Diablo 4 Beta Feedback

PC General Discussion
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I will be rating different aspects of the game on an A to F grading scale and offering suggestions to improve on some of them. These are my own opinions, some of which might be hot takes, but my only goal here is to help improve the game by giving constructive, organized feedback.

Grading scale:

A - I love it and it’s great the way it is.

B - I like it despite its flaws.

C - It’s okay but it could be even better.

D - I don’t like it and it needs to be changed.

E - It’s awful and I don’t want it anywhere near me.

F - Vile and I’m triggered just thinking about it.

I have played all 5 classes in the beta, leveling 6 different characters to max level and gearing all of them to a fairly minmaxed level. That is to say, I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing the Beta and trying many different builds on all of the classes. This will be a very long post with a tl;dr at the bottom.

Class Balance - C

  • Sorcerer - C
    • The gameplay and feel of this class is top tier, but their kit is completely overloaded and because of it they are the undeniable strongest class in the Beta. I won’t go into specifics on every skill and mechanic, but overall they have too much damage while also having equally as much defensive capabilities as Barbarian while also being equipped with ample CC. The issue with Sorc I believe is how much power is in its class mechanic. It’s hard to accurately pinpoint what makes the class so strong because it has so much going for it in so many different areas. Its single target damage is top tier, it has massive aoe and cleave abilities while also being afforded strong defensives like Ice Barrier & Flame Shield (on top of a cheat death). It has one of the strongest ultimates in the game in Deep Freeze that allows you to be immune to damage and CC while also providing a massive burst CD. That, in my opinion, is too much power in one ability. It has a shorter CD than Unstable Currents and it is objectively more powerful even if not through damage but utility & safety. There is too much to address in this single class, but it is clearly overpowered currently.
  • Rogue - A
    • Possibly the pinnacle of class design so far in the Beta. Their kit is overall quite well balanced and has a lot of tradeoffs that keep its damage potential in check. Positioning matters on this class and although they have a healthy amount of defensive options, they are still the squishiest class by far. One of the few classes that doesn’t seem to have resource issues! There are no clear flaws in its skill tree, and it flows very well from level 1 to 25. There are a variety of playstyles and freedom within the class and it feels surprisingly balanced. Overall I think every class should aim for Rogue’s level of balance.
  • Barbarian - C
    • I love this class and it will most likely be the 2nd character I make on launch. The biggest issue with this class is its skill tree is quite limited and the resource options with the skill tree aren’t enough to help its resource intensive playstyle. Core skills simply use so much Fury and you don’t have enough options to generate it, so you have to rely on taking damage from several mobs or skilling entirely into Fury generation and even that isn’t enough. The other issue with the class is within the skill tree there are clear design issues. For example the “Pressure Point” passive is quite restrictive as it only allows you to improve Core Skills but only on a Lucky Hit. It gives you Vulnerable for 2 seconds, but it’s just not worth investing points into when you can get Vulnerable much easier by just taking Flay and its respective Enhanced Flay upgrade (or a variety of other easily accessible options). That’s just one example, but there are many little things like this within the Barbarian’s skill tree that makes it feel limiting and underwhelming at times. The class scales very well once it gets levels and gear, but the early game is unnecessarily rough in my opinion because of the resource issues and skill tree.
  • Necromancer - C
    • I didn’t spend much time playing this character as it was completely overpowered and bored me nearly to death. I got to level 16 before giving up on the class. It was enjoyable and its skill tree seemed balanced from what little I did experience. My only real gripe with the class is, it has access to entirely too much “free” damage. Corpse Explosion costs nothing to access and it wrecks. Bone Spear early is a monster and it requires no thought because the class effectively has infinite resource.
  • Druid - C
    • I absolutely love the Druid and it’s been the class I’ve spent the most time with so I feel like I have a fairly good idea of how the class feels and plays early as well as what its strengths and weaknesses are. The Druid’s biggest issue is resource generation, simple as that. The class has a lot of utility in its basic skills and that helps to take some of the burden off of its weaknesses early. Although Druid doesn’t have as restrictive of a skill tree as Barb, it also lacks an alternative way of generating resource; while Barbs can generate resource by dealing or taking damage, Druids are forced to attack and that’s where the issue starts. Druids basic skills offer utility but not a lot of damage, so constantly attacking with its basic skills is severely underwhelming (most likely intentional), but there are only suboptimal ways of alleviating this issue until around level 9 when you can take Blood Howl and its Innate Blood Howl passive for Spirit Generation. This issue is exacerbated by a common flaw found in the skill tree of several classes (more on this below). Overall this makes the class feel rather weak early (it’s manageable and even fun if you like a challenge) but VERY strong later.
  • Summary
    • The common flaw is that every class has some sort of “increase maximum resource” passive that increases their maximum resource by 3, and generally this single passive gates some upgrades that help alleviate resource issues (Heart of the Wild and Abundance for Druid). This feels absolutely terrible, and these passives need to be significantly buffed. Investing an entire skill point for 3 resource when I could get a 6% damage bonus on a core skill is a terrible tradeoff in every situation. Overall, the class balance between all 5 classes is decent, but could be significantly improved with simple tweaks to the skill trees of each class, particularly resource intensive classes like Barb and Druid. Barbarian needs a second pass at the order in which their passives are unlocked and then it will feel much more in line with the other classes.
  • Suggestions

    • To fix the resource issues, there are a few solutions, one of which is a must.

      • MUST - Significantly buff the “increase maximum resource” passives for each class respectively. A skill point is worth more than 3 resource and I shouldn’t feel like I have to invest in a terrible passive to unlock better ones. Skill points are limited and should be treated as a valuable investment which means every node and passive needs to feel satisfying and rewarding to invest in.
      • Increase the resource generation of basic skills per level, that way early game you can choose to invest in basic skills without their upgrades if you want more resource generation and don’t want to invest into passives, this adds choice and rewards players for investing in their basic skills. Currently the damage improvement per level is simply not enough to bother investing into them until much later
      • Give every class passive resource regeneration. Barbarian can instead have their Fury generated on taking damage increased along with their base HP.

Dungeon Design & Mechanics - B

  • Design - B
    • Overall I love the dungeons in this game and I often found myself bouncing around from one to another after grinding one for an hour. I love that the procedural generation keeps dungeons effectively the same layout because it means once you’re learned the characteristics of that dungeon, you become incredibly good (and fast) at clearing it efficiently. You begin to know where certain enemies will be, where shrines will be, etc. This is AWESOME. I know some people are upset with the repetitive feel of this design, but I personally do not mind it at all. There is enough randomness to the design that it feels fun without being exhausting because of maze-fatigue. My only real criticism here is that some of the dungeon layouts are a bit too big forcing you to run for a while which can be boring/exhausting particularly in corridor-based dungeons.
  • Mechanics - C
    • Again, I legitimately love the dungeons in this game and I think they put previous games completely to shame, but the one area that they do not excel at is in arbitrarily gating the player via some seemingly random mechanic that doesn’t belong. However, not all of these mechanics are BAD. The Animus mechanic found in Anica’s Claim is how mechanics should be. Kill enemies, collect things (without clicking/channeling), continue! This is a great mechanic and it’s done passively (important) because we will be killing enemies (notably Elites) so tying the mechanic to these enemies makes for a healthy mechanic for the game and player. Now, for the awful mechanics… Collect mechanical boxes, slay all enemies even the little dudes hiding in dark corners that you will inevitably run past, etc., are the exact opposite of how mechanics should be designed in my opinion. Not only do they disrupt the flow of the game, but they force you to go out of your way (even making you backtrack sometimes) just to be able to complete the dungeon (the actual content I want to be playing). It’s something I have to actively focus on doing and as such takes away my enjoyment. These games are all about zoning out and having fun while killing mobs, letting your build do its thing, etc. You can’t do that when you get to a locked door only to realize you missed 1 enemy and he’s at the start of the dungeon. That’s an Alt+F4 for me.
  • Summary
    • Overall the dungeons here have a very solid foundation that could use some tweaks/improvements to make them even better. The biggest issue by far is some of the bad mechanics that are present in many dungeons. The much-improved and well designed aspects of dungeons should also be commemorated though because they truly are a massive step up for the genre and series in my opinion.
  • Suggestions
    • This should be fairly obvious but simply design more mechanics around the Animus collection type of mechanic where we simply go around and kill Elites then continue on our journey to the Boss. Personally, I think in Nightmare Dungeons there should be no arbitrary gating mechanics at all as I believe the only thing limiting me should be my build, but if we absolutely have to have mechanics, then I would rather have passive-oriented mechanics than active-oriented ones. As for some improvements that can be made to address the bad mechanics (if they can’t be removed,) allow us to carry more than one mechanical box simultaneously, as well as remove the channel to pick it up. We can pick up everything else in the game with a simple click except for these things. It needs to go! The “slay all enemies” mechanic can simply be converted into “slay X% of enemies” which achieves the same goal without being monotonous, and turns an active-oriented mechanic into a fairly passive one.

UI and UX - C

  • General HUD - B
    • Everything on the screen feels a bit too big at times. You’ve given us this vast and beautiful world of Sanctuary but so much of it is covered by unnecessary UI elements (minimap, text, etc.) We desperately need a UI scale slider and the overlay map back. I think it would be nice to keep the minimap as an option for people who prefer it (potentially those new to the genre or who are used to more traditional RPG games.)
  • Map - C
    • The map is a bit too simplistic and half-baked as it relates to the user experience. I feel that I should see the location of open world events on the minimap as well as a Legend to learn what each symbol is quickly. I also don’t think the bar at the top of the map that shows Collections, Social, Clan, etc., needs to be there. More than a few times I wanted to look at something higher on my map so I had to zoom out or scroll because that massive bar was in the way.
  • Character Panel - E
    • This one is very rough and honestly took a lot of getting used to. The biggest issue for me is the stats screen and how to access it. Materials & Stats being one button should have never been a thing. The two have nothing to do with each other. In fact, the number of times I intentionally went to the materials window to see how much of a material I had is exactly zero. The number of times I went to the materials screen because I wanted to check my stats is probably in the several dozens, though. I’m sure the team is aware of this, but it needed to be mentioned just in case. The other issue is not being able to easily see our resistances. This should honestly be shown on the same screen as Attack Power, Armor, and Life. Particularly because at higher world tiers there will be a resistance penalty imposed on the player. I don’t want to go scrolling through a long stats window every time I want to check if I’m at a comfortable resistance for some element.
  • Skills Panel - B
    • It feels extremely clunky to navigate on PC, although it isn’t the absolute worst. My biggest gripe with it is there is no keybind to open it in the expanded view, so I have to first open the half-view and then manually move my mouse to click expand if I want to browse the whole tree which is weird considering there are two keybinds, one for the Skills Panel and another for “Abilities” but both do the exact same thing (probably because of Paragon being locked). The “Abilities” keybind should probably just be changed to Paragon Board.
  • Vendor Panels - F
    • They are all universally bad and I really hope it’s just the Beta UI because other than the Blacksmith (which is still terrible), the other vendors are absolutely awful to interact with. I don’t want to ramble on about this as I’m sure everyone is aware of it.
  • Health Globe and Skill Bar - A
    • I absolutely love the design approach to conveying status effects on the player here. The fact that I can tell exactly what is happening to my character (for the most part) simply by glancing at my health globe is top tier design. The way so many keywords/effects have been designed and interwoven throughout the game makes this feel especially great. It significantly improves the flow and feel of combat and has made me actually appreciate not having text on my globes! My only criticism is not allowing us to remove the display of keybinds underneath the Skill Bar.

Quality of Life - C

  • Combat Text & Status Effects - C
    • The visual clutter in combat needs to be addressed. I personally like knowing when enemies are affected by some status (Vulnerable, Immobilize, etc.) however, having it pop up in a large font in the thick of combat when there are enemies constantly throwing CC at you is not the best approach. Instead I think there should be an option in the settings to either disable combat text or to convert it into status icons instead. A simple icon or symbol near their health bar or above their head is enough and is far less cluttered. I’ve died more than a few times because of not being able to see some CC due to the combat text.
  • No gems tab - E
    • This needs to happen if it hasn’t already. Currently gems taking up the same inventory space as a two-handed weapon just doesn’t make a lot of sense. I understand the intent behind a more uniform inventory space, and for the most part it hasn’t bothered me except for this one thing.
  • Item Compare - D
    • This is kind of a UI thing as well as a QOL thing. The way that affixes are seemingly randomly ordered makes it extremely exhausting to compare items which is an essential thing to do throughout nearly every part of the game. Affixes need to be ordered better so that we can easily compare stats and weigh the pros & cons of two items. Simply showing green numbers and red numbers isn’t enough. In fact, the red font could use a bit of a touch up as it is kind of hard to see after comparing a bunch of different items back to back.I think a healthy approach is to order affixes like this:
    • +Skills / +Stats
    • Offensive affixes
    • Defensive affixes
    • Utility affixes
  • Quest Dialogue - B
    • This is a minor issue but please allow us to select quest dialogue via a keybind/button press rather than having to click it with the mouse. It is a fairly minor QOL change that alleviates some of the mouse fatigue that can occur when playing this genre of games.

Itemization and Character Progression - B

  • Items - B
    • Overall I love the itemization in this game and believe the team has done a fantastic job, however there are some clear flaws. One that immediately comes to mind is the frequency at which you get redundant and similar affixes stacked onto an individual item. For example, you might find an item with 3 different rolls of damage reduction (close/distance/flat). This isn’t good and this type of roll should arguably never happen. Certain affixes need to compete with each other in my opinion to reduce the tediousness of gearing a character. Also, some items can begin to feel a bit samey due to the nature of the game (i.e., several items with Vulnerable damage & Overpower damage etc). These items, while very useful, aren’t the most exciting to get and often don’t feel like clear upgrades. This could be an issue with having limited experience with the game currently or a case of “boring affixes” which sometimes happens. Ultimately I think we could use some more interesting affixes.
      Examples:
      • +resource on kill/damage taken
      • +speed (MS/AS combined)
      • +MS on kill
        (I’m just throwing stuff out there)
  • Gems - C
    • So far I’m neither disappointed or content with the state of gems. They all just kind of provide meh benefits, and they seem bland overall. I think Crit damage on X is just kind of unappealing despite its obvious power benefit and I feel like it will simply lead to everyone defaulting to using emeralds or sapphires in their weapons, which is pretty boring in my opinion. It would be nice to have more interesting effects (and specific) effects rather than blanket increases to damage, but it’s not the worst system.
  • Aspects - B
    • This is one of my favorite systems in the entire game but there are some issues that have already popped up in my experience with the beta. I love that Aspects can provide me with a way to progress and invest into a skill without needing to grind XP to get a skill point. Some Aspects, however, are just way too strong and it feels almost like you absolutely need them for a skill to be useful. I think Aspects with large modifiers might have too much power in them and not enough in the base skill which will lead to the D3 effect where you need to have X legendary to use Y skill at endgame. I personally think a maxed out skill should be strong and an Aspect should take it to the next level, not simply make it go from being okay to godly. The Pulverize Aspect (I forget the name) is a good example (particularly since you can imprint it on 2H and get 200% damage), as well as the Tornado Aspect that allows it to “seek targets” (that should just be baseline in my opinion.) The Aspect system has a ton of potential, but it can lead to overshadowing the skill tree rather than complementing it as intended.

tl;dr - The game has a very solid foundation currently but there are some issues. Class balance isn’t as great as it could be, and the UI/UX needs a lot of work before launch. Itemization is great, but also has some flaws that could lead to bigger issues popping up down the road (Aspects having too much power relative to base skills, redundant affixes).

Overall Grade - C

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