Diablo 3 Game Difficulty Progression.
When a player finishes the story campaign of Diablo 3 on Normal difficulty, they can move on to a more difficult game setting. In order of difficulty, these settings are Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno.
The player should note that there are a number of significant changes between each of these settings. In order to prevent the player from getting confused by these changes, as well as to help prepare them for the new challenges ahead, they are encouraged to consult this guide so that they can better plan changes in their builds and equipment.
General Changes
Monsters are able to move faster the more difficult the game setting, and the projectiles from their ranged attacks shoot faster as well. However, the loot players can find also get better, with monsters dropping higher level items, new armor types, and also unique crafting components. The specific changes for each difficulty is as follows:
Nightmare Difficulty
Monsters gain new affixes, namely: Arcane Enchanted; Extra Health; Fast; Horde; Fire Chains; and Vampiric.
See Monster Affixes page for full details.
Monsters now have a chance to drop Pages of Training, which are used to train artisans and to craft more potent recipe items.
Hell Difficulty
Monsters gain new affixes, namely: Avenger; Health Link; and Invulnerable Minions.
Monsters now have a chance to drop Tomes of Training, which are used to train artisans and to craft more potent recipe items.
Inferno Difficulty
Monsters now have a chance to drop Tomes of Secrets, which are used to train artisans and to craft more potent recipe items.
Check out an informative affix video.
Life Steal
Life Steal is an affix which gives back a percentage of the damage dealt as Life points. The player’s Life Steal has reduced effectiveness as the game setting becomes more difficult. Its effectiveness per difficulty is as follows:
Normal Difficulty – 100% effective
Nightmare Difficulty – 70% effective
Hell Difficulty – 40% effective
Inferno Difficulty – 20% effective
Note that the player may want to reconsider their gear as they tackle higher difficulty settings due to the changes in the effectiveness of the Life Steal affix.
Monster Resistances
The more powerful monsters have resistances against crowd control abilities, which are movement and control impairing effects such as stun and slow. These resistances reduce the effectiveness of the ability used against the monster by a given percentage.
For example, a monster on the Nightmare difficulty setting has a 50% resistance to stun effects. An ability that should have stunned the monster for five seconds will have the length of time of its effect reduced by 50%, causing the monster to be stunned for only 2.5 seconds.
The resistances of these monsters are more potent the higher the game difficulty setting.
The monsters also have resistances to some specific ability types. These types of monsters would have minimum thresholds against these abilities, which have to be met in order for those abilities to even have any effect on them.
For example, a boss monster on the Hell difficulty setting has a 70% resistance to stun effects, as well as a minimum threshold of 0.5 seconds. An ability that should have stunned the monster for 1.5 seconds will be ignored, because the 70% stun resistance would have reduced the effect to 0.45 seconds, which is below the minimum stun threshold of the monster. In other words, the boss monster will not even feel the effects of this ability. If that same boss monster cannot be hit by the player over 21 yards with a knock back effect, it still will not budge an inch.
The monsters have move slow and attack speed reductions, also known as ER or effectiveness reductions as well. These reductions affect the magnitude of the effect of the ability, and not its duration.
For example, a champion on the Inferno difficulty setting has a move slow reduction of 40%. If the player uses an ability against a champion in Inferno difficulty, which should have slowed the movement speed of the champion by 60%, the move slow reduction of the champion will reduce the magnitude of this effect by 40%, causing the ability to slow the movement speed of the champion by only 36%.
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