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Loot 2.0 Legendary Items

Shimizu: Thanks Travis. Hi, everybody. So I am gonna talk for a few minutes about legendary items, but the first thing I wanna say is, I do recognize that there are people out there that might have played Diablo III for 30 or 50 even a hundred hours and never found a legendary.

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So maybe you are thinking “all this section isn’t for me. I never find these things.” Well, we have a new philosophy for the expansion end-game for everyone. We will be changing the system around, so that everyone has a reasonable chance of finding one of these items.

Now that being said, legendary and set items are by far our most rare type of items; and keeping with what Travis was just saying: Rarity Equals Power. They should also be the most powerful items as well. Now this is something that we did not delivery on for the launch of Diablo III, but it’s something that we are very much looking to fix for the expansion.

(ovation)

So specifically, What are we gonna do? How we are gonna fix that? Let me start by talking about how we are gonna improve some of the classic legendaries that are already in the game.

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So, after the 2.0 patch comes out, we gonna be droping new version of each of these legadaries. And these new versions will be addressed in three different ways.

First, drops at monster level. What does that mean? Well, currently every legendary in the game drops at one particular level and one particular level only. In “Reaper of Souls” that item can drop at every level from then on. So, for example you might have a Puzzle Ring that drops at level 32. That item can also drop at level 32, 33, 34… all the the way up to level 70 with stats that are prepared for that level.

Speaking of stats, we are gonna be doing a stats pass on all of the items, to make them viable. Again, Rarity Equals Power. They should be the most powerful items in the game. The stats should reflect that.

But finally, we are also gonna be looking into adding new powers to many of these legandaries. They should be not only good from a stats point of view, but also to make them unique from an utility point of view, give them powers that you don’t see anywhere else in the game. So, lets take a look at an example.

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These are the Frostburn Gauntlets. On the left is an example that is currently in the live game. On the right is the example from the “Reaper of Souls”.

So, first point drops at monster level, previously this item would only drop at Item Level 62. Now It can drop up at 62, 63, 64 and in the example here — this is the level 70 version of this item.

Stats pass: So, we have done a stats pass on this item. You will notice that we have added primary stat to it. In this case, intelligence. It’s got way better stats. It’s a much more viable item. We want to draw your attention to this gray numbers on the right, there.

This is the new feature that we have added to 2.0. You highlight any item with the mouse. You hold on the CTRL key and these gray numbers will come up. What are they? They show the possible range or random values that you could have gotten for each affix.

(applause)

So this is something that we added, because we want people to understand the items better. We want everyone to be able to understand sort of the items space and to know what is going on there. But I show these up here, because I wanted to point out intelligence and in the worst possible case, in the worst possible role you can get 750 intelligence on this item.

So it’s still a really, really viable item even if you get a really bad role on intelligence. And this represents the philosophy shift in that if you are lucky enough to get the legendary items, You shouldn’t have to be extra lucky on top of that multiple times in order to have a viable version of it.

So the last point here is this affix in orange here — this is the new power that we have added to this item, and didn’t have it before. This one says: “Your Chill effects have a 50% chance to Freeze instead of Slow.”

So, what does that look like? This is a Wizard using the Ray of Frost. Ray of Frost normally just chills and slows the enemy, but because she is wearing this item, she can freeze them in their tracks.

(Applauses)

So, really, this is where a large part of our item development is going for the expansion — into the creation of these new affixes that change the way that you play the game.

So I am gonna close out this panel by going over to few examples of these powers that we are working on. First up, the Haroutunian Arm Guards, again, focusing on the affix in orange says: “Every time you destroy a wreckable object, you gain a short burst of speed.”

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So, what does that look like? In this example here, I pairing it up with the classic Fire Walkers Boots, which kind of destroys things around me. So everything I get near these gravestones, I just get a little short burst of speed.

So this sort of really changes the way that you kind a look at the environment and look at the game, because you may not have noticed all the wreckable objects in the environment before, but now that you have this item, you definitely will, because you will be stearing towards them for that little burst of speed.

Next example, the Illusory Boots. Again, the orange affix: “You may move unhindered through enemies.” So, what does that mean? It means that you have the freedom to just run right through the enemies.

So, I can see that this being like a value to hardcore item, maybe we are getting surrounded. Might mean the end of your character. Or you know, I guess some of the point there is we want you to be able to look at the hotbar after getting an item and think “Hmm, maybe I don’t need Vault anymore , maybe I don’t need some of the escape skills anymore, because this item is taking that ability for me.

So, some of the new powers that we are making, lastly, modify skills that you already have. So in this case there is a witch doctor mask. Witch doctors have a skill called Horrify. Horrify is a one-shot AOE fear. You hit it and every one runs away from you. In this case, this item will change Horrify.

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Tiklandian Visage orange affix: Horrify causes you to Fear and Root enemies around for 8 sec.

So, instead of the one-shot fear, watching him pop Horrify and it will follow him around, and he can just stun enemies around him, and just finish them off with these other skills.

So, some items we are doing just because we think that they are cool to do.

This is a homage to an item from another popular online game. This is what it looks like in our game.

So, every time “The Wizard” attacks, she got a chance to proc this cool chain lighting effect to help her dispatch her enemies.

So my final example is a set item example, and you may recognize that set items are gonna be among the most difficult, the most rare to get the powers from, because you need multiple items of the same set; but in keeping with “Rarity Equals Power,” that Travis was talking about again — we are saving some of the better skills for a set item bonuses, this time around.

So, in this case, this is a Demon Hunter set with a temp name, don’t worry, and the 2-set item bonus is your spikes traps lure enemies to them. So this really increases the utilily of the spike traps. Now you can really control where they are going.

If you notice, every time she sets the spike trap down, they will taunt the enemies to it.

So, that’s all the legendaries we have for you today. Back to Josh.

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