Definitely try WT1 to get the Ashava trophy. She's too tough for most groups to kill on WT2. As for switching to another class in the hope it'll feel less grindy - it won't. Barb is actually one of the better classes now, but even that has had a few significant nerfs eg. shout skills. None of the classes actually play really well now. Rogue with twisted blade/puncture/poison imbue is probably the best melee build, but can struggle with elite packs in some of the dungeons. Sorceror is just meh. Pathetic damage output which becomes more obvious as you increase from lvl 10 +. Also, poor defensive skills ... all of them have been heavily nerfed. Necromancer summoner builds are completely dead - bone/blood builds are viable in the lower levels, but like the Sorc have very few defensive skills and damage output isn't enough to compensate. I haven't tried Druid, but for the purposes of this lower level beta I'm reliably informed it remains a grindy, unenjoyable experience. Perhaps there will be some excellent builds at end-game, but the journey getting there should be enjoyable, too.
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Because of the way monster scaling has been implemented ie. with character level and number of players, Ashava ( and presumably other world bosses ) has a much smaller health pool tackling her solo, or in a smaller group. For example, you're better off taking her on with 8 x lvl 20 characters than you are with a full group of 12.
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A lot of flack going d4s way from the latest beta about how it’s a worse experience from the last beta, and it’s fair. But put in perspective, d3 is a horrendous playing experience early game as well.
Problem here is such nerfs and the lack of unique drops is insult to injury.
And it won’t end there. Charged bolts + the fireball enchant is pretty busted and that will likely be nerfed before release too. There’s not a vast array of skills and combos, and blizz can’t even get these balanced, so faith in getting a consistent playing experience is minimal. Reminds me of wolcen obliterating builds that people had put many hours of endgame into.
Problem here is such nerfs and the lack of unique drops is insult to injury.
And it won’t end there. Charged bolts + the fireball enchant is pretty busted and that will likely be nerfed before release too. There’s not a vast array of skills and combos, and blizz can’t even get these balanced, so faith in getting a consistent playing experience is minimal. Reminds me of wolcen obliterating builds that people had put many hours of endgame into.
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The way I'm looking at it is that previous beta weekend some classes/skills were simply far too OP, so they made changes, this beta weekend some classes/skills are too underpowered, so I expect they'll make changes again and now that they've done either end of the spectrum it should be much more simple to find the middle ground, after all if you want to find the middle of something you need to know both ends first, so I'm keeping my preorder, I've already done 10 hours in this beta weekend so I'll still easily hit the 70 hours to make it hit my £ per hour, even if things remain unchanged
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Associate
My Barb feels far weaker this time around. I've still only seen one legendary drop and I've been farming KorDragan for a while now. Tried to do Ashava last night but the randoms I got were awful. Soooo many deaths 
Soldato
I'm going to drop to WT1 and try and do Ashava today, hopefully the lower difficulty helps. Was nowhere near on WT2 last night.
It does. We hadn’t hit its second phase after 5 minutes in wt2. Cleared wt1 in 10 minutes
Soldato
Nice just got Ashava done on my first try today on WT1, so anyone struggling I'd suggest dropping the difficulty
I'm still pre-ordering and planning to play, I'm not sure we can truly tell how the game will be until we see the end game, and the class balances and play styles may change a lot based on more skill points and legendaries/unique items.
I actually like it where legendary items are harder to find as long as they're good, remember in D2 where hard to find items in the game meant something because you needed some luck to find them. I hope D4 has some items like this especially at the top end.
I'm still pre-ordering and planning to play, I'm not sure we can truly tell how the game will be until we see the end game, and the class balances and play styles may change a lot based on more skill points and legendaries/unique items.
I actually like it where legendary items are harder to find as long as they're good, remember in D2 where hard to find items in the game meant something because you needed some luck to find them. I hope D4 has some items like this especially at the top end.
Managed to kill Ashava on my 2nd attempt, we got plenty of time left, like 6 or 7min, I guess its just down how lucky you are with how strong the rest of the group is.
Game also runs super smooth compared to my 1st beta experience so will definitely be buying this as I can see I'm going to be playing D4 for at least few 100 hours.
Game also runs super smooth compared to my 1st beta experience so will definitely be buying this as I can see I'm going to be playing D4 for at least few 100 hours.
Associate
22seconds left and that was on WT1. I really hope they show the total kills Ashava gets over the weekend. 
It was insane how often my randoms were dying.
I rushed through and went straight into farm mode this weekend. Didn't take long to get to 20 and saw 3 legendaries drop. One while levelling, one from Kor and unusable due to level req and one from the boss. I didn't feel the Barb was as powerful as the other weekends, felt very weak. Without any useful lego's though I guess that's not too surprising.
It was insane how often my randoms were dying.I rushed through and went straight into farm mode this weekend. Didn't take long to get to 20 and saw 3 legendaries drop. One while levelling, one from Kor and unusable due to level req and one from the boss. I didn't feel the Barb was as powerful as the other weekends, felt very weak. Without any useful lego's though I guess that's not too surprising.
Man of Honour
So I've been playing Server Slam as a barb and thing that bugs me is the low drop rate for health orbs in boss fights. I was reading a couple of guides to dealing with one early stronghold, Nostrava. The mini-boss fight against the three witches would be easy they say, because there's lots of health drops. No there -ing isn't. You can't escape the area, you can't Portal, and you can only stack four health orbs. And despite killing a dozen or more minions I got one health orb drop before I died. So I kept dying until I rage quit. I get that D3 was too easy, I get that mini-bosses are supposed to be hard. But this taking the Michael.
Continually running into other gamers in the world outside towns is annoying, given that I'm a committed SP-only player. At least Path of Exile only showed the other players in the towns.
The maps are stupid: lots of winding paths with no open areas. It's like Grim Dawn, but less fun. Although that's a bit unfair, because GD did have a few open bits. Does D4 open out later?
Also what is it with Blizzard waiting until the first expansion to add the paladin? Because on current evidence I'll be waiting until then as well.
Continually running into other gamers in the world outside towns is annoying, given that I'm a committed SP-only player. At least Path of Exile only showed the other players in the towns.
The maps are stupid: lots of winding paths with no open areas. It's like Grim Dawn, but less fun. Although that's a bit unfair, because GD did have a few open bits. Does D4 open out later?
Also what is it with Blizzard waiting until the first expansion to add the paladin? Because on current evidence I'll be waiting until then as well.
I would have liked the Paladin from the start, if they had to swap one out in order to have the Pally in then I'd happily drop the yucky pet class like Necro. Cant stand masses of pets running about all over my screen (PLEASE someone create an arpg where only the pet owner can see their pets), having said that... all the previous Diablo games have had a class added in their expansions so I guess a class being added in an expansion is a normal for the series.
Oi !! Behave !
But yeah, in towns at least, there should be an option to not display other players summons/minions.
As for playable classes, I miss not having crusader or paladin in the opening line-up. After this latest beta, none of them appeal to be honest.
It's a decent game from what they've shown so far, but in many ways it seems to me to be better suited as an RPG than a hack'n'slash. Running through the main town the first few times it immediately made me think of Original Sin 2, but that more on an aesthetic/atmosphere level rather than gameplay. In gameplay it's much more a top-down world of diablocraft than it is a true successor to Diablo 2 (3 clearly was also something else entirely).
I think what bothered me the most in the end about it has been the overall limited way of setting up and playing a character, any of 'em. It just gets boring fast. Perhaps in the end game it will open up but I doubt it, because the limited selection of skills for basic/core is not going to change. The way they've designed the skill tree is just very weak. I think also I'm just too spoiled by the immense freedom of options that PoE accustomed me to.
On the other hand I have to say, hats off to them on the art department and overall environmental design. They're truly world class and by far the game's best attributes. There's also just a lot of care & detail in terms of animations, environmental interactions, the camera framing during cinematics/mini-events, etc. it's clear that there's been a ton of work put in the game. It's far above the kindergarten effort they previously showcased in D3 and it's much more in line with what used to be famed as "Blizzard quality".
I think on the whole it's going to be a fun time playing through it once for the story and atmosphere but I don't see it have the end-game vitality of a PoE. It's probably not an accident that the successor to the hack'n'slash genre ended up being made by hardcore fans of Diablo 2 and it's likely that only a similar situation will give us a path forward from PoE and into something better (and hopefully with actual melee this time). Luckily H'n'S games can still be reasonably be made on a budget by a small (and fanatical) team of devs. When/if we'll see that remains to be seen but I think it's clear that Diablo 4 is firmly in the mmo-lite category and as far as (new(new?)) Blizzard is concerned they're not interested in recreating those games except maybe aesthetically.
Overall I'd give it a go on gamepass if it ever arrives there, but I'm otherwise kinda 'meh' about it. In some ways though that's somewhat of a victory compared to the hitherto abysmal record Blizz has had in the past decade+ (D3, Warcraft 3 Remaster etc.) imo, so I'll still grade it positively.
I think what bothered me the most in the end about it has been the overall limited way of setting up and playing a character, any of 'em. It just gets boring fast. Perhaps in the end game it will open up but I doubt it, because the limited selection of skills for basic/core is not going to change. The way they've designed the skill tree is just very weak. I think also I'm just too spoiled by the immense freedom of options that PoE accustomed me to.
On the other hand I have to say, hats off to them on the art department and overall environmental design. They're truly world class and by far the game's best attributes. There's also just a lot of care & detail in terms of animations, environmental interactions, the camera framing during cinematics/mini-events, etc. it's clear that there's been a ton of work put in the game. It's far above the kindergarten effort they previously showcased in D3 and it's much more in line with what used to be famed as "Blizzard quality".
I think on the whole it's going to be a fun time playing through it once for the story and atmosphere but I don't see it have the end-game vitality of a PoE. It's probably not an accident that the successor to the hack'n'slash genre ended up being made by hardcore fans of Diablo 2 and it's likely that only a similar situation will give us a path forward from PoE and into something better (and hopefully with actual melee this time). Luckily H'n'S games can still be reasonably be made on a budget by a small (and fanatical) team of devs. When/if we'll see that remains to be seen but I think it's clear that Diablo 4 is firmly in the mmo-lite category and as far as (new(new?)) Blizzard is concerned they're not interested in recreating those games except maybe aesthetically.
Overall I'd give it a go on gamepass if it ever arrives there, but I'm otherwise kinda 'meh' about it. In some ways though that's somewhat of a victory compared to the hitherto abysmal record Blizz has had in the past decade+ (D3, Warcraft 3 Remaster etc.) imo, so I'll still grade it positively.
Soldato
As I understand it from playing the beta, the health orbs will drop after bosses lose a certain % of hp, so it's race against time to knock their HP down faster than they do yours.
Additionally you do get a 5th potion slot at some point via the unlocks, and you can upgrade the standard potion every 10 levels.
Melee does tend to have it a little harder in close quarters combat a lot of the time though, i wonder how the barb will do at max level with the extra weapons/legendary effects you can get with those.
In theory thats where the Barb should start to have the advantage because of the extra legendaries that the Barb can have
Soldato
Having played some more this patch I'll probably start off with a rogue, though I'll definitely want to level a sorc as well.
The rogue was good fun as long as they don't nerf the twisting blades too much, but beyond that, it's also nicely positioned to re-spec for ranged combat with the bow should I feel like a change of pace.
The rogue was good fun as long as they don't nerf the twisting blades too much, but beyond that, it's also nicely positioned to re-spec for ranged combat with the bow should I feel like a change of pace.
Soldato
Absolutely do Ashava on wt1, the only people doing it on wt2 are those who have nolifed the hell out of it and got all their legendary items with perfectly rolled rares.
My advice for launch is also to start on wt1 regardless, the difficulty spike isn't worth the slight increase to xp per kill. As you can kill things way faster in wt1 so will likely out level anyone in wt2 anyway.
My advice for launch is also to start on wt1 regardless, the difficulty spike isn't worth the slight increase to xp per kill. As you can kill things way faster in wt1 so will likely out level anyone in wt2 anyway.
Casual player here, I've put around 30 to 40hrs in D3. Jumped into the ServerSlam weekend to get the Lv20 doge and Early Voyage title rewards. I've reached lv21 but want to know if there's a way to double confirm I've received those two mentioned rewards. Can I set them now somewhere to confirm or do I have to wait until release? I've looked through a few guides but they only mentioned how best to get to lv20 but don't also say "go here, click that, then this to confirm you got these two rewards"