Version 0.8.6

Patch notes
These are the official patch notes for version 0.8.6 released by Grinding Gear Games.

Features

 * Replaced the passive skill tree. The new one is less confusing and promotes a greater diversity of character specialisation, as well as solving many balance concerns we had.
 * Added a new end-game. After completing Merciless difficulty, you can talk to an Act Two NPC who will give you access to the Maelstrom of Chaos via a waypoint. The Maelstrom is a highly experimental work in progress, and will grow substantially with each patch. There are currently eight different level templates in it.
 * Enabled the Templar class, the Strength/Intelligence hybrid
 * Added instance management. Ctrl+click an area transition or entry on the waypoint list to bring up the instance management interface. You can have multiple copies of the same instance active, and can select which to visit (or to create a new one) with the manager. Instances now last for 15 minutes.
 * Missing graphical shaders are now generated in parallel with gameplay. This means that the sharp freezes associated with shader generation will be greatly reduced. Entities that do not have shaders will not be drawn, so you may notice things popping in if it's an area we haven't fully cached the shaders for.
 * Substantially improved asset preloading. Now there should be far less loading lag while playing the game.
 * Critical strikes with lightning damage now cause the "Shocked" status. This can be stacked up to five times on one target. In this state, monsters or players take 10% additional damage per instance of Shock
 * Skill and support gems can now have quality, like equipment. Each gem is affected by quality in a specific way - for example, additional damage or attack speed. Skill gems from quest rewards have zero quality.
 * Added new skill prototype: "Glacial Hammer" (Hits the enemy, converting some of your physical damage to cold damage. If the enemy is frozen and is on less than one third life, they will shatter when hit by Glacial Hammer. Requires a mace or staff.)
 * Added new skill prototype: "Infernal Blow" (Hits the enemy, converting some of your physical damage to fire damage. If the enemy dies soon after being hit, they will explode, dealing fire damage to nearby enemies.)
 * Now, when changing area, you won't get the loading screen until the new instance is ready. This means that you're able to defend yourself and/or heal while waiting. Previously you could die at this stage.
 * Added heaps of new item tiers to each progression, so that they are spaced out better at higher difficulties, and scale properly to the new maximum item levels. The highest tier are extremely rare.
 * Added quest rewards to the Mud Flats glyphs quest and Alira/Kraityn quests
 * Monsters who are killed while frozen now shatter, leaving no corpse behind. Unique bosses cannot shatter.
 * New effects for frozen, chilled, surges and lightning damage
 * Added two new currency items with temporary art/names. They upgrade the quality on Flasks and Skill Gems respectively.
 * Improved speed of level generation on the client
 * Incrementally improved effects, animations, sounds and world areas
 * Plenty more improvements to Act Two dungeons
 * Changed default value of "Always Highlight" and "Show Life/Mana" values to false.
 * The character panel now displays your Critical Strike Damage Multiplier
 * Elemental damage effects are now more appropriately sized for the quantity of elemental damage you dealt, relative to the target's maximum life
 * Changed many washed up wood doodads on the beach to tiles so that we can place them better (to not block players)
 * Improved dungeon generator to prefer rooms without extraneous doors
 * Pressing Ctrl+C while hovering over an item you own will copy its description to the clipboard
 * Numerous improvements to the networking code
 * Changed the cutoff damage percentages for elemental damage effects
 * Added a heuristic for determining which town to send players to when towns are getting full
 * "Always highlight" and "Show life/mana levels" are now no longer on by default
 * The wording of text to do with Critical Strikes has been improved to make it clearer

Bug Fixes

 * Fixed item rarity calculations. "Increased item rarity" now works properly. Chests now drop higher rarity items. Shops have item rarities set properly
 * Movement near abysses should now work correctly. Leap slams over abysses should look more correct.
 * Fixed a crash that occurs when buying items sometimes
 * Fixed a bug with monsters dropping the wrong quantity of items
 * Attack speed is now calculated correctly while dual wielding
 * Fixed an issue that should improve sync while running long distances
 * The player now leaves their party when they respawn from hardcore to non-hardcore
 * The league name should now always be correct
 * Fixed various rendering issues with linked items on the website
 * Fixed a rare realm crash
 * Fixed a crash if the client is closed while the player is moving, under some circumstances
 * Fixed the Double Strike effect when using a thrusting sword
 * Fixed bugs related to the life and health degeneration of raised zombies
 * The player now faces their target when casting detonate dead
 * Tidied up the gem attribute requirements display
 * Sirens should now get more appropriate monster mods
 * The item data page on the website should be more correct now
 * Fixed various bugs with the display of connections on the passive skill screen
 * Fixed a bug where occasionally incorrect items would have their sockets shown
 * Fixed quotes on the forums
 * Fixed a bug where a poison arrow cloud would persist forever if its owner left the instance
 * Fixed a bug where the Waterfall Cave entrance would sometimes be facing in the wrong direction

Balance

 * Rebalanced every passive skill for the new tree (and added plenty more. We're up to 750 or so now)
 * Rebalanced all skills to support 20 levels
 * Rebalanced all item mods
 * Reduced drop rate of equipment such that 18% of monsters drop items rather than 23%. Non-equipment drop rates are unchanged.
 * Repriced all items in shops to care more about scrolls and less about other currency items
 * Changed Frenzy Charges to add 4% attack speed and 4% cast speed per charge
 * Reduced chance of currency items dropping by 25%. Instead, scrolls are more common.
 * Changed Power Charges to add 2% overall critical strike chance per charge
 * Reduced physical damage reduction from 5% to 4% per Endurance Charge
 * Changed exp split in parties to use level+4 in the ratio rather than +10. This means that it's slightly more weighted towards the higher level characters.
 * Increased damage of Added Lightning Damage support gem by 14%
 * Moved wands to the misc vendors and balanced the number of rings/amulets/belts/flasks
 * Increased Spark damage by 12.5%
 * Reduced chance of getting mana/life mods on weapons
 * Nerfed Sweep some more - it now does even less damage and only has a 30% chance to knockback
 * The Added Fire Damage support gem now adds fire damage in proportion to your physical damage. This does not affect elemental spells now.
 * The Added Cold Damage support gem now increases chill duration substantially and does 14% less damage
 * Ice Spear now deals 10% more damage
 * Reduced Ice Spear mana cost
 * Shields have been nerfed slightly at higher levels, so the highest tier shield only gives a base 35% block chance.
 * Doubled the number of items that can drop from normal chests
 * Changed off-colour socket spawning on items so that it's flatter at low levels and now more common at high levels
 * Life leech now recovers the leeched life at twice the previous rate
 * Mana leech now recovers the leeched mana at 25% more than the previous rate
 * Set new area levels for difficulty 4 - it's not flat any more
 * Nerfed fireball projectile speed by 20%, boosted its damage up by 5%
 * Reduced amount of mana lost to Sapping flask mod and nerfed life regen from it a bit
 * Nerfed both aspects of the Caustic flask mod by 40%
 * Reduced leech available on items
 * 1h/2h weapon passives now only apply to melee weapons (they're marked as such)
 * Substantially increased the range of the taunt effect for Enduring Cry
 * 1-hand/2-hand weapon damage passives now refer to Melee weapons only (not bows or wands)