Instability is the new resource pool of the Wizard, replacing mana, which is only used by the Witch Doctor, in Diablo 3.
Contents
Wizard Development
Wizards used mana when first introduced at Blizzcon 2008 and also in the Blizzcon 2009 demo, but shortly after the 2009 show Blizzard announced that all classes except for the Witch Doctor would use something other than mana for their resource. The only non-mana resource yet fully explained is the Barbarian's Fury, so while we know the Monk, Wizard, and unnamed fifth class will all use something other than mana, details are lacking.
Instability Design Theory
The concept behind instability, in terms of what type of gameplay it's meant to encourage and support, was related by Jay Wilson during an October 2009 interview. [1]
- Diii.net: Everyone seems pretty happy with the function and form of the Barbarian’s Fury resource, but nothing has been revealed about the non-mana resources that the Wizard and Monk will use. Can you give us some insight into what kind of play style their resources are meant to encourage?
- Jay Wilson: Well for the Wizard we want to enforce the fact that she’s a glass cannon. I don’t think it’s fun to ever run out of mana. I’m not really interested in an extended resource for her. For the WD we’re okay with mana, since he’s got some pretty good skills to recover mana that also double as attacks. And he’s not defenseless when he’s out of mana. He’s got pets and ways to attack with them that aren’t mana intensive. For him that makes mana fairly interesting.
- For the wizard, when she’s out of mana she just dies. And that’s not fun. So if anything, we want to encourage how she plays. So she’s the kind of character that blasts first and asks questions later. Very vulnerable. So we want to implement a system that makes her more blasty, but even more vulnerable. We want to make that a choice for the player. "Do I want to make myself more vulnerable in exchange for being more blasty." And that’s a cool gameplay pull there.
Health Orb Benefits?
Since the announcement of Instability, players have been wondering if health globes would benefit it. Health globes added to the Wizard's mana (and they boost the Witch Doctor's as well) when used in the Blizzcon 2009 demo, but did nothing for the Barbarian's Fury. Jay Wilson addressed this issue in an October 2009 interview. [2]
- Diii.net: Do you envision the health globes will boost [instability] in the way that the Wizard and Witch Doctor gained mana from them at Blizzcon?
- Jay Wilson: Um, maybe? *sounding intrigued* Usually in the third or fourth skill revision on classes we look at that kind of thing. For the Witch Doctor we figured that a lot of the mana things we had on the Wizard would work better on the Witch Doctor. We were having trouble maintaining enough mana while play testing the Witch Doctor. Especially if players didn’t take a specific mana recovery skill. So we focused on spreading that out across a lot more of the class so he can pull mana back more easily. When we get to other classes I’m sure we’ll look for more of that.
But the key is that we don’t necessarily want to... we don’t want to cannibalize an existing gameplay mechanic. So when you take health globes that are already important, and you make them even more important, then that doesn’t really create gameplay. For the WD, the health globes weren’t that important a lot of times, since he very rarely took damage with his pets, so for him by enhancing his desire for health globes, we’re really putting gameplay where it wasn’t. So whatever we’re designing a class that’s what we look at.
Instability Speculation
It's uncertain how this gameplay mechanic will work, but the name hints at the Wizard's lore, and also its functionality. Most likely each spell cast will cause "instability" due to the dangerous and volatile nature of the spells the Wizard wields.
Hypothesis 1
Too much instability will hurt her or make her unable to perform certain tasks or perhaps modify how a spell is cast or what spell is cast (eg: casting Disintegrate will produce Spectral Blades instead). It could just be a power gauge inspired by the now defunct Mana Burst, dealing damage based upon how much/little control she has over the instability. Remember Mana Burst was a passive skill from the previous Arcane Skill Tree, Tier 4. It was listed with a description that supposed to add 25% damage to any spell casted by a Wizzard with a full mana orb. Now, there isn't mana anymore for the Wizzard, and probably they removed this skill too. Perhaps the new system would be something like this spell: just making more damage from spells if you got high Instability, and less if you got and empty orb. Also, it would increase the damage taken if you got tones of Instability.
This theory has merit because most resource systems use one or another way of gaining a resource and using skills by spending it.
Hypothesis 2
An alternate form would be that the instability somehow helps the Wizard to cast spells better in some way. The more spells cast, the instability will actually help by causing ripples in time or similar effects.
The only problem with this is that it could be quite unbalanced if the Wizard would continuously gain power the more she did, especially in PvP.
Hypothesis 3
Instability could also take the form of a meter that fills up as the Wizard casts spells, representing the buildup of excess unstable magic as she pushes her limits. When this meter (or, more likely, orb) fills to a certain point, the Wizard begins taking damage from each spell while increasing the damage of that spell by the same amount. For example, a spell deals a base of 1000 damage. When the Instability orb reaches 30% percent, when she casts that spell, she take 2% of that spell's damage, but the total damage that spell deals is also increased by 2%. Then the Instability orb would fill another X%.