Thoughts on the Diablo 3 1.0.7 PTR

200k to craft one of these. Hoping for good stats.

I decided to test the Diablo 3 PTR within an hour after it was announced. The use of more gems to create those elite Marquise Gems caused gems of all types to skyrocket (This is the first time I've seen every gem cost over 2000 now, I wish I bought a lot of them earlier.), and I wanted to see if those new items were worth it.

Thoughts on the PTR:

• It seems like elite mobs spawn more frequently and creatures drop more. Where it was hard to get five to spawn during a Arreat Core Lvl 1 / Tower run, at least five elites appeared to build up the NV quickly and that only appeared before I finished the map. I'm guessing because they want testers a chance at grabbing those DE's to test out the new plans.
• During a single run during the PTR, only two Demonic Essences appeared per run. 20% seems fair enough for MP0, given that you only encounter less than twenty per run. Plans might drop too often when farming minibosses and would be much cheaper to buy from the AH instead than from the vendor (1.5 million gold).
• The undocumented feature of identifying items when selling to vendors: Previously all items had to be identified before selling - now when you're on the sell item screen instead of being unable to sell you will identify it instead. I like that change.
• Plans drop too frequently now (5x as much - I found 7 plans within the first two hours of play, two exalted, the rest plans released in the update) - expect those prices for each legendary plan to go down a bit. The plans to create account bound items are sellable, though trades are the only way to do that at the time of writing.
• Marquise Gems are underpowered for 80 million... or more. In short, they're not worth your extra gold and you should buy an equipment upgrade instead. The Ruby does +150 to damage - even though it might sound large, it's still less than what a crit damage might do on a Lvl 60 hero, when they're focusing on getting the most dps as possible (which means going for high crit chance and damage)
  • The only reason why the Ruby would be the only thing worth buying is that it greatly increases the damage potential of pets or alts - making any hero under Lvl 50 overpowered (When you first find a weapon sockets at lvl 15 or so, you'd be lucky to get 50 dps on it).
• The new crafting recipes? Item level 63, 1 main stat guaranteed at up to 15% more than possible (by that, in the range of 200-215) and 5 random stats. For each of the main armor parts. 100k to craft, and more for the ingredients (total 200k or so to craft one). Also, they're account bound, so you can't sell on the AH. Have fun. (This, I believe, is the closest they have gotten to gambling in D2)