PTR Feedback (Long) - D4 Badass now?!

PTR Feedback
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Hi Everyone, my name is Tylicius

Please take this feedback from a point of positivity, I wouldn’t be here writing all of this unless I cared about the game getting better

General / Aim

  • Comprehensive list of changes, notes and suggestions for improvement
  • Hopefully this is useful to anyone who wanted to play the PTR and didn’t / couldn’t
  • I’m not holding back any punches about cool things / secrets / new stuff. I’m hoping that anyone who reads this from start to finish will give themselves a better understanding and a possible advantage for S4 start (if you’re looking for that, or a reason to read)
  • Disclaimer: That also means it might be full of spoilers, so if you dont want to be spoiled - please stop reading now
  • And also hoping this proves as valuable to any of the devs reading this for feedback and suggestions for improvement / overall thoughts

Overall Thoughts

  • I think the general sentiment is that D4 is much much better now after these changes. Hopefully the ‘D4 Bad’ memes stop. I’ve even actively been trying to say ‘D4 Badass’ now to do my part in helping to change the mindset and overall sentiment of the game
  • I can wholeheartedly say that this does go a long way to renewing peoples faith in the game. I know its not possible, but I would’ve liked to have seen changes this radical in every season starting in S2. And would like to see positive changes like this in the future
  • However for all its great changes / additions, the game is not without its bugs / areas for improvement. Lets get into it!

The PTR Itself

  • Massive shortage of materials. Need more: Boss Mats, Forgotten Souls, Veiled Crystals (rare droprates nerfed), Scattered Prisms (killing WB on CD was not cool) and Masterworking Materials
  • Would be nice to have a vendor where we can just buy gear or unique items and boss mats (D3 Bloodshard Vendor). Especially the new unique items that were changed or added this patch / PTR that you want us to test!
  • PTR Vendor with Weapons
    • It would be nice to have another vendor that sells weapons purely for testing skills / skill scaling: 1 dmg / dps weapon, and more that increase by 500 dps up to a 925 item at ~4k dps

Zoom Out

  • Possibly the biggest (sleeper) W of the patch. Thank you so much for this
  • Gives you a bit more distance, but still shows black bars on the side for ultrawidescreens. Would love to see ultrawidescreen support added once again
  • Clipping - With the ‘far’ view distances, some of the ‘breakaway’ walls need to breakaway sooner. While playing from ranged, sometimes you cant see into other rooms because of archways or doorways blocking your view. This just makes indoor maps painful in high pit runs
  • Minion Agro radius. Needs to be increased for the extra view distance. Minions sit idly next to you instead of engaging when you curse monsters more than three quarters distance to the edge of your screen

Loot Filter

  • Still missing from Diablo IV
  • The game has gone a long way to try and not make one mandatory. But as predicted, its still mandatory. Here are my thoughts as to why:
    • All ARPGs have gear that becomes irrelevant. That blue weapon from level 1 means nothing to a level 100 demigod. Therefore we need Loot Filters to ‘block’ unwanted loot / clutter from dropping on our screens!
    • After about 12 hours all you care about is Legendary and Unique Ancestral 925 gear with 1 or more greater affixes
    • Therefore as you progress, the majority of loot that drops becomes redundant / irrelevant.
    • Hence it is a waste of our time to ‘sift’ through millions of items to find what we want / care about. We’ve all heard the comments of d4 wanting to slow the players down - not respecting time etc. This is one of the reasons why
      • Yes, there is an argument to be made that you could just introduce a new WT5 that only drops 925’s with greater affixes and autosalvages everything else. But where will it stop? D3 already had T16. POE already has T17!
      • To be fair POE has one of the best 3rd party loot filters around
      • Another option that you could do is just make D4 open to 3rd party addons / mods like wow. I’m sure the community will quickly figure out a way to make it better

Items / Itemisation

As mentioned above - Normal, Magic and Rare base types are outdated very quickly now

  • Unless there is a plan to upgrade a Rare into a Legendary and give it a 3rd affix, I would like to see:
    • All Normal, Magic and Rare items autosalvaged
    • The codex being used as a Pseudo loot filter to help you find key aspects. It could ‘recolour’ favourited aspects
  • Item Power (925 cap)
    • Potential Bug. Noticed that Masterworking (MW) doesnt actually increase the item power anymore - 925 is the max. (950 was max in S3)
      • From -25 ilvls we lost some resists, armour and flat weapon dmg. But gained more overall from GA, Tempering and MW
  • Itemisation / Tempering
    • Itemisation is a lot more restrictive now, especially for defensive stats
    • Issue: Damage Reduction (DR) removed from everything BUT shield. Which only Necromancers can wear
    • Suggestion: Bring Defensive Tempers to Rings
      • Issue: Rings force you to have an Offensive + Resource temper. But this is useless for builds that don’t use resource or have already solved their resource issues…
      • Suggestion: This requires a change of design mind-set
      • The Devs need to be okay some builds not using basic skills (generators) and also not using spenders, and some creative builds not using both. In the PTR Patchnotes they gave alot of these skills the ‘core skills’ tag, so they can get scaling - which is great. But now the next step is to move away from this generator/spender mentality
      • Also the first 2 points in the tree are wasted if not using a basic skill… Would like more passive choices
  • New Affixes
    • I really like the new +minion mastery affixes on gear
    • Generally I like how scarce they made +core skills / +specific core skill. Brings back the D2 feel of getting a +1 to all skills and poggin out
    • I dont like how they are competing for the already scarce Defenses like Life and Armour and Res
    • These seem to have some kind of in-build hidden weights (like POE), making some stats more common and others more rare. For example INT (mainstat) and Max Life are very common (high weight). And +skills / + passives are very rare (low weight)
  • Greater Affixes (GA) - I, II, III and IV!
    • GA are great and feel like mini primal drops from D3
    • Graphically they need better signaling / visuals to clearly identify them from normal non-GA Legendaries / Uniques:
      • Suggestions: It should be clear when a GA item drops
      • Greater affixes I, II, III, IV should drop with: different coloured beams and minimap icons, coloured item borders
      • The little pointed ‘star’ icon for the actual greater affix itself could be used on the minimap, and just recolour it for the tier I, II, III or IV (IV should have its own special / ‘unique’ icon - not the same as current uniques or even legendaries - pentagram? Lilith symbol?)
      • Can I suggest the best version be Red. and the others be some close colours leading up to red. (Light Purples to Dark Purples and then RED?)
      • Also the item border itself needs to stand out with the same coloured tiering
      • Also as a side note, I think these items with their new cool updated colours / visuals should AUTOMATICALLY drop as FAVOURITED. This would save grief later with the new ‘Salvage All’

Tempering

  • Tempering makes legendaries more powerful than 90% of uniques. Maybe uniques should get 1-2 tempers as well - as a rare drop? Maybe Pit200 or Tormented boss reward?
  • Tempering Manuals
    • Issue: Right now ‘bricking’ a III GA item feels pretty bad. There is no way to fix it or to reset the Rerolls
    • Suggestion: Would be cool to have a ‘high end’ crafting material that could let you reset rerolls, that could drop from Pit level 200 or Tormented Bosses
      • Or have +5 rerolls on the item per GA that is has
      • Or why not both? =)
    • Tempering Manual Drops:
      • Tempering manuals seem very rare. After blasting for a full week, I was still missing around 30-40% of all manuals (including lower rarities). 20% of them I just didn’t see at all
      • If this because they werent in the game yet, then fine. But if not, I think the droprates need to be improved by a factor of 10x
      • Fix double drops or duplicates. They are already rare enough so this feels bad
  • New Tempered Affixes
  • Generally the weapon / offensive tempered affixes are well received. Because it feels like these affixes are imploring some ‘outside of the box’ thinking and are moving in the right direction
  • Number of affixes / choices on Recipes
    • Why do some recipes have 3 choices and some have 5 or even 6? Make it standardized and have 4. And if you’re lucky you get 3
    • Barbs with ‘Dust Devils’ recipe that has 2 choices which both affect dust devils is crazy to me. Its too OP and you ‘cant lose’. Split those up and put them with other choices
  • Other necro specific notes:
    • Cast Twice is very overdone. Its powerful but boring
    • Add more corpse support: +chance, +ranks to hewed flesh, +corpse capacity
    • I feel like every skill tree’s ‘small passives’ needs to be incorporated into the tempering manuals. I.e. if it exists on the tree, it needs to exist as a tempering recipe book imo
      • Disparity in movement speed values. The +ranks to small passives that give movement speed need to be increased on the mobility tempering recipes. The base movement option is 8%-12.5% and the small passives give +4% MS but the recipe option only gives 1-2 ranks?? It should be increased to 2-4!
    • Shields are not really well supported in this game and could use some love: Block Chance, Block DR, Max Res, %Life on Block, %Barrier on Block, Retaliate with %Thorns on Block, Physical Damage Taken as X Element
      • And move generic flat DR from shield to Chest Armour
  • Gear Homogenization. With the removal of damage reduction it feels that certain affix slots are now ‘locked’. Especially for HC characters

Blacksmith Masterworking

  • Masterworking can be reset for a minimal fee (there is a little swirl icon next to the item icon). It doesnt show it but it actually costs 1Mil Gold. Needs to be added to the ‘reset item’ tooltip hover
  • Masterworking Process
    • Masterworking ‘skip’ animation too long. Needs to be like enchanting.
    • Endgame masterworking QOL:
      • Endgame you only care about hitting certain stats as a triple (orange)
      • The clicking becomes the biggest issue given ample time / mats
      • I would suggest to save all of our minds / sanity and more importantly our hands, that a +4 and/or +12 craft button be added / integrated
      • Using +4 will consume the required mats (its all 100% upgrades until level 4 anyway so this is fine to use even at entry level)
      • Using +4 again or +12 will rng the amount of mats consumed and consume them accordingly and so on until you hit max level
      • Then you can just check your item and go yay or nay and reset to go again until you reach your desired outcome
  • Bugs
    • Masterworking items just shows an ilvl 1 blue base of the item you’re upgrading in the ‘upgrade animation’ and not your actual item. Visual bug
    • Masterworking DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY on GREATER AFFIXES. From my testing it seems like they are only getting the ‘base’ upgrade (of +45%) and none of the crits. There is also another bug that doesnt show when they crit (no colour change)
  • Concerns. This system is from P2W games. Please tell me P2W isnt coming to D4…

Blacksmith Salvaging

  • Love the new ‘Salvage All’ button
    • The ‘salvage all’ seems to salvage everything in your ‘equipment’ inventory (that isnt favourited). If it is favourited, it protects it and doesn’t salvage it
    • I wish that the ‘Salvage All’ button also salvaged gems and sigils. Been asking for this for ages. Not a huge deal but would be nice QOL

Gems

  • Gems rework is nice
  • Having mainstat on gems is very powerful
    • On that note it would be nice if The Pit gave shattered prisms, even with a low % drop
  • Any cool ideas to use excess gem dust? Craft on gems somehow? Make malignant hearts?

Occultist

  • New Codex of Power Interface
    • Its nice that you can ‘favourite’ aspects in the Collections → Codex of Power interface. But it should do something to aspects that drop with that ‘favourited’ aspect. Even something as small as ‘they drop as “favourited”’
    • I would like to see a filter for ‘perfect aspects’ added as well. (100% of all aspects collected, but only 2% are Perfect)
    • Bug. Blood-soaked Aspect. Shows as “0” descrated ground dmg
  • Enchanting
    • ‘View possible affixes’ window should stay open during Enchanting. Otherwise the options need to show the roll range so people can know if they got a perfect roll or not (without having to memorize it)
    • Enchanter still doesnt show the roll range for each affix. Please add this from D3
    • Speaking as a solo player, I still think this rerolling system is too costly for the current acquisition of gold in the game
  • Craft Sigils
    • Would be nice if Tier 100 got its own new rank / craft
    • Once you’re progressing through high pit levels, you wont ever want to do anything less than a NMD100. It becomes the baseline and therefore would be nice if it was on its own (100% chance to craft NMD100). Or increase sigil droprates / sustain. Or whynot both? =)
    • With NMD being the primary source of glyph XP now, it would be good to see the increased glyph xp rates from Vaults be brought across to NMD. Vaults are gone afaik
  • Bugs
    • Sometimes the ‘imprint’ or ‘enchant’ buttons just disappear. This is only something I’ve noticed on the PTR (never on live). A relog does fix it but its still annoying. Also noticed this happening on the Blacksmith now too…
  • Codex of Power Rework
    • Love the changes, big W
    • Removing the aspect inventory is nice
    • BIG BUG. Codex Reset and ALTS. Everytime you make an Alt it FULL resets your codex on your main back to MINIMUM. This is probably the biggest game breaking bug there is and needs to be sorted before S4. Devs confirmed in campfire that progression is shared in Seasonal SC, Seasonal HC and Eternal
      • If Codex is PER CHARACTER, I can tell you now that there will be fires and pitchforks in the proverbial streets (Reddit)
    • Veiled Crystals shortage (Worse than the toilet paper shortage of 2020 during COVID!). Its mostly imprinting that cost the most and making this change noticeable. Basically because of the reduced rare droprates, less veiled crystals drop and are received from salvaging

Stash and Stash Pressure

  • Now your stash basically becomes ‘scrap everything that doesnt have a Greater Affix and keep only good rolled legendaries and uniques’
    • As someone who blasted on the PTR, I can confirm that my stash was 95% full of greater affixes + uniques. I kept one of every unique and threw out old ones if I got a better rolled or GA one
    • Each character needs 6 tabs EACH and maybe a 7th as a ‘common’ tab like D2 that is shared amongst all characters on that account (season softcore, season hardcore and eternal realm)
  • Boss materials need a ‘materials’ tab. And the interface changed to trade materials from there. Or have a ‘fragments’ tab
  • Consumables tab is very full
    • Sigils, Boss Mats, Elixirs, Incense etc etc
  • Elixirs
    • Need a separate elixirs tab. Utilize the elixirs on the action wheel as a new way to access / use elixirs. The tech is already there

Towns

  • New layout of towns is much improved with close key NPCs and more stashes
  • Also noticed that town portal has been added to the ‘Action Wheel’ for all you console / action wheel enjoyers
  • Would still be cool if you could mark a town as ‘favourite’ so that your default portal goes straight there
  • S3 Gatehall seems to be gone

Nightmare Dungeons (NMDs)

  • NMD50 still not dropping 925s only. Its meant to be monster level 95+ (which is technically NMD42)
    • Check sources of chests etc too - these dont drop 925
  • NMD100:
    • Carrion Fields - just ate my sigil and nothing happened. This dungeon might be bugged?
    • Mercy’s Reach NMD bugged out. Got both of the mechanical boxes and put them on their pedestals but the door wouldnt open. Bugged
    • End of Dungeon reward always give 3 distilled fear, so the RNG has been removed. But it also look like it took up slots where we used to get legendaries? NMD still the best for legendaries aside from maybe Helltide 2.0 now
    • Random Events: New ‘packs’ of goblins added like D3! I saw up to 5 in a little huddle. Would be cool to see more. Butcher still drops 1 static NMD sigil. NMD100 sigil sustain is a problem. Random loot ‘pops’. Randomly drops a bunch of crafting mats (abstruse sigils, baleful fragment, coiled wards etc). Would be nice to see boss mats / forgotten souls / herbs, ores, hides / elixirs!

The Pit

  • In General the pit seems really fun. Its like NMD without all the silly objectives and events and annoying affixes. Plus not having to loot until the end is great. Its just you and your wits against the strongest forces hell can muster
  • I would also love it more if there were leaderboards for The Pit like there is for the Gauntlet. Except with better rewards, and filters for ‘builds’
  • Progression
    • I feel the progression in the Pit is really really slow
    • Even between the early monster levels, it takes ages. My suggestions would be to give more rank ups for faster completion times: Beat timer = 1 tier. Beat by 1 min = +1 tier. Beat by 2min = +2 tiers. Beat by 3 mins = +3 tiers. Beat by 4mins = +4 tiers, etc etc. Beat by 9mins = +9 tiers for 10 tiers total!
    • Also it would be nice to see a splash screen when you’re done - similar to gauntlet scores, but instead of your score it shows you: Time taken, Dmg Dealt, Dmg Taken and the breakdown by element / dmg type, # of Deaths etc. This would go a long way to helping players gauge their power offensively / defensively
  • Rewards
    • No prestige / special reward for Pit 200? This is a wasted opportunity. Should be a mount or a title or some cool mats to reset your Tempers etc if not all of those. Maybe some Tormented boss materials that let you bypass the normal boss farming hamster-wheel?
      • Stygian stones are cool but the ratio of stygian stones to normal boss mats is like 99 : 1
      • People dont like farming boss mats, people dont like doing rota’s (boss rotations - just to get scammed last minute). Let this be an opportunity to fix that. Let it drop like 3-4 random boss mats. Also let boss mats stack to 999 please. This 50 is just not enough, now that Tormented bosses take 5x the mats…
      • Or let us transmute stygian stones to normal boss mats at the Alchemist at 1:1
  • Transition between Pit levels needs some polish
  • Pit should drop more materials and not just for masterworking (veiled crystals, ore etc - basically everything you would get from salvaging normal, magic or rare items, and just remove those items from the the pit entirely. I feel that if you’re entering the pit, you’re looking for endgame items with your endgame character)
    • I’ve always said this and I will continue to say it, the seasonal system / mechanic should be the most rewarding thing there is every season. D4 failed to do it in the Vault, everyone quit then a hotfix came in and buffed it after everyone left. Make it rewarding, make it good (from the start). If its too good you can always nerf it later
    • This includes new bosses, so the fact that Andariel drops uber uniques is cool but its boring and very uninspired. She better drop some cool stuff on live… Literally why go through all the trouble of making a boss arena, new mats and new animations just to drop the same junk that Duriel did? Its such a waste
      • I really dont want D4 to continue to be the land of missed opportunities. Hire me, I’ll fix the game. Seriously if you want me to provide closed PTR testing, hit me up. I’m happy to help!
  • The Pit Obelisk location should be tweaked. Its sitting on ground that has a slight incline and looks a bit weird. Would like to see it on its own pedestal / plinth or something like that
  • Pushing in the pit
    • Bubble on Boss kill. Would be good to get an invulnerability bubble dropped right on the chest straight after the boss kill. Lingering effects can kill you while looting
  • Bugs
    • Opening a pit run shows the same notification as a NMD right now (press tab to find it on your map lol). This isnt really applicable now since its right at the obelisk you click on to start it. Just a small polish thing
    • Sometimes when you try and open a portal, it goes through but it bugs out and closes the portal (consumes your mats). Then it says ‘The pit has been closed’ in the chat in red text. Even though the animation is still up behind the obelisk you’re just unable to click it
    • Level 131 appears twice
  • QOL:
    • Need more checkpoints throughout the pit please. Make them twice as frequent. And 100% need one at the start of the boss room and at the start of every new floor please
    • Monsters that drop ground effects or shock towers need to clear INSTANTLY after they die. With everything basically one shotting you at high pit levels, even taking one tick of poison or one stray shock tower or arrow will kill you
    • Gold Standard / Omega Design would be that 10% of all Nethiron is converted to Ingolith and 10% of that Ingolith is converted to Obducite automatically when you open the chest. That way you dont / wont need the Alchemist
  • Stygian Stones. Would be cool if the stygian stones bypassed the normal boss materials requirement and let you walk straight in

Tooltips

  • The tooltip showing ‘Upgrades an Aspect in the Codex and unlocks a new look on Salvage’ is really nice. Good info and having the icons is useful and clear
  • The ‘pictures / icons’ showing the materials that you got over your HP globe is super nice
    • Remove the diamond notification everytime you get a material. Add it for ‘new’ items only please. Do I care that I got a Resplendent Spark? Yes. Do I care about my 9999th stack of leather? No
  • Better icons is something that the game needs more of: clearer and more distinct icons / signals that represent things quickly and concisely
  • Tempering tooltip. It currently says tempers. “Tempers” doesnt imply whether its used up or not - is that how many there are left or have been used? Its confusing and it should just say “Rerolls”. Joe P mentioned they would change this in the dev stream - just adding this note as a reminder

Helltide 2.0

  • Generally heaps better. More fun. More dense. More loot. Much excite, many wow! The events / ambushes are cool. Its very rippy with all of the new density and things pushing you around
  • Baleful heart summoning event is cool. I like how it gives you more rewards for contributing! And has an awesome icon / tooltip to boot! I would still like clarification if using 2-3 hearts will give me more loot though
    • Please add a way to ‘signal’ that you have 1/2/3 mats available, so you don’t put your mats in and have to wait there for no-one to show up lol. Its good how the buff persists til next helltide. Would be good if it persisted through logouts / DCs too. And also if Cinders persisted across helltides without needing the logout trick
    • Bugs. There is a few bugs with the big worm that spews out monsters. Once it despawns it can randomly leave an impassible terrain in that spot (once it blocked my chest loot). And it can also knock you off your mount
  • New Secret Doomsayer Event. Clickable NPC that turns into: Cinders (boring), Goblin (cool), Monsters (boring), Doomsayers Chest (awesome!). Worth 50 cinders and can give boss mats. Keep an eye on your map because it appears after others click it too. But its got a short duration maybe 30sec-1min before despawning

Pickup Range / Radius

  • Should be increased. It needs to be the same as the ‘guardian portal’ in the pit. You can literally click that thing like half a screen away, its so good
  • What if it also scaled with movement speed? 0% would give you what you have now, and 200% would give +10% or +15% pickup range (pro-rated for values inbetween)

Debuffs and Proper Signaling

  • Debuffs in this game are actually still terrible as 99% of debuffs are still missing
  • Debuffs currently known: Durability (gear break), Vuln, New Tormented Bosses (good), Immob (blue boot), Stunned (swirl), Dazed (smoke bomb), Slow (light blue swirl)
  • Debuffs that I would like to see on yourself via a debuff bar (clear ICON) and on the monsters target / health bar, with DURATIONS:
    • Everything mentioned above needs a NEW ICON and a duration in seconds / with a pie chart timer. With an option to enable / disable numbers in the menu
    • Curses - Like the shrines it would be good to see a coloured symbol above the monsters head as well as on the monster target bar. Literally copy D3 if you have to. Even D2 has better curse signaling lol
      • POE has a cool system where all the shrines overlap into this cool symbol, having something sick like that for necro would be cool. I know theres only 2 curses now but thinking ahead, if you took the Lilith symbol and started peeling layers off it you could make each layer a curse and then once you have them all up on a monster it’ll show the Lillith ‘tag’ above their head (and on their monster bar). [Cuz we’re all team Lilith now since we learned Inarius is so lame… (Wtf? wtb inarius redemption arc???)]
    • Would like to see signaling be more clear in general please, as well as the duration of debuffs and buffs on me

Buff bar

  • Need another 1-2 buff bars, and / or let us ‘pin’ key buffs to a set position along the buff bar.
    • Amazing idea: Let us customise the size / location of the buff bar (like FFXIV and other games).

Gambler / Obols

  • Gambler can drop ‘greater affix’ items
    • This is a nice little ‘bonus’ because obols becomes a legitimate farming strategy for end game
  • Bug. The gambler does not always give 925 items. Also still gives normal / sacred magics, rares and legendaries in WT4 - which, according to the patch notes, is a bug.

Stash

  • Search Function. Can’t search for greater affixes
    • Would be nice to search for specific greater affixes, maybe it should be a new icon / toggle. So if you search for INT and hit the icon / toggle it would just show Greater Affixes for INT
  • Could we get longer labels for the Stash Tabs? Looks like 15 is the character limit. Would be nice to increase it please

BOSSES

  • Normal Bosses. Same mats, same fights. Uber Andariel added but couldnt get mats
  • New Tormented Bosses. Same bosses
  • New Tormented Andariel added. Couldnt try for lack of boss mats
    • Each boss has a new stacking debuff mechanic that drastically increases your dmg taken every time you get hit by a mechanic. Would reset on death, so you could learn the fight (except for on Beast in Ice which was bugged and wouldnt reset)
    • Only had enough mats to try the following bosses:
      • Tormented Grigoire. Fine and killed him in about a minute. No new boss mats. No new mechanics. Dropped 2-5x the uniques. Only dropped 1 (one) boss material, instead of 5 mats expected. First kill did net a ‘Resplendent Spark’
      • Tormented Varshan. Same as Grigoire, but without the resplendent spark. He does become a gear / dps check because at low gear / dps you cant even break his shield lol
      • Tormented Beast In Ice (bugged). Getting a stack of the buff did not ‘drop’ or reset on death. Because you summon him with a NMD sigil, you get 4 tries and you can entirely fail the ‘dungeon’ and waste all your boss mats. Definitely the hardest by far and super punishing. Needs changes badly
      • Ran out of time / mats to try the others unfortunately. But I heard Lord Zir was the easiest by far
  • Feedback:
      • Tormented bosses are VERY UNREWARDING. I felt extremely happy to kill them but instantly disappointed when I saw the drops (or lack there of)
      • 5x normal boss mats + 3 Stygian Stones for ‘up to 5x’ the rewards is not good. As a min I would expect 5x the usual boss mat drops. And then ontop of that maybe guaranteed GA drop on all legendaries and a minimum of II (2) GA on uniques
      • Do ALL tormented bosses drop uber uniques? I didnt get any in my testing. If they dont then they should at 5x droprate (10% total)
      • Would also like to see some “Unique” rewards such as a special horse or title for each boss. And something really special for Tormented Duriel / Tormented Andariel

NECROMANCER

Curses

  • The Decrepify curse texture needs to be updated, because if you scale it with decrep area size on ALL of your gear, it becomes so big that you can literally see the pixels lol. “Diablo 1 called and they want their curse animation back lol”
  • The Bloodmoon Breeches / minions curse effect needs to be taken off these pants and moved to the Passive Tree (Curse Wheel) or Paragon Tree. Why? Because self casting curse is now a visual noise pollution nuisance. And because its good QOL for minions. And it is the minion patch after all, so theres no time like the present
    • Hard to tell if minions have cursed an enemy with Bloodmoons (no animation)
    • Its actually good QOL to have bloodmoons on because of the increased curse area, I feel bad for using the curse normally as the whole screen just gets covered. It’s (almost) like playing with a dust devil barb. “Oh my bad bro, I didnt know you wanted to see the floor, or the game, or anything other than my tornadoes lul”
      • The best middle ground I think would be to let us turn down other players spell effects (like how other necro minions have a 50% opacity or whatever, give us an option to have that apply to all players spells and effects, and change the colour of monster effects too)
  • Big Bug with Decrepify SLOWING ME
    • Turns out that if you have Bloodmoons on with Bone Mages Upgr2 selected, the minions auto curse will also CURSE YOU. This hurt my soul, please fix!

MY SUGGESTIONS TO FIX MINIONS:

  • Give players a ‘command minions button’ to ‘go here’ or ‘attack this’. And/or a mark skill that will let us focus fire a target
  • Let us change the ‘stance’ of the minions: Aggressive, Defensive, Passive (like WOW pets). There should be 3 buttons on each page of the book of the dead.

Book of the Dead (BotD)

Should let you change / customize all minions:

  • Select / Change the damage type of the minion for each of the current ‘Minion Types’ (Warriors, Mages, Golem): “Blood, Bone, Shadow (incl Darkness and Corruption), and Physical”
    • 4 buttons at the top of every page in book of the dead, one button for each ‘element’ that augments the base dmg of the minion chosen - can only select 1. Essentially giving it that scaling ‘tag’
  • The whole process should be as simple as 5 steps (incl suggestions for improvement):

1 - Which element would you like to deal damage with: Blood, Bone, Shadow, Physical
2 - Which Skeleton Warriors do you want:

  • Skirmishers - Well balanced melee minion
    • Upgr1: Horde - Gain +1 to each skeletal minion type that you have
    • Upgr2: Berserking - Minions crit when you do (same as in game)
    • Sacrifice: % Max Resource
  • Defenders - Focus on Defenses
    • Upgr1: Intervene - Each Minion shields you once per 10secs that it remains alive (flavour only), granting 2.5% of your current health in Barrier. (Individual CD per minion. Scales well with # of minions and Max Life, and Defenses)
    • Upgr2: Shield Wall - When in DEF stance, Defenders will create a shield wall / phalanx formation directly infront of you but have 50% reduced movement speed and cannot attack. (Player controlled, blocks frontal attacks in the direction you’re facing but is weak to ground effects)
    • Upgr3: Sergeant - One of your defenders will forgo their sword and shield to raise a battle standard. All corpses within the area of the battle standard will automatically have raise skeletons cast on them. Sergeant cannot attack but revives skeletons and summons skeletal priests for you (using your attackspeed). This one does share some functionality with sacreligious ring, but the CD on sacreligious is too long just for raise skeletons (1sec). Most necromancers can cast multiple raise skeletons in this time, but it stops them from doing their offensive attacks. OR leave this one but make sacreligious scale with your atkspd (no CD)
    • Felt inspired to make 3 for this one. Each one fills a niche that I feel that the necromancer is lacking
    • Sacrifice: % Attackspe
  • Reapers - A slow hitting minion that deals Heavy Damage
    • Upgr1: CDR (same as in game)
    • Upgr2: Chance to spawn a Corpse (same as in game)
    • Sacrifice: Cooldown Reduction

3 - Which Mages do you want:

  • Tormentors (previously Shadow) - Mages that fire piercing projectiles (Great synergy with pull in skills that can pixel-pull like corpse tendrils and Iron Construct golem)
    • Upgr1: Chance to curse enemies. (Gains all benefits and increases to Curse Skills. Basically take this off Blood Moon Breeches and put it here, and give it a higher chance. And a noticeable curse indicator on monsters please!)
    • Upgr2: Chance to fire an additional projectile (same as in game)
    • Sacrifice: % Critical Strike
  • Wraiths (previously Cold) - Summon undead wraiths that fire projectiles that can chain to 3 additional enemies (50% less dmg per enemy chained) [100+50+25+12.5 = 182.5%]
    • Upgr1: Minions extract the essence of monsters on hit, granting it to you (same +3 essence on hit). Would be cool if when they fire their projectile a small teal droplet comes back towards you - like a essence drain or extract
    • Upgr2: Applies Vulnerable on hit (same as ingame). Reapplying vulnerable to a target that is already vulnerable increases its duration. [Give vulnerable an icon above the monster bar and a duration with either seconds or pie chart style]
    • Sacrifice: % Max Life
  • The Flagellant (previously Bone) - Monsters that deal heavy projectile damage at the cost of their own life (-10% hp per hit)
    • Upgr1: Minions fire your basic and Core Skills on your bar! (Gains all benefits and increases to basic and/or core skills). If no basic or core skills are equipped monsters fire projectiles with a reduced health cost per attack (-5% hp per hit)
    • (WARNING: To avoid minions / skills getting double ‘elemental scaling and tags’ here, the element chosen for the SKILL will over-ride the element for the minion. I.e. you cant have shadow bone spears, or bone blood lances)
    • Upgr2: Fortify on hit (same as ingame). When your minions die they drop a corpse.
    • Sacrifice: Chance to spawn a Corpse (or Ranks to Hewed Flesh - also the lucky hit chance on hewed flesh should be removed, just make it chance to summon a corpse please. Same wording / mechanic as reapers Upgr2)

4 - Which Golem do you do want:

  • Abomination (previously Bone) - A horrid protector that taunts enemies and retaliates with “Bone Spikes” when hit (rename “Bone Spikes” to “Deadly Spikes” so as not to have any ties to the ‘bone’ damage type - but hopefully you can think of a better name lol)
    • Active: Command the golem to charge to the targeted location, taunt all enemies and cast ‘Deadly Spikes’ around it. Additionally the Golem and the necromancer become unstoppable and breaks through walls. (Any enemies hit along the way while charging are also taunted)
    • Upgr1: The Abomination’s spikes make targets vulnerable for 4 seconds. Additionally these spikes scale with thorns, and thorns value is increased by 200% for you and your minions. (No CD)
    • Upgr2: The Abomination spikes deal 154% damage. Additionally when the golem is hit by a basic or core skill from the necromancer, it loses 2.5% of its current HP and retaliates with deadly spikes. (No CD)
    • Bone Storm: Augments the effect of Bone storm on you and your golem. Now causes a whirling storm of Deadly Spikes to radiate around you and your golem. Scales with selected upgrade chosen
    • Would also be super nice if the minion ‘element’ chosen overrode the Bone Storm’s ‘bone’ tag. So you could have a shadow or blood or bone storm without ‘Aspect of Ultimate Shadow’ - these types of Aspects just seem clunky. For clarity you could add the golems scaling tag to bone storm (changes live in the passive tree)
    • Sacrifice: Critical Strike Damage (x)
  • Flesh Amalgam (previously Blood). An amalgamation of flesh from your worst nightmares, created from the corpses of various creatures like a patchwork horror. The flesh amalgam consumes nearby corpses to heal itself (2% per corpse, granting half as much to the necromancer)
    • Active: Command the golem to charge to the targeted location, leeching life from enemies hit to heal you and the golem. Additionally the Golem and the necromancer become unstoppable and breaks through walls. (Any enemies hit along the way while charging are also leeched from)
    • Upgr1: The Flesh Amalgam consumes nearby corpses but stores those corpses on its person for later use. For every corpse it consumes it grows larger and deals 1% Increased Damage and gains 0.5% Damage Reduction, stacking up to 50 times (same as in game but now requires a ramp up time). Using a corpse skill on the Flesh Amalgam will consume one corpse and remove one stack of the buff. (Buff should be trackable on the buff bar, or on the essence globe)
    • Upgr2: The Flesh Amalgam turns into a ‘meat shield’ for the necromancer, absorbing 30% of the damage you would otherwise take (same as in game). When it would die from this affect, it instead goes to 1 HP and casts the Golem Active Ability as a last stand (even if its on CD) - leeching double the life from nearby enemies [1min CD]
    • Bone Storm: Augments the effect of Bone storm on you and your golem. Now causes a ripping wind that tears at enemies, carving off flesh to form corpses. Has a 15% chance to form a corpse - effect is doubled on bosses
    • Sacrifice: Resource Cost Reduction
  • Iron Construct (previously Iron Golem): A towering giant wrought from iron weapons and armour gathered from fallen enemies - reanimated through undead magic
    • Active: Command the golem to charge to the targeted location, pulling nearby enemies into a stunning ‘ground pound’ slam attack. Additionally the Golem and the necromancer become unstoppable and breaks through walls. (Any enemies hit along the way while charging are picked up / pulled)
    • Upgr1: Attacks now hit with such force that they cause a small aftershock in the surrounding area [154% weapon dmg] (-50% attackspeed, +200% area)
    • Upgr2: The Golems Stoic presence bolsters you and your other minions, making nearby friendly creatures immune to knockback and stun effects
    • Upgr3: Default attacks reduce the cooldown of its active ability. In addition the area of the slam now clears all harmful ground effects and affixes (+100% area)
    • I made 3 for this one, with the last two trying to address some issues with minion builds.
    • Sacrifice: % Overpower Chance / Damage

5 - NEW - Sacrifice ALL. Sacrifice bonus if all minions are dismissed - %Int or %Willpower Bonus, whichever is higher (to help buff those builds damage through the loss of minions).

Key Passives:

  • Rathmas Vigour - Key Passive
    • ‘Blood orbs healing’ affix on gear was changed to be less restrictive (with the Dmg on Tuesdays removal on affixes), and now just says ‘+%healing’. Rathmas Vigour should be updated to suit
    • NEW SUGGESTION Rathmas Vigor now works with ALL HEALING. And your skills and abilities now heal you for the amount of fortify gained, if you are already 100% fortified
  • Bugged aspects / passives / paragons:
    • The visual bugs that were clear and noticeable:
      • Frenzied Dead. Buffed slightly. No stat change on char sheet
      • Inspiring Leader. Atkspd to Crit. As above
      • Frenzied Golem. As above

Wishlist

  • Things missing from the game / things I would like to see added
  • SSF. Solo-self Found
    • The towns can still be ‘shared instances’ so people can see other peoples xmogs and doesnt detract from the store / mtx purchases
    • Everyone wants this for fairness in racing and for self imposed challenges
    • Others just want the prestige of not trading
  • Xmog. When you inspect people it would be nice to see what type of horse they have and their horse armour / accessories as well. Just like you can for their xmog armour etc
  • Runewords! I hope we get some of this in the near future. And NOT with the xpac, it was promised in D4 so dont hide it behind an xpac paywall please
  • Fix the bugs, dont nerf the fun
    • I only ask that you dont nerf the fun before its had. If its a bug then sure go right ahead and fix it, but if its just tuning then let it slide for now
    • Don’t nerf minions into oblivion. This is meant to be Necro minions’ time in the sun, so let us have it for atleast 1 season please
    • And I’m sure alot of the other classes feel this way about their respective power bumps

Anyway thats all of my thoughts. Its been fun but exhausting. I’m gonna go sleep for 3 days straight now!

Thanks for your time / patience and for reading!

Let me know if you have any cool ideas to add

Kind regards,

Tylicius

3 Likes
2

Wow, you’ve put a lot of work here with this feedback. You have many good ideas(didn’t read the necromancer thing cause i’m not necro player), i would also add better way to trade because how it look like now its a joke. You have to use third party sites or discord, add player to friends, then to party and then trade. It should not look like this.

I would also add tooltip showing item stats of dropped items on the ground, then player could decide if he want it or not.