Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Diablo 4’s Season 1 patch has dropped, bringing a surprising amount of damage and XP nerfs to the game.
Blizzard Entertainment’s big 8GB patch for Diablo 4 had dropped in preparation for Season 1’s launch later this week, giving players their first real look at all upcoming Unique Items, Legendary Aspects and balance changes coming to the game. While the real effects of this patch won’t sink in until Season 1 begins, online reception seems unanimous: this patch kind of sucks.
Before we get into that however, let’s dig into the content of these patchnotes. Patch 1.1 makes Altar of Lilith unlocks and map progression account-wide, meaning that we won’t have to go around searching for these statues every new season. World Tier rewards have also been affected, with more gold and loot drops from enemies in Tier 2, and monsters now appearing at a few levels behind players in Tier 3 and Tier 4, making vanquishing them easier. Also, Killing monsters at higher levels than the player now rewards much less XP in Season 1.
A new season brings new Unique Items for players to chase. The Season of the Malignant has six in total:
General
Ahavarion Spear of Lycander (Uber Unique Staff – World Tier 4): Gain a random Shrine effect for 10-20 seconds after killing an Elite enemy. Can only occur once every 30 seconds.
Barbarian
Azurewrath (Unique Sword): Lucky Hit - Your Core Skills have up to a 20% chance to Freeze enemies for 3 seconds and deal 0.75-1.5 Cold damage to them.
Druid
Fleshrender (Unique One-Hand Mace): Debilitating Roar and Blood Howl deal 0.5-1.0 damage to Nearby Poisoned enemies.
Necromancer
Lidless Wall (Unique Shield): Lucky Hit - While you have an active Bone Storm, hitting an enemy outside of a Bone Storm has up to a 5-25% chance to spawn an additional Bone Storm at their location. Each of your active Sacrifice bonuses increases the chance by 25% and the total number of additional Bone Storms you can have by +1.
Rogue
Eaglehorn (Unique Bow): Penetrating Shot has a 30-80% chance to fire an arrow that bounces off walls and scenery. Hitting enemies from behind with Penetrating Shot will make them Vulnerable for 3 seconds.
Sorcerer
The Oculus (Unique Wand): Gain the effect of the Teleport Enchantment for free. When you Evade using Teleport Enchantment, you are taken to a random location.
That's all of the Uniques. Season 1 also adds seven new Legendary Aspects:
General
Audacity (Utility Aspect): When there are at least 5 Close enemies, Stun them for 2-4 seconds. This can only occur once every 20 seconds.
Craven (Mobility Aspect): You gain 20-40% increased Movement Speed when moving away from Slowed or Chilled enemies.
Barbarian
Ancestral Charge (Offensive Aspect): Charge calls forth 4 Ancients who also Charge, dealing 50-100% of normal damage.
Druid
Subterranean (Offensive Aspect): Poison Creeper’s active also casts Landslide in a circle around you. Earth Skills deal 10-20% increased damage to Poisoned enemies.
Necromancer
Gore Quills (Offensive Aspect): Blood Lance will consume Blood Orbs to also conjure lances from them. Each additional Blood Lance deals 20-50% of normal damage and prioritizes targeting un-lanced enemies.
Rogue
Pestilent Points (Offensive Aspect): Every third cast of Puncture is Poison Imbued with 100-150% of normal potency.
Sorcerer
Searing Wards (Offensive Aspect): After spending 200-100 Mana your next Firewall is free to cast and will destroy incoming Small Missiles.
On balance changes aimed at the game’s character classes, Blizzard says that it’s focusing, “on clear itemization disparities over redesigns of Class features. The Class changes are largely focused on numeric increases to Skill Upgrades and Legendary Aspects that players haven't yet found compelling. Additionally, we're changing Critical Strike Damage Paragon Glyphs to empower all damage—instead of only Core Skills—to enable more build strategies.”
But then Blizzard mentions that, “there are also a few Class stat decreases on sources which grant extreme amounts of damage, healing, or Unstoppable,” which are, in other words, nerfs. The developer notes that it usually prefers build-specific changes to be buffed up instead of nerfed down, but it feels that these changes are, “necessary for the overall health of the game.”
Well, what these changes amount to are a whole lot of nerfs to classes across the board - impacting the Sorcerer in particular, despite already being considered one of the weakest endgame classes in the game. The Sorcerer’s Devouring Blaze, for example, has had its bonus Critical Strike damage against Burning enemies nerfed by quite a bit. Considering most endgame Sorcerer builds incorporate some kind of fire ability to put out adequate amounts of damage, that nerf alone is a huge blow to the class - and it’s just one of many. Consider that the one Unique Sorcerers get in this patch also comes with a punishment for using it (you get randomly teleported to another location).
Rogues aren’t in a great spot, either. With Vulnerable damage (inherent on Crossbows) reduced by ~65% affecting Crossbow builds and Siphoning Strikes now requiring a Lucky Hit chance of 75%, there’s a lot coming in the way of existing builds and survivability. One Reddit user notes, “I just tested my Penetrating Shot Rogue and he does about 40% less damage and I am getting one shot in higher tiers that I could easily complete before.” Another Necromancer player complains that, “My attack power on my necro went from 14,000 to 8,300 after this patch. I'm also way more squishy AND they made it so you need to do nightmare dungeons 10+ levels above your own to get the maximum xp gain.” No class is coming out of this patch unscathed.
Changes to enemy levels at higher World Tiers grant players less XP in the endgame, increased ability cooldowns leave players vulnerable in the middle of awkward ability combos, Helltides are even more challenging while the The Tortured Gift of Mysteries chest costs way more Aberrant Cinders, and on and on do these nerfs go. My personal favourite of the patchnotes? “The channel time for the Leave Dungeon ability has been increased from 3 to 5 seconds.” They made players wait longer to leave dungeons for no discernable reason.
Online reception to these patchnotes has not been kind, mostly because players were expecting buffs to their favourite classes for a faster and more enjoyable levelling period, but were met with a list of significant nerfs instead. At this point, the most players can hope for is that Season 1’s newer mechanics, like the Malignant Hearts, make up for these nerfs, and then some. The good news is that Blizzard is well aware of this patch’s reception, and plans to address it in an upcoming Campfire Chat stream this week:
In case you missed it, here’s everything you need to know about Diablo 4’s Season of the Malignant.
