So… each difficulty will be 20% harder, cumulatively.
This means that T1 is 20% harder, T2 44%, T3 72.8% and T4 107.36%
This means that T4S8 will give the impression of having received a 50% nerf.
Yeah, I know, it’s not a nerf, but it feels like one.
That’s why it’s a Phantom nerf and not a nerf.
I tried to do math with Pit… but the result was too crazy to be real… something like 200,000 times harder on pit150. I think pit will have a different starting point in S8, which considerably alters the math.
But, despite the math, not being able to reach the same Pit as in S7 will give the impression of a massive nerf.
This has the potential to be worse than the patch 1.1 disaster.
Edit: I am very disappointed that it is necessary to clarify this: I am not complaining. I’m just trying to predict the future.
A player nerf? Yes, because monsters are stronger. There’s also direct player nerfs, like Ultimate damage caps.
Should players reach P150? I personally don’t believe so. I believe (my opinion) that P100 should be the goal, with try-hards hitting 110-115. And the goal should be that most builds accomplish that in 2/3 GA gear.
My issue is that there’s not been any real changes outlined to promote player-used skills. Devs stated they disliked the “use a skill only because it casts other skills” and wished to move away from that.
S8 seems like a realignment for the game/enemies, with no real player-side alignment. So we’ll see how it goes, but I expect lots of rage in PTR.
EDIT: Devs also stated more per week/month balance changes, so maybe that will be the approach to player-side alignment.
It will absolutely be lowered from S7, just like it was lowered from S6 into S7.
The Ultimate change alone guarantees lowered output.
However, output isn’t the key to T4. I can one-shot current T4 with Ice Shards and no Ultimate on arguably the weakest class. Will I climb p150 with that? No (rofl), but T4 is woefully weak for being labeled “aspirational”. The big hurdle to current T4 is just surviving - getting Armor/Resists/DR high enough.
Yes, but not all builds use Ultimates as the main source of damage. It’s not a global nerf.
Killing the monster before it kills you is always key. And damage output is always an important part of this equation.
In fact… there is a “lethal” point where you feel like you need more defense, but in reality you need more damage. Choosing defense in this situation will lead to you getting stuck.
When you need more defense, for example, is when you manage to complete a Pit despite dying multiple times.
To be honest, I wish Diablo 4 had more skill-based mechanics… so I could base my defense on my skill and put more stats into damage.
To be honest, that’s based on everyone who decided to continue after reaching T4.
Being the highest difficulty, it’s normal for many to stop playing after reaching it.
I’m sure more than 10% will make it to T4 next season… if they don’t stop playing halfway through after seeing that they are much less powerful
The season 1 nerfs caused rage because they nerfed everyone’s eternal characters. It won’t feel as bad with fresh characters just facing harder difficulty.
The changes to difficulty are not exclusive to the season…
Eternal players will be the ones who will instantly notice how much their performance drops.
Remember that this affects Pit as well. If you suddenly drop 10 or 20 levels of Pit, you’ll obviously think you’ve been nerfed. In the worst case scenario: the best builds may drop 40 or 50 levels (depending on how the Pit’s new math works)
To be fair, one thing was said by a dev during a development update while a graph was displayed, and another thing was said by the “Diablo lead” during an interview (and who was later surprised when reminded of it).
What I mean is that one is not working directly on the game or giving public official statements on official channels.
That statement was most likely an accidental leak by Rod. Information that he later denied… (and he recently “confirmed” the next one is arriving in 2026)
Not true, what average player wants is normal gameplay (not one shot everything, and then not being forced to play a 40 minute pixel perfect fight against a boss that was designed to be fought by someone - about 15x stronger)
Reduce that discrepancy and you have a winner
It is also interesting how you complain about 20%, 44%, 79%, and 104%, but you don’t acknowledge when people say that the game is badly balanced cause discrepancy between builds is 1 MILLION % (actually not even that, 1 million times is 100 MILLION %)
You’re basically complaining your “build” is gonna get 2x weaker, what about those that were saying all the time that they can almost one-shot everything but when they get to a Boss fight they barely make it ?
THAT is why you nerf the outliers… Just because there is Pit 150 does not mean you have to beat it (in fact I hope they remove all of them post 100 and then readjust strong builds accordingly down)
THAT will work (at least temporarily), what the game will have at that point is reasonable balance, but it will still lack fun (but that’s not substituted by scaling or adding more power, some other time more on that, in fact already wrote it - somewhere else)
I don’t know how you went from nerfs to gameplay.
So I’m going to take your advice and pretend it’s not there.
This is not a “Balance” topic.
A global nerf isn’t balance. It’s rescaling.
I know this is what you can infer from the message because a normal player only talks about nerfs when he is angry about them, but at no point am I saying that it is something that I don’t like or that I disagree with.
(And no, this doesn’t mean that I agree with it or that I like it… stop that)
I’m just saying that it’s going to be a disaster like 1.1
My opinion on whether the nerf is good or bad is irrelevant to this statement.
I really think that impossible challenges should not be part of a video game.
If a player sees a difficulty in a modern game, he will believe that it is possible in some way (Even if the difficulty is called “Impossible”)
And I say “modern game” because arcade games are like that (Infinite scaling until broken by error “256”), and I’m sure that those who want a game without oneshots hate the idea of an arcade Diablo.
In S7 and S8 yes, S1 and S2 no, the problem is every “idiot” here “trusted” the devs that they “finished” the game properly, they didn’t, and they hadn’t
One look at leveling post lvl75 in S1 and was already a tell
No new item affix
No new monster (or monster augmentation for that matter)
And YET, they decided to ignore all that and “fix” it with a couple of hacks that were supposed to “propel” players from 70 to 100 so that they play Lillith and “bang” their heads (against the wall) there
Well the problem is those “hacks” didn’t only propel 70-99, but also screwed up the parts of the game that were ALREADY working well and intended
Then when they realized that the hacks don’t “propel” people fast enough - they decided to trash-bomb the entire game (and end up in even a worse place because now even the parts that felt good had to be “reimagined”)
Then they decided to “reinvent the wheel” for S2 by - trash-bombing the early game even more, so even the bits of sense of accomplishments that existed previously - are not there anymore, because… Reasons
TLDR ? - had people been aware that the game is not finished, definitely not polished, not balanced (or rescaled in your own words) properly - we’d have had a banger
But THAT didn’t happen, and because it didn’t happen is a consequence of:
I refuse to be a tester and QA, Blizz should know better their game
Fair enough, true…
But then why are we here on the Forums and not just playing the game ?
And b.t.w. we should “think” of those that don’t play 200 hours a month as well (so their gameplay of 30-40 hours a month is not entirely a total waste), AND also think of ways of the game being fun to play regardless of the rewards (or lack of them)
Again… I still have no idea how you jump from one idea to another…
You say it’s normal not to reach the end because the end isn’t finished???
If that’s the case, there’s no point in showing the end.
Following that logic, if pit 150 isn’t reachable, it shouldn’t be there.
I think that too, and that’s why I think Season shouldn’t be aimed at casuals.
Aiming Season at Casuals means you have to create experiences that last two days, in other words, create Diablo 3. Which in turn forces you to create the game for non-casuals in Eternal. This translates into a very slow game in eternal and ridiculous bonuses in Season to make it really fast (AKA the current direction of Diablo 4).
The opposite is a slow game throughout the entire game and if you are casual you play on eternal because you don’t lose anything there.
