Blizzard has revealed some of the changes it made to Diablo 4 after its recent beta playtest, and from what I can see, it’s addressing the biggest concerns I think people had.
One of them was bored with the dungeons, specifically traipsing back and forth on them. “One of the most common pieces of feedback we received is that players felt they were lagging too much in certain dungeons,” the company said in a blog post. “We’ve optimized many of the dungeons in all regions to reduce the need for backtracking.”
Only in Fragmented Peaks – the zones in the demo – have the nine dungeons had their layouts changed. And wherever the dungeon has an object, especially an object you have to move around, there are now speed buffs as well as other enhancements to keep you up to speed.
These:
- To reduce the need to backtrack, a small number of Struggling Monsters will seek out the player to help complete the All Monsters objective.
- When Animus is gathered, player and nearby allies: Gain 10 resources / Reduce all active cooldowns by 1 second.
- Animus channel freeze time was reduced from 3 to 0 seconds.
- Rescue time was reduced from 3 to 1.5 seconds.
- All rescue objectives now drop a health potion when completed.
- While carrying an Ancient’s Statue, Bloodstone, Mechanical Box, or Stone Carving, you and your nearby allies will receive a Momentum bonus, granting a 25% increased movement speed.
- Pedestals channel time reduced from 2 to 0 seconds.
- Returning a portable item to its pedestal now fully restores health, resources, potions, and resets cooldowns for all nearby players.
- All doors will now generate a minimum ping when opened.
- All structure objectives in dungeons now have additional combat mechanics that players must overcome.
Regarding classes: As expected, barbarians are buffed. Specifically, he is given a 10 percent damage reduction so that he can survive more reliably at melee range. And in connection with that, several bosses have been “rerated for melee character difficulty”, resulting in changes to their attacks and mechanics.
Also as expected: The Sorceress and Necromancer have been rendered unconscious. Necro minions now die more often and zombies explosion isn’t ridiculously powerful, and wizards have dialed up chain lightning.
Common
- Effects such as Stun and Freeze can be applied twice before Elite monsters become unstoppable.
- Class skills were reviewed to confirm that all classes have access to enough skills that overcome control loss effects.
- Many legendary powers have updates on their effectiveness.
Wild
- A flat 10% passive damage reduction has been added to the barbarian class. Some skill tree passives had their damage reduction effects reduced to compensate.
- The Whirlwind skill now does more damage and consumes more Rage.
- The Double Swing skill enhancement refunds the full cost of Rage when used on stunned or knocked down enemies.
Druid
- Companion Skills will now deal massively increased damage.
- The cooldowns of all ultimate skills have been reduced.
- Usability improvements have been made to Maul and Pulverize.
- Using a non-shapeshifting skill will transform a druid back into its human form.
necromancer
- Summoned minions will die more often, requiring players to use corpses more often.
- Several bonus stats have been increased in Book of the Dead.
- The damage done by the Zombies Explosion skill has been reduced.
- The brightness of Skeleton Warriors and Mages has been reduced.
Wicked
- Upgrading to Subterfuge Skills increases their bonus.
- Bonuses to multiple passive skills have been increased.
- All Embalming skills have their cooldowns increased.
- Charged Bolt damage increased and mana cost decreased.
- Reduced Chain Lightning’s damage and reduced its effectiveness against bosses.
- Reduced the cooldown for the Enchantment bonus of the Incinerate skill.
- Firewall will now spawn beneath enemies more often when its enchantment bonus is used.
- Increased Lucky Hit chance for Meteor Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Magician
Other notable changes include Butcher being buffed on World Tier 3 and 4, which weren’t in the demo and I shudder to imagine what that would be like, and Cellar dungeons having a higher chance of triggering events Being made less boring, and to reward you with chests.
Oh and the reset dungeon button has been disabled. Apparently some hardcore players were using it to get out of sticky situations, and in general, Blizzard wants you to move around, not farm in one place. “Still,” it added, “we know that replaying a specific dungeon can be fun and the team is looking into a more permanent solution for this.”
You can find a full list of changes on the Diablo 4 website.
Diablo 4 launches in less than two months, on June 6th, though if you pre-order it, you can play starting at midnight on June 2nd in the UK, or 4pm Pacific-time a day earlier in the US. Are. So far, we’re big fans of what we’ve seen, but it’ll be interesting to see what the rest of the game holds, especially the endgame.