I ended up playing a few more rounds of Diablo 4 Season 11 since the goblin event last for another day or two more. During that time, I created a new Rogue using Dance of Knives with Poison Trap and reworked my Necromancer as well as finish up my Hydra Sorcerer and leveled the glyphs up for my Evade Spiritborn. Given that I went through this process and a few more upgrades, I decided to put some thoughts on where the class situation stands at least with Season 11.
Paladin
While I’ve only played Auradin and some of the Hammerdin build, the main takeaway is that the Paladin is considered “broken” at the moment by most people mostly because of how it’s being used to sell the expansion, similar to the Spiritborn on Vessel of Hatred’s initial release. The difference though is that the next expansion won’t be happening until late April (along with the mysterious new class) so there’s a chance that for season 12 (which will happen before the expansion launches I believe in March 10th or so) the Paladin in all likelihood will see some adjustments.
Now, I did read that there is a teaser for the 2nd class coming in February so I don’t know if the class will launch alongside season 12. If it doesn’t, then I still expect Paladin to be kept fairly strong at until the expansion is released. It would make little sense to nerf the paladin into the ground before the new class comes out and prior to the expansion. That said, I don’t think certain builds like the Auradin will be as powerful as it currently is and I have to wonder if they will end up removing the Holy Light Aura effect for the Spirit Wolves which have been the thing that really makes this build at a different level. Personally, I think Blizzard needs to steady their hand in preemptively changing the Paladin since the class was just released to avoid bad PR.
Sorcerer
While I haven’t tried the Crackling Energy build, I did read that it’s fairly powerful, possibly up there in ranks as a top build. I still can give this build a try but would prefer doing it on a fresh character rather than my Hydra Sorcerer just because I can get another spark. That said, the Hydra Sorcerer feels a lot limper compared to last season where it was one of the two top tier builds. With the change to Primordial Binding and lack of the Chaos Perk that changes this to a low life build with high resources, the Sorcerer really lost a lot of power. Other changes like to Fractured Glass have rendered other builds rather bland. I do think that the new unique Orsivane is a good one but you do lose a lot of active defenses like Frost Armor. Blizzard did mention considering an alternate way of bringing back the popular Mana Shield, which was a huge contributor to the power gain last season.
Spiritborn
Spiritborn is far from the flavor of the month now. The Evade build feels significantly weaker compared to last season. Part of that I think is how Chaos Armor allowed classes more flexibility in gearing choices. But Spiritborn are currently locked into Loyalty’s Mantle, Wushe Ne Pak and Band of the First Breath. Loyalty’s Mantle is one that hits hard too since we cannot use Helm of Perdition in that slot. The only way to gain that back is through getting the right Sanctification. But chances for getting a solid Ancestral Loyalty’s Mantle and landing the right Sanctification is pretty small. As a result, a good chunk of power is missing.
Barbarian
While I read Hammer of the Ancients is quite strong, I remain steadfast with the good old Whirlwind/EQ build. Again like the Spiritborn, the Barbarian’s need for Mantle of Mountain’s Fury goes into competition against Shroud of False Death. But the real problem is that I see more build guides calling for Vehement Brawler and either Call of the Ancients or Wrath of the Berserker where your burst damage comes from an Ultimate. And at least for me I feel that I’m mostly hitting like a wet noodle most of the time especially against Elites and Bosses unless I can get my Ultimate cooldown lined up. That kinda sucks. I did end up crafting a Grandfather so my damage was boosted. But getting consistently good damage compared to my Paladin at least for this season felt terrible.
Druid
There’s really just two builds at the moment: Raven Companion and Pulverize. Raven Companion was the one I wanted to try but could not get the gear and decided to swap to Pulverize. Pulverize physically feels awful especially in the Pit because it’s slow and at times not seemingly doing any damage. I can’t tell if that’s because of a lack of Overpower but the core issue is the massive nerf to Grizzly Rage’s cooldown. I don’t know which idiot did this but this was a really awful decision. Cooldown management in this game is absolutely wretched and trying to deal with the mob spam that happens in the Pit while keeping your eye on your cooldowns isn’t fun. I’m glad I got to play Pulverize with the Rotting Lightbringer but in general, Pulverize just hurt my hands to the point where I couldn’t wait to be done with this character. I would have done Ravens again if we had the Chaos Perk that changed companion skills into core skills. So this was another class that suffered from the removal of Chaos Perks.
Rogue
I have to admit that I liked playing Dance of Knives in this current iteration vs my first time through. It’s a lot smooth now but most of the awkwardness in the build comes in fighting bosses. The cooldown management is better since traps have lower CD than other builds. But when you get into a boss fight it gets very sketchy. I thought about swapping to Death Trap but that one looks like even worse cooldown management, which I despise. Oddly, the Rogue generally played better in the Pit than the Druid for me.
Necromancer
This used to be one of my favorite classes. Now, it’s my absolute bottom tier class. Necromancer Minions are in a really awful place. The Golemancer build I managed to make work well enough. But it’s just too damn slow. The AI really kills most of the Necromancer builds for me. But as a flavor, there’s almost no choice anymore since there’s only two viable builds with skeleton archmages and the three golems. There are no real “hybrid” type of builds for minions since it’s better to sacrifice them and how the key uniques support one type. One of the best old items in the game of Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul is bottom tier because it doesn’t have any real damage multipliers or boost.
Also, I tried Blood Wave and like before, I found this build to be terribly awkward. The positioning aspect is just wretched but worse yet the fact that you have to pick up Blood Orbs manually to reduce the awful cooldown on Blood Wave. That aspect feels like utter trash in the Pit where there’s so much explosions and effects on the ground that running over old spots seem like a risk. I haven’t tried other builds and at this point I have no desire to.
Conclusions
The biggest issues I see with classes are with the Pit and bosses especially at T4 or high Pits. I’m guessing that the people over at Blizzard feel that most classes (except the Paladin) are where they should be since this season, very few feel as good compared to the Paladin. I’m certain a huge part of this is that the “aspirational content” aspect of T4 is determined from the potential power gain from Sanctification. Now, I would be in favor of this except that the main issue is the same one plaguing the game: lack of end game content.
I don’t mind a grind but I get bored out of my mind doing the same thing. Most of the time I feel I’m either in Helltides or in Dungeons. I rarely feel motivated to do Undercity, the Pit, Bosses or even Inferno Hordes outside of my Paladin just because none of the builds in T4 feels as smooth. I do not wish to refarm on T3 bosses when the ancestral and mythic gear drops are really low. And even goblin dungeons aren’t motivating because of how much garbage loot is produced.
I will say that the Pit in its current stage is awful to any click heavy builds, especially those that sacrifice movement and defense skills and/or have heavy cooldown dependent abilities. While I don’t disagree about increasing the general difficulty, I think the way it was done is terrible. I just feel that everything has become visual clutter and that you’re constantly being chased or pursuing some timed goal. I like neither situation and don’t like the way the game is going. Some people call this more akin to a mobile arcade type of game. But I still think the most fun I have with the game is the early progression. The end game suffers far too much because none of the classes are well balanced and the content is highly repetitive. I have a feeling none of these scenarios will change anytime soon and that Blizzard will end up doubling down in this direction, which I think is a huge mistake.
What I do hope for is that this “de-empowerment” effect is related to adding more power once the expansion comes out. I don’t know if we’ll continue to see these eight levels of difficulty along with the Pit. I think for now it’s fine just because we have one more season before the expansion. But it’s unknown what new things will come in the next season that aren’t as bland like these Divine Gifts. At least if the dates are accurate and March 10th will start the new season, that will imply the expansion will be aligned in terms of the release with the ongoing season. But there’s probably a lot of feedback from all the current changes which hopefully will influence the next season before it hits.
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