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Do people ever just get excited about things? I guess I am a casual gamer because I totally do not look at features in an analytical way. I look at something and think about how it will add to the immersion, story or my gameplay experience. How frustrating life must be when things that are inherently fun and for leisure become points of contention and unrest in the eyes of those that play the games. What is the point? A lot of it also seems to be contrary for the sake of trying to play devil's advocate every single time something is shown.

From my standpoint I am very much excited to have the followers be added depth to my solo play experience and story of the game.

There's been a couple threads lately talking about possible new expansion classes, and I've seen more interest in the Druid as one of them then I thought I would. So I figured I'd finally post what I've had written down for awhile now about my take on the Druid class.

I have numbers but I think I'll forgo those just because they'd probably vastly change anyway upon testing. Instead I'll list what skills / passives I've come up with so far, and how I envision they will act. Thanks to Elendiro for the idea of class specific shoulders + resource name =)

Thanks to Ulydssian for the idea of the shapeshift runes changing the color / fur of the animal!


The Druid

Role: Melee + Long range caster

Main Spell Schools: Lightning / Cold / Fire / Physical

Resource: Natural Energy (green in color). Only regenerating attacks regenerate this resource, it does not deplete over time and no target is required to benefit from regenerating attacks. A large pool (think 125-150 or so) with large regenerating attacks (such as 10-15) and big spenders (such as 20-25).

Main stat: Strength

Class specific armor: Animal pelt / feather shoulders. (Thanks again to Elendiro).

Class specific weapon(s): The Glaive, and the Two Handed Glaive.

Skills

Spell Spenders;

Thunder strike. Lightning damage, long range, small aoe around target. Instant cast. The bolt comes down where targeted.
1. Calls 3 lightning damage stars to hit random targets, and also does AOE damage off of each target hit.
2. Add's a 25% chance to stun for 2 seconds.
3. Instead of an AOE upon hit, 6 lightning spears shoot out at a farther distance, piercing.
4. Damage increased, AOE removed.
5. Leaves behind a lightning field that does 45% weapon damage over 2 seconds to anything inside.

Ice Spike. Cold damage, long range, single target. Has a chance to pierce. It's a fast moving projectile that slows targets.
1. Killing a target with Ice Spike creates an explosion of ice that does %WD to enemies behind the target.
2. Grants Ice Spike a 15% chance to freeze any target it hits.
3. Turns Ice Spike into an Ice Trap, that arms after 2 seconds, dealing massive damage.
4. Ice Spike leaves behind a frozen trail, slowing enemies.
5. Ice Spike creates an Ice Wall that blocks enemies.

Lava Surge. A medium range channeled spell that does fire damage. Similar to disintegrate it pierces, but it has a wider swath as it attacks.
1. If channeled for at least 3 seconds, burns the armor on targets making them take 15% addition damage.
2. pools of lava burst from the ground underneath the beam for 3 seconds dealing damage. The Druid can run faster on top of these pools.
3. Turns Lava Surge into a shield that lasts for 120 seconds and does constant fire AOE.
4. Removes the pierce and instead adds a % of damage aoe off of target
5. Creates a volcano at the target location that will hit enemies with fiery brimstone (lol) for 15 seconds.

Wind Blast. Instant projectile, long range and does physical damage. Has a built in chance to knock back.
1. Replaces the attack with a wall of wind that surrounds the druid, slowing projectiles for 10 seconds.
2. Reduces targets attack speed by 20%.
3. Adds a chance for Wind Blast to pierce.
4. Each cast increases attack speed by 3% for 5s, stacks up to 3 times. (the IAS affects every skill)
5. Split Wind Blast into 3 projectiles, shooting off in a cone shape.

Elemental fury. A 2 minute cool down. Randomly picks one of three attacks when used. 1) Armageddon - Rain fire on all enemies. 2) Hurricane - Ravage all enemies caught, while slowing them. 3) Temporal Thunder - Strike random enemies with lightning, adds a chance to displace and stun enemies. Lasts 15 seconds.
1. Decrease the Cool Down to 80 seconds.
2. Enemies killed with Elemental Fury explode for %WD.
3. If Armageddon is chosen, it spawns 3 fiery golems to fight for the Druid for 2 minutes.
4. If Hurricane is chosen, receive a damaging AOE buff for 2 minutes. (D2 hurricane)
5. If Temporal Thunder is chosen, receive a displacement shield for 2 minutes.


Melee Spenders;

Puncture. Does instant damage, plus adds a heavy Bleed on the target. Increases target damage taken by 12% from all sources.
1. Cuts the bleed damage in half, but increases the damage taken by the target to 15%.
2. Receive 9% of the damage done as life.
3. Infect the wound to create a slowing AOE off the target, reducing enemy movement by 20%.
4. Affects all targets directly in front of the Druid.
5. Removes the instant damage and the increased damage debuff, but triples the bleed damage.

Pound. Medium range AOE around the player. 5 second cool down. Has a chance to stun for 1 second.
1. Removes the cool down, and the chance to stun.
2. Increases damage, turns the damage into fire.
3. Gain 5 Natural Energy and 5% life per target hit.
4. Increase the Druids armor by 25% for 3 seconds after use.
5. Freely cast Pound anywhere targeted.

Rabies. A callback from the D2 druid, it's a fast spreading Poison damage Dot. Internal chance to make enemies randomly attack the player or other enemies.
1. Change the chance to confuse enemies to a chance to fear enemies.
2. Increases Rabies damage, reduces the amount of targets able to be effects from all to 5.
3. Slow all enemies effected.
4. Life on Hit and Life Steal return double their normal amount when used on enemies with Rabies. (Druid only)
5. Enemies with Rabies leave behind poison clouds dealing damage over the course of the DoT.

Gnash. Single target physical attack with high damage. Adds a short range charge when used.
1. Increase the range of the charge to long range.
2. Knock back enemies you hit while charging to your target.
3. Replace the charge with a small radius AOE off the target.
4. Using Gnash increases your total damage by 3%. Stacks up to 5 times.
5. Adds a damage effect to the charge itself, and changes the damage type to fire.

Summon skills;

Wolf pack. 1 minute cool down. Summons 5 wolfs to fight for the Druid. The wolfs persist until killed. (Imagine them being about = to 3 zombie dogs).
1. Big bad wolf. Summon 1 wolf for 20 seconds that mirrors the Druid's damage, critical hit chance and critical hit damage. Uses a single target physical attack.
2. The Spirit Clan. Summon a magma, a wind and a nature wolf to fight for the Druid. Each wolf has a unique attack in addition to their melee attack. The Magma wolf randomly raises small volcanoes for persistent AOE damage on the ground. The Wind wolf uses gusts of hurricane force winds to slow and damage enemies, and the Nature wolf strikes out with chain lightning.
3. Blood Brothers. Summon two health-linked wolfs that return 9% of the damage done as life to their master.
4. Lurking wolfs. Increases the Wolf Pack's damage and reduced the cool down to 45 seconds.
5. Seeing Red. When attacking a champion or elite pack, if the enemies health drops below 25% the wolfs become immune to all CC and have damage increased for a short duration.

Ancient Ward. A 1 minute cool down that summons an Ancient Ward at the target location for 30 seconds. An ancestral bear spirit is tied to this ward and will fight for the Druid for the duration.
1. The Ancient Ward summons constant ravens to attack everything within reach.
2. Everything inside the Ancient Ward's radius takes an additional 10% damage.
3. Every party member inside the Ancient Ward's radius receives 900 Life per second.
4. The Ancient ward now lasts for a full minute and is carried with the Druid. Summons an Oak Spirit to accompany the Druid and increase their max life by 10%. This spirit cannot attack, but can be attacked.
5. The ancestral bear spirit now has a high chance to stun when attacking, and will taunt enemies to attack it.

Resource Regenerating Attacks;

Crush. Single target attack that increases it's own damage per stack, up to three stacks.
1. Also increases Crush's attack speed by 5% when used, up to 15%.
2. Adds a chance to knock back the target.
3. Makes affected enemies take X% more physical damage.
4. Creates a shockwave behind the target for X%.
5. Has a chance for an AOE knockback.

Pulse. Lightning damage in cone in front of the Druid.
1. Shoots 6 streaks of lightning randomly.
2. Has a chance to pull in up to 5 enemies.
3. Makes affected enemies take X% more fire damage.
4. A chance to stun enemies that are hit.
5. Create the pulse at long range.

Frost Axe. Attack all enemies in front and on both sides of the Druid for cold damage. (think of an ethereal pair of frozen axes that the druid swings upwards crossing arms, then back downwards ending with both arms as far back as they can go).
1. Gain 3 Natural Energy per enemy hit.
2. Makes affected enemies take X% more lightning damage.
3. Gives a chance for targets to be frozen.
4. Throw the Frost Axe instead.
5. Slam the axe into the ground, erupting frozen energy to do AOE damage over 2 seconds. This effect can stack.

Fire Ball. A projectile that explodes upon hitting the target.
1. Adds a 33% chance to attack with a giant fireball that does double the damage.
2. Turn the fire ball into a ball of lightning. (Not the DH skill >.<)
3. Leave behind a %WD dot on affected enemies.
4. Makes affected enemies take X% more cold damage.
5. Ricochet the Fire Ball up to 3 enemies.

Shape-Shifting; ( every time a shape shift is cast, it randomly chooses one of a couple different skins per form ). All would probably have about a 30 second cool down, except chimera form.

Werewolf Form. A long lasting buff on the player that increases attack and movement speed, and grants +5% strength.
1. Extends the attack speed buff to the whole party.
2. Also creates two wolf cub allies that attack and tank like pets.
3. Upon use, howl and fear every nearby enemy
4. Extends the movement speed buff to the whole party.
5. Gain +25% movement impair reduction.

Lion Form (or bear form). The animal can be debated, but the purpose would be the tanky-type. Increasing dodge / armor / vitality.
1. Increases party members vitality by 10%.
2. Melee attacks have a 15% chance of doing double damage.
3. Reduce all damage taken by 10%.
4. Grants the druid 650 life per second.
5. Adds a 1.5% life steal to all attacks.

Eagle / Raven Form. This would give the Druid the appearance of an Eagle / Raven, while still standing on two legs (think the animals head + wings on the back). It would increase resource regeneration per resource regenerating attack and increase elemental damage.
1. Increases the elemental damage bonus and extends to party members.
2. When reduced to below 20% health, the druid flies up and becomes immune to all damage for 3 seconds. This cannot occur more than once per 90 seconds.
3. Grants three ravens who damage enemies.
4. Reduce physical damage taken by 10%.
5. Attacks have a 10% chance to charm an enemy. Only one enemy may be charmed at a time.

Chimera Form. A 2 minute cool down, 15 second buff. Health globes grant 5 seconds extra, up to 15 seconds, for a total of 30 seconds maximum in Chimera Form. Turns the Druid into an Eagle + Lion and gives him a new set of attacks. Such as;
A hard hitting, piercing lightning bolt.
A channeled frontal cone AOE fire breath.
A huge radius ground-pound AOE.
A massive single target damage attack such as Ravage.
A charge ability that flies the player to the target location, breaking CC, with a 7 second cool down.
The last skill slot would be filled by the rune selection;

1. Summon multiple snakes to attack and poison enemies with a dot.
2. Fixated shield. A shield that can be used once during Chimera form, that blocked all incoming damage for three second. Party members can step inside this shield and also use it.
3. A stone form buff that makes the druid slower, but immune to all CC for the duration.
4. Extend a massive attack speed buff once to the Druid and the entire party for 7 seconds.
5. Creates an AOE stun for two seconds, with a 7 second cooldown.

'Utility' Type Attacks;

Elemental Shield. Decreases elemental damage taken by 10%.
1. Increase the Druids resist-all by 15%.
2. 10% chance on critical hit to gain 15 Natural Energy.
3. Grants + 3 Natural Energy per second.
4. Gives the druid free use of the next attack used against them for 10 seconds, 30 second cool down. Some attacks not eligible (such as boss attacks).
5. Enemies attempting to run in the opposite direction of the Druid will have their movement speed reduced by 35%.

Force Tap. Uses half of the current remaining Resource to heal the player ( each point of resource could heal for 100 health at max level or so). The point of this mechanic is to make it so this skill doesn't need a cool down. Instead once used more than twice in a row without generating your resource, it's really not that useful. The + HP from health globes and potions increases the life gained from this skill.
1. Switch to use 15% of remaining health for 20% of max Natural Energy.
2. Creates a -30% damage taken shield on the druid for 3 seconds after use. Incurs a 15 second cool down.
3. Uses all of the Druids resource to grant themselves plus all party members 1600 life per second for 5 seconds. Only usable when >= 75% Natural Energy. Has a 10 second cool down.
4. Damage surrounding enemies for 200% of the amount healed.
5. Increases armor by 15% for 3 seconds after use.

Iron Roots. A single target root immobilizes the enemy and does damage over three seconds. Has a 5 second cool down.
1. Summon two creeping vines for 3 seconds that seek out enemies, damaging and slowing them.
2. Create a surge of roots that immobilize every enemy within 8 yards of the target for 3 seconds. Has a 10 second cool down.
3. Increases the damage and the effect of the roots to 4 seconds.
4. Creates a giant AOE explosion after the effect of the roots is over.
5. Attacks made on the rooted target deal an extra 20% damage as AOE to surrounding targets.

Drain. Decreases the target's damage done by 20%, and puts a 1.5% Life steal debuff on the target for the whole party to benefit from. Can only effect one target at a time, and lasts 15 seconds.
1. Changes the life steal debuff to a 400 Life on hit Debuff.
2. Gain 5 Natural Energy every time the Druid strikes the target.
3. The target's attack speed is also reduced by 20%.
4. The Druid's strength is increased by 10% while a target is effected.
5. Vines slowly wrap around the target, dealing damage over time.

Swap. Change places with any targets within the small casting area, dealing arcane damage. Has a 5 second cool down, and doesn't require a target.
1. Increase the arcane damage and causes it to be an explosive AOE, but adds a 2 second delay.
2. Each target swapped with will grant the Druid 5% health.
3. Only effects one target, and instead of swapping brings the target to the Druid.
4. After 3 seconds, the Druid is pulled back to the original swap location.
5. On arrival, the Druid unleashes an arcane nova.

Passives

I've only come up with a couple passives so far, so feel free to suggest more.

Blood Rush. Every health globe picked up increases your shapeshift duration by 3 seconds.

Hungering. Recover (insert life after kill number here) each time an enemy is slain.

Power Surge. While not in a shape-shift form, picking up a health globe grants you an additional 3 Natural Energy when using Natural Energy generating abilities.

Razor Scales. Gives the Druid a chance to reflect 10% weapon damage back to melee attackers, and increases armor by 10%. Reflected damage causes the enemy to bleed for 45% damage over 3 seconds.

Natural Order. Spells have a chance to recover 5 Natural Energy upon critically hitting a target.

Lake of wisdom. Increases the Druid's maximum Natural Energy by 75.

Diseased. Enemies under 50% health gave their damage reduced by 10% and take and an additional 10% more damage.

Dead beast's hand. Receiving fatal damage causes the Druid to enter Beast Mode, gaining 30% health and 100% Natural Energy back, and all skills are set to cooldown. This effect can only occur once every 3 minutes.

Infected wounds. Attacking an enemy that is poisoned returns 1.5% of the damage done as life.






As you can see, I've really imagined this iteration of the Druid to be a full on caster, that can also shape shift and work great as a melee class. There might not be any apparent synergy between a lot of skills, but that's because all the rune variations are missing.

I would love to hear feedback on this, positive or negative =D Let me get one thing out of the way early though; I'm very aware a lot of these ideas have been gleaned from Diablo 2, and WoW, and I'll admit I got a lot of inspiration from both.

Thanks everyone for reading!

Battle.net US Forum Thread: http://us.battle.net...opic/8891689930 highly rated

Battle.net EU Forum Thread: http://eu.battle.net...opic/7527573396 highly rated

Reddit: http://www.reddit.co...stic_pt1_seals/

--------------------------------------------

Hi everyone,

before I start I want to apologize for my English. I hope you can understand it!

You might remember me for this thread.

This time I want to show you two ways I thought to make the mystic an artisan with original (I hope) mechanics.
This is the first part while the second one will come in the future (aka soon™).

It's a VERY VERY long read so I will put a TLDR version at the end of the whole post, but if you have some free time, please take a while and lis... read my idea

Like if you like!

PART 1: SEALS - BASE CONCEPT

What are the seals?

Seals are new droppable items that will allow the player to enchant any white item.


What is it that makes them different from the blacksmith's crafts and from a "similar-Diablo2-enchantment" implementation?

The difference is that with this system the player can choose which magic properties can be enchanted on the item.
Of course the choice remains random in some way (more on this later).


It doesn't seem a great idea... is there something that makes it cool?

Of course! It's been quite a while since I thought that Diablo 3 has a lot of potential in terms of character customization but mechanics like the ability to place statistics or the skill tree (that I really loved) that were a fundamental part of Diablo2 both for customization and replayability were cut from Diablo 3.
But it is also true that there are people who didn't like those mechanics so:

how to create another way to customize your character?
This is where my idea kicks in: seals can level up by capturing the souls (gain experience) of slayed monsters.
On every level they can be infused with different magic properties chosen by the player (these properties are the ones that will be enchanted on the item).
However, this wouldn't have been enough to make this idea looking great... maybe it would've just made it more frustrating.

So why not create a similar mechanic that players miss a lot, like Diablo 2 runes?
That's why I thought that if the player chooses the right combinations of skills (magic properties) to infuse into the seal he can unlock the secret properties of the seal itself.

But still, this was not enough for this feature because probably it would've been too easy to create the perfect seal so I had to think of two ways to make everything more hard:

1 - adding "breakibility" to the seal: on every level up and on every skill infusion ("skill infusion" is refered to the action of the player when he chooses a magic property to infuse into the seal) there is a 5% chance that the seal will break.

2 - adding another mechanic: the purification of the seal

What is the purification of the seal?

If the player reaches a point where the percentage of "breakability" is high he can decide to use the seal for an enchant so he can avoid to break it prematurely.
To be able to use the seal the player has to purify it by freeing and destroying the evil souls trapped into it.

Basically when the evil souls are free, the seal will disappear from the altar (more on this later) and some elite monsters will appear.
These monsters will be as powerful as the seal was.
Once the player has killed every monster of that elite pack, the last one killed will drop the seal in its purified form.
The purified seal allows the player to enchant a white item (more on this on the fourth part).
Elite monsters can also appear when the seal breaks prematurely, so it is important to handle these new items with care!

Another very important thing: if the player is not able to kill the spawned elite monsters the seal is lost forever!
So the player has to be careful to not make the evil souls too powerful!

Note: Purified seals cannot be traded

Are there different types of seal?

Yes:

- Seal of valor: can enchant one-handed weapons

- Seal of power: can enchant two-handed weapons

- Seal of will: can enchant armor items

- Seal of honor: can enchant jewels (white jewels? why not? maybe crafted by the jeweler)

- Seal of the Nephalem: can enchant class items

Seals are also divided based on the maximum level they can reach (e.g. the "Austere seal of valor" can reach only level 2 while the "Pure seal of valor" can reach level 3 and so on - note: the maximum level limit is 10) and based on their quality (magic, rare or legendary).

PART 2: SEALS - SKILL CHOICE AND INFUSION

In this part I will show you the first images of the new seal interface.

Here's the first one:



and here's the tutorial:



Let's see what happens if the player puts a seal into the altar:



As you can see the player chose a seal of valor and you can also notice that the quantity of souls needed for the seal to level up is 50.

The next image will show you the tutorial that appears when the seal reaches level 1:



See how the "breakability" percentage has increased to 5%.
This means that on the next level up or on the next skill infusion, the seal has a 5% chance to break.

At this point the player has just to click on the button "1 unused seal skill point" to open the window where he can choose which skill he would like to infuse into the seal:



This image shows you how the choice of a skill is made.
The player can choose one of two skills randomly chosen from a pool of many others.

Skills are divided between Primary and Secondary skills which can have other "secondary skills" called Traits.

Primary skills are infused into the first globe of every row of globes and they will determine what type of properties the seal will have.

Secondary abilities instead will improve or add effects that will "ensue" the characterization of Primary skills (I hope "ensue" makes sense).

Let's make an example based on the image above.

Cold Power will add cold damage to the item while:

- Freeze will add a chance to freeze the enemies

- Frozen Hell will additionally increase the cold damage done by Cold Power

- Blizzard will allow the player to use the Blizzard spell of the wizard (this affix doesn't exist at the moment but I think that the implementation of this idea would need a game with a larger pool of affixes and where an item can have more than just six affixes).

As you can see from the example above you can notice that the Primary skill determine the main "element" (in this case it's the cold damage) while Secondary skills just "ensue" it (I hope "ensue" makes sense here as well).

Anyway here's the tutorial that clears out any doubt you might still have:



This tutorial gives you another important information: the right combinations of skills allows you to unlock other primary or secondary skills so in the "list" of Secondary skills and Traits it won't appear any "Hidden" skill (which can be either Primary, Secondary or a Trait) because it is up to the player to discover "what skill unlocks skill X or Y or Z".

The player will have to choose from Fire Power or Cold Power and in our case he will choose Cold Power:



You can see how the Monster Power has increased and how it is based on the Primary skill (Primary skills will also determine the monster power).
Keep in mind that the seal breakability increases with a skill infusion as well infact it is now at 10% while previously was only 5%.

Let's see what happens at level 2:



This level activated two globes: one for another Primary skill and one for a Secondary skill so the player's choice for the next skill infusion can be made on two Secondary skills, two Primary skills or one Primary skill and one Secondary skill.
Have a look again on the seal breakability percentage.

On this next image you can see that the player has chosen another Primary skill:



and on the next level the altar will appear like this:



But let's take a step back: what would have happened if the player's choice was a Secondary ability instead of another Primary ability?
Here's the answer:



and the tutorial:



and level 3:



But let's take another step back and let's see which were the skill choices when the player decided to infuse "Freeze":



In the image above you can see that the Freeze skill has no Traits while Blizzard has. In this case the Traits of Blizzard would influence Blizzard of course, making it stronger by adding or improving its effects (e.g. a trait could add the effect of a Blizzard rune).

This time let's take a step forward instead and let's pretend that the seal has just reached level 4 and that the player has laready infused both Freeze and Blood Bath.
The player decides to infuse the next skill and:





But didn't Freeze have no traits? So how is it that possible?

Frozen Explosion is a Trait of Freeze and the infusion of both Freeze and Blood Bath unlocked it.
Frozen Explosion is infact a Hidden skill!

Hidden skills are a fundamental part of this idea and they will lead us to the next part but before we procced I want to try to be even more clearer on how this whole system works.

Basically this idea was inspired by one of my favorite games series: Heroes of Might and Magic.
If you never played any of them you might not be able to understand what I mean, but the ones familiar with the series will understand for sure.

I took the mechanic of the hero's level up (mostly from heroes 5) and just modified it a bit to be "Diablo-like".

Before we get to the next part I will show you one last image that might clears everything out (those of you familiar with Heroes of Might and Magic 5 might recognize it even if it is modified):



Don't look at the icons (they're just examples) but at the "sense" of the image.
I hope this helps to make everything clear on how my idea works.

PART 3: SEALS - HEROIC SKILL

This part explains how to unlock the "secret skill" of a seal with the right combinations of skills.

As I wrote above, the player doesn't know in advance how to unlock a secret skill.
However, it is possible to know what skills can unlock the Heroic Skill (this can be changed if it's too easy to unlock it).

What is the Heroic Skill?

I'm sure many of you noticed the big globe that is "alone". That globe is where the Heroic Skill will be infused.
Every Heroic Skill will give different magic properties depending on the type of seal and on the combinations of skills.

How do you unlock the Heroic Skill?

You just have to make the right decisions when you will infuse a skill.

But let's have a look on a first image:



You can notice that there is a "light" around the first globe: it means that the player is on the right way to unlock the Heroic Skill.

Let's skip to a higher level and let's pretend that the player infused the right skills to unlock the Heroic Skill:



and the tutorial:



and now with the Heroic Skill already infused:



Notice the green colored bonuses. Those are the Heroic skill magic properties!

The image above represents a case where everything went well (perfect skill choices and very lucky randomness), but in most cases the player will have to "wait" before having the chance to infuse the Heroic Skill because as I wrote earlier skills are randomly chosen from a pool of many of them.

In the image below you can see that the player had to wait until the max level to be able to infuse the Heroic Skill:



The player is also allowed to keep infusing skills even after the infusion of the Heroic Skill to make the seal more powerful but if he decides to do so he knows that the seal might break.
You can notice this with two images I showed you: a level 6 seal breakability is much lower than a level 10 but also their "power" is much different.

NOTE
I already explained this earlier but to make it clear I will explain this again:
in the images the level 10 seal breakability is 100% because the last skill has already been infused.
A level 10 seal with one seal skill point still remaining has a 95% breakability: this means that with the last skill infusion the player has a 95% chance to break the seal and if the infusion is successful the breakability percentage reaches 100% (the max level limit is 10 so with this last successful infusion the player does no longer have the risk to break the seal)

Let's have a look on the last two images before proceeding to the next part:





PART 4: MYSTIC - ENCHANTMENT

Once the player has purified the seal he cannot enchant a white item alone: he needs the help of the mystic.

To enchant an item you just need materials and gold.
Let's see a first image of the user interface:



As you can see there are two "slots": in one the player has to put the white item and in the other he has to put the right purified seal (seal of valor for one-handed weapons, seal of the nephalem for class-items etc).
There is also an "Item Statistics" panel where the player can see what magic properties the item will gain.

Here's an image of how the enchantment works:



The player just needs the required materials and gold and the enchantment will happen.

PART 5: MYSTIC - UPGRADE OF A SEAL

Seals can be upgraded and this allows the player to increase the maximum level limit a seal can reach.
This means that if the player wants a level 10 seal (which is the maximum level limit cap) he needs the help of the mystic (droppable seals reaches a maximum level of 6 in Inferno difficulty).

Here's two images on how the user interface will look like:





As you can see you can upgrade magic and rare seals (legendary too).
Higher level and legendary upgrades are droppable recipes of course.

On the image below you can see what the player needs to upgrade a "Seal of Will" (max level 1) into an "Austere Seal of Will" (max level 2).



You can now understand how important is the role of the mystic.

We will now have a look on the tooltip of a seal:



Let's explain its characteristics in detail:
you can notice that this is a rare seal and that it has a "Sacred power".
"Sacred Power" is just an indication to know what it is its maximum level.
However, you don't need to remember every single "power" to know what it is its maximum level because just below that there is this writing: "Level 5".
So this seal can reach level 5 at maximum.

If the player wants to increase its level cap he needs the mystic and the "upgrade operation" won't modify its magic properties in any way (except the level cap of course).

Speaking of magic properties you can see that this seal have two of them:

- Chance to break the seal recuded by 20%

- Monster power is reduced by 25%

This means that the seal has less chances to be broken and that the power of the monsters is reduced by 20% when they are released.

There are many more magic properties of course:

- Seal can be reused (only on a legendary seal)

- Indestructible (only on a legendary seal)

- Infused Skills power is increased by 5% per seal level

- Maximum level is 15 (on a legendary seal with reduced seal breakability and with the magic property above)

- Elemental skills power is increased by 10%

- Monster power is increased by 10% (yes, there are also negative magic properties!)

etc etc.

I also thought to give the Mystic the ability to also craft seals other than just upgrade them.

PART 6: CONCLUSION

I think that this idea will add a great amount of longevity to the game and a different "style" of enchantment.
I believe that if a player wants to create the perfect seal he needs to farm a lot but I hope that this doesn't lead to more frustration:
if the creation of Heroic Seals was almost impossible to do this idea would just need some adjustments like increasing the skill infusion choice from only two skills to three.

I know that to implement all of this the game would need a major overhaul but maybe the devs can take this idea to create a much more enjoyable and deeper-depth game.

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Edit - Note
I'm not a fan myself of "break things" mostly if you have worked so hard to obtain those things.
As I wrote in a post on reddit I couldn't come up with anything else other than this "breakability" and I think that some features needs some downsides to make the game less linear.
Of course the "breakability" can be removed and changed to something else so that's why I'm writing here a couple of alternatives

Diablo (EU - EN):
instead of adding more seal breakability, with every seal lvl, it should add the chance of decreasing the seal of 1 seal lvl, so it would not get destroyed, but just lose one lvl. bcs it would be really annoying and propably really hard otherwise to get a lvl 10 seal.

CrniVuk (US - EN):
instead of "breaking" it in a way that it dissapears let the Seal simply be dissabled unless you can repair it again with some other specific item/seal/what ever.
That way the progress you worked for months doesnt just dissapear, and you encourage players to get out there and do something against it.
This could also work as a gold sink, as the Mystic has to repair it for you of course.

There can be other alternatives of course, just remember that this is a base idea that can be used by the devs.. so anything can be changed to be less complex / frustrating etc. It needs hard testing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is all and I will leave you with two last images of the new UI (TLDR version after the images):





TLDR version:

Added a new droppable item: seals.
Seals are livellable items that must be purified (you have to kill the evil souls inside it) to make them able to enchant a white item (the enchantment requires the help of the mystic).
The magic properties infused into the seal can be choosen by the player in a random way (much like Heroes of Might and Magic 3/4/5) with the seal skill points that are earned through the levels of the seal.
The mystic will also increase the maximum level limit that a seal can reach.

Edit:

Link to U.S. Forums Thread: http://us.battle.net...opic/8156055717 highly rated

Link to EU English Forums Thread: http://eu.battle.net...opic/6787929710 highly rated

Link to EU Poland Forums Thread: http://eu.battle.net...opic/6891639245 highly rated

Link to Reddit discussion: http://www.reddit.co...nd_the_burning/ highly rated



And “like”... if you like (on the official forum threads and reddit too if you'd like of course)

Thanks everyone for the very positive feedback. It's much appreciated!
I'm glad that so many people liked the suggestions!

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Hi everyone,

I wanted to send an e-mail directly to the developpers but it seems that they don't have a direct way to give them feedback (the only one I could find was this: wowcmfeedback@blizzard.com but it seems it refers only to the feedback on CMs, MPVs etc. - and anyway the files in .pdf are too big to be sent to them ).
So the only way to do it it's by using the forums so I will write my ideas here.

I'm sorry about the very long read BUT this is my feedback and it was intented to be read by the developpers, so if you don't want to read it, just stop here.

(remember that these are just simple ideas that the developpers can take as base to create something new and improve the game)

Here's the e-mail:


Hi,
I'm Edriel, an italian Diablo 3 player.


Firstly I want to apologise if my English is not very good, I'm really trying to write in the most clearer way I can but I don't know if I will succeed.


Since the launch of the game I felt that this chapter of the Diablo series could be very successful.
However I don't think that in its current state it can become a masterpiece.


With that in mind I started to make many suggestions on the Italian Forum and after a while quite a few people who were excited about my ideas suggested me to personally send you my feedback.
So that's why I'm writing you this e-mail.


I hope you will enjoy the two ideas I translated for you, because it took quite a while to do it


P.S. I posted the Talisman idea in September so it might feel a bit “old”.
P.P.S. I hope you can answer me, even just a “we received your feedback and we appreciate it would be nice”


Sincerely
Edriel
an italian fan of the Diablo series


FIRST SUGGESTION - REINTRODUCTION OF THE TALISMAN


➢ BASE CONCEPT

This idea is ment to improve 2 important aspects of the game that currently, in my opinion, are lackluster:

1. Longevity
2. Paragon Level design

I imagined something that is not far from the philosophy of the Diablo series and something that I really loved in other games: the souls.

The Talisman will be a special container that will allow the player to capture the souls of defeated enemies.




As you can see from the image the Talisman will feature 5 minor globes and a supreme globe of souls.
In the 5 minor globes the player will trap the souls of lesser demons (normal monsters or Elite monsters – the quantity of souls needed to full the globes depends on balance of course and on the talisman type. So the player can have “situations” where he/she needs just one Elite monster to fill completly the globe, “situations” where the quantity depends on how many times the player used the Talisman or “situations” where he/she needs a mix of normal and Elite monsters' souls and in this last case Elite souls would fill more the globe) while in the Supreme Globe the player can capture the soul of a Boss.

Every minor globe of souls will activate its own effect based on the type of Talisman that I will show you time to time.
When all the minor globes are full, the player is allowed to capture the soul of a boss that will increase or add other effects.
In addition everytime the players starts a new game session all globes are empty.

➢ TALISMAN OF THE NEPHALEM

This idea could replace the current mechanic of the Nephalem Valor by inherently including it into the Talisman.
The idea can also be “expanded”. But how? In this way:




This is the Talisman of the Nephalem.
As you can see there are various effects: +1 Artisan Item, +1 Follower Item etc.
These effects will unlock everytime the relative minor globe is full, but the effects (or bonus items in the case of this type of Talisman) are not cumulative so, for example, if the player has both the first and the second globes full, only the second effect will be applied.

With this Talisman the player needs just one Elite monster to fill completly a single minor globe and the effects will be applied only on Elite monsters kills and Boss kills.

Once all 5 minor globes are full, as I wrote above, the player can capture the soul of a Boss.
This soul will grant him/her the chance to have all the effects active, but when he/she kills another boss or when he/she kills an Elite monster and the “Talisman procs”, all souls will be lost.

Why did I wrote “Talisman procs”? Because if you did see there is a “chance to find 1%”.
What does that mean? It means that the chance to find bonus items is only of 1%.
Don't worry about that percentage because it refers to a Paragon Level 1 character: the percentage is equal to the Paragon Level of the character.

If the player kills another boss, instead, the chance is always set to 100%.

In this next image you can see the tutorial that might clear any doubt you could still have:




In this other image you can see that the player has a 1% chance to find an extra gem on the next kill of an Elite monster (or Boss):




This last image shows you how the Talisman will look like when all the globes are full:



➢ TALISMAN OF ENCHANTMENT

I feel that the lack of a quest that makes you enchant an item is very sad, so I thought a way to allow the Talisman to enchant items.

My initial thought was that this system should have had a mechanic based completly on the “harvest” of souls so without the need to add new droppable items and with a completly random enchantment.

However I feel that the introduction of new droppable items would fit much more the philosophy that the
developpers wanted for Diablo3.

These new items are the Soulstones and they will have one magic property each (except one particular soulstone of which I will write later)




This image represent the Talisman of Enchantment.
To explain how it works here's another image:




As you can see even in this case there is a sinergy between the Talisman and the Paragon Levels: the higher is the player's character Paragon Level the more powerful are the magic properties.

Let's have a look now at how a Soulstone looks like:




This is the particular Soulstone I wrote about earlier.
It will have always a primary statistic and a relative magic property of the class that uses that statistic.
For example the “Soulstone of Virtue” grants Dexterity and:
– Spirit Regeneration
or
– Life points per Spirit points spent
All other Soulstones will have their magic properties and their relative values completly random.
Let's have a look on how this Talisman works (make sure you check the Paragon Levels everytime):











Last but not least, the image that shows you how a full-globe-talisman looks like:




The soul of the Boss, as you have seen from the images, will give you a random number of sockets.
Anyway, this idea can be replaced with, maybe, a better one that allows the soul of the Boss to add a random magic property instead of the sockets.

Note: This Talisman idea can be used to craft new and powerful rings and amulets as well!

➢ TALISMAN OF SKILLS

This type of Talisman will allow the player to improve his/her abilities.
Let's see how it looks:




With this Talisman, whenever the player starts a new game session, the globes won't become empty.
The quantity of souls the player captured will be saved so the player's efforts won't be wasted, because every talent point the player gains makes the next Talisman “refill” longer.

To prevent that a player becomes too powerful, there can be a maximum number of talent points a player can gain.

To learn how this Talisman works I will show you an image:




Like every other Talisman I showed you, even this one has a sinergy with Paragon Levels.
The last image represent the Talisman when it has all its globes full:




➢ TALISMAN OF ABILITIES

This Talisman allows the player to benefit from various temporary buffs chosen by the player himself/herself.

Every 10 Paragon Levels a globe will unlock (in this Talisman there is another type of globe – the globles of temporary buffs - where the player can “put” the chosen buff) and it will allow the player to benefit both a longer duration of the buff and a “major quantity” of buffs at once.
Every globe has a duration of 5 minutes (hypothetical duration).
However, the 10th Paragon Level is an exception because the player will unlock not one, but two globes.

Anyway here's a first image to understand better what I've just written:




Now another image that shows you how the Talisman works:




In this case the temporary buff has already been chosen. To choose a temporary buff the player has just to click on the globe of temporary buffs. Once he/she clicked on it a window will open: this window is much like the window that allows the player to choose his/her passive abilities (just to let you know how it looks like).
From the image you can also understand that the temporary buff is already active because the minor globe linked to it is full.

Let's skip to level 20:




At level 20 a second minor globe of souls will unlock. This will allow the player to benefit from temporary buffs for another 5 minutes, but he/she must pay attention because the minor globes are not cumulative.
This means that the duration is just refreshed and it won't stack so the maximum duration is always 5 minutes.

At Paragon Level 30:







In this last image the player has just filled the second minor globe of souls.
This will grant him/her another temporary buff for another 5 minutes since the duration has just been refreshed by the second minor globe.
Just to make it clear: temporary buffs stacks with each other so in this case the player benefits of both temporary buffs.

What happens at Paragon Level 100?




This image explains that when the player captures the soul of a Boss, he/she can benefit of all the temporary buffs for a maximum duration of 30 minutes (or until he/she kills another Boss) with doubled effects!

Isn't there a negative aspect?
Yes and no: it's true that the supreme globe of souls makes the player very powerful, but the downside is that he/she must kill a boss within 5 minutes from when he/she filled the last minor globe.

This is the Talisman at full power:




Note - Temporary buffs can be various: e.g. +10% armor, when you drink a healing potion you gain 50 points of Fury etc, +5% movement speed etc.

➢ TALISMAN OF PORTALS

This Talisman has the simple function to capture souls. Once enough souls are captured the player can decide to release them to open a portal that leads to the Burning Hells.
The monsters that the player will find inside the portal will be stronger the higher the Paragon Level is.

Here's an image to explain how it works:




Here's an image of the new UI:




➢ THE TALISMAN

All these Talismans are separated ideas, but I thought that it would be awesome if all of them could be implemented into the game:




By clicking on the icons, the player can choose which Talisman he/she wants to use, so the Talisman itself will change its functionalities based on the player's choice.

The function of the Talisman can be changed any number of times within a game session but everytime the player changes a type of Talisman for another all souls will be released.

The Talisman of skills is no exception, but the bonuses the player receives from the skill points (the ones that are already allocated) will continue to be granted to him/her even if the Talisman is set to another type.

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P.S. You can check the animated gifs of the talismans of portals and abilities at these links (but the words are in
italian sorry):
Portals: http://imageshack.us...minatoevoc.gif/
Abilities: http://imageshack.us...itaanimato.gif/

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SECOND SUGGESTION – THE BURNING HELLS PORTALS


➢ BASE CONCEPT

This idea might be similar to the Talisman of Portals one, but I can assure that its philosophy is completly different.

After you defeat Diablo in Inferno difficulty the player will find out that there are still many Burning Hells Portals active throughout all Sanctury! The player's mission is to seal all of them.

To start the “sealing operation” the player has to talk with the Caravan Leader in any act.
The NPC will show the player the map of Sanctuary where he/she can see where the portals are.
After the player has chosen which portal to seal, he/she will start a quest that will be different everytime: mission rewards, objectives, treasures, bonuses etc. will be different from mission to mission (except a particular one,called “Enigma” where the objective is always the same – more on this later).

The tooltip of a mission looks like this:

● Mission Type
▪ Objectives

● Enemies in the area
▪ Resistances, abilities, damage, etc of the enemies

● Rewards based on the Mission Type
▪ Quantity or type of reward

● Description of the mission

The Description of the mission will be the only thing that has a fixed “pre-set” since the number of mission types is limited to three (the number is just the number of mission types I could thought about, but the number can increases depending on the feedback received).

It might sound a bit complicated now, but I can assure you that it's a very simple idea and with the help of some images everything is going to be much clearer.

Once the player has accepted the mission, he/she will get teleported to the area where the portal is and we can start the “sealing operations”. When the quest is completed the player can get his/her rewards.

➢ MISSIONS

Let's have a look at the map:




In this map the player can see where the portals are.
In every game session the position of the portals changes but the total number of them is always 10 (hypothetical number).

Let's have a look:





Note the different positions of the portals between the two images.

At this point the player has just to choose what portal he/she wants to seal so he/she will mouse-over over one and:




Let's analize the tooltip:

Mission: Assault

The mission type Assault is one of the three different mission types.
Assault indicates a mission where the player has more than one objective (objectives are random – I wrote about this earlier) and he/she must do them in a precise order. For every objective the player completes he/she will get a reward (more on this later).

Monsters

This point indicates which monsters the player has to fight against when he reaches that area.
In addition the player will know what the resistances, the abilities, the weakness etc. of the monsters are going to be.

Note: I thought that the resistances and the weaknesses of the monsters could be a fixed number (like 50%) and that only their damage increase could be random.
Another nice idea would be that the resistances of the monsters scale with Monster Power (MP0 = 5% resistance, MP1 =10% resistance... MP10 = immunity and no weaknesses ---> of couse the immunities cannot be to all elements...)
I thought it would be nice to reintroduce the resistances (even if it goes against developpers' will) mostly to give a sense to the elemental damage types.
In addition the player knows before the battle what type of resistances/weaknesses the mosters will have, so he/she can prepare better himself/herself with another type of weapon and/or another build etc.

Objective Rewards

Everytime the player completes an objective he/she will receive the rewards that are listed in this point.

Mission Rewards

When the players completes the mission he/she will get the rewards listed here.

Note: Just to be clear, even if I wrote this earlier, the rewards are random, and so are enemies etc.
E.g. If the player gets another Mission: Assault he/she might get the objective to kill X number of monsters and then save Y villagers, the monsters might be Moloks and Cultists with cold resistance and fire weakness, the objective reward might be Z quantity of gold and the Mission reward might be a rare amulet.

Let's have a look on the second mission type:




Mission: Race against time

In this mission the player has only one random objective but he must do it within a certain amount of time.
The thought a player should have is: will I go for the mission rewards or for the hidden treasures?
As you could understand, if the player wants the hidden treasures he/she must explore very well the entire area to look for them at the probable expense of a mission accomplishment (you lose time while looking for hidden treasures) or if the player wants the mission rewards he/she has to leave behind a lot of hidden treasures.

Note: This would be an ideal situation which might change due to the player's progress (more gear, lower MPs with end-game gear etc).

Hidden Treasures

This is a list of what items the player can find if he/she explores very well the area.
By doing so he/she loses time and he/she might fail to complete the mission.
Hidden treasures can be found inside corpses, chests, ashes etc.

Enemies and Mission rewards

The same as in Assault

Let's have a look on the last mission type:




Mission: Enigma

This mission type will have always a fixed objective: “disable traps”.
By looking at the image you can easily understand that there are no enemies, but this doesn't mean that when the player activates/disables a trap they won't appear.
To disable a trap, a player has to solve little enigmas (in Soul Reaver 1 style – just to be clear on how I ment these enigmas to be – but much much easier to solve) or he/she must activate and then destroy them (much like the one in the Cathedral where when you click on the chest a lot of skeletons appear).

Rewards

Everytime a trap is disabled/destroyed it will drop something. “That something” is what it is listed in this point.

Enemies and Mission rewards

The same as in Assault and in Race against time.

Now that the player knows what type of missions and rewards he/she can get, he/she has only to decide where to go:




Once the player has completed that mission (note how the portal is now grey-colored):




he/she has only to choose another one:




and so on.

➢ Q&A AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Q. What does the player have to do once he/she has the map of the burning hells portals open?

A. As I wrote above, the player has just to mouse-over over a portal to choose which mission he/she wants to do and once he/she decided he/she has just to click on that portal and the click “accept”.

Q. What would happen if a player relogs into the game after he/she got a disconnection while he/she was doing a mission?

A. As I wrote above, the position of the portals changes on every game session.
However if the player gets a disconnection or has to log-out, the mission will remain active and when the player steps back into the game he/she will see a town portal that leads to area of that mission.

Of course, if the player was doing a Race against time mission type that mission would get cancelled if too much time has passed between the disconnection and the relog.

Another thing: the Burning Hells portal of that mission will remain active, visible and will stay on the same position as it was before the relog. When the mission is completed that portal will grey-out and be disabled like all others. This is to clarify in case you had some doubts if there could be a case where a player could get more than 10 portals open at once in a single game session.

Q. Aren't there going to be any monsters in the Enigma missions?

A. Enigma mission type is like the other two, so the player might have to fight against monsters. That image was just an example to let you see that you could get an empty map and a “relative safe” area (however, monsters can spawn from traps!)

Q. In the Race against time mission type the player could just skip the mission rewards and just look for hidden treasures! Didn't you think about it?

A. In this mission type the rewards must be balanced in a way so the player MUST choose what he/she really wants to do: fail the mission and look for treasures or complete the mission and leave the treasures?

Q. Is there any achievement for the Burning Hells Portals?

A. Yes, here's a couple:







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P.S. Enigma missions might not be very “Diablo” like, but I think that something different might help this game to become a real success. Also you can have a mission that is a mix of all three... well.. the combinations can be many... it's just a matter of immagination I guess.

P.P.S. “Missions” can be renamed to “Quests” of course

If you would like to check my other ideas you can click on the link below:

http://eu.battle.net...opic/6533923479

That is an index of all my ideas for Diablo3, but unfortunately they are all in Italian.


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Reintroduction of the Talisman
and
The Burning Hells Portals
by Edriel - an italian fan of the Diablo series

"This is a very sensible stance to take I think, especially for those who are sceptical about the expansion and the future of Diablo III."

AKA you're all stupid so buy this shit and us employees at blizzard are still greedy, keep giving us your monies. om nom nom