Potion

The role of potions in Diablo III has changed repeatedly during the development. Early on, there were health and mana potions, just like in Diablo II. Later changes to the game structure and class resources removed mana potions entirely, while leaving health pots. There were never any rejuvenation potions seen.

As of May 2011, healing potions remain in the game, but they are designed as emergency life savers, not as something characters will sip regularly. Health potions instantly heal a large amount of hit points, but have a long cool down, eight seconds or so as of Blizzcon 2010, which makes them something a character can only count on once or twice during an intense fight. There were no healing potions available for characters in the Arena demo, but it's not known if this prohibition will apply to the Arena in the final game.

Most healing needs in Diablo III are meant to be satisfied with health globes.

Potions and Game Balance

One of the D3 Team's main design goals in Diablo III is to make the game more consistently difficult, or at least challenging. Towards that end, they are going to greatly de-emphasize the role of potions in the game, and force players to obtain healing from health globes. It's not known if NPCs will sell potions, or if they will only sell them in limited quantities, but however they are obtained, potions will be less beneficial and less common than they were in Diablo II.

In the BlizzCon 2008 and 2009 demo builds there were no NPCs selling potions (or anything else). Healing potions could be found in the demo, but they were fairly rare. Each healing potion granted a set amount of life (40 for a Barbarian at level 8, who had about 150 total life), and filled that much health instantly, as rejuvenation potions do in Diablo II. There was a considerable cooldown time after drinking a potion (before another one could be consumed). In the 2009 demo, this cooldown was around 8 seconds.

Health potion function remained substantially the same in the Blizzcon 2010 PvE demo. There were no potions available in the PvP Arena demo, but it's not known if this will be true for the final game as well.

Health Potions

Health Potions have worked their way back into the game, during development. Early on, the team talked about there being no, or very few potions. As of Blizzcon 2009, potions were very rarely seen compared to Diablo 2. Although the overpowered demo build characters seldom needed to use potions, this was definitely an accepted element of keeping a character alive.

Jay Wilson talked about the concept and execution of health potions during an interview from Blizzcon 2009. [1]

Jay Wilson: We did put health potions back in, but they play a very different role. You can't spam them like you used to, you can only use them about once a map. The purpose of those is to take the edge off the loss of health. I don't have health, or I've got half health, do I want to use a health potion, or do I want to risk it? Ooh, I've got 10% health, it's not even a decision. That's a really interesting decision, and it makes potion use a fun part of the game.

IGN: Why not auto-cast a potion if you're down to 10%?

Jay Wilson: Because it takes the choice away from the player and we wouldn't want to do that. We really want the player to make that choice. So the other side of it is, we deal with some of the harder monsters, like bosses and rares and champions, they don't just drop them like that. They would drop health globes at percentages of their health. Rares in particular are almost guaranteed to drop about every 25%. The other thing we did, because we design everything for cooperative play, if you pick up a health globe and you have a friend nearby, you both get the benefit. So that's something we did to make sure the system didn't favor people who are running forward, melee classes, who used to pull up all the health potions. Now they're actually helping the people in the back.

	Name	Effect	Rq LvL
	Minor Health Potion	Instantly restores 250 life.	1
	Lesser Health Potion	Instantly restores 400 life.	6
	Health Potion	Instantly restores 550 life.	11
	Greater Health Potion	Instantly restores 1,000 life.	16
	Major Health Potion	Instantly restores 1,600 life.	21
	Super Health Potion	Instantly restores 2,500 life.	26
	Heroic Health Potion	Instantly restores 4,500 life.	37
	Resplendent Health Potion	Instantly restores 6,500 life.	47
	Runic Health Potion	Instantly restores 9,000 life.	53
	Mythic Health Potion	Instantly restores 12,500 life.	58

Other Potions

	Name	Effect	Description
	Power Potion	Critical hit chance increased to 100% for 30 seconds.	"How many tyrants and fools have traded their lives for one chance at victory? Such power comes with great risk." -Warzecha's Treatise on Magical Means

Potions in PvP

Players have asked how potions will be handled in PvP play in Diablo III. This question is not one the D3 Team have answered yer. There were no healing potions in the Blizzcon 2010 PvP demo, but this might not indicate a design decision for the final game.

Jay Wilson did talk about healing potions in conceptual terms, during a BlizzCon 2008 Q&A session.[2]

Jay said that potions could not be used that often in D3 PvP, and that there would be some sort of cool down timer on them, as there is in World of Warcraft. They will be useful, but their benefit isn't that large, and they can't be chugged endlessly, as they were in Diablo II. The utility of potions is not designed to be that great, which should help keep them from becoming overly-valuable in PvM or PvP play. Jay thinks that the (relative) absence of potions in Diablo III will improve the PvP play, since potions in D2 essentially gave players infinite health and mana. This turned unregulated duels into little more than potion drinking contests, where the player with more of them usually won.

Elixirs

There are elixirs in Diablo III. So far Strength and Dexterity elixirs have been seen. As of BlizzCon 2008, these provided a temporary, 300 second bonus to that one attribute. Elixirs were not seen in the Blizzcon 2010 demo and it's not known if they remain in the game.

Potions in Diablo II

See the Potions page in the Diablo II wiki for full details on potion use in Diablo II.