S4 Write-Up Feedback (32 lvl 100 Chars, 1100h of play, 6 pax)

PC General Discussion
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Hi all,

Here again with seasonal write-up constructive feedback.

To be efficient for this season and considering the scope of changes, I got together with 5 friends and the 6 of us put together our thoughts on the overall experience.

We have 32 lvl100 characters and nearly 1100 hours of S4 between the 6 of us.

Previous season’s feedback for reference:
Final PTR feedback v2.0 - Top 16 needed changes to guarantee S4 is a success
It’s great to see that most of what was in this previous feedback was solved. Kudos!

Note: Very fun season, a lot of new things which are always fun to try out, new builds, mechanics and more importantly, systems to the endgame. D4 has so much potential. :slightly_smiling_face:

HIGHLIGHTS:

  • Codex improvement. Codex improvement. Codex improvement.
  • Having a GA system on drops is a lot of fun, Masterwork as well.
  • Helltides are much better and fun to do, both leveling and endgame when hunting for items due to the many drops you can get per hour.
  • We now have a purpose of hunting for perfect gear. It could’ve lasted the whole season if the tempering system and other things felt better.
  • It’s now possible to tailor builds to a more specific extent.
  • New fun builds, like FOrb, Minions and Twisters.
  • New fun items like Tyraels.
  • XP and leveling feel much better than before.
  • Pets coming into the game, mercenaries on the horizon, legendary glyphs & raids.

IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES:

Greater affixes & new itemization system

  • All temper manuals should have 4 affixes. 25% probability. Remove weights if they exist due to % size in each affix.
  • Tempering feels awful. Bricking ruined the experience for our group overall. On average we’ve bricked >75% of the 2-3 GA items we were able to get through the season. Considering their rarity, it’s not healthy.
  • We hit a wall at some point with bricking gear, since the amount of 2-3 GA drops we got for a possible upgrade were mostly not usable at the end and the amount of time it took to get another 2-3 GA viable item was way too high.
  • We had to rely on buying and selling items to be able to have gold to accompany all the gold reqs. The inflation caused by RMT was the only thing that saved us from not being able to enchant, reset MW, etc. If we couldn’t sell items for billions, the season would’ve ended earlier.
  • We still have too many useless affixes. I.E. Life per hit, life per second. Or the implicit plus x movement speed after evade implicit on boots.
  • Uniques feel absolutely useless 99% of the time. There’s too many of them. Feels cluttery. Either remove or upgrade them or make a system for them to be usable.
  • There has to be a way to reset tempering. Perfect 3 GA drops are too rare for bricking to be a possibility. Example: 1 of our party spent 2b on 3 near perfect pairs of pants, had 1 in the bank. Bricked all 4 in the first roll of affixes. Didn’t even make it to the second affix roll attempt. This is extremely demotivating considering we have 12 slots…
  • Keep the possibility of not having the perfect affix range but being able to have the affix itself. Or replicate the masterwork possibility of resetting with either gold cost or material cost.
  • We all ended up putting down S4 this week due to churn on bricks and low drops.

New builds, xp & class power

  • The most fun builds were nerfed too heavily: Too many core skills across classes are useless: Twisting Blades, Whirlwind (iconic), DS, Shred, Ball lightning, Claw, Forb, etc. The most fun builds in the game are useless. This can’t happen. Being stuck with a basic ability build is a shame considering all the ones we have.
  • Being tied to having to use basic attack builds like Bash or fire bolt isn’t nearly as fun as Forb and Twister for example. Yet, these last 2 are just unplayable at high level…
  • Sorcerers need a third enchantment slot.
  • Druids as a class are way too weak and need a revamp. They have amazing skills yet can’t function properly.
  • Tempest roar should be an aspect. Druids not being able to use Shako / Tyraels is a sin.
  • The immortal flame shield builds shouldn’t be possible. The CDR nerf that tried to kill this really messed the rest of the builds up.
  • Rogue’s rapid fire build with scoundrels looks amazing but unplayable on controller.
  • We NEED post 100 leveling to make people keep playing a longer time. If we’re getting more glyphs with xpac, more paragons would be nice. Feels too stale at 100

Helltides & new threat meter

  • The density is still a bit low vs what it could be. Especially in the hole in the ground from hell. It should have more mobs.
  • The Helltide ‘bug’ is exactly how Helltides should be normally. It’s the kind of ‘feature’ that shouldn’t have been removed.
  • With the removal of the threat meter bug we’re back to spam farming maiden for efficiency which defeats the purpose of the Helltide changes.
  • If the threat meter is full, make it so it doesn’t go down if we keep killing stuff so mob density remains high.
  • Perhaps implement a feature that after using x mindcages, threat meter remains high. Do not remove mindcages next season.
  • Add Hell bosses the size of world bosses in the Helltide. Mini bosses like the maiden are fine to keep.
  • Keep the Helltide favour system next season as a goal to be unlocked per character. This was absolutely great.

The Pit of the Artificer

  • Useful to test builds yet it’s not fun per se. I get the intent behind it, but standing still for 10m basic attacking the same mob with 20 trillion HP until it eventually dies, gets old, very, very fast.
  • One shot mechanics are painful, but getting better.
  • The bosses are extremely slow to kill, having trillions of HP.
  • The builds don’t feel good in there, it’s just a race against time to see if you can kill the boss fast enough rather than the actual power of a build. It’s tough to balance.
  • It’s overall not the sort of endgame we need. One key learning from this season is that item hunt works for most people, hence the success of the season. It’s clear that players want to grind to have perfect gear and then play it while progressing. 3 crucial things need to happen for this:
    • A dungeon-raid like system for players to either work together or solo and where bosses have a chance to drop amazing items.
    • Post lvl 100 progression, where we get more paragons and are able to get stronger with x amount of time put into a character. We’re really missing this.
    • A WT5, hellworld or hellmode with specific dungeons in there where it’s a challenge to beat with BIS gear, WITHOUT mobs with 1 trillion hp or one shot mechanics but rather a mechanical challenge for players or collaboration needed.

Other topics:

  • Please change the colour beams for Uber unique items. Or let us change them in settings at least. Give us that WOW! factor when getting great drops. Similar to green beams for set items in D3.
  • Summoning ladder bosses like Grigoire and Varshan is a torture. Mindlessly resummoning, running through the same dungeon. It’s just terribly unfun. Same for Beast in Ice.
  • Improve World bosses. They’re just one shot every time. Make them level 200 and have pit boss help from other bosses if needed almost as if they were the bosses of the bosses.
  • Gold is too hard to get in a structured way without trading for billions and giving up GG items. Need new systems around it.
  • Whispers need to be uncapped. Allow us to gather 50 more before turning in.
  • Add 999 to each slot of boss materials so we don’t fill stash with hundreds of them.
  • Make it so that when tempering we keep the affix when rerolling;
  • Gem fragments need to be way more common. I only had enough royals for one character on my third level 100. Had to keep rotating them around. No point in this.
  • There should be legendary gems. Infused by mixing Royal gems with X material from raid bosses or somewhere else for new effects.
  • Would be great if strongholds had a revamp & purpose. No one does them anymore.
  • NMD’s need a revamp. Freeing 5 prisoners isn’t fun. NMD’s could be great if there were boss checkpoints instead of ‘free x’ with a large boss at the end with a fun battle.
  • Give us more options to get glyph xp aside from NMD’s.
  • Improve Druid aesthetic, they look so bad it’s painful to see.
  • Improve Character customization, black dye, change wolf/bear hair for example. Make us be able to make a character unique.
  • Add a different visual when an item is fully masterworked. The circles, triangles and stars seem a bit too simple.
  • Remove blue paragon glyphs, no one uses them.
  • Revamp certain Uber uniques, I.E. Andariels. Normal uniques also.
  • Include SSF in the choice option and an ingame indicator.
  • We need a groupfinder for future content. Right now it’s pretty boring to have to rely on 3rd party platforms. Especially if you play on console due to typing.
  • We need an auction house for trade. Seller submits item, price or offer request, and someone’s free to offer that price or buyout directly. Something simple. It’s a nightmare trading offline.
  • World tier 5 or Hellmode. Something that’s harder than current WT4.
  • Wardrobe loadouts. It’s so cumbersome and expensive to change builds. I think if you A/B tested this implementation you’d see the ROI from having people more engaged in the game would be far more positive than the dedicated dev hours needed for the change. This was definitely the case for us.

Top 5 prio from our experience out of all these points:

  1. Make core skill builds viable. We want to play FOrb, Double Swing Twisters, Whirlwind, Shred, Twisting Blades, Flurry Poison, Pulverize.
  2. Post level 100 progression with paragons and increased strength so we can run better dungeons/raids, endgame in general, where we can use these builds in a fun way, rather than stand in front of a boring boss wacking at him for 10mins.
  3. Change the tempering system so that when we actually get a great 3GA item we’re happy instead of dreading the moment of tempering. Make each recipe have 4 affixes. Let us keep the previous roll.
  4. World tier 5 or Hellmode for a more fun experience into the endgame. We currently make Wt4 content redundant.
  5. An auction house for trade. Seller submits item, price or offer request, and someone’s free to offer that price or buyout directly. Something simple. It’s a nightmare trading offline.

Hope this helps.

43 Likes
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agreed with every word, but this probably will take years for Blizzard to happen considering how long they were making S4 (and idea of “loot reborn”) and came up with just a tempering and masterworking, like whole new expansion and these QoL improvements they will give us like super mega exciting thing which is not - it just quality of life upgrade of the game

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Agree with all points. Especially the buffs to core skills should be like next week. The basic skills are okish but they lack animations, so playing bash barb for 200 hours gets old fast. I would rather play frozen orb sorc but she can barely do pit 100 with top gear.

Sorc needs paragon and skill tree full rework, she is so luckluster in comparison to other classes.

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These suggestions are nonsense. I would unistall the game if those were implemented

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agree on most, especially item bricking - way too much nullified progress removing initiative to try something new. and this is from folks who trade their 2+ GA, folks who don’t trade should feel even worse.

for class balance - I think they should massively buff glass cannon type build damage output. massively means 10x more… because as it is right now barb have HP and damage. glass cannons have no HP and less damage. makes no much sense balance-wise in higher pits. even top sorc in the list relies on exploding ads to push higher pits and fish specific bosses with ads. this is not glass cannon gameplay but fish-cannon.

as of infinite flame shield - do not see this very different from 500k HP barbs, especially how clunky is to play the build (one mistake and it’s instant death, forced to basic attack build and no other cooldowns on bar etc) and how hard is to get it running. IMO instead of nerfing it to the ground it should be made feasible yet with some counters in PvP/end game. if barb can skip boss mechanics with face tanking other classes should be able too.

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I agree on a ton of this, if not all of it. Tempering being demotivating because of RNG and bricking items and not being able to play the funnest builds because they get nerfed into the ground(why does this need to happen, it drives me absolutely insane) are the biggest ones.

People are wayyyy to concerned with balance these days. My absolute biggest concern is always whether I am having fun and feel powerful along with satisfying progression. Anything else is secondary. Too much time spent on trying to get well rolled items and then tempering and masterwork RNG on top is demotivating.

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Agreed. A few things on the list seem a bit nit picky or are things that are only a problem for someone in the top 0.01% of players, only plays D4, and power levels…but for the most part these are pretty good suggestions.

Especially the pit boss ones. I don’t really die in them unless I get super unlucky (obscured explosions or cc into a one shot during a pit boss), but the pit bosses just take so much time to kill compared to everything else. 25-50% of the run time is me fighting those chonkers.

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very thought out and clear. I really hope the devs take the time to read even 1/2 of this. The game is a lot better but as it is I will not be playing s5 and will not buy the dlc until the base game is tweaked more. Its moving the right direction but there is still too much bad rng in the system to feel good

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Im not the best player but I did go hard this season. Completed a 122 pit. I havnt had a real upgrade in weeks now though because every 2-3GA i get bricks which is killing it for me

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Make sure you read it. You’re breaking the rules by highlighting the names of company employees.

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they are speaking directly to the community lead devs…

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This. I feel like the balance is needed right now as the difference between a strong and very strong build is too high so I get it but it’s still a factor in how enjoyable the experience is.
I don’t want to use basic attack builds which are bugged or hit better vs core builds which should be the ones used.

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Super constructive feedbacks. I think they can fix tempering system easily. Like 1 regular non GA ancestral leg item gonna has 5 base reroll attempts, each GA affix gonna earn 2-3 more attempts and if you brick it, you can reset it with some rare mat like spark or stones.

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Tottally agree.

For example, this season, the material for adding gem slots to armour was extremely rare. It’s one of the things that could be used perfectly or some other material with relative rarity like sparks or whatever.

One other thing I was thinking is them keeping the ladder for helltides and extending it so you could get more sparks in the same account rather than having to do an alt.

Any solution is fine, just not as it is right now.

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still love most these ideas

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Any data available for review?

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they need to remove yellow/white/blue items all together from WT4 or make a WT5 without them and drop gold instead.

The Pit’s return on investment is low and boss drop crap gears. no reason to run Pit 200 for 10 mins when you can run Pit 61 in 2 mins. and why punish going into the pit as a group by making others get half the loot mat… D2 was fun cuz you can open a game and random people come in and chop shat up together.

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I don’t get all the crying from tempering items. Seriously and the greater affixes, 2 or 3 greater affixes items should be rare and if it Gets Broken yeah it sucks but that’s why it’s also so rare to find one and even more rare to get good tempering stats on it.

Can they fine tune the system of tempering yes like maybe adding a system where they can work in tiers for tempering tier 1 you get thé best tempering stats tier 2 Middle tempering stats and tier 3 thé lowest tempering stats than bricking Will not feel that bad.

Also like some People allready pointed out make a rare item where you can van reset tempering on gear and An other rate item where you can choose to rule one tempering stats out so you have more chance of thé tempering stats you want.

I think that this Will be a fair system for many players, does it suck to Brick your items yeah but i don’t find it so bad as most players make out of it

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Yeah, this. This is our experience too. Went through so much loot to get… nothing. It’s a shame.
Also, pit isn’t really rewarding in terms of loot. Only to push.

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Gonna be honest, stopped reading here. For someone who claims to have played the game a lot this is not a matter of doubt. I also think your whole post is just a reason to cry about tempering.

1 Like