Paragon System brings big changes to Diablo 3’s Magic Find hunt

Looking for something to do in Diablo 3 after you grind to level 60? How about grind 100 more levels to help increase your magic find while grinding for loot? That's what Blizzard is suggesting with their new Paragon System in patch 1.0.4.

Blizzard today revealed their attempt to give players who aren't satisfied with the current item hunt "something more to strive for". Unfortunately, their solution is more grind.

The new system, as detailed on Battle.net, adds an additional 100 Paragon levels to players who have already hit level 60. The new Paragon system is designed to address Magic Find gear-swapping while providing players who have already reached the max level 60 with an "extended progression system".

Here is how the Paragon System will work:

• After you hit level 60, any further experience you earn from killing monsters will begin to count toward Paragon levels
• There are 100 Paragon levels
• Every Paragon level will reward you with:
  • Core stats such as Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Vitality in amounts similar to what you’d gain from a normal level
  • 3% Magic Find and 3% Gold Find
• In addition, a distinctive increasingly-impressive border will surround your character portrait in the in-game party frame to denote your Paragon progression, with a new frame earned after every ten levels. Your Paragon level will also be visible to other players wherever your normal level is shown

To support the new system, the Nephalem Valor (NV) will now provide a 15% experience bonus per stack, applicable toward Paragon levels. For the record, the first Paragon level should take about as long as it took most players to get from level 50 to 60, according to Blizzard.

"The time to reach the upper Paragon levels approximates the long-term time investment required to get a level 99 character in Diablo II," Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson added.

"We wanted to find a solution that was not only very forgiving of gear swapping, but one that would ultimately help us slowly and gently move Magic Find off of items in the future," he explained. "It’s such an intrinsically important stat to the core purpose of playing the game that tying it to gear — which is a customization system in many ways — is ultimately an approach that would continue to cause problems. We need to transition away from it, and do so in a way that doesn’t flip the entire game end-over-end."

With Paragon in place, the Magic Find and Gold Find will be capped at 300% before Nephalem Valor which means that without any Magic Find gear at all, you'll hit the cap when you reach Paragon level 100.

"This way, you can continue wearing your current Magic Find gear as you slowly but surely work to gain Paragon levels. Eventually, once you hit Paragon level 100, you’ll have the freedom to completely focus every slot on stats that help your character kill stuff faster and stay alive longer," Wilson said.