Thoughts on NM dungeons on T4 (tier 21 and above) and patch 1.10 changes

Console Discussion
1

Firstly, nightmare dungeons on T4 are absolutely OP AF. Having a fire lightning generator that follows you around, moving faster than you do, and TPs to your location is OP. Having random freeze effects in the dungeon on top of this doesn’t help - for example, had used evade and TP, then get frozen in spot, can’t move and the moving fire lightning pylon hovers over you and 1 shots you (you should never get 1 shotted by a monster, let alone a trap imho), especially when the cooldowns on your mobility skills are FOREVER. Absolutely unpleasant. Add to this, the massive buffs that monsters get, the SFA buffs that you get and the mobs are 2+ higher levels than your character level, already making them more difficult. How the hell is this even remotely balanced?

With 22% CDR, frost nova still has a cooldown time of 12 seconds. Teleport isn’t much better. Both shields (flameshield and ice armour) for sorc are near useless. They don’t shield you well, and their uptime is pathetic.

D4 is reminding me of D3V with inferno mode and how crap it was, and how unbalanced it was. I gave up on D3V after 6 months, this time around, I am far smarter and can see myself giving up on the game pretty much now. There’s no point in doing something that is just creating angst for you. I have better things to do with my life and time than play a game that makes me cranky.

Patch 1.10 update thoughts - ice shards sorc seems weaker to me and is doing less damage [than last night, same clvl]. Either that, or monsters were buffed. Neither were mentioned in the patch notes, but 1 attempted nightmare dungeon tonight and a normal dungeon make me very confident that changes have been made to either nerf the sorc build/skill(s) or buff monster health.

Drops - T4 drops have been absolutely ATROCIOUS. During the normal dungeon tonight, killed 3 elites and got 3 potions and some gold for my effort. A minute later, killed 2 more elites and got a sacred magic (blue) item and gold. The boss for the dungeon? A single sacred rare and guess what, gold. The nightmare dungeon had 1 ancestral unique drop (same boots as last night), so much for random! And, nothing else. Not even another legendary (I got 90% through it before I had my 4 deaths and the dungeon finished). A very frustrating experience. It reminds me of the mess that D3V was on release with poor drops. Again, it may just be pure randomness, or user bias, but drops tonight seemed far worse than say, last night or the night before. I mean, significantly worse.

XP was also worse post 1.10 patch - I’m lvl 71 and for doing an entire normal dungeon and 90% of a nightmare dungeon, I got 1/8 of a level (with elixir usage of course). That is less than what I got previously, including the nights before.

The game has turned into pure frustration for me and I simply either return to T3 with no prospect of better drops (angelic items only dropping in T4), or just give up on the game. Gated drops are NEVER good in a game. Every difficulty should have the chance of an item type dropping imho. I have no problems with making it say, 3% drop rate for say, T4 for an angelic item, and 0.5% for T1 etc. But to have an entire class of items simply not available unless you play T4 is just crap game design.

Anyway, I think I am about done with this game. Back to D3, which I consider a far better game and far more enjoyable for me personally. Even D2R is far more enjoyable for me than D4. Even D3 will eventually get old for me, since after s28 there are no new updates. Luckily I have plenty of other hobbies to keep me busy in my spare time, and plenty of other games to play.

SLATFATF.

1 Like
2

First, what lvl Sorc are you in WT4? That tells me how far your are with Paragon points which if you build right, helps with surviving WT4.

Few things you have to realize with Sorc in Diablo 4. We lost followers in Diablo 4. The Sorc basically turned i to a battlemage here, a ranged caster that is a monster magnet to everything. Least with followers we had something that took aggro. That’s gone for some dumb Blizzard design decision.

You have to equip two shields in your builds and stack armor cause resists are completely broken.

And yes, everything in NM dungeons at 35+ can one shot you out of nowhere, especially the off the screen attacks. Complete garbage game design. Add in the Chain CC that makes you feel you m/kb or controller is broken.

I’ll stop there. This game has some very lazy monster mechanics, poor designs, that make our character feel less like a ‘hero’ and more like squishy most the time.

2 Likes
3

lvl 71. Have followed the paragon board guide as per maxroll.gg.

I have sacrificed damage on amulet and 1 ring for health, as that was needed.

I was doing damage, at lvl 71, the night before the latest patch, no issues. No changes in character. It just feels weaker over night.

Armour is nearly 5000 and health 4000. Sheet attack 3000 (not that sheet counts for much).

Yes, I miss the follower - that is a major flaw with the game imho.

Was doing a NM 23 dungeon. But, as I said, even a normal dungeon felt significantly harder for me post patch .

This ^^^^

it’s very badly balanced, even more so than inferno mode in D3V was imho.

Another issue is the gear gating behind T4. It’s a catch 22 - you need that better gear to do T4, but it doesn’t drop unless you do T4. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

I should re-test in T3 to see if monsters feel more difficult than before post patch.

A mate who teamed up with me to do the T4 capstone dungeon together has already had a very nice angelic wand and focus drop for his character, boosting his DPS considerably.

Another issue is that the skill tree doesn’t show the cooldown for the base skill. Is a 12 second cooldown for frost nova normal with 22% CDR? My previous focus had another 1.3% CDR and the cooldown then was ~8 seconds. I’m dubious that a difference of 1.3% makes up for a 4 second gap in cooldown. That doesn’t sound right to me. Ice shards sorc is broken with cooldown issues and most players are complaining about it. Cooldowns need to be reduced IMHO by Blizzard.

But, as you said, the game is very badly balanced and a mess atm. It’s a shame, it has a lot of potential. The game looks beautiful (although I’d like to see rain and mist effects, especially in Scosglen). Gear RNG is pretty bad imho, even harder to find good gear than previous Diablo games. I get that players lose interest if they find perfect gear on day 1, so making it harder to get maintains longer game play for the playerbase. But I think Blizzard has went too far in the other direction with D4. Or, perhaps I’ve just been unlucky. My RNG luck (and luck in general life) have never been good.

I think I will take an extended break from the game for 6 months and see where it is.

Thank you for the kind reply. I expected the usual trolls to post a bunch of personal attack replies.

1 Like
4

I hate the ones on floor the most… Because they can be covered up by your own graphics… soo… if you aint following your ABM (always be moving) and abc’s (Always be casting)… you’re toast.

The lightning one… if i recall correctly you need to get in the bubble.
Uhh… Frost nova has an affix that gives it 2 charges. teleport if using crackling energy + overflowing energy passive=Faster CD’s for electric including teleport. I’m literally teleporting every 2-3 seconds with my build. stun locking most enemies because of raiment.

Agree the time for them being up is a bit horrid on both. But FS is mainly for a quick fix to your hp. a brief shield. and a CC breaker.

The thing is… d3 at the start was mostly hell due to horrible rolls on gear… allowing STR and Dex on a Sorc item? Yeah BS. Thing with d4 is you got to actually play smart a bit. (mind you this is coming from a old HC vet 95% nothing but hc on d2 and d3)

In my build i have 4 points in glass canon. So… if im not ABM and ABC. I’m DoA.
Sorc is definitely one of the harder ones to just jump into on d4. (this was first class on d1-4 for me because… magic pew pew.) And by far d4 is the roughest start out.

After reading… your hp is only 4k… thats definittely on the low end. You are using red gems in armor, and skulls in rings/ammy right?

5

I’m constantlymoving, and casting when cooldowns are off. I have long cooldowns and it’s a common problem with the ice shard sorc build. Looking at the skill tree, it doesn’t mention base cool down for the skill(s). BAD design.

This One was like a floating lava pylon that fires out fire lightning (or what looks like fire lightning). It moves around the map following you very fastly, and it’s hard to shake. It also seems to TP to you when you get out of range, so you can never truly outrun it. I basically get 1-1.5 seconds to engage the mobs, then have to run off cos the pylon is within range and zaps you and 1 shots you. Then it’s 12 seconds of running around (this is with 12% CDR!) waiting for frost nova to cooldown. Given that the mobs were 3 levels higher than me (already an issue), and the player gets a crappy useless buff for the NM dungeon whilst the mobs get MASSIVE benefits (20% extra damage as physical, distant mobs have a 25% chance of slowing you down if they hit you for this particular dungeon, but some of the sigils I have give the mobs 30% bonus damage and they take 60% less damage from the player - how the **** is this NOT unbalanced?). I don’t mind a challenge, but I like it to be balanced and fair. These current NM dungeons are NOT fun, and NOT balanced and NOT fair to the player.

I’ll hve to look at it. I have followed the maxroll.gg build guide (levelling to 50). I haven’t bothered too much with the fine detail in their end game guide, simply because I haven’t found any bloody end game gear yet!

It seems all the sorc spells have way too long cooldowns.

I’m generally pretty smart as a player. Also long term HC play (D3 only though - s6 impale DH typically top 10 globally since s17, no deaths yet).

That’s interesting to know. I don’t know if any of the other character classes interest me or not.

skulls on most of my armour, only rubies in my chest piece. That was based on some advice from a YouTuber video that I watched. I can swap to rubies, it’s dead easy, have the gems and money to unsocket etc.

I didn’t play at all last night, and only those 2 dungeons the night before. I have today off work, but really not interested in playing. D4 has just made me too cranky. Bought Avatar 4k last night, will probably watch that today. I also need to make a bunch of important phone calls today, to government departments, so that’s like 5 hours blown lol. Working tomorrow (Saturday). I’ve never had such a hate/love relationship with a game before, not even D3V compares (it was just hate lol).

Oh, and I had the butcher spawn in both NM dungeons from the other night. On T4 he has shields right from the start and I basically can’t get the shields down to zero before I run out of mana and actually damage him. So, by the time my frost nova comes back off cooldown, he’s shields are back at full health and it’s just a repeat of the first round. Ridiculously OP and unbalanced. Have had him appear now 8 times (twice on T4, first time tried and died, 2nd time the other night I just deliberately exited the dungeon to cause him to despawn). Twice on T1 (first time horrible death, got him the 2nd time with a mortar pylon help; next 4 times mano a mano on T3 without any real issues).

If I return to D4, it’ll probably be to T3 and I won’t bother with T4. With that said, I see no real reason to do so, since T3 is a dead end and with the best gear gatelocked, T3 is worthless as being part of the gear grind hunt.

The game has many aspects that are BADLY designed. FACT.

1 Like
6

Welll from what you’ve stated you seem to be doing things right.
I originally had barrier gen in my armor. was getting 1 shot still very easily. said hell with it. threw in all royal ruby’s and im good now. ^.^" Well atleast when not facing enemies 5 levels or so above me, can still get 1 shot because 4 points in glass cannon.

I wish ya luck in the future with this, i feel ya on the lightly playing. im still slowly working on getting sorc to 100 before season 1 starts. but… being solo all the time is a little bit draining. Since my old d3 peeps said they aint coming to d4. I used to rush to max level and them power level them in d3. lol

1 Like
7

I have barrier gen too, helps with both DR and DPS (when barrier is up of course).

I got a new ring last night, had life on it, so upgraded and swapped it. Also swapped out the skulls for rubies in my helm and pants (I had rubies in my chest already). I also added a few more paragon points and grabbed some DR from elites - reached 72 and a half lvl. If I can get to 74, I’ll be able to finish this board and move to my 4th board.

I desperately need an ancestral wand and focus for the DPS buff.

I was wrong on my CDR - I also have 9% on my helm, so around 32% CDR. I don’t think frost nova should still be taking 12 seconds to cooldown. Does that sound right to you?

A D4 channel that I follow on YouTube has suggested that the following stats on weapon are the best:

crit strike chance ==> crit strike damage ==> vulnerable

My current weapon has damage to close, damage to injured, both of which are high (~50% for the latter), vulnerable and core. Am I really losing that much damage by not having crit strike and damage? Do they really trump close/injured, which have much higher damage % rolls than crit chance/dmg? NB. I have never seen a wand roll with crit strike chance. I have re-rolled a fair bit at the occultist too and never seen this roll come up. I am also currently using a dagger, because no wand has rolled as good as the dagger that I am using. I am not sure if using a dagger is inherently worse than a wand for some esoteric reason that I cannot fathom.

Cheers,

Dave

8

I’m a level 90 druid WT4 and clearing nightmare dungeons up to 65 easily. I can clear some like blind burrows level 70.

I do agree that some of the modifiers are tough and I usually sell those to craft others.

As far as loot goes, its raining ancestrals non stop, legendary drop a lot too, uniques as well especially as the last reward.

1 Like
9

This right here is important point. Blizzard stated not all nightmare affexs are good for all classes and builds.

Like on my stormwolf build i don’t run close range damage reduction for emeny or the lighting one. So its important to salvage the ones you know are just bad for your bulld. Like suppressor is the bane for my necromancer so i never take that one.

Also T4 is a tad harder till you hit around 75. By then you should have replaced most of your sacred gear with ancestral gear.

10

Yes, I think I will have to start doing the same, rather than trying to do some of them. The Ones where mobs do 30% more damage and take 60% less dmg from players are unbalanced. Blizzard clearly doesn’t understand the meaning of balancing in a game. And, those dungeons, mobs are mlvl 75 vs my clvl 72, so 3 levels higher, which is already an advantage to the monsters.

I wish. Did a helltide just now, 1 ancestral legendary (useless). 3 ancestral rares. The rest were sacred or worse. It’s just not worth it.

Since the last patch, either ice shards has been nerfed, or mob health has been buffed. It is now clearly harder for me to clear mobs than it was pre-patch. Drops are also significantly worse. Others are reporting similar things - we can’t all be wrong.

That might be the case, but it doesn’t excuse bad game balance. 30% monster health and 60% less dmg from players is NOT good for ANY build.

LOL, you’re joking right? Getting F all ancestral gear drop, and what little does, is of utter ZERO worth to me. Obviously some players are having all of the luck it seems. Others, are getting screwed by the game.

11

Yeah I had to swap them out, if barrier was down for a second i was toast. soo HP worked better, granted i still have a barrier up 90% of the time, and most of my damage comes from stunned enemies.,. think it was stunned/frozen, either way its like 410% damage increase lol.

And yes… those stats are important… which im honestly lacking. cant remember the stats. but Chance means more times of critting and the damage is well… higher damage per crit.

cant recall if it will roll on a wand. maybe just focus? been a while since ive looked at gears. got a stockpile on ancestral in bank that ive been storing while spamming NM dungeons.

12

I played D3 before this one and found D3 to be a boring and easy walk in the park. The bosses in D4 need to be stronger. The elites and mobs are fine just a bit unbalanced where some are superstrong and some are very weak. They just need to even out the difficulty on the mobs but most definitely not make them weaker. If you’re having a difficult time you can always go back to tier 1.

13

or, the game is unbalanced. It’s a mess like inferno mode in D3V. Just sayin’.

Drops are just pathetic. The end game grind is NOT fun. It’s boring AF, not conducive to character development and again, unbalanced.

14

Some of the combos of negative effects are pretty harsh. Just scrap ones that look difficult and craft a different one. You’re not forced to suffer through one’s you’re not prepared for.

1 Like
15

The modifiers are fine in my opinon. I know what you mean about the following lightning thing. Did thag once and only once now theg get salavaged if that modifier is listed. That and resource burn what a lame modifer that turns that into a bad time. What is really the worst and what id like to see them work on is either cool downs on freezing / stone ect effects. They spam those abilities and you cant even move so you insta die. They need a much longer cool down and blizzard needs to look at groupings.

16

Some dungeons are just flat out terrible to run as well even with a NM sigil that is favourable for you. Because I am getting a little burnt out running the same 7 or 8 dungeons I decided to try a few others yesterday and some of them have walls and doorways that block a significant portion of the screen and I end up just spamming skills in a general direction. Moving forward into the room did nothing and only blocked more of the screen.

If the game wants to use so many stun locks and AOE’s that persist on the floor then we need to be able to see the battle field. It’s hard enough to dodge ice and poison at close quarters, but near impossible when you can see it at all.

And speaking of AOE’s that persist. Those spider webs that the shoot that root in place. They seem to stay longest of all. I died last night in a NM dungeon to the dreaded poison and frozen enchanted combo elite pack that also happen to be spiders the poison also had teleport and frozen exploding. After one of my deaths I started from the checkpoint and as I’m about to engage in battle I got rooted by a web from the previous battle. The enemies reset but the effect lingered.

Also we need to see more of the screen in general. The amount of times I have been rooted, frozen, charged into and teleported on by enemies from off screen is crazy at WT4 and if WT5 comes it’s going to likely get worse. I get that we have to play for defense as well as offense, but to have to spec 1/3 of your slots on some classes to get past CC mechanics is not exactly fun or rewarding gameplay. It feels like everything is designed around grizzly rage uptime.

I wonder sometimes if the devs really do play their own game.

17

Yeah, I have learned that the hard way too.

Even some of the lesser effects need higher cooldowns.

Have had similar happen. It’s exceedingly frustrating and bad game design.

Pretty confident that they don’t.