Basic Math - The Failure of Diablo Melee

[Sirian]

I passed on your previous comments about unlimited potions, because I really didn't think you wanted to go there.

Of course I want to go there. That is literally the ONLY reason I started this thread: to go EXACTLY to there.

But your phrasing is not a fair assessment. You say "unlimited potions" and that isn't what I said. I didn't get in to numbers because I don't know enough yet to know exactly what the numbers ought to be. I do know that the current numbers are unbalanced, however, and that is a good enough place from which to start.

I thought that maybe you just wanted to reduce the cooldown to 20 seconds or something...

33% reduction in the "Run Away Little Girl, Run Away" experience? Not nearly enough, for sure.


The entire concept of these mad-crazy boss packs is off the rails.

Whatever is the hardest content to beat in a given act must be made reasonably beatable. The proper thing, then, is to get away from these uber packs that, by comparison, render the regular mobs "too easy" and nothing but cannon fodder.

Kiting packs to some backwater and stranding them there, then ignoring them thereafter and carefully avoiding re-aggroing them, is not my idea of proper strategy. Nor is easy mode interspersed with one-shot-kill land my notion of game balance. Blizzard has their head in the sand on this one, and it undermines the best parts of their generally good design. They should have chucked this aspect of Diablo 2 in the history bin and moved on to engineering a more evenly paced game. The notion of worthless trash mobs and overtuned boss encounters is an MMO concept that this franchise could do without.

Is that going to happen at this point? Seems impossible. They've made their bed. Nevertheless, Diablo 1 did not have boss encounters that were ridiculously stronger than normal mobs. Quite the contrary: the bosses always showed up on specific floors, and were predictably present if their mob type had been selected on that floor. They'd have one quality that was tougher (or at least different) than their regular counterparts, such as Plaguewrath's maintain-range trait, or the fire clan pack that would shoot Succubus missiles.

There is some strategic novelty to overcoming the D2/D3 boss packs with the multiple, random abilities. However, it is fairly narrow, and it comes at the cost of rendering the rest of the game worthless by comparison. That is not a successful or worthwhile tradeoff.


In D1, fighting the regular mobs was GREAT fun, and the bosses would be a little bit extra edge to deal with on occasion. In D3, fighting the regular mobs is ONCE AGAIN good fun, more so than in Diablo 2. Yet we have this terrible burden of overtuned boss packs, which are then too lethal to be much fun -- or if your gear, ability selection, internet connection, computer quality and player skill are all strong enough, the bosses are fine but the rest of the game is a waste of your time.

This is a design blunder of the first order -- and frankly, something that should not be repeated in D3 after stepping in it in D2. They should have learned better.

Did you know that poison damage actually caused more damage in D2 than other forms of magic damage? But why was poison resistance such an afterthought for most players? Because you could always healing potion through it.

Have you ever read my D2 spot reports? My D2 site is back up now, after being offline for the last couple of years.

sirian.warpcore.org

My run with Wussie girl would have been quite different if I had neglected her poison resistance.

Potion cooldowns are a good mechanic. The idea of health globes that you have to move to and strategically use is also a good mechanic.

I agree, but they are not properly tuned to the incoming damage counts. The potions more so than the globes.

The player needs the ability to survive. Death, by definition, is "losing" that given encounter. There should be no unwinnable encounters.

CC is part of the solution, but it cannot be the only solution. All the CC options have cooldowns, while the threats include things like champion packs where four different mobs can chain-CC your toon. Four mobs executing Jailer in sequence, or a Horde boss pack of a hard-hitting creature type able to chain Vortex you or chain Teleport to you. There are some mobs encountered in sardine cans, such as waiting for you as the first encounter in the sewers or caves, events that are traps, and so on, where there isn't room to kite or even maneuver.

So, yes, Ember and many of my special D2 characters would get devasted with the new fight mechanics, but I take that as a sign that Blizzard has learned from the past.

Blizzard has reacted to the past. That is not the same as learning. If all they've done is shut down kiting with a smirk and a laugh, expecting us to rely on these new defensive and CC skills but giving them too long of cooldowns to be able to deal with specific packs that can chain their abilities enough to overwhelm your defensive ability options, then they are far from having learned anything. They've "closed" what they see as a "loophole" in the D2 design. "You WILL die! Ahahaha!" Um... yeah. Gee, thanks. But is the more narrow design of their making as fun to play as D1 with its instant potions or D2 with its endless kiting? Not at the moment.

I passed on your previous comments about unlimited potions, because I really didn't think you wanted to go there.

Here's why we need to go back there.

Your point about spike damage being the only damage that is dangerous is true regardless of healing options. If you get in over your head (whatever that means to your toon in its current gear, ability set, companions, and content phase) you should be in danger. If not, you should not be in danger of dying. You may ought to be going up against enough resistance that ineptitude could soon put you in to danger, and that resistance should be robust enough to be entertaining, but you should NOT be constantly in a "Run Away Little Girl, Run Away" adrenalin rush, or the game will be too stressful, too tedious, and ultimately too one dimensional.

Whether you can full-heal instantly several times in a row without restriction, or heal only a small fraction of your health globe and wait 30 seconds before you can do it again, or something in between, spike damage is and remains the only threat of death. (Attrition could be a threat, as well, but only if you are trapped -- sardine cans, ambushes, positioning mistakes, etc). So that line attack is-- well, it's feeble. Sorry, but it doesn't even matter to the core issue. You can run away to town, fire off your CCs or armor abilities or whatever, but whatever your reaction, you MUST stop taking that kind of damage and fast, or you are dead.

I don't think there's a player on this planet who can lecture me about Diablo kiting. I've been there and done that, under a number of the most extreme conditions. Heck, I've even pulled off some epic kiting on this barbarian toon already -- and the ratio at which I'm having to do that is part of the problem here.

A more robust healing option allows players to engage more and run around kiting less. YOU may enjoy hardcore-only Diablo, stacking your toons with the most survivable gear possible; diminishing, avoiding, and managing your risks to where you never die; but that does not mean it's my cup of tea nor should that be imposed on me arbitrarily. Let ME choose a game plan, and let that be something other than endlessly kiting mobs because I lack for healing options and can't afford to take a hit. Nor do I want to be force fed a game balance where I must play like it's Hardcore, running around like a tank with the most possible health and damage mitigation I can stack.

You can play Diablo 1 by pulling one mob at a time, most of the time. You can play it by shooting offscreen, measuring every step, always retreating to the choke point, and so forth. That may even be fun, if that's the most your toon can handle under variant conditions. That style of play should be on the menu, but if that's the only flavor, this restaurant sucks! There's also something to be said for pulling faster, killing faster, and risking pulling too much for your gear, level and player skill. Even with the instant potions, you could readily die in D1 if you jumped in over your head.

D3 wouldn't require monks and barbs to carry specific healing skills or go home crying, if potions were once again a primary form of health recovery. The orbs ARE a good option, a fun addition, but are too luck-based to be the only answer.


Nearly endless instant potions would be too much, but 30 seconds until the next mini-potion that will only heal a third of your health globe anyway, that is definitely way too little.

A belt with four potions on it, which has a 30 second refill cooldown, sounds like a reasonable place to start. The potions are more expensive than dying, at least where I'm at in the game, so it's not like it will be economically feasible to drink them like a fish.

Let players opt for a smaller belt if they like, with some minor buff and a few achievements available if they do. Then YOU could still have your one potion every 30 seconds, without imposing on me the need to disengage from melee with a ridiculous frequency.

Do I expect Blizzard to do this? No. I've seen no sign that they even comprehend the math errors in Diablo2 and Diablo3 game pacing, and that would have to occur before any solution of this type could be considered. But I have the notions rolling around in my head and needed to express them so I could move on myself.

Nor do I think this would be enough by itself to fix the problems here, but I also do not believe that nerfing mob damage alone will be enough. The two sides of the equation both need to migrate toward better balance, and then perhaps we will have a game with a reasonable shelf life to it.


- Sirian