Diablo (series): Difference between revisions

* [[Anti Grinding]]: In the first game, each floor had a finite number of enemies, limiting experience and item acquisition.

** It's obvious fast enough that you can still grind by starting a new game with the same character, resetting the entire dungeon bosses and all.

** The Secret Cow Level was announced on April 1st, and [[Subverted Trope|turned out to be real]].

* [[Ax Crazy]]: {{spoiler|''Every hero from 2.''}}

** Equip a Barbarian with an axe (or two). Cast Berserk. or Frenzy. Literal example. [[Don't Explain the Joke|Ax, crazy.]]

** Really, every hero from 1 as well. By the sequel, the first game's Rogue is Blood Raven, the Sorcerer is the Summoner, and the Warrior is the [[Big Bad]] (though they were all corrupted by demons to some degree).

* [[Badass Beard]]: Possible explanation for the Monk's [[Bald of Awesome]].

* [[Badass Boast]]: In ''Diablo II'', just before you're about to fight Diablo; "Not even ''death'' can save you from me!" {{spoiler|He's right.}}

* [[Damage Over Time]]: Lots of abilities and effects deal their damage slowly, poison being the most common.

* [[Damage Sponge Boss]]: Izual, first boss encountered in Hell, from ''Diablo II''.

** According to the manual his order are masters of keeping themselves level-headed and strive for perfect balance. He is on the side of good simply because evil is in danger of winning. In other words, the trope is played perfectly straight; Dark may not be good, but it [[A Worldwide Punomenon|sure as hell]] isn't evil. (Unless the angels somehow get the upper hand...)

*** He'd still qualify for [[Dark Is Not Evil]] even if they did: see [[Light Is Not Good]] below.

* [[Demon Slaying]]: You will be doing this a ''lot'' in this series.

* [[Devil but No God]]: Averted. There isn't a devil either. In Hell you have the Three Prime Evils and their four lieutenants, and in Heaven you have the Angelic Council. Sanctuary itself was created by a ''relationship'' between an angel and demon.

* [[Downer Ending]]: {{spoiler|In the first game your character is corrupted by Diablo's soulstone and becomes one of the sequel's [[Big Bad|Big Bads]]. The sequel ends with Tyrael destroying the Worldstone, which is apparently the only thing holding Sanctuary apart from Heaven and Hell.}}

** In ''Diablo II'', the Barbarian class is able to dual-wield any single-handed weapons, and use any two-handed sword in one hand (and thus dual-wield two-handed swords).

** In the ''Diablo II'' expansion, the Assassin class is able to dual-wield claw-class weapons, and has a passive skill to use them as a shield while doing so.

* [[Enemy Summoner]]: Sand maggots in ''Diablo II'' which spit poison and lay eggs.

** The aforementioned "summonomancers" can have a small army of skeleton minions, plus a merc and a [[Golem]].

* [[Eternal Equinox]]: Present in ''Diablo II''.

* [[Lava Adds Awesome]]: The spells "Volcano" and "Molten Boulder".

* [[Evil Laugh]]: Seems that Baal finds many things funny.

* [[Fighter Mage Thief]]: Played completely straight in ''Diablo'', with the Warrior, Sorcerer, and Rogue, respectively. In ''Diablo II'', the archetypes get expanded on and diversified, with the Paladin and Barbarian descending from the Warrior, the Assassin and Amazon descending from the Rogue, and so on. Most classes can be played as two or even all three types, though.

* [[Fireballs]]: It has fire magic in it after all so that's almost compulsory.

* [[Fishing for Mooks]]: A strategy in some cases as you do not want to go wading into large melees, the barbarians taunt can be used to lure enemies away from other enemies. This can help in defeating fallen shamans but is generally regarded as a waste of skill points.

** Waste of skill ''point'', arguably, though the ability to get basically any monster that does anything complicated or dangerous to stop doing it and instead walk right up to you and get its ass kicked is handy sometimes.

** Somewhat justified since he's essentially a [[Bait and Switch Boss]] there to end the act with a [[It Was His Sled|twist]] by making the player think they're about to face Baal.

* [[The Gods Must Be Lazy]]: There doesn't seem to be ''a'' God in the setting (with the Prime Evils dividing up the duties of Satan) but the angels of the High Heavens are more concerned with saving their own asses than those of the mortals of Sanctuary (whom most angels would just as soon see effaced anyway, since the way it came to existence means it's inherently half-demonic. They don't want anything that isn't pure angelic to exist.). The demons from the Burning Hells, of course, aren't picky with their prey, so the world is [[Crapsack World|just as crappy]] as you'd imagine as a result.

* [[Gradual Grinder]]: Necromancers, and oddly enough, Paladins.

** A well-made Paladin has no business grinding away. Blessed Hammer, Smite, and Zeal are some of the highest DPS skills in the game, and none of their other active skills are at all grindy.

** There's a guide written up for the technical details how poison damage works, including how it gets overwritten and how to convert damage over time in-game as relates to time IRL, to help use it viably as a damage-over-time effect. Without knowing this, it's easy to overwrite/nerf your own damage and come to the conclusion that poison simply sucks.

** This is compounded by the so-called "LCS" - or "Lying Character Screen". Literally the only number it can't get wrong is your level, and inaccurate stats can appear as early as level 3. The attack (and related chance to hit), defense (and related chance to be hit), and damage numbers are particularly meaningless, having absolutely no relation to the actual figures used once you have a few different sources of bonuses to these things.

* [[Happy Ending Override]]: The second game is one of the few games that matches ''[[Chrono Cross (Video Game)|Chrono Cross]]'' in the sheer brutality of this--''everything'' you did [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|only made the problem worse]]. It looks like the third will apply this to the second as well.

* [[Hard Levels Easy Bosses]]: For most decently well built characters, act bosses tend to be more of a punching bag than any challenge. The real killers in the game? Multiple packs of unique and minions, bosspack archers and other dangerous melee monsters like frenzytaurs, gloams and tomb vipers, and generally speaking powered up regular mooks.

** It's possible that poorly geared characters, that can deal more damage than their own HP, end up having trouble killing monsters in hell difficulty.

* [[He Who Fights Monsters]]: {{spoiler|Every protagonist. No exceptions.}}

** And Aldaris from [[Starcraft]].

** And [[Ben 10 (Animation)|Grandpa Max]]

* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: ''Black Death'' in ''Diablo'', and their ability to ''permanently'' lower your health by [[Lost Forever|one point]] causes even experienced players to avoid them like the plague.

** The fact that they can crash the game when dealing a finishing blow to the player in earlier versions, makes it worse.

** Marius, however, is the shining example. Not only does he ''violently bugger up'' by yanking Tal Rasha's Soulstone (and thus releasing Baal) while Diablo and Tyrael were occupied, but he breaks things worse by inaction due to ''not'' going through the [[Hell Gate]] and having the Soulstone fragment destroyed. [[Alas Poor Scrappy|This does little to make his death at the end of the main game any less tragic.]]

** In Hardcore mode, the difficulty of the game essentially forces you to play cooperatively; beating the game on your own requires a very specialized build and a great deal of skill and/or patience.

* [[No Hero Discount]]: Demons about to overrun the countryside? Tragic. Want your armor repaired? Cash up front!

* [[Nothing but Skulls]]: Skullpiles as treasure chests, in addition to lying strewn about in Chaos Sanctuary. Made worse by the nature of the [[Random Drop|Random Drops]] game - ''How can you not find a skull in a pile of skulls?''

** Justified in that the skulls you ''want'' are the skulls of arcane demons - apparently the rest are a more mundane variety.

** Due to a bug in how damage is dealt when Fire-Enchanted monsters explode upon death, they can easily OHK an unprepared player. The mini-boss Nihlathak is infamous for both his potential to drop desirable items and his potential to kill even ''prepared'' players in an instant by using the corpses of his dead minions as area-of-effect bombs.

* [[One Size Fits All]]: A frail and shaky Witch Doctor can wear the same armor as a massive Barbarian, provided the stat requirements are met.

* [[One Stat to Rule Them All]]: In most cases, non-Vitality point assignment is only recommended for meeting equipment requirements. What happened to avoiding getting hit, and so being able to add to strength and agility? Well, all right, so far it's only Amazons who get to enjoy Slow Missiles...

** Apparently it just sets the flag to being unable to transmute the Cow Level opening formula, rather than barring entry into the portal. Therefore subsequent Cow King kills are possible in multiplayer with the help of other "virgin" Cow Level players.

* [[Our Angels Are Different]]: Light tentacles instead of wings, tend to wear armor and face-concealing cloaks. As far as alignment goes, they are ostensibly on your side, but don't expect any help from anyone other than Tyrael. Appear to lean towards being dicks, again with the exception of Tyrael and a few novel-only angels.

* [[Rule of Three]]: To craft the weapon that will open the path to Mephisto's lair, You must use the Eye, Heart, and Brain of Khalim.

** The Three Prime Evils.

* [[Saving the World]]: What you are supposed to do.

* [[Sealed Evil in A Can]]: The Soulstones.

** In the first ''Diablo'', there was a Staff called the 'Rod of Onan' which could never ever be a reference to the Biblical story of the sin of Onan. It summoned golems from the earth.

** There's also the mini-boss [http://www.d2tomb.com/images/unique_monsters/summoner_ani.gif The Summoner], who bears a distinct resemblance to [[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers|a certain kids TV Villain...]]

* [[Skill Point Reset]]: ''Diablo II'' is infamous for its unforgiving skill tree system which forced many players to start the game all over again when it turned out their skill build wasn't any good later on. Fortunately a one-time reset was added in a patch, and a certain late game item also allows this, making it slightly less jarring.

* [[Skyward Scream]] - The first game's ending.

** For enemies, there's the Summoner, who can [[Glass Cannon|deal lot of damage to you from a long distance but goes down pretty easily]], if you can manage to get through [[Goddamn Bats|the multitude of weaker enemies surrounding him]] to actually hit him.

* [[Stock Sound Effect]] - Blizzard abuses this often. Minotaurs' death in ''Diablo II'' is one of the examples.

* [[Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome]]: The hero from the first game is the [[Big Bad]] of the second.

* [[Sword Drag]] - the Rot Walkers in ''Diablo II'', Act V do this.

* [[We Buy Anything]]: Shopkeepers love to buy items from you.

** In the first game, only related items can be sold to the relevant shopkeeper. The sequel relaxes the rule and plays this trope straight.

** She described herself as a "Hunter of Evil" whose job was to hunt down rogue mages, and Tal Rasha was a rogue mage (to put it lightly), so it could be inferred that she went after Baal... but you never see her in ''Lord of Destruction'' either.

* [[You Can't Thwart Stage One]]: Or Stage 2: both games end badly for team Human.

* [[Zip Mode]]: In the unofficial expansion ''Hellfire'', your walk speed was doubled in town. In ''II'', you could run in towns without depleting your [[Sprint Meter]].