Diablo (series)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Awesome Music:
    • When you defeat Diablo in Diablo II, the introductory guitar riffs from Tristram's theme plays.
    • Diablo II is chock full of great music, straight from the first act.
  • Cliché Storm: Part of the charm of any Blizzard game.
    • Play the Game, Skip the Story: Who was going to pay attention to it, anyways? If anything, Blizzard knew they shouldn't make anything too original.
      • Anyone who only played multi-player probably didn't even know there was a story; it skips all the cinematics and most of the background is in the manual.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Expanding on what was mentioned above: the game is played in three difficulty levels. When you beat one, you play the same five acts and their quests again. Very few who play on the public servers do anything besides pay other players in-game loot to beat all the bosses for them, skipping sidequests, so that they can sit and leech experience in games run by high-level characters/bots and shoot from level 1 to level 80+ within a few hours. This is justified when making a PvP character to avoid all the grinding, but most do it so they can rush bosses looking for perfect loot or just because they're bored of the repetitive nature of a three-difficulty playthrough.
    • Not to mention, when you play the game in multiplayer, you look up a stat-sheet on the internet, carbon-copy it in your character, and follow the exact skills in the playthrough. Blizzard was Genre Savvy enough to know that the same thing would happen in Diablo III and letting people customize stats would be redundant anyways, in part because of this trope.
  • Complete Monster:
    • The demons qualify as an army of complete monsters. They are vicious, cruel, kill humans in the most gruesome imaginable ways, eat their children when they lack food... and the Prime Evils are even worse.
    • There were some demons who were tired of the endless fighting and went to live on Sanctuary with like-minded angels in relative peace. They all got slaughtered in the backstory.
  • Crazy Awesome: The Witch Doctor may or may not be this. Since he uses voodoo and such, most of his spells can be understood, but some of the spell upgrades may push him into this territory. Example: he has a spell called Plague of Toads, which summons toads, you can upgrade to turn them into Flaming Toads. Or a giant toad that devours enemies. Oh that's not all, he can also allegedly SUMMON ZOMBIE BEARS.
  • Demonic Spiders: Numerous examples. Exactly which monsters qualify varies depending on your character build, but Oblivion Knights, Gloams and Stygian Dolls are some of the worst.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Gharbad the Weak.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Hammerdins (a Paladin that works off spamming blessed hammers) unlike other spellcasters, don't hit a brick wall with immunities, and needs no tactics but "spam blessed hammer" and is pretty much the only build good for both PVP and PVM.
    • Ice Build Sorceresses. For two major reasons. First, any frozen enemy has a chance to be shattered, destroying the corpse. As such, all those resurrecting enemies? Lose their minions very quickly. Second, in the latter parts of Nightmare, and Hell in it's entirety, each enemy has a random immunity. The other two Mastery skills for sorceresses just straight up increase damage dealt in their applicable skill trees. Ice Mastery, however, does not. It LOWERS YOUR ENEMIES' RESISTANCES to cold damage, allowing you to pierce their immunities, at high enough levels. Granted, it still doesn't make ice truly EFFECTIVE against them, but allows a Sorceress to not be completely halted. Except that Cold Mastery doesn't pierce immunities. The way an immunity is flagged in Diablo II is to have a resistance at, or above 100%. Thus, Resistance reduction does allow a limited degree of immunity piercing.
  • Genius Bonus: Balrogs being called Megademons in the second game. That's more or less a direct translation (from Sindarin) of "Balrog".
  • Goddamn Bats:
    • Plenty of them, but the Leapers most definitely qualify. They attack by jumping, and are knocked away every time you hit them. They are also fast enough to dodge ranged attacks, and always attack in large numbers. The pigmies in Act III swarm you in large numbers or attack with their blowpipes from a long distance, and their shamans can revive them. Their undead versions are even stronger and explode when killed. Then there are the imps from Act V. They teleport, shoot fire from a long distance, and mount towers or war beasts where they're even harder to touch. And finally, the suicide bombers. They charge you at high speed and explode, knocking you back taking out a large chunk of your life and possibly freezing you.
    • The druid can summon these to his side in the form of ravens. They barely do any damage, but they are fast, cannot be attacked in any way, and can blind anything they attack.
    • The mummies, who spew clouds of poison in death and can be produced by a Mook Maker, the saber cats and slingers, who come in swarms, can throw exploding or poison potions, and move really fast, but die quickly, and anything that can poison you in Hell.
  • Idiot Ball: If the Lone Wanderer hadn't been holding this in the first game, Diablo would never have been reborn in the second game. Seriously, how the hell could anyone think it was a good idea to jab something nasty and evil into your head in an attempt to contain it, immediately after defeating him and seeing him revert into a dead human with that thing in his head, who probably had the same idea?
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks: Being a Blizzard franchise, it was inevitable.
  • It Was His Sled: The path to the "secret" cow level? Not at all a secret now days.
  • Magnificent Bastard: The Prime Evils. They planned everything that happens from the backstory to the second game and possibly even farther. Not to mention they get away with what they wanted in each single game, even when they are supposed to have been defeated.
  • Most Annoying Sound: 'Whoa! What can I do for ya?'. Or 'I sense a soul in search of answers'.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: Loot hitting the floor. There's a reason Blizzard hasn't changed the sound set since the first game.
  • MST3K Mantra: This is a requirement. Fridge Logic avoided.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Have a sucky internet connection or just don't prefer online multiplayer? NO HIGH LEVEL EQUIPMENT FOR YOU!
  • Sequel Displacement: Diablo II to the original Diablo.
  • That One Boss: Formerly (and for some builds, still) Duriel due to some loading issues early in the games life that resulted in him killing you before the game loaded his lair. Even now, you spawn right on top of him, and if you get close to him, you are slowed heavily (making melee next to impossible without prepping thawing potions, something otherwise unused). The arena is also the smallest of all the bosses, making Hit and Run Tactics virtually impossible.
    • Nihlathak (thankfully optional, unthankfully Randomly Drops the item needed to access the 1.11 patchs added bonus boss) thanks to his corpse explosion (already considered the best necromancer skill in the hands of players, it deals a percentage of a monsters hitpoints in damage by blowing up its corpse; only a handful of obscure items can prevent it) abilities.
    • The Lord de Seis is a mini-boss summoned before you fight Diablo. He is famous for his herd of ultra-powerful Boss in Mook Clothing minions and the aura he grants them flattening even powerful players.
    • The Butcher in the first game, he's a huge jump in power above anything the player has met at that point, meaning he will take a massive damage before dying and can kill the player in seconds if they aren't prepared properly.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The addition of color was a complaint when Diablo II was first announced (Diablo really was nothing but brown and grey and blue). Of course, no one remembers or even cares anymore.
  • The Woobie: Marius. Unlike the protagonists, he's just a poor shmuck with no power dragged into the whole mess, scared out of his mind by all the death and destruction happening around him. The only time he tries to do something, he actually makes things worse. In the end, he dies in an asylum, at the hand of Baal, begging for his pathetic life.