Designing
Endgame Content in the Diablo Universe
In this post, I will first be taking
a look at what is considered to be endgame content by the majority of Diablo
players versus what the developers have seemingly designed as Diabo 3's current
endgame content, and why the two do not coiencede with eachother. After that I will dicussing various game
design factors that are limiting to the end game content and then moving on to
design choices that promote end game content and the longevity of Diablo
3. Finally I will be speculating on
redesigning Diablo 3's end content and showing ways in which future content
could be created without negatively influencing any current or future content.
Diablo
Fan's Endgame Content - It's Over Nine Thousand!!!!!!
For the majority of Diablo players
and for 99.9% of the diehard fans the endgame content of any Diablo game is not
defeating the hardest boss, or clearing the story on the hardest
difficulty. The endgame goal of players
is all about the power, the gear, creating the strongest, most perfect
character possible and resting smugly knowing that yours is better than
everyone else's. That drive to
perfection, to create the ultimate min/maxed character is what kept Diablo 2
alive for years and years. It’s what
kept players farming for endless hours and it is what made that farming
fun. Getting that peice of gear that was
even just +1 stat closer to perfection made all the difference in the world to
hardcore Diablo players while getting a legendary at all was what caused the
more casual crowd to get excited. Gear,
was the true endgame content for Diablo players.
What
Seems to Be Diablo 3's Endgame Content - Moar Numbers = Moar Content
Currently in Diablo 3, it seems that
the developers have intened for Inferno difficulty to be the endgame content of
the game. At a single player pace, the
difficulty of it lends itself to taking the average player weeks, maybe even
months of farming to make it through a few hours worth of content. The developers want you to be playing their
game for a long period of time to be able to see all of the work and content
(beautiful content in my opinion) that they have dedicated so much of their
time to and to enjoy your time spent doing so.
In the case of Diablo 3, their solution to this was the Inferno
difficulty and they tuned the numbers (and only the numbers) as such to be the
endgame content of their game, lasting for a long while.
Player
Desires Conflictig with Designer's Goals - PvD
From the designer stand point, the
endgame begins when players hit level 60 and the endgame content is
Inferno. From the player standpoint, the
endgame begins when they are able to start making thier character as powerful
as can be and the content for that is gear, specifically the being able to
obtain the best gear possible. See the
conflict? The game designers want
players to beat something while players want to be able to create something.
There is nothing wrong with different goals; sometimes they even happen to fall
in sync with each other creating a better experience all around, so what went
wrong with Diablo 3? The difficulty of
Inferno has actually barred players from reaching their goal. The design goal of the developers has
prevented players from being able to accomplish there desires. It is this brick wall dropped in front of
players that is at the core of their displeasure. Not only has Inferno blocked players, but it
has forced them onto paths that few enjoy, compounding their frustration.
Patch
1.03 - Bandaid Fixes
As the new patch is scheduled to be
coming out soon, I'd like to take a few moments and sidetrack to go over a
couple of the changes. One change that I
highly approve of is champion packs guarenteed to drop a rare with full
Nephalim Valor stacks. Rares are simply
more exciting than blues and there is no guarentee they will be any good. Even if Blizzard were to lower the chance for
great modifiers on them, the overall player experience would still improve. Finding a rare and the possibilities when
identify them tickles the players pleasure senses way more than blue quality of
loot does and I feel that this is a very positive change.
The next two changes I will discuss
feel as if a bandaid is placed on the problems rather than actually being
addressed. The first of these, the
lowering of health and damage of Inferno monsters is a step in the right
direction. The tuning of Inferno is
siply way too high and the numbers, without a doubt, need to be lowered. However, I call this a bandaid fix because it
does not addressed the underlying problems of Inferno, that, while the numbers
make it difficult, Inferno is very boring and lacks challenge. The last change, changing the item level drop
rates so that Act III/IV gear can drop in Act I and more often in Act II, is a
huge step in the wrong direction to me.
It promotes the idea that overgearing the content is the way to go and
that it was never intended to be beaten with gear relavent to the content. Also, while it does allow players to reach
their goal of obtaining the best gear possible, it feels cheapened when it is
avaiable at such an early act, almost of if it’s being handed out. It also removes alot of the need players feel
to progress through Inferno difficulty.
It is much easier and much more efficient to farm Act I than it is to try to progress through Act II and
beyond, and without incentive, players will endlessly farm Act I until they
overgear the rest of the Acts and are able to completely stomp it.
Creating
Enjoyable End Game Content - I'm Not Addicted, I Can Quit Anytime
In any game, the main focus is (or
at least should be) creating enjoyable content for players. In an online game, the focus will shift
slightly putting more of an emphasis on creating enjoyable end game content. Designers accomplish this by first deciding
on a goal for their players then move on to determine the ways players will go
about this. With games that are sequels
however (especially online games), the players already have their own goals for
the game in mind and expect them to be the same as the previous game. When designers change this goal in between
games, it forces players not only to understand a new goal, but to throw away
the goals that had been solidifying in their minds for years. While it is possible that a game could be
designed so well that the change comes as a welcome shock, more often than not
this is not the case. Unfortunately,
this is the camp that Diablo 3 has fallen into.
So how do you create enjoyable end
game content for Diablo 3? First you
have to understand the goals of the players who have been playing and in love
with Diablo 2 for years and years. Then
designers must decided if this goal should remain the same or if a new goal
should take over, in the case of Diablo, the goal in the player mindset is so
strong and in this case so enjoyable to players, that it should have been left
untouched. Once designers understand the
goal their game should be aiming for, the questions become what works and what
does not work in creating a postive, enjoyable experience as players progress
to this goal.
From this point on I will begin to
talk specifically about Diablo 3 and its elements. First about what elements are limiting the
end game, then what elements need to be limited, and finally how positive end
game content can be created.
Story
Limitations - One Beautiful World Thrown Out the Door
On most players first time through
Diablo they will sit and listen to the story.
Each new quest, cutscene, and bit of diablogue pulls them deeper into
the world and by the end of normal they are happy with the experience they were
a part of. After that first time through
though, the story ceases to become important having turned simply into people
to click and and esc buttons to press.
The story has become irrelavent to the game and in essence needs to be
thrown in the trash and pushed out of developer’s minds. Sticking to the flow the story has set out,
can cause potential design paths for the end game to be ignored.
*Quick note, story progression is
fine for Normal through Hell, but I feel that in Inferno it should have been
removed.
Limiting
the Difficulty - Fences, Walls, and Gates, Oh My!
Most players enjoy a difficult game
and don't think much of easy ones. In
fact one of the major things players asked for was for the difficulty of Diablo
to be significantly increased. However,
the difficulty of Inferno took things a bit too far. Suddenly the difficulty of Diablo 3 had
become a wall, blocking players from their goal, and nobody likes running into
a brick wall. In Diablo 3, difficulty
must be designed in a way that is challenging and fun to the player while still
allowing steady progression at a decent pace toward their ultimate goal. It cannot be designed in such a way to halt
progress; therefore limits must be placed on how "tough" monsters can
actually be designed to be
Limiting
the Auction House - The Gear that Keeps on Giving
Diablo 3 is the type of game that
lends itself to having an auction house, however when left unchecked (as it
currently is) things will get out of control.
At the moment it is quite possible that the save peice of gear has been
bought and sold on the auction house over 100 times. Gear is constantly being bough, used, and
resold. This recycling of gear needs to
be stopped. The auction house is
becoming flooded by powerful items that will never dissappear and there is no
system in place to keep this in check.
Without some kind of limiting control the auction house will quickly get
out of control, holding ever growing quantities of every item possible. As the auction house grows and grows the
value of the endgame gear and thereby the endgame content will continue to
diminish. Something has to change. Honestly, I think it will talk several steps
each new one's effects evaluated before a solid solution surfaces, but I think
that a good first step is to make anything bought off the auction house bound
to your account. This would make
purchases more meaningful and cause each one to effectively remove that item
from the market permantly, reducing flooding.
Redesigning
Inferno - We Can Rebuild It, We Have the Technology
In my previous post (link at bottom)
I spent a decent portion of time talking about the current difficulty of
Inferno and its flaws. To recap, Inferno
is barring the way to the player's goals for Diablo 3's endgame. The difficulty is purely in numbers, creating
walls that do not provide any challenge, only frustration. This has caused players to be forced to farm
the lower tiers of gear, something that is considered by most players to be
work and not play. For the next several
sections I will be taking a look at how to redesign Inferno in such a way that
it is fun, challengeing, and fresh.
Creating an Enjoyable Challenge -
Working Up a Sweat
For
the past 3 difficulties and last 60 levels, players have worked their way
through Diablo 3's Acts. The content has
been seen multiple times and very little of it has changed. However, players were accompanied by a sense
of ever increasing strength and a constant stream of new variations of skills
to play with. So while the content
stayed the same, players were kept entertained and this made the process
enjoyable. At the end of Hell, the path
to level 60 had been reached and the prospect of Inferno loomed before
them. This is a grand milestone, the
start of the real game for most players and it should be treated at such. Inferno should redefine the game experience
that players had currently been having.
No longer entertained by leveling up while moving through old content, the
gameplay and content must change, giving players a variety of options to keep
things feeling fresh and providing a level of difficulty that challenges
players to find ways to overcome and deal with without feeling shoved against a
wall. Players should be able to work at
and think through the challenges, like solving a puzzle and not feel that they
are trying to beat a brick wall with a stick, making no progress at all. Players need things to learn.
Dealing with Numbers - What I
Learned from Sesame Street
We all learned our
numbers in grade school, 2 is bigger than 1, 5 than 10, 9374202384 than 25, and
applying that knowledge to games is childs play. Bigger numbers beat smaller numbers. When it comes to difficulty, difficulty by
numbers is extremly boring and provides no challenge to players. Challenge and enjoyment comes when we are
able to use smaller numbers to overcome larger ones. Yes there needs to be a threshold, you
shouldn't be able to clear content in all white level 20 gear, but it should
not be so high that you can't make do with what gear you've picked up along the
way. Allowing players to overcome
challenges by learning them, or by coming up with creative solutions is what
appeals to players about diffculty.
Using there brain to come up with techniques to overcome whats been put
in their way. Lack of gear should almost
never limit progression, but rather an abudance of gear should create ease of
play.
In Diablo 3 there are
some types of number difficulty that players find appropriate and add to the
user experience and there are some types that players hate and should almost
never happen. Getting one-shot is an
example of this. Diablo 3 should have
abilities that kill players in a single hit, but how that is done is very
important. Nobody wants to be killed by
a small handful of white damage from generic auto attacks, let alone be killed
in a single one of these hits, there is nothing fun or exciting about it. On the flip side, players do enjoy when there
are elements that can and will kill them in a single hit. A few examples, Dark Berserker's charge up
swing, arcane orbs, or Mallet Lords, all of these are acceptable forms of being
one-shot in players’ minds. They are
very dodgeable attacks and abilities and getting hit by them is silly. When modifiers come into play though (in this
case especially waller, jailer, and vortex) these things that were once easy to
handle, all of a sudden become a challenge.
A well timed vortex into a charge swing will end your life so will over
estimating your time to get away from an arcane orb and then getting jailed
next to it. These things can surprise
the player and even after experiencing a time or two and figuring out ways to
prevent it from happening or to get out of them when they do, they still force
players to stay on their toes and watch out for them. When you start to add more than one type of
this challenge to a fight for players to deal as well as the constant threat of
taking too many normal hits that wittle down their health, things become hectic
in a good way and the player is forced to grow and become better at the game to
overcome them. This provides a positve
user experience.
So
what kind of numbers provide for a solid and reasonable challenge? The answer is all kinds! First off, ping-ponging health is bad. Taking hits should decrease health at a
steady rate while healing should raise health at a slow one. Getting hit by 1 or 2 hits should be able to
be countered by healing, but allowing yourself to get hit constantly should
begin to wear down you health, steadily bringing you closer and closer to
death. Your health versus monster damage
should be crafted in such a way that the scare of a quick death from regular
hits should never be there, but neither should you be able to ignore them.
The
next teir of numbers should be those that are dangerous yet mostly
avoidable. A good example of this is the
wasps in Act 2, it’s easy to dodge the slow moving bullets they fire, but when
the screen becomes cluttered by them and other ablities come into play, the
odds of dodgeing every one of them becomes quite low. These bullets should be a significantly
higher danger to you than a generic hit, but they should not massively chunk
your health pool or kill you outright.
Getting hit by 1, 2, or even 3 shouldn't end the fight for you, but it
should set you back in a way that you have to work to recover from it over a
decent amount of time (say multiple uses of a CD healing ability). Taking a few tics of plauged, a tic of
desecrator, or a few hits of electrified are also good examples of this.
The
last tier of numbers is those that are outright deadly to you. They are numbers that should be extreme,
maybe even to the point that no amount of gear would let you get hit by
them. These are the one-shot abilities
or one-two combos such as jailer desecrator.
They keep players on their toes and keep up a constant level of
excitement. These types of numbers
should always revolve around a player’s ability to easily avoid them and ways
other than the abilties themselves should be found to increase the likelyhood
of a player getting hit by them.
Creating
numbers in this way does two things for a player. The first thing it does is give players
something to overcome, and allows them to learn how to. The challenges are something players have to
figure out how to deal with, be it through a careful eye or the use of an
ability to negate or escape the danger.
Multiple levels of danger give them multiple things to deal with, and
give them priorities on what to avoid.
They have to make choices on what is an acceptable risk or on what
damage to take if things become unavoidable.
There is a costant, yet not overwhelming stream of information that
players must process, and this keeps things exciting.
The
second thing that these numbers do is give the player choices. There is an absolutely amazing and beautiful
amount of choice in class customization in Diablo 3 and by giving players some
leeway in the numbers department; it allows them to pick a playstyle that suits
them. Maybe they want to go deeply into
something heal based that and allows them survive more mistakes over time. They could also decide to go the glass cannon
build hoping to be able to defeat the enemies before they end up makeing 1 too
many mistakes. Perpahps they choose to
go defensive so that they can surive making too many mistakes at once. Kiting, close range, AoE, minion, cooldown,
mobility, all kinds of builds begin to become viable and players have the
freedom to choose how they want to play their character, even if it is not the
most efficient way.
Champion Challenges - And the Die
Roll Says
Champion modifications
are most likely Diablo 3's best way of creating a challenging experience. Based on what you get they can be
frustrating, easy, or downright impossible and this is a great thing. It adds spice and variety to the gameplay and
creates a heap of new situations for players to learn and overcome. I also believe that there is no need for
every combination to be balanced. It's a
good thing when the die rolls in your favor and you get an easy champ pack, and
it’s just as good as well as flavorful when a pack's abilties work so well
together to make it almost impossible, it gives players a goal for gear to
overcome without forcing them to face that challenge.
The one problem with
champion modifications in Inferno is that simply increasing the number
champions can have from 3 to 4 is not enough (often times one of those
modifications is ignorable anyways).
Inferno needs to offer something new that wasn't shown in the previous
difficulties. Players need a new
challenge. I believe that Inferno should
have made the player face a larger variety of modifications; new ones should
have been introduced. Rather than
cluttering things here, I will put an appendix at the end of my post where I
will put ideas for new champion modifications that could be added to the
Inferno difficulty
*As a last note, I feel
that ALL unique (purple) enemies should be treated as champion packs in terms
of number of abilities and randomness of them.
Boss Battles - Dragon's Should be
Epic
One of the most
dissapointing things to me in Inferno was the bosses. They didn't change one bit. I went into the King Leoric fight eyes
peeled, waiting for some new mechanic to appear and add new challenge to the
fight. Instead all I got was the same
fight I had done many times before. When
the same thing happened on the Butcher I realized they weren't going to change
and let my hope die. It made me sad.
These are bosses in the
hardest difficult in Di-freaking-ablo.
They should be epic! They should
challenge players. Offer them a new
challenge that causes them to come up with new strategies to defeat them. The first time I fight any boss (not just the
Act end ones) on Inferno difficulty I should not feel that they are easier than
any champion pack I have faced, let alone many many times easier. There needs to more. There needs to be new. Inferno bosses need to change.
Tiered Multi-Act Progression - I Can
Travel in Nine Dimensions
I don't remember why now
but until a few weeks before Diablo 3's release, I believed that in Inferno
difficulty all Acts would be set to the same difficulty. Maybe it’s because I explained how I felt and
still feel Diablo 3's final difficulty shoud work to a friend and they told me
that was Blizzard's plan already and I believed him. Whatever the reason, it did not turn out the
way I had hoped so let me explain the way I envisioned the Acts would work
Inferno.
Upon reaching Inferno,
the progression by story design should have been thrown out of the window. Players have gone through it several times
already. They have also reached the
level cap so there is no longer a need for monsters level to increase with you
over a controlled span of time and area of play. With these things able to be tossed aside,
designers have the opportunity to rework the progression flow of Inferno
specifically for max level characters.
While there are many possiblities for this, one of the best designs (and
how I would redesign Inferno) is what I like to call, Tiered Multi-Act
Progression.
Considering how the Acts
are designed, upon reaching Inferno players would be allowed to choose to
progress through any Act. The mobs in
each Act would start at level 61 and as players progressed through the Act,
most likely after each boss, the monster level would grow. Not only would this give players the freedom
of choice, but if they ever got stuck they would have the option to try to
progress through a different Act rather than beat their heads against the only
progression route avaiable to them. Even
once players had "beaten" the game, designing Inferno this way would
seem to create more endgame content because players would have more than one
Act choice to farm from.
*This design would also
allow for more varied farming options like the one decribed in the Rewards for
Exploration and Completion Section.
Completely Random Enemies - Hey, You
Weren't There Before
The title of this
section really says it all. Each zone in
Inferno should be populated by a random set of enemies rather than the same
ones all the time. This would add an
element of unpredicability that generates excitement in players and keeps them
on their toes. It adds variety,
challenge, and freshness to Infero by creating moster set combinations that
were not possible before and are new to deal with. These are good things that add spice to the
endgame content of Diablo 3.
Inferno Redesign Summarized - TLDR
While difficulty is a
good thing, it needs to be done in such a way as to not brick wall player
progression, especially when a player’s true goal begins when progression
ends. A difficulty purely because of
numbers is frustrating as well as boring and farming for gear that is not
top-tier is more work than play so the difficulty of Inferno must be one of
skill. It must require players to think,
to react, and challenge the player to overcome it, not their gear. In the Diablo universe, gear must also be
strong so whatever challenge created gear must allow you to overcome with
greater ease. Variety must be added to
Inferno. New champion modifications and
random enemy sets populating zones instead of set ones would spice Inferno up and
keep things feeling fresh and exciting.
Boss fights should be epic and so new mechanics should be introduced to
them. And last but not least, the choice
on how to progress and through what should be given to the player, allowing
them more choices and a tiered multi-act progression system works perfectly for
this.
Creating
Varied Endgame Content - You Mean I Can do Two Things?
To begin to create endgame content
for Diablo 3 we must first understand what the endgame goal of players is. We already know this to be creating the
ultimate character through gear and we know that the primary method of
accomplishing this is farming (and that is what it should be Diablo
games). Knowing this, the question
designers should ask themselves is this.
How to best make farming enjoyable?
In what ways can they design multple farming paths, multiple styles of
farming, and a varitey of play experience while farming? Figuring out multiple ways to answer this
question will give players the ability to choose how to farm, and will keep a
certain level of unpredictability, freshness, and excitement to a process that
will be repeated thousands of times over by the average Diablo 3 player.
Positive Incentives - Because Good
is Always Better than Bad
When
farming, players tend to gravitate towards the easiest and most efficient paths
possible. Case and point for this was
ash pot farming in Act I, treasure goblin farming in Act II, and Resplendent
Chest farming in Act III. Though these
things did need to be nerfed (not killing mobs should never been more rewarding
than killing them), positive incentives should be given to players to encourage
various ways of farming. Nephalim Valor
is a good example of this. It
discourages the old Diablo 2 magic find runs against a single mob and promotes
the creation of paths leading up to boss kills through postive benefits and
without nerfing the effciency of those mf runs.
Positive incentives like this open up more options and push players to
involve themselves in more of Diablo 3's content. I believe that more incentives could be
created, turning even more of Diablo 3's content into endgame content.
Rewards for Exploration and
Completion - Discovering Vast New Lands
The
immensity of Diablo 3's content is a beautiful thing. There are still dungeons and events that I
have not seen. Npc's that I have not met. There is so much out there for players to
discover, but players will only encounter it when they decide to take a break
from farming and endgame content. I feel
however, that it could be made to be part of it. By creating a positive incentive for players
to spend time exploring zones and finding all they have to offer, the endgame
content of Diablo 3 could improve.
Another option of play and farming can be made.
Currently,
the rewards for completeing events or exploring dungeons versus the time put
into them are often just not worth it.
So what can we design that would give players more incentive to seek
them out? I believe the answer is fairly
simple. Every zone is spawned with X
amount of champions, events, treasure goblins, and resplendent chests.
If
we tallied up a zone, we would get the total number of "exploration
items" and could use that number as a way to track a players completion of
a zone. Upon fully completing a zone,
players would be able to recieve a blue quality item of their slot choice
(maybe not weapons). Upon completeing a
defined section of an Act, or perhaps just a percentage of the whole Act,
players would recieve a rare quality item of their slot choice. The item level chances would be determined by
what section of an Act you completed, or by what percentage mark of the Act you
had reached. This would open up a new
type of farming, one where you can "hunt" to fill a specific
equipment slot. I believe that this
bonus would encourage players to seek out and experience the immense amount of
content put into Diablo 3 while still keeping things in the endgame
mindset. The incentive is not so high as
to force out normal farming, but specific enough to catch the eye of players
who know exactly what they want.
Preventing
Farming Paths While Keeping Them Predictable - I Know It's a Box, but Whats
Inside It?
Endgame
content of a game getting static is not a good thing. Creating ways for it to stay feeling fresh
while keeping a certain level of predictability should be the goal. Earlier in the Inferno section I mentioned
that mob sets in zones should be completely random and this section is mostly
about the same idea. By allowing mobs to
be randomized for zones and by creating a greater range of possible spawn
points for champion packs, we accomplish the goal of preventing set in stone
farm paths. However, as a balance,
players should be able to predict how many champion packs they are going to
find in a zone (I believe it’s currently 2 - 3 in any zone). By not knowing what they will find in terms
of enemies, but knowing what they will find in terms of rewards in each zone,
things are feeling fresh and new longer without having a negative impact on
predicability. As an added bonus, players
would not restrict themeselves to X zone each run, but would feel able to
choose any zone to do their farming in (yay for more player choice).
Extreme Drop Chances - Unlimitted
Power!
Gear is the primary
source of endgame content for Diablo 3 as well as its longevity, so what better
way to increase this than to add items beyond item level 63. By throwing in some level 64 or 65
legendaries (and only legendaries in my opinion), and giving them extremely low
drop chances, players would always have something to shoot for. The thrill of just possibly finding them
would drive players and the excitement of actually seeing one would be
unmatched. Players know that it is
highely unlikely they will ever reach the absolute max potential of thier
characters, but just that chance of getting that amazing item is enough to
enthrall them.
Perfectly Rolled Gear - Just One
More Point Please!
This actually already
exists in Diablo 3, but I felt I should just make a quick note of its postive
impact. The ability to find perfectly
rolled gear (legendaries with max stats) comes with all the benefits listed in
the above section. It’s a great system
and should continue to be used.
Challenges
and Challenge Difficulties - Time for the Bonus Round
Aside from just endgame content,
bonus content is a good way to be able to add new content without causing a
negative impact on existing content. A
good exmaple of bonus content is pretty much the current design of
Inferno. A difficulty where the numbers
are tuned extremely high and progression through it is block frequently by
things like gear checks. However, this
content would not drop loot; instead its purpose would be the challenge of
completeing. Perhaps maybe adding a set,
one time, powerful, bound to account or character reward for completing
it. This difficulty could up
hair-pulling hard because with no loot, it would not be considered a block to
player's goals, only an extra challenge for players to tackle if they chose
to. There could even be several extra
levels of difficulty as time goes on and players gear improves. Other forms of bonus content could also be
designed. Special zones, be it serious
or easter egg in nature. Boss challenges
(imagine fighting "Ultra Diablo" or multiple bosses at once) or
survival modes could also be added as bonus content. There are infinite ways to create content,
and an easy way to keep it from negatively impacting current content is by
offering it as a bonus with little or no reward save for the challenge itself.
In
Closing – Yay, He’s Done Talking
Once again my post has run very
long, but I hope that you’ve enjoyed the read.
My goal was to provide some (preferably correct) insight into player’s
goals and how to design content with them in mind. I hope that I have accomplished this,
provided food for thought, and come up with a few things that players would
enjoy seeing. If you read it all, I
really thank you for your time!
Appendix
A - Champion Modifications
Strong – Makes normal attacks of
monsters stronger.
Blasting – Occasionally fires a
medium speed projectile in the direction the mob is facing. 1 Shot for champions, 3 bullet spread shot
for elites.
Duelist – Upon entering combat with
mob, creates a 100yd by 100yd arena, locking the player in with the pack. (No way out but to kill or be killed)
Erupting – Across a very large area
centering on the monster, the ground will flash for a few seconds revealing a
handful of safe zones. After the time
period ends, the ground will erupt for massive damage, forcing the player to
reach one of the safe zones before it goes off.
Pulsing – The champion will
periodically pulse for low, unavoidable damage.
Shifting – Periodically the mob will
change its elemental weakness (denoted by color of the mob). The mob will gain high resistances to
anything other than this element but will also take increased damage from this
element. When hitting the champion, it
will cause them to drop an orb (somewhat like health globes) that will
temporarily change all damage you deal to that type.
Rending – Getting hit by normal attacks
from enemies with this modification will cause a stacking DoT to be placed on
players. As the damage grows, it will
eventually become impossible to ignore, even deadly forcing players to back off
for a bit and let it fall off.
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