This is THE update of the year by a mile! Fantastic ideas that will surely place Diablo 4 at the top of the genre once again. Solid path. Off-topic: If I had to nitpick, please rid the monsters of the blinking when hit (look how nice it looks without the monster flashing https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/page_media/J7SHIBZE21KD1607721495492.gif) and do something about the god-awful tooltip font! 
9.5/10 canāt wait for Blizzconline '21 
In my opinion, so far so good. I like it overall but there is a few changes and tips that i would stick to.
As happend few times with WoW, the squish with numbersā¦ just donāt push Diablo 4 to that direction, make it with smaller numbers, its easier to see and judge the comparation between damage or gear or anything else, and at the end its more reasonableā¦
Just donāt push game in that direction. By the videos in this q4 update lvl20 +2k damage wtfā¦ what will it be when it reach max level and gets end game gear, bilions, trilions ? Like in diablo 3 now ?
I am very big fan of diablo franchise but mehā¦ When diablo 3 was released i remember the time when numbers were good at the beginning, but now? It lost all common sense and thatās why i stopped playing the game honestly. I mean, from 10k damage to over 500 trilion bilion (the numbers are too high that i donāt know they actually exist) ? Especially if you consider to add some expansion to diablo 4, consider that number valuesā¦
Or other option would be not to have visible numbers on screen at all, just like in diablo 2. Butā¦ we are living now in modern ageā¦
Other thing is, make gold valuable and useful. In diablo 3 gold value lost all common sense in gameā¦ some players have enough gold to share equally across the entire community of diablo 3 and enchant their items to perfection so many times with all created charactersā¦ To avoid that, lower the value of gold and make it useful by adding some kind of system to spare gold in reasonable wayā¦ diablo 2 had gambling, also add pets to game, add pets to gambling systemā¦ make gold valuable so players can actually trade items for goldā¦ justā¦ make damn gold valuable but not in amount as its in diablo 3ā¦
Nextā¦
Consider adding professions to game? But make it useful actually in every aspect of gameā¦
Nextā¦ hmmā¦
About itemization, legendaries and uniques to be more specificā¦ donāt make end game items that are āuselessā just to fill the voidā¦ i mean, for example in diablo 3, there is bunch of legendaries that nobody is using at all, cause there are META builds and they are only way to goā¦ Make items to be competitive, that is a correct word, competitive.
To itemization alsoā¦ its stupid for example, letās say an amulet to have āchance to blockā? Nobody is hitting you in the amulet, you are defending with your shield and your front, back and side body. Make gear, letās say Chest to have āgrayā stat and that stat becomes active only if you wear a shield āAdds 10% chance to block if you wear a shieldā and with that example there is tons of things you can addā¦
About jewelry (rings, amulets and i donāt know what else)ā¦ even for no-casters like barbarianā¦ jewelry shall represent the power of character, even to add some sort of new spell to them, i would call it a āSide spellā, and every character could have max of 1 or 2, that will help them on their journeyā¦
Thatās it for now from me 
When i come up with new ideas in stuff, iāll be back!
Second, we want to support deeper customization through our itemization. Items should support and enhance your class, not define it.
Please, please, please! Never forget thisā¦ For the love of god; please donāt let D3 happen again.
āAngelic Powerā and āDemonic Power,ā
Thank you for removing this insanely stupid concept. It felt bad from the moment you first showed it.
Items are looking so much better now.
To see what that feels like in action, weāve added weapon speeds and inherent characteristics to all weapons in our latest internal test environment.
Please give these speed values actual numbers. Diablo is a an ARPG, itās a full-on numbers game. We want to min-max, not number-guess or rely on third-party sites/applications to pull information from the game you otherwise gate behind dumb āwallsā like this. If you continue to hide information like this, tools like TurboHUD will continue to exist.
So, weāre making a lot of exciting changes here. Weāre increasing the potential power of individual affixes on Magic items. Weāre increasing the maximum number of affixes on Rare and better items in the endgame. Legendary affixes now roll randomly (Yes, really!) on Legendary Items. And Unique items will replace Mythics.
This is looking much more promising than the previous item updates youāve shown so far. Items now look fun and interesting to pickup vs. just focusing on the D3 style of specific pieces or bust. Please donāt recreate D3, we donāt need another boring gear-set fest with static builds/gear loadouts.
You want builds to be diverse, so please keep that promise and donāt fail us again like what happened with D3.
Iām worried to see set items come into play with these updates and really really hope what youāve said before with them holds true. We do not want to see D4 turn into another D3/WoW where the entire endgame is ruled by gear sets and forced metas.
This was a nice update to see, as the previous ones did not really seem like you guys were listening at all and just recreating D3 on a new engine. Nice to see our feedback is being listened to finally in the Diablo space as it really hasnāt been for the last handful of years with D3.
Here are my thoughts on this update and some new ideas Iād like to share(by someone whoās been a Diablo devotee since '99)
1. Please keep the damage numbers lowā¦even for endgame
Over 1k weapon attack at level 20-ish? In a classic RPG game, this would sound almost like a weapon that drops from an end-game boss, rather than a leveling item. I hope they donāt go for millions/billions of damage like in D3. Everything in abundance sucks because it loses its importance. Like, it wouldnāt matter if you dealt 1 million and 10 damage or 1 million and 500.
You guys did that in Shadowlands by doing a real nice stat squish because seeing lower numbers is much easier to process and it looks cleaner. We arenāt the angelic nephalems that angels are afraid of anymore. Weāre just random adventurers trying to survive.
2. Bring back Minimum Damage and Maximum Damage.
This is not a PvP game. Itās all about the RNG. Seeing an ability do one and the same amount of damage every time gets boring real quick. Besides, the fantasy of it is when you hit a monster, sometimes you hit them where it really hurts, at random since thereās no aim in the game, and thatās basically your Max Damage. Min damage would be when you hit them where it didnāt hurt so much.
3. Remember elemental affixes from past games?
Thatās right. Finding that cool axe but with a twist - it CRACKLES with energy and electrocutes enemies from time to timeā¦ Or a cool flaming sword that sets things on fire. Imagine infusing that into runewords or just binding those affixes to gems, or maybe even just those weapons casually dropping. I remember they were introduced in Diablo 3 beta and were scrapped. So many cool things were scrapped from the beta.
*3.1. Make different monsters resistant to X affix and vulnerable to Y affix
In Diablo 2, something cool was that all clubs/maces dealt more damage to undead. Why? Well, you donāt kill a zombie by slashing them to bits. You bash the undead hells out of them and they die. Now thatās what I call a real RPG element. A cool thing to do is make something in reverse - what dies faster when you slash it rather than bashing it?
In addition, I think every monster should be vulnerable to some elements likewise and resistant to others.
This creates a lot of opportunities for a player to study different groups of mobs and improve their knowledge/skill at the game. Same goes for the need of specific resistance school in a specific Act/zone. The best part would be if theyāre not spoiled on the health bar tooltip. Maybe add a bestiary for every character that adapts as you kill monsters and tells you more info about them the more you kill/progress.
This would only make sense if the monsters are challenging enough and unique of course.
4. I AM SO HAPPY WITH THE RETURN OF STAT SYSTEM YAYYY
This has been my favorite part so far. Rhykker suggested that Dexterity should give casting speed for Sorceress and I second that. The fantasy of having dexterity is being agile, nimble, and having more movement/attack/casting speed fits the fantasy just right. Everything else, including the skill system, seems great!
PS: What about having Dexterity requirement of X wand or Int requirement for Y Staff? I really wish you guys brought back stat req for items.
5. A fleshed-out Runeword system
Any news on that? Iād be thrilled to find random runes drop from monsters and to be able to utilize, them properly, and not as a substitute to gems. Make interactions between them, for example.
6. Static damage scaling with level > percentage damage.
In the example given it is shown how much damage Strength gives you. Yeah but is that amount of Strength going to give you the same percentage 20 levels later? Itās kind of confusing. Iād honestly keep the percentage values, but introduce some static damage scaling with level too. It is just cleaner in my opinion and most classic RPGs like Diablo 2 use that. Itās only a bit more difficult to balance, but if stats are squished enough then it shouldnāt be a problem. Having a balance between scaling with static damage increase and %s increase is going to make level power easier to follow.
Final thoughts
Anyway, I am really happy to see that the Diablo team is closely reading playersā feedback. Iām grateful for the amount of effort you guys are putting into it. Keep it up!
Yes! This is exactly what I was hoping for; glad to see you going this direction, this will make characters feel and play more unique and not be as dependent on items. Canāt wait!
Just my personal opinions about what Iāve seen.
The stats should be in a different order on your character sheet. You have two physical based attributes and two mental based attributes. Just seems weird that they are separate from each other. ( Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Willpower )
Also, why do they do different things on different characters? Do we all have to adapt to new system, every time we try out a new character? It would make more sense that each attribute affects the same things.
Attribute Example :
Strength for Attack Power and Defense.
Dexterity for Accuracy, Evasion and Speed.
Intelligence for Spell Power and Resistance.
Willpower for Resource and Cooldown.
I would also like damage numbers to stay low. Not a big fan of seeing 1.2 million or 1.2 billion, just seems strange that they go that high. I would also like to see Min and Max damage on Weapons and Spells. Theyāre also comparable.
Mod Examples :
+X% Weapon Damage
+X% Spell Damage
I also wouldnāt mind being able to use weapons on a sorceress. The cool thing about Enchant Weapon in Diablo 2, was making a Spell Sword or Arcane Archer build. The Ice-blade thing doesnāt fit with that fantasy, as it always looked like another spell to meā¦
Love the new Skill Bar. Looks good. Minimal, but effective.
My thoughts on the December update are mostly positive. More or less, everything that was talked about was great.
Really, everything they are changing sounds wonderful. The things that worry me a bit are not what have been talked about, rather, what have not been talked about.
I am hoping they look at the nitty gritty aspects of items next, removing/adding/editing affixes where necessary. I am hoping to see:
All in all, a good update with some great new directions, but hoping the affixes get fine tuned and make items a bit more simple and exciting.
Thank you devs for the updates and listening to our feedback!
Youāre on the right path.
Thank you Blizzard for an awesome update for Diablo IV. A lot of people have missed itemization, I have missed that.
Every player with randomly stats looks great.
Please make no account bound, I hope most items will be tradable in Diablo 4 (Not for hours, but permamently.)
Trading is fun for people who like to trade runes/gems for other items etc. . .
Looking forward to next update, maybe magic find will be back too.
Make Diablo great again 
I love scrolls are back 4 real!!
People now have to buy Scrolls of Town Portal / Identify Scrolls.
Back too Itās root of Diablo 
Strongly disagree here with you. PoE itemization and progression system, while being very complex, is something we should approach and not move further away.
D3 is just to simple to change your build and skill if you have the right equipment, we that played a lot of D1 and D2 want that our character progression matter. And not that it can be rebuilt with a couple of clicks away.
Agree. Clarity is very important. Instead of fast/very fast/ slow, etc it should be x attacks/casts per sec.
And one more thing, comming with the attack/casting speed they should add faster casting/ blocking/(maybe) attack animation, not increasing your speed but make the animation faster, so you have more time to reposition and manuever.
Well, while I donāt think the damage rangeās absolutely necessary, I agree that we need more clarity on base damage and attack/casting speed.
Also not a fan of spell casters having attack as offensive stat, wheres the spell power instead.?
Well so what about universal wepons and items (like rings)? They also need 2 seperate damage attributes too? (4 if you also count speed). Tachnically a spell cast is also an āAttackā it uses a āWeaponā. Maybe they can also change the text to ābase damageā for clarity. However itās just text changes so itās not very important.
Hmmm, Iām not too agree about that. I think the attack/ cast speed should have a fixed value for a weapon but it can roll +/- x% attack/casting speed affix in items.
The defense number is actually straight forward, it increases your armor and elemental resists with a diminishing returns. There are other seperate defense affixes that you can get like max health, seperate elemental resists and more.
The attack, in the other hand, is more confusing, partly because the way they present it with the weapons, is it base damage? Or is it dps, which means the base damage addition will be divided by your attack/cast speed?
very good improvements since last itemization update. Keep up the good work !
I still think they shouldāve done more work in a quater than that. Still no word about set items, runewords, potions or crafting. Beside the improvements on skill are noticable but still very linear, not enough to satisfy many players who wants more complex and customizable skill system.
In the other hand, I love the attribute system. In the first glance, it went to the same mistake of the previous RPGs, but when you inspects it closely, the % damage bonus by the āmainā attribute is not that overwhelming, so you can actually gain similar or sometime more benefit by investing points to other attributes, especially with the interaction with the skill nodes. Of course it will need lots of improvements in the future but I think theyāre comming the right path with this one.
Well, I donāt even know where to start.
Long story short, iām 35 years old, and iāve been playing the Diablo franchise ever since Diablo 1 got released at the beginning of 1997. I also played Diablo II + Lords of Destruction for a good 10+ years and Diablo III alot since release in 2012.
Problem is, you ruined almost everything with Diablo III. The damage youāve done to the Diablo franchise is irreversible at this point. You really messed that up with Diablo III.
The biggest flaw of Diablo III in my opinion were :
You seem envious to back pedal on those poor decision you made on Diablo III, yet, iāve just read the blog article for the Quaterly Update of December 2020, and I feel so dissapointed. Their is so much stuff you are doing wrong yet again with the itemization.
You proven yet again that your itemization vision is still hot garbage in my opinion, you have no clue how to properly design an RPG the āBlizzard Northā way. And itās saddening to say the least.
Iām not looking foward to play this game, simply put, the more I read the quaterly updates, the more I see your team will not deliver the ARPG game that iām looking for, not even close.
I know full well that iām not adding constructive feedback to the discussion, but unfortunately, I do not think that writing a book on how to properly design an ARPG will change anything at this point.
But I have time to waste and I will give it a shot anyway. The short version of this book would discuss in details what the core pillar of a good ARPG are :
TL:DR : If we can reach max level in 2 hours with the help of a stupid power level, and if we can get a full legendary set in the same period of time, your game is definitly DOA. What you cleary seem to misunderstand, is that the core audience of Diablo players are real hardcore players who play thousands of hours per year. You need to build and design the game around that knowledge, else your game will be dead in less than 1-year after release, just like Diablo 3. Also you need to scale all the numbers down, and keep them LOW, you seem to like playing with multiple thousands, not to say millions and billions of gold, damage, ect. That is just impossible to balance thus will ruin the whole game economy and everything else around it in a matter of days if you dont aggressively SCALE EVERY NUMBER DOWN.
Looks as though the update addressed many of our concerns. Figured Iād share this topic to continue the conversation.
The direction as of now is promising. I really like this iteration for legendary items. It feels a little more intuitive compared to consumables.
It also pleases me to see the return of Unique items and fixed stats.
Seems as though the developers are really listening this time around.
Now please remove the attack attribute from jewelry.
TL:DR : If we can reach max level in 2 hours with the help of a stupid power level, and if we can get a full legendary set in the same period of time, your game is definitly DOA. What you cleary seem to misunderstand, is that the core audience of Diablo players are real hardcore players who play thousands of hours per year. You need to build and design the game around that knowledge, else your game will be dead in less than 1-year after release, just like Diablo 3. Also you need to scale all the numbers down, and keep them LOW, you seem to like playing with multiple thousands, not to say millions and billions of gold, damage, ect. That is just impossible to balance thus will ruin the whole game economy and everything else around it in a matter of days if you dont aggressively SCALE EVERY NUMBER DOWN.
Yes to this whole post. Cannot agree enough. Iāve been playing the series since the first Diablo came out as well.
D4 is heading into a direction that has a feel more along the lines of another addition to Diablo 3, rather than another unique addition to the franchise like each sequel has been, and itās very worrying. Diablo 2 was such a vast improvement on the first, and D3 (while not vast at all) was much simpler and easier for casual gamers along with a polished feel and it was still uniquely different from the other two. I feel it is best to take the best from the previous games while adding something new and original, leaving the garbage and noise behind. A lot of changes weāre seeing seems like weāre just gonna have a rehashed D3 instead of a true addition to the series. Donāt waste time on that, please.
The artistry and story were great in D3, but aside from the smooth gameplay there wasnāt much else. I agree the learning curve should not be huge as it would deter some players, but donāt make it āChoose this class, this build, and beat the game in a day (donāt worry, weāll decide your stats and skills for you)ā style which D3 really damaged the franchise with- saying it is basic and lacking depth is an understatement.
The absurd numbers in D3 was a huge turnoff. The āEither I one-shot them or they one-shot meā style is never enjoyable. That is not combat, thatās a lazy Russian roulette and is not rewarding at all.
When playing D4, like we did with D1 and D2, we want to go to bed after playing and then literally have dreams of ways we can customize the future for our characterās depth and progression to reap the rewards or accept the consequences. We define our character by the choices we make in creating them bit by bit, our characters are not defined simply by their class and/or equipment.
I know a lot of people are voting for respeccing so, if it is implemented, please keep it minimal and tasteful.
D4 needs to slow down and follow a similar ponderous pace as D1 with its simplicity and enthralling atmosphere and D2 with its character progression and depth, not the smashānāgrab of D3. Please keep in mind youāre creating another hallmark other companies wish they could compete with, not a cash grab. If a few more years is what it takes to get it right, then thatās fine, weāll be waiting. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, devs.
I think that sounds like a good idea. Technically there are examples similar to this in D3 such as wand of woh that changes explosive blast. I donāt doubt that there will be legendaryās that augment the way spells work to where they almost work entirely different and in essence are a new spell.
Why not just add a toggle system for people how like more depth?
I agree, I think they need to add a bestiary that provides info about monsters such as what elements they are more vulnerable to, armor types (like in warcraft3 armors take more damage from certain attacks and less from others) :
I agree with this too. It also provides opportunity for additional affixes in the affix pool such as āincrease minimum damage by xā and āincrease maximum damage by xā.
In conjunction with the bestiary and monster vulnerabilities, if there are monsters more vulnerable to elements this can make affixes such as āadd 1-500 cold damage to your attacksā or āadd 200-300 cold damage to your attacksā affixes that can be useful to have in the overall affix pool as well. I think the other affixes such as % chance to do this or that are just quirky and donāt feel right. There just need to be more affixes that are more straight forward such as those mentioned above.
I think as others have said, bring the āattackā and ādefenseā numbers down like to the 10ās and low 100ās. Theyāre just too big already it seems. Seeing numbers in the millions, billions, trillions like D3 is just stupid.
Going back to the Warcraft 3 armor types, I think the armors that players wear should also have weaknesses and strength based on their classification. Chain mail could be more resistant to ranged/piercing attacks but weaker to melee attacks. Plate is more resistant to melee attacks but weaker to magic. Etc. Heavier armor types should also effect movement speed.
Thoughts about Legendary Powers (overall i like idea that they will be radomly generated on items):
I would suggest to avoid legendary powers that boost dmg of specific skill; it should be for group of skills, e.g. insted āMeteor gains XX ccā¦ā should be āFire Skills gain XX ccā¦ā or Secondary etc. Legendary powers for specific skills should change their mechanic, not boosting their dmg.
I hope there wonāt be situation when class specific items will roll other classā legendary power. E.g. Druidās helmet with legendary power for Barb skills etc.
Youāre a fool if you still have hope for this game not to be designed around the widest possible audience with every possible RPG aspect watered down to fit the IQ of the 7 years old kids of the new generation.
This game will probably be just as bad as Diablo III if not worst and thatās a fact. The more I read their quaterly updates and learn about this game, the less and less I care about it because it will definitly not be what I want it to be, not even close.
On top of that, they will most probably shove tons of microtransactions down our throats (because Activision) and will milk every possible penny out of the die-hard Blizzard fanboys.
You better get your expectation very low for this one. Despite what they want you to believe (cf : they are ālistening to the communityā). They clearly arenāt and the game will not live up to your expectation.