Diablo III summer patches and hotfixes announced

The folks at Blizzard Entertainment have released a gigantic update to the game Diablo III that will have all gamers jumping for joy – unless you're a Monk. This update will have the Monk class pushed back in several ways – specifically in the rune department where what you love and know as Overawe is, as Blizzard says, "good, but we don't think it's so far out of line that we're going to swoop in and hotfix it out of existence." As for the rest of the fixes, they're all coming for the same reason as this first hotfix: balance.

The set of updates Blizzard has announced this week are not so much scheduled as they are "in the works", with developers behind the scenes being given the order to create future patches with yet-unspoken deadlines in mind. Blizzard is not only letting players know that these changes are being done to not only balance out gameplay far better than Diablo II ever did (or does, since some still play it), but to encourage a variety of character class builds as well.

Blizzard lets us know that an impressive range of characters have already been built:

since Diablo III's release:

• On average players have created 3 characters each

• 80% of characters are between levels 1 and 30

• 1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty

• 54% of Hardcore players chose a female character

• The majority of Hardcore deaths (35%) occur in Act I Normal

• The most common level 60 build in the game is only used by 0.7% of level 60 characters of that class (not including Passive diversity)

• The most used runes for each class at level 60 are Barbarian: Best Served Cold, Demon Hunter: Lingering Fog, Wizard: Mirror Skin, Monk: Peaceful Repose, Witch Doctor: Numbing Dart

Blizzard currently has a patch in the works (under the version number 1.0.1) which will be "mainly aimed at addressing service issues" and has been in the works since the game's launch. For those of you just joining us here on SlashGear, please feel free to check out our first of several reviews of the game and head to the timeline below to see our full Diablo III coverage in brief!