Hi Devs and fellow Diablofans,
Below is my feedback for Season 7 of Diablo 4, after a few days of no-life blasting / playing / testing. Overall its a been a relatively fun experience, but theres definitely some pain points that could use smoothing out.
For reference I was paragon 210~ish, completed all bosses on t4 difficulty, finished the battle pass, completed the seasonal rep grind (pre-hotfix), got all max occult gems (2 legendaries and 1 blue for my bis setup), glyphs to 46+ (main glyph was 75+), cleared pit 100 but stopped pushing as I got bored.
Disclaimer: The below is my own personal opinion. Feel free to listen to it or not as you see fit. It all comes from a place of love for the game and wanting to see it flourish. Where possible I will try and give suggestions for improvement =)
General
This is my quick TLDR for anyone not wanting to read the entire post.
Overall I think the season is quite fun / enjoyable. The reward board / reputation system can seem quite repetitive / grindy, but overall the season is quite good and a step in the right direction.
The witch powers are a great power boost and seem very strong and diverse.
Personally I think the witchtides / purple helltides and rootholds / occult gems should go core. But not the witch powers. Would like to see more class agnositic systems in future, in all things - not just seasonal themes.
Armoury
The armoury is great but it doesnt carry over the witch powers - which kind of makes it feel half-baked / uncooked. Its literally the main part of the season =P
Albiet its not that hard to change it over manually, but the armoury is meant to do that automation for you - that is the point of the system lol.
Otherwise I would like to see more slots. The current capacity is 5, I would like to see it increased to 10 atleast.
Honestly the armoury is a godsend. For those of us that USED TO make multiple of the same class every season, I thank you.
Persistent Issues
These issues are prevalent / persistent season after season. They bear repeating as they would improve the game drastically. Im just categorising them all together so I can copy and paste it back on the forums every season til its fixed =). They include:
Loot Filters - see below.
Obols cap - see below.
Inventory / Stash Management - see below.
Leaderboards - Need a leaderboard to extend the longevity of the game for competitive players. Pit leaderboards would be ideal (like d3). Or a leaderboard for a new endgame mechanic.
Horse - Not much to say here, but its still ânot greatâ. Gets stuck on every little rock or uneven piece of terrain. Gets knocked down if a feather hits it. Needs a move speed increase and an extra charge on boost, and some titanium armour plating.
Loot Filters
Still need a loot filter. I know its being worked on / developed. My suggestion would be to let us customise the âautosalvage thresholdâ - so we can use this as a pseudo loot filter in the interim.
Customisation levels. (Level 1 is a quick fix / quick win for the game. Level 3 would be ideal [wishlist territory])
Level 1: Keep only greater affix items, and autosalvage the rest
Level 2: Let us choose which slots to send to âauto salvageâ
Level 3: Let us choose which stats to keep and send the rest to âauto salvageâ
D4 is at an advantage here because all gear drops âidentifiedâ, so this system can easily be utilised until a full-fledged loot filter is developed / implemented.
If you so wish, you could make this an end-game mechanic / system after defeating all of the bosses on the hardest difficulty etc. IF you feel like we need to earn this level of filtering / QOL.
Obols Cap / Gambler
The maximum capacity / cap is still too low. Suggestion: Increase to 10k
Bug. The gambler is either bugged or ninja nerfed from last season. For reference, last season I blasted just as hard and after the first few days I had gotten 100x more uniques and even an uber unique. For reference this season I only got 1 unique lol (not an uber / mythic either).
As mentioned at the start, I didnt do super high pit pushes but I got all my glyphs to 46 and one glyph to 70~ish while climbing to pit 100 - which is when I got bored and finished the battlepass and seasonal rep grind then quit the season.
Inventory / Stash Management
The current stash space is still inadequate for someone who plays more than 50-100 hours per season. This is another big pain point, and one of the many reasons I quit the season as it just killed my enjoyablity. For reference, my entire stash was filled with ancestral items (1GA+ or better).
As mentioned before, we need dedicated homes for: gems / runes / elixirs / boss mats. These should have their own tab (see POE)
Another tab that we need is a NMD sigil tab, it should hold 100/1000 of each NMD sigil - sorted by dungeon name. It should also be searchable and have the âsalvage keysâ option somewhere on this UI.
Its good that Infernal Horde keys stack now but these should also be in the âsigil tabâ.
Tributes should also have a dedicated slot in this âsigil tabâ.
Would be nice to have affinities as well. Where you can set a tab to hold âuniquesâ and when you deposit a unique anywhere into your bank / stash - it goes straight into that specific tab that youâve set the affinity for.
And it would be nice to have affinities for specific slots as well. I.e. if you care alot about 2h maces, you can set a specific tab to hold all your 2h maces (and only that) etc.
Bonus points if we could select multiple, so for example, one tab can hold amulets and rings, and another tab could hold helms and gloves - or any combination that your character cares about in its current gear progression.
Missed Items (that appear in your stash). The current limit is 10. I think given the current state of the game and no loot filter, this capacity needs to increase to 20 or 30. Ideally 50 for my omega-blasters.
Witch Powers
As a meme its just d3 witchdoctor assets reskinned, but functionally and practically its a good system. Its got diverse choices and interesting build combinations to help shore up your builds weaknesses or further buff your strengths.
This kind of mentality needs to be carried forward for all seasonal themes imo - class agnostic systems are always going to be better received than class specific ones.
I also think that we need more class agnostic Uniques as well (not just with a defensive effect, or generic effects like lightning bolts) but something like - after you do #numberof fire or physical attacks your next core skill is âempoweredâ.
Mechanically, all of the skills are very interesting. And how they interact with each other is the level of synergy that I would like to see in the base classes moving forward (having these types of synergies can substitute a numbers buff).
The upgrade cost for some seems a bit steep. I can see it being 1.5x more expensive than others, but some are literally like 70 and others are 350 - thats 5x difference for not 5x more power. This needs some tweaking.
Occult Gems
Seems expensive but complements the whisper materials / gem fragments caches and farming loop well.
Due to its expense, I see this as a very end-game system. And the powers feel strong / complement each other well.
Personally I think since each gem is compounding in its cost, the first âtierâ (magic) of occult gems should be slightly cheaper to make the total cumulative cost (at tier 3 / legendary) more achievable for players with less time to invest.
Bug/QOL. Occult gems dont show their name when socketed. So if you have a blue gem socketed that you require for upgrading to rare or legendary, you need to unsocket it to check its name lol. Seems like a small oversight and easy fix.
âFriend of the Bogââ legendary occult gem is bugged. The âunhinderedâ part doesnt seem to be working. Tested both in town and outside in the wild. A pity because it took so long to grind. Killed the fun / hype for me. Was hoping this would be the fix to constantly getting ccâd / pulled / pushed around on a necromancer.
Witchtide / Purple Helltide
Cool zone, lots of monsters, lots of activities. Does get boring / repetitive after about 24 hours of doing this. If this sytem does go core, I would like to see another 10-20 events added to the pool, and them all be on a random rotation.
Would be nice to have a button on the map that does the job of the raven, but can be accessed from anywhere (outside of the Witchtide, like how the witchpowers can be - very good change btw). I think I suggested this previously. Because right now helltides still suffer from having to leave zone (while being swarmed) and going back to the tree.
Would be nice if instead of going to the Raven after every 10 whispers, we could increase that number to 20 or 50. Based on the total amount of whispers / grim favours in any given zone. Then go hand them in afterwards (in lots of 10). I.e. if the zone has 10 whispers worth 30 grim favours, then let us stack them up to 30 and hand in afterwards.
QOL: Reward Bag / Caches should give all their rewards instantly. (I.e. instead of dropping 1000 stacks of 1 veiled crystal, drop them all in a single stack lol). I have no idea why it needs to take 30sec-1min to open every whisper cache - when its just giving you the same mats over and over and over again. This is most prevalent when opening âmaterial cachesâ from whisper rewards
Runes should be auto pickup (walk over to collect, not click to collect like it is currently), and just show their icon / name on the little toast window - to notify players of what they received. If its a rare rune, then let the âtoastâ notification linger for longer.
Minor Bug. When you enter the higher world tiers, the autosalvage blues / rares does not apply to caches / chests. Such as whisper caches etc - these can still give blue and yellow items. I believe I reported this previously.
Raven. Having the Raven as a âsanctuaryâ is nice like the âTarsarak / Scouring Sandsâ zone, where mobs cant spawn around it. But not every zone is like this. Where the raven is closer to events that can spawn, I think having an invulnerability bubble on the raven would be ideal.
The final few bags of the rewards board needs to give alot more ancestrals, especially if youâre going to make it take as long as it does to get your rep up. By the half / three quarter mark it felt like a chore. Maybe make one of the reward tiers give a multiplier to rep gained?
Since I spent ALOT of time here (grinded to tier20+ pre buff), Iâm going to give feedback on each of the events (apologies if I miss any or get the names wrong, doing this purely from memory):
Wisp. Cool but it needs to stop for monsters, or give us more time before despawning. Issue: It spawns monsters behind it. When you first hit Torment 4 difficulty, it can be hard to keep up with the thing. When youâre geared, you donât really care and can catch up to it quite quickly - killing everything along the way.
Tree/Animals. Great event, very good. Would like to see more elites pop out. I like the run speed of the animals. A bit faster with a bigger circle for QOL is the only improvement I can suggest.
Frogs. Frogs are great, quick and easy. Basically what you want in an event
Entangled Probably the quickest event, just kill one elite. There is a bug sometimes where the âtetheredâ elite that spawns just runs off into Africa for no reason.
Runes. The rune circles are fun. The buff is nice, the spawn rate is good and the reward is good. Great mechanic.
Twisted ???. Cant remember the name but this one is twisted something (vine / totem?) and its basically a kill monsters in circle mechanic, before the health depletes on the twisted vine / totem thing. This is a super great mechanic once youâre geared, as monsters just hyperspawn as fast as you can kill them. I enjoy these and would like to see more in future.
Patrol Guard. Fine but it walks too slow, and doesnt spawn enough enemies quick enough.
Herbs. Its cool that you brought the Subo tech to show the herbs on the battlefield, but I think 7 herbs is too many, also they can spawn throughout the ENTIRE MAP. This is too much lol. Just make them clustered in one corner and be done with it. Or you could add ores in there as well, so people are also inadvertently farming mats.
Another thing is that the burning brazier you need to add the herbs into (after collecting 7 of them), is often on the complete other side of the map. So maybe have / add more of these?
Slain Corpse. This one is good as it spawns a bunch of normal enemies, and one elite at the end. Would like to see approx. 10-20% of those normal enemies be converted to elites as well.
Exposed Roots. This is the main mechanic to spawn Fugitive Heads. I feel the droprate of heads is kind of bad on this. The event itself seems pretty good / rewarding. I would like the roots to just work when you touch them (proximity) instead of requiring a click. Also sometimes they are hard to see with all the monsters, effects, your spells going on at the same time.
Its the same issue that Helltide suffers from, red on red on red on red. Instead of red its now purple.
How to make this / other seasonal mechanics better:
Tip 1 - Make whispers / grim favours stack to 50 (or however many it is possible to get in an entire zone)
Tip 2 - Add the raven as a button on the map, you can access from any zone / area / place. Because the same âjarring pauseâ comes when you do whispers in a helltide zone, and you still need to go back for that. So whynot have ravens in those zones, or just have a button on the map.
Tip 3 - Make all raven areas âSafe zonesâ or sanctuaries, that have an immunity bubble where you can AFK in peace if you need to. Helltide suffers from this also, where you cant break away from the game long enough to get a portal in (without dying). Theres no reason why each zone couldnt have 2-3 ravens with invulnerability bubbles around them.
Rootholds
Having lots of monsters and loot is great but its annoying to parse through it all (see note on loot filters above).
Having a boss at the end is awesome and feelsgoodman.
Would like to see more diverse affixes on the buffs/debuffs that you can choose
Would like a way to scale the difficulty of this mechanic via tiers (and the game in general - like the old âProfane Mindcagesâ). Would be nice to have 10 choices of buffs/debuffs, and be able to choose more and more, the higher tiers you progress / unlock.
General feedback on headrotten monsters: what is with these monsters having 3x their HP in barrier? I think just having them have more HP generically would feel better lol. As the barrier is very hard to distinguish between it and the vulnerable debuff (same / similar colour). I.e. shift the barrier value into the hp value of the monsters, or fix the colours.
NMD
I like that you reduced the reliance on NMD now that Rootholds are much more lucrative and give similar the same materials / rewards.
I was also kind of hoping that the new rootholds / witchtides would also drop obducite. As Iâm sick of farming NMD just for obducite now (Yes I realise you can do infernal hordes, but I believe NMD is still more efficient).
Would like to see Rootholds replace NMD entirely for a season or transform all NMD tilesets into rootholds - but instead of dropping legendaries they just drop obducite (idea: or have an item that converts all drops to obducite for 30mins / 1 hour)
Kurast Undercity
Not sure what the point of this mechanic is anymore. Purple helltides drop more mats. The only useful tribute is the one that can give uber uniques / mythic uniques.
Raid
Not sure what the point of this raid is anymore. Its unclear whether it got any new transmogs or mounts added to it. Already got the stuff I needed from it last season, so admittedly I skipped it entirely this season - as I didnt have a reason to go back. Would like to see some rewards added to the raid every season if its going to continue to be in the game. I.e. give us a reason to go back in there. Otherwise we wont lol.
Necromancer / Class Design
Summon Necromancer. Tried it for a little bit while levelling and expected it to be stronger than last season. Did not feel a marked difference. Not sure why, might need some further investigation from someone smarter than me.
Edit: Turns out that mendeln is bugged and not calculating damage properly, no wonder it felt lackluster.
Swapped to blood surge as soon as I got some decent life gear (as minions were feeling underwhelming). This is the first time that Iâve levelled with blood surge all the way to 60. It took me into t1 but fell off hard in t2, even with cruors and deathspeakers - where I transitioned into the new shadow bloodwave build.
The new Kessimeâs shadow bloodwave build is very cool / strong. I hate to be that guy who complains about the strongest build but its still not mechanically perfect.
One downside is that sometimes it just does ZERO DAMGE. You can fire 3 bloodwaves that do billions of damage per hit, and it just ping pongs mobs between waves and does 0 damage to them. In future I would prefer better mechanically strong skills (i.e. make the explosion radius a bit bigger, and fix the zero damage issue), even if you have to nerf the output slightly.
I didnt get to test it, but I do like the concept of Indiras, with changing the way your bloodwave / bonespear and bloodlance work / interact. And I would very much like to see more of this in future. Augmenting your skills is 10000% what all uniques should do, if it just gives damage then why not make it into an aspect?
Maybe if I get bored, I will go back and make a bonespear / blood spear mage build. That was the only other thing I was excited to try this season, before I lost interest.
Random Notes / Bugs
Game performance on launch was absolutely atrocious (thanks for launching on time btw). I know some hotfixes were pushed to alleviate issues, but that first day is so sacred to so many players. Especially group players. I had a party member DC so often it just killed the momentum for us.
Not a huge fan of how d4 and d3 were scheduled to launch around the same time. I know its been updated now, but I feel like people still enjoy going back to d3 for atleast one weekend. Also can we make D4 launch on a weekend like d3???
Anyway thanks for reading the scribblings of one mad necromancer.
For those still playing - keep enjoying and may you have good rng.
And for those devs at blizz that read this - thank you very much and I hope it served as a good insight into your game from a semi-hardcore blaster player perspective.
Kind regards,
Tylicius - Necromancer-enjoyer