Diablo Junkie

Since the developers of D3 are wanting the game to be more tactical and strategic, I propose that they introduce more short-term buffs, and debuffs, on timers of course. In Diablo 2 there were very few Short-Term buffs, and only really curses and a couple of the Barbs Warcries for Debuffs. By allowing the buffs to be such long-term and spammable they efectively took away an element of strategy that could add more depth to the game. The same is true for curses, they had such a long duration and were so spammable that they were in effect applied to every monster you ever fought, all the time. Now I've introduced the idea in a basic concept, I'll present some examples of what I propose: N.B These are just ideas, to give a flavour of what sort of stuff could be used, not necessarily actual skills to implement. Buffs 1. Burst of Speed

In Diablo 2 the Burst of Speed skill wasn't really a Burst, more like a Prolonged Skill of Speed Enhancement. To make things more interesting Burst of speed could last 30 seconds and be on a 180 second cooldown. So if you cast BoS at every opportunity it would be up for 30 seconds, then down for 150 seconds, up 1/6 of the time. To balance this, BoS would of course need to be more powerful, a greater IAS boost, greater FRW Boost, maybe a damage boost to reflect increased Velocity. As well as increasing the potency of the skill it would need to be stackable with any other Buffs that were implemented (I.E if Fade was left as a long-term Buff, BoS wouldn't override Fade, but instead work as well as Fade). By doing this there would be many tactical considerations in both PvM and PvP. For PvM, do you cast BoS at every opportunity, or maybe save it for the tougher fights? Do you use it to wipe out the Minions with a Boss or save it until the Minions are dead to kill the Boss quicker? In PvP do you cast it at the start of a duel to try and get a quick kill, or wait and try and surprise your opponent? This sort of strategic thinking would add to the gameplay in my opinion, instead of joining a game and casting all your Buffs at the start and not having to cast a single one for over 10 minutes.

2. Focus (Placeholder name)

Focus would be a buff for the Mage character, granting a percentage bonus to all offensive spells. With a medium length and a medium cooldown (so it would be available roughly half the time), exact percent would need to be calculated so it wouldn't be necessary for the class to function, but would be a nice pick of skills if you could manage to re-cast it regularly.

3. Rapid Block

Rapid Block is a defensive buff for the main shield using character, granting 95% chance to block all physical attacks for 15 seconds, with a long cooldown (180-300 seconds cooldown). Granting near immunity for a very short time this skill would have tactical uses, but wouldn't necessarily be a "must-have" skill.

4. Regeneration Skill

Granting rapid health regeneration for a short period of time to a class, OHK's could still cause problems but would add survivability.

5. Charge up skills

Very similar to Frenzy from D2, as the skill charges up grants bonus', short term so you need to keep attacking with it to keep the bonus'.

6. Empower

Empowers a caster class with formidable melee skills, giving increased damage, IAS, DR etc, for 2-3 minutes, 4 minute cooldown. While empowered unable to cast spells, can only use melee skills etc.

Debuffs 1. Vicious Swing

An attack that gives a target a reduction in damage as they reel from the attack, the debuff lasts 3 seconds or so and gives -50% damage, less effective on Bosses / Depending on the size of the monster.

2. Lethargy

AoE Spell that has the same effect as chilling from D2, but can work on CI's and Bosses, 10 second duration, 12 second cooldown.

3. Voodoo Curse

Acts similar to a curse from D2, but with much shorter duration and a cooldown. Possibly just overlaps so can be kept in a boss perma, or maybe 1-2 seconds where the curse would have run out but the curse hasn't recharged yet, like lethargy example above.

Combined Buffs / Debuffs 1. Blade Shield

Ala Blade Shield from D2, caster surrounded by a shield of blades for a short while, gives defensive bonus' to the caster, and debuffs any monsters in contact with the caster.

Basically I'm hoping that there are lot more strategic skills in D3, rather than simply casting BO etc at the start of the game, then spamming the same offensive skill for the entire game. Adding buffs and debuffs with a short duration means they will need to be cast frequently, breaking up the monotony of casting the exact same offensive skill over and over again, and will add the tactical elements of deciding when to use the buffs or debuffs. Thoughts and Opinions welcome.

This week the Diablo III Community Manager Bashiok answered a few questions from the Battle.net forum community continuing the analysis of the gameplay video shown at the 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitationals. Bashiok: While the crumbling bridge could be taken quite literally, it was intended to get the idea across that Diablo III will have more interactive and responsive environmental hazards. Of course if such obstacles existed in the way they were displayed every class would need some way to proceed. At this time we aren't announcing any additional class abilities though. Bashiok: It used the same "tile set" as the Tristram Cathedral dungeon including a specially made entry room. It was a static and specifically crafted dungeon especially for the demo, so yes it includes the look for Tristram Cathedral, but it's not a true piece of the game as you would play through it. Bashiok: Hey, are you kind of kid who reads the last page of a mystery first? Who pesters the magician to tell you his tricks? Who sneaks downstairs to peek at his Christmas presents? Nooooo... of course you're not. That's why I'm noooot goooonna teeeeell yoooou! Bashiok: What I said was: "... we don't plan nor have any armor items at the moment that are class specific - although the bonuses and stats may be better suited to a certain class - anyone can pick up any chest/shoulder/leg/etc item and wear it. However, there are some weapons/off-hand items that are class specific." No changes to this yet, there just weren't any drops that were class specific. We essentially "hand placed" every drop that happened in the video. We knew people were going to dissect and scrutinize every detail, and everything that drops in that video was purposefully and specifically chosen to be dropped... everything. Fun fact: I played as the female barbarian for the recording. Bashiok: Well the way we imagined the final fight going down when thinking about the flow of the presentation was to have a few heroes killed off, and thought it would be cooler to see someone get ripped in half by a giant demon than just fall down. While it was an event made for the presentation it could definitely be worked in to the actual end-product. We try not to spend time on anything that can't be incorporated in some way. If there's a mockup or some cool flavor added in somewhere to show something off, we want to build it so that it can actually be used. Bashiok: They're for the most part static. With the outdoor environments we felt we could get a lot more out of them by crafting large and visually impressive scenes, which random map generation really just doesn't allow for all that well. By that same token one of the main goals with Diablo III is to flesh out Sanctuary, to make it feel more like you're in this living and breathing world. With towns shifting around everywhere you do sort of lose a sense of cohesion, and an attachment to the places you're visiting. On a very slight technical note - for random map generation you're essentially creating a bunch of rooms that can all fit together in various ways. It works quite well for a dungeon which is essentially a series of rooms any way. For an outdoor environment though it tends to make it either fairly bland, or fairly linear just by how the edges have to line up. You're either running zig-zag patterns to find the map edges, or you're running down a narrow pathway. Neither are extremely compelling, and at the same time you're losing the visual grandness that could come from a fully hand-crafted and artistically realized environment. That said, the outdoor areas aren't completely static.