Nephalem valor buff sounds neat. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4241234476#1 We’re working hard on balancing and testing Diablo III, and one of the major components is making sure that the end game experience is fun and exciting. We’d like to share a few of our goals for end game: We have an enormous number of skill build combinations, and we want a lot of those skill builds to be viable and interesting While there are millions of skill builds available to players, we don’t want players swapping skills regularly to beat specific encounters as they come up We don’t want repeatedly running specific three-minute chunks of the game to be the most efficient way to acquire gear for your character While a three-minute run shouldn’t be the most efficient, we also don’t want you to feel like it’s a two-hour commitment every time you sit down to play Bosses should still feel worth killing Nephalem Valor is one of the major new systems in Diablo III and it kicks in at level 60. Keep in mind that this is still in testing and we’re still working out the details. Here’s how it currently works internally: Rare and Champion packs already have great loot on them. By killing a Rare or Champion pack, not only do you get their loot, but you’ll also receive a buff granting you increased magic find and gold find. However, if you change a skill, skill rune, passive, or leave the game, the buff disappears. As an extra reward, if you kill a boss while this buff is active, you’ll receive extra loot drops from that boss. The exact amount of magic find and gold find provided by the buff is still being reviewed, as is the amount of extra loot you get from a boss while the buff is active. We’re also playing around with whether or not the buff stacks, what the duration should be, and whether or not it should persist through death. We want to make sure the buff is strong enough to make staying in your current game more rewarding than creating a new game. At the same time, if the buff is too strong, it risks making shorter play sessions feel not worthwhile. We expect this system will encourage players to stick with a skill build of their choice, select an area of the game they enjoy, and sweep it for rare and champion packs on their way to a boss, finishing off a run with a boss that’ll be worth killing. If you wanted a shorter play session you could be done at that point, but if you have more time, the path of least resistance would ideally be to stay in the same game and make your way towards the next boss.
Sounds like an okay idea if it's done right. What would stop you from popping in right before a boss, hunting down a rare pack to get the buff, and then killing that boss over and over?
If I read it right, the buff goes away when you leave the game. That means you could pop in to get the buff and kill a boss. However, to kill that same boss again you'd have to regame which wipes the buff, or you could continue in that game and kill the next boss in the dungeon.
Yeah. What they want you to do with the buff is find a rare early on and play through everything with the buff. If it stacks and persists through death then it would be amazing to start fresh games and power through everything.
Hopefully you can't "power through" Inferno. Also, I was thinking of the hilarity that would ensue on Inferno when someone in your group decides to go chase after a treasure goblin.
What stops you from changing your skills before the rare champions and keep the skills for the upcoming boss? Surely having inefficient skills for rare champions is a lot easier than having inefficient skills for actual bosses.
Blizzard wants to implement this buff to give incentive for defeating bosses without changing their skill sets. But I just mentioned an obvious and easy method of going around this "difficulty" by switching to the boss specific skill page but only right before the champions making the champions relatively more difficult but not by big enough margin. Point is why do this in the first place if its so easy to "exploit" (I'm exaggerating)
I think the idea is that you have a particular skill setup and you should be able to go through the game from beginning to end without worrying about changing out any of your abilities. They don't want people stopping every five minutes to swap abilities. With all of the awesome abilities available you should be able to pick six that will last you through a play session without changing them.
When you say extra loot, do you mean, extra loot. Or do you mean extra loot that is on par with what elite/champs drop. I remember from the article before, bosses do not drop gear that is as good as champs/elites. They will drop gear as good as champions and elites with this buff (because you have to kill champions and elites to get it, which was the point). With the buff active you’re guaranteed one extra item drop from the boss, and it’s likely that it’ll be 1 item per stack of the buff. Up to X stacks. We don’t know how many it’ll be, probably a handful. How many stacks will there be if any? We're not totally sure but probably a number you can count on one hand. Do you lose the buff when you die? It lasts through death currently, and we like it. I know some people will also want it to be a punishment for death, but repair costs are already extremely impactful. Does the buff splits between players? Like someone joins after you've been killing and they have less stacks? It's a direct increase to your MF/GF, so it uses the same mechanics. Do you lose it on disconnect? There's a small grace period, similar to WoW where you can get back into the game before your character is actually logged out (ie a timeout), but yes if your character times out you would lose the buff. What is the Time limit on the stack, if any? We're messing with times from about 15 minutes to an hour. We don't know yet. Do Stacks get removed after a boss? We don't really think it needs to. Your focus is still going to be seeking out champions and rares. If you want to get full stacks, kill a boss, and then try to rush to kill another boss before the buff falls off... have fun? It's not going to be the most lucrative way to play, so it's likely a non-issue hypothetical.
This is what I kind of picture No Buff Rare/Champions - 2 guaranteed blues or higher (with mf) Bosses - 1 guaranteed blue after first kill The buff is going to increase the # of drops so I picture something like 6 stacks and for every 3 stacks you get an additional loot drop. 6 stacks Rare/Champions - 2 guaranteed blues or higher (with mf) Bosses - 3 guaranteed blue after first kill (0-2 stacks = +0; 3-5 stacks = +1; 6 stacks = +2) So after you maximize your buff bosses will be slightly better in terms of loot drops but it will require playing and exploring the world before the bosses.
This is good in theory but this sounds like they're just expanding upon the D2 roll system and its reliance on DR to keep magic find reasonable. Guaranteeing however many more blue drops doesn't really mean much because of the way the rolling system works. E: The real question I have is how they're going to change the MF formula and the way it applies. They could make the DR cap waaaaay higher and have uniques/rares dropping constantly and allow the random variables to hold even more sway in their worth. This way a terrible player who could only kill andarial (using D2 as an example) may only be limited to the ilvl bracket of something like Shaco but isn't economically out of the game because RNG is more important now. This also allows them to do things like remove loot table "pollution" from higher act bosses so you don't end up with things like getting sanders boots/gloves every second run because of the roll mechanics.
