Before I go into my D4 idea I want to talk about D2 and D3 potions.
D2- I didn’t like how often I had to go back to town to buy potions; however I did like the option to spam potions in certain situation to stay alive when things got hairy. I did not enjoy pots taking up 1-4 on my keypad.
D3- I like how potions had different effects when they were used but I didn’t like the CD time on it. I liked having just one button for potions.
D4- Lets say we have one potion/flask,I like the idea of just one pot. When used more than once in X amount of time it’s strength is reduced by X amount. After X amount of time the pot goes back to full strength.
Resets after 30 seconds? 1 min? Reduces % by 10, 15 or 20?
What about potions restoring a certain amount of resource depending on which class you’re using?
What if potions were customizable. For example: My barb has a lot of HP regen/Life steal/HP per fury spent and I’d like my potion to restore more fury than HP. Could I find better pots/flasks that give me less of a penalty when used a lot? What about after using the potion for the first time it gives HP/Resource regen? Can I customize that? More regen to HP or more toward resource?
I would like potions to be just focused on HP/Resource restoring and leave the abilities more to items and the skill trees/passive trees etc.
I think this adds more depth without making the game more complex.
Would these customizable potions/flasks have to be found or should we start with them? Maybe rare ingredients or rare flasks are need to craft our customizable potion? What do you guys/gals think?
Yeah, potions are tricky I feel… Since using scrolls, tomes and potions like something akin to D1 or POE is probably too complicated for D4, I’d very much like just one button.
Maybe if you keep pots simple and all or most of pots insta heal, then you could give things like life regen, defence and resistance more weight when it comes to mitigate damage.
I however am also not a fan of the pots having a cooldown… Maybe the -x regen on reuse would be cool on insta heal pots aswell!
I’m not against also finding legendary pots, though these I think should not be super inpactful in any general scenario, perhaps just a short time resistance buff. Or maybe something very specialized, like it breaking you out of a specific kind of CC, for example like freeze or working as an antidote to poison.
Edit: The legendary potion affix need to have a cooldown since the potion doesn’t.
Have potion(s) having charges with a recharge rate. Like furious charge for barb.
This allow you to spam them a few times ( if you have charges left) but not all day long, while not needing to keep refilling in town.
It allow a bit of leeway of not needing to wait XX sec for cooldown as long as you have more than 1 charges, while not being exploit with potion spamming.
I also propose belts with modifiers to enhance potions like
Extra charges
Increase recharge rate
Increase potency if potion
Increase potion effect duration
And maybe some fancy
You gain extra ( armor/ damage/resistance/ attack speed etc) for xSec after using a potion charge.
I kind of dislike this option because either the extra stats are low, and therefore pointless, or the buff is significant and using a potion becomes part of your rotation, instead of being an emergency heal.
I have the same knee jerk reaction. If even the heal from the potions are powerful (which they really need to be), they risk affecting when you “have” to engage, like you say @Gilthas
I am however indifferent to having additional effects from potions being on belts or on the potions themself.
I agree cooldowns on potions is something too rigid removing diversity of combat possibilities.
But this is a problem that should be addressed only after an overhaul of the general cooldown system, into a resistance system to provide diversity of spells.
Someone created this thread weeks ago:
Also, there are already a few other threads concerning the potion system though.
I hate potion spam. There is nothing interesting or compelling and let’s be honest, we all spammed them and ran back to fill up. No or complexity involved. Which is confusing when some D2 guys who preach complexity and strategy, bemoan the D3 potion system in favor of D2s.
With a CD and legendary powers you can strategize when to use your potion. The CD prevents you from standing in stupid becaus you can spam pots. I would prefer to keep one potion on a CD with ways to modify it like in D3, or meet PoE half way. Give us a health and resource potion slot and give it a base set of charges that refill under certain conditions like kills, being hit etc. Or just a health potion that does the same. Either way it or they can be modified via legendaries or something.
I don’t think any game has ever done potions well. In games like Diablo 2 and PoE you depend on them too much for healing and mana regen, it gets annoying pushing potion buttons almost as much as your skill buttons. In Diablo 3 it’s too much the other way, you don’t rely on them at all but there’s also no flexibility.
As Kiadaw said, I personally prefer a system in the middle of those games. Basically a Diablo 3 potion system that you don’t rely on but also one with flexibility, similar to PoE. My idea is something like a 3 flask PoE system where you can choose 3 different flasks but one where the flasks aren’t reliant on killing trash mobs and are instead based on charges that regenerate over time. Example: A health flask would have 3 charges and each charge would take 15 secs (or whatever) to recharge. If you want to make it more strategic you could make charges universal across all potion slots, meaning if you use 3 health flask charges you lock out your mana flask and other flask- this is a similar system to classic WoW where you have to be strategic as to whether you want to health potion or mana pot.
-I think it’s also important not to end up like PoE where you have to use potions to cure status ailments. It becomes a mandatory thing and the game basically becomes balanced around it.