Difference between revisions of "Electrified"

Revision as of 00:49, 6 April 2012

Electrified bosses are Diablo 3's version of Diablo 2's Lightning Enchanted bosses. These bosses emit sparks that snake across the ground and hit all enemies in their path. These sparks are sent out all the time at a medium pace, and emerge much more frequently the boss or Champion is being hit. In addition, Electrified bosses add lightning damage to their melee or ranged attacks, and they enjoy a naturally high resistance to lightning attacks.

The sparks from this modifier are quite visual, but less damaging (relatively speaking) than their Diablo II counterparts. That said, in Diablo 3 there are more sparks all the time, and they cover more of the screen, but they are not as instantly deadly in their damage as they were in Diablo 2.

This modifier appears on Bosses and Champions. The lightning sparks do not emit from the Bosses minions, though they are highly-resistant to lightning and hit with added lightning damage.

Development Changes

Early version was massive.

The sparking property of this modifier was first seen at Blizzcon 2009 and 2010, when the spark output was truly massive. You can see an example from those days in the screenshot to the right, and it looks more like a huge lightning ball than a series of smaller, discrete charges.

Early beta many sparks version.

The number and size of the sparks emitted (at least no Normal Difficulty) was reduced during testing, and by the start of the Diablo III beta it was much more like the Diablo II version of the skill, with dozens of small charges appearing and snaking their way to the edge of the screen.

This version was visually-impressive, but not very dangerous, for the sparks did very little damage and were all individual, instead of stacked up, or running in a tight train, as they often were in Diablo II.

During the Beta test the function was modified again, with more spread given to the sparks, and the sparks now coming from a sort of electrical core within the boss or champion. This becomes quite obvious when the monster is killed, and the "core" remains behind for several seconds, continuing to pump out sparks just as quickly as when the boss was still alive.

In addition, the sparks now spread out much more widely, making no spot particularly deadly from lots of sparks, but not leaving many totally safe spots either.

Electrical cores linger after their Champion hosts are destroyed.

Stacking with Multishot?

Electrified Grotesque boss and minions.

The most dangerous boss modifier for much of Diablo 2's early history was an MSLE, a boss with both the Multishot and Lightning Enchanted modifiers. These enemies pumped out huge stacks of charges, making each bolt a larger, glowing spot of instant-death for most characters.

Eventually, it was discovered that this huge damage was a bug, and that while Multishot was supposed to increase the number of bolts, it wasn't supposed to increase it by that nuch. Once the bug was fixed, in D2 v1.10 and later, MSLEs became no more dangerous than regular LE bosses. This change was fair, but did take a lot of the challenge/fear out of the game.

In Diablo III... it's unknown. As no one outside of Blizzard has yet tested Nightmare, Hell, or Inferno difficulties, it's not known how or if Multishot will stack with Electrocute. The same early D2 bug will surely not be repeated, but it's quite possible that MS will bump up Electrocute, to some amount.