What's coming in patch 0.10.2?

0.10.2 introduces a new intelligence skill called Incinerate. This skill causes your character to launch a torrent of fire from its hand. The longer you repeatedly cast the skill from the same location, the larger and more damaging the flames become. We're expecting to unveil screenshots or video of this skill once tweaking has been finished.

Incinerate was introduced as the first of our Open Beta skills because fire casters really needed an additional skill. We wanted to make it substantially different to Flame Totem (which acts as a standard flamethrower effect), so that's why we introduced the mechanic where it does more damage the longer you stand still. Incinerate goes through four separate damage stages. By the last one, it's very effective, especially when combined with appropriate support gems. Of course, standing still in the face of monsters does pose survivability problems, so it presents many tactical choices in combat..

0.10.2 also contains many other minor features. I've listed some below (note that this list is not complete and many could be removed or modified!)

• Changes to the Duelist passive skill tree to make the class more powerful. It's likely that only characters who are affected by the moved skills will have their passive trees reset.
• Passive skill allocation now requires confirmation to prevent misclicks.
• Substantial changes to voice acting including Act One NPCs and overhauls of the Lion and Beast sounds.
• Damage boosts to at least five skills.
• Nerfs to low levels of Poison Arrow and Fire Trap. They're still pretty good though.
• Level 78 and 79 item mods.
• Improvements to the visual effects of several skills.
• A new monster skill. Snakes needed to have more ways to kill you, right?
• A new 3v3 PvP arena.
• Changes to the variance of pack sizes in end-game Maps. It has a lot of effect on pacing.
• Many more changes and bug fixes that will be in the full patch notes.

With Incinerate filling the gap for fire casters, we've scheduled an area-of-effect melee skill for 0.10.3. This patch is due the week after 0.10.2.

In addition to the changes scheduled for these weekly content patches, work continues on deeper issues such as movement simulation sync, client effect performance in large parties and security changes. These will be deployed in whatever the next patch is as soon as they're ready. There are different people working on content for the weekly patches than those improving platform issues.

Thanks again for your continued feedback and support of the game. We love you guys!