Diablo III Developers on Healing and Follower Gear
Blizzard Blues and developer thoughts on quality of life improvements
The Diablo III developers are looking at quality of life improvements that could be made to the game, to refine the many changes made in Patch 2.0 and in the Reaper of Souls Expansion. The latest Blizzard Blues delve into those, including thoughts from developer Wyatt Cheng on the Healing overarching stat, and a discussion about whether Followers should share their gear across all characters on an account.
A build's worth isnt just defined by its DPS potential, but also by its defenses and utilities
Well said! We know that a DPS meter is a fairly frequent request and you can be sure that we’ve talked about it. Ultimately though, we feel that a DPS meter would put too much focus on one single aspect of the game and we currently don't have any plans to implement one.
Let me explain why we feel this way: DPS is certainly important, but Diablo is a combination of activities. Healing and Toughness are are important, too, and your movement and positioning, your ability to aim with certain abilities and using them at the right moment also play an important role in "determining" how "well" you're doing. DPS alone shouldn't be the only number that matters when you play.
You're not competing with anyone but yourself so that DPS number is completely irrelevant to your own experiences.
Actually, we believe the frequent call for such a feature is indicative of a desire for a way to measure your progress and compare with others.
One feature that we’re working on and that is planned for our first major content patch are Tiered Rifts, and our intention is to add Leader Boards which will allow you to track your progress. That way, you’ll be able to see how quickly you can clear these special rifts which in turn should allow you to assess your efficiency and compare with the community at large.
We don’t have details to share at the moment, but we’ll have more information on Tiered Rifts (and Seasons) in the future – stay tuned!
what im trying to say is that those numbers mean nearly nothing... SPECIALLY damage number.
DPS, Toughness and Healing are stats that are meant to serve as quick way to assess your general character power. The numerous individual stats on your character sheet, perks granted by your legendary items, and various skill options all need to be considered however if you wish to analyse your combat efficiency thoroughly. This is the Diablo III reality and a single legendary affix can make a hero with surprisingly low values perform at a level that is unachievable for those with higher raw stats but wielding no special legendary powers.
Nevertheless those stats can still be used for a surface check for the gear and characters - especially if you keep in mind the stats marked with adjacent orange diamond (that are not calculated into either DPS, toughness or healing), and how crucial can they be in increasing your real damage output or survivability. We are definitely open to hear your feedback on how these aggregate stats could be improved so as to better indicate the power of your heroes so please keep it coming.
Just posting from the hardcore perspective...it would be nice, but I still think this should just be allowed on softcore, sure it sucks to die on HC and lose the gear that you had on your follower, but with that said...thats kinda the point of Hard Core.
Thanks for sharing your perspective on this, and it's definitely a good point that would need to be addressed if a system like this was ever implemented.
Also, Grimiku, please deliver this feedback:
- when you die an are about to respawn, your follower respawned seconds before you did, instantly dying, then you revive -> no follower there.
Fix: give him the same "ghost time" that you have.
I'll put this on my list of things to talk about at our next meeting. It's something I certainly notice when I'm playing my normal mode characters, and the followers would probably like it if they took less dirt naps, too.
No, I do not share item between class because each class has different requirement and the specific follower that best suit that build. I may switch follower for a character but the item are different between classes. Even if I have 2 class of the same, I will have different builds and require different follow setups.
As said above. I will only switch them to test to see if this setup is better or not.
No. Please don't force it on everyone if it must be added. I would like to keep each of my follower different. If they are all the same, the fun of gearing these "pets" will be removed.
It's certainly true that there are plenty of situations where a player would not want to share follower items, and that would need to be considered if a feature like this was implemented. Personally, I know that equipping my Scoundrel with a Windforce is fine on my Demon Hunter, but a pain when I'm trying to keep monsters stuck in a Piranhado.
Basically, if I enchant an item 30 times and it's up to say 1,000,000 gold to enchant again, if I come back a week later, will it still be 1,000,000 gold to enchant again? Or does it eventually reset to something reasonable again?
Thanks
edit:
To be clear, I'm just pulling those figures out of thin air. I don't actually know how many enchants it would take to get a particular item up to 1,000,000 gold.
Currently, Enchanting costs do not go down through a natural system. What I mean is, if something was patched to change the costs then that's one thing, but there's no system in place that would reduce the cost for Enchanting an item as it stands.
Keep up to date with all the latest Blizzard Blues posts in our Blue Post Tracker or the RSS feeds!
Possible Changes to the Healing Stat
Developer Wyatt Cheng took to the forums to reply to an interesting post about how the Healing and Toughness stats should be viewed. The Healing stat was already changed in Patch 2.0.4, and it may be adjusted or renamed entirely in the future.
Post by Blizzard (Blue Tracker, Official Forum)
Thanks for spreading awareness! Great write-up.
Damage, Toughness and Healing are all designed to be rough guides to try and help players make gear choices, but knowledge of the underlying mechanics will always allow players to get the most out of your gear. Savvy players understand that mechanics like "+% damage to skill X" or "Cooldown Reduction %" can provide significant increases to your combat effectiveness. Equipping your character is about much more than just making an abstract number on your character sheet as large as possible.
Healing is currently an estimation of approximately how much Life the game thinks you probably heal per second. Obviously it's just an estimation because mechanics such as Life Per Kill and Life Per Resource Spent don't translate directly into a Life per second value.
We've been talking about changing Healing into a "Toughness healed per second" value. This unfortunately makes it even more of an abstract concept, but it would help take into account that your damage mitigation enhances the value of your Life recovery stats. The ultimate goal of the three summary stats is to provide a "quick gut check" of an item's effect on your character, and making this change to Healing could probably help guide people better.
Damage, Toughness and Healing are all designed to be rough guides to try and help players make gear choices, but knowledge of the underlying mechanics will always allow players to get the most out of your gear. Savvy players understand that mechanics like "+% damage to skill X" or "Cooldown Reduction %" can provide significant increases to your combat effectiveness. Equipping your character is about much more than just making an abstract number on your character sheet as large as possible.
Healing is currently an estimation of approximately how much Life the game thinks you probably heal per second. Obviously it's just an estimation because mechanics such as Life Per Kill and Life Per Resource Spent don't translate directly into a Life per second value.
We've been talking about changing Healing into a "Toughness healed per second" value. This unfortunately makes it even more of an abstract concept, but it would help take into account that your damage mitigation enhances the value of your Life recovery stats. The ultimate goal of the three summary stats is to provide a "quick gut check" of an item's effect on your character, and making this change to Healing could probably help guide people better.
No DPS Meter for Diablo III
Some of the European community managers talked about the commonly requested DPS Meter. As mentioned back in the expansion release party Q&A, Wyatt Cheng also noted there why the developers aren't interested in adding a DPS meter to Diablo III. They also discussed the meta-stats like Damage, Healing, and Toughness.
Post by Blizzard (Blue Tracker, Official Forum)
A build's worth isnt just defined by its DPS potential, but also by its defenses and utilities
Well said! We know that a DPS meter is a fairly frequent request and you can be sure that we’ve talked about it. Ultimately though, we feel that a DPS meter would put too much focus on one single aspect of the game and we currently don't have any plans to implement one.
Let me explain why we feel this way: DPS is certainly important, but Diablo is a combination of activities. Healing and Toughness are are important, too, and your movement and positioning, your ability to aim with certain abilities and using them at the right moment also play an important role in "determining" how "well" you're doing. DPS alone shouldn't be the only number that matters when you play.
You're not competing with anyone but yourself so that DPS number is completely irrelevant to your own experiences.
Actually, we believe the frequent call for such a feature is indicative of a desire for a way to measure your progress and compare with others.
One feature that we’re working on and that is planned for our first major content patch are Tiered Rifts, and our intention is to add Leader Boards which will allow you to track your progress. That way, you’ll be able to see how quickly you can clear these special rifts which in turn should allow you to assess your efficiency and compare with the community at large.
We don’t have details to share at the moment, but we’ll have more information on Tiered Rifts (and Seasons) in the future – stay tuned!
what im trying to say is that those numbers mean nearly nothing... SPECIALLY damage number.
DPS, Toughness and Healing are stats that are meant to serve as quick way to assess your general character power. The numerous individual stats on your character sheet, perks granted by your legendary items, and various skill options all need to be considered however if you wish to analyse your combat efficiency thoroughly. This is the Diablo III reality and a single legendary affix can make a hero with surprisingly low values perform at a level that is unachievable for those with higher raw stats but wielding no special legendary powers.
Nevertheless those stats can still be used for a surface check for the gear and characters - especially if you keep in mind the stats marked with adjacent orange diamond (that are not calculated into either DPS, toughness or healing), and how crucial can they be in increasing your real damage output or survivability. We are definitely open to hear your feedback on how these aggregate stats could be improved so as to better indicate the power of your heroes so please keep it coming.
Should Followers Share Gear?
Grimiku discussed the idea of Followers sharing their gear across multiple characters, so they wouldn't each need to be geared up individually as they are right now. There are some complicating factors to the idea, as he mentions while gathering information about how players would view a potential such change down the road.
Post by Blizzard (Blue Tracker, Official Forum)
I think this is solid feedback, and I'd be happy to pass it along. A lot has changed with the followers since Reaper of Souls was released, and it might be a good time to take another look at them. We don't have any current plans to alter how followers are equipped, but I'd still like to hear your thoughts about it.
- Do you currently share follower gear between your characters?
- How often do you swap follower gear around?
- Would you use a feature that allowed your max level characters to share follower gear?
Just posting from the hardcore perspective...it would be nice, but I still think this should just be allowed on softcore, sure it sucks to die on HC and lose the gear that you had on your follower, but with that said...thats kinda the point of Hard Core.
Thanks for sharing your perspective on this, and it's definitely a good point that would need to be addressed if a system like this was ever implemented.
Also, Grimiku, please deliver this feedback:
- when you die an are about to respawn, your follower respawned seconds before you did, instantly dying, then you revive -> no follower there.
Fix: give him the same "ghost time" that you have.
I'll put this on my list of things to talk about at our next meeting. It's something I certainly notice when I'm playing my normal mode characters, and the followers would probably like it if they took less dirt naps, too.
No, I do not share item between class because each class has different requirement and the specific follower that best suit that build. I may switch follower for a character but the item are different between classes. Even if I have 2 class of the same, I will have different builds and require different follow setups.
As said above. I will only switch them to test to see if this setup is better or not.
No. Please don't force it on everyone if it must be added. I would like to keep each of my follower different. If they are all the same, the fun of gearing these "pets" will be removed.
It's certainly true that there are plenty of situations where a player would not want to share follower items, and that would need to be considered if a feature like this was implemented. Personally, I know that equipping my Scoundrel with a Windforce is fine on my Demon Hunter, but a pain when I'm trying to keep monsters stuck in a Piranhado.
No Reset to Enchanting Costs
If an item is Enchanted multiple times, the gold cost increases each time. This can add up when trying to reroll to get the perfect stat on an item! There have been specific changes to Enchanting costs in patches, but there isn't a system that would reduce them automatically.
Post by Blizzard (Blue Tracker, Official Forum)
Basically, if I enchant an item 30 times and it's up to say 1,000,000 gold to enchant again, if I come back a week later, will it still be 1,000,000 gold to enchant again? Or does it eventually reset to something reasonable again?
Thanks
edit:
To be clear, I'm just pulling those figures out of thin air. I don't actually know how many enchants it would take to get a particular item up to 1,000,000 gold.
Currently, Enchanting costs do not go down through a natural system. What I mean is, if something was patched to change the costs then that's one thing, but there's no system in place that would reduce the cost for Enchanting an item as it stands.
Keep up to date with all the latest Blizzard Blues posts in our Blue Post Tracker or the RSS feeds!
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