The reason for 16 torment levels, and 150 GRift levels, is that in a game whose core satisfaction loop is getting more gear to get more powerful, many players would like to be able to continue progressing up a ladder as far as they can, with continued progress over a large number of distinct steps. That fits nicely with Blizzard’s apparent desire that players be able to play for hundreds or thousands of hours.
So given that, having a very long ladder of growth that each player can and will progress on is a smart game design, especially if its done such that each step is pretty enjoyable each and of itself.
What is a lot less smart is having just a few difficulty levels, including the possibility that even the easiest of which will be too much for some players to overcome, especially if in their early experience they did not pick the right class or skill or have the right gear drop. That’s a good way to give people a bad experience and to throw away large sums of potential revenue.
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Which Druid build seems fine? Because wolf druid is not fine. It’s by far the weakest build in this beta by a very large margin.
WS/tornado/hurricane wolves for tanks
Never see a mass exodus from a game that buffs. Its always the nerfs that cause people to bail.
And judging the game on Druid kind of pointless since they get nothing for their class really in this beta.
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I’m with you, this game was a grind and difficult. It shouldn’t be a walk in the park you can go through without repeating some content and grinding your way up the ladder.
Clearly, many people have never played an ARPG in their lives here. A = Action, that doesn’t mean you are sitting at a boss fight for 2 hours slowly chipping away their health bars, or taking 5 - 10 spell casts to kill one monster.
If you want that, go play an MMo.
The whole idea of the Diablo franchise is to smash literally thousands of monsters in a short space of time, get loot to increase that killing ability and farm bosses for even greater loot drops. Diablo isn’t Dark Souls either, Diablo is purely about speed killing, loot and the lore of the world its based in.
Beta’s always unfortunately generate misconceptions and why quite a few developers don’t doing Beta tests especially for MMos because that can, and will affect sales. Diablo especially, has many old school fans which I’ll say - are worried because so far, Diablo IV is taking several steps back from the classic franchise. Taking risks sometimes can work out, but if it fails…Blizz is risking a lot on taking the franchise into a different direction here.
The diablo series also, classically has had severe class imbalances at launch. D3 was one of the worst to have class imbalances and those didn’t manifest until players reached Hell with Barbs becoming the only class being able to farm it safely, with monks a close second.
Diablo 2 had class imbalances, sorcs were exceptionally overpowered at launch with static shock literally melting hell diablo in seconds. Zons multishot smashes entire packs of mobs in seconds, Hammerdins etc
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I can’t speak for others, but, I decided to try this open beta and see for myself whether or not the game is worth the price tag. I like the druid class, and I like playing fury druid. But, fury druid has always been in a bad spot (D2R), and I was hopeful that things would be different in D4. Unfortunately they were not. It was a seriously painful struggle, but I stuck with it and got to 25. I then started farming some dungeons and the pain continued.
Based on that first impression I most likely will not buy this game. Not unless significant improvements are made to this build. On a whim I decided to roll a sorc & necro and I was literally just walking through mobs. It felt very strong. Maybe too strong. However, I don’t want nerfs to happen, rather, bring weaker builds up to be on par with the “gg” builds.
Start doing broad sweeping nerfs and players will just not play imho.
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Bear seemed quite fine, but I agree that when I switched some skills from bear to wolf, my dmg seemingly went down, which felt wrong. It should deal more dmg and take more dmg than bear form.
Haven’t tried caster druid, but others have said that it felt better than feral, so also sounds fine.
What are you even on about. Druid boss fights doesn’t take hours or anything close to mmo fights.
D1-2 had slow gameplay as well. Warrior has to fight like 1 mob at a time. Only when fully geared with Enigma etc you clear fast.
Highest greater rifts in D3 take long time and these are definitely not fast kills as well. Even in PoE endgame boss like Maven takes 10 minutes from what I saw.
Point is game is too easy with Sorc and Necro. I tried it and it quickly turned into boring D3 experience while Druid playthrough felt really fresh with slower more tactical and challenging gameplay.
I was being sarcastic 
But its the truth, Diablo series as a whole isn’t meant to be a tactical, its about destroying multitudes of mobs quickly as possible doing loot runs, even D3 is the same way and you can’t blame two classes being ‘too easy’ with the beta experience because its not remotely a clear picture of whats to come, besides Barb and Druid both have important class skills locked in basically Act 2.
If you want a tactical experience, try World of Warcraft.
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Like I mentioned in another thread - here you go:
Diablo 4 - Getting Thrashed by Den Mother - YouTube - youtube video of my druid being destroyed, legend and rare gear shown at the end
Diablo 4 - destroyed by Den Mother as a Barb - YouTube - youtube of same fight with barb, annihilated by the boss - level 25 with multiple legendary gear
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Also understand that beta, gear is exceptionally limited so mobs after level 20+ out level the gear you can find so melee definitely at a disadvantage and 100% rely on builds right now, this shouldn’t be an issue at full launch, and if it is then its grounds for complaining.
My general issue is mid and endgame for melee and how everything will develop over time.
Not in a hack and slash looter. But a true rpg game sure i agree
Making a purchase decision based on balance in a beta is premature.
Some skills could use nerfs, some could use buffs. Address the extremities at both ends.
All skills of all classes need to be considered - not just sweeping class buffs.
A big part of the balance formula issue here is minions. They provide so many targets that even swarms of enemies have plenty of non-player targets to choose from.
This gives players a lot more free reign for action economy. There’s simply less survival they need to execute, so they spend more time outlaying damage and less deaths (which is also more dps).
Obviously Necro is the big culprit here. I haven’t played necro so not fully qualified to say - but I immediately wondered how would 1 less skelly warrior and mage go for balance.
I played a lot of druid and played with every build option there. An extra wolf and raven (ravens is broken/not working well by the way, I made a post on it) would improve their minion game.
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I actually agree with nerfing things. The problem is that you can’t really do that without getting rid of scaling minions/bosses. They put themselves in this situation.
One thing not considered, though I don’t know for sure, is that he is probably decked out in at least all rares if not all legendaries. That is not going to happen at launch until way later in the game due to drop rates being increased for beta. So we are judging a characters power level by the beta and not the actual launch.
If they are going to nerf/buff it should be at least a week or two after launch so we can see how players are fairing with normal drops and not this super drop stuff.
I’m for buffing the underpowered because when you nerf than you remove the fun from the classes that feel right and instead make them feel worse and the ones that need buffing don’t get it so they continue to feel bad.
To each their own.
There isnt much tactical experience over World of Warcraft tbh.
In any case, plenty of room for trying to make a tactical A-RPG. Would love to see it.
Well, what and when would you make a purchase decision on then?
This kinda is the best information you will get.
Indeed.
They can nerf the scaling if needed.
Melee needs help in general. It’s just a bad kind of rough where you get the feeling the one who designed the game hates melee. Of course items matter a lot. I’m sure you can find plenty of overgeared people one shotting bosses on barb and druid. Try do that with garbage gear(which you’ll be getting plenty of in retail).
We’re only seeing the first 25 levels of the game. I don’t expect it to be hard at all(and it isn’t). It just reeks of poor balancing going on. Come back and say the game is too easy when we’re playing at high level at max difficulty. I’m sure people(content creators) will faceroll everything the game has. Just pick the most op build and try farm the pieces and just win.
This is probably something that most people will not agree with but I found a poorly geared druid better than a poorly geared barb up to 25. At least on the druid you can switch to ranged. But hey maybe melee becomes really good at 30+. It’s just hard to say right now. The necro and sorc could be terrible later on. The druid could be the most op class in the game(lol).
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There are two more tiers of difficulty later on. Why in the f are we talking about balance issues for 1-25, outside of perhaps making barb and druid feel less painful to play.
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