Diablo 4's patch notes are here – here's what's changed
Diabwoah.
The Diablo 4 team says it has "been diligently monitoring [our] feedback" and has revealed what's changing as it rolls out its next patch of fixes.
Patch 1.0.2d is now live across all platforms and ushers in "balance adjustments" to classes.
"We’ve made some balance adjustments to Classes and want to provide our reasoning behind them," Blizzard explains in the patch notes. "Overall, we're quite happy with the performance of our Classes, but we know there is always room for improvement. Our goal behind these changes is to create a better balanced and enjoyable experience across the board.
"While we want players to both feel and be truly powerful, some Class builds and synergies are outside of our bounds for what is reasonable for the health of the game, so we are reducing their effectiveness," the update continues. "As an example, we generally want to avoid creating situations where players can survive unreasonably high amounts of damage for long periods of time because it too greatly warps our vision for how combat should be in Diablo 4."
Consequently, the team has surmised that "some skills and builds are not as effective as we would like", so it's pushing out some buffs to increase their strength, whilst Paragon Glyphs are "currently providing too much player power, so we're reducing their overall effectiveness".
The biggest victim is the Barbarian class, which is being nerfed from pretty much every angle, from its OP Challenging Shout – it's having its damage reduction reduced from four to two per cent – to the Gohr's Devastating Grips, which sees its explosive damage gained from Whirlwind clipped from 50-70 per cent to just 16-26 per cent.
Necromancers, on the other hand, are getting some well-needed improvements, with their Blood Lance damage increased from 67.5 per cent to 80 per cent, and its Blood Wave damage improved by an impressive 30 per cent.
"An ideal we have carried throughout development and will uphold is that Class balance is a journey, not a destination," the team says. "We want more Class builds to be fun, powerful, and competitive within reason."
You can also expect the usual "miscellaneous stability and crash fixes", too, of course, and players with high-speed NVMe SSDs should hopefully stop having their game freeze upon start-up.
For more, including how other classes have fared, check out the official website.
Diablo 4's launch continues to be dogged by a licensing issue on PlayStation that is affecting players on PS5. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, there's no estimated time or window as to when the issue may be resolved.
Wondering where our Diablo 4 review is? As Chris explained earlier this week, "we've been playing the game a fair bit, but right now we're just not ready to publish a full review that meets our standards for thoroughness".