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Written by BuckGB on June 12th, 2009

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What are your specific questions on fury? As someone else said BlizzCast 8 gives some general information on it (mostly from an art angle) so I'd recommend listening to that first. I can probable give some examples of how it's working right now though if you have specific questions. Just understand it's still a system that's in the process of development.

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Okay. How much fury does each skill cost? As an example.

They require fury in amounts of full fury globes. So the most one can cost is 3.

Does each ability cost a full globe?

Yes, currently abilities that do cost fury cost one or more full fury "globes". Don't get the term 'fury globe' too stuck in your brain though, there's going to be an official name for them and it may not be globe.

Do abilities cost a portion of each globe?

There aren't and probably won't be abilities that cost a portion of a fury ... ball. I'm going to call them fury balls. Wait ... no ... that's a terrible idea.

Are the globes valued numerically, similar to rage, and the abilities cost a "number" of Fury?

Right now they actually are, but that's because it's sort of mid-transition from an old fury system. They'll simply be shown and referred to in ability cost as full globes. At least that's the current thought.

As I said it's still a system and game in development, and any of this can change entirely. This is just a peek into the current workings.

Does fury deteriorate over time?

Yes.

Is fury cost affected by skill growth (adding more points to a skill).

I don't know of any abilities that do right now but it's always a possibility for balance later.

When you use a fury skill, does the damage dealt serve to recharge your fury (meaning that you could theoretically have a net zero fury cost when attacking crowds)?

It does, but of course it's subject to change.

How many dots of fury (dots, yes) does the ground stomp cost? If three, I can see people holding it for when they need it, and not using any other skills to conserve fury.

It doesn't cost any fury, but it does have a cooldown.

On that note, is 3 the absolute maximum? Or can you go a little over 3, like 3.9 or something, so you'll get a full bubble soon after? If 3 is the hard max, then you'd have to use a 3 dot skill immediately before it decays to 2.999 or something.

Fury decay doesn't happen that quickly. There's a grace period in there before it starts ticking down.

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Ground stomp is an exception mainly because of the nature of its use. A cooldown allows it to be used as an "oh crap I'm overwhelmed" ability without also requiring you to have fury built up. Most if not all straight attack abilities like cleave, leap attack, whirlwind, etc. have fury costs, in addition to most 'buff' abilities.

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Fury is also built from incoming attacks. If you're in a moderate sized scuffle you can unleash abilities pretty regularly. The animation that was shown in BlizzCast was made in a test environment, using a single weapon and attacking stationary (and non-attacking) zombies. So it built up fairly slowly, but nice and consistent for the video, which was the point. In a normal game, and as the barbarian especially, you're quite often surrounded and the balance of normal attacks/fury gen/special ability use feels quite nice.

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Thanks shark, yeah there are abilities that alter fury generation, degeneration, and how and when it's gained. Those skills are a bit outdated but the general mechanic intentions persist.

Regarding someone's question on getting into a battle on a cold start (no fury), there is Enrage, an ability that grants a bubble of fury and increase fury generation. Kind of similar to Bloodrage for Warriors in WoW if that helps you. So you can pop enrage (lolinsidejokelol?) and then be able to get in and start using at least one ability instantly.

Regarding fury cost and someone implying that everything is going to cost tons of fury, right now there's only one ability that costs more than a single bubble. Even still, if you're surrounded, you cleave, that costs a bubble but the damage you're taking while you cleave and the damage you caused with the cleave is usually enough to cleave again immediately.

I don't think it's a surprise that chests aren't the highest of priorities at the moment, so final design on them is lacking, but personally I think requiring a key for them really only plays into a classical sense of what chests are in an roleplaying game. And... I think we're just sort of past that in terms of game focus and design. We can logically and realistically map out how chests and their loot effects a game and its players, and design accordingly. There's no reason to require a key for what is essentially nostalgia.

You're already fighting against the odds. First did a chest even spawn at all? If it did what quality of a chest is it? If it's a high quality chest then let the game roll and see if anything even worth picking up pops out. Y'know? It's a lot of "ifs" and hopes to then also throw an item requirement on top of just to see what the dice show.

I won't disagree with the... ceremony (uh oh dangerous words) of having a key that then opens a lock. That's very tangible and real and fulfills a certain desire for work and reward. I carry a key, it opens a lock, good things are behind the lock. But we obviously want to impact inventory as little as possible, and carrying keys just feels like a punishment. Coming across a chest and not having a key, that doesn't feel fun, that's really aggravating. Another punishment. Having keys take up no space and be almost infinite in quantity to resolve both those problems and the reason to have keys disappears completely.

So is there any reason to have keys except to fulfill some sense of nostalgia that we know there are locked chests in games, and we need keys to open them.

I don't ask that rhetorically, sometimes keeping things identifiable and seeming "right", reminding us of the feeling of past games makes the experience better. So please discuss.

edit: What an odd flip/flopping ramble. Feel free to ignore any of that.

From what I've heard, Angels are vibrations of light and sound and don't hold a corporeal form.

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Ah right, right, they can create a human appearance for themselves (I think Inarius did for prideful reasons?) Not unlike some demons have, although their natural form is obviously far more tangible... and gross.

Heh, if people think there isn't enough gore... you ain't seen nothing yet. This is Sanctuary. Demons and evil cults still really like torture and putting bodies on pikes.

The mere occurrence of an event such as BlizzCon doesn't truly dictate what will or will not be shown. We obviously want to put on a good show, and entertain those in attendance as well as reveal new information about our titles currently in development, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the information we reveal will include a class announcement.

There are a lot of different ways to do it, and it's likely that the way we give health will be tailored to the style of the encounter and behavior of each boss.

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I hope you're not calling that an interesting fight, or saying Diablo II was replayable because it had no mechanics beyond the boss' abilities.

In Diablo III we want at least some boss fights that aren't defined simply by having a creature with more health, unique art, and more powerful abilities. We want there to be something more to them, tell a story, have more unique mechanics that make sense for the boss.

As far as the original topic, when health globes could be delivered during a boss fight, there's really no limit for how they could be delivered. Take the King Leoric fight, they were delivered through creatures that he summoned, normal skeletons. Every boss could essentially have the same thing, normal enemies around him that can be killed for the potential at getting a health globe drop. Or, you could have something more interesting ... like a boss that does a special attack that has the ability to break open some large corpse storage tanks that are in his lair. The player has to lead the boss to the tank and try to invoke the special attack so he'll break the tank open, which unleashes some health globes. You could even treat the tank (code-wise) as a normal creature, meaning abilities and items could augment the number that drop and amount they heal, etc. giving some control to the individual player. If you don't need the health you can ignore the mechanic, but it could be a way for players to try to game the boss and make sure they can survive the fight. Totally hypothetical, we don't have a fight that resembles what I described, but it's a possible delivery system.

I disagree that having bosses that do something more than simply cast the spells they're given to cast kills replayability.

The process of supporting additional languages for our products isn't something we take lightly. It includes full time production, technical, account, in-game, translation, QA, web, and community support. Which then requires the hiring and training of staff for each where necessary to support the language. So, it's more than simple translations in a text file, it's a full range of support for the language and the customers that speak it. But of course we're always looking to expand our products in to new languages and regions/countries where and when possible.

We don't have any announcements to make regarding additional language versions at this time.

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