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I checked both...all Arreat Summit says is "Superior items have improved Defense, and/or Durability. Superior Weapons can have increased chance to hit or damage, and Durability" and there isn't even a page in our Wiki for Superior Items (which honestly is why I'm trying to put this info together).

So I'm trying to figure out the stat ranges for the bonuses that occur on superior items and I'm hoping someone here can help fill in the blanks.

Superior Armor
Enhanced Defense: ?%-15%(?)
Increase Maximum Durability: ?%-?%

Superior Weapons
Enhanced Damage: ?%-15%
Increase Maximum Durability: ?%-?%
+Attack Rating: ?-?

Also, I'm fairly certain that the stats are mutually exclusive; that is you can't have superior armor with both increased Defense and Durability. Is this accurate? And does it hold true with the weapons as well (especially considering the +AR)? Thanks for any help.

Quote from "luc1027" »

By "instability", do you mean mana ? and please explain me why you call that instability ?

I'm having trouble finding it, but I'm pretty sure there was a Twitter post not too long ago referring to the Wizard's resource as Instability.

Quote from "ScyberDragon" »

If you raise instability too high then either spell can back fire, have no effect, less damage (whatever they decide to make it blanaced). This will allow you to start strong without having to build up anyhing. It will also encourage the player to use multiple spells to keep the instability in check. For anyone who thinks it will FORCE you to use other spells. Think of it this way, when you normally ran out of mana you couldn't do anything. With this system when you raise your instability too high (equivalent to running out of mana) you can at least still cast something.

In this system though, there's no benefit to having high Instability. In fact, those suggestions make having high Instability a detriment. So there's no reason that a player would ever build his/her Instability up. Just swap back and forth between generating and draining spells or just use the "neutral" spells. I don't feel like that's a particularly compelling resource system.

I agree that having to cast "lesser" spells is a definite issue for any sort of charge-up based system. Despite its shortcomings though, it forces the player to make more decisions, use more spells, and have his/her head in the game rather than just spamming two skills over and over. I think a unique and intriguing style of gameplay for each class is what Blizz is aiming for when they're spending all this time and energy coming up with specific forms of combat resource for each class.

I will admit that it is an awful lot like rage, but I think the big difference is the forced dump when it gets full. If your Instability is full, you won't have the option of casting the spell normally or with your full pool; it's all or nothing. I think this idea fits quite well into the "glass cannon" archetype. It also makes for some more interesting decision making: if you have 80 Instability, do you cast that 70 Instability Havoc spell or do you cast another Un/Stable spell to finish filling up your bulb first? I also envision the Instability pool filling and draining much more quickly than rage/fury would.

As for "Havoc," it's just the first thing I thought up for the example...Volatile would work just as well, although I'm not sure how much confusion there would be with a part of game hardware and actual gameplay mechanics. And as far as complexity is concerned, the full Instability bonuses don't necessarily make the gameplay more complex, just the underlying mechanics. For those players who think the mechanics are on a need-to-know basis, they can just know that their spells do more damage with a full pool. The min/max type gamers can worry about how exactly that works.

EDIT: And, as Ivaron pointed out, I'm sure they could do a variety of things with the spell hotkey images to clearly indicate which category they fit into. I don't know if they're reserving a certain color background for a certain tree (for lack of a better word), but if so they could differentiate with colored borders or something like that easily enough.

Hey all...long time lurker, first time poster.
I was daydreaming at work earlier today and came up with an idea for the Wizard's energy system that I think could make for some interesting play. It's basically an outgrowth of the oft-suggested charge-up system, but with an extra kick that I think makes that somewhat dull system a bit more exciting. Bear with me, because I can sometimes be a bit long-winded...

So basically all of the Wizard's damaging spells would be grouped into one of three categories: low, medium, and high Instability (although with cooler names...I'm thinking something along the lines of Stable, Unstable, and Havoc, respectively.) For simplicity's sake in this explanation, let's assume that the Wizard's Instability "pool" will range from 0-100.

Stable Spells: No cost, low damage, low Instability generation (~5-10)
Unstable Spells: Low cost (~15-30), medium damage, medium Instability generation (~30-60...considering the cost, makes for a net gain of 15-30)
Havoc Spells: High cost (~40+), high damage, no Instability generation

Thus far, we have our basic, boring charge-up system. However, where things get different is when a spell is cast with a full Instability pool. In this case, the entire pool is drained, regardless of the base cost of the spell, and in return the spell gets certain bonuses. Now, my idea is that casting a full Instability Havoc spell will (almost) always be ideal. With that in mind, I will lead you through my thought process on how the full Instability bonus would work.

Damage Scales Proportionally to Increased Cost: Confused? Let's say, for example, you cast a Havoc spell with a base cost of 40. When your Instability pool is full, it will automatically cost all 100 Instability. In this case, the increased cost is 60 Instability. Compared to the base cost of 40, the increased cost of 60 is 150%. Therefore, the spell will gain an additional 150% damage for a total of 250% base damage. This was my original idea, but as I got to thinking of it, this system basically increases both the damage and the cost of the spell by x%. Although this would certainly increase the Wizard's burst capabilities, it doesn't really provide more bang for your buck, if you will. So, I started trying to think up other ideas...

Damage Increases by a Fixed Amount: This was my next idea. Unfortunately, unlike the previous bonus, this does not balance across spells of different costs. For example, if the fixed damage bonus is 100% and you cast a Havoc spell that normally costs 40 Instability, you're essentially using 100 Instability to do 80 Instability worth of damage. That's underpowered. On the other hand, if you cast a Havoc spell that normally costs 80 Instability, you're only spending 100 Instability to do 160 Instability worth of damage. OP. Next.

Damage Increases Proportionally with an Inverse Increase in Critical Strike Chance: Here I returned to my first idea but with the added perk of also increasing critical strike chance of the spell, thus providing that extra bang for the buck that was originally lacking. To ensure that it is balanced though, the increased critical strike chance would scale inversely to the increased damage. That is to say, if your damage increases by, say, a factor of 8 (as in a relatively low-cost spell), the critical strike chance would increase by a factor of 2. Conversely, if the damage increased by a factor of 2 (as with a high-cost spell), the critical strike chance would increase by a factor of 8.

Obviously, none of these solutions are perfect, but I think my last suggestion is looking pretty nice, if not probably still in need of balancing.

Casting Stable Spells with Full Instability: In this case, I think a fixed damage increase would be fine...maybe something around 3-5x damage and 2x Instability generation.

Casting Unstable Spells with Full Instability: Again, my idea is roughly 2x damage and half Instability generation. I want the Instability generation penalty here because I don't want it to be better to cast an Unstable spell than a Havoc spell with full Instability.

Obviously these ideas aren't nearly as fleshed out as my Havoc ideas, but...

What do you all think?