It’s beta with limited access to the content so naturally, there are most likely many misconceptions about future content, builds and how characters will grow especially towards end game but for the beta, there is a lot of negative aspects which I’m sure people have noticed, and I hope the developers take all the feedback from all sources to make the game a true Diablo experience, I’m just going to point out the main aspects I feel the game is suffering from the most in my own personal opinion.
- Class Balance
Frankly speaking, the class balance in the beta is horrendously bad. with a hierarchy already formed with Necro’s > Sorcs > Rogues > Druids > Barbarians in which you can argue the last two classes, it seems entirely that melee suffers from all sorts of issues especially ranging around resource management and resource generation which makes both the Barbarian, Druid and to a lesser extent the rogue less fun and even boring at times to play.
Not to mention that both the Barb and Druid are so gear-centric based that having the best available gear for both classes is an absolute must, the other classes are not so gear dependent as these two and this is why both these classes have a higher difficulty factor and without top tier gear, both these classes suffer the most out of the other classes.
Lets also talk about significant skills being very under-whelming, lacking synergies and/or just lacking in overall damage or usefulness. Many of the shields/barriers don’t last long enough to put super useful either, like with Sorcs shields which last like 2 seconds and cost too many skill points where you could just invest in Chain Lightning, Hydra or Ice Blade builds, teleport and wreck.
Necromancer again, clearly shows the class imbalances are so significant with the class being so far ahead of the beta pack all across the board - but are they going to be viable endgame? Again, these questions are important because all classes should be viable in ARPGS at all levels of the game, and right now - I’m thinking this could be a huge problem for people picking their starting class at launch, since the Necromancers really only big issue is for World Bosses and pet survival, once you start forcing classes down literally one skill build root for endgame effectively limits the game and damages the freedom of your characters overall growth - basically any reasonable build should be viable at all levels of an ARPG, the more viable builds for endgame a class has, the better.
Druid and Barbarian are both boring to play, and stems from having resource generation issues and long cooldowns, the latter is an issue for other characters too. Listen, the whole premise of the Diablo series is to hit fast, kill fast and so far, Diablo 4 feels almost geriatric at times coupled with limited skill bar functionality, which seems like Diablo 4 was definitely aimed more towards console release which leads to…
- Not enough skill bar slots
Following on from the previous paragraph, the lack of hotbar slots definitely feels more crafted towards console players, because this severely limits player builds since you basically have to have a base attack to generate resources which is one slot used up already and for Necro they even even less because minions automatically uses up a slot. I honestly think 8 slots are needed, at a bare minimum ultimate needs its own private slot.
- Performance
Queues and general performance issues have been a constant problem in the beta, granted we’ve seen positive improvements on the queue situation from Day 1 with 1 hour+ queue times, down to <30 minutes on average and hopefully thats a good sign that Blizz are actively working on that for launch because no one wants 1+ hour queue time only to get kicked out and has to re-queue again.
Performance still continues to be a big problem with 0FPS stutters and little solutions so far, this could be a beta issue because I seem to remember the D3 beta had similar performance issues as monitoring tools was causing problems, Also remember the infamous error 37? Lets hope Diablo IV doesn’t generate its own error code memes at launch.
- Global Scaling and post-game difficulty
This is a mixed bag for me, whilst I personally don’t mind it - I do see it further complicating progression if your gear isn’t up to par for World Tier 3 and 4. It is a minor issue in the beta because you are limited to a small slice of content with mobs out-levelling the gear you can acquire, the highest level gear I’ve personally seen is the Staff of Elements which is level 21 from a rare world event encounter so naturally, this gives a negative impression as bosses and mobs become harder to kill post level 15 - 20+ especially for Barb and Druid which already have limitations due to lack of class skill being locked.
Things I’d like to see change.
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Barbarian and Druid buffed all across the board, especially with resource generation. Remove Barbarians resource degradation over time as well, Barbs already have a tough time.
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Make it easy for Barbs to change weapons at the press of a button and make it clear this can be done so if Barbs want to practice levelling a different expertise, it can be done without messing around with gear.
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All other classes need lower skill costs and better resource generation because the average flow of the game is auto-attack > spam two skill attacks > spam auto-attack > spam two attacks, basically the resources give you the ability to use two, maybe three abilities at most before you are completely out of resources and this doesn’t help the game at all, makes certain parts feel like a chore and leads to general boredom.
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World Bosses needs a repair NPC in the area to prevent leeching players when they have broken gear, also make world bosses have a minimum level to join the event.