Health Globe
Health Globes are orbs of life energy that can escape from killing monsters. In an early build of Diablo III, there were also Mana Globes.
Contents
Why they Exist
Game Mechanics
The drop rate is quite low, but with the amount of monsters coming at players, there should rarely be a lack of orbs, and when they are far between, there is always potions. Additional tweaks have also been promised.
- We're also playing around with some alternate functionality for when/how they're picked up while you're at full health, as well as some visual tweaks. Regardless we're going to make sure it's as fun and balanced as possible.
Health orbs heal on a % basis; if they fill say, 25% of a character's hit points, then a Barbarian would get more actual health from one than a Witch Doctor, even though both would see their health globe fill the same amount.
Drop Rates
Jay Wilson said they were on about 25-35%.
Boss Battles
During Boss Battles, where no extra monsters are killed, individual hits on a boss will have a (low) chance of spawning a Health Orb.
Appearance
In the BlizzCon 2008 build, the globes had changed slightly, getting some sort of ornamental graphic on the top and bottom, like a small golden crown.
Health Globes and Mana
In the GamesCom 2009 demo, Mana Globes have been removed. At the end of one video, the Wizard regains a large amount of mana by picking up a Health Globe. This is because they now get Mana as well as Health from Health Globes if they invested in Stability Control.
Witch Doctors also receive mana benefits from health globes, if they have invested into various of their mana+ skills.
Controversy
There has been some small level of controversy about these Health Orbs as some players do not like the idea of "power-ups" in a RPG game. It is nowhere near the levels of the art controversy, but some people are genuinely upset.
In either way, it is highly unlikely that Blizzard will change Health Orbs significantly at this point.