Diablo 3 is a game I have played on and off for about seven years now. I did not play or enjoy every single season on the way, but it was a game that I would sometimes log in to, grind, and enjoy for a week or two (sometimes more) before uninstalling it and waiting for another opportunity.
While many remember the game as not particularly good and with few ground-breaking changes each season, the game’s development has changed drastically over the past few years, introducing more and more interesting seasonal themes, adding new progression systems to the game, new content that would permanently become playable – even after the season has ended – or simply bringing very overpowered, but fun powers for all classes. Even an SSF mode was finally added, after so many years!
Playing the latest Season 29, which is considered to be the last Diablo 3 season with new content (before they start recycling previous features), I focused not only on blasting and having fun, but also on thinking about the game, its design, power level and such. And this is how the idea for this post appeared in my head.
Table of Contents
My history with Diablo 3
The first season I played in (after finishing the campaign for the first time) was Season 5, which started on January 15, 2016. I only played for a little bit, and I didn’t even hit level 70, which was and still is the maximum.
The first season where I played a bit more seriously was Season 10 back in March 2017. I had about 60 hours of playtime in total on two classes: Demon Hunter and Crusader (the latter being my favourite class of all time, even now).
Ever since then, I played, on average, every two seasons, and I would hit about 60 to 80 hours of playtime every time I did. There are two major exceptions to this rule:
- Season 17 (“Season of Nightmares”), released in May 2019, where I had about 150 hours of playtime
- Season 27 (“Light’s Calling”), released in August 2022, where I had about 110 hours of playtime
I will touch on these two seasons in particular in the next parts of this post.
In total, I have about 1100 hours in the game, which maybe isn’t a lot considering how many years have passed, but it gives me some game knowledge and a historical background as well.
Some initial thoughts
There will always be a meta
Let’s embrace it – whether we like it or not, there will always be a strategy, a build, or a playstyle that will be considered “best”.
This can be applied to many games and is a point of discussion in many other multiplayer games (an example can be Guild Wars 2, where a good portion of the community actively denies and opposes the idea of having a “meta”, but this could be a topic for a different post).
This is not something to be afraid of or fight with (not that it can even be fought with). It is impossible to balance a game in such a way that all options, builds, classes, skills, or items are made equal. There will always be something that is considered “best”, “strongest”, or “optimal”. It is unavoidable.
However, we have to explain the impact of having a meta. Just because some things are considered “strongest” doesn’t mean you have to play these. It means that you have to play them if you want to compete on the highest levels (and, probably, if you want to do group play as well). In the context of Diablo 3: you absolutely can play a Sweep Attack Crusader build with “Roland’s Legacy”, but:
- you shouldn’t expect to be able to compete with other Crusader builds to reach the top of the Crusader leaderboards
- you shouldn’t expect to get into push groups (if I make a GR150 push group, I would only take builds that are considered “meta” to make it a smooth experience and ensure we get it done well)
In a game like Diablo 3, it is even better, considering that there are separate leaderboards for not only classes but also different builds within those classes, which means that you can always compete with others on a similar power level. Just because a Condemn Crusader build with “Armor of Akkhan” is the strongest Crusader build in Season 29, it doesn’t mean that somebody playing a Sweep Attack build with “Roland’s Legacy” cannot compete and become the best and strongest player – within their own power level bracket.
Power creep (to an extent) is not inherently bad
First of all, “power creep” is a statement used to describe a situation where updates, seasons, or expansions for a game introduce more powerful builds and generally raise the power level of existing characters.
In the world of Diablo 3, this is measured in two ways:
- How strong a build is, or what Greater Rift level can it push; for example, in Season 7, the Rank 1 Crusader in EU Softcore pushed a GR99, whereas in Season 17 (three years later!), the Rank 1 clear was already a GR134. To put this into perspective – a single Greater Rift level increases the health of all monsters inside of it by 17%, and all damage dealt by them by 2.3%, therefore an increase of 35 tiers is equal to (1.1735 = 243) times more health on all enemies!
- How fast a build can run; for example, the top 2 fastest builds in Season 29 for speed farming are Crusader’s “Aegis of Valor” build and Demon Hunter’s “Gears of Dreadlands” build, which are both extremely strong and very fast in movement
It is important to explain the extent of the statement: “Some power creep is not inherently bad“. In a game like Diablo 3, which is fast-paced, revolves around blasting and killing stuff, and has few fundamental changes between updates or seasons, some power creep is, in my opinion, quite good. It feels fun being able to run really fast and not having to spend hours farming keys or bounties. It feels good coming back to the game after a few seasons of a break and being able to reach new limits – can you imagine how the players would feel if we were still only able to clear up to GR100 in 2023? Being able to progress slightly more each time, and being able to get slightly more XP or some more loot each season is overall a good feeling. But whether Diablo 3 only has “some” power creep will be a point of discussion in a further part of the post.
The design of Diablo 3
Skills
In Diablo 3, each class has quite a lot of active skills available to them (between 21 and 26) as well as many passives (about 18 per class). However, what is more important and interesting are the individual skill upgrades – Runes. Every single active skill in the game has 5 Runes to choose from (technically 6 if we consider the default, “No rune” option), which sometimes simply empower the skill and sometimes drastically change its behaviour or functionality.
While this certainly isn’t the most interesting or the deepest possible skill system in a game, in my opinion, it fulfills the needs – in theory, at least. In practice, there are some issues.
Firstly, some runes are just extremely overpowered and significantly stronger compared to others. Even if runes for a certain skill are quite diverse and interesting, sometimes a single option invalidates all others. Here are the examples.
Akarat’s Champion
The Crusader explodes with the power of their order, increasing damage dealt by 35% and increasing their Wrath regeneration by 5 per second for 20 seconds.
- Fire Starter: for the duration, also burns any enemy damaged by either of the Crusader’s attacks for 460% damage as Fire over 3 seconds.
- Embodiment of Power: increases the bonus Wrath generation to 10 per second.
- Rally: using Akarat’s Champion reduces the remaining cooldown of other abilities by 12 seconds.
- Prophet: gain 150% additional Armor while Akarat’s Champion is active. The first time you take fatal damage while this is active, you will be returned to full health.
- Hasteful: Gain 15% increased Attack Speed for the duration.
There are some interesting ideas in these runes – I could see there being some synergies with the “Rally” or “Hasteful” runes. However, “Prophet” is such a powerful rune that it makes all others completely irrelevant. It not only gives a free “cheat-death” style effect, which would normally be a passive skill with a 60-second cooldown (Hardcore players enjoy this), but it also increases the user’s Armor by a whopping 150%, which – for an average, unoptimized Crusader build with 42,000 Armor – increses the damage reduction by 58% (from 92.3% to 96.7% with 103,000 Armor). There is not really a world in which this is not worth taking, especially considering it’s near-permanent uptime on most builds that use this ability.
Battle Rage
Enter a rage which increases damage by 10% and Critical Hit Chance by 3% for 120 seconds.
- Marauder’s Rage: increases bonus damage to 15%.
- Ferocity: Increases movement speed by 15%.
- Swords to Ploughshares: While affected by Battle Rage, all Critical Hits will heal the Barbarian and their pets by 21,457.
- Into the Fray: Under Battle Rage, the Barbarian will gain 1% additional Critical Hit Chance for every enemy within 10 yards of themselves.
- Bloodshed: Deal damage equal to 20% of your recent Critical Hits to enemies within 20 yards every second.
While once again some options seem interesting (“Marauder’s Rage”, “Into the Fray”), “Bloodshed” is just so much better due to how Area Damage and density work in this game, and if this skill is taken as a damage-increase, then this rune will always be the “best in slot” option.
For comparison, let’s look at a well-designed skill with many interesting and – more importantly – different runes to choose from, depending on multiple factors (such as items, our role in case of group play or playstyle).
Impale
Throw a knife that impales an enemy for 750% damage as Physical.
- Impact: Impale’s target is knocked back and is Stunned for 1.5 seconds.
- Chemical Burn: Impale’s damage type changes to Fire, and the target will also burn for 250% damage as Fire every second for 2 seconds.
- Overpenetration: Impale’s damage type changes to Cold. The knife will now pierce, hitting all enemies in a straight line.
- Ricochet: Impale’s damage type changes to Lightning. In addition, after the initial target, it will bounce to two additional targets.
- Grievous Wounds: Critical Hit Damage for this skill increases by an additional 330%.
On an additional note, I don’t think it’s an issue that some runes (some of them actually being used in good builds) being very simple damage increases with no additional effect, such as this one.
Hammer of the Ancients
Call forth a massive hammer to smash enemies directly in front of the Barbarian for 535% damage as Physical. Hammer of the Ancients has a 1% increased Critical Hit Chance for every 5 Fury the Barbarian has.
- Smash: increase the damage to 640% as Fire.
Power level of items
In Diablo 3, all percentage damage increase (or reduction, but let’s focus on the first one for now) from different sources is multiplicative. To illustrate this, let’s consider the following example.
Let’s say we have a Monk Wave of Light build with the “Monkey King’s Garb” set. Let’s start with just the set items and keep adding from there. Consider the base skill damage of Wave of Light (before applying any of the multipliers below, but after applying effects such as weapon damage, dexterity % damage increase, and base skill damage) to be X.
- Monkey King’s Garb (6 pieces): Lashing Tail Kick, Tempest Rush, and Wave of Light have their damage increased by 1500% for each stack of Sweeping Wind you have.
With the default 3 stacks, the damage is already 46X. - Vengeful Wind (Fist Weapon): Increase the maximum stack count of Sweeping Wind by 10 and increase its damage by 800%.
The damage is now 196X. - Incense Torch of the Grand Temple (Daibo): Reduces the Spirit cost of Wave of Light by 50% and increases its damage by 550%.
The damage is now 1274X. - Pinto’s Pride (Bracers): Wave of Light also Slows enemies by 80% for 3 seconds and deals 150% increased damage.
The damage is now 3185X. - Tzo Krin’s Gaze (Spirit Stone) plus damage roll on boots: Increases Wave of Light Damage by 165%.
The damage is now 8440.25X. - Elemental Damage on bracers: Damage increased by 20%.
The damage is now 10128.3X. - Rabid Strike (Fist Weapon): Spirit spenders that teleport you while Epiphany is active are also mimicked on a nearby target with 450% increased damage for free.
The damage from this effect (which is separate from the above calculations) is 55705.65X, so the total damage is now 65833.95X. - Bindings of the Lesser Gods (Bracers): Enemies hit by your Cyclone Strike take 200% increased damage from your Mystic Ally for 5 seconds.
The damage from Rabid Strike proc is now 167116.95X, and the total damage per cast is now 177245.25X. - … and there is more (we can already see what’s going on, right?)
I haven’t even mentioned all the multipliers in this build, and we can see the damage went up by over 177,245 times. One hundred and seventy-seven thousand times.
I do not think all of these damage increases should be multiplicative. In my opinion, it is way too meaningful to have a regular item increase your damage by 150%, 550%, or even higher for some items in some builds. And while this isn’t really a problem for gearing up, since making a build with all the necessary pieces is usually very fast, it just feels like unnecessary and arbitrary power jumps.
Instead, I would argue that some, if not all, effects should be additive. Let’s consider the same example but with the following change: All similar modifiers are additive. The base damage is once again going to be X.
- Monkey King’s Garb (6 pieces): 46X
- Vengeful Wind (Fist Weapon): 196X
- Incense Torch of the Grand Temple (Daibo): 1274X (total skill damage bonus is now 550%)
- Pinto’s Pride (Bracers): 1568X (total skill damage bonus is now 700%)
- Tzo Krin’s Gaze (Spirit Stone) plus damage roll on boots: 1891.4X (total skill damage bonus is now 865%)
- Elemental Damage on bracers: 2269.68X (skill damage bonus is 865%, elemental damage bonus is 20%)
- … and so on
We can see that having each additional item is still a sizeable damage modifier, so the optimal build would stay very similar (if not the same). However, there is now more room to increase the meaningfulness of certain stats (such as elemental damage) as well as legendary power ranges (they could be wider to give more room for optimization – in this case, I could see Pinto’s Pride have a damage range between 100% and 300%, which – all in all – would be a potential few percent damage increase between the minimum and maximum roll). Another upside would be to create more diverse builds, either based on more than one high-impact skill or introduce more conditional affixes and damage-increasing ways, instead of having a generic “Skill X deals Y% more damage”.
Interesting set or item options
What I really like in Diablo 3, and what I think is very underdeveloped, are certain sets (especially some of the newer ones) with some utility powers. Particularly “Mundunugu’s Regalia” and “Horde of the Ninety Savages”.
Mundunugu’s Regalia (2 pieces)
Big Bad Voodoo now follows you and lasts twice as long.
Horde of the Ninety Savages (2 pieces)
Double the effectiveness of shouts. You deal 100% increased damage to enemies that are Stunned, Feared, or Frozen.
These all seem like very interesting offensive and defensive options that you could take to boost your or your team’s performance. So where is the problem?
The problem is that no build (outside of the full sets of these and the zero-dps support options) would use them. While it is common nowadays to use powers of more than one set at a time, the crafted sets are far more powerful (Guardian’s, Captain Crimson’s, Aughild’s) and better fit into builds due to having different than standard pieces.
Some key points:
- I think there should be more sets with their 2-pieces power like these two mentioned – maybe make a powerful skill even better, maybe give some passive bonuses like Damage Reduction and Recovery, maybe increase damage by a bit in a way that multiple builds could use it
- Sets with utility powers like these should consist of different pieces to make it easier to incorporate into different builds – maybe the set should consist of a belt and bracers so that we can play 5 pieces of a standard set and then 2 pieces of this? Maybe make a ring that can be taken instead of something like “The Compass Rose”?
- The current, crafted sets (Guardian’s, Captain Crimson’s, Aughild’s) should ideally be a bit weaker, in my opinion, so that they are still a good option but not nearly as much as now; currently, due to being able to get both the 2-pieces and the 3-pieces bonus with just 2 items, they are all very strong and give incredible amounts of both Damage and Toughness
Another kind of item that I think is very well designed is this one.
Mortick’s Brace
Wrath of the Berserker gains the effect of every rune.
Enter a berserker rage which raises several attributes for 20 seconds: Critical Hit Chance, Attack Speed, Dodge Chance, and Movement Speed.
- Arreat’s Wail: Activating Wrath of the Berserker deals 3400% weapon damage as Fire to all enemies within 15 yards.
- Insanity: While active, gain 50% increased damage.
- Slaughter: While active, Critical Hits have a chance to cause an eruption of blood dealing 300% weapon damage to enemies within 15 yards.
- Striding Giant: Reduce all damage taken by 50%.
- Thrive on Chaos: While active, gain 5364 Life per Fury spent.
There are three interesting options here, and this one really does feel like having a choice. While you would normally take the 50% damage reduction (which is much more relevant than the others), having a 50% damage multiplier or some additional recovery also feels amazing. Well, Mortick’s Brace is basically sacrificing an item slot to get these tasty bonuses. I do think it would be interesting to have a few more, similar items – of course not for every interesting skill in the game, but having something like this as an item option with several bonuses from different areas (damage, toughness, recovery) sounds good to me.
Game balance (around items, not skills)
One thing I have noted with the game is how it is balanced almost entirely around items and legendary or set powers, as opposed to skills. The numbers on abilities and runes have remained very constant for a very long time, with a few minor exceptions, which makes balancing the game a lot easier – there is only a single surface for all builds, which is items along with their stats and powers, and the team doesn’t have to interfere with the fundaments.
Of course, I would love it if certain issues with skills and their designs were addressed (take a look at the Skills section), but overall this approach is less likely to create unfun gameplay and bad balance (which could happen if, for example, we changed a skill that is used by multiple builds).
Heavenly Strength
This is pretty much a side note, but I dislike the idea of the passive skill “Heavenly Strength” being mandatory to equip the “Norvald’s Fervor” set, which includes a Two-Handed Flail and a Crusader Shield.
Heavenly Strength
You can wield a two-handed weapon in your main hand while bearing a shield in your off hand.
Your damage dealt is reduced by 20%.
I don’t think items should be tied to passives, but rather the other way around – skills should be tied to items. The skills you use should be reflective of your item build, but you shouldn’t need a certain skill to even be able to use a set.
Overall I like this particular passive ability as a way to create some non-standard combinations and allow to keep an offhand’s shield passive while wielding a two-hander in the main hand (and maybe another one in the cube, for a total of five hands?), but it shouldn’t be a necessity to use a particular set of items.
Non-standard sets like Invoker
What I really like in Diablo 3, and what I think is underdeveloped, are builds that I would call “non-standard”. Currently, the most relevant of these builds are Thorns builds. Particularly, one of my favourite builds of all time is the “Thorns of the Invoker” Crusader build.
This build is so much different than nearly every other build in the game, because:
- Almost all damage comes exclusively from Thorns, as opposed to certain damaging skills or effects
- Crit just doesn’t work, at all – there is no point investing in Crit Chance or Damage
- Weapon damage doesn’t affect damage output – in a perfect scenario, the damage range is rolled off the main hand
- The build heavily focuses on Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction (to reach uptimes as high as possible on all skills), and toughness (to be able to face tank as much)
- There are seemingly a lot of options for certain playstyles (Norvald’s instead of Pig Sticker, Echoing Fury vs. The Furnace vs. Blood Brother in the Cube, Guardian’s vs. Captain Crimson’s, etc.)
The apparent variety of options to choose from is almost certainly related to the way the build is. If there is no need to have the highest possible “Damage” stat and all its multipliers (Skill % increase, Crit, specific conditional legendary items) – because the base is just Thorns with a few generic multipliers like Strength and Elemental Damage – then there are more options to choose from for sustain, toughness, and utility. Or just more generic damage, if that’s needed.
Another significantly different example would be any build using “Shi Mizu’s Haori”, for example, the Wizard Frozen Orb build. The item works as follows.
Shi Mizu’s Haori
While below 20% – 25% Life, all attacks are guaranteed Critical Hits.
This lets us change all Crit Chance rolls for something else – such as Intelligence, Area Damage, or Cooldown Reduction – and fully invest into Crit Damage. However, we also have to remove all recovery from our build, including Life per Second, Life per Hit, and any desire to ever use the potion. While this is a very specific way to play, and it’s definitely not recommended for hardcore, I love that you can do this.
I would love it if there were more of those non-standard builds – based either on Thorns, some generic item damage (there are a lot of items that could do that if they were strong enough!), or some effect that could be a way to completely change the build and all item rolls conditionally (like Shi Mizu).
Seasons 16, 17 and 27
Earlier I mentioned that the most playtime I had was back in Seasons 17 and 27, and here I will talk about why I think they were amazing and why they created a really fun experience. I will also talk about Season 16, which – despite me not playing it nearly as much – I think was a pretty major step regarding the game’s balance, at least temporarily.
The first out of these three – Season 16. Let’s take a look at what the seasonal power was.
Season 16 – “Season of Grandeur“
For the duration of Season 16, all Seasonal players will benefit from the legendary power of the Ring of Royal Grandeur.
Ring of Royal Grandeur
Reduces the number of items needed for set bonuses by 1 (to a minimum of 2).
This sounds pretty simple, and that’s because it is. However, having this item as a baseline did two things to all builds:
- Introduced new hybrid builds that used two different class sets (or empowered already existing ones)
- Added a free “utility” item slot to most other builds
While this is pretty significant power creep, I think – especially if the game was designed more around those utility set bonuses – this was an interesting idea that improved build variety and helped create some hybrid builds, such as the “N6M4” Natalya’s + Marauder’s Demon Hunter or “Inna + Uliana” Monk. For other builds, it was essentially a free item slot or equipping a crafted set (which were far weaker back then, but they could be useful for, for example, farming).
I would say that if the number of 2-piece set options was improved, having Ring of Royal Grandeur available for free to everyone would be a good change. Even currently, the majority of builds are using a crafted set, which forces them to wear the Ring. If the game was changed to better account for hybrids (for example as explained in Interesting set or item options), I think it would be healthy to have this as a baseline with a lower power level to push people into really hybridizing.
Season 17 – “Season of Nightmares”
For the duration of Season 17, all Seasonal players will benefit from the Set bonus provided by Legacy of Nightmares.
Legacy of Nightmares
While this is the only item Set Bonus the character has, their damage dealt is increased by 750% and damage taken is reduced by 4% for every Ancient Item they have equipped.
This season was a blast. It created so many new, never-before-seen builds, that would normally either not work at all or just be very weak due to having to sacrifice two Ring slots. It also, combined with some balance changes, had a very positive effect of bringing a lot of builds up in the tier lists, which is generally a very desirable outcome. The more builds are in the higher tiers (so builds that are able to perform better), the more variety and more fun in competing on different classes.
Another metric of how well received this season was could be the fact that, following this update, a new Legendary Gem “Legacy of Dreams” was added that essentially works the same as the rings, except it takes up a single gem slot instead, which for almost all builds (one exception) is the better choice.
Season 27 – “Light’s Calling”
Season 27 introduces a new type of consumable item called Angelic Crucibles. Once uncovered by Nephalem, these heavenly artifacts can be used to Sanctify any equippable Legendary item. Sanctifying an item reforges it to have perfect Ancient-level stats on all affixes while also preserving the item’s Legendary Power. In addition, this process adds one of three new powers unique to each class.
I am mentioning this season not because it created some well-rounded gameplay (the powers were extremely strong, but also imbalanced between classes), but because it brought some interesting, limited content. It made some builds much more fun and powerful, while also adding more excitement to the game’s loot system (being able to create a perfect item is pretty fun!). I liked this season a lot and I think more seasons should have this much of a limited “fun element” in them.
Lack of content outside of GRs
This is pretty much a side point, considering the rest of this post has been focusing mostly on items, skills, and power levels, but I think this is one of the major flaws of Diablo 3. It is nice to have an “infinitely-scaling” (well, not really…) piece of content, but it would also be great to have more things to do in the end game. Maybe some interesting bosses with mechanics that drop exclusive items, materials, or more than average Primal Ancients? Maybe some smaller versions of Greater Rifts with less time and more pressure? Or maybe some kind of easily farmable content with lots of monsters that you can just run over and over again with little downtime for some specific materials? Either way, I’d love it if the options to choose from were improved.
A good step forward was introducing Echoing Nightmare, but ever since it was heavily nerfed, people only really started doing it for the augments. While, obviously, having such easy access to augments is a good thing, Echoing Nightmare doesn’t really feel like “additional content to do” but more like “something you have to do if you want to make your build stronger”. The rewards outside of augments just aren’t worth the time anymore.
Conclusions
Diablo 3, despite having a pretty controversial past, is in my opinion currently a decent game. Over the past few years, starting around Season 16, the game improved significantly in almost all aspects – gameplay, balance, design, and even the “fun” factor. The seasons are interesting and worth playing (but often not really sticking around for much longer than a week or two) and the game itself is very satisfying, both visually and gameplay-wise.
However, there are a few issues with the game. Some of them I think could be solved even in the current iteration of Diablo 3’s development, with a bit more work and a couple more seasons. Some of them would probably require a larger rework, and thus pretty much a new game.
So, is Diablo 3 the best aRPG out there?
…
No. Absolutely not. Of course not.
But is it fun to come back every few months and blast for a week? It very much is. And I hope to continue doing that in the future, even if the new seasons aren’t as exciting as the ones previously. And, most importantly Diablo 3 is better than Diablo 4.
Because D4 bad.
Sources
Diablo 3 game reference: https://eu.diablo3.blizzard.com/en-gb/game/
Diablo 3 builds and guides for Season 29 (last accessed: 4.10.2023): https://maxroll.gg/d3
Information about Diablo 3 seasons: https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Season