Blizzard has announced an upcoming campfire chat on February 29th, which involves the upcoming gauntlet/leaderboards, balance changes and “loodthirsty powers set(ting) to make their return.” While I’m certain some of the more hardcore loyalists will be returning to participate in the gauntlet/leaderboards aspect, I have high doubts that these parts of the game will set the world of esports on fire. Already, the gauntlet/leaderboards features had been delayed for whatever reason so with the other major part being balance changes coming down the pike, my gut instinct tells me these things are related.
Before I talk more about the gauntlet/leaderboard part, I want to address the only real section that piqued my interest: the return of the vampire powers. Now, it’s tough to say how this will be implemented. Because it’s Blizzard, my guess is that they’ll simply turn this into a unique item farming thing since they already established a similar pattern with the Malignant rings. But my hope is that Blizzard is smart enough to realize that the content of the season specific vampire areas along with the way the vampire powers were implemented made season 2 a lot of fun. I have said in the past that the best ways they can implement this feature is by putting the returning seasonal power into a timed event similar to World Bosses. In that manner, you don’t inflate a feature that’s effectively going into the core of the system and has the ability to seemingly cause an imbalance of power. Instead, what you’re doing is diversifying the available content once it’s proven to be successful as both increasing activities as well as inching up power creep.
In this case, I don’t think the power creep is bad when you put s2 content in parallel with the s3 content. The Construct companion, while a nice addition, just isn’t interesting enough on its own no does quite enough to really make a character feel that powerful. Yes, there are people out there who have solo killed uber bosses with the Construct using specific builds but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a great thing nor more importantly any fun. And quite frankly, I don’t want them to overthink as per Blizzard’s usual problematic behavior when the s2 system was fine as is.
The other thing is that if they just decide to move the vampire powers into items, then it’s a really stupid and lazy move. You’re just forcing players to go out and hope RNG fancies them. But it’s such a horrible and thoughtless way of handling content. Right now, the game is in a very bad state overall compared to other games where the game developers are far more generous. And a huge problem of Diablo 4 is that simply there’s just not enough to do in the game to retain players. Item hunts on their own aren’t for everyone and that aspect leads to quick burn out. The game simply needs more activities to keep people engaged, even if it means at the expense of game balance. That’s how sorry of a state this game is in currently. And Blizzard, in their monolithic, mega corporate structure, just are incapable of competing with the speed of smaller companies (which is ironic when you think about it).
Now, if the vampire powers make a return in a slightly nerfed state but we get to acquire them in a similar fashion as s2 without too many crazy class/item changes, then I’m totally fine with that. I want my characters to be more interesting by having complimentary powers that exist beyond Aspects, Uniques and the Construct companion. If this helps diversify the build pool by giving a new layer so that other builds can shine, great. That’s exactly what the game needs. For instance, I’m running a Minion build right now on my latest Necromancer. There’s not a lot of interesting options for handling this build but the way I’ve got it set up uses Sever as a damaging ability. I know there’s another Necromancer build that effectively removes any core skill, etc. and replaces them with stuff like Bone Storm and Blood Mist. But to get to that stage you need very specific gear and probably will end up sacrificing either damage, AoE, or defense. Just adding Metamorphosis back into the mix to give Evade the ability for Unstoppable alone adds a lot to this build. But I shouldn’t have to sacrifice say my boots for some dumb unique that I can’t customize just to get Metamorphosis. That isn’t interesting and just shrinks an already limited pool rather than opening it up to customization based on player preference.
Going back to the gauntlet/leaderboard thing, I honestly hope that Blizzard doesn’t fuck this up where they try to balance every single skill. I’m guessing that the delay occurred because Blizzard is incapable of balancing things out and probably wanted to avoid another Abatoir of Zir situation where only 1-2 builds dominate. I know Blizzard is desperate for positive PR amidst their continuing downward spiral as a game company and they cling onto the hope that they can capture the attention of fans through esports. But there’s no real demand for this kind of thing. I get that some streamers enjoy doing stuff like races in PoE but the whole idea of esports should really just remain a community run thing rather than a corporate initiative. It feels that when Blizzard tries to involve esports into the mix, the entire game ends up getting ruined because they’re too fearful that one thing will end up being better than another and the net result is everything being mediocre. Abatoir of Zir should’ve been a huge warning to Blizzard that this path is wrong and that they should just focus on developing more activities in the game rather than areas like PVP that are desired by a tiny minority. And they should just give up in that type of thing rather than force it. It’s simply a massive waste of time on everyone’s part.
Now, that my rant for the upcoming campfire talk is done, I want to switch gears a bit just to what I’ve been doing in the game lately. I still haven’t given up just yet. I did recently get my Druid to level 100 and ended up pausing him because I simply haven’t been able to obtain a Tempest Roar (unlike last season which is truly frustrating). So I was trying to level my Barbarian up and got her to WT4 before stopping (because I swapped back to my Druid).
After that, I started playing a Necromancer just for fun. I ended up doing a weird hybrid Minion – Sever build. So far for leveling, I found it to be fun. All the bosses have been easy with this build and the only problems have been clear speed and AoE. I think for now, I might just end up sticking with this build, at least until WT4. The nice thing about Sever and this build is that you can get the two main uniques (Sacrilegious Ring and boots) in WT3. The main issue I have with this build is that your defense is mostly passive through your golem. And your minions are very squishy. I know there’s an aspect that helps with damage reduction on your minions so my plan has been to go with a shield (once I find a good sacred one) and see if I can put that aspect on the shield.
But eventually, I’ll probably transition into a pure Sever build. I know Bone Spear is still strong and apparently this season you obtain the Exposed Flesh aspect along the way in your Codex. So I could further transition the build in WT4 to Bone Spear. But it really depends on the gear I find. The WT4 minion ring feels as though it’ll come too late whereas pure Sever feels easier to assemble. But S3 is all about distance and AoE so we’ll see how this build develops.
The Barbarian with Upheaval is a lot of fun but I really think I need to push her more. I’m finding that Charge isn’t a great ability outside of AoE clearing for Vaults. Against bosses though, Charge really sucks. I don’t think you really do any damage at all with it against a boss. Sometimes, I’ll hit Charge head on and not see happen. But again, for something like Vaults, Charge and Upheaval are great abilities. But I’m considering swapping back to HotA if I manage to get some decent gear. My Sorc is decent but too squishy this season. Damage ramp up time takes too long against bosses compared to S2. However, I think HotA still does quite well once you get basic gear. And even Upheaval’s single target doesn’t seem bad. Just the wind up takes so long to finish. The real question to me is how Upheaval will perform against single target once I manage to obtain a Hellhammer. My barbarian is still trying to get better gear so I might have to wait for that.
Then there’s the possibility of running a Rogue. The one build I am interested in is Penetrating Shot. I don’t think this is a good build to level with. But I think once you get some decent gear/aspects, the build is much better. I have heard that Twisting Blade is in a terrible state after Blizzard unmercifully nerfed it. So without a really good go-to Rogue build right now, my motivation for playing one is quite low. That being said, I am hoping that if/when the vampire powers return, if they do as they been used in S2, then it might be worth trying a Rogue. Until that’s confirmed in terms of implementation, I’m going to just continue working on my two other characters.
I will say as part of my concluding thoughts here that if this campfire talk ends up being a major disappointment (and the likelihood at this stage is very high), I would consider just dropping Diablo 4 altogether and giving either Baldur’s Gate 3 or Last Epoch a try. I have been watching streamers play Last Epoch and heard mixed reviews. I do know that the live servers have problems and that the team has been working hard on fixing them. But the silver lining is that Last Epoch has an actual offline mode (how about that!) so I might have to look into that if Diablo 4 just ends up shooting itself in the foot because of Blizzard’s incompetence and my diminishing faith in that company.