Diablo 3’s Inferno Difficulty Getting Damage Tweaks

As part of Blizzard’s ongoing focus of streamlining the difficulty and balance of Diablo 3, the developer has made a few tweaks to the game’s highest level of difficulty, Inferno. Namely, the team has effectively reduced the amount of damage monsters in that mode do, as well as the overall effectiveness of player’s defense mechanisms.

Mainly, Blizz is notching down the usefulness of defense spells to correlate with the decrease in monster damage. Technical Game Designer Wyatt Cheng says that these decisions were made based on their study of high-level players and the over-use of defensive skills, or specific ones, rather.

Cheng and the team at Blizz are convinced that most players consider some defensive skills essential to success – with choices like Energy Armor in-use by over 83 percent of level 60 wizards, and War Cry’s Impunity modifier in-use by nearly 87 percent of barbarians. Talk about shoveling defense attributes down your character’s throat.

Blizz hopes that taking the skills and monster damage down a few pegs will help players flock to other alternatives, hopefully balancing the playing field.

More updates are coming too, Cheng says in the post. A new “monster power” option will be added to increase the difficulty even further and enable greater rewards, this alongside a tweak for the monk’s ‘One with Everything’ skill set.

In related news, how many of you are still playing Diablo 3? I’d raise my hand, but I quit after getting my rear-end handed to me on Nightmare. Another play though, you say? No thanks.

[via Blizzard]