Diablo III Getting ‘Paragon’ Levels With Patch 1.0.4

One of the chief complaints that many gamers had about Diablo III, myself included, was that there wasn’t a whole lot to do once you’ve hit the level cap, which is currently 60. It’s an issue that Blizzard acknowledged in the past, and now they’ve come up with a solution.

In a blog post on the Diablo III website, game director Jay Wilson announced the “Paragon” system, which allows your characters to go beyond level 60, growing in power with more and more stats on level up, all without going beyond level 60.

The primary goal with the Paragon system looks to be to give players something to do after they’ve hit the character level cap, but that’s not all they’re doing with the system. The Paragon system also addressed Magic Find and the oft-debated topic of “gear switching.”

As things currently stand in Diablo III, players can bring a champion down to low health using their DPS-focused gear and then finish killing the champion after switching to Magic Find gear. With the Paragon system, you won’t have to do that — eventually.

The Paragon system goes up to 100 levels, and players at level 60 who earn experience from killing monsters will have that experience go towards their “Paragon” level. Each Paragon level you gain nets you a certain amount of Magic Find, Gold Find, and base stats up to a cap of 300 percent Magic Find and Gold Find at Paragon level 100. To get to level 100, however, is no small task.

Wilson said in the post that getting to Paragon level 100 will take you about as long as it took to get from 1-99 in Diablo II. As those who played Diablo II can attest, that can be quite a long term goal, especially without the equivalent of Baal runs/Ubers.

To take a little burn off of the new Diablo III grind, Nephalem Valor stacks, in addition to awarding Magic Find and Gold Find per stack, will now also offer a 15 percent Paragon experience boost per stack.

The new system will be introduced in patch 1.0.4, which also includes a number of other changes including some much-needed class balancing. No release date has been given, but it’s expected out by the end of the month.

What do you think about Diablo III‘s upcoming Paragon system?