Blizzard has vowed to improve “the effectiveness and fun of the Sorcerer and the Barbarian” classes in the next patch for Diablo 4which will be released next Tuesday, August 8.
In his latest Campfire Chat live streamthe Diablo 4 the dev team has laid out a series of changes that are expected to please fans, following the intense disappointment of the Diablo community in the 1.1.0 patch that just preceded the launch of the game’s first season, Season of the Malignant, on July 20.
That patch had tried to reset Diablo 4‘s balance and laid new foundations for its future as a live service game, but did so by slowing player progress in a number of ways and without a number of prominent player complaints about issues such as storage space, specification and viability of certain character classes and builds.
That work begins now. Game directors Joe Shely and Joe Piepora and class designer Adam Jackson spoke at length about what to expect from patch 1.1.1, highlighting the changes coming to the Sorcerer and Barbarian, the two classes currently perceived as the most underwhelming in the game.
Jackson said that the wizard’s much-mocked survivability would be improved and associated penalties for some of his abilities would be eased. He called this “kiss-curse mechanics”, where when force is added, something else is taken away to balance it out. The feeling is that this balance has gone too far with the wizard and held back the class.
Changes to the Barbarian aim to make the experience of playing the class feel better and more fluid in the early game, Jackson said, and to improve the late game by making the class’s Unique items more engaging and effective .
Outside of these two classes, underpowered builds and Unique items will be improved across the board, though Jackson warned that the team will tread a fine line with Uniques – the goal isn’t for them to be so powerful that they automatically get the best items are in the game, but rather that they should interact with builds in interesting and unique ways. Build-specific items and skills are opened up to make them more useful in a wider variety of situations and builds.
Other changes coming in the 1.1.1 update include increased monster density in Nightmare Dungeons and Helltide events, which should somewhat make up for the apparent lack of experience since the last patch. All bosses above level 35 are guaranteed to drop legendary items, as are all treasure goblins above level 15.
There will also be some big improvements in quality of life. The cost of respecting your character is reduced by as much as 40%, significantly loosening the game pressure on experimentation. There will be an additional stash tab to increase item storage. And horses get less caught on the landscape and breaking down barriers.
In future patches, the developers said they are looking for ways to bring the different damage types closer together in effectiveness (currently critical attacks and damage to vulnerable enemies are greatly overpowered), finding ways to upgrade certain builds and abilities (especially Ultimates) scale up better in the late game, and improve minion builds, especially for the minion-focused Necromancer class.
Blizzard said it would publish the patch notes in full on Wednesday, August 2. The community will no doubt make its feelings known.