D4 Beta and Barb feedback from a semi-casual gamer

PC General Discussion
1

Spent the weekend playing on & off levelling up a barb. My main goal was just to get a feel for D4 and the Barbarian class in general. I’ve split the feedback in D4 in general and then the Barb class.

D4 general, the good:

  • I really enjoyed the feeling of the scale of the open world - It made me feel there was a ton to do and I could take my time doing it. I felt rewarded for the different things I did and for exploring.
  • I really enjoyed the visuals - The environments look beautiful and the details blew me away

D4 general, the bad:

  • The dialogue felt slow at times and I found myself wanting to skip conversations to move things along
  • At times, navigating through the UI was a bit confusing, especially crafting. So many tabs and options that were a bit hard to figure out
  • Itemization was a bit of a let down, I quickly realized that blues are pointless. Yellows are much better as are legendaries. By level 15 all blues are auto-salvage / sell.
  • I want more of my power to come from skills, not items.
  • I had a lot of minor crashes and hang-ups when interacting with NPC’s or switching zones but I’m guessing that my be from things not loading from the servers
  • One visual gripe I did have was that the water reflections are a bit too “bright / shiny” and at times, the “fog / blizzard” effects get a bit annoying if they last for too long.

Bard, the good:

  • Combat felt great and the visceral nature really appealed to me
  • I liked how my character switched between the two sets of weapons
  • I liked how almost all the skills I tried felt, especially upheaval and Whirlwind
  • My favorite build was to leap into a group (with the fury gen upgrade), hit stomp or a shout and then blast them with upheaval or WW. That’s what I feel a bard should be like. Come flying in, screaming like a mad man and then destroying enemies…

Bard, the bad:

  • I felt slow, when moving around
  • The minute I got into a boss fight, I was in a lot of trouble. Though I could clear out trash just fine and one-shot enemies, the minute I fought a boss, I felt like I was just tickling them and getting dropped in two, three hits. There was no way to get my health back in time. The worst was the Den Mother…
  • I was forced to respec for bleed and thorns damage (which is super OP), then go in and apply bleed, get extra damage from thorns and then kite around while healing from Iron Skin and potions. This was a pretty big letdown. I wanted to smash the thing in the face not apply bleed and then kite around.

Final feedback and ideas:

  • I didn’t really enjoy the MMO part of the game. It felt weird having other people in “my room” next to “my stash”. I want to feel like I’m alone and fighting hords, not having random people come flying in shooting fireballs around…
  • I would have wanted a mount right out of the gate or at leas the minute I get to the first proper town. Walking around felt too slow.
  • Waypoints should unlock without having to “activate” them. Forgot to do one, swore loudly when I realized I had to walk all the way back to the town to activate it.
  • World boss on set times is not great design. I want to play when I want to play, not drop everything to jump in the game at a specific time.
  • Itemization feels a bit off, I want more of my damage to come from skills than from items…
  • I’d like to have the option to zoom out a bit more too! I often felt too close to the character and would have liked to have more stuff on screen.
  • Finally, with the gameplay being the way it is now, I don’t really understand how season will fit in…

Looking forward to playing next weekend and trying out the rogue and druid…

4 Likes
2

Yes, it destroyed my sorceress, and I had to switch back to T1 past this point.

I felt that.

Just like in last Epoch, yes.

That would destroy the RNG nature of the game.

Skills are innate, but items are RNG.
This is a core mechanic, just like any card game.
Cards are powerful, but you get them randomly.

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Can you report this nice feedback in-game using Ctrl + B ?

If not enough time, can you report your feedback during the open Beta ?

With your proposals to solve the encountered problems.

3

I thought the in-game feedback was only for reporting bugs? If you can send open feedback, i’ll try to do that :slight_smile:

4

i played hardcore so i got the chance to die and start over trying all the classes.

barb is the most underwhelming to me right now. by a large margin.

im not making any hasty decisions though - hard to tell when we can only get to level 25. maybe hes a late bloomer.

cant wait to try the 2 other classes.

i hope the necro is more d2-y than d3-y. i’ll see soon enough.

1 Like
5

I agree with most of your feedback as a Barb player myself. However, Den Mother can be taken down without respec to Bleed + Thorns alto that build is pretty sweet but not necessary what a Barb is all about.

The only gripe I have is while it is a necessity to kite around boss fights, Fury drops too quickly and builds too slowly for it to be an effective resource during such long drawn fights. Some balancing to Fury generating items or potions are necessary here. I wish there were a skill where it gives a minimum amount of half the Fury globe for perhaps 1min.

Agree with the rest of your final feedback. My 2 coins.

6

Seriously… this many people were doing it this wrong(lol so was I for a long time). But at the end my barb felt OP even my friends were all shocked when I said bosses died in 5 secs or how it was even possible to hota 1 shot a group of rares. I wish I knew how to show people how my experience went. I will say that at first when I was putting all points into basic and core skills to 5/5 It was awful. First dungeon I went to I couldn’t kill the boss till one of my friends asked what I put points in. I told him and he laughed saying “so you only have 2 skills”. Once I figured out what works and started getting legendaries it was amazing. I really enjoyed the limited beta.