Diablo 4’s been something of a breath of fresh air when it comes to collecting and actioning beta feedback from the players.
It’s clearly been a fruitful exercise for Blizzard overall, and the publisher recently put out a retrospective of everything they’ve learned.
To summarise: lots of annoying things are now considerably less annoying, and the entire class roster should feel much more satisfying to play overall.
Let’s recap what’s changed since the game made its first beta appearance back in March.
Dungeons
No one was very happy with the huge amount of backtracking involved in the beta dungeons.
To fix this, Blizzard has made a further round of optimisations to many of the Fractured Peaks dungeons. This should reduce the amount of time anyone spends traipsing around empty rooms and corridors.
The developers also gave a few examples of how dungeons have been made more fun - and less infuriating to finish up.
Critical interaction objects, once tucked away in side rooms that frequently demanded backtracking, have now been placed in areas you’re likely to pass through after an encounter.
The chance of an event spawning in each dungeon has been increased from 10% to 60%.
To reduce the need to backtrack, small numbers of straggling monsters will seek out the player to help complete the Kill All Monsters objective.
When Animus is gathered, the player and nearby allies will:
Gain 10 Resource
Reduce all active Cooldowns by 1 second.
Depositing Animus channel time was reduced from 3 to 0 seconds.
The time to Rescue was reduced from 3 to 1.5 seconds.
All Rescue objectives now drop a Health Potion upon completion.
While carrying the Ancient's Statue, Bloodstone, Mechanical Box, or Stone Carving, you will receive a Momentum bonus granting a 25% move speed increase to you and nearby allies.- Pedestals have had their channel time reduced from 2 to 0 seconds.
Returning a Portable Object to its Pedestal now fully restores Health, Resource, Potions, and resets cooldowns for all nearby players.
All doors will now generate a minimap ping when they are opened.
All Structure Objectives in dungeons now have additional combat mechanics players must overcome.
Kripparian wasn't the only person to point out Diablo 4's faults during the beta, but many improvements have been made since.
Classes
Next up, the classes of Diablo 4 and how combat with each one feels.
In general, Elite Monsters will become impeded by effects like Stun and Freeze for twice as long, before they become Unstoppable.
Class Skills have also been reviewed to make sure everyone has enough tools to deal with effects that impair a player's control.
Additionally, a number of Legendary Powers have been made more effective in general.
As for the classes themselves, there’s a healthy mix of quality of life improvements and combat buffs - but also some nerfs you'll feel as well.
Here’s how things are shaping up for the full roster when launch rolls around:
Barbarian
A flat 10% passive damage reduction has been added for the Barbarian Class. Some Skill Tree passives had their damage reduction effects reduced to compensate.
The Whirlwind Skill now deals more damage and consumes more Fury.
The Double Swing Skill Enhancement refunds its full Fury cost when used on Stunned or Knocked Down enemies.
Druid
Companion Skills will now deal heavily increased damage.
All Ultimate Skills have had their cooldowns reduced.
Usability improvements have been made to Maul and Pulverize.
Using a non-Shapeshifting Skill will transform a Druid back into their human form.
Necromancer
Summoned Minions will die more often, requiring players to utilize Corpses more often.
Many bonuses in the Book of the Dead have had their stats increased.
The damage dealt by the Corpse Explosion skill has been reduced.
The brightness of the Skeletal Warriors and Mages has been reduced.
Rogue
Upgrades for Subterfuge Skills have had their bonuses increased.
Multiple passive Skills have had their bonuses increased.
All Imbuement Skills have had their cooldowns increased.
Sorcerer
Charged Bolt’s damage was increased and the Mana cost to cast has decreased.
Decreased the damage of Chain Lightning and reduced its effectiveness against Bosses.
Decreased the cooldown for the Incinerate Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Firewalls will now spawn underneath enemies more frequently when using its Enchantment bonus.
Increased the Lucky Hit chance for the Meteor Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Finally, there’s a host of tweaks to various aspects of the game, such as the UI and monster combat behaviour. Head over to the full post if you’d like to read all the details.
What do you make of these changes? Have they made you more excited in the build-up to launch? What other final nips and tucks do you think Diablo 4 could do with before launch?
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