Table of Contents
Diablo 4 Introduction
The day I published this review, Blizzard unveiled the Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred expansion scheduled for release in October of 2024. The expansion includes the continuation of the campaign story, a new jungle region, mercenaries, a community dungeon, and a new class called the Spiritborn. The pre-order includes pets which pick up gold and materials. That’s one step in the right direction!
On July 2, 2023, I wrote a comprehensive review of Diablo 4 giving it a score of 8.3. Since then, Diablo 4 has released four seasons. The first season was lackluster, but the second was pretty good. The third was a monumental mistake as the game developers thought adding puzzle traps in dungeons was a good idea. It certainly wasn’t. The game began to see a mass exodus of players walking away, including dedicated streamers. Plagued by problems tied to end-game, the seasonal content, and the fact classes were so disbalanced, Diablo 4 was in a terrible state and appeared to be going further down the rabbit hole of failure.
All of that changed with the release of Season 4, and I felt it was worth doing another review of the game because so many good changes have been made that Diablo 4 is really “back from the dead”.
The complete list of recent patch notes for Diablo 4 can be found here.
- Developed by: Blizzard Activision
- Original Release Date: June 1, 2023 (Windows, Console)
- Season 4 Release Date: May 14, 2024
- Version Reviewed: 1.4.2
With nine months of content, bug fixes, enhancements and refinements, Diablo 4 has come a long way since its initial release.
This review isn’t just about Season 4, but the overall state of the game including the new features and changes part of the latest release.
Changes to the World
Helltide is one of the best mechanics in D4. It’s constant and nonstop action the player can immediately jump into and even level all the way to 100 with if they want. There really isn’t anything like Helltide in any other ARPG. It’s crazy, fun and rewarding. Probably the best open world feature currently in Diablo 4, and Season 4 thrusts the player right in the middle of it. It’s quite a sight when multiple players suddenly trigger hell worms spewing demons or a frenzy with numerous bosses. It’s definitely the most active system in the game. Each helltide lasts 55 minutes with 5 minutes of downtime, and Season 4 has an event multiple players can participate in to farm the Helltide Boss. It’s fun, engaging and quite rewarding when it comes to items. Players can also activate something called the Profane Mindcage to increase the level of monsters in Helltide by 10.
World Bosses haven’t really changed except they appear every 4 hours now and are usually killed in just a few seconds in Tier IV. They also drop materials needed to summon the tormented versions of end-game bosses.
Legions are the same as well, with no changes.
Capstone Dungeons and bosses are the same as before, but with the new Tempering mechanic (covered below) they are much easier now. Experienced players often do the first Capstone at 25 and the second one at 35. And even at those levels, the bosses are quite easy and often die in just a few seconds.
Nightmare Dungeons are pretty much the same as well, but the experience given to level Glyphs has been raised, which is great. They also provide the best experience in the game for leveling to 100; even better than Helltide.
Season 4 added new Endgame Bosses, which are used to farm Uber Uniques once players hit level 100. There’s quite a few of them and the materials take a lot of effort to acquire, which makes getting the BiS gear a time-consuming, yet often fun experience. Maxroll’s Boss overview is the best. While it’s possible for players to farm the endgame bosses solo, it makes sense to do boss runs with others because more people benefit from the rewards from the expensive cost of materials.
And of course, the ability to use Mount speed in town has been added. Thank god.
The Codex Overhaul
One of the best new features of Season 4 is the upgraded Codex. Aspects as items are gone! If you find a legendary with an aspect and salvage it, the aspect goes into your Codex. Each time you salvage the aspect the “power” of it increases. This new system has players building their codex and working to max out each ability. It’s fantastic and has freed up the inventory slots.
The Pit
Next to running bosses for ubers, The Pit is the new end-game. It’s essentially Greater Rifts from Diablo 3 where the player runs against a timer to kill the final boss and get the rewards. The Pit also awards the materials required for master working, so once a character reaches level 100 and wants to focus on improving their gear, they have to run The Pit a lot. There’s an achievement for completing Pit level 100, but anything after that is just fluff.
There are three Tiers of master working materials that drop from the pit. Obducite drops between 1-30, Ingolith drops between 31 and 60, and Neathiron drops after 60. Each material is used for a different tier of Masterworking (covered below). The cool thing is higher level mats can be transmuted at lower levels, so if the player creates an alt and wants to masterwork all gear to tier 1 and has a ton of Neathiron from another character, they can convert those materials to Ingolith.
Pit level 1 is monster level 101. Pit level 50 is monster level 151. My understanding is at the time of writing this review, nobody has surpassed pit level 150, and those who have gotten into the 140’s are running pits with two or more characters.
The concept behind the Pit is a good one, but it has a ways to go before players can really enjoy it. Right now, it’s repetitive, and at higher levels, the bosses are ridiculously hard and often 1-shot the player. The reality is once a player can farm Pit level 60-80, that’s all they need to do.
Players can transmute Pit materials at the Alchemist to convert higher grade materials to lower for re-masterworking.
Sadly, the drops from Pit runs don’t get any better at the higher levels. The only benefit is more materials for Mastercrafting. This is really a bad design as higher level pits should award more than just materials, such as a greater chance of Greater Affix rolls on items (covered below).
Tempering and Masterworking
Tempering fundamentally changed the game for the better. Players no longer level up gear like they did before. Temper Manuals now drop for the played class and are learned to unlock abilities that can be applied to items. And the difference tempered gear makes is staggering because it gives the player a great degree of control over the power and defenses of a build. There are six types of Tempering options: Weapons, Offensive, Defensive, Utility, Mobility and Resource. Each item has a limited number of Tempering rolls on it. Once the rolls are gone, the item cannot be tempered further. Unlike Enchanting, Tempering does not allow for a rejected roll. This is by design, which can cause the player to “brick” an item (or get a roll that’s useless, thus making the item useless).
For example, a Heartseeker build always wants % chance for Heartseeker projectiles to cast twice on their main weapon. That particular roll is part of the Basic Augments – Rogue recipe, which has 5 potential outcomes in it. That means with each roll, the player has a 20% chance of getting the Temper; and even if it’s hit, the range is 58% – 85% which is quite a difference. In other words, it’s possible for an end-game weapon to hit that recipe with only 58%, which will generally be discarded because the roll is so low. I’ve also had 3-4 items in a row “brick” while trying to land a simple 33% chance roll. It happens all the time. It’s frustrating, but also rewarding when you get the perfect roll. Tempering is also the control mechanism to ensure players don’t always easily have the best gear all the time. More than once an amazing and valuable item will drop only to be destroyed (or “bricked”) through tempering, resulting in a quick sale of the once great item to a vendor.
While most players focus on offensive and damage purposes, Tempering can also address defensive decencies, such as low resists, armor or life. All gear up to Ancient can only have one temper, but Ancient gear can hold two tempers. Unique items cannot be tempered.
While Tempering is very powerful, bricking items is part of the design, and there’s nothing more frustrating than finding an amazing item and bricking it to a simple 33% roll.
Masterworking is the final end-game item enhancing system that increases all properties by 5% for each level. Levels 1-4 are Tier I, Levels 5-8 are Tier II, and Levels 9-12 are Tier III. A level 12 Masterworked item has a 60% bonus to all stats on that item, which is a lot. And with the completion of each tier, a random property is increased by 25% beyond its normal value. This means players masterwork and raise the tiers in the hopes of hitting the best properties on an item. For example, imagine hitting Vulnerable Damage on a bow as a Heartseeker build for all 3 tiers, giving it at 75% increase. That would be one of the most powerful bows in the game.
Unlike Tempering, Masterworking allows for an item to be reset and re-rolled, which ensures it will never truly “brick”. But the time it takes to farm materials from the pit, especially at Tier 3 is quite daunting and time-consuming.
Right now, it costs roughly $9,000,000 gold to take an item to Masterworking 12. Rank 1-4 costs 100 Obducite. 5-8 costs 260 Ingolith. 9-12 costs 550 Neathiron. And that’s just the core Pit materials. Each rank also requires things like Veiled Crystals and Forgotten Souls. In other words, it’s quite expensive to take any item to Masterwork rank 12.
Enchanting still works the same way that it did before, although the cost has been lowered for additional rolls. There’s still players who spend hundred of millions on trying to get the “perfect enchanting” roll on an item.
Gold, Items and Inventory
In Season 4, fewer items drop. This means less stash space is needed and the game has much better inventory management, especially with the new Codex removing Aspect drops. Gold is now very valuable and players are regularly selling items to vendors after nightmare dungeon runs so they can afford to Masterwork their gear.
The Greater Affix feature is another big change to the game. Items can drop with up to four enhanced affixes (which is nearly unheard of as 1-2 is more common). This feature is defined by a star next to the item name when it drops. These are some of the most sought after items in the game as a Greater Affix has a 1.5 multiplier on the max roll of the property. So a 100% max roll on a GA item becomes 150%. This opens the door for a whole new set of goals for item hunting. The most powerful builds in the game have 2-3 Greater Affix high rolls with high Tempers and high Masterwork rolls on the specific values.
Herbs have been combined into Bundled Herbs, which was a great change. However, Angelbreath is still a key material that many players are constantly farming.
This season, there are two new potions: Elixir of Momentum and Elixir of Holy Bolts. The Holy Bolts potion is crazy and makes many builds outright broken due to the amount of damage it does.
Another great change is that any monster level 95 or higher will always drop level 925 gear. This means the moment a character can start running Nightmare Dungeons at level 41, they will start getting 925 gear.
Obols play a key role in progression as the dealer now sells Sacred gear at 35 and Ancient gear at 55. This allows the players to quickly move through their Tiers and throw on top equipment. Obols can also drop Greater Affix and Unique items, which means spending them at end-game is also important and can procure valuable items.
Resplendent Sparks are new with Season 4, and rewarded when a character salvages a Uber Unique item, or completes specific seasonal goals. A player can craft any Uber Unique with 4 sparks at the Alchemist. However, getting the sparks is very difficult and only rewarded through killing a Tormented Boss for the first time, Uber Lilith, or completing the Iron Wolves seasonal journey. This is a good control mechanism so players have the chance to get that “one uber” they’ve always wanted, but they have to really work at it. The only way to get additional sparks after they have been claimed by beating the bosses is to complete the Iron Wolves journey on alternative characters. That or finding a Uber Unique you don’t want and salvage it.
The game also added an Allowance Cache to be crafted during the leveling process at the Alchemist, but I have never used it (or needed to).
Class and Difficulty Changes
Every season brings with it a large list of changes to skills. The Ball Lightning king of Season 3 was gutted and is now gone. But the good news is the addition of Tempering and Masterworking allows most players to take nearly any build to end-game. A build may not be able to solo the Tormented bosses, but with enough dedication, most any build can easily go beyond Nightmare 50 and the first tier of Pits. This is often perfectly fine for casual players.
Diablo 4 still has class balance issues. No question. But it’s so much better off than it was before. Necromancer Minions were all the rave this season, and rightly so. They rock and are strong as ever, although the AI still needs work.
They also changed it so Hardcore Deaths can’t be avoided with the potion like they could before. Hardcore is real hardcore.
The Paragon system is pretty much the same as it was before.
Trading, Game and Technical Changes
Trading is finally very active in the game due to the demand for gold. diablo.trade is the main site and players are selling and buying hundreds of thousands of items. This site provides additional support to the fact that an Auction House is needed for the community. Note you cannot trade Uber Uniques or items that have been Tempered, Enchanted or Masterworked.
Diablo 4 never had issues with Graphics. They’re beautiful, fluid and the best looking of any ARPG. They also fixed the server stability problems. I never have issues anymore. the Game is smooth and technically solid.
From a community perspective, Diablo 4 is the busiest I’ve ever seen it. Weeks after the launch of Season 4, the game is packed. Players are everywhere, and the world is very much alive. Especially in helltides.
Remaining Issues & Feature Requests
Given that Diablo 2 created the ARPG Ladder, the fact there is still no internal Ladder system for Diablo 4 is just ridiculous. I don’t know what the team is thinking, but the continued omission of a ladder and requirement for external 3rd parties to provide them just emphasizes a huge design hole in what players expect from the game.
MTX prices are still stupid, and there are no MTX for things like companions or pets, which is what players want. Whoever is running the MTX store at Blizzard doesn’t really know (or care) what players want, or how to provide what the community wants for the right price.
The game needs a SSF mode added.
Pit bosses at higher levels are terrible for the majority of players, taking forever to kill and depending on the “mix” often 1-shotting the character. Pits definitely need to be refined.
As previously mentioned, given the success and player use of diablo.trade, it’s very clear Diablo needs an in-game auction house.
Even with the recent change to lower drop rates, a Loot Filter is still needed.
Nobody cares about the Gauntlet. It’s a bad design and should be removed from the game.
Diablo 4 really needs end-game progression for characters beyond 100, similar to the Paragon system from Diablo 3. Players want to build their characters as they play, even if they hit a traditional level cap. They figured out how to implement such a system in D3. They can definitely do it for D4. And given the depth and breadth of things players can do in the game, it would be awesome to build the equivalent of a Paragon level in D3.
End Game
The end-game system of D4 with Season 4 is similar to what it was before, but players can also push the pit, temper and masterwork their gear, and complete the Codex for each class. Below is a quick listed overview of things to do at end-game:
- Reach level 100 with each class
- Maxing Glyphs (Level 21)
- Tempering and Masterworking to max out gear
- Pit Pushing
- Farming normal and Tormented bosses for Uber Uniques
- Maxing out Codex
- Pushing Nightmare Dungeons (Max 100)
- Defeat Uber Lilith
- Try new builds
- PvP
In other words, there’s plenty to do!
Leveling Alternate Builds
Leveling alts has never been easier than it is in Season 4. Dive right into Helltide and open the first Iron Wolves reward as soon as it’s available, which gives a top tier weapon. As soon as the character hits 25, complete the class quest and then Temper gear before running the first Capstone to unlock Torment III. Switch to Torment III. Run a Tier 1 Nightmare dungeon until reaching Level 35. Spend Obols and get a complete set of Sacred gear. Temper and enchant the gear for resistances and damage then do the Tier IV Capstone. Once that’s done, run Nightmare 20 dungeons. At Level 55, use Obols once more to roll, Temper, Enchant and equip Ancient gear. Welcome to Tier IV! Continue to run Nightmare Dungeons until all Glyphs are 15. Then alternate Helltide with Nightmare Dungeons to get glyphs to 21. That’s how easy it is to get to 100.
I also want to note the Goblin Event allows the player to save Goblin level 80+ loot bags in the stash to be opened by other characters. This gives a new character access to open the bags and get item level 925 gear right at level 55.
Season 4 Top Builds
While I want to clarify the Pit Ladder from Maxroll isn’t an exact representation of the most played builds throughout the game, it’s a good reference point for those who want to push content. This shows us which builds tend to be the most viable.
Below is a snapshot of the most played builds reported to the Pit Ladder.
If you add Golem and Mages together, Minions comes in as the 3rd most played build. Below are the builds that have cleared pit 120+.
And below are the top Hardcore builds. It’s interesting to see how tanky the Druid Wind Daddy build is.
As you can see, Heartseeker is the king build this season. And for good reason. It’s powerful, fun, and there’s a lot of effort that goes into maxing it out, which makes the BiS gear hunt for the build quite involved.
Regardless of the above stats, this recent thread on Reddit shows players are enjoying all sorts of builds. It’s not about pit pushing or playing Hardcore. It’s about having fun, and the reality is nearly all builds can be played for most content.
While Heartseeker is the most popular build, Barbarian Bash is really the top build. Not only does it hold the highest Pit clears on the Ladder, it destroys all content, is easy to play, and doesn’t require any uniques to really get up and running. The player basically holds down the right mouse button and destroys… everything. Bash is powerful because of the Bash Cleave Tempering. Once this tempering is applied, the rest of the game is EZ mode. Even easier than Heartseeker. Players prefer Heartseeker because it’s more “fun and involved” but I was surprised at how fun Bash was. It was my first 100 this season. Rob2628’s Barb Bash build guide is the best out there, having 9 variations available based on what the player wants to accomplish and what gear they have.
Rogue Heartseeker is the second most powerful build this season, and while Bash Barb pushed the farthest, there are more Heartseeker builds on the Pit Challenge list than any other. It’s fun, shoots arrows that seek and destroy their targets, and takes more focus to max out the gearing. It also freezes and shatters enemies left and right, which is visually enjoyable. When leveling, just use Heartseeker with Elemental damage tempers. Lucky hit chance to Vulnerable is the key to this build. I prefer Sanctum’s Heartseeker Build Guide for those who want to try it out.
And third, we have Necromancer Minions. The reality is both Golem and Shadow Mages are equally viable and tied for clearing up to level 127 of The Pit. Minion AI is still a bit wonky though, but the Minion build is probably the easiest to play because the minions nearly let you AFK and resistances are improved by Intelligence. Tempering for Minions is also very easy compared to other builds. Out of playing 5 different Minion builds this season, my favorite was Ruze_Cruise’s Gigachad Mages Build guide.
Conclusion
Diablo 4 Season 4 is finally what the game should have been at release. I’ve had a blast playing, leveling multiple characters to 100, and even farming Tormented bosses. Is there room for improvement? Definitely. Is the game still missing features? Yes. But, is it a good and fun game? Absolutely. As seen at the beginning of this review, Diablo 4 is actually growing in popularity weeks after the release of Season 4. While a Goblin and XP event is currently taking place, the reality is people are really playing the game because it’s very good – but most importantly, very fun.