From a big picture standpoint, it's not healthy for the game when a player's health pool goes from full to nearly empty and back to full on a regular basis very quickly, over and over, during regular play. I know not every character build plays this way - but I would assert that it's not good for the game when this is a dominant or even common way to play.
Why?
Here are a few negative effects it has:
1. A health pool that quickly goes from full to nearly empty implies that there's not a lot of room for variance in incoming damage. When incoming damage is that high, a 15% increase in monster damage would result in death. This leads to comments like "As soon as I turn up the Monster Power I get 1-shot". I'd like to see a game where a clever player can handle a higher Monster Power by reducing incoming damage through good play. Unfortunately, if the combat pacing and dominant builds are such that all players are geared to survive the biggest posisble hit from a monster and instantly heal to full then there's no room for that differentiation. Let's use mortar as a simple example. If a wave of mortar hits takes me from full to nearly dead, and then I instantly heal back to full, then mortars don't pose a realistic threat to me. In this state, there's no way for a clever player (who wants to dodge mortars) to differentiate themselves from somebody who doesn't care (and just decides to get hit). In both cases you're healing instantly to full and surviving through the damage no matter what, and in both cases turning up the monster power results in you dying no matter what if you take a single mortar wave. It becomes a pure gear check.
2. For players who push the MP up anyways, it makes the game feel like it was designed around one-shots. In my previous example with mortar, some of you may be thinking "There's room for turning up the Monster Power, just don't get hit at all!". This isn't great either. It means my death feels very binary. One moment I'm at full health, the next instant I'm dead. It also means that once you decide you are going to accept being one-shot, you don't care about your health at all. Who cares if you have 20K or 40K health if you're going to die either way? We'd be in a better place if the mortar-dodger was allowed to take the occasional hit, but can handle a higher monster power as long as a majority of them are dodged.
3. Healing very rapidly back to full also loses all the fidelity of small attacks. If players are regularly going from full to nearly empty and back to full again on a regular basis, then there's no room for mechanics which act as a slow drain on your health. Plagued is a great example of this. We don't want Plagued to be something that kills you quickly, but it also shouldn't be something you ignore forever. Standing in a pool of poison should be something that adds tension to the fight. You know you're not going to die now, but you can see the threat looming. When healing rates are very high, there is no room for the slow drain damage sources - they become insignificant.
4. My current health loses meaning. Being at 95% health should mean you're relatively safe. Being at 5% health should mean you're almost dead. Being at 50% health should mean you're somewhat in danger and you should play it safe, but as long as you do you should be fine. These are all concepts that make intuitive sense. Unfortunately, they are not at all true in the current Diablo environment. When health pools are rapidly going from empty to full and back again, these health values all blur together.
5. You lose a lot of tactical combat opportunities. Tactical combat requires that the player can properly assess the situation and react accordingly. When your health pool moves up and down rapidly you are no longer reacting to dangers. A rapidly changing health globe means you are playing in a predictable pattern and crossing your fingers hoping that you live through it. You are playing in a way that avoids situations that will instantly kill you, but there's no tension associated with being low on health that would cause you to make a tactical decision to change your play pattern.
I'm saying all of this without pointing at any specific solutions. That's because there are no instant-fix solutions. It's a challenging problem that we're actively working on. Things aren't going to be perfect overnight, but improving the pacing of combat is something we constantly work on.
I will say that the first line of defense is reducing the rate at which players heal. After we pull in the rate of healing, next we analyze the patterns in which monsters deal damage. Ultimately, defensive stats will play a role in all of this. If some life regeneration, damage mitigation or (gasp) life on hit lets me play a little more aggressively, that's a good thing.
It's gonna be wonderful if they manage to give us a more tactical combat experience with the expansion. There are certainly some flaws with the system at the moment, but it's great that Blizzard is looking for ways to improve upon what already is the best aspect of the game.
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"Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the small death that brings total obliteration."
This somewhat worries me. While they seem to have a quite proper grasp on what defines challenge and how it is currently broken, this is pretty much just a well written version of what has already been said during the long interview with Archon during his twitch stream a few months back. For now they got nothing more to show than insight on what should change and a very vague idea with the leaked beta class changes. I really hope that Blizzcon will deliver some solid info on changes and not just a prolongation of hype with tidbits of well done trailers and vague information on what might or might not come
They've already said they are going to be buffing life per fury/spirit spent and that they don't like the life steal stat. I wouldn't be surprised to see them add that life per resource spent for all classes. They also are talking about making health globes drop every 20-25% to put the emphasis on that for healing and rewarding good play. They want the primary healing to be through globes and the secondary source through lpss/loh etc..
He also talked about how instead of taking 100% dmg or 0 dmg that you would take 80% dmg or 20% dmg, so that there was always a feeling of danger but still being rewarded for good play.
The above was also talked about by Wyatt back in July of this year.
As a wow heroic raider, I get his point of being at 50% is safe but not so safe. It is way more challenging to play when you are getting under the 50%, you must think : alright which skill should I use to stay alive and after how do i heal ?
So far my barbarian is farming mp10 and I stand in any crap... which isn't fun at all.
I am sure they will implant in a good way : life regen / life per fury spent / life per sec / per hit and nerf the life steal of course !
1. Get enough HP/resist/armor to not die in under a few hits
2. Get some life steal
3. Get your DPS high enough that you heal instantly
Then you want to group mobs into as big a ball as possible and always choose huge AoE skills. You will heal so fast that a mob of 50 monsters amongst 2 elite packs poses barely any more danger than a mob of 3 monsters.
With health bumping up and down like crazy, globes become useless, especially on higher MPs and for higher health pools.
He wasn't talking about the health globes you pick up, he was referring to your HP as "the" health globe. The orb with your health pool in it. "A rapidly changing health globe" = your HP going up and down.
1. Get enough HP/resist/armor to not die in under a few hits
2. Get some life steal
3. Get your DPS high enough that you heal instantly
Then you want to group mobs into as big a ball as possible and always choose huge AoE skills. You will heal so fast that a mob of 50 monsters amongst 2 elite packs poses barely any more danger than a mob of 3 monsters.
With health bumping up and down like crazy, globes become useless, especially on higher MPs and for higher health pools.
He wasn't talking about the health globes you pick up, he was referring to your HP as "the" health globe. The orb with your health pool in it. "A rapidly changing health globe" = your HP going up and down.
The part where he talks about tactical decision and reacting accordingly is referring to health globes. At least in my opinion. If not, I'd add that as point #6. Health globes have become irrelevant for many builds in the game as of now.
Yeah, only the WD has any real interest in health globes (and a good interest it is - I quite like the WD's interaction with globes).
While I get the point you are making and for the most part it's true. DH has always benefited greatly from globes
I'm just glad they are going to make them a more vital part of gameplay in general. Also if you look at one of the barbs skills. I forget the name of it, but it gives life per fury spent increased by + health globe bonuses. (which is an underrated stat btw)
I think the solution is just to give monster abilities more specific mechanics, and that interact with player movement and abilities, instead of just raw damage output...
What if a mortar hit also gave you a 5-second stacking debuff that makes you take 100% more damage from subsequent mortar hits? Eating one or two, not a problem... but a few more will instagib anyone.
What if arcane lasers put a debuff on you that makes you take an increasing amount of damage if you don't stop moving for a few seconds after being tagged? .. and make plague-patches do increasing damage if you don't move out of them.
What if stuns/blinds/confusions lasted 3 times longer on enemies that used vortex/teleport within the last 0.5 seconds?
What if desecration's damage was huge, but proportional to how full your health was to the extent that it did almost nothing at 20% health, but could one-shot you if you stood in it at full health?
^
The problem is the existence of instagibs, a recognized bad design, which in turn exist because there exist healing mechanics that enable you to heal back to full in a very short time - something must be dangerous for the player, after all.
And your solution is... more instagibs. Welp
You seem to have missed the bit where I proposed instagibs that were the result of the player ignoring game mechanics designed to punish indifference to same, whereas current instagibs pretty much come out of nowhere. The subtle (and, in your opinion negligible?) difference is that one is down to player thought and planning, the other is down to RNG.
I read a solution on the official forums to the LS problem and it makes sense. If they gave monsters resistances but less life it would solve the LS problem. Keep the monster ehp the same (so same kill time, nothing changes)but with resistances we'd do less damage and thus less life returns. No complete immunities but varying resistances would also make things interesting.
I didn't miss a thing. They want instagibs to never happen, they're the bad design.
I like your idea about extra punishment because of gameplay fails. If they tweak healing so that you could go from 100->70, 70->80, 80->50 and so on you might as well design monster abilities such that the 80->50 step becomes 80->30. And you'd need 10 seconds of leeching/regenning (or a health orb) to get back to full. It'd force you to be on your toes a bit more.
But you want them (or you don't? you basically ignored the main point of wyatt cheng's post) to leave healing uncapped and scaling directly only with dps (this part is their design problem) and introduce some extra ways to get instagibbed. You're not focusing on the problem at hand.
I didn't read that post as Blizzard not wanting any instagibs at all... the reason why I proposed them is that if you don't have them, then the meta-game become all about outgearing the big hits so you can go back to ignoring game mechanics, which is exactly the problem at hand.
At the moment, the 'punishment' for ignoring elite abilities is no worse than (and in most cases not nearly as bad as) the 'baseline' incoming damage, which means that the sustain needed for ordinary combat has a side-effect of making things like mortars, plague and fire-chains irrelevant. Part of the solution is reducing 'base' monster damage and life-steal, absolutely... but that alone would make combat tedious, and it'd still be as faceroll as it is now (assuming you're at a 'comfortable' MP).
IMO, a crucial part of fixing this issue is to have elite abilities that force the player to switch their tactics or face unavoidable death. In my perfect D3, there should be particular abilities and combinations of abilities that brutally punish the inattentive, but only give a brief scare to people who are on their toes. A WW barbarian, CM wizard or TR monk who pays no attention to what they're fighting should die within seconds when they encounter their nemesis affix... to the extent that even dialing back the MP 3 or 4 levels shouldn't be enough to save a faceroll player from their own tunnel-vision.
I didn't read that post as Blizzard not wanting any instagibs at all...
That's because Wyatt didn't say anything about removing all instagibs. It's not in the post. Someone is just making shit up.
I am willing to bet that they do keep certain one-shot (or exceptionally-high-damage) attacks. Stuff like Mallet Lords, Azmodan's fireball, Skeleton King's wind-up attack, etc. One-shot mechanics work well for "special" attacks that must be avoided. They don't work well on common attacks like mortar, arcane, etc. I think that's precisely what Wyatt was talking about.
That's not to say that mortar is an instagib mechanic. But it is to say that if one volley of mortar takes you down to 10%, then, due to its relative common occurence, that becomes a point at which you gear around. If you can heal that 90% through globes/potions/or regen stats before the next mortars happen, then there's no point to the mechanic.
That's a far cry from "there won't be any instagib mechanics" though.
I am willing to bet that they do keep certain one-shot (or exceptionally-high-damage) attacks. Stuff like Mallet Lords, Azmodan's fireball, Skeleton King's wind-up attack, etc. One-shot mechanics work well for "special" attacks that must be avoided. They don't work well on common attacks like mortar, arcane, etc. I think that's precisely what Wyatt was talking about.
I hope they do. Telegraphed instagibs make for a fun game, regardless of genre, even if they raise my blood pressure too damn high in HC.
That's not to say that mortar is an instagib mechanic. But it is to say that if one volley of mortar takes you down to 10%, then, due to its relative common occurence, that becomes a point at which you gear around. If you can heal that 90% through globes/potions/or regen stats before the next mortars happen, then there's no point to the mechanic.
That's a far cry from "there won't be any instagib mechanics" though.
Well, as I said, I think one mortar hit should be a minor annoyance, but eating 8 in a row should turn you into jam regardless of your EHP... so yeah, if Blizzard starts talking about removing all instagibs, I shall be grumpy beyond reckoning.
I didn't read that post as Blizzard not wanting any instagibs at all...
That's because Wyatt didn't say anything about removing all instagibs. It's not in the post. Someone is just making shit up.
I am willing to bet that they do keep certain one-shot (or exceptionally-high-damage) attacks. Stuff like Mallet Lords, Azmodan's fireball, Skeleton King's wind-up attack, etc. One-shot mechanics work well for "special" attacks that must be avoided. They don't work well on common attacks like mortar, arcane, etc. I think that's precisely what Wyatt was talking about.
That's not to say that mortar is an instagib mechanic. But it is to say that if one volley of mortar takes you down to 10%, then, due to its relative common occurence, that becomes a point at which you gear around. If you can heal that 90% through globes/potions/or regen stats before the next mortars happen, then there's no point to the mechanic.
That's a far cry from "there won't be any instagib mechanics" though.
Actually Wyatt has said similar.
Right now we don't have many ways to stress the EHP of the ranged classes without it feeling bursty. I think this is because the game has an plethora of "Do the right thing and take 0 damage, do the wrong thing and take 100K damage". Since the outcomes are so binary, the correct way to build a ranged class is to try to do the right thing as often as you can, and maybe build enough survivability so you can make a mistake once in a while. What I think we need more of is "Do the right thing and take 20K damage, do the wrong thing and take 80K damage". You're still trying to do the right thing, but you're still taking damage either way. Besides, Sanctuary is a dangerous, violent and hazardous place - some amount of damage comes with the territory. When I play, I want to feel stress on my EHP and my Sustainability while still feeling satisfied for making smart plays. I also want to value incremental survivability choices I make on my gear and my skill build.
Let's take it into some more concrete numbers. Let's say a Demon Hunter has 30K health and regenerates 20K health per second via Gloom or what have you. In that world, a 30K hit kills you instantly.
Let's take a mechanic like Mortar. Suppose at the MP level you're playing at, Mortars hit for 30K. As a Demon Hunter you have 2 choices, you can either plan on avoiding all Mortars perfectly, and then you don't die. Or you can gear for either 35K basically you're allowing yourself some "slush". How you gear depends on your confidence in your ability to avoid those Mortars, and how sensitive you are to death.
If you gear for 30K or less, then you are going to feel like the game is really cheap and unfair when you do die, because when those mortars hit you that you had planned on avoiding, you go from full to dead instantly. (Side note, this contributes to Vortex feeling cheap. It's not that Vortex kills you directly, but Vortex causes you to take damage from something you had previously planned on avoiding completely, because you know it kills you)
On the other hand, if you gear for 35K health, then the game went from threatening to super-easy-mode, because the mortars are flying at you once every 2 seconds, and you heal to full in 1.5 seconds, now the mortars never actually kill you. In fact, you might not even bother dodging them anymore.
Now enter the "half-damage and half-healing". Instead of healing for 20K health per second, I heal for 10K health per second. But instead of taking 30K damage, I take 15K damage. In the absence of any other changes, I think we'd see exactly what you predict. The game didn't become interesting, instead, I'm just going to gear with 15K health.
However, what if the way in which we cut Mortar damage wasn't just a strict 50% cut. What if we took the 30K damage and made it "0 damage if you avoid the Mortar by 20 yards, 5K damage if there is a Nearby Hit of about 8 yards, and 25K damage if you are hit directly".
Now as a player I can't reliably plan on avoiding all the Mortar hits. If I want to play super-duper safe I can avoid all the mortars, but I'm probably running a ton and doing almost no damage. Realistically I'm probably going to take 5K "incidental damage" constantly. This is going to eat into my 10K healing per second. If I take a 25K hit that leaves me at 5K health, I'm scared but not dead. Over the next 5 seconds I can't afford to take another direct hit, and can either play super conservatively to avoid even 5K hits, or I can play more aggressively and accept that my 10K regen per second is being partially counteracted by the 5K near-hits and just make a concerted effort to avoid any more direct hits until my health is back up to a comfortable range.
You're right this would be a significant shift in the environment, which is why you haven't seen such a change.
Note: I'm not actually saying we're going to change anything with Mortar. I'm just using it for illustrative purposes because I think it's a good example for people to wrap their minds around right now.
When incoming damage is that high, a 15% increase in monster damage would result in death. This leads to comments like "As soon as I turn up the Monster Power I get 1-shot". I'd like to see a game where a clever player can handle a higher Monster Power by reducing incoming damage through good play.
He never comes right out and says it but if you read between the lines, he's implying that he's not happy with current balance of dmg output vs rewarding good play vs life steal.
In the case of the abilities you mentioned since they are all very telegraphed then sure I could see them remaining high dmg, but I don't think they want them to 1 shot you. Especially mallet lords, I've watched good players die to jailor mallet lords. And with Loot runs, you will too. So unless you think read affix -> run is the type of gameplay they are promoting, I'm sure you'll agree.
^
The problem is the existence of instagibs, a recognized bad design, which in turn exist because there exist healing mechanics that enable you to heal back to full in a very short time - something must be dangerous for the player, after all.
And your solution is... more instagibs. Welp
You seem to have missed the bit where I proposed instagibs that were the result of the player ignoring game mechanics designed to punish indifference to same, whereas current instagibs pretty much come out of nowhere. The subtle (and, in your opinion negligible?) difference is that one is down to player thought and planning, the other is down to RNG.
... welp?
Don't like the idea, because then the game becomes far too much about twitch skill (nearly 100% really) and not enough about gear, the game would strike some sort of balance, ideally. Players should feel threatened/stressed in harder difficulties with sub-par gear, but it shouldn't be a case of: your gear must be this good to ride.
You can have situations of requiring players to pay attention and play well without outright killing them upon the first mistake made.
He never comes right out and says it but if you read between the lines, he's implying that he's not happy with instagib as it stands.
If I'm reading this thread correctly, nobody is. There seems to be some differing opinions on whether it should exist at all, but TPTB haven't signalled their intentions in that regard... but it's important to remember that they are indicating that they want to solve both the problem of stat-stacking trivialising content, and the somewhat faceroll nature of D3's combat once you get a 'safe' build+gear combo.
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Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
From a big picture standpoint, it's not healthy for the game when a player's health pool goes from full to nearly empty and back to full on a regular basis very quickly, over and over, during regular play. I know not every character build plays this way - but I would assert that it's not good for the game when this is a dominant or even common way to play.
Why?
Here are a few negative effects it has:
1. A health pool that quickly goes from full to nearly empty implies that there's not a lot of room for variance in incoming damage. When incoming damage is that high, a 15% increase in monster damage would result in death. This leads to comments like "As soon as I turn up the Monster Power I get 1-shot". I'd like to see a game where a clever player can handle a higher Monster Power by reducing incoming damage through good play. Unfortunately, if the combat pacing and dominant builds are such that all players are geared to survive the biggest posisble hit from a monster and instantly heal to full then there's no room for that differentiation. Let's use mortar as a simple example. If a wave of mortar hits takes me from full to nearly dead, and then I instantly heal back to full, then mortars don't pose a realistic threat to me. In this state, there's no way for a clever player (who wants to dodge mortars) to differentiate themselves from somebody who doesn't care (and just decides to get hit). In both cases you're healing instantly to full and surviving through the damage no matter what, and in both cases turning up the monster power results in you dying no matter what if you take a single mortar wave. It becomes a pure gear check.
2. For players who push the MP up anyways, it makes the game feel like it was designed around one-shots. In my previous example with mortar, some of you may be thinking "There's room for turning up the Monster Power, just don't get hit at all!". This isn't great either. It means my death feels very binary. One moment I'm at full health, the next instant I'm dead. It also means that once you decide you are going to accept being one-shot, you don't care about your health at all. Who cares if you have 20K or 40K health if you're going to die either way? We'd be in a better place if the mortar-dodger was allowed to take the occasional hit, but can handle a higher monster power as long as a majority of them are dodged.
3. Healing very rapidly back to full also loses all the fidelity of small attacks. If players are regularly going from full to nearly empty and back to full again on a regular basis, then there's no room for mechanics which act as a slow drain on your health. Plagued is a great example of this. We don't want Plagued to be something that kills you quickly, but it also shouldn't be something you ignore forever. Standing in a pool of poison should be something that adds tension to the fight. You know you're not going to die now, but you can see the threat looming. When healing rates are very high, there is no room for the slow drain damage sources - they become insignificant.
4. My current health loses meaning. Being at 95% health should mean you're relatively safe. Being at 5% health should mean you're almost dead. Being at 50% health should mean you're somewhat in danger and you should play it safe, but as long as you do you should be fine. These are all concepts that make intuitive sense. Unfortunately, they are not at all true in the current Diablo environment. When health pools are rapidly going from empty to full and back again, these health values all blur together.
5. You lose a lot of tactical combat opportunities. Tactical combat requires that the player can properly assess the situation and react accordingly. When your health pool moves up and down rapidly you are no longer reacting to dangers. A rapidly changing health globe means you are playing in a predictable pattern and crossing your fingers hoping that you live through it. You are playing in a way that avoids situations that will instantly kill you, but there's no tension associated with being low on health that would cause you to make a tactical decision to change your play pattern.
I'm saying all of this without pointing at any specific solutions. That's because there are no instant-fix solutions. It's a challenging problem that we're actively working on. Things aren't going to be perfect overnight, but improving the pacing of combat is something we constantly work on.
I will say that the first line of defense is reducing the rate at which players heal. After we pull in the rate of healing, next we analyze the patterns in which monsters deal damage. Ultimately, defensive stats will play a role in all of this. If some life regeneration, damage mitigation or (gasp) life on hit lets me play a little more aggressively, that's a good thing.
With health bumping up and down like crazy, globes become useless, especially on higher MPs and for higher health pools.
They've already said they are going to be buffing life per fury/spirit spent and that they don't like the life steal stat. I wouldn't be surprised to see them add that life per resource spent for all classes. They also are talking about making health globes drop every 20-25% to put the emphasis on that for healing and rewarding good play. They want the primary healing to be through globes and the secondary source through lpss/loh etc..
He also talked about how instead of taking 100% dmg or 0 dmg that you would take 80% dmg or 20% dmg, so that there was always a feeling of danger but still being rewarded for good play.
The above was also talked about by Wyatt back in July of this year.
So far my barbarian is farming mp10 and I stand in any crap... which isn't fun at all.
I am sure they will implant in a good way : life regen / life per fury spent / life per sec / per hit and nerf the life steal of course !
1. Get enough HP/resist/armor to not die in under a few hits
2. Get some life steal
3. Get your DPS high enough that you heal instantly
Then you want to group mobs into as big a ball as possible and always choose huge AoE skills. You will heal so fast that a mob of 50 monsters amongst 2 elite packs poses barely any more danger than a mob of 3 monsters.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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He wasn't talking about the health globes you pick up, he was referring to your HP as "the" health globe. The orb with your health pool in it. "A rapidly changing health globe" = your HP going up and down.
CLOSE! You forgot that sometimes it's easier/safer to kill a pack of 50 than it is to kill a pack of 3
The part where he talks about tactical decision and reacting accordingly is referring to health globes. At least in my opinion. If not, I'd add that as point #6. Health globes have become irrelevant for many builds in the game as of now.
I'm just glad they are going to make them a more vital part of gameplay in general. Also if you look at one of the barbs skills. I forget the name of it, but it gives life per fury spent increased by + health globe bonuses. (which is an underrated stat btw)
What if a mortar hit also gave you a 5-second stacking debuff that makes you take 100% more damage from subsequent mortar hits? Eating one or two, not a problem... but a few more will instagib anyone.
What if arcane lasers put a debuff on you that makes you take an increasing amount of damage if you don't stop moving for a few seconds after being tagged? .. and make plague-patches do increasing damage if you don't move out of them.
What if stuns/blinds/confusions lasted 3 times longer on enemies that used vortex/teleport within the last 0.5 seconds?
What if desecration's damage was huge, but proportional to how full your health was to the extent that it did almost nothing at 20% health, but could one-shot you if you stood in it at full health?
You seem to have missed the bit where I proposed instagibs that were the result of the player ignoring game mechanics designed to punish indifference to same, whereas current instagibs pretty much come out of nowhere. The subtle (and, in your opinion negligible?) difference is that one is down to player thought and planning, the other is down to RNG.
... welp?
I didn't read that post as Blizzard not wanting any instagibs at all... the reason why I proposed them is that if you don't have them, then the meta-game become all about outgearing the big hits so you can go back to ignoring game mechanics, which is exactly the problem at hand.
At the moment, the 'punishment' for ignoring elite abilities is no worse than (and in most cases not nearly as bad as) the 'baseline' incoming damage, which means that the sustain needed for ordinary combat has a side-effect of making things like mortars, plague and fire-chains irrelevant. Part of the solution is reducing 'base' monster damage and life-steal, absolutely... but that alone would make combat tedious, and it'd still be as faceroll as it is now (assuming you're at a 'comfortable' MP).
IMO, a crucial part of fixing this issue is to have elite abilities that force the player to switch their tactics or face unavoidable death. In my perfect D3, there should be particular abilities and combinations of abilities that brutally punish the inattentive, but only give a brief scare to people who are on their toes. A WW barbarian, CM wizard or TR monk who pays no attention to what they're fighting should die within seconds when they encounter their nemesis affix... to the extent that even dialing back the MP 3 or 4 levels shouldn't be enough to save a faceroll player from their own tunnel-vision.
That's because Wyatt didn't say anything about removing all instagibs. It's not in the post. Someone is just making shit up.
I am willing to bet that they do keep certain one-shot (or exceptionally-high-damage) attacks. Stuff like Mallet Lords, Azmodan's fireball, Skeleton King's wind-up attack, etc. One-shot mechanics work well for "special" attacks that must be avoided. They don't work well on common attacks like mortar, arcane, etc. I think that's precisely what Wyatt was talking about.
That's not to say that mortar is an instagib mechanic. But it is to say that if one volley of mortar takes you down to 10%, then, due to its relative common occurence, that becomes a point at which you gear around. If you can heal that 90% through globes/potions/or regen stats before the next mortars happen, then there's no point to the mechanic.
That's a far cry from "there won't be any instagib mechanics" though.
I hope they do. Telegraphed instagibs make for a fun game, regardless of genre, even if they raise my blood pressure too damn high in HC.
Well, as I said, I think one mortar hit should be a minor annoyance, but eating 8 in a row should turn you into jam regardless of your EHP... so yeah, if Blizzard starts talking about removing all instagibs, I shall be grumpy beyond reckoning.
Actually Wyatt has said similar.
He never comes right out and says it but if you read between the lines, he's implying that he's not happy with current balance of dmg output vs rewarding good play vs life steal.
In the case of the abilities you mentioned since they are all very telegraphed then sure I could see them remaining high dmg, but I don't think they want them to 1 shot you. Especially mallet lords, I've watched good players die to jailor mallet lords. And with Loot runs, you will too. So unless you think read affix -> run is the type of gameplay they are promoting, I'm sure you'll agree.
Don't like the idea, because then the game becomes far too much about twitch skill (nearly 100% really) and not enough about gear, the game would strike some sort of balance, ideally. Players should feel threatened/stressed in harder difficulties with sub-par gear, but it shouldn't be a case of: your gear must be this good to ride.
You can have situations of requiring players to pay attention and play well without outright killing them upon the first mistake made.
If I'm reading this thread correctly, nobody is. There seems to be some differing opinions on whether it should exist at all, but TPTB haven't signalled their intentions in that regard... but it's important to remember that they are indicating that they want to solve both the problem of stat-stacking trivialising content, and the somewhat faceroll nature of D3's combat once you get a 'safe' build+gear combo.