After a successful beta period, Blizzard have released some of the changes they are incorporating for Diablo 4. Let’s take a look.
This news comes courtesy of a blog post released by Blizzard in which they detail the changes they will be making to Diablo 4. To summarise, they seem to have taken a lot of player feedback into account and have addressed some of the main concerns.
Dungeon layout changes for Diablo 4
One major concern was about the lack of diversity for the dungeon’s crawlers… Well, dungeons. Players didn’t like having to traipse back and forth to the same dungeons. Luckily, the company has addressed this issue.
“One of the most common pieces of feedback we received is that players felt they were doing a lot of backtracking within certain dungeons,” Blizzard said in a blog post. “We have optimised multiple dungeons across all zones to minimise the need for backtracking.”
They then go onto list the dungeons that will be receiving an update with the majority of them being in the Fractured Peaks zone. The nine dungeons receiving changes will grant players with a movement buff that can help them navigate objectives easier.
The full dungeon changes are as follows:
- To reduce the need to backtrack, small numbers of straggling monsters will seek out the player to help complete the Kill All Monsters objective.
- When Animus is gathered, the player and nearby allies will: Gain 10 Resource / Reduce all active Cooldowns by 1 second.
- Depositing Animus channel time was reduced from 3 to 0 seconds.
- The time to Rescue was reduced from 3 to 1.5 seconds.
- All Rescue objectives now drop a Health Potion upon completion.
- While carrying the Ancient’s Statue, Bloodstone, Mechanical Box, or Stone Carving, you will receive a Momentum bonus granting a 25% move speed increase to you and nearby allies.
- Pedestals have had their channel time reduced from 2 to 0 seconds.
- Returning a Portable Object to its Pedestal now fully restores Health, Resource, Potions, and resets cooldowns for all nearby players.
- All doors will now generate a minimap ping when they are opened.
- All Structure Objectives in dungeons now have additional combat mechanics players must overcome.
Updates to Classes
The Diablo 4 beta allowed us to dabble with all the classes we will get in the full launch of the game. This included Barbarian, Necromancer, Druid, Sorcerer and Rogue. Out of these, Barbarians have received a buff that gives them 10% damage reduction.
Sorcerers and Necromancers have been nerfed. Necro’s minions die quicker and their Corpse Explosion ability doesn’t do as much damage. For Sorcerer’s, their chain lightning now does less damage.
Additionally, a few bosses have been “re-evaluated for melee character difficulty”. This will see changes in their attacks and overall mechanics.
Here are the overall changes for Diablo 4 Classes:
General
- Effects like Stun and Freeze can be applied to Elite Monsters twice as long before they become Unstoppable.
- Reviewed class skills to confirm that all classes have access to sufficient skills that remove control impairing effects.
- Many Legendary Powers have had updates to their effectiveness.
Barbarian
- A flat 10% passive damage reduction has been added for the Barbarian Class. Some Skill Tree passives had their damage reduction effects reduced to compensate.
- The Whirlwind Skill now deals more damage and consumes more Fury.
- The Double Swing Skill Enhancement refunds its full Fury cost when used on Stunned or Knocked Down enemies.
Druid
- Companion Skills will now deal heavily increased damage.
- All Ultimate Skills have had their cooldowns reduced.
- Usability improvements have been made to Maul and Pulverize.
- Using a non-Shapeshifting Skill will transform a Druid back into their human form.
Necromancer
- Summoned Minions will die more often, requiring players to utilize Corpses more often.
- Many bonuses in the Book of the Dead have had their stats increased.
- The damage dealt by the Corpse Explosion skill has been reduced.
- The brightness of the Skeletal Warriors and Mages has been reduced.
Rogue
- Upgrades for Subterfuge Skills have had their bonuses increased.
- Multiple passive Skills have had their bonuses increased.
- All Imbuement Skills have had their cooldowns increased.
- Sorcerer Charged Bolt’s damage was increased and the Mana cost to cast has decreased.
- Decreased the damage of Chain Lightning and reduced its effectiveness against Bosses.
- Decreased the cooldown for the Incinerate Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
- Firewalls will now spawn underneath enemies more frequently when using its Enchantment bonus.
- Increased the Lucky Hit chance for the Meteor Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Other changes
The dreaded Butcher – an enemy that randomly spawns and does a lot of damage has now been buffed for World Tiers 3 and 4.
The ‘Reset Dungeon’ option has been removed due to players being a bit cheeky with its usage. As it could be used to farm specific areas, Blizzard wants to avoid this.
Cellar Dungeons are also receiving some treatment aimed at making them less boring. They are now more likely to trigger special events and reward chests.
Read: Diablo 4 Battle Pass – everything you need to know
This is all the newest updates we can expect for the full launch of Diablo 4 on June 6. If you wish to check them out yourself, make sure to head over to the blog post. Here you will find changes to UI, QoL updates and overall enemy encounters.
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