Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard has outlined changes to Diablo 4’s classes, dungeons and skills following criticism of the open beta.
Diablo 4 held two open beta weekends for players last month, and while people seemed to have fun trying the game out, they found plenty of problems with it as well. Blizzard Entertainment published a blog post this week, outlining all the changes it plans to make to the game following criticism of its open beta. These include much-needed buffs to the Druid and Barbarian classes, changes to make dungeons more interesting and other quality-of-life fixes.
The blog post almost reads like a list of very, very early patch notes, but is clearly meant to show that the company is listening to its fans well ahead of launch. For example, we personally felt that while slaying beasts in Diablo 4’s dungeons felt fun, the dungeons themselves felt repetitive due to their same-y layouts and uninteresting objectives that often encouraged backtracking.
To fix this, Blizzard says, “We have optimized multiple dungeons across all zones to minimize the need for backtracking.” These ‘optimisations’ include Structure Objectives being repositioned along main dungeon pathways, so that players don’t have to retread the same paths to find side rooms that host them. Now, they’ll be easier to reach and players can just continue exploring after defeating them.
Blizzard also notes that, “Player feedback stated that the action of completing each Objective felt tedious.” To fix this, the developer will increase gameplay bonuses, saying, “We hope that providing bonuses, such as the increase to mobility while carrying certain Objective items, will streamline and vary the experience of completing Objectives. This adjustment is merely a starting point, and we intend to extend this philosophy to keys in a future update.”
Dungeon events now have a 60% chance to spawn as opposed to the 10% chance during the beta, leading to a lot more spontaneity during dungeon crawls. Enemies will also start to move towards the player when their numbers start dwindling down, so that players don’t have to run all over the dungeon to complete a ‘Kill all enemies’ objective. While this doesn't seem to be enough to really fix how repetitive the game's dungeons are in the long run, they'll certainly make the early game a lot less tedious to grind.
The blog post also runs down quite a few changes to Diablo 4’s character classes. Players had a bone to pick with how weak the Barbarian and Druid felt, but both are getting buffs in a few places to make up for it. Barbarian is getting a 10% passive damage reduction, and their Whirlwind Skill and Double Swing Skill Enhancement have been buffed up. Druid’s changes are a lot more significant: their Companion Skills now deal heavily increased damage, their Ultimate Skills have reduced cooldowns, and Maul and Pulverise are now easier to use.
Necromancer and Sorcerer on the other hand, have been nerfed a tad. Sorcerer’s fairly overpowered Chain Lightning has had its damage reduced, and the skill is now less effective against bosses. Necromancer’s minions now die much more easily, and Corpse Explosion does less damage - meaning you’ll have to summon more often in the full game. Their minions are also less bright, which hopefully means that they look less cartoonish in the game now.
Diablo 4 launches on June 6, 2023. Blizzard outlined the game’s endgame content here.
