The first time I saw Diablo 3 was at its initial unveiling in 2008. It had a dizzying system of rune items that could be picked up and socketed — not into equipment, as in Diablo 2, but into your character’s skills themselves, to modify their effects. Any rune could be used to modify any skill, and there were seemingly dozens if not hundreds of the things, opening up endless possibilities for skill customization.
By the time the game launched in 2012, all this had been scrapped. Skill Runes were no longer items but variants, five for each skill in the game, which unlocked as the character leveled up. The change — part of a controversial attempt by developer Blizzard to radically streamline Diablo 3 — seemed like a downgrade. It wasn’t.
What it was was a shift from customization to curation. In effect, Blizzard decided that instead of leaving players to experiment in a kind of randomized skill lab, it would carefully redesign every skill in the game five times over. And if there’s one thing Blizzard excels at, it’s skill design.
If Blizzard took freedom away with one hand, it gave it back with the other. Apart from the level requirement to unlock, there are no material or resource costs involved with picking or changing Skill Runes, and almost no restriction on when you can swap them around: just a 10-second cooldown on the skill that practically means you can only make changes out of combat. This is even true for swapping out skills themselves — there’s no talent tree to speak of — meaning your entire character build can be redesigned on the fly at any point, whether to mold it to new gear drops or just because you feel like it.
Skill Runes became, and remain, my favorite thing about Diablo 3, which became, and remains, my favorite Diablo game. They allow you to zero in on very specific flavors of each character class, and they make subtle changes to the skill that work in conversation with your playstyle, responding to it or nudging it in a new direction.
Let’s take just one skill as an example: the Demon Hunter’s Vault. The Demon Hunter is an exceptionally cool occult ranger-style character who specializes in ranged weapons, traps and explosives. Vault is a movement skill that sends them quickly cartwheeling across the battlefield and avoids attacks; it’s very useful for a class, and a game, where positioning is everything. It costs Discipline, one of the Demon Hunter’s two resource pools, to use.
Vault’s first Skill Rune, Action Shot, has the Demon Hunter fire arrows at nearby enemies while Vaulting, so you never need to stop dealing damage. Rattling Roll stuns and knocks back enemies you Vault through, making it excellent for crowd control and for Demon Hunters who like to get into the thick of the action. Tumble reduces the discipline cost if you Vault again immediately, so it’s perfect for agile and/or squishy Demon Hunters who want to cover long distances and stay out of harm’s way. Acrobatics is the opposite, replacing the Discipline cost with a cooldown; it retains the skill’s utility but allows you to focus more resources on attacks. And Trail of Cinders leaves a trail line of fire in your wake, allowing the Demon Hunter to paint the battlefield in criss-crossing paths of deadly flames.
Each feels totally distinct to use, while retaining the snappy satisfaction of the original skill design. And each harmonizes with other skills and with equipment builds in all sorts of fascinating and tempting ways. Most importantly, each has been carefully designed and balanced by some of the best designers in the business to feel like a genuine and equal alternative; there are almost no default Rune picks in the game.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
