The recent launch of Diablo 4, while initially hyped by many, came with a few glaring issues with regards to its late game activities and the strength of certain classes.
Prior to the current patch, many complained about the lack of variety when it came to viable builds, particularly for those who have reached the torment world tier, where every enemy hits like a truck and requires a lot of damage to take down. At that point, only a handful of basic and core skill combinations could effectively clear screens with ease, while the rest were left lacking.
Players who managed to reach the endgame during the game’s first couple of weeks also pointed out various issues with EXP gain and just the general lack of noteworthy activities to participate in. For instance, there wasn’t really any real incentive in doing nightmare dungeons as you used to gain similar, if not more EXP, by just repeatedly running regular ones. Even Blizzard took note of this and essentially nerfed one of the dungeons (Ruins of Eridu) that players spammed due to its elite monster density.
NOT SO NIGHTMARISH BUFFS
One of the changes introduced by the latest patch included significantly higher EXP rates for nightmare dungeons, which people have been asking for since the first week of Diablo 4’s release. One user on Reddit noted that there is no real reason to do them apart from leveling up glyphs, which was partly true due to how they pretty much have the same density as normal ones, with the latter being easier to clear due to there being no other modifiers that made it harder to complete (e.g. random lightning strikes that you have to avoid).
With this change also came another quality of life update, which is the ability to teleport directly to a nightmare dungeon through the in-game map. Previously, players had to run all the way there from the nearest waypoint, which, depending on where it’s located, may be a long trek occasionally interrupted by masses of enemies or roadblocks that prevented mounts from moving through them.
Helltide chests and Whispers now give more EXP, giving those who have finished the campaign more options for leveling. While it may not be as efficient as merely spamming nightmare dungeons, it’s still nice to have alternatives to keep players from burning out while still offering them a source of good loot.
LEVELING IMPROVEMENTS
In an effort to enhance the leveling experience and make every build stronger and more engaging, Blizzard has also made small adjustments to classes across the board, with very slight buffs to most basic and core abilities.
Although it’s great to see them taking community feedback seriously and helping other classes and builds catch up to the ones topping the leaderboards at the moment, the current changes do little to address why some skills are used less than others. For example, players have already pointed out that increasing the damage of the Rogue’s Blade Shift does nothing to solve the issue of how useless it is compared to something like Puncture, which can both slow enemies down and render them vulnerable.
There’s also the issue of minion survivability, as Necromancers who use summoning builds tend to struggle in late game due to how fast skeletons die. Even if you can generate corpses at a rapid pace, you’d find yourself frantically mashing the summon button due to how quickly your little army gets reduced to nothing. Personally, this affects me a lot as I’m currently pushing content in torment with such a build, and it’d be nice to see some adjustments later on to address this problem.
CONCLUSION
Blizzard seems to be taking feedback for Diablo 4 seriously and has been making adjustments based on whatever data they have been gathering over the past few weeks. With these recent positive changes, I’m looking forward to what else they have in store for us once the first season comes out some time in July. For now, I predict that many of us will probably be experimenting with new ways to farm EXP in an effort to reach level 100, or somewhere close to it.