I got a Barbarian, Druid, and Necromancer to level 25 in the beta and semi-optimized their gear. I also played a Rogue to level 20 and got to see some of its gameplay which is pretty good.
The core of Diablo 4, the open world, combat, public events, world bosses, main story quests, and side quests, is pretty great, and if the beta has given me anything it is excitement for the full release of the game. There are a few things that need to be polished a little more but overall I am satisfied with the core of the game.
If I had to give this game a rating based off of the content available, I would say it is an 9 out of 10. It isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, it is just really good at what it does and what it does is being a shared open world ARPG.
That said, there are things like invisible barriers in the abandoned jail dungeon, character tugging when loading into a new area of the map, some UI weirdness in its layout, and some class balancing that need to be addressed before launch.
As far as classes and class balance, for the most part it comes down to some small damage buffs or resource generation buffs. Other than that, they feel great and unique to play. The Barbarian has some skills that could get a buff to damage or resource generation, but overall, the Barbarian feels like it’s pretty solid.
The Druid felt the worst to play during the beta as it was so lacking in damage output and damage mitigation right out the gate. I get that we didn’t have access to the Druid’s class feature but NO CLASS should feel gimped without their class feature. It should feel like a bonus buff and reward for playing that class and shouldn’t be an additional factor in its level up balance. The Druid needs at least a 15% buff to its overall damage and damage mitigation to feel as good as the Barbarian level up experience. There are outlier abilities that are really strong and those can be left alone. The Druid shouldn’t find tackling Veteran content impossible without a group. Once I hit level 25 and got Legendaries, my melee lightning Thor build was really strong. The experience to level up to that point was just god awful.
The Necromancer felt like it was in a good state. It wasn’t overly powerful or overly weak. I loved being the commander of my own army of the undead. The only two problems that I noticed was doorways blocking my army from doing damage as they would get bottlenecked. Second was that there was no active ability to command my skeletons to attack a certain target like there was in D3. I miss that ability. I would say to have 2 of the melee skeletons and 2 of the mages, closest to the target you attack, redirect and assist you in attacking that target. The others can do whatever and attack adds.
The Rogue felt good. I played it as a melee assassin build and leveling up felt balanced. The biggest game changer was getting some legendaries to give armor or reduced damage when attacking. From there, my Rogue felt like an unkillable killing machine. I loved it. I would like another charge for Imbuement skills. Only 2 charges feels pretty lackluster. Hopefully there is a legendary later that gives more charges.
You made a great game here Blizzard and don’t let anyone tell you different. Listen to the player base’s feedback, but don’t let people get you down when they say it is a bad game. It is not a bad game. They are just wrong and like to live blissfully ignorant of that fact. Keep up the great work and I hope to see an improved experience during the full games release.