This is going to be a long one. If you don’t care about the process of how I arrived to this point skip to the end.
Background:
I’m 35. I played Diablo in 1997. I played Diablo II when it came out in 2000. I quit Diablo II after the rust storm that happened after 1.09d, I guess. Back then I mained Amazon.
Last year after around 15 years since playing Diablo II I got Diablo II: Resurrected and replayed through the story for nostalgia, though I went with a sorceress as my original one zoomed around maps really fast with teleport and annihilated everything with frozen orbs, novas, and that lightning stuff.
Then I tried Diablo III. I didn’t expect much going into it. But I ended up really enjoying it. It felt like a true successor to Diablo II. Since Diablo III doesn’t have an Amazon I made a sorceress there too. It was that last season before the one before Diablo 4. I had the Tal Rasha set and meteors flying everywhere - it was great fun. My character felt strong and important, like a world savior. I even bought the Ultimate edition of Diablo 4 - mostly for the Inarius’s wings in Diablo III if I’m being honest, and they do look sick.
Going into Diablo 4 I was immediately leery of certain aspects. It seemed more like a loosely Diablo themed MMO than a true successor to Diablo II & III. In the betas I really didn’t like seeing other people all the time since it ruined the immersion of being the one world savior. I didn’t like the open world feel, as it went away from the ARPG element of moving to the new locations like II & III had. I didn’t like that Blizzard just gave up and removed trading entirely. I played a sorceress with chain lightning and hydra which I came up with myself independently of the people posting meta builds - it just felt right. I felt strong. I really liked it, despite the other shortcomings.
I only played the first and second beta weekends and opted to pass on the others as I’d already seen what I needed to see and I didn’t want to burn out redoing the same content over and over before the game even came out.
Then early access came. I tried the same build I had for my sorceress in the beta. Ho boy… talk about a different experience! Gone was the fun, or any semblance of feeling powerful.
My hydras were now wet fire noodles firing little playful bubbles at enemies, my chain lightning that could clear a room in 1-2 casts now took 3-7 casts. We have 100 mana and that sucker costs 35. Meaning in 3 casts my entire mana pool is completely gone. On trash mobs. Trash mobs!
I’d immediately felt like something was off with the very first boss in the prologue. It took so many mana pools to kill that guy. But I gaslit myself into thinking I was just imagining it. By level 25 I couldn’t take it anymore and I swapped to firewall.
The mana problems still existed but because the fire would keep damaging and killing enemies even once I was totally out it didn’t feel as bad. It was a massive quality of life improvement.
But by 45 I’d started realizing it absolutely sucked with bosses. The unicorn on a doggy made it the most obvious - I’ll avoid the name as to avoid spoilers. Nevertheless I finished the campaign with firewall without a sweat.
But now that it was time to try the capstone dungeon I knew since the weakness of firewall was bosses and as I had to kill a boss I switched to ice shard.
The damage was immediately absolutely insane by comparison. But I quickly found myself with even worse mana issues than chain lightning had 20 levels prior. I did the capstone freshly swapped over to ice shard and managed to clear it out except the final boss. That dude curb stomped me so hard and so many times I just gave up. Despite it taking me over an hour to even get to him I just couldn’t do it. I tried asking for help in local chat but a random disconnect sealed the deal for me. I was done with that.
It seemed to me like I’d need to be at least level 55 to do it, if not 60. So between collecting Lilith statues and (very inefficiently) leveling, I spent days to finally get to 52… but even then I needed help to do it because ice shard sorc has no sustain. It can burst once or twice then that’s that. A barbarian made it look like an absolute joke.
At 58 I tried the next capstone - that was a mistake. But I knew I needed to do it for ancestral items so I could finally solve my mana issues. But no one would help me. I even had a guildmate that was a level 75 barbarian that just smugly told me to get to 63 and if I still needed help after failing they’d help (spoiler: they didn’t).
So I grinded to 63, though I found a buddy to grind with and we did duo Champion’s Demise from 58 to 63. Well, he was 54 originally. But ended up catching up while I slept, despite the fact I was playing 18-20 hours a day. Dude must only sleep like 3 hours. Crazy. He also switched from arc lash to ice shard seeing how much crazier my damage was than his.
Tried it again, this time with the buddy. We struggled all the way through and got to Elias. Got absolutely destroyed by the homing projectile stuff (that I still don’t understand how to avoid). My friend told me that he wasn’t even the final boss and the one after that was 5x harder. So I gave up again (you f’ing liar).
Then I leveled all the way to around 66 doing Champion’s Demise with groups - by this point my buddy had decided sorcs suck and made a rogue, a number of levels prior. He ended up wanting me to carry him and his other friend through Champion’s Demise solo as they were like level 20 and getting 6+ levels per run in T3. And I did for a bit, but eventually that friend got off and he rejoined me for a bit. Then he wanted me to solo carry him more, and I had to put my foot down. I really wanted to level and it was way too slow solo. So he ended up leaving, didn’t really play with him after that. But I found the official Diablo 4 discord made getting full proper groups for Champion’s Demise super easy. So I did that to 69. At some point I finished my renown for more of a power boost.
Then I saw someone say in that same discord that he was on the final boss and first one to DM him could join. So I did, and was. Of course it was another freakin’ barb. And he made it look pathetically easy. Though his gear was shockingly good, like 800+ ilvl.
What kept me going all that time was knowing if I just got to a certain item level I’d reach breaking points where I could actually manage my mana. Because, believe me, I tried everything. I had a 21 mana on cooldown use ring, a 4 mana on CC ring, a double avalanche necklace, a double frost nova legendary, and all the cooldown reduction and mana cost reduction I could muster, and using avalanche of course instead of shatter, having to use fireball+ice shard enchantments.
I figured initially it would be at 65-75. But 65 came and went with the same issues. Once on world tier 4 I did about half a dozen Champion’s Demise runs on my own so I wouldn’t waste anyone’s time as I transitioned into better gear and ensured I could actually do it. I did plenty of damage but I’d get squished like a little bug if anything so much as sneezed on me. Eventually, adding in a huge barrier on attacking an elite, a 45% armor increase for doing damage, and like 85 life regen per close mob I was virtually unkillable, and I timed myself killing the top lane at just 2 minutes and 40 seconds. So I figured I was good to go. I joined a group. As it turns out they become drastically harder with 4 people, taking way more damage to kill. So I couldn’t solo my lane as I thought and needed help and even with help was still a bit slow. Still, I managed to get to 75.
I got that gear I’d been hoping for, or at least what I thought was that gear. Over 800 item level gear with the best mana cost reduction, cooldown reduction, resource generation, lucky hit resource restoration. All the best I could possibly get on my amulet, focus, boots, and helm.
My mana was still absolute garbage. So how long do you have to play a class for it to actually get good and become playable? It still being nigh unplayable at 75 seemed to be too much for me. What, was I going to have to go to 90? Forget that. Oh and by this point that friend of mine had already gotten a new rogue and barb powerleveled to ~65.
So that night I’d basically decided I’d quit the game. Laying in bed the next morning I figured I’d just make a barb and rogue and get them powerleveled and if I couldn’t like them either then I’d quit.
But with all storage tabs full I decided to take the time to clear out all but one tab which would be the downsized sorc’s tab. One for each character and one for gems seemed fair, considering I was abandoning my sorc.
In the process I upgraded a couple pieces of gear with some gear I’d stashed away as potential upgrades. I did a few test runs with it. Slight improvements but not enough for it to matter. Fact of the matter is despite being nigh unkillable I flat out couldn’t kill damage resistant enemies and increased health ones took ages with 4 players. Solo it was fine. But with 4, all I could do was straight up ignore them. And suppressors wreck an ice shard build’s mechanics.
Then I “upgraded” my chestpiece I noticed I’d not upgraded yet. And my attack power went from 6.3k to 5.4k, defense went down from 6.4k to 6k. In what world is that okay?! That was the last straw that actually pushed me over the edge into quitting.
The reasons:
From start to finish my character felt weak and pathetic, not at all like a heroic world savior. This feeling was compounded by constantly running into other players and thus not feeling like my character was special.
Resource starvation mechanics aren’t fun. They suck. A single spell shouldn’t cost 35-44% of your mana. You shouldn’t need to fully empty your mana pool, maybe even multiple times, on trash mobs. One shot, that’s all it should take on an optimized build. Hell, with a properly optimized build one shot should kill elites too UNLESS you’re playing at a significantly higher difficulty like a high nightmare dungeon - that’s where challenge should truly come in. But as it stands doing them at all aside from initially doing some to obtain and level sigils is pointless. Completely. And the negatives on them are seriously unfun, like the shadow stuff that follows and leave pools. That made me and my friends never want to do them again.
Rerolling a stat a few times shouldn’t completely bankrupt you. You can seriously blow through like 20 million gold with 5 or 6 rerolls on maybe two items. That’s so absurd it’s insane.
You should never EVER end up with SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE gear by “upgrading” your gear. What you had before should be the bare minimum, but it’s not even something we should have to consider.
My class felt bad to play from start to finish. And for that matter random elites and capstone bosses shouldn’t be harder than the hardest bosses in the campaign that were jokes by comparisons.
Seeing nothing but constant nerfs to anything remotely good made me lose any hope of ever finding anything actually good that didn’t suck.
Ultimately I tried, I really did. But I just couldn’t have fun. I played a lot, certainly. Probably around 200 hours - I even took the week off work to play more initially.
In the end I don’t even consider this truly a Diablo game. For starters Diablo isn’t even in the freakin’ game. The Nephalem that could eat Prime Evils for breakfast was completely ignored and forgotten, along with the entirety of Diablo III’s story it seems aside from Lorath joining the Horadrim. There wasn’t even a one line mention of them like “What about the Nephalem?” “Dunno, no one’s heard from them in years.” That would’ve been enough. And don’t even get me started on Mephisto. You seriously want me to believe the joke we met was the same dude that said “The skies shall rain fire, and the seas will become as blood. The righteous shall fall before the wicked, and all of Creation shall tremble before the burning standards of Hell!”? Really…? To be honest a lot of people praise the story but I don’t even think the game had a good story. It had good cinematics though, I’ll give it that. The long one late in the campaign was one of the coolest cinematics I’ve ever seen in my life.
6/12 Update:
Because so many people suggested I had terrible gear or a terrible build I actually logged in for all of about 30 seconds today (I had not since my post) and screenshotted all my gear. I’ll share that below. But to be clear: I used the Maxroll leveling and subsequently endgame build guide for iceshard sorceress. The one change I truly made is my paragon in a slightly different order. I did the Starter board + Destruction, Elemental Summoner + Imbiber, then instead of Burning Instinct + Exploit I did Frigid Fate + Elementalist, then I did Burning Instinct + Exploit after that because with my stat distribution it was better for me to have Frigid Fate first and I was using fireball thus had no burning so Burning Instinct was a less useful board for me overall. However the actual choices remained unchanged otherwise.
Also it appears that the upgrading of my chestpiece causing my attack power to go from 6.3k to 5.4k and defense down from 6.4k to 6k is changed. Maybe it was a bug…? My defense did indeed go down from 6.4k to 6k however it looks like my attack power is still somehow 6.3k again.
My sorc is level 75.
Attack power: 6,329
Armor: 6,068
Life: 4,467
Stats I can’t really see in my screenshots due to items covering them but strength, willpower, and dexterity are 3xx and intelligence is 7xx.
Now for the gear…
• will indicate a stat I’ve rerolled.
Amulet:
Choker of the Protector
Ancestral Legendary Amulet
745+20 Item Power, Upgrades: 4/5
24.4% Resistance to All Elements
8.0% Damage Reduction [4.3 - 10.1]%
+16.8% Movement Speed [14.7 - 24.5]%
•15.7% Mana Cost Reduction [13.0 - 22.3]%
13.2% Cooldown REduction [6.1 - 13.7]%
★Imprinted: Damaging an Elite enemy grants you a Barrier absorbing up to 6,663 [4,141 - 8,282] damage for 10 seconds. This effect can only happen once every 30 seconds.
(Royal Skull) +250 Armor
I’m not actually sure why the imprint is listed with that range as it was a perfect roll on the imprint itself. Weird.
Ring#1:
Prodigy’s Loop
Legendary Ring
578 Item Power
19.0% Cold Resistance
19.0% Lightning Resistance
+6.0% Fire Damage [4.5 - 8.0]%
+4.5% Barrier Generation [4.5 - 8.0]%
+6.5% Lightning Damage [4.5 - 8.0]%
+8.0% Damage to Chilled Enemies [4.5 - 8.0]%
★ Using a Cooldown restores 21 [15 - 25] Mana. (Sorcerer Only)
(Royal Skull) +250 Armor
Ring#2:
Loop of the Umbral
Ancestral Legendary Ring
772 Item Power
24.7% Shadow Resistance [24.7]%
24.7% Poison Resistance [24.7]%
• +3.4% Critical Strike Chance [1.8 - 5.0]%
+14.0% Damage to Burning Enemies [7.0 - 14.0]%
+459 Maximum Life [306 - 664]
9.0% Resource Generation [5.0 - 12.0]%
★ Imprinted: Restore 4 [1 - 4] of your Primary Resource when you Crowd Control an enemy.
(Royal Skull) +250 Armor
Helm:
Frostblitz Boneweave Helm
Ancestral Legendary Helm
762+20 Item Power / Upgrades: 4/5
978 Armor
+14.0% Lucky Hit CHance while You Have a Barrier [7.0 - 16.8]%
+55 Intelligence +[39 - 59]
+21 All Stats +[39 - 59]
•12.6% Cooldown Reduction [6.1 - 13.7]%
★ Imprinted: Frost Nova gains an additional Charge but the Cooldown per Charge is increased by 32% [40 - 30]%. (Sorcerer Only)
(Royal Ruby) 4.0% Maximum Life
Chest:
Doom Armor of the Crowded Sage
Ancestral Legendary Chest Armor
801+20 Item Power / Upgrades: 4/5
1,437 Armor
+18.9% Barrier Generation [9.8 - 19.6]%
+10.1% Damage [6.2 - 14.0]%
5.6% Damage Reduction [4.3 - 10.1]%
•+9.8% Total Armor [4.3 - 10.2]%
★ You Heal for 79 [23 - 93] Life per second for each Close enemy, up to 311 Life per second.
(Royal Ruby) 4.0% Maximum Life
(Royal Ruby) 4.0% Maximum Life
Warlord Gauntlets of Fortune
Ancestral Legendary Gloves
791+20 Item Power / Upgrades: 4/5
406 Armor
+49 Intelligence +[39 - 59]
•+9.1% Critical Strike Chance [4.2 - 11.2]%
+2 Ranks of Ice Shards [2-4] (Sorcerer Only)
+10.6% Attack Speed [6.2 - 14.0]%
★ Imprinted: Your Lucky Hit Chance is increased by 19%[+][10 - 20]% while you have a Barrier active. (Sorcerer Only)
Pants:
Primal Chausses of Disobedience
Ancestral Legendary Pants
776+20 Item Power / Upgrades: 4/5
796 Armmor
While Injured, Your Potion Also Restores 28% Resource
•+10.2% Total Armor [4.3 - 10.2]%
6.1% Dodge Chance Against Close Enemies [6.1 - 11.8]%
+24 All Stats +[14 - 25]
+48 Intelligence +[39 - 59]
★ Imprinted: You gain 0.45%[x][0x25 - 0.50]% increased Armor for 4 seconds when you deal any form of damage, stacking up to 45.00%[x][25.00 - 50.00]%.
(Royal Ruby) 4.0% Maximum Life
(Royal Ruby) 4.0% Maximum Life
Hearthless Runners
748+20 Item Power / Upgrades: 4/5
384 Armor
Evade Grants +70% Movement Speed for 1 Second
6.4% Mana Cost Reduction [5.8 - 9.7]%
+39.2% Movement Speed for 4 Seconds After Killing an Elite [19.6 - 39.2]%
•+4 Ranks of Frost Nova [2-4] (Sorcerer Only)
+45 Intelligence
These are not ideal - I prefer the 3 evade charges ones. Also I was hoping to get movement speed but I couldn’t pass up that perfect Frost Nova roll. and yeah, the MCR isn’t ideal at such a low roll but it’s the best I could get.
Mainhand:
Twin-Blade of Frozen Memories
Ancestral Legendary Dagger
801+20 Item Power / Upgrades: 4/5
1,246 Damage Per Second
[831 - 1,247] Damage per Hit
1.20 Attacks per Second {Very Fast Weapon)
+28.0% Damage to Close Enemies
+15.4% Damage to Frozen Enemies [9.8 - 19.6]%
+21.7% Damage to Crowd Controlled Enemies [13.3 - 23.1]%
•+70 Intelligence +[69 - 88]
+28 All Stats +[28 - 39]
★ Imprinted: The Avalanche Key Passive now applies to 1 additional cast. (Sorcerer Only)
(Royal Emerald) +12.0% Critical strike Damage to Vulnerable Enemies
Not having lucky hit with a wand is unfortunate but it’s the best drop I found, and damage to close enemies is still good.
Offhand:
Runic Orb of Piercing Cold
Ancestral Legendary Focus
794+20 Item Power / Upgrades: 4/5
1,213 Damage Per Second
[809 - 1,213] Damage per Hit
1.20 Attacks per Second (Very Fast Weapon)
9.7% Cooldown Reduction
Lucky Hit: Up to a 5% Chance to Restore +18.2% Primary Resource [9.8 - 19.6]%
+18 All Stats +[14 - 25]
6.1% Mana Cost Reduction [5.8 - 9.7]%
•12.6% Cooldown Reduction [6.1 - 13.7]%
★ Imprinted: Ice Shards pierce 3 [3 - 4] times, dealing 25% [25 - 20]% less damage epr subsequent enemy hit. (Sorcerer Only)
(Royal Emerald) +12.0% Critical strike Damage to Vulnerable Enemies
I would like to think I’m pretty decently geared for my level - they’re certainly the best drops I could find. It should also, hopefully, demonstrate I’m not completely braindead when it comes to understanding gearing and stats in the game.
Now then, I think my summary is probably not all that great or concise and goes over some relatively unimportant points. So I’ll try again:
(new) Closing:
There are some things I think can and probably will be changed in the future; though, there are a number of things that are likely core design decisions that are unlikely to ever change as they would require complete reworks of entire systems and much of the game as a whole.
I think mob level scaling could be adjusted to not be quite so overtuned and punishing so the player doesn’t consistently feel weak and underpowered (though I believe this was a design choice). I’m not sure the resource starvation could be solved as it appears as a fundamental design aspect in all the classes
Some things like the necro void cloud visuals can and will be fixed, I think we may eventually get a gem bag or have them added to the materials tab, and I think we also may eventually get more storage (in fact I think we will and they’ll charge us for it).
I think class balance could be adjusted so more builds are viable and the classes feel better to play and more powerful, though I don’t think they’re at at point where they want to as a design choice currently. They seem to want people as weak as possible right now.
The open world and MMO feeling aspects that detract from the previous single player heroic ARPG feel I don’t think is solvable and is here to stay.
The bad story can’t really be helped, though maybe it can improve with subsequent expansions in the future.
I think they’ll fix guild chat getting spammed with achievements with no way to turn it off, and show possible reroll options, and possibly add a search function in stashes.
I also think there’s effectively zero endgame, nightmare dungeons are clunky as a system and pointless and the negatives too severe - particularly that even low level ones have super nasty ones. Maybe they can add better endgame systems in the future.
And I think nobody is going to ever want to redo their renown for seasons.
TL;DR:
I played all the Diablo games since 1997. I particularly liked Diablo II & Diablo III. I played ~200 hours of Diablo 4.
I liked the game in the beta as sorceress however the experience significantly changed for the worse me since then. I don’t like consistently feeling weak and pathetic rather than like a heroic world savior in Diablo 4. I don’t like that the game is designed as a resource starvation simulator. I don’t like that the game feels more like an open world MMO than like a single player ARPG like the past titles.
I tried to no avail to make my sorceress not suck and try as I might I could never solve its mana problems despite ultimately shooting for that as my goal (after watching the Maxroll build preview video where mana never went down). My friends suffered the same issues.
The mob level scaling system is overtuned and systematically keeps the player feeling weak, making them instead often feel weaker upon leveling up.
I hate that rerolling items will absolutely bankrupt you and think there should at least be a cap and costs should at least scale based on your level to provide an easier leveling experience and early experimentation.
Seeing nothing but constant nerfs to anything remotely good made me lose any hope of ever finding anything actually good that didn’t suck.
I personally thought the story sucked (though this wasn’t a major determining factor in my quitting).
Ultimately I tried but I just couldn’t have fun.
Additionally, I was very upset that upgrading a piece of gear obliterated my stats instead of improving them, dropping my attack power from 6.3k to 5.4k, and defense from 6.4k to 6k. This was the last straw for me, though this appears to have somewhat been a bug as it seems to no longer be the case. So I will have to retract that particular point.
