Difference between revisions of "Fury"

Revision as of 19:52, 31 March 2009

The Fury orb for the Barbarian, as seen in Blizzcast episode 8.

Fury is a character stat that Barbarians have in place of the mana other classes generate. This feature was introduced in the Blizzcon (October 2008) build, and is not present in the gameplay footage from the WWI (June 2008) when the Barbarian made his debut.

Fury is built up during combat; successfully hitting enemies fills up the Barbarian's Fury bulb, enabling him to use his most powerful skills, most of which cost some Fury to use. When the Barbarian is not fighting, or not hitting enemies, his Fury steadily fades away, until it drops to nothing several seconds after a battle.

Fury changes the Barbarian's play style, making it impossible for him to use his most powerful abilities at the start of a fight. He must warm up a bit, building up his Fury with basic attacks, and only unleashing his devastating skills when the Fury bulb has filled up enough to allow him to expend the energy in violence.

Fury is modified by a number of passive skills, some of which cause it to fill more quickly and drain more slowly.

Hands on Report

The most detailed report yet filed on Fury comes from a Blizzcon Barbarian gameplay report by Flux, posted on Diii.net. A quote:

Fury is the new mana, but only (so far) for Barbarians. Fury replaces mana, but unlike the old blue bulb, it does not fill up when not in use. 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 persistently, I could see enough to like the concept. The Barbarian is designed to be a melee battling character. 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 wary cry that boosted the Barbarian’s damage by 100%, increased critical damage by 30%, and lasted for 15 seconds. (With one point in it, which was all the BlizzCon build allowed to active skills.) That was half, or more, of my total [fury], 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.

Fury-Based Skills

While few of the Barbarian's combat skills were tied to Fury (or had Fury costs) as of the Blizzcon build (October 2008), a variety of passive skills effect or modify Fury in various ways. A partial list:

• Bad Temper slows the rate of Fury drain.
• Enrage increases the Fury gained and damage taken for a short time.
• Savage increases the Fury gained after scoring a critical hit.

These three skills are all from the Berserker skill tree, but it seems unlikely only that skill tree will have Fury-based skills. It's certain that the skills will evolve greatly over the course of development, but until Blizzard releases more details, players can only speculate.

Fury Gameplay Issues

Though we've not seen that much official information yet about Fury, and how this property functions is sure to change during development, some insight into the Barbarian's designed play style can be gleaned from analyzing how Fury works and reading over the Barbarian Skills.

As the D3 Team has commented, the D3 Barbarian is designed to be melee brawler. He's strongest while in combat, and has various skills that increase his powers when he's dealing with multiple enemies, or that only trigger when he scores critical hits. Fury ties into this design theme in obvious fashion. The Barbarian's Skills require Fury to cast, and he can only build up Fury during combat, and Fury drains away quickly when he's not in combat. Hence a Barbarian will want to be in combat as often as possible, and will be at his strongest while fighting. It's a nicely-designed feedback loop.

In a related issue, if Fury drains away quickly after a fight (as it did in the October 2008 Blizzcon Demo), Barbarians will want to hurry from battle to battle. Furthermore, a Barbarian will be generally unable to start off a fight with big Skills, since those require Fury and the Barbarian won't have any until he does some hitting and builds it up. This should force Barbarians to play more strategically. They'll have to be cautious when beginning a fight, with only basic attack skills available. This is a big change from the D2 Barbarian, who almost always starts off a fight with his mana fully charged and his biggest skills ready to go.

Ironically, Fury might enable skills to be more powerful. If some of the biggest Barbarian skills cost a lot of Fury, that would effectively limit how frequently they could be cast. This would mean the D3 Team could make those skills massively destructive, compared to a skill that could be used all the time and would be overpowered if it were too strong.

However Fury is handled, it seems sure to spur major changes to the play style of the Barbarian, from the versions of the character most fans knew in Diablo II.

Fury Questions

Few particulars are yet known about Fury. How is the maximum value determined? Is there equipment that will boost the total, or cause it to drain more slowly or fill more rapidly? Are there potions that will fill the Fury bulb? Does the Barbarian gain Fury when he or a party member collects a Mana Globe?

Lots of active skills don't currently list a Fury cost; are those skills going to be free to cast in the final game, or is their non-cost status more about the game's documentation being far from complete?

These and many other questions were discussed in a recent On the Drawing Board article about Fury. See it for much more on this issue.

World of Warcraft Influence

The D3 Barbarian's Fury works much like the "Rage" property of the Warrior class in World of Warcraft. This isn't surprising, since the D3 Team has frequently cited WoW as a major influence on their design concepts in Diablo III.

Other Resources

There are not yet any gameplay movies showing Fury in use. In the WWI debut movie from June 2008, the Barbarian had mana, since the bulb was blue and could be seen refilling when no skills were in use. Fury wasn't added into the game until later in 2008, and the Blizzcon gameplay movie was shot from a Wizard's PoV.

Besides the Blizzcon report cited above, Fury was discussed in great depth in this article, and it's a regular topic of conversation in the Barbarian forum.