Diablo – Are there differences in the frequency certain champion/rare affixes occur

diablo-3

Last night I noticed that almost every champion/rare pack I came across had Mortar as one of their prefixes. I believe, out of the dozen or two I fought, only 3-4 packs did not have Mortar.

It seemed like more than half had Plagued.

Yet only two had illusionist. Only one had Horde. Only one had Invulnerable Minions (thank goodness!). Only two had Avenger.

In all the time I've spent playing (I'm up to Act II Inferno), I've only ever seen Missle Dampening once.

I know that some affixes only become available at higher difficulties (e.g. Invulnerable Minions only appears in Hell or Inferno), and some are only possible on rares or champion packs, but not both (e.g. Horde only appears on rares, and Health Link only appears on champion packs). But setting aside those restrictions, are some affixes "rare" on their own?

Is there any information about the relative frequency with which each affix appears? Is Missle Dampening really just uber-rare? Did I just get ridiculously unlucky with the RNG last night with all the Mortar Jailer Plagued X monsters I fought?

Best Answer

As Ben says, there are three types of affixes. These are broken up as follows:

  • Strong CC (limit of one):
    • Knockback
    • Nightmarish
    • Vortex
  • Defensive (limit of one):
    • Avenger (Champion pack only)
    • Extra Health
    • Health Link (Champion pack only)
    • Horde (Boss only)
    • Illusionist
    • Missile Dampening (Boss only)
    • Invulnerable Minions (Boss only)
    • Shielding
    • Vampiric
  • Aggressive (no limit):
    • Arcane Enchanted
    • Descrator
    • Electrified
    • Fast
    • Fire Chains (Champion pack only)
    • Frozen
    • Jailer
    • Molten
    • Mortar
    • Plagued
    • Reflects Damage
    • Teleporter
    • Waller

So any affixes from the Aggressive category has a much higher chance of being seen, i.e. Mortar and Plagued, while an affix like Missile Dampening will only appear for Boss packs (not Champion packs) and only has a one in seven chance if they have a Defensive ability. This results in a much lower chance of being seen.

Note that while CC and defensive categories have a limit of one from each of them, that doesn't mean that a group must have one of each of them. I believe they can roll with only one of two, or even neither of the two, i.e. solely aggressive affixes.