** Diablo 4 Thread **

Just finished the new expansion campaign. Got to say, I absolutely loved the story, especially going into it with zero hope after the Vessel of Hatred campaign. From the art direction, the cutscenes, music, characters, story and it's conclusion - it felt inspired. I've become so used to the mindless cookie-cutter, least-effort, lowest common denominator slop that's thrown out these days.

As a game overall, I think Diablo 4 has been great (when ignoring it's cash-shop and seasonal tricks to get money). It's had really low points, I thought the original game campaign and setting was excellent, then I thought Vessel of Hatred was utterly abysmal and genuinely put me off playing the game. So I went into this with really low expectations, and I'm pleased to say I was surprised constantly.

As for the gameplay itself... its WAY better than it was at launch. While there's a lot of systems in place now which can get confusing. I think they've found a good rhythm to the gameplay loop, rather than being strung-out, slow and unrewarding like it has been at times since launch. There's a lot to do now. It's definitely become more of a spruced-up Diablo 3 experience rather than what they were going for at launch, and to be honest, despite what I and many others online wanted at launch... I think its for the best.
 
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Finished the expansion, it was decent enough.

Not really enjoying the warlock class enough though, may switch to Sorceror for the end game
 
Grim5 said:
Finished the expansion, it was decent enough.

Not really enjoying the warlock class enough though, may switch to Sorceror for the end game
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Similar thoughts. They gutted Warlock class at the eleventh hour and it shows : visually flashy but the mechanics are cumbersome and has poor innate defenses. In contrast, ball lightning sorceror build is Op for end game - for about the 8th season running.
 
With the new expansion I've been playing Warlock, I've unlocked T5 but sticking with T4 for now. I have all Legendries and most of the aspects I need, but only need a monster to look at me wrong and I'm dead despite stacking health and resistances where I can, so have to play a little more conservatively and hold my distance. Hopefully when I start getting the uniques I need I can start pushing the levels a little higher, but right now the drops aren't in my favour and it's slow getting the resources I need for the cube.

But overall with the campaign and changes to endgame this has proven to be a really good update to D4, the Skovos Isles and dungeons are really gorgeous.
 
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AStaley said:
With the new expansion I've been playing Warlock, I've unlocked T5 but sticking with T4 for now. I have all Legendries and most of the aspects I need, but only need a monster to look at me wrong and I'm dead despite stacking health and resistances where I can, so have to play a little more conservatively and hold my distance. Hopefully when I start getting the uniques I need I can start pushing the levels a little higher, but right now the drops aren't in my favour and it's slow getting the resources I need for the cube.

But overall with the campaign and changes to endgame this has proven to be a really good update to D4, the Skovos Isles and dungeons are really gorgeous.
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If you're playing anything other than an apocalypse build ( and maybe tyrant's grasp ) your damage output will plateau around T9/10 even with the extra uniques and fleshing out paragon levels. There are several inherent flaws with the warlock class : a) poor innate defenses made worse by defensive passives being stripped from skill trees b) damage multipliers are fewer / less compared to other classes c) visual clutter from spells which obscures many of the one-shot kill mechanics ( they are annoying even when you can see them ) - you'll be zipping around blasting stuff then boom, out of nowhere, you're dead in an instant and d) clunky mechanics that require more set-up eg. sigils and make the class less fluid overall ( in an end game that's heavily biased towards speed & mobility eg. the pit, infernal hordes, undercity. )

All of these things are fixable, but it'll be next season at least before they address them. In my opinion, if you have any desire to complete the season journey then choose almost any other class this season. Blizzard undercooked the warlock by a large margin and literally made eleventh hour adjustments to skills/abilities before launch that crippled it even further eg. the Metamorphosis ultimate skill originally boosted your other skills by 15 levels ... now it does zero.
 
xaldub said:
If you're playing anything other than an apocalypse build ( and maybe tyrant's grasp ) your damage output will plateau around T9/10 even with the extra uniques and fleshing out paragon levels. There are several inherent flaws with the warlock class : a) poor innate defenses made worse by defensive passives being stripped from skill trees b) damage multipliers are fewer / less compared to other classes c) visual clutter from spells which obscures many of the one-shot kill mechanics ( they are annoying even when you can see them ) - you'll be zipping around blasting stuff then boom, out of nowhere, you're dead in an instant and d) clunky mechanics that require more set-up eg. sigils and make the class less fluid overall ( in an end game that's heavily biased towards speed & mobility eg. the pit, infernal hordes, undercity. )

All of these things are fixable, but it'll be next season at least before they address them. In my opinion, if you have any desire to complete the season journey then choose almost any other class this season. Blizzard undercooked the warlock by a large margin and literally made eleventh hour adjustments to skills/abilities before launch that crippled it even further eg. the Metamorphosis ultimate skill originally boosted your other skills by 15 levels ... now it does zero.
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God damnit I'm still only on the first expansion and you've ruined it for me already :D
 
Worthy said:
God damnit I'm still only on the first expansion and you've ruined it for me already :D
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I’m still on the base game so I can remember the story, but then realised I’m pretty much skipping all the chat and scenes, plus not touching any side quests so not sure what my goal was there lol.
Honestly I know nothing about the game lore really, and I’m not sure I’m bothered as much as I thought I was.
 
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xaldub said:
You'll easily clear the campaigns with any class ... the problems only really begin to emerge in the mid-to-late end game activities.
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This, went in blind with a very simple centipede spiritborn build that I threw together, it's carried me through the campaign (pentinent) and currently around tourment 6 is where I'm hitting a wall and am actually having to slow down and now care about items and upgrading.
 
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@xaldub Currently running a Blazing Skulls build, I’ll likely switch to the Apocalypse build once I pickup some spare gear and then start start maxing it out. Right now just using gear that dropped replacing a few aspects and early tempers, so could easily boost my DPS with a bit more focus.
 
Currently on Humble Bundle monthly (you can sub for one month and cancel) for £11.49 alongside Shin Megami Tensi V makes it a great deal. I think its just the base game though

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AStaley said:
@xaldub Currently running a Blazing Skulls build, I’ll likely switch to the Apocalypse build once I pickup some spare gear and then start start maxing it out. Right now just using gear that dropped replacing a few aspects and early tempers, so could easily boost my DPS with a bit more focus.
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I picked this as my starter build and its a lot of fun, but does top out around T10/11 even with everything maxed out and, as mentioned above, the one-shots being hidden by the screen clutter got old quite fast. I did open up T12 but it was quite painful to try and progress. I'm sure with giga-skill its possible to clear everything but I'm average at best. Switched to a WW Barb which I've not played since the original launch and it powers through all the standard content and you can actually see the one-shots (of which there are far fewer) coming. Just working on T12 Mephisto at the moment, I'm not geared enough to just blast through the mechanics so its a journey but one I can see is achievable.

Not a huge fan of the random rolls on uniques, it would be far better if you could also enchant them (with appropriately rate mats) to give a bit more control, because for some uniques that are world drop only its extremely difficult to target and in a seasonal format it gets frustrating. Even an 'upgrade to ancestral' cube recipe so you can get a reroll + another item for a 3:1 attempt would be helpful.
 
Brok said:
Not a huge fan of the random rolls on uniques, it would be far better if you could also enchant them (with appropriately rate mats) to give a bit more control, because for some uniques that are world drop only its extremely difficult to target and in a seasonal format it gets frustrating. Even an 'upgrade to ancestral' cube recipe so you can get a reroll + another item for a 3:1 attempt would be helpful.
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This is one of the changes I despise ... if that's the route Blizz wanted to go down then they should have made it possible to adjust the individual affixes using the Horadric cube ( not just an option for a random reroll of the entire item. )

Also, what idiot decided the "resistance to all items" affix should be placed in the defensive affix pool rather than the resistance affix pool for the purposes of crafting ? I wasted so many resources / gold on trying to craft "perfect" items until I found this out. Really this sort of info should be accessible in game eg. encyclopedia for skills, affixes, unique & mythic items etc. We shouldn't be reliant on streamers or datamining the code to find this stuff out.
 
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Is the expansion worth a pickup if I've played base game already? I didn't get super into it as it just felt like a reskinned diablo 3.
 
Just hovered over the buy button about three times the last three days and then pre-buyers remorse kicked in. I should probably clarify in that the similarity to D3 for me was just an overwhelming amount of numbers and effects on screen that it becomes just visual nonsense. Story was okay but I didn't find the gameplay satisfying enough to stay beyond that.

I suppose I'm interested if the story is worth the tag alone, rather than the hours of gameplay beyond.
 
Im an ARPG fanatic and ive played them all and ive got to admit this is finally feeling like a Diablo game.
I passed on the vessel of hatred expansion as the game itself just wasnt in a great spot but finally its very good now.
Engame is pretty good with War Plans but yeah we are just doing the same things but it feels so much better.
The Endgame does need more activities but im sure that will come but the game has tonnes of build option per class now too with items to grind for.

In terms of story, i havent got a clue i skipped through everything, i play these types of games for gameplay, build crafting, character progression etc.
 
MooMoo444 said:
Just hovered over the buy button about three times the last three days and then pre-buyers remorse kicked in. I should probably clarify in that the similarity to D3 for me was just an overwhelming amount of numbers and effects on screen that it becomes just visual nonsense. Story was okay but I didn't find the gameplay satisfying enough to stay beyond that.

I suppose I'm interested if the story is worth the tag alone, rather than the hours of gameplay beyond.
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The story in the base game and latest expansion is decent. However, Vessel of Hatred's was pure mince.

Gameplay wise, D4 plays like a Diablo 3.5 ... so if you didn't enjoy D3 at all then I'd probably not recommend D4 for you.
 
Lilith done at last, on to Mephisto next, what an absolute joke of game design these parts are, staggeringly low quality in this day and age.

I've been farming for the last few days dedicating loads of resources to finding a set of unique gloves and pants, wasted loads. I do one nightmare dungeon and the gloves suddenly drop twice, with the next dungeon dropping the pants a unique ring that was on the list after those. Massive boosts but I've messed up quite badly though, I simply didn't read the notes on the cube and transfigured a few of my items that had really good rolls without master working them first, all unmodifiable now so they're just going to hold me back, the farming loop continues.
 
Noxia said:
I've seen some with level 190+, worry for their well being tbh.
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I've done the +300 paragon a couple of times in seasons, one was the spiritborn evade build so pit 100 took 60 seconds, it's a long boring grind.
Done paladin holy aura, that takes about 50 seconds to clear 100.
Got to LVL 30 this season and quit, god-damn it's boring to hell. So waiting for new poe2 season.
 
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