Entering Diablo 4, the denizens of Hell level up, as Blizzard revealed that Lilith’s best will now have armor for increased damage mitigation in RPGs. Goodbye big numbers, hello cleaner UI.
One of Diablo 3’s most frustrating features is the damage count. As you level up, you start dealing millions damage, which all show up on your screen. Unfortunately, the monsters also hit quite hard, further cluttering the screen and causing utter mayhem.
Step into the monster’s armor. Yes that’s it; Upon entering Diablo 4, Lilith’s armies will now have damage mitigation in the form of physical armor instead of a bloated HP bar that takes years to reduce despite dealing massive damage to your character.
Discussing this during the Diablo 4 Developer Livestream on February 28, the game’s lead designer Meng Song states that “we have a problem: whenever we want to increase the monster’s defensive power, the only way to doing so is to increase the monster’s HP.
“If we want to increase the defensive power of a level 31 to 32 monster by 10%, it means that the level 32 monster will have 10% more HP. If you do this from level 1 to level 100, you end up with a very large number; billions, even trillions.
“In order for players to kill these mobs, they need to deal billions of damage, and in Diablo 4 we display that number as floating damage text; we cannot hide it. So because that number is so big, it covers a lot of the screen.”
Game director Joe Shely notes that these numbers are “difficult to understand”, especially since “combat in Diablo is very fast-paced and you want to be able to quickly figure out how much damage you’re doing”. We want to keep the numbers low. »
So instead of having huge numbers on your screen, the monster will absorb some of the damage using its “armor”, and you’ll only see the damage you deal directly. This keeps the numbers low, while making it easier to balance monsters.
As someone who’s bad with numbers, I’m very happy to hear that. My main gripe with Diablo 3 was diving as a monk, doing my combos, but not being able to figure out how much damage I was actually doing. I also missed smaller enemies because they were obscured, which meant it was very easy to get overwhelmed or miss things. During my Diablo 4 gameplay preview, I found the UI to be much less busy, which made everything a little smoother.
So go ahead, big damage numbers! Finish the old and make way for the new. If this change piqued your interest before Diablo 4’s release date, be sure to check out which of Diablo 4’s classes you’ll choose to send Lilith’s demons back to hell.