Diablo IV Quarterly Update - Q2 June 2022

General Discussion
21

i don’t think legendary powers are item type bound

22

Ima do my bust to build the ultimate 1 skill Barb and show it off.

23

From what I recall, they are bound to a few item slots each.
Like, Legendary affix X might spawn on boots and gloves. Etc.

24

I think last 2021 update made that a bit more confusing.

25

can you quote that?
i dont recall

26

Sorry Blizz, was hoping for more on this update. I suspect we got a push to get this done quickly to coordinate with the Not-E3 announcement and to draw some fire away from the D:I cash shop fiasco. No, I’m not forgetting it, and no, I’m not letting the company off the hook for it. At some point, someone needs to make an official statement on this issue.

On to the necro:
It’s hard to speak too much about it because we really don’t have much. We get 4 skill trees, but only got to see 2 spells out of each.

  • Bone tree - focuses on crit, has bone spirit and bone prison
  • Darkness tree - focuses on DoTs, has decompose (generator) and blight (AoE + DoT)
  • Blood tree - focuses on life leech, has blood surge (AoE) and blood mist (defensive)
  • The Army - focusing on summons: melee skellies, ranged skellies, golems

We’re told there are curses, but don’t get much more than that. We’re told there’s a bone spear. That’s pretty standard.

And the class mechanic is about customizing the minions. Great. Does this mean the Book of the Dead only deals with 1 of the skill trees? Or does that mean we only have 3 skill trees and “The Army” is built into the others? It’s a “fourth play style”, but not a fourth skill tree.

Regardless, it’s still thin. We have melee minions and three choices. We have golems with three choices. Do we get 3 types of mages too? And of course, we’ve got the option to drop these minions for a bonus and play as an Army of One. (Hat tip to the recruiters :laughing:)

The archetypes are there, but frankly, we’re not seeing all that much. It’s a familiar class, so we’re told we’re getting what any logical necro player would expect. What’s new about the D4 version of it? That remains to be seen.

As for the art, I’ll do a separate post of that once I’m happy with what I want to say and how I want to say it.

2 Likes
27

Like this essence can go to weapons, gloves, and jewelry

I would prefer it it was at most 2 item slots per legendary affix. But this sure is much better than all slots. That would be a balancing catastrophe. What they are setting up here likely already will be.

Speaking of this picture, why not make the legendary affix into:
Spender skills deal 4% more dmg for every second you havent used a Spender skill, up to X% (All classes!)
(Not sure what Fury skills entail exactly, so it could be more specific than just Spender)

Come on Blizzard :S

At least it isnt skill specific though.

28

ah, interesting
so at least they have a bit of “personality” left

29

Nor should we!

This remains a problem until D:I is either closed down, or the P2W is removed. Not particularly because of D:I, I honestly dont care about the game, even without the P2W it seems quite terrible. But P2W is a much bigger issue than Blizzard or Diablo.

Yeah, the choices indeed seem to be extremely limited.
I guess there is a chance that you can customize them more in the skill tree. But that is just yet another reason why we should see the skill tree, so we wouldn’t have to guess or naively hope. Until then, the only reasonable course is to expect the worst.

As far as we know there is just not skills, just one big skill tree? (Which really should be one skill tree per skill instead :confused: )

1 Like
30

I think Fury’s one of the Barb’s skill trees, parallel to our new Necro Bone or Darkness tree, so this is a boost probably only to a handful of skills within that tree that a Barb could choose.

I agree that the legendaries need to be a bit more broad. I don’t want to see legendary affixes only for 1 skill like they are in Immortal and D3. You end up with a shopping list effectively, and I think that’s bad for build diversity. We end up with a high prescribed set of build options only a handful of which are really viable. We get the illusion of build diversity but it’s lacking in practice because there are really few viable options. Obvious choice is obvious.

So, I’d rather see those affixes being written more broadly. Trying to actually write such examples however is a challenge. You end up fairly quickly running out of broad concepts that are interesting and worth elevating as a legendary bonus. We need a bit of a compromise where some specificity is allowed. The interview contained an example where you got +2 minions on the battlefield. It’s specific, but a good legendary affix. Generally, I like bonuses to class trees as a way to do this. My main goal is to avoid having a list of “mandatory” legendary items that you must have to make a viable build if you choose X skill because not having those bonuses makes you too weak.

I’m certain there’s more, but they’re not ready to reveal it. It’s hard to evaluate with only 30% of the picture. We got the part we’d all expect: a lot of carry-over from D2, 3, and Immortal; which leads to my question at the end - what makes D4’s version different?

Edit: thinking faster than I type, I forgot a few words

31

Yeah, I meant I dont know which skills are in there, but pretty sure they are all Spenders.
Maybe it can be specified even further; like Single Target spenders, or Direct Dmg Spenders etc.
or it could just be [Fury,Blood, Fire etc.] Spenders, so picking one category from each class. No matter how an item is designed it will be possible to make it broader, and work across classes.
Doesn’t have to be all classes for every single item, but it should at minimum be 3+ classes for each affix.

32

fury afaik is the barbs resource
or is that rage?
isn’t that quite the same thing? XD

33

Understandable, and I like your examples. In practice, it may end up being too broad. As an example: everyone’s got a generator right? If so, does that make a legendary with +attack speed to spenders feel “mandatory?”

34

:100:

It can be a fairly extensive list; like these, and all kinds of combinations thereof, leading to lots of combos

Generator, Spender, Cooldown, Single Target, Cleave, AoE, Melee, Ranged, each Dmg type, Direct dmg, DoT, Channeled, Proc, Offensive, Defensive, Mobility, Summon/Pet, Buff, Debuff, and so on.

Just being a good game for once would be a huge improvement over 3 and Immortal at least :pensive:

As for the necro specifically, the D3 necro never felt like a necro imo. The summoning was way too weak and temporary. Witch Doctor felt much more like a necro.

1 Like
35

Could make it “Melee Generator” for example as well, to make it less broad.
Or for broad ones, make it have pros and cons. Faster generator attacks are always useful of course, unlike faster Spenders which have the build in negativity of spending more resources. So it could be “+20% faster but generates 15% less resource”, or “30% faster generators, but all spenders cost 50% more”

Edit, misread your post and answered for Generators.
As said, spenders already have the build-in con of faster attacks requiring more resources.
Also, cooldown skills dont benefit from attack speed, so it is limited further.
But Spenders could have many of the same limits. Only “Single Target Spenders”, and of course stuff like “20 faster attack speed, but…”. Various stuff that makes build A really want the item, while build B do not.
And optimally, stuff that means two builds using the same spender might still not both want the item.
Like a WW barb who is able to generate lots of resource might want faster attack speed spender legendary, for the classic Spin to Win gameplay. Or another without resources, want to make his WW as cheap and slow as possible, while focusing on other benefits - movement speed and bleed maybe for a fast AoE DoT build? A third might just use WW as a secondary skill for burst or procs where the extra attack speed, while useful, would be worse than picking a legendary that gave 20% more proc chance on spenders.

As for “everyone got a generator”, while I hope many builds by default will go for a generator, because resource generation should finally matter, unlike in D2 and D3, hopefully plenty of more specialized builds will throw away the generators and make due.
Or other builds will only use generators and no spenders.

36

I Like

  • The dark ambiance. A lawless world, full of monsters
  • All Necromancer styles (except the yellow armor). They look awesome. Vampires & Undeads. Great job !
  • The new circular Bone Prison + the new Bone Spirit, good combo.
  • Mechanics available to generate corpses (missing corpses is a pain, especially in D2 where you need a corpse to raise a skeleton)
  • Book of the Dead giving necro minions runes and behaviors
  • Cleansing dungeons having an impact (unlocks towns, camps, loot ?)
  • Blood Wave - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=31 and https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=204
  • Grim Scythe - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=38
  • Curse - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=58
  • Orbiting Bone Spears - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=61
  • Corpse Explosion - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=61
  • Bone spear and Essence orbs - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=98
  • Bone Spear splitting in 3 teeth - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=103
  • Necro climbing the sail - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=97
  • Druid jumping off its horse and immediately transforming into a Grizzly - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=41
  • Sorceress Nova - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=268
  • Sorceress Glacier with growing ice spikes on monsters over time, we feel the freezing process - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=66
  • Sorceress Blizzard with snow / ice rain, feels powerful - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=174
  • NPC begging for its life, then hidding - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=123
  • Greed world boss: I hope the wounds reflect how much damage players inflicted to the boss - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=137
  • Camera angle changes - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=89

I Dislike

  • The yellow armor, ugly - https://youtu.be/I-HtDwwuRFs?t=107
  • Greed’s gold puddles seem detached from the ground, they should blend with the ground. Blades of grass should stick out from gold puddles. Grass should burn. Something. - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=154
  • Frozen Nova - Frozen Monsters look like they are just white-snowed. Need to work on translucide blue content, like monsters should be covered with a thin ice/plastic-ish layer, in order to make players feel it is actually ice rather than snow - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=268
  • Frozen Nova - Ice spikes on ground. Either too much or not enough. Vanilla Nova should not have spikes on the ground. If this was an intended effect of a rune like D3 Bone Nova, then go full ice spikes and make few enemies to be pierced by ice spikes for 1-3 seconds (knockback + freeze crowd control)
  • Snowed ground doesn’t look like it is snow, but sandy snow. Weird. Too much yellow. Might need to be way more white with subtle translucide blue additions - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=269
  • Parangon Boards look messy, need more clarity. Better readable background, more different / distinguishable forms and colors ? - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=229
  • Frozen Orb looks weak - https://youtu.be/94wQxtv_sAc?t=163
  • Bone Prison feels a little bit too static. Maybe make it alive by moving each bone up and down at a random speed (like D3 bone spikes). It would look like a mouth full of teeth, like the Sarlacc sand monster in Star Wars that ate Boba Fett. It would make the Bone Prison darker - https://youtu.be/7h3a_fU_0-w

Suggestions

  • Players should be able to combine { Bone Prison + Blood Nova }. Ex: Blood Nova deals 15% increased damage to enemies trapped inside Bone Prison. Or more generic for group play: Enemies inside Bone Prison take 15% more damage (from everyone).
  • Keep the D3 rune where the Flesh/Blood Golem explodes in several corpses, so player can quickly raise multiple skeletons
  • Raise skeleton ideally should not require to target a corpse so the game stays fluid (Ex: The “best” corpse is auto-selected), or at least be a large zone spell (15 yards) so players can vaguely target, just like curses.
  • Book of the Dead - Necro minions should have runes / behaviors that are programmatic / evented. Ex: If a player lost X% of its life, a minion will sacrifice itself to allow player to regen its life - https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Alarak_(Co-op_Missions)#:~:text=Sacrifices%20itself%20to%20heal%20Alarak
37

“Providing players with the option to pursue Lilith on their own or with the aid of others is just another way players have additional agency when playing Diablo IV.” - Blizzard Entertainment June 12, 2022

If that means I can turn off other random players or create a “private” shared world for me and my friends (in story mode AND endgame) I’m happy.

1 Like
38

It definitely should mean that.
But it doesn’t :frowning: Because… Blizzard.

39

First impression on the Necromancer: really, really cool, just awesome!

40
  1. what is the skeleton limit.
  2. how do you choose between melee skeletons and mages? does it just alternate?
1 Like