Fury is a new game feature in Diablo III. It’s new even for Diablo III, since it was not in the game at the WWI debut in June 2008, but had been added by Blizzcon, in October 2008. Fury is basically mana, but only for the Barbarian. Wizards and Witch Doctors do not have Fury; they have mana that works just as it does in Diablo II. (They are both mages though. The two remaining unannounced characters will be more combat-oriented, and might use Fury as the Barbarian does.)
Fury replaces mana for the Barbarian, and works a bit differently. At the start of a game, a Barbarian has no Fury. He fills up his Fury bulb during combat, gaining Fury as he deals out damage; it works a bit like mana leech in Diablo II. Once he’s built up some Fury he can start to spend it by using skills, and that’s the real change with this feature—Barbarians can not some of their active skills at the start of a fight; they’ve got to land some hits to build up Fury first. This changes a lot of play mechanics, and players are quite divided on this change.
Click through to read the full article, which has a first hand report on what it was like to use Fury in the Blizzcon build, and lists of the pros and cons of this new feature…
What’s Using Fury Like?
Here’s what I thought of Fury in a gameplay report written immediately after Blizzcon, when my memories were fresh:
Barbarians have zero Fury to start with, and only build it up during combat, when they land successful strikes to their enemies. As soon as the Barb is not fighting, the Fury starts to drain away, and it seeps out quite quickly. I frequently filled my Fury bulb completely during a fight, paused to pick up an item or two, then ran to find more monsters, and arrived just as my Fury went down to nothing.
My Barbarian had about 100 Fury at level 7 or 8, and while I didn’t get to experiment with it that extensively, I saw enough to like the concept. The Barbarian is designed to be a melee battler. He gets all sorts of bonuses while in combat, and many of his skills only trigger when he scores critical hits. With that design goal, the fact that he has to fight to build up Fury, and has to expend Fury to use most of his skills, is only natural. It looks like an expert Barbarian player will be most at home when surrounded by enemies, and will have to learn to cycle quickly through a variety of attack skills and war cry-style buffs to stay alive and able to smash his enemies.
The only big Fury expenditure available in the Blizzcon build was Battle Rage, a war cry that boosted the Barbarian’s damage by 100%, increased critical damage by 30%, and lasted for 15 seconds. It cost 50 Rage, which was about half of my total, but I never minded spending it. The combat improvements were substantial, and since Rage faded away so quickly, I had a constant feeling of “use it or lose it.” Whenever I finished a battle with a full Rage bulb, I tried to remember to cast this war cry, since the precious juice would all be gone by the time I got to the next battle anyway.
Using Fury in the Blizzcon build was fun to get some idea how it works, but I don’t think that experience will be all that informative of how Fury will work in the final game. At Blizzcon only one or two skills had a Fury cost: all the others were free, or didn’t list any Fury cost in their hover descriptions. (All of which can be seen in the wiki.) As mentioned in the quote above, the only one with a substantial Fury cost was Battle Rage, from the Battlemaster Tree. A few points on that issue, since it seems improbable that every Barbarian skill but one would be free to cast:
- The D3 Team might have removed Fury costs to make things easier for new players at Blizzcon.
- Fury might have been so newly-added to the Blizzcon build that Fury costs hadn’t been implemented yet.
- There might not be Fury costs for the lower level skills. (Only tier 1 and 2 skills could be used at Blizzcon.)
- Fury costs might only be on buffing, warcry type skills, like Battle Rage.
We’ll learn more about this issue over time, so it’s not something to worry much about just yet. It seems unlikely that Fury is just something the team is experimenting with. It’s a major game mechanic change for the Barbarian (and perhaps other unannounced characters) and it’s something they’re clearly modeled after the World of Warcraft warrior ability “Rage.” Also, there are a number of Barbarian skills that involve Fury, which shows that the D3 Team has integrated the mechanic into the character design. For example: Bad Temper slows the rate of Fury drain, Enrage increases the Fury gained and damage taken for a short time, and Savage increases the Fury gained after scoring a critical hit, amongst others.
Fury Issues
How Fury works is far from finalized, and most details about it are not known to anyone outside of Blizzard. At Blizzcon, on a low level Barbarian with no good equipment, in a build with few Fury-costing skills, Fury drained out entirely between battles. There’s no telling if that will be the case in the final game; a level 80 Barbarian with good equipment might have a Fury pool of 1000, numerous skills and items slowing the drain speed, and could go AFK to get a fresh Dr. Pepper and return with still enough Fury to start the next battle with a Whirlwind. We just do not know yet, and likely the D3 Team doesn’t either; since they’re still designing and balancing and tweaking, and will be through the beta and beyond.
That said, here’s some speculation on the issue.
Will other characters get Fury? It’s widely expected that the remaining two Diablo III characters will be combat types; one with some sort of ranged weapon/bow specialization, the other more of a light knight. It’s possible that those characters will have Fury as well, rather than mana. However, since we know much of D3 is influenced by WoW, it’s worth pointing out that only the warrior class has Rage in WoW; other melee fighters do not.
Fury changes the game play style of the Barbarian. In D2 a Barbarian can begin every battle with full mana and use any skill at his disposal. If Fury drains out quickly in D3, that will not be the case. The D3 Team constantly says they want players to play more strategically in D3; not being able to rip into every fresh mob with Seismic Slams and Furious Charges, but instead needing to start by chopping up some weak monsters on the edge of the pack to build up Fury, will be a major change.
On the other hand, Fury might enable the D3 Team to include more powerful skills for the Barbarian. If the skills can be used whenever, as is the case in D2, they have to be balanced for that fact. If a D3 skill can only be used occasionally, due to a very high Fury cost, the skill can be devastatingly powerful. That could be fun, or it could be frustrating to players weaned on D2, who are used to using every skill constantly.
Fury will require Barbarians to play more intelligently. In D2 it’s very easy to keep buffs charged, with the long duration and low mana cost of Battle Orders. What if that warcry could only be cast during or immediately after a battle, and it only lasted for 15 or 20 or 30 seconds? It would entirely change how the character was played. Well the D3 Barbarian (at least its preliminary state) has a lot of skills that work like that. Big buffs, but they only last for a short time, and thanks to Fury, it looks like they’ll only be cast during battles. This could make for much more exciting play, as Barb players have to juggle buffs and attack skills, keep track of what’s still in effect, and judge what’s a more important use of their limited Fury pool. That definitely seems to meet the “more strategic” gameplay goals of the D3 Team.
Items are another big issue with Fury, but here we can only speculate. There are Barbarian skills that slow Fury drain, increase Fury gain, and increase Fury gain after Critical Hits. Items could mimic all of those bonuses, as well as boosting the total Fury pool, cutting Fury costs for skills, etc. Let your imagination run wild on this one, as Bashiok requested.
Also, keep in mind that Barbarians have no mana, which means that every item that boosts mana for other characters has to do something different for the Barbarian. The bonuses can’t just be 1 to 1 converted to Fury either, since the size of the bonuses will be different, The Fury amount degenerates while mana regenerates, etc. Items might simply add to the total Fury pool: +20 mana could equal +20 max Fury, but it may be a more complicated interchange than that.
Finally, consider how Fury will work with Player vs. Player combat? Fury could have a huge impact there. If Fury only grows during combat, and PvP is conducted in monster-free environments, Barbarians would be hard pressed to use any of their big skills, or to keep their buffs up. This might require some special work to balance things differently for PvP vs. PvM.
If you’ve got some thoughts on these issues, or want to bring up some other issues regarding Fury, hit the comments. This issue will likely remain contentious for some time yet, and it probably won’t be until the next big game show event with a playable build of D3 that we can add much to our knowledge of how Fury works in D3.
On the Drawing Board is written by Flux. These articles examine crucial game design issues and decisions in Diablo 3 by explaining the issue and presenting arguments for and against. On the Drawing Board aims to spur debate and further the conversation, rather than converting readers to one side or the other. Conversation and disagreement is encouraged. Have your say in the comments, or contact the author directly. Suggestions for future column topics are welcomed.
