Before going into Diablo 4 itself, I want to talk about myself as a gamer who enjoys the general RPG genre. I fell in love with RPGs partly with games like The Bard’s Tale (especially 2 & 3), followed up by Ultima 3-6, Wizardry, Might and Magic and the gold box series for the classic SSI Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I had spent grueling days, weekends and years grinding out XP to get my characters into an ultra powerful state where the game felt mostly easy to me. The most satisfying aspects was seeing my characters going from zero to hero with a meaningful progression system that rewarded you with time well spent.

Many of those old games I mentioned had their set of issues too usually caused by bad luck (RNG) or possibly very poor design. For instance, Ultima 3 had a very interesting character creation system where you could have hybrid classes that would split their core abilities in half if the class shared an ability with another class. But you get feel gimped out such as a Druid who could only reach 49 spell points, thus disallowing them higher levels of power and making them feel pointless to bring along. Or Might and Magic 2 suffered from very poor early game balance where even at the lowest difficulties a single encounter could wipe out your party because the game would allow for too many enemies while your party possessed little to no gold, gear and being of too low level/bad attributes. Then you would have a game like Wizardry 6 where the character creation process was nonsensically ass backwards in forcing you to spend hours just to roll up a single character because of how poorly conceived the workflow was.

Usually though, once you got over a certain hump, these games mostly were enjoyable. At the same time, even with their flaws, those games generally had no way of a system level update so you were stuck with any bugs that weren’t caught in QA and got shipped. Maybe later on the community might add patches in a few cases but generally those games remain nearly the same as they were originally conceived.

In a contemporary live service game like Diablo 4, you can expect that the game will see changes both good and bad, depending on how much the company wants to invest in the product. With Diablo 4 though, I have found that because it is a recent game with a ton of funding and eyes internally hoping for its continued success that the game itself is highly unstable. This situation can be good and very frustrating at the same time. Before talking about the frequent annoying changes, I want to walk through the burn out pattern I’ve encountered with Diablo 4.

A fresh season in Diablo 4 is fun for roughly the first week. Having a completely new character with the season journey incomplete and plenty of discovery/new things to conquer. Sometimes such as in Season 13, the top builds aren’t as fleshed out so there’s some freedom if you start the season early. If you haven’t played the game in some time (like a season or two), most likely there should be more changes that go into core especially as the player base have been calling for more permanent additions, which we’ve seen such as the new Nightmare Dungeons and bosses.

With everything reset like Mercenaries, your Paragon Board, stash space, etc. there’s more motivation to push forward as there’s plenty of clear goals in sight. During the early part of the season (the first few days), it might be frustrating as one starts to assemble a build. If by any chance any build guides exist by this point, then trying to structure ones build close can get you near the higher difficulties but not necessarily at the end game where you’re farming the highest tiers (unless you have help or know of a broken situation). Sometimes you can get supremely unlucky choosing the wrong class/build and need to start almost from scratch either by abandoning your current gear setup and/or ditch your character entirely for something else. At this early stage, that scenario isn’t horrible because there is generally a path forward as more builds come online and the meta starts to solidify (especially meta builds that rely on low hanging fruit type of solutions).

Where the game starts to taper off is when the progression slows to a near stop and you’re optimizing low percentiles for minor gains. Trying to get perfect Enchanting rolls, upgrading Aspects for the final levels, getting the highest value from Unique powers, etc. does not excite me much compared to the larger gains in the earlier stages of the game. Part of it is that the rarity in getting an upgrade like this relative to the power gain is to tiny that there’s not much to really excite. It’s a different feeling when, for instance, you find a 5th charm that unlocks the high end of your build. There’s a similar feeling with the whole +5 main stat meme/joke from Diablo 3; you can continue grinding indefinitely but it’s not exciting anymore.

Usually by this point, I might start up another character (if I haven’t already). Part of my alt-a-holicism is that I tend to reach a stage where the progression slows to a halt. Maybe the character I have feels stale. Generally, when this occurs, I think it’s because the routine no longer is fun or I want to see how other styles affect the environment for the character. This doesn’t exist only in Diablo 4 nor ARPGs but across RPGs and other games like this where the game to me is how I can alter the environment. When I say environment, I don’t mean having a mage that cast fireballs at flammable objects and watching things burn asunder. I mean the state of the game such as how one style can be altered because of the switch to a different character. An example of this is how I started with a Static Charge Blizzard Sorcerer that moved really slow but could demolish zones then swapped to a Companion Druid build for this current season, which moved fairly quickly and only required me to hit my cooldowns.

While gearing up those two characters, there was a certain level of excitement as I familiarized myself with the new systems from the expansion. Everyone was learning and the game was still changing (such as bugs that affected certain builds). From there, I would go on to create a Whirlwind Barbarian, which turned out to be my best character of the season, a Dance of Knives Rogue, an Apocalypse Warlock and eventually a Zeal Paladin. Leveling each character was fun mostly because they had their own play styles, although I was quite familiar with a few. But part of the motivation was seeing how certain builds changed like the Dance of Knives Rogue which no longer relied on traps compared to previous seasons or the Whirlwind Barbarian which now could use Dust Devils without the Aspect.

There was a major problem though in each of these cases. The issue was dealing with gearing especially in later stages and the funnel that became repetitive really quickly. While the new Horadric Cube does offer a massive improvement compared to previous types of crafting with more focus on being able to get the affixes you want, you end up dealing with heavy RNG to the point where a lot of times you feel like you go backwards. Transfiguration probably is the most endemic of this issue where a situation similar to Sanctification could occur. Unlike Sanctification though, the risk:reward structure in Transfiguration feels awful. Sanctification had bad outcomes too but it was partly mitigated by Ancestral Uniques and Mythics which could avoid the really bad outcomes. And the super rare multi Transfiguration outcome is simply that, too rare. In the case of Sanctification, the reward aspect was much higher because you could get Mythic aspects on gear, which could double the effect of certain ones (like double Ring of the Starless Sky). That made Sanctification exciting even though the other aspects of that season were in truth quite bland.

Then with War Plans, the start of doing these feels fresh because it’s new. But once you realize that you have almost no control over the layouts of the plans themselves and that you’re limited to rerolls, then the situation really stinks. You only have a very select few number of activities at your disposal and a very small number of modifications that you can obtain only after spending a very long time grinding on a single character. And when you want to switch things up, the cost is quite high so you just end up grinding even more.

But these are not progressive systems in my book. These are gambling systems where the game has quadrupled down at almost all levels in its over-reliance on RNG. The problem is that RNG becomes a substitute for original content by forcing the player to go through a system of regurgitation. You may hear me frequently belittle this situation things like fake carrot on a stick, the hamster wheel trap, bozosort, etc. But it really boils down to not respecting the players’ time for as little effort as possible.

The thing to me is becoming self-aware once this condition gets problematic. Usually, I end up feeling physically ill whether it’s from carpal tunnel, mental reluctance/lack of enthusiasm and sometimes straight out anger with a vile green sensation erupting from my belly. That’s the point where I know I’m becoming burnt out because the system is no longer fun and I’m simply in this horrible loop where I can no longer move forward. Worse yet I can move backwards with poorly conceived systems like Transfiguration.

There are going to be pundits who try to defend this system. My belief is that those people aren’t real experts on this type of thing but actually have an undiagnosed gambling addiction. I’ve seen people on stream who really believe in the RNG system where they tie the long grind to this unattainable thing. They get high once they reach this pinnacle and continue seeking this euphoric state much like a drug user seeking out a new high. They can’t admit that they have a major issue and use any excuse to defend their state of mind.

For myself, I don’t get the endorphin rush in the same manner. I am not addicted to that type of thing since the addiction for me is the satisfaction of actual growth as a result of the effort I put in. What hampers that sensation is the opposite for me where failure simply puts me into that opposite state where I feel sick as I mentioned. Once that happens, the only way I can heal myself is by stepping back for a long period.

With regards to Blizzard’s game, I already knew of this social engineering type of design because it’s the same problem I had with World of Warcraft. I recognized that issue with the way gear was provided as a kind of gateway drug to staying in the game. When you could obtain the gear, there was an immediate rush of satisfaction. However, the way they introduced gearing for the end game is where the poison lie in connecting it to some RNG mechanism where week-in and week-out you were forced into the proverbial hamster wheel. If you were lucky, you could get out. And if you were really lucky, you managed to get everything you needed. But once that happened, there really wasn’t as much incentive to do those operations (at least for me). It’s basically an ass backwards system.

So with the way the game is moving, it feels like various design philosophies have gone into Diablo 4 where at some point, the game loses the novelty. In this latest iteration, the RNG crafting is basically salt over the wounds. I think if there was some QoL attached where the workflow wasn’t bad, then I wouldn’t mind as much. I have to refer to Torchlight: Infinite where their crafting system is more modern. You might be forced to grind more if you can’t get the thing you need at the moment, but at least you’re not enslaved to a bad UI/UX workflow.

I once said that Diablo 4 would improve if they removed RNG from crafting and now War Plans as the mechanism that controls how you play. I don’t mind the target farming for materials; my belief is that once you find the materials, you should be rewarded for that instead of adding on another level of silliness. Again, the crafting aspect itself wouldn’t be bad if the workflow management wasn’t so god awful and very “engineer-y” (to paraphrase how the VC woman from Silicon Valley described an app that the Pied Piper gang made in a later season).

Then there’s the other problem when it comes to live service games: instability. No piece of software is completely bug free. However, Diablo 4’s constant systems changes with the nerfs/buffs are insufferable. Because of the multiplier issue, there’s zero chance this game will ever be balanced because the mathematics are too complex and out of control to be properly tested.  At the same time, when you see the patch notes for Season 14 come in and it’s basically a decimation of all these builds, you have to wonder what’s the point? Eventually, the developers are going to update things all over again. But this cycle never ends. You think that they take one step forward but move 50 steps backward. I really don’t get it at this point. I personally think some people in the company figured out how to create job stability for themselves in doing the absolute lowest effort possible and this is the “content” the players receive. Then you compare this to other companies that can dish out a ton of content with smaller teams and less money and you have to wonder what’s going on.

At either rate, the main purpose behind this blog was trying to get a better understanding for myself on what’s going on and why I feel unmotivated to play as well as this negative cloud hanging over my head anytime I look over at this game. I just feel so disappointed all the time and it’s impossible to feel any enthusiasm because the game just keeps going around in this endless circle and doesn’t really improve by much. I’m honestly surprised that they managed to get something like War Plans and the Horadric Cube out. Neither looked special from a development point of view but I’m guessing that the itemization on the backend with all the tools that have been created for their game designers must have some truly terrible code behind them because it feels like a ton of stuff got refactored. The problem is that even if it makes the people’s lives in the company easier, it does little for the player base at large.

The post Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred: Self-Analysis/Reflection on Game Burnout appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

First, why do Zeal? It’s a decent leveling build (which you can find here) where you can transition from a starter to end game. Most of the basic skills are the same which means there’s not much else to learn once you hit level 70. If you’ve played Diablo 3, the build will remind you of the Roland’s Sweep build where you quickly blast everything around you. Like the Roland’s set build, this build also increases your attack (cast) speed when you employ the new Cathan’s Dauntless Faith Charm set where the two set bonus causes your Zealot (Zeal) skills to give you a Do or Die effect. This effect stacks and boost your Critical Strike Damage and Attack Speed up to 25 times.

Along with the Do or Die effect, the 3 set bonus triggers your Rally skill at maximum stacks once every 6 seconds. Because of this autocast effect, you don’t need to put Rally on your action bar but will want to place points into it because it helps with your movement speed, gives you Unhindered and triggers other Justice skills, which we will talk about in a moment. Then the 5 piece bonus increases your Zealot damage as well as stores an Afterimage effect for every 5 stacks of Do or Die that gets spawned when you move. So it’s a like a Shadow Clone that you leave behind after attacking.

The other major component to the Zeal build is a unique 2-handed sword called Red Sermon. Besides increasing your Zeal damage (which is the main reason to get this item), you also gain the Death or Glory variant for free, which means you’ll have two variants for Zeal. Death or Glory causes Zeal to do a full circle attack, uses 10% of your Maximum Life instead of Faith as a cost in exchange for increasing your Critical Hit Chance and Zeal’s damage. Besides Death of Glory, the build uses Zealot’s Legacy which attacks randomly and striking 4 additional times. Also, you pick up Additional Strikes, which gives you 2 more attacks and Weaken, which makes Zeal a fast attack.

To mitigate some of the life sacrifice from Death or Glory, you take Endurant Faith to spread the damage out, Defiance Aura to get passive healing and stand in Consecration for a little more active healing. In general, I’ve found that as long as you’re not just spam casting Zeal endlessly, the amount of life removed is negligible and can be topped off quickly. The build guide I use doesn’t do anything extra like add Life on Hit or Life on Kill but I imagine that you can effectively become quite a powerhouse in splitting some defense by using either type of mitigation.

Most of the defense here comes from Resolve stacking. The guide has you take Resolve on the amulet, helmet, chest and leg pieces and applying the Glynn’s Anvil aspect on one of the three armor pieces. Then you start building Resolve stacks early on by using Fortress. Since you can masterwork Resolve and get GA’s on it, you try to go for +12 on those pieces to get 48 points in Resolve on gear. I will have comments later on regarding Resolve stacking but it pretty much is the primary way to build defenses here.

Now, one of the cool things that happens with the way Rally works along with the 3 piece bonus from Cathan’s Dauntless Faith Charm is that it gets periodically autocast. When that happens and you choose the Words of Inspiration variant, Rally expends all available charges (which is up to 3) that causes your Justice skill cooldowns to be reduced by 3 seconds per Charge. Since we don’t have Rally on the action bar, you’re effectively able to lay down Consecration once every 2-3 seconds or so.

For mobility, you use Falling Star and employ the Igni + Ceh Runeword for using Spirit Wolves to apply Vulnerability to reduce the cooldown. The rest of your mobility comes from raw movement speed placed on your boots. But with Rally being up most of the time, you shouldn’t have many issues getting around. Also, while the guide suggest Cir + Vex for your other Runeword choice, I think it’s a bit of an overkill. Instead, I prefer Bac + Que for keeping up a Barrier for the extra defense. Movement really isn’t an issue on this build and you can get more skill points from your Charms. But having another layer of defense in sketchy moments I think is worth it for melee builds.

The biggest issue I’ve found in terms of the play style was the tiny pause when you cast Zeal. Because this ability is in melee range, certain mob on death effects like Executioner make the scenario dubious. I generally keep an Evade charge handy just to dodge quickly. Falling Star helps out with this too. That’s also why I prefer Bac + Que because I don’t want to rely on Resolve stacking or Fortress.

Another issue I had with this build (guide) was the emphasis on Critical Strike Damage, Vulnerability, Attack Speed and Physical Damage affixes/multipliers. I think because you get your Critical Hit chance from Helm of Perdition, Fanaticism Aura and Death or Glory via Red Sermon, you avoid having Critical Hit chance on your gear (except as a Temper on your weapon). But it does make these ideal stats very hard to obtain, which is really annoying and has me question the end game crafting and gearing system.

Before I dive into some overarching concerns I have with the end game systems, let me finalize a few thoughts on the Zeal Paladin build. First, it’s a decent build that does pretty good boss damage, which generally is my concern as I take a character into the end game. AoE-wise, it’s not great because of the range factor. The Afterimage effect seems cool in concept but most of the time you’re leaping/moving to the next pack of mobs so if the intent was to leave behind a clone to attack, it doesn’t feel effective. Maybe this style of play works better at higher difficulties but it doesn’t solve the problem of how you’re forced to move forward most of the time.

I did like the ideas of the combining synergies between the charm bonus, Rally, Consecration, Red Sermon and healing. The general concept is pretty cool. The Afterimage clone effect would be cool if they follow you around for a few seconds rather than be left behind. Like in the case of Whirlwind Barbarian with Tornadoes, the Tornadoes shoot outward, so stragglers can be damaged. I might have to play around with the Zeal build at higher torments to get a better feeling. Right now, my character is only at Torment 6.

That does beg the question: why am I only at Torment 6 on this character? So part of the reason I’m writing this post is to talk partly on the journey of this character not just writing on how to create a build (because someone has already done that for me). Because I have played numerous other characters in Season 13, I managed to accumulate plenty of spare gear, materials and set charms. Usually at a certain point in a season, if I’m enjoying myself, I tend to play alts especially if there’s new builds I want to try. Naturally, in Season 13, because let’s face facts and call the Lord of Hatred launch nothing more than a public PTR, the number of choices has been wide open. With the Paladin being the other newest class, I wanted to check out other builds as I only used an Auradin back in Season 11 (and leveled with a Hammerdin). Zeal was one of the top builds around and I got to see it in action which piqued my interest.

One of the advantages of having all those preexisting characters and spare gear is that it’s easy to get rolling fast. For instance, I grabbed Bac + Que and Igni + Ceh up immediately and crafted sockets on my starting gear. The difficulty mostly was in getting new Aspects to align with the build guides. Since I was pretty impatient, I used the upgrade mechanic in the cube to convert blues to rares to legendaries as well as Bartering with the Mercenaries (although I frequently run out of currency). Even with these methods, you still may not find all the key Aspects to really get the build online. So my leveling experience was more of a hybrid situation.

Also, attempting to match up the affixes on gear to the main build was a very frustrating experience (still is). Because the build guide emphasizes on almost all offensive stats, you need to get supremely lucky. Even crafting these stats in the cube isn’t a guarantee. At a certain point after burning tons of materials up, I would simply give up and find any 2-3 combos “just” enough because it was getting too expensive and painful to try and perfect the build. Even the midpoint guide used here mostly emphasized the “all damage multiplier” types, which I think is a red herring in a way. Because of having to deal with crafting, managing another Paragon board, etc., I effectively quit because I started to feel burnt out.

After giving myself a few days off, I came back and played around with this character again. One of the things you can do is that reaching Torment 1, you can convert your other set charms into your current class’ sets. Since I was aiming for Cathan’s Dauntless Faith Charm, I naturally crafted the one for the Wing Strike build and only crafted a single piece for the Zeal build. That only infuriated me into taking a few more days off to clear my head (not to mention I was upset at the upcoming Season 14/patch notes).

So finally, I decided the other day just to play normally and treat this character as an “advanced” fresh start character. Meaning, she would have some twink gear but I already had found the Red Sermon and had enough Aspects and basically gear to hit Torment 1. And to be frank, I enjoyed this part. If it weren’t for the fact that I have a kick ass Whirlwind Barbarian, I would probably enjoy playing other characters a lot more. But having a near fresh start character does give you a type of new way of progressing and it honestly doesn’t take long before you’re in at least Torment 3. The thing is that I didn’t want to push her too fast in the way some people might try going from zero to hero when you already have unlocked all the higher Pit tiers on a more powerful character. That way, I could still experience a small sense of progression on her. On top of that, getting the other set bonuses was not difficult at all.

But part of the journey was just using the existing War Plans to get through these lower torments. I could have just grinded in the Pits to push her Glyphs, etc. But you simply do not gain enough War Plan experience so you’re effectively wasting a lot of time doing any non-War Plan activity (which will be part of my upcoming criticisms to the War Plan mechanism). On a fresh character, you will want to only do War Plans so you can level them up. This does prevent you from focusing on a single activity like the Pit and you’re at the mercy of RNG for what it gives you. As a result, I would do the Pit anytime I had a chance but I still needed to do all the side activities which takes time, which left me at around Torment 6. I could easily do a higher Pit level but I like gradual progression especially because of how I didn’t obtain all the necessary glyphs.

That said, I really had wanted to play the Wing Strike build rather than Zeal. I think leveling with Zeal was a little painful and slow. At the moment, Wing Strike is considered a C grade build as per Maxroll. Also, I’ve read numerous other people describing Wing Strike being weak, awkward and not great at bosses. However, Wing Strike does offer one thing that other builds (except pure Auradin) do not: a walking simulator build.

Given this experience, the whole ordeal gave me the epiphany of how poorly structured Diablo 4 is at the moment. First, crafting is definitely in a better state if not the best state as far as any previous version of Diablo has been. But the cost and sheer RNG aspect make the situation truly a nightmare along with the horrible UI. While I do think the crafting materials are a massive step up from what they had before, the interaction with this whole system is nearly insufferable from the fact that you cannot easily pick up the materials off the ground, the tiny amounts provided, the very manual mechanisms to craft anything desirable and the depressing feeling of being letdown when you cannot get what you want. Some mentally disturbed individuals actually enjoy this system but I think those people are masochist and want carpal tunnel because that is what you will receive as your true “reward” from enduring this torturous experience.

But I think the frustrating wasn’t just this terrible flow for me. I think where the game just dies and leads to burn out is when I find myself doing this highly manual, one-by-one, type of workflow where I get nowhere. When you combine how build guides are made with the “idealistic” gear in mind and try to pair it with someone who does not want to spend their entire life inside a single game, it’s a really bad combination. I want to play the actual game and find some meaningful progression towards a goal. The RNG factor absolutely kills 90% of my desire to play this game any longer than a month when there’s a reasonable season at hand. I’m not talking about just grinding to find items, but grinding, finding the items/currency, then starting from scratch because the game has a shitty “The Price is Right” failure honk going off on you because there’s a built in gambling mechanism. It’s just not fun and more than frustrating.

Where the idealistic build guides portion start to damage the game for me is when the game allows for an insane level of multipliers and damage types on gear. For instance, in the Zeal Paladin’s case, you grab on Gloves, Rings and Amulets Critical Strike Damage, Vulnerable Damage, Physical Damage and Attack Speed. While it is good that you can obtain all these forms of damage modifiers, getting the quad-fecta version is close to impossible without spending hours maybe even days on a project. You’re effectively doing Focused Rerolls or Adding/Removing carefully, one by one. The workflow of the Cube itself is just so horrendous that you’re better off blowing your brains out with a bazooka than suffering this mind numbing, fecal waste of time. Hence, why I just started giving up once I hit 2-3 key modifiers. We’re not even talking about Greater Affixes either nor adding the perfect Temper and Masterworking, which still are all RNG based to a degree. THIS IS NOT FUN.

For me and I think a lot of ARPG players, the real fun is when you see meaningful progress and that you’re gradually getting improvements while the game opens up as well as seeing the updates which alter how you play the game. The way Diablo 4 is currently designed, you have so many impediments where the start of a new season is fine but once you get into the end game or when you start playing alts, this feeling of sameness of self-awareness of being on in a trapped hamster wheel creeps up quickly. This same feeling is the same reason I quit World of Warcraft a while back because I knew that game was horribly poisonous to my mental state. With RNG being the gatekeeper in Diablo 4, I feel like all the joy of the game gets quickly sucked out, which is why the game only last for most people a few days after the start of a season.

Another thing that I realized in playing the Zeal Paladin build is that the game is terrible for anything except walking simulators. At this point, the game requires every build to be fast, do area damage, have great single target, need high defense and a get out of jail card (outside of Evade). It’s absolutely ridiculous to have these types of requirements because it imposes a very strict type of style in place. The end result of these requirements is that the only builds worth doing are those that can either clear the entire screen at once or doing enough damage in a radius quickly while not stopping. All the builds that I’ve played that were enjoyable were speedy, did not pause for casting, had some sort of gimmicked defense and possessed a reasonable area clear. This is an absolutely stupid design.

There are two major problems in the current design of the game, which funnels players towards these types of builds. First, bosses have massive, unforgiving AoE zones and generally poor mechanics that become annoying once they phase. So you need to effectively kill the boss before they can phase. If damage reduction were actually meaningful in this game, the damage wouldn’t be so bad. You should be able to take multiple hits even at higher difficulties if you have enough Toughness. So Toughness is virtually a nonsensical, meaningless stat. The second major problem at this stage is the recent addition of on death effects. I would argue that on death effects would not be an issue IF YOU COULD SEE THEM. The game’s art design effectively make these on death effects almost unfair because they aren’t highlighted well, they conflict with the player’s abilities and the damage becomes so high that there’s almost nothing you can do. It’s one thing if the Executioner’s falling sword pushes you into a swirling poison pool that takes a portion of your health away. It’s another when you can’t even see either and just die out of nowhere.

The other massive problem is the speed in which the game has moved towards. People describe Diablo 4 as more of an arcade style game (they even have those anymore outside of Japan????). So the expectation is that everything just moves fast. When they talked about increasing the AI for monsters in higher torments a while back, we never really saw that aspect in play. I think most people were expecting better reactions from monsters, which only seem meaningful in lower level content where a player is undergeared. In higher difficulties, the only real visual thing is seeing monsters assault players must faster and shoot out a ton of damaging effects. None of these elements cause me to believe that the monsters’ AI has improved; instead, it’s just AI slop in a very literal sense. But the result of this is to force players to have increased speed in a variety of ways. It’s basically kill or be killed.

But the core overarching issue is the internal edict that the developers are here to kill the players. This was actually a highlight in a previous developer campfire. “You will die” they mentioned during Season 9, I believe when all the monsters received a massive revamp. Now, this situation would be fine IF there was compensation for the way the various systems have evolved. If Toughness was actually meaningful/useful as a clear stat to indicate how much damage you can mitigate at once, then the current systems would actually work. You wouldn’t have to use some sort of janky, gimmick like Resolve stacking or Immortal Barbarian with Selig’s to deal with a lot of the one shot stupidity.

Along with this internal edict as I’m labeling it, the various multipliers that players are allowed and almost expected to use are out of control in conjunction with the Torment and monster damage scaling problems. Many people have stated that multipliers are what is making the game ridiculous. The problem is that they aren’t really meaningful stats at the end of the day. You can’t deduce how much you ought to be doing because of the wishfully complex math involved. It would be different if say +1 skills simply meant +1 to damage or something on a reasonable level. I think part of the problem is that multipliers are the mentally ill fated mechanism that got World of Warcraft into a bad state to begin with in creating higher tier gear and making lower levels invalid when an expansion began. So this issue ended up somehow getting inherited to the Diablo franchise.

I don’t think the game as-is can easily change the multiplier situation without yet another round of monstrous refactorings from the ground up. But it is a major issue that I think has made these various builds problematic because of how it’s impossible to reliably calculate damage and defense. And to be clear, I think the only real multiplier should be on Critical Hit and nothing else and I would reserve that type of damage to a few select scenarios.

Given these situations and the upcoming Season 14, I’m not certain if I want to play at this point. I’m a bit disappointed in the state of things. I think the changes to Mythics coming up and the various balance changes don’t solve the core problems of the game. The actual builds themselves won’t change much, which leaves just the season mechanic as the only reason to play. But I might just be burnt out by the game at this stage. I think if the grind was more progressive than regressive from its RNG dependency, I would be more compelled to try more things out. But the game is still a far cry from what I would consider a true A tier level title.

The post Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred: Season 13 Zeal Paladin Build Review and Game Thoughts appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Once the event starts, you encounter waves of foes that assault you from all areas of the arena. As you go through waves, you progress from Normal to higher Torments that eventually become similar to Pit tiers. The general premise is that the feature is similar to Echoing Nightmares in Diablo 3. Unlike Echoing Nightmares, the environment isn’t as chaotic and the arena is far larger to move around. You can get various foes from the game as well as mini bosses, including one that I’ve never seen thus far. Sometimes you can encounter goblins while portals spawn in. I’m not sure what the consequence is for leaving portals alone but they flash on the mini map.

In my run, I took my Barbarian, who has been handling Torment 11 just fine. My Barbarian isn’t optimally geared and I use an Endurant Faith unique charm to bolster her survivability. In a few cases, her health did go down to some sort of poison or damage-over-time effect. I did fine up until around Pit tier 110. That’s when it became much harder to take down mobs. My hand started to hurt and I was getting bored quickly of the repetitive game play. So I simply opted to die (or as they describe it “getting overwhelmed). Once that happens, the event stops and you can resurrect then collect your loot. The loot is located in one corner with a special box. Once you open that, various additional goblin type of portals spawn, leaving goblin bags.

So let me start by addressing a comment I read on the reddit forum where the beginning difficulty should be selectable. For the most part, the developers almost verbatim copied the feature from Diablo 3 over except for the various environment effects (like constant explosions and meteors dropping from the sky). Part of that copy involved having players start at a lower tier to work their way upward. I feel like the event simply lasted forever and it took a while for new spawns to come in. Lower levels are pointless to me but probably should start at whatever Pit level you’ve conquered. The real issue is that the event takes a fair amount of time before you can arrive near the difficulty you should be playing at.

Honestly, this felt not that much different than Infernal Hordes once the event starts except you can pause momentarily in Inferno Hordes after a period. In general, the game play is nothing more than a typical gauntlet that tries your patience and endurance rather than your skill. I think once you past Pit 100 or so, the loot really doesn’t get much better. That might be a guess but you receive so many of these goblin bags that the bulk of the loot feels like garbage. The only item of note that I found was my first Mythic Seal. Luckily, it was the one that reduces set bonuses by one and had some decent affixes for my build related to berserking. The rest of the loot appeared more in quantity than quality.

But I have to ask why was this event added as an end game activity? It really doesn’t stand out in the scheme of things. The numerous goblin bags you receive at the end of the event mostly drop currency, runes and charms/seals. But you can get most of this stuff elsewhere. I think the Mythic Seal was more serendipitous than a reflection of the event itself. But the real issue is that this game mode really doesn’t mean anything compared to Echoing Nightmares. With Echoing Nightmares, you could get gems that you’d use to augment your gear so it had an actual side purpose worth doing. I probably wouldn’t have an issue of this event if it were faster or distinct from similar gauntlet style systems in the game.

Beyond that I would like to talk briefly about the Mythic Seal I found. First, I was in Torment 11 when I discovered my first Mythic Seal but I think the relevant part is conquering a Pit Tier 112 equivalent of the Echoing Hatred event. Possibly, because I hadn’t located one, the game took pity upon me. However, the Mythic Seal itself was inside one of the Goblin Loot bags where probably 20 or so had dropped at that tier of difficulty. So I think it’s a combination of things that gave me a higher chance of finding one rather than a single definitive thing.

Second, the Mythic Seal had the Ring of Royal Grandeur type of effect in reducing the requirements for Talisman sets to become active. This is probably the thing I sought the most because the effect is quite intriguing when paired up with various seals. For my Whirlwind Barbarian, I typically use the Sescheron’s Fury set along with an Endurant Faith for tankiness. The original legendary seal I used had Dark Pact, which wasn’t really relevant to my build (because I snagged it from a random pile in my stash). So I ditched the Endurant Faith and old seal for the Mythic one. The Mythic one had two berserking type of affixes, which were far more relevant, even though people say that the Mythic seal itself really isn’t effective for a Whirlwind Barbarian (most people use a Crown of Lucion unique charm here, which I do have). However, I had a few Berserker’s Crucible charms lying around in my inventory, which is considered useful for a starting Whirlwind Barbarian, so I swapped over to using two of those which gives me 50% more damage, 20% cast speed and 30% damage reduction while berserking. In comparison, Crown of Lucion is supposed to give up to 90% damage increase by casting a resource using ability as well as increasing its cost. So I think most people opt for the higher damage. In my case, I went for a hybrid that seemed like an in between compromise for Endurant Faith and Crown of Lucion along with the higher attack speed. I really don’t know why people aren’t choosing this option. I will say that without Endurant Faith, periodically I can get chunked particularly from DoT type of effects. But I think it’s kinda cool and I want to continue using it for now.

The other thing I wanted to point out about this Mythic Seal is how the affixes were Barbarian specific. I’m sure it’s fine in general but I like the idea of twinking out alts who might require a combo set. On the other hand, given that I have one of these now, I might look into the so-called Immortal Barbarian build. I personally don’t like the build idea because it sounds very gimmicky. Also, I would have to farm up new gear to get rid of the various maximum life I’ve taken as well as redo my Paragon Board (which I hate). But it might be fun just to try out since my Barbarian is already fairly well geared. I think if I did that, it would give new life to my Barbarian because I think it’s a little stale for me. Lastly, I had been considering playing a Paladin just because I’m bored and want to try something different. Some people have classified the Paladin as the worst performing class with some builds at the B tier. On the other hand, I would mostly be doing a Wing Strike type of build or maybe Zeal just to see something different from my S11 Auradin. I’m not expecting much nor do I really want to push the build far.

At any rate, going back to the Echoing Hatred activity, this is one that needs a lot of work. Right now, as it stands, Echoing Hatred resembles more of a live beta test for its performance rather than an activity that’s truly ready to be turned into part of the core end game grind. I think with regards to the Mythic Seal I found, that was sheer luck and I wouldn’t want this type of activity to be the defining thing to obtain that type of item. Besides the sameness to other timed gauntlet events, my primary complaint about this event is how long it last. Inferno Hordes already can take between 20-30 minutes but you can get small pee breaks between waves. I couldn’t even tell how long Echoing Hatred lasted but it felt like it went on forever. My hand ended up hurting, I was clearly bored and unmotivated to push further and thought that this was an exercise in futility by the end. So to me, they need to cap the event’s time limit or figure out how to speed up the difficulty progression. All of these elements just make it feel that they snagged the old Greater Rift gauntlet code from Diablo 3 that would provide a “test” to see what level of a Greater Rift you could/should handle. Finally, the idea of having a single arena serve as this bland unending wave gauntlet challenge is mind numbing. Personally, I think you should only have to do this event once each season at most because it’s not good, not rewarding well enough and painful to do.

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1. Warlock Visuals – I don’t think this is going to be an easy fix that will get out in time for Season 14 but the Warlock is simply too noisy and visually busy for no good reason. Even something as simple as an opacity slider for player effects could make a huge difference because of how badly the various effects interfere with the environment. The biggest issue is the conflicting ground effects that can determine the life and death for a situation.
2. Not Quite on Death Effects – It was clear that the game needed a change to increase the danger players can encounter. However, on death effects are a thing more ARPG players loathe because they’re generally considered unfair when they occur. While having danger is still required, it should not be an all-or-nothing scenario especially when defenses generally have little impact on blunting these effects. The fix would be to figure out a good spot where Toughness translates into mitigating a percentage of the overall damage. So instead of seeing your entire health bar taken off, you see percentages at a time. In boss fights, this change makes a much bigger difference especially in cases where bosses are phased and have poorly telegraphed mechanics. I think that might be easier to change compared to another revamp where the developers inspect each mechanic to add better telegraphing. The long term solution is to improve the visuals and telegraphing of mechanics but I think that’s a monstrous feature that would take a very long time to get right.
3. War Plans Shared Experience on An Account – This is something I think most people want. As someone who has done five characters already, it would be nice to have my experience be spread across the account since I’m still the individual playing but simply changed context with the alt. I don’t mind the grind itself but to get to the lower levels of the trees is pretty bad. I do hope to see more upgrades and more activities for War Plans but I have stated that if that is to occur, they need the shared experience part to balance out having more nodes added as well as deeper trees. For leveling to 70, I think they can have limited trees to prevent players from overextending themselves. But the overall experience should be shared. That way you can customize your activity on what you need such as getting gear or glyphs upon hitting level 70.
4. Better Unique Affix Management – I think the way Uniques were handled was basically laziness by the developers. At this point, the only real “Uniques” are Mythics. Uniques would be better off if their powers were turned into Greater Aspects or some other recipe and allow players to imprint them. The old Unique affixes were better done and made them worth farming. This was a major mismanagement on their part since they cut out passives and were in all likelihood rushed to get this part of their system out rather than sitting down and really examining each unique’s affixes and figuring out what deserved to stay. The long term fix is to make the Unique Aspect a property that goes into its own Aspect box once you salvage the item. That way, you can still use a unique that drops but are required to farm it. And it can still be build enabling since they would be rare. But at least allow players to optimize the affixes on them by letting up imprint the Aspect onto a rare.
5. Remove Indestructible Transfiguration Property – No one liked the bricking effect during Santification so the developers relented in only having legendaries and not Greater Affix uniques be affected by a “brick”. Given how difficult is already is in finding a decent item, the idea of indestructible is merely adding insult to injury. Something like this is good for streamers to be embarrassed by their viewers but it’s terrible for the average player as an experience where you feel like you’ve wasted your time. If they intend to keep this, then bring back adding prized legendary aspects and mythic properties to Transfiguration similar to Sanctuary. That makes it worth the effort of Transfiguration’s gamble.
6. Temis Obol Vendor – It’s become a recent issue someone discovered where they realized that the Obol vendor in Temis does not provide Uniques. It blows my mind how the Obol vendors don’t share the same loot table but I did confirm last night that I could gamble a unique elsewhere. This sounds like a low hanging fruit situation to fix maybe in a patch for this season. But it is frustrating knowing that I missed numerous unique opportunities because a single vendor was either bugged or intentionally designed in this manner.
7. Echoing Hatred Rarity – I think a major complaint from most people is that the one new end game activity simply is too rare. I think it was an experimental mode and that the developers didn’t know how well it could scale or destroy their servers. So they made it into a rare event because it’s probably built really badly behind the scenes. They didn’t have a PTR to really help them determine how to scale this thing either, which is why I think they limited the access. Not to mention they wanted a broader group to test this feature out rather than just hardcore types or streamers.
8. The Latest Gem Implementation – Personally, I didn’t really care enough because I wasn’t interested in min/maxing my characters out this season. But I will say that the farming portion for getting top Gems is ridiculous. One might say it’s balanced against the power that the Gem Strength affix provides via Transfiguration (which can be further Masterworked). But the way you get these Gems is mostly through a single dungeon or by trading. I know some people are calling for the nerf to Gem Strength but that would only work if the power of the gems are reduced correspondingly with the effort to farm them. Oddly, a lot of those people who are in some of those camps are the types that want a hardcore grind. So I don’t get it. Either way, I’m probably in favor of reducing gem power, decreasing the amount of materials required for higher level gems and keeping the Gem Strength affix as-is since it’s already a rare enough Transfiguration that it’s like hitting the lottery when you get one.
9. Making War Plans Selection a REAL Play List that can be Customized – I think it was false advertising by Blizzard when they said that War Plans would be customizable for your play style. No, it isn’t. War Plans forces you into a nonsensical RNG grouping that has limited number of changes. WTF is this. I think this game mode had zero need for an RNG layer that made no sense. If you wanted an RNG layer, you’d have to compensate the player by adding something like triple rewards because the RNG layer defeats the purpose. Instead, War Plans should be a game mode that theorycrafters can help other players plan out their activities based on the need. I’ve argued in the past that you should have a path to help players obtain their goals. If you’re focused on paragon leveling, then provide a tree that optimizes your boards. If you need gear, especially build enabling uniques as you’re trying to get your build online, give me that type of tree. Honestly, if they want to fix the War Plans piece, get rid of the experience points part, have the activities get unveiled as a character levels up with certain breakpoints that permits that character to gain access to an activity (e.g. lair bosses only start appearing in Torment) and make the selections completely available and deeper. Or perhaps, the experience gained from activities goes into a general pool that function as activity upgrade points that can be placed into the available nodes. That would solve the bulk of the issues with this system. The current system is half baked and only was popular due to the novelty from its freshness. But it was far from what was promised in my book.
10. Loot Filter Upgrade – Besides improving on tooltips (because certain parts make no sense when you look at them), I think the Loot Filter should simply be changed into a Loot Vacuum with a checkbox that makes auto pickup turned on by default. But you should be able to uncheck it if you prefer the carpal tunnel inducing experiencing of clicking on microscopic items that have a tiny pickup radius and are placed haphazardly on the ground in a manner that makes clicking impossible.
    10b. Auto pickup for Currency, Charms/Seals and Runes – Instead of the Loot Vacuum, then at least let the Pet pick up these microscopic items. There’s really zero reason why anyone in 2026 should have to sift through the ground for these imperceptible items. We know the technology exist because the Pet can pick up gold and other materials. So why not the rest?

Final Thoughts

Why didn’t I add Mephisto and the cut scene to this list? I think Mephisto is such a poorly done boss that it should be outright scrapped. Whoever the lead encounter(s) person/people are need a mandatory probationary period at Blizzard. I’m not sorry nor will I apologize for making that comment. There’s something clearly wrong with this person in believing that they can add a raid style phased boss to a farming, casual game and then force some sort of social engineering to cockblock seasonal progress because of how bad the system is designed. I feel like the Diablo 4 team invited the raid boss encounter people from WoW to the Diablo 4 side without realizing that they are two differently designed games. Many encounters that have the horrible pulled out view should be removed from the game and revamped from the ground up because they defy any common sense for UI/UX and game play in this genre. Even high end streamers who can farm these bosses do so through gritting their teeth because of how bad these mechanics are. The difficulty for these bosses is purely artificial. If you want a raid style boss, go play Dark Souls or find a mythic guild in WoW. I don’t want Diablo 4 to be a game for everyone. There’s some limits where you need to put your foot down and say enough is enough. Same thing for the Tower and high level Pit situations. The so-called broken builds that people complain about wouldn’t be a thing if leaderboards and this misguided notion of esports were removed as a core value from Blizzard in all of their games. It’s something that makes a game like this toxic since the competitive assholes, who are a very tiny vocal minority, are the ones ruining the fun by calling for nerfs and not really understanding how a game like this ought to be made.

The post Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred: My Top 10 Fixes that Need to Happen for Season 14 appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

1. Inferno Hordes / Impending Doom – I imagine this upgrade is really meant for group play because it’s just awful for a single player the way things are setup. Effectively, you’re waiting or events to spawn in the last 10 seconds of a round but you’ll get things like spires or Aether Fiend spawns which take too long. It won’t matter what build you use as a solo player but this one probably should go away unless they replace the events with other modifiers like Aether Goblins, the Inferno Butcher, etc. and avoid the four point area system. Only take this one if you have a group.
2. Inferno Hordes / Total Chaos – This might seem appealing because of the chance to get the goblin event. However, the downside is that you only have two picks per round. The problem here is that most choices end up sucking in general and if you get a bad set of choices like spires and the rain options, you can’t do anything that can prepare you for an event like the Aether Fiends spawn. You’re better off just having more choices and optimizing around that and your build.
3. Tree of Whispers / Fortune of Famine – This to me really is a n00b trap. I’ve had situations where the only choices were junk. It feels awful when you’ve wasted your time only to see junk appear. I think an option like this is better for streamers who enjoy getting ridiculed for donations, subscription messages, etc. Otherwise, for a normal player, this is a terrible option.
4. Helltides / Wretched Vermin – This is truly an uninspired choice. Although I’ve never chosen this upgrade, I’ve seen others who tried it and basically you see these rats falling from the sky around you. There’s no reward that I see associated to this event and think that if there was a benefit, then it might be novel. Otherwise, it’s just a bad meme.
5. Helltides / Hell’s Prize – I haven’t seen anyone report that this choice is any good. I think it’s just another n00b trap. You’re really better off going for a wide spread and opening as many Tortured Gifts as possible since the average reward these days is pretty bad.
6. Helltides / Undying Embers – This is another n00b trap. I think it’s incredibly hard to die in Helltides these days. This definitely is a wasted upgrade for Hardcore players.
7. Undercity / Jade Epiphany – The right hand side of the Undercity I heard is really bad. For some builds, increasing the monster power level might cause a complete failure of a run because people can’t kill things fast enough. The thing with the Undercity is that you need speed and fast kills for a build to be successful. Once you hit Mythic Tribunes, the rewards themselves are pretty high so anything beyond modifiers that increase your attunement pretty much hurt your chances for a successful run.
8. Lair Bosses / Infernal Deception – I think the Belial mini boss encounter is annoying as hell when it happens. Imagine how I’d feel if you had to deal with yet another encounter once your Inferno Horde run is done especially once you’ve spent 20-30 minutes trying to get through all those waves of nonsense.
9. The Pit / Damned Thieves – I won’t even go near this thing. Traps in Diablo 4 suck and the goal for any Pit run is to finish as quickly as possible. Add to the fact that you have to deal with the stupid Orb mechanic and this is clearly a n00b trap.
10. The Pit / Heart of Stone – Even though I choose this option when I get a chance, I still dislike the way it’s implemented. I hate having to pick this thing up at the start of the run or even pick it up if I drop it. But the worst part is the backtracking for grabbing slow dropping Orbs that require you to run over them and not have a Pickup Radius attribute/affix to make this issue not as frustrating/painful. If the Pet moved faster, had a big pickup radius, etc. then maybe this option wouldn’t be as bad. This is more of a situation where it’s a forced necessity but I feel there should be better options available for a stupid mechanic.

The post Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred: My Bottom 10 War Plan Upgrades appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

The Good

• Removing Passives from the Skill Tree – I think removing the old passives, including the last key notables, was an excellent choice. I think for newer players, the passives made little sense and not tangible enough especially when you needed one to work with other conditional elements. Probably, the biggest bonus to me was the idea of relegating passive upgrades to the Paragon Board or Aspect leveling and mostly trying to keep the core skill tree relatively clean.
• More Meaningful Upgrades to Skills – This idea was more like an upgrade of Skill Runes from Diablo 3. I think the pieces here are clearer in intent like changing a Sorcerer’s Hydra into a Frost one or adding another Wolf for a Druid. In addition, by cleaning up the skill tree and enforcing more meaningful side choices, I think the game now has a clearer path for room to expand on the skill tree rather than combating passives that may outweigh choosing a skill or some other obscure mechanic hidden behind odd combinations and conditionals in the backend systems that certain players may abuse.
• The Horadric Cube – There’s no question that the Horadric Cube is a massive win here. The existing crafting systems (Tempering, Enchanting, Aspects, Socketing and Masterworking) actually synergize quite well with this new system that make crafting actually fun and interesting to perform. The last expansion’s Rune system also works quite well when you can use the Horadric Cube upgrade Rune in conjunction with the Jeweler’s 3:1 random craft to get end game Legendary runes. This is not a perfect crafting system but it’s clearly a vastly improved scenario that was a badly needed addition to Diablo 4 to make crafting actually an endgame goal.
• War Plans – Compared to the failed and wasted Raid system from Vessel of Hatred, War Plans has proven to be a fairly decent (albeit simple) end game system that enhances your activities and provides certain key rewards. The real key though is the addition of activity trees where people can use the experience gained to augment their end game. While the current implementation is still what I consider a rough draft, it’s a great starting point to incorporate past seasons, future seasons and potentially integrate outdated content into the core experience for the player.
• Talisman System – The new Talisman system is a nice addition in trying to further enhance the player’s power. I think of the Talisman system as more of an inverted Kanai’s Cube system especially when you take into account how a player can use a Unique charm (or 3 with the Mythic version) to “add” a gear slot without sacrificing a key armor slot (e.g. a Spiritborn can now use Helm of Perdition and employ their unique helmet as a charm). I think an underrated piece here is gaining small affixes like Movement speed which really helps early leveling until one can acquire decent boots and the higher end Tempering recipes. It’s still a pretty rough system that can use adjustments but I can see potentially in the future how more slots can be added if Blizzard wanted to but still retaining the main concept intact.
• Loot Filter – Major QoL win here. I started using one the other day (got it working!) and the change in drops is quite significant in a positive manner. I think setting up a generic filter isn’t too bad in just getting rid of non-Ancestrals, uniques and Aspect upgrades. But the main win is clearing up the clutter especially from certain bosses that have bad loot explosions that are a real pain to handle.
• Goblin Realm – Yes, this is a D3 copied idea but it still works when you get it. I don’t think the drops are as impactful mostly due the limitations of ones inventory. Also, the boss at the end (a smaller version of Greed, I believe) feels lackluster compared to the original D3 version. It’s still a nice surprise when you get it.
• Chaos Waves in Helltides – This is a small feature that carried over from S10 which is used as a node on the Helltide activity tree. But it’s a really fun one that provides some neat bonuses. One of my favorites is when you can get unique drops especially on fresher characters.
• Extra Bosses Everywhere – I think it’s cool that you can now see various bosses outside of their lairs. The Nemesis one is very intimidating but also incredibly rewarding when you encounter one. But this is the prime example of what I had been talking about in previous blogs on how having customizable content experiences can really enhance the core game play.
• Changes to the Pit Layout – The Pit is something I never really cared for because of how it was meant to mirror Greater Rifts from Diablo 3 but it never hits its mark because of the structure. I think the layout changes to the Pit are really good because it changes up the map configurations. They’re still mostly linear in nature but you can go down small side paths without having to deal with extraneously long treks while fighting the countdown timer. Also, I’m very glad they removed the horrible boss arena aspect because those were just problematic. That makes boss fights a little more dynamic, especially since mobs can still swarm you after a boss gets summoned. In some cases, that could be a boon.
• Faster Glyph Leveling – While I’m still not happy about the Pit being the only mechanism to level up Glyphs, the part I do think is very good is how you can use the activity tree to configure more points into glyph leveling. It’s still tedious to level Glyphs but you can get a large number of upgrades faster. That means less Pits in general, even though I think the activity has become less painful and tedious in general.
• Aspect Reduction – I think one thing is that a lot of Aspects had been removed, consolidated and/or moved elsewhere to skills or uniques. I still think there’s a lot of bloat with Aspects but the general noise ratio has shrunk, which was badly needed. I still am uncertain how they see Aspects but I do like the fact that they’re not the main thing which enabled the core builds any longer.
• Temper Recipe Reduction – Like Aspects, I think the number of Temper recipes had been reduced. Certain parts I will miss like utility Tempers you could add to boots or armor that would increase the size of certain skills. I think those type of things really work better in a skill tree where you have meaningful skill side upgrades that a player can put more points into. So hopefully, those types of Tempers will eventually return but in the form of either side nodes in the skill tree or an updated Paragon Board.
• More Builds – In general, there are more flavors of builds than before due to the main upgrade to skills that flavor a build. Not all builds might be considered meta or end game viable but the shake up in these systems do make things vastly more interesting, at least for now.
• More Meaningful Crafting Materials – One of my blogs addressed how certain key crafting materials ought to be highly sought after and be elevated into first class citizens for end game crafts (similar to Sanctification). Well, we got them in a variety of ways. Likewise, it makes things like Tributes and certain Dungeon affixes highly sought after.

The Bad

• Rune Reduction – It seems that after taking a pass at the existing systems, Runes got hit too. In a few cases, I am not overly fond of their removal such as the Earthquake rune. Oddly, in searching for the ability to cause Earthquakes, I can’t find anything. Maybe it’s in HotA but I really miss being able to level a new character with Bac – Tec and running around and destroying things.
• Material Scarcity – I think in changing these systems, material scarcity continues to plague the game. Right now, the main missing ingredient is Forgotten Souls. I heard from Kripparian’s stream the other night that Ancestrals give Forgotten Souls (which was a great tip btw) but they still remain very tough to find especially once you start min/max’ing a character (or in my case multiple characters). I suppose in a game that requires a clear grind, having a high end resource being semi-scarce is a good thing but it is a pain point. For some things like the Unique crafting material, I think it’s fine to be rare. But Forgotten Souls is a real tough one at this stage due to either the cost or limited amount one can receive. It’s not a be-all/end-all issue but again it is a pain point that might need a small adjustment.
• Legion Events – While Legion events are still fun to do, they need a reason to do them. With the introduction of War Plans, I really hope that they change these activities to activated events rather than timed ones and that they become incorporated into War Plans. As a group activity, these as-is are fun to do. I think having a separate activity tree for Legion events, keeping them part of the open but instanced world and making them more customizable with key rewards (can anyone say crafting materials????), these things should be able to make a major comeback.
• World Bosses – Like Legion events, World Bosses should not be timed anymore. I think making these summonable like Azmodan from S11 is the way this encounter ought to be handled. Making them summonable and incorporating them into War Plans with their own activity tree will greatly improve the novelty of having World Bosses as opposed to once again being a 10 second semi loot pinada (which apparently they are now again)
• No Dedicated Whisper Activity during War Plans Configuration – This part I don’t understand. I know there’s a separate activity tree for Whispers but I’m mystified why they weren’t included as part of the War Plans setup. There’s also a few activity nodes that I don’t understand like having monsters coming out of the caches. I can’t tell if that’s what is causing the in town monsters. But I wish Whispers became another activity one could complete to increase the variety of War Plans things to do. Like one thing I would do to make Whisper activities really interesting is to use the activity tree to add “green Helltide” type of old seasonal Whisper content back (e.g. turning a zone into a Vampire zone or bringing the Realm Walker). Having the old seasons become an activity a user can add to the node of the Whisper activity tree would vastly improve the variety and number of things one could do while not being competitive directly with Helltides (because we can still keep the Helltide content as a separate activity that is mutually exclusive from these Whisper activities and give players alternative zones to farm). This should really be a no brainer and a lower effort feature because of how Blizzard has these activities already built into the history of the game.
• Strongholds – Strongholds badly need love. I think a lot of players avoid these because they’ve done them a thousand times. But now they’re an impediment because of how certain dungeons can be blocked. For War Plan activities and Escalating Sigils (I think the game just kicks you out if you encounter an area with blocked access because of Strongholds). I personally don’t mind Strongholds because they are effectively an easy way to gain levels early on and a way to break up leveling for non-story mode based characters (especially new seasonal ones). I have a variety of ideas of how these can be improved (even adding them into War Plans if they get revamped) but the main point here is that these are outdated pieces of content whose original purpose has been superceded by the evolution of the game and require a major overhaul. Otherwise, they simply stick out like a sore thumb or red headed stepchild.
• Continuing Imbalance of Builds – Despite the revamp, not all builds are created (or redone) equally. From what I know, the truly OP builds are mostly those with some bug that wasn’t caught by QA. Even if that’s not the case, some builds/classes just got left in the dirt like the Necromancer (namely Minions). Outside of the multiplier problem, I think the odd conditional interaction between skills, items and other elements continue to plague the game. I don’t think there’s an easy solution especially when the game wants players to augment skills with subsystems. But it is painful to see a skill like Blood Surge not be used more often for whatever reason.
• Minion Necromancer – Oddly, of all the summoner classes, the Minion Necromancer to me seems like the saddest. Besides bugs, the main culprit that I think hurt Minion Necromancers early on was the immediate pre-nerfing of a unique that would’ve allowed Minion Necromancers to get up to 28 Minions (I think Skeletons). The excuse that was given was the typical “server issues” whereas Companion Druid with their army of fury critters and the hundreds of Ancestors for Barbarians are fine. Heck, even Rogue’s Shadow Clone proves to be better than the lowly Minion Necromancer. For me though, the real killer is the lack of customization for Necromancers. A while back, I tried out a Bone Skeleton Mage Necromancer that employed Bone Spear with the Helmet. While novel in concept, it wasn’t good. I still like the idea of being able to link my Necromancer skills to my minions. I think if Blizzard took a hard look at this concept, it would clearly differentiate how a Necromancer operates from other summoner builds. Like why can’t we have Bone Spear Skeleton Mages? Or Blood Surge Blood Golems? The potential is there but the real link is connecting a Necromancer’s inherit skills back to their minions to make them far more interesting. Not only does that open up the diversity to the types of Minion Necromancer, but it hopefully gives new life (pun partly intended) to them that currently does not exist.
• Evadeborn Meme – I know there’s a bugged version of this class/build but multiple seasons in a row where Evade is the only meta? I’ve been wanting to play a non-Evade Spiritborn for sometime but the class has been underperforming outside of the Evade builds, at least from what I’ve seen. I really wish that Blizzard had created an Amazon class and/or Monk rather than establishing an oddball class that fits nowhere. It was a lot of fun when it first came out but as we have learned, the first class of a DLC/expansion is going to be bugged and overpowered (purposefully). That doesn’t mean that the class should be in a bad state afterwards.
• Warlock – At this stage, as much as I’d love to try the Warlock, the visuals just cause me problems. I think the visuals are a bigger issue overall but I think pointing out that Warlocks are suffering as a result is the key takeaway here.
• Major Nerfed Paladins – After removing the Castle node, Paladins simply haven’t been the same. It’s sad given that this class was probably one thing new players wanted to experience since it’s a popular archetype in the realm of fantasy. It’s still viable but it won’t see the higher tiers that broken classes are experiencing. I don’t think this was intentional but I think the Castle fix should’ve waited until after Season 13 at least as a sales tool.
• Forgotten Souls Scarcity – I mentioned this as a pain point that isn’t a complete killer because having worth farming for is good. But it does inhibit a smoother crafting experience especially when GA tempers are affected by RNG. I think they just need to either adjust the numbers for the cost or add content that is target farmable for this precious currency.
• Meaningless Herb Nodes and the Alchemist – Mining nodes still are highly valuable in Helltides mostly due to the scarcity of Forgotten Souls, the high yield for Cinders and the occasional gem dust. But Herbs themselves have no place in the game in this season. Along with that the Alchemist serves no purpose since potion upgrades and Elixirs/Incense were removed. I don’t know if there’s plans to turn any of these things into something worthwhile but it’s clear that the ideas are antiquated and require a complete re-examination or ought to be completely removed from the game.
• War Plans Activity Tree Re-spec Cost – Not a complete deal breaker for me but it does force you to be absolutely sure about the paths you choose since re-speccing cost a ridiculous amount. Since they removed the cost for re-speccing a character, I have no idea why they added a cost for re-speccing the Activity Tree, especially when it’s already lean.
• No Account Wide War Plans Experience – This isn’t necessarily my own complaint. I think part of this issue is when you start up a new character and how having a completely unlocked War Plans might cause a new character from fully utilizing their War Plans. For instance, it makes no sense for characters below Torment and max level (not Paragon) to have Boss Lairs be unlocked and fully specc’d out. In that instance, the player would die as a level one. For me I think the current implementation is okay if the activity trees aren’t expanded upon. But I am really pulling for an increase in the number of nodes for the Activity Trees and expanding the activity types for War Plans. The way I would handle the situation is to prevent gaining full experience until the player enters Torment I on max level (if the user starts a new character). I think the hard part is determining a sweet spot for alt characters while not overwhelming them with fully unlocked trees that may cause them grief. But I think the situation is as trivial as some players are thinking, which is why I’m hesitant on making this a major issue.
• Loot Filter UI/UX – The Loot Filter does need some more work in terms of wording and a tutorial on how to use this thing. Some parts aren’t worded clearly not their intent and probably require tool tips on how each component is used (especially certain hide/show options). I think that the campaign should have introduced a quest line to help players learn how to learn the Loot Filter as opposed to hiding it as a feature. As silly as that may sound, I think Loot Filters end up becoming more for advanced players of this genre. But it’s one of those things that when you use one, you realize the high value and inherent worth in improving ones gaming experience. I can’t imagine how many players who aren’t used to ARPGs get confused because they don’t understand how their character and loot works.
• Still Beta Feeling – I honestly think this current S13 is nothing more than a live test server at this stage. There’s too many bugs and issues that ended up getting a hard deadline but still feel incomplete or broken. And I suppose that’s fine for a live service game but I think the game still needs a lot of polish to turn it to a B level (where it’s probably a B- level in my book)

The Downright Atrocious

• Visuals are really bad – If there’s one major complaint I have about the game is that the visuals are in a really bad state. One of the previous seasons addition for on death effects have made the updated content to feel downright terrible. I know they added a bunch of updates and the added difficulty. But these updates clash with the art style and the overall experience is god awful. But I place this issue under downright atrocious because I think the visual piece is going to be really hard to fix based on the art style. I think the art style is meant to be immersive and visceral but the way it’s implemented causes conflicts everywhere, whether it’s lag, FPS issues or unseeable ground effects. The game would be better serviced with these visuals using a slower pace. Otherwise, the current pacing, which is more on the level of a Torchlight Infinite, ends up hurting how the visuals work because you simply can’t see anything. You’d need to do more on adding opacity to skill effects, better highlighting of monsters and objects, improved pickup radius and better visual indicators that don’t clash with skills such as extreme colorization to indicate the type of damage being used. I think the latter part would be good if enemy effects could not overlap. Otherwise, it would simply be slop visually and not help the current situation.
• Item Pickup Sucks – As someone with various physical problems with my hands (carpal tunnel, two broken fingers, etc.), I think still being forced to click on small areas to grab items or interact with objects is horrifically painful. I maintain that the solution to item pick up is to convert the Loot Filter into a Loot Vacuum mode that can be enabled with a checkbox. While pets are the primary method for handling out of range currency types, I would prefer that a person could just run over the Loot and have it placed in their inventory. If you add a scrollbar to each inventory slot with a FAR larger space allotment, it would solve the bulk of the complaints for inventory management. This should be as bad of an issue as it is in this type of game especially when like games have already solved this QoL problem. And it isn’t a skill issue either; it really is a QoL problem.
  Likewise, the interaction with objects like Prisoners continue to be problematic. I know some of that was solved like doors but dungeon quests are particularly painful. Same thing with chests. I think these things should be auto opened or interacted based on distance. If players really want to feel the click, just provide a checkbox to enable clicking on objects. But I shouldn’t have to suffer physically because of wretched UI/UX.
• RNG upon RNG Progression – I will never stop fighting this issue with Blizzard’s core design philosophy. I feel that at a certain point, progression feels awful because of how RNG based almost every design decision ends up becoming. Crafting and War Plans were already inflicted with this form of punishment for no good reason. An example of this is Transfiguration. I was excited to see a version of Santification make its turn. But the outcomes for Transfiguration don’t feel as worthy of an RNG chase because of not allowing for the legendary power to be crafted. But the real issue is that finding a good base already is problematic especially due to the revamped Uniques (which I’ll talk about). Even when you get a solid item, you can still “brick” it. But why? I would prefer the currency to Transfigure to be super rare and a chase item rather than not having a more deterministic thing that I can craft upon something. The new system does work better than before but it’s still in a very rough phase. But I think the RNG dependency is what kills the game entirely at some point. Like I should have a clear path for how I can reach the end game not depending on sheer luck all the time.
• Mephisto Fight – I think only one person likes this fight in the world. But he enjoys pain and suffering. The real issue is that this fight is a dissertation on miscalculations in design vs genre. It’s basically a World of Warcraft version of a mythic raid boss fight where you’re forced to learn god awful mechanics and need go through multi-phases and start from scratch if you’re defeated. On top of that, the fight isn’t really a “challenge” but just a ton of crap thrown at you. Like the change of skills and the pull out view that is disorienting. Add one shots and this no longer becomes aspiring content but just a flat out “fuck you” from the vast majority of the player base, almost as reprehensible as the dead raid from Vessel of Hatred that ought to receive the proper treatment of being permanently deleted from the game. This fight was semi-okay for the campaign to do on easy mode. But that’s where it belongs along with the trash Lilith fight (and yes, I did beat her but only by outgearing her).
• One Shot Mechanics – In general, one shot mechanics are dogshit that makes everything one tries to build up for seem meaningless. Player damage should be gradual that break down the defenses that lead to conservative potion usage rather than sudden panic mode that occurs infrequently (like the shitty DoT scaling problems). The issue with one shot mechanics is that it’s a disruptive experience that most often induces confusion partly because of a lack of a combat log.  The other problem is that it’s impossible to build up any meaningful defense because of the dilution of defenses into the general “Toughness” notion and the equally obscure “resistances” category. Damage Reduction also provides almost no meaningful interaction against one shot mechanics. To me if I’m using a Shako and have 20% damage reduction, I should see 20% of my life still intact when I get hit by one of these so-called one shot mechanics. Otherwise, it’s a bill of goods that Blizzard is selling you.
• Multipliers – I think most people agree that the real core problem in Diablo 4 is the wholehearted embracing of multipliers. I think multipliers in this game are baneful where the mathematics can’t easily be controlled and it’s tough to see how everything works out because of out-of-control, nonsensical scaling. I have no easy solution to the multipliers problem but it’s something that makes the game hard to balance around and needs to receive a deep examination. The only multiplier that makes sense to me is a critical strike. But I think the multiplier used on that effect be simple in the math where the idea is that you’re hitting a vulnerable spot that instantly kills an enemy or gets close to taking that thing down.
• Damage Types – If Damage Types retained the Diablo 2 Rock – Paper – Scissors notion, it might sort of work. The real problem is that there’s a variety of damage types that don’t really mean much in the scheme of things. In fact, I would argue having these different types of damages hurt in that there’s not a lot of actual difference. Like what’s the difference between a Fire dot and Poison dot? They simply are dots with a different flag. Then you get even more confusing damage types like Vulnerable and Overpower. Part of the problem in conjunction with multipliers, one shot mechanics and defenses is that none of this is self evident. You pretty much have to understand a poorly conceived system that probably needs more overhauls, especially if someone wakes up and decides to remove most multipliers from the game. Again, I consider this a downright atrocious problem because the issue is deeply buried.
• On Death Effects – I probably don’t have as big of an issue with these as the majority of the players but I need to identify it as the culprit that sits under almost everything else listed here. The problem is that you cannot prepare for the on death effect that one shots you when it happens. You can’t anticipate how badly it would affect you outside of “well, it was your fault for standing around.” While I can applaud the updated elite/rare affixes, I think they still need to be balanced where defenses play a better role or that the visualizations improve. I think that Blizzard will have an impossible time in the near term finding a solution for the visualizations because of the art style. That part requires an entire graphics engine overhaul and you won’t see anything like that in the near future. So the only compensation is to lower the intensity of the damage these effects do or cause them to shut off the moment a mob that invokes the effect dies. Since the math is probably impossible for Blizzard to handle, the easiest, lowest hanging immediate fruit is to simply cut off the effect after the mob dies. There is no other elegant solution here without actual engine fixes.
• Bugs – Bugs were expected from a new expansion especially with this amount of refactoring for existing systems. But some are just so bad that they make the game unplayable. I think I would be a lot more forgiving towards Blizzard if the game had better overall leadership. There have been improvements and the expansion does show that there is a positive willingness to listen and change. I think that whatever we’re seeing is the remnant of damage from the revolving door for this game where each new major group coming in has a different idea of how to implement the game. So that vision whether it’s democratic, KPI driven or done through some bad apples have serious issues that are bleeding into the overall quality of the game.
• Performance – I’m separating out performance from bugs just because it deserves a category in itself. I noticed that the game degrades over time and I’m not the only person. Certain areas like elevations seem to cause incredible lag while a simple action like opening ones inventory in town triggers more lag. If you add all the other “Downright Atrocious” items listed here, it makes HC only seem like a masochist’s wet dream. Despite that, having a poorly performing “modern” game has no place when the old Blizzard motto was to make a game that works on old hardware. My gut tells me that the issue is partly network related and graphics related where the assets and various effects are badly intermixing and too many calculations are being done that a lot of machines can’t handle. Also, I’ve read that the game experiences a big memory leak and it’s been an ongoing issue for years now. I have a feeling that it’s unsolvable based on how the engine works and without a serious revamp to tone down graphics or reduce calculations to make things less taxing on the CPU and memory, you aren’t going to see any fix for this issue.
• Poor Teaching Experience – Something that occurred to me about how this game operates is that there’s really no tutorial mode to help players learn how to play the game. I think the campaign ends up hurting because the story ends up being a horribly gratuitous way for some writer to masturbate his/her writing fantasies to as opposed to using the campaign as a mode for aiding new players to existing, revamped and new systems. Like there’s no such thing as a base build that a new player can use to experience the game. I see a lot of new players on Twitch struggling because they have no idea how the game works, what skills work with what, understanding the abomination of a confusing, inexplicable damage type system, etc. The game would do much better by cutting down the campaign and using it as a tutorial mode for key mechanics in the game rather than an overdrawn exposition for someone’s bad taste in writing. I think moving forward, the campaign mode either should be cut down to only relevant parts to teach new players or existing players about these systems (i.e. the intro mode) or introduce a hand holding mode that gives gear and leads players to experience the game as it should. I feel a lot of players who don’t understand how an ARPG works probably end up quitting after the lengthy campaign, believing they beat the game but only learn of the game because of the overhype. But they never understand what makes the game reasonably fun, which is tragic because of how the systems can be pretty fun.

Final Thoughts

Again, the key thing here is that Lord of Hatred managed to really nail some of the core things people were begging for. There’s a very good base in terms of the new systems that can be expanded upon. I think many players can see the potential for the new foundation, which means that Blizzard did a reasonable job here. However, the really reprehensible areas are either unfixable or need a monstrous overhaul that prevent the game from reaching anything higher than a B level currently, especially at the level expected from a Blizzard game funded/owned by Microsoft. It shouldn’t be the case where independent competitors are pushing out better ideas.

The post Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred: The Good, the Bad and the Downright Atrocious appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

I stated before that the biggest problem in Diablo 4 (and in a lot of Blizzard games) is this awful codependency on RNG as a form of content. I think the expansion has continued to double down on this aspect to give the illusion of long term progress rather than solving meaningful progression. In the past, I have referred to RNG progress as akin to BozoSort where you just create an exponential problem for players who want to see gradual, meaningful and time well spent progress as they move through the game. But let me point out some of the worst culprits in the game:

• Altered affixes on Uniques – This is one of the worst complaints on the reddit forums. Already, it’s tough to find a decent Ancestral item with any GA on it. To add insult to injury, Uniques lost their previous affixes and now simply have any value, making them almost like a shitty version of an old Aspect.
• Continuing non-determinism on crafting – Despite introducing a crafting system with the ability to better target affixes, you still remain on the proverbial hamster wheel trying to nail the affix you need. Outside of wasting your mats and time, there’s absolutely no point in this activity. It’s no more fun than how Enchanting works currently except the sillier back and forth system you must deal with. And if you fuck up and eat all your mats up, you’re just SoL.
• Transfiguration as a shitty version of Sanctification – Despite all the warnings the player base gave on Sanctification and the fact that they even changed Sanctification to remove the idea of bricking, you still can brick an item. Maybe the worst part will become amulets because of the idea of a chase for a good legendary Aspect power that you can add. Some believed that this was too OP during S11 but I think you had enough wiggle room where it was good enough. Now, with the extreme variance and worse drops with more RNG mixed in to the affixes and quality, you’ll be lucky to see a decent Transfiguration to really get excited about.
• Reroll Unique Power – I originally believed this would be the re-introduction of Chaos Armor. Instead, it just rerolls the values on a unique. It’s an absolutely worthless craft. Even doing something such as reroll a unique power on an item with a similar base would have been better than the lameness here.
• Losing GAs when you craft – This one infuriates me. They made it so GAs are much harder to find. If that’s the case, why can’t you be allowed to reroll it? There’s just mind boggling levels of stupidity and asshole-ness involved here.

Now, I suppose part of the deal is to use the new Loot Filtering system so that you get less bad stuff and focus more on the good stuff. I gave it a try and maybe it’s me but I found the filtering system to be mostly trash. The rules don’t make sense. Like I don’t know how you can hide just shit items or only permit ancestrals except uniques or something along those lines. And when I did enable the rules, nothing worked. Like WTF. So if this system is meant for el casual, then someone needs to take a lesson on UI/UX design badly here.

But these things make my progression really unfun. I feel like when I do get a good item, there’s not much of an impact just because I’m so burnt out by the repetitive content as well as being bashed over the head by unending turds of bad loot that nothing really excites me when I find something. And I still think that the physical act of picking up loot is god awful. I don’t know what it is but they give you such a small space to be able to pick up something.

What I really think they should have done is not have a loot filter at all. Instead, they needed a customizable loot vacuum. At this stage, I think having the Pet act as a loot grabbing tool won’t work because these bozos fucked up on not having your pet pick up crafting materials. There’s so many other existing systems that handle inventory and loot management better that it’s mind boggling just how archaic Diablo 4 is by comparison. Like Lost Ark is probably one of the best loot management systems where it just gets vacuumed up and you can see those items going into your bags on the side during a Chaos Rift. And for all the garbage that drops on the ground, why can’t they simply add a scroll bar to allow users to go down more rows in their inventory slots? Why are Blizzard so fucking adamant about giving players limited inventory slots when other games with far better and more meaningful loot hand these out more freely?

Someone suggested that the Horadric Cube should’ve been part of ones inventory. Considering everyone carried one in Diablo 2, I’m surprised that this piece of crap is sitting around in town. It should’ve been giving the functions of the blacksmith, jeweler and Occultist on top of the other powers introduced in this expansion. I mean, they have the slot for it. Why was this overlooked? Even if the actual inventory inside of the character sheet didn’t expand, the added Horadric Cube could’ve functioned as a secondary inventory space for anything.

Talisman

So now that I’ve played around with the charms/seals system a little more and learned about the Mythic seals in existence, I have some opinions on how things were implemented here. I think the charm set system is okay in how they brought in interesting effects as well as added two affixes per charm. Some of these effects are actually cool like the Bear for druid or scenarios where a skill gains the minor upgrades. The Unique slot is lame in that you can only use one at a time unless you have a specific Mythic seal that permits three (but no set items). One of the major chase items is the RoRG-like Mythic seal but I found out you can’t use it for Uniques and its purpose is to enable two sets (in most cases).

My main issue with this system is that you’re really limited in the number of charms enabled by your seal. I heard at least one streamer mention that Diablo 2 could’ve easily solved the Charm system by simply adding a separate tab for charm management. Diablo 4 did this to a degree but there’s almost no creativity in how one can use the various charms that drop. At some point, rares and blues become worthless so I don’t get why they were introduced into the game. I would have preferred a smaller tab that simply enabled everything that was inside. Then a set could become active with a separate interface like the one presented. But you could’ve done more with charms than what was given and even make lower rarities more useful.

Also, I’m disappointed that aspects also could not be imprinted on charms. That would solve some issues where item slots compete against each other. Even if you only had a single unique enabled, there should be ways to get Aspects imprinted on charms as well. Then only having the unique slot would make the situation special for those types while Aspects would get more slots to use. Because in truth, the Talisman idea is just a version of Kanai’s Cube but much more limited. There’s certainly potential here for growth but it’s very mediocre in my eyes at this stage compared to what it ought to be.

T9 – T10

I feel that the jump between T9 to T10 is massive. With a reasonably geared character, you just feel far squishier and require a higher amount of damage. At the same time, getting the gear to make that jump is really tough because of the various qualifiers like Ancestrals, GAs on the right affixes, Mythics, etc. all which are hidden behind RNG. I know there are unethical builds that become enabled because of bugs but that just shows how ridiculous the systems work behind the scenes. Most of it is some bad math error. I really wish they didn’t make bosses just HP sponges with higher damage that force you to see some shitty phase. Other games handle difficulty levels in a far better and more creative fashion. For instance, HC to me should be decreasing the quality of loot one finds rather than doubling down on stupid on death effects and high levels of untested damage that cause a frustrating permanent death. Or perhaps higher levels of difficulty would add the shitty effects that so-called dad gamers hate and allow the hardcore players more bragging rights for conquering without the compromise of loot and experiencing the end game while preventing characters created in easier modes from moving between difficulties.

But I think everyone in the community groaned at the prospect of multiple Torments because they generally would be used as meaningless gates without any real satisfaction besides the tiny percentage who enjoy measuring their toothpick, needle dicks. At any rate for myself, I see myself hitting around T9 where the game feels reasonably smooth and not horribly antagonizing. I don’t like trick builds because they’re inevitably going to be nerfed. I’d really prefer if there were more meaningful and deterministic ways to progress rather than relying mostly on RNG.

War Plans

When you start leveling your War Plans, the progress generally feels decent. My main problem with War Plans is that no matter what, you end up feeling burnt out. Part of the problem is that the number of activities you can choose are very limited. Worse yet, you don’t have that much agency in how you setup your War Plan. Most of it is still predetermined by our good old boring friend Mr. RNG. And these activities mostly have no evolved much over the course of the game. Once you hit a certain point where progress slows to a snail’s pace, War Plans feels like a wretched chore because you’re pretty much relegated into these limited activities. One activity really isn’t even on the War Plans which is Whispers, despite having an activity tree attached.

Then there are the activity trees. The modifiers are generally pretty decent but their depth is minor. If the developers were afraid of dad gamers being too stupid to understand how these modifiers work, then they really must think poorly of their audience because these trees are less complicated than a one year old’s Duplo set with a single piece. I heavily dislike that there’s exclusion such as Chaos Rifts and Duriel’s Maggots not being simultaneous choices. Why not? I think a person should be able to cross pollinate as much content into these things as they desire. Otherwise, even with these modifiers, the actual number of times you encounter them are infrequent enough where the content they’re meant to support ends up still feeling stale.

So here’s what I think needs to happen for War Plans to improve:

• Account wide progress. This pretty much seems like a given at this stage. I don’t know how much work will be involved but if more nodes and ways to customize these activity trees increases, then the developers need to make the progress account wide for a season.
• The ability to spec into as many nodes as possible. There’s no real good reason why the choices on the activities are mutually exclusive.
• Get rid of the random nature of what a War Plan is. Let the player actually plot out what they want to play in the order they want.
• If you REALLY insist on having an RNG based War Plan, add a separate bonus spree. Or make it so that the choices having additional modifiers that are a one time thing similar to Dungeons’ affixes.
• Increase the number of activities. We need normal Whispers (not just Hellfire Caches), Legion events, repeatable Strongholds, World Bosses to be added to these activities. I feel that these things have taken a back seat to the main activities except possibly World Bosses. And if Whispers have activity trees, why not add them into the selection in the first place?
• Get rid of Torments and put all difficulty scaling into War Plans’ activity trees. Then add more nodes with the ability to scale risks/rewards at the node level. Like if say you have a lair boss type of node, side upgrades like the skill tree where you can modify the boss’ difficulty with things like double bosses, two other equivalent bosses, +2 monster power, etc. that can increase. Maybe even small bits like percentage to health and damage or lowered resist. These aren’t difficult concepts to implement. Give complete agency to players.
• Bring back more season content and corresponding rewards through War Plans. Like give us the Realm Walker with the Seething Hordes or whatever they were called or those S3 trap dungeons to unlock the Construct. And while you’re at it, bring back Chaos Armor via Chaos Portals.
• This clearly should be the interface and mechanism for building out a specialized type of game play that works for any build. They said that these War Plans should function like a playlist. Well, the playlist shouldn’t be random. The playlist should have a goal. Like I want to improve my glyphs so give me all Pit runs. Or I want to farm Mythics. Let me use War Plans to set up a mechanism to help me progress towards my goals. If I’m done with leveling glyphs because I hit a wall, have War Plans show me a path to improve other parts of my journey like more ancestral gear or crafting materials. This should be the thesis of what a War Plan entails.

Leveling Alts

I know there’s a technique to use multiple Whisper Caches to get an alt to max level quickly. At this time, I won’t use it just because I enjoy exploring the game. Also, there’s a few key pieces missing like unlocking Strongholds for waypoints or missing out on Tempers, etc. But I will say that the initial 10-15 levels are really painful in this game. I mean you should have more Aspects, Tempers, etc. in leveling an alt for the season, but it’s a weird experience because you can dump your skill points into lower parts of the tree because those parts are level locked. Like when I did my companion druid, I was actually dumping all my points into Lightning Storm.

I’m not sure if I’m really a fan of the leveling experience because what you want to be is not where you start. I feel one of the frustrations with the game for people who are not as experienced in this genre is not understanding how a build comes together. They did some work to make it so key pieces that were build enabling are now the key upgrades for a skill (e.g. Alpha Wolves) rather than being a pure Aspect. Even then I wish they get rid of the idea of having this twig-like entity in the way it’s structured. Instead, I wish you could rotate this thing around and lock in pieces earlier. For instance, if I want to use Wolves early on, why should I have basic skills?

I am glad that you no longer are forced to take a basic skill or certain things on the tree. But they need to get rid of the level requirements because it feels weird being forced to wait until you get to the thing you want to play and doing this massive context switch. The RNG based loot system simply does not lend itself well to the structure of leveling. This part is especially true during the campaign.

Along with that, I can’t emphasize enough how much I hated the campaign. It’s just too long. I was watching Mathil1 and he pretty much hit the nail on the head after completing the campaign: it’s just drawn out. I describe the situation as the story gets too much emphasis and I think because it’s long and wears people out, those who don’t understand where Diablo 4’s actual strength lies end up missing out because they don’t stay for the long term grind. They’re just making it too much into a theme park like a Disneyland ride or too much WoW influence. The story is convoluted and not compelling. I miss the old days where you just got 4 cut scenes between the major acts and you appreciated that effort. The writing feels to gratuitous rather than adding to the game. I believe I’m not the only gamer who shares this sentiment. Because of that sentiment, I refuse leveling using the campaign mode. It’s just drivel.

I have to talk about leveling through the Diablo 4 campaign is vs Path of Exile’s 10 acts. The main difference is that you constantly feel like you’re progressing in Path of Exile through the campaign. It does feel stale after a while but it’s more because it’s setup in a linear manner. Diablo 4 has nothing but unending, horrible, drooling dialogs that make you want to immerse yourself in a tub of acid to get the wretchedness out of your head. Even if you fast forward as much as possible, there’s still stuff that is forced upon you. I really hope that in the future, if there’s more expansions they just either cut down on the story/campaign or let people purely opt out. I don’t honestly give a fuck how much time and money you wasted on this part, I will do what I can to skip everything because there’s nothing fun about it.

Where I’m At

Honestly, I think I’m done with my Companion Druid. The gear and Paragon grind at this stage just isn’t worth it. The little additions you can get don’t feel impactful and I don’t get excited by the gear I find. To get the real upgrades I need, I have to continue to grind mindlessly and hope that I don’t want to jump off a cliff from going insane from the banality of the current system. Instead, I’ll probably level more alts just because I want to experience other builds before they get nerfed into the ground. There’s a few I want to try still because of how the charm systems operate as well as the various updates. So that alone is worth doing. But I think trying to push into higher torments is an exercise in futility in the current setup. The developers call it aspirational content; I call it a waste of time.

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