I wanted to take a moment to share my thoughts on the current Diablo 4 PTR. For the first time in a long while, I’ve detected something exciting in the game—fun. The current state of the PTR looks amazing, offering enjoyable gameplay, exciting mechanics, and a real sense of power that players have been craving. However, based on past experiences, I can’t help but expect that everything will be nerfed again, turning this fun experience into something much more tedious and frustrating. This pattern is starting to feel both annoying and counterproductive.
Here are a few reasons why nerfing everything would be a mistake:
Players want power fantasies: Diablo has always thrived on making players feel powerful, and the current PTR captures that feeling perfectly. Nerfing characters and abilities undermines the core enjoyment of the game, making players feel weak and ineffective.
Community feedback has been positive: The buzz around the PTR is largely positive. Players are excited about the changes and are eager to play. Drastically nerfing everything risks alienating this excitement and the player base. When players express joy, that’s something to build on, not tone down.
Nerfs diminish experimentation: The variety of builds and playstyles emerging in the PTR is refreshing. Players are experimenting with different gear, skills, and strategies. Constant nerfs discourage this creativity and force players into narrow, “safe” playstyles that reduce the game’s depth and replayability.
Frustration with endless nerfs: The constant cycle of buffs and nerfs is frustrating. Just when players find a build or mechanic that feels fun, it gets nerfed into oblivion. Instead of constant nerfing, consider rebalancing by boosting underpowered elements rather than taking away what works.
Fun is the priority: At the end of the day, people play Diablo 4 to have fun. The current PTR is delivering on that front. Over-correcting with nerfs only takes away from the enjoyment players are experiencing, leading to dissatisfaction and a drop in engagement.
Thank you for your time and for considering these thoughts!
Blizz needs what they’ve done in the beginning. The need to finaly bring out a balance patch that brings everything to sane numbers and that’s it. That time they faulded like a badly build cardhouse when they first removed all numbers to make people finaly play the game and not faceroll was a good thing. Sadly they gave in to the number fetishists that equate fun with big numbers and not the fun of using an ability.
D4 was doomed balance wise after they stepped away from reducing numbers drasticly. Now they introduce a PTR where you still do trillions of dmg or so much dmg the game can’t show it anymore and call it a stat squish. They never learn from their faults and D4 is possibly the first Diablo game that needs more then one expension to become good.
i never stated that everything should only be “buffed” and never “nerfed” but every (fun) build in the past where people had a giant amount of fun from has been crushed by nerfs many times.
new builds will come that will be broken (which will be completely nerfed again).
balancing is something blizzard doesnt seem to be “to great” at… sadly…
im sure most of u know that every season theres only 1/2 characters really sticking far out on the top with their builds, which basically everyone is going to play towards.
Lightning spear sorc is insane right now (definitely gonna be nerfed) which it shouldnt cuz its super great and amazingly fun!
Gotta keep in mind the casuals…
the new season will bring Torment levels which make thhe entire game (way) harder…
“nerfing” a build doesnt make a game more difficult it just makes the same game more tedious…
Considering the extreme grind blizzard wants us to do for Mythic uniques as well i would rather not have everything to be a challange (but thats my perspective) seeing as ive run 25uber bosses and still didnt get 1 uber drop.
I don’t got the time of the world to spend 30hrs a week playing a game…
Either way nerfing isnt gonna fix it, it will just make the player experience worse, harder content is coming already, and Armour is again beeing nerfed by Torment tiers…
not gonna be a whole lot of challange if some players are just gonna be 1tapped unless we sweat.
35-40h is pretty much what i play for the WHOLE season most of the time, and it’s largely enough to 100% complete the whole season + solo uber lilith and every tormented bosses without using any guide in my case or any pre-made build. (i usually use skills that are considered B to A rank in term of tier list) or any build considered S Rank or S+ that trivialize the game
so…i’am a casual and i find it too easy while not using this kind of build already.
and i’am not a pro or anything, yet i still think it’s way too easy already even without that kind of build
I didn´t play PTR at all. But majority feedback here is… There is no loot. Ancestral doesn´t exist.
I save my opinion for release. But not sure where you get “The buzz around the PTR is largely positive.”
I see exact opposite here.
Also can we please stop with it was fun. Everytime someone mentioned this and that was fun. Real meaning was it was OP as F. Just be honest, say I love broken OP builds, nothing bad about it. But lets not pretend fun= just OP.
Ancestral loot does drop but at a low rate. And the GA on it is like it is now, very random. Also the Ancestral gear stat wise is not much better then ilvl 750 gear. I’m only going to foucus on weapons mostly. The new glyph system should do the rest.
But, but, but… they gotta shift the meta, up and down. Who the heck wants to play the same fun build 2 seasons in a row? Certainly not eternal players! That’s garbage. Let’s all queue for the next elevator to the top floor, because UP WE GOOO boys.
So, what we already have? I levelled a HC toon to 100 in S5 in no time (a nerfed barb btw) with zero risk, you’re already basically an immortal god if your build doesn’t suck.
I agree TC, but this will probably do no good. They just don’t seem to listen to people like us and instead listen to fools like this:
Why do you even play if you don’t enjoy the power fantasy aspect of these games. You’re playing the wrong genre if you don’t like that, and YOU need to go find something else to play and stop helping to ruin it for the rest of us.
If blizzard could make a game with actual mechanics instead of creating difficulty through HP sliders that would make a world of difference.
Currently we are forced to blast at the endgame because the content and rewards are all based on time and not on completion. Nearly any build that you throw together can complete the activities but only a handful can push high enough in the endgame because of the timer.
What blizzard needs to do is drop the timers and stop pushing us to speedrun. And for those that do speedrun put in a mechanic like Helltide where the difficulty ramps up with the speed of your kills and normal monsters are replaced by elites and eventually rooms of bosses. Make the speedrun an ultra high risk strategy and reward them with a 3GA chest piece that has resist, life per second and healing received
