Impressions from Q4 D4 blog

A guaranteed critical strike indeed was more of a random and even class specific occurrence, given that the amount of preparation to surprise attack a vulnerability in a formidable opponents defenses shouldn’t happen every so often.

I’m not quite sure I follow that part. The D4 classes are already beginning to feel unique in their respectful ways. Druid as metamorphosis & / or shapeshifting summoner of bestiary aid via pets, the identity of the class archetype has been brought to life more in this method.

Slot machines ring ring ring ring ring

no really that’s diablo…

It’s okay. There is so much that itemization can adjust.

Potions with cooldowns. More than just running them out of health and then sending them back to town…

I mostly disagree with LLama about the attribute.

I rather interesting stats than the boring stat sticks found in most dull looter gamea.
+strength, + damage, + resist, + Hp . yawn.

The problem with these “traditional” attributes, other than being dull, is people will end up all having gears with the same stats, just different values.

We seen this in D3 already. Glove, crit chance, crit hit, main stats, attack speed…

The attribute like movement speed on elite kill is cool, this allows you to tailor contents that focus on hunting elite by target attributes.

If you are not specifically target elitem you can op for another attribute, creating diversity between people, instead of looking at the same few stats for every gear. This is true to D3, PoE & other loot game. So boring.

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The stat progress shouldn’t be all about dmg then crit, that makes it linear. Even though stats or classes are distinctly different, goals look the same to me.
System could be elevated by embed crit rating to certain spells when you hit stat thresholds or acquire some passive abilities to empower them.

I think this would work better instead of giving a goal post to the all characters while ignoring their effective distance and capabilities of them. Currently, stat system doesn’t talk of a limiting hardcap or diminishing returns softcap so far, that means it would be a dump stat if no restriction taken.

Some classes may benefit from crit rating from stat growth if that’s what they’re into. Sure this gives them an edge and characteristic, but it’s also good to have some diversity with utility stats such as movement speed, maximum resource or even faster block rate or hit recovery.

I ain’t gonna lie, this could be fun for the sake of power fantasy, yet again like in Diablo 3; but one build aiming for the same generic piece at the market with other builds don’t sound good to me. Itemization must push the player towards the class specific items more if class based fantasy hooks are the baseline here.

That’s actually my point. Thank you. Different specs and different builds must target different items but it’s impossible to do so if legendary itemization turn out to be a mishmash slot machine system with “5 random affix +1 random legendary affix”. There must be constants so we can have some control and target items.
I shouldn’t be forced to play the game for 5 hours straight wandering to find the item I want and when I find it, it should better worth it somewhat.

Regarding the new stat system, I’m concerned they’re making the same mistake they made in D3 vanilla with the DEX classes having their innate defense stat being Dodge, which resulted in huge damage spikes when Dodge failed. This was universally viewed as bad for the DEX classes because having your main stat mitigate some damage 100% of the time is much better than the all or nothing granted by Dodge.

I understand that stat requirement for can help force players into the correct stat point allocation, but then it just seems like illusion of choice.

I will say that I do like the throwback to STR, DEX, INT, and WIL. They’re familiar and should be in Diablo.

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That’s right. They have to come up with something good so dexterity builds won’t feel like gambling in a fight.

If healing received related main stat feeds passive life regeneration affixes, this combination might become an important part of the dexterity/dodge builds to mitigate this denting impact without forcing the character to a shield before difficulty scale goes high.
I think dexterity builds have to come up with some absolute damage reduction such as absorb, block rate or damage reflect at their class skills instead of direct mitigation to not fall into the same pitfall this time.

Right, because the top sticky is so hard to spot…

:roll_eyes:

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Loved what I read. Really shocked to be honest that they seem to be listening. Still a ton of work to do but looks like a good direction. Also just a thank you for keeping the community informed.

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Yeah. Dodge should not be part of attributes tbh. Not sure dodge should really be part of the game at all, but at least don’t make it something we have to depend on.
Nor should there be such a thing as a Dex or Str class. There should be Dex or Str builds. Among all classes.

I completely disagree with that. Mr LLama just want a D2 or PoE clone, and affixes on these games are boring. He even showcases affixes on that video of D2 and PoE trying to show how they are better, and god they are absurdly boring.

Mr LLama is also so absurdly anal with crit hit chance on gear, but his beloved PoE (which, again, he used as example of good item affixes) also has it all over it’s gear and it doesn’t break the game like it does in D3. He also makes some stupid remarks on how you could get 100% of something and they it would be broken, as if we actually knew if it’s even possible to get 100% increase on that stat.

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PoE build guide…For boots look for resistance, life/ES & movement speed (90% builds)
Body armor, look for hp/ES, resistance. (90% build)

Thats why we must move away from general stats, becuase it will end up most people using gears with the same fews stats.

Interesting non conventional stats that is more specific make loot hunt more exciting & longer.

Otherwise, we will be back to gears with marginalised improve numerical values ala D3…

Fixed it for ya :+1:

There still is a dump stat and that is the main stat. Exactly like in D3.

It’s not even the principle of a main stat that’s the problem, it’s making the others absolutely useless. True, in D4 only one is (INT for Barbarian, STR for Sorceress) and the damage bonus of main stat is heavily nerfed (maybe even too much) but the issue remains. Who is going to spend any point in INT when playing Barbarian ? If anything else it will condemn INT threshold nodes to never be used because that would mean wasting far too much otherwise useful Attribute bonuses.

It’s easily fixable however. There just needs an offensive bonus on every Attribute, no matter the class, as long as it makes sense and opens more specific builds while main stat remains the default choice.

I don’t think it’s bad as a secondary defensive bonus. It’s always helpful to avoid some damage.
Of course if it was the only thing DEX provided it would be terrible, just a little more than STR providing only Defense.

I like most everything about the blog and the item affixes with the exception of the legendary affix. Making it random I feel introduces too much RNG. I like that a legendary item has a set legendary power and feel that it should not be random.

Hey everyone, here is my opinion from this Q4 D4 blog:

I have good feelings with the statistics that come back to diablo again. I feel confident with the statistics even if they still need some work to be be done. My greatest fear for them is to have a statistic that erase all other ( like + life in D2 and +X% damage in D3) developpers have to work with this in mind to make sure to have a performant system. To resume for this part go ahead you are doing well for now.

Now the items.

To begin with i want to talk about what i loved in diablo 2 items.

In Diablo 2 i loved the fact that most of the item (white/ blue/rare) you find can be at least usefull and even godly if you find the perf stats ( i have in mind those monarch 4OS FBR increase chance of block, 4OS 100 life elite armors or rare circlet +20%FCR + skills +@res+str, etc.)

Most of the items have a goal such as white for runewords blue for craftings rare for endgame gear.

Uniques works mostly with rare base with a stat you can’t find normally on this kind of item ( such as +skills and fcr for arach pelt ) or good stats defined (i mean no RNG). And when you dropped a unique you say " Ah god, i know this item is good even before ID".

Runeword was great in Diablo 2 but finally when you look to this 20 years later : that’s just crafted items with crap you found in Sanctuary. I don’t want them to come back in diablo 4 for this reason : The developers can provide us a similar system to RW : a wonderful crafting system. Extremely important.

Now my feelings about the actual system of Diablo 4.

Developers got the good philosophy with the items in diablo 4. Make every items usable and important. However, the RNG is scaring me a lot for the legendary affixes and seems still to much powerfull compared to other affixes you can only find in rare and magic items.

They have to work on the basics affixes that roll on the items to make them simple. MRLlamaSC explained this in his reaction video to the Q4D4 and i’m fully joining his point of view.

The second thing that scares me is the RNG. i got the feeling that developers doing too much with this on items and do the same mistake that they’ve done in D3.

to synthetize my opinion : developers have to get back on basics once again and work hard on based affixes that rolled on items. They need to work the RNG of the affixes in general. I really hope they will bring us a solid crafting system (mix from d2 and d3).

I don’t agree at all. There is nothing any more exciting about some of these affixes they have showed off over your typical affixes from D2 or POE. Do you want to list which affixes shown on D4 you find that are not “absurdly boring” because I can assure you you are way over exaggerating the “fun” of these affixes.

The “fun” affixes are really reserved for legendary’s and uniques for their special affix powers.

Crit chance and Crit damage single single handedly ruined affixes/itemization in Diablo 3. His concern about CC and CD is not misplaced and a large amount of players acknowledge the issues with how overpowered those stats are. Don’t try and downplay the issue of those affixes just because you think you’re pointing out some hypocrisy with Llama, get a grip.

I don’t find any of them boring. I would never call them perfect or anything, but they all sound way more fun than the generic +stats and +resistances that he showed from PoE.

He also showcases a D2 item which he thinks is a great example of a good and fun item from that itemization system. The sword has +attack speed, +enhaced damage, +attack rating, +cold damage and mana leech. Generic and boring. Also, it’s important to point out that this weapon he uses as a example has a truckload of “enhanced damage” (419%), which he seens fine with. But god forbid D4 has a item with +50% fireball damage.

Well… I don’t think anyone can argue that crit hit chance and crit hit damage didn’t essentialy ruin D3 itemization. That in no way shape or form warrants how anal he is with those stats, as the game he uses as a example of itemization also has it.

The simple existance of these stats are not a problem at all, yet he cringes so hard at the sight of these stats like they alone spell doom for the whole system.

First you didn’t list any of them that you find so fun.

I find +resistances and +stats very fun as both of those have a lot of theory crafting potential. They also give a sense of character power increase as you acquire more of those stats. This shows you don’t understand RPG’s then. The affixes being “fun” according to your ridiculous definition and context shows you don’t understand what this game genre is about or that you don’t realize what genre of game you are playing or are fundamentally attempting to redefine it which means you should be playing a different genre then. It sounds like if you were game dev you would just make this game into an arcade game or something like overwatch.

Again, the “fun” affixes are on legendary’s for people such as yourself who can’t be bothered with “boring” “generic” theory crafting stats. That’s why they are combining aspects of D3 and D2 so that both camps can be content. Don’t downplay stats that you perceive as “boring” because you don’t understand them when other people see the potential and purpose of them that you don’t.

Really it sounds like you’re really not a fan of the RPG genre then if that is how you summed up most of the looter games.

Do you really want me to go copy paste the affixes from the items so you can read them here instead of opening the quarterly report?

How exactly +stats and + resistance have a lot of theory crafting potetial? You literaly put enough stats so you can use what you wanna use, and enough resistance so you don’t get killed in a second. There, theory crafting done.

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Allowing difficulty scaling up for faster paced combat for the player to step towards higher effective hitpoints? Maybe?
Instead of going full tank, game supposed to give you a logarithmic growth somewhere so you have to utilize life sustain and resource management instead of imagining that you would be an untouchable tank when you stack resistances only.

While quarterly reports never mentioned such thing because system is barebones, softcaps and breakpoints allo player to move forward through difficulties by diverting their stat allocation. I don’t think they’ll just break this up for us to theorize before relase date but we’ll see.