Yesterday, the Blizzard Diablo 4 team went into more depth about the new changes and posted a blog post with some minor patch notes. Maybe the biggest reveal (for me at least) was that the Lord of Hatred expansion will be launched not on the 28th as per the website but the 27th at 4pm PST (that is for myself who lives in their timezone). On top of that, the new season itself will launch at 4:30pm the same day. The previous day or two I believe had the full NDA removed so various news outlets and channels were finally able to unveil as much changes as they could without spoiling key pieces. In my case, I’m not that interested in the story to begin just because Vessel of Hatred was a horrible let down with god awful writing and never ending dialog banter. That said, I still am pretty much mentally consumed with the massive amounts of information being dropped, which continues to update as new things are discovered here and there. In that sense, I wanted to not go into the specifics but provide my overall current view of the game and where I stand.
I suppose the best way to start is to describe my mental state towards the game. I think because of how the Pre-Release with the Paladin debut a few months back was such a huge deal, much of my enthusiasm had died down especially with what I felt would be a disappointing Season 12. In turn, I decided to avoid burn out by the time Lord of Hatred and the Season 13 (whatever that would be) arrived so I could start with an open mind and feel a real need to go hard once the game dropped. Along the way especially with this past month where small tidbits of info had been dropping once a week, I think that my interest has slowly started increasing as well as some initial disgust possibly due to what I perceived as a negative reception towards this current season 12. However, the past few days’ various reveals now has hooked me especially as my patience has been dwindling; I just want to play the goddamn game already man!
At any rate, the bottom line for me is that I am approaching all of this with cautious optimism. The general new changes look reasonable and I know going into the expansion that no matter what, the game will be changing. It’s similar to Season 4 where Itemization 2.0 came about and the game had changed. The difference is that Season 4 did not provide much additional content beyond the Itemization because of how drastic of a change that was. The main seasonal piece was the Mindcage and revamped Helltides, if I recall properly. I think it was one of the better received seasons in that the Itemization overhaul was so big of a change that you almost had a brand new game. Not only that but those changes would be baked into the core. Because Blizzard effectively revamped all the classes, you were forced to change the style of game play to a degree.
Despite that, in retrospect those changes were simply not enough and that they continued to rework those systems even up until this current point. The Lord of Hatred expansion to me mostly looks like a combination of taking previous content and refining all their lessons since season 4 in producing this new expansion. The only real new things we’re getting if you want to be honest are the new zone, charms/talisman/seals, some new items, the skill tree revamp, Horadric Cube, fishing and Echoing Hatred (which is just an imported Echoing Nightmares minus the gem you get at the end for augmentation). The modifiers from War Plans look like stuff we’ve encountered before or maybe through events. But I think all those previous seasons will see some form of a comeback here such as Chaos Rifts. But in general most of the content you’re interacting with will remain the same.
Where my doubts mostly come from are in progression and balance. One of my frustrations in the Diablo 3-4 series is how drops work because of the wide disparity that came through increasing number of Torments. When I saw how Torments are changing in terms of their target audience and rewards, I felt that we might see Stingy Blizzard make a return. Now, I do get that there needs to be a better progress system for loot so the power increase doesn’t happen all at once or not at all. But I’m afraid that due to being at the mercy of RNGesus and the difficulty level, you might get blocked because you’re missing something key whether it’s a tempering recipe, an aspect, unique, etc. And when progress feels artificially impaired because of RNG, then that’s usually when a game takes a massive shit in your mouth.
The balance portion comes in where Blizzard traditionally has an impossible time figuring out how to tune their numbers. The biggest issue has been the multiplier game. The best way I can describe this scenario is the difference between slicing through air and worsening ones carpal tunnel syndrome. I saw how in S12 they pushed some lair bosses to a much higher torment because of a special upgrade that would cause one to take 20+ minutes to finish a boss. To me that’s just stupidity in action because the dick swung in the other direction. I think a scenario like this is fine if you only have to do a boss like this once where there’s no real reward except some form of recognition. But no one in their right mind would want to farm something like this. It’s not challenging, just tedious and a complete waste of time.
So it’s hard to say without actually playing how all these systems will end up working. Most of the reviews I’ve seen or read seem written by a bunch of jobbers that aren’t heavily invested into the game nor do any credible theorycrafting. Maybe that’s a good thing though because you need to have a middle ground in establishing a baseline for what will become the average player to setup your difficulty. In my case, I think I’m slightly above average but not at the level of a hardcore theorycrafter. So I won’t be the type who will be doing 20+ minute boss fights if I see them. But I should be able to get far enough with an established meta build to do well on my own.
That said, let’s talk about my plans for the launch. I’ve already downloaded the patch which took all night (thank god they released all that already). And I originally said I was planning to do a Warlock on launch. However, I think the main issue for me is that after looking at their skill tree, I really have no idea what to do with the class. That said, both the Hydra Sorcerer and Companion Druid have really caught my eye. Because every class will see a revamp, nothing will feel the same and all previous builds will become null and void. In the case of the Hydra Sorcerer, I’ve seen the Frost variant and the revised Fractured Winterglass might turn this build into something quite fun to play. Likewise, the Companion druid will be getting a Talisman set that are Bear focused so that one looks like a lot of fun to try.
No matter what though, I’m sure I’ll just fly through the LoH campaign and skip as much dialog and non-cinematic cut scenes as possible while intermixing my progress with the actual seasonal content. Because I am fairly comfortable with the Hydra sorcerer, I’ll probably just go in that direction as my starter. Also, since the new area needs to be uncovered, I won’t have immediate access to any new dungeons which may have Warlock aspects (unless they decided to change that part too from dungeons). Usually, unlocking a few key aspects early on as well as some strongholds help in giving you some early legendary powers as well as tempering recipes. I haven’t heard of any new Mercenaries either so the only real reason to push the new content is to gain access to the Horadric Cube and unlocking the talisman feature (which I suspect both will sit in Skovos or some campaign quest along the way). Also, I think War Plans are more of an end game activity, so you’ll probably want to hit level 70 to get access to them. But they might also be part of the campaign quest.
From what I heard though about the season, there won’t be any additional content just because the amount of changes are vast and they want to focus players on the new stuff. I am disappointed we won’t have something like the Realm Walker but that might be a moot point depending on how War Plans are implemented. If they did their homework right, War Plans might make seasons a moot point in the future. Or at least they’ll be added to War Plans if a season ends up being a success, I believe. The one thing that will be annoying are the Capstone Dungeons. I didn’t check if they still were a necessity for S12 but they were a definite impediment in S11. I imagine that they’ll block progress for the season journey so you’ll probably want to get those out of the way even while in Skovos.
Beyond the campaign itself, I am very interested in seeing the changes to the systems. The big thing the Blizzard developers are proclaiming is build diversity. Beyond the skill tree revamp and Talisman, the other major things are Paragon, Unique and Aspect revamps. I did see that Uniques can have their aspects rerolled so in effect we’ll be seeing a similar effect to Chaos Armor. I heard the main method for handling this change is through using the Horadric Cube. Also, I don’t think we’ll be seeing static stats on Uniques like we do now. But it does make me question what the purpose is for Uniques vs Aspects. I suppose the main thing would be more build enabling whereas Aspects can be imprinted. So that portion is going to be odd conceptually to me because it simply makes Uniques feel less Unique.
However, I did read we will be able to Temper Uniques and Mythics. There might be one other thing (besides Transfiguration) to Uniques and Mythics but the idea of adding Tempering to Uniques and Mythics is interesting. I think the goal here is to have less competition for BiS situations since Tempering offers some critical stats. But it does make some Mythics seem more useful like a Tyrael’s Might with +maximum life as an example. I still hope to see double tempering return but I haven’t heard about that yet.
Masterworking sounds like it will remain the same but nothing has been mentioned for Enchanting. A lot of the Enchanting portion seems to be replaced using the Horadric’s Cube. Quite honestly, I’d love to see them just ditch the D3 implementation of Enchanting altogether. I hated sitting around clicking on a button and hoping that the thing I need would appear. There’s going to be more focused crafting so that should replace Enchanting for a lot of cases (well as long as one has the materials). They got rid of Elixirs and Incense, which I think is a great thing but it makes me wonder what will happen to Mining and Herb nodes in the open world. I did mention these old parts of the game in a previous blog but I think most of the crafting material is getting replaced. So neither would be useful except possibly mining for gems.
Going back to the classes, I have to say that I would like to try at least the Sorcerer, Druid, Necromancer, Barbarian and Warlock this season. The Rogue hasn’t been fun for me for a while and Spiritborn was really weak the last time I played it. I might give Paladin another go but it’s not a priority since I want to eventually experiment with a Warlock once a few build guides go live with that. I think I can get away enough with Sorcerer, Druid, Barbarian and Necromancer on my own initially without having to deal with the old passive skills and being able to focus on the various flavors of a build and finding the right aspect and uniques to boost their potential.
Beyond that I think I’m just going to need to be patient. It’s going to be a long weekend…
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