By far the most concerning aspect of this game are the builds. Lets ignore the fact that this isn’t a traditional screen-clearing game. They’ve shifted away from big hordes of mobs to more lost ark-ish style of game focused on boss fights.
The builds in this game are so shallow. There are leaks of the paragon nodes as well and like typical Blizzard lack of innovation fashion, they’re following the same horrible model as WoW. Low risk design decisions that just give +dmg and +def passives. WoW does this same model now because it’s way easier to balance around. Things that completely change abilities should be in the paragon tree, similar to some uniques/legendaries.
It gets even worse in diablo 4 because of a super low number of abilities in the game that are split to pre-defined builds. Diablo 3 had huge criticism because the sets completely ruin build diversity and force you into playing very specific builds. You’ve basically done the same issue with the talent trees, but it’s even worse because the options have DRASTICALLY reduced.
Example:
If you play a fire sorc, they have so many passives around fire dmg and burning that you’ll have to focus your build nearly exclusively into fire to get benefit from these passives. Now, lets look at your options, you either run firewall or meteor, or fireball or incinerate. Honestly, all of which is awful because they’re all spammable abilities that fight over the same resource to use anyways. The only true choice is in one area, which is utility. You either run fire shield or the ice barrier or teleport. You might prefer to just run multiple utility spells instead but then you’re limited to once again, having to take a single choice trash passive just to not get a skill to go on the bar. Going frost? Have to go all frost. Going lightning, grab all lightning skills with like 1 choice.
Rogue is another example. There’s basically no synergy between melee and ranged so you will have 1-2 options to choose between if you go melee or if you go ranged.
Druid? same thing, going werewolf with all of the passives? well you’re getting every werewolf ability and there are no choices at all except for the companion.
It doesn’t look as bad on the beta as it is because we don’t have enough points to invest into all of the passives, but once you get deep into the rest of the passives, it’s going to be even less incentive to be using non-utility skills that don’t align with your choice. The way the trees are laid out, it makes it difficult to get the utility spells you want without putting points into some mediocre passive earlier in the tree to go to the next ‘node’ for skills.
The way the skill tree is built is shallow with lack of choice. Not nearly enough abilities at all. It tries to force you into this “pick 1 generator, pick 1 core spender, pick 1 utility, 1 movement, etc.” model and then shrinks your choice even more with passives focused onto 1-2 choices of the ‘type’ of ability in each one of those.
The way the paragon trees are laid out for the most part is just +stats, +resists, +dmg and defense. So just ‘passive power gain’, low-risk, easily balanced, shallow nodes.
So basically if I play fire sorc, I already know my build today. It’s already predetermined and I’ll pretty much be choosing either firewall or meteor and that’s it. Everything else is already pretty much chosen.
I get that blizzard isn’t trying to be PoE. It focuses on the most ultra casual players ever in all of their games within their genres but even casual players enjoy real options/choices. This has even less options than D3 which is mind blowing. I’ll go as far as to say that Diablo Immortal has better gearing/skill diversity than D3 and D4 as a mobile game.