History VideoGame / Diablo

* BossDissonance: 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.

** Pre-1.10 MSLE, and to a lesser extent, post-1.10 LEFE, LECE, or LEFECE monsters probably still count, though, since dealing any damage to them can mean insta-death.[spoiler]LE, or Lightning Enchanted, causes a monster to release sparks when hurt. The other modifiers mentioned either greatly increase the number of sparks (MS or Multi-Shot), or add enormous amounts of damage to them (FE and CE, or Fire Enchanted and Cold Enchanted).[/spoiler]

The third game in the series, ''Diablo III'', was announced in June 2008 for a 2012 release. Trailers for it are on Blizzard's homepage. In the meanwhile, the developers of the first two ''Diablo'' games, Blizzard North, resigned ''en masse'' and formed "Flagship Studios", which continued to produce HackAndSlash games, specifically ''HellgateLondon'' and ''Mythos''. After Flagship folded, the same people formed "Runic Games", which produced ''{{Torchlight}}''. All three titles can be considered {{Spiritual Successor}}s to ''Diablo''; they certainly all play similarly.

* CastFromHitpoints: A unique curse that Baal and some of his succubus minions cast causes players with more mana than health (i.e. most spellcasters) to use up health instead of mana when using their abilities, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin essentially forcing them to cast from their hit points.]]

* MoneySpider: One of the worst offenders. Watch in awe as a swarm of insects spits up a suit of plate mail!

* MookMaker: Several enemies can revive dead enemies (such as the fallen shaman). Also, the player character, if he plays as the necromancer, as he has the ability to summon HelpfulMooks (such as skeletons and Golems).

** [[http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/archivist.xml The Archivist]]: Basically Cain as a playable character: Extremly slow movement, [[OneHitPointWonder dies as soon as a monster touches him]], and has AwesomeButImpractical skills such as turning enemies into {{QuestGiver}}s.

* {{Council of Angels}}

* {{The Legions of Hell}}

* {{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}}s game - ''How can you not find a skull in a pile of skulls?''

A HackAndSlash game series from BlizzardEntertainment. Notorious for having [[WasteOfTimeStory an elaborate backstory and plot]] [[{{YMMV}} that nobody ever follows]] concerning a war between HeavenAndHell. As a sort of simple graphical {{roguelike}}, [[RandomlyDrops the pursuit of the perfect randomly-generated equipment]] and [[LevelGrinding character build]] to satisfy one's inner {{Munchkin}} gives the game tremendous replayability.

* {{Nothing But Skulls}}: Skullpiles as treasure chests, in addition to lying strewn about in Chaos Sanctuary. Made worse by the RandomlyDrops nature of the game - ''How can you not find a skull in a pile of skulls?''

* RainOfArrows: dual-wielding Demon Hunter in ''Diablo III''. AwesomeButImpractical thanks to stupidly low chance of RandomDrops for hand crossbows with decent damage rates.
* RandomlyDrops: At extremely slim odds. The chance of anything in the game dropping a Zod (the rarest rune) ranges from zero (cannot drop) to 1:some six digit number.
** Mercifully, the latest patch has made the rarest runes drop more frequently - still incredibly rare, but it is now reasonably likely for a high-level player to see a few in a Season. Before it was possible for a player to never see some runes in their entire ''career'' - unless you traded for dupes.

* FallenHero: [[spoiler: All three player-characters from the first game wound up this way by the time of the second. The fighter became possessed by Diablo's soulstone; the rogue...well, Blood Raven's her; and the sorcerer became the Summoner who's causing Lut Gholein a small hell's worth of grief. And possibly every hero from the second game has gone AxCrazy or some other form of loopy. Yes, the Paladin included.]]

* OneTimeDungeon: The Cow Level can only be played once per difficulty level.