Minion attacks can Overpower, Minions more aggressive, Golem will now Leap into a distant target, and...
Hellbent Commander: While you control at least 7 Minions, they deal 10/20/30%[x] increased damage.
Let's fucking GO, Necros!!! :D
That’s fun. I was using Blood Wave just because I hadn’t before and using the aspect that gives it three waves and the one that gives it shadow damage and it was doing decently. Now it might clear the board? I don’t know. I’m pretty new to the game and wanted to try a bunch of different stuff
Yeah, this seems to be overlooked. They said they buffed shadow core skills to compensate, completely overlooking that Blighted Aspect was used for shadow minions.
I think this is the real answer. Blighted aspect was so powerful other builds were taking shadow skills and Shadowblight key passive with no intention to do real damage with them, but ONLY to trigger Blighted. That’s a clear sign of a design issue that needs to be fixed.
> Active ability - If the Golem is far from the targeted location, it will now leap to the target.
This one is super nice too. The fact it doesn't leap now is kinda dumb.
The base / corpse rune golem in D3 leapt to the target location, they should have copied that.
I'm just glad my stupid Golem will never get stuck in a map and stand there like a big derp cos it couldn't path to the enemies I told it to smash. HULK LEAP! PUNY MOBS! :D
Season 2 people thought ball sorc would dominate but it turned out to be Barb. Season 3 there were hopes for lightning storm druid but it ended up being Barb. Season 4 was all about minion necros except Barb dominated again. Season 5 there might not even be a contender. Glad they’ve sorted the balance issues in Barbablo.
They upped druid spells 2x. I was excited to see sorc being upped finally. I was shocked when I started reading sorc notes. They're fcking kidding us. Okay, let's see how far the new lighting build will go… I guess that's another season of only one viable build (I don't wanna count firebolt abomination - literally the worst build ever gameplaywise.
I'm a casual who just returned from S0 a few weeks ago and it's comical to me just how insane Barb feels compared to, well, everything else. I rolled a Barb a few hours ago for the first time and I'm already in my mid 50s facerolling wt4. I bet i can be 8/12 on everything and already bored of it by Monday if I no life tomorrow.
What the hell took me so long?
They don’t need to balance barb. They need to bring the other classes up, A LOT, to compensate for barbs having 4 main weapons, two of them being two handed getting the big buff multipliers on aspects.
Sorc could get their third enchantment back, druids could get their pets super buffed like minions, necro are pretty much there and rogues just need new kits/builds.
Seems like rogue is always the one with the fewest amount of op builds pop up each season. Albeit, I’ve never played rogue as it just hadn’t made it to the rotation yet (next season starter). It seems like I never see a lot of rogue specific content on YT and such but all the other classes I see a ton for.
Let me preface this by saying I love D4 ever since Season 4 improved so much.
But these class skill devs are total clowns. Sever and blight needed 10x buffs to be competitive, so they nerfed its key aspect Blighted by 66% and only buffed those two skills by 50% and 30% respectively. A net nerf to extremely underpowered builds.
Tona of conj additions. Conj builds might be buffed.
If you can play FO with wintergladd and it counts as the cast, then this might be a rebalanced of the nerf beforehand. That's a decently big multiplier that scales and helps your resource gen.
Sorcs being able to use uniques might be hidden power we haven't tested yet. Azurewrath and doomvringer come to mind.
I still expect them to be dead in a ditch, but I have a feeling the minmaxer streamer community will possibly find something in the ptr
As someone who has tried, and tried, and tried to make conjurations work, they don't. They hit like wet noodles and don't scale at all. The buffs in this patch don't change that. They are lucky hit proc generators and buff you with conjuration mastery, that's it really.
In fo builds conjunctions add a bit of damage outside fo procs, it wasn't the main focus and even then they did a lot. People mathed it out and it was decent
We don't know what's going to be new, but them adding more casts may signify something in terms of a unique.
If you were trying pure conjugation, yeah that sucks because you can't generate them fast enough, that's where winterglass made that a viable option. It's possible they add some conjugation unique and it breaks that build wide open, we don't know yet.
I'll wait for ptr to see what happens and make my judgements, but I still expect nothing right now
Druids got some hefty buffs and Sorcs didn’t seem to get much. Both classes also got a couple of nerfs as well.
Better loot for treasure goblins again.
Not really.
Shepherds aspect used to give you a 180% [x] damage multiplier. Thankfully they completely reworked shepherds so it doesn’t work with core skills and compensated by buffing most core skills by 80% [x]. You free up some aspects but not enough to make up the total dps loss, but the biggest benefit is druids don’t have dead skills.
Additionally storm skills were heavily reliant on the thunderstruck passive being uncapped and could easily get to like 160% [x] multiplier whereas now it’s capped at 40%[x].
But there were some other buffs so maybe it kinda works out power wise.
TLDR: thankfully shepherds isn’t the meta anymore but it appears on the surface that druids actually received a net nerf. But not having dead skills is huge just for how people engage with the class so at least it’s potentially a stronger baseline I suppose to start with and buff from there.
Maybe I missed something big in there though.
The Earthen Bullwark change makes it finally somewhat usefull. But Thunderstruck ist a heavy hit. If Druids go out at least breakeven its luck.
And the nerf to Debilitating Roar is also a major letdown
Lightning skills now can´t be played as human anymore. They have literally 0 more multipliers as aspects and have to be played as werewolf or shapeshifter to get any dmg out of them. This sucks so fkng hard, i can´t believe they did not compensate this in any form.
Didn’t realise about this but lightning storm in human form was my fav build so I’m abit annoyed if it’s receiving bug nerfs plus I don’t want to be a bloody animal all the time , let me be nature man not wolf the cast lightning thematically it doesn’t make sense , Druid dead now for me if they keep that change
Well judging by the numbers, the damage seems to break even, not only do you lose the companion aspect which you lose about 160% multiplier or so (correct me if im wrong), you also lose thunderstruck now it is capped at 40, you use to be able to get like 150%-200% multiplier.
So them doubling the base damage is like giving 100% multiplier to every skill, and yes now you can use other aspects other than the companion one which will increase your damage but I don't think it is that much of a buff though.
Yeah it’s a positive move design-wise. But it actually appears that druids saw a small net nerf in overall power level with these changes.
I hope it’s a stronger base to build off at least.
Yeah, I thought we were going back to grizzly rage builds but the CD got nerfed so it kind of annoying to play around, I think they might need to triple the base damage or make storm build not require tempest roar so they can run shako.
Yeah they need a full rethink on tempest roar.
If they want it to be “mandatory” for storm/wolf builds they really need to buff the item significantly. All the affixes are awful atm.
It’s so weird/annoying when everyone else is running around with a shako with CDR/max life/20% DR and druids have a helm with max spirit, poison res (which every druid already automatically caps through their paragon) and some tiny additive damage numbers.
Ice armor, flame shield nerfed. No defensive replacements or additions added as of right now.
Totem and focus implicit changed to lucky hit chance.
I hope someone PTRs the fuck out of sorc.
As is, there's absolutely no universe where any endgame sorc with any build gives up an aspect and set of tempers for an item that adds as little as Azurewrath adds. I could see Doombringer *potentially* making the cut 'cause Sorc can benefit from the extra element if they're running Tal Rasha's, but that's quite niche.
Fire shield also starts its CD after it ends. We will definitely need SOME sort of survivability buff. But at least it gets rid of the degenerate infinite flame shield stuff. That was just awful and would never have been healthy.
I honestly don’t get the reason why they removed the damage added to shields. It’s not like shields lasted very long anyways in endgame. But I am excited. Almost all changes and additions sound great.
It was easy to have the ice armor last the full duration, and they added a temper for ice armor duration, but then nerfed ice armor to the point where the duration will never be met in end game. One hit and it’s gone.
This feels like the Monk mitigation nerf from EQ all over again.
I swear every game I play, you can be guaranteed whatever class I pick will be shit on and ruined for no reason. Sorcs aren't OP, so let's nerf their survivability across the board for no reason.
And also buff barbs again. And ignore Druids.
I just finally gave up this season. Was excited to get in and play with all the new changes and more things being viable. Better build variety. But it’s still Barbie, Barbie, Barbie and now Necro bring up the rear.
The devs claimed they used D2 as a basis (Or so I've read) and it seems to me that they're purposely doing this shit to avoid Sorcerers becoming super strong like they were in D2. Nevermind the fact this is a completely different game.
What kills me is that sorcs were just strong because the gear requirements in D2 were minimal. A well geared paladin was arguably stronger than a well gear sorc. People picked sorc for mf hunting because tele was inherent and mf gear was fairly easy to come by for them. It's not like they were heads and tails above everything else, they just needed less to get there.
And then when creative sorc users succeed in finding a way despite their efforts, they nerf the F\*\*\* outta whatever technique was made effective. It's almost like we're playing against the devs instead of against demons... or wait..
I paid 70$, I want my screen to be filled with explosive shit, flying objects and bunch of elements falling from the sky, not a dude hitting shits with 2 swords or ballet dancing.
My incinerate Sorc is losing a whooping x50% dmg from Burning Instinct getting capped, lol what. The buff to Engulfing Flames and Combustion wouldnt even break it even.
Yeah, I have x125% right now.
I can't think of any decent fire builds for S5. Blizzard still seems viable and that chain lightning unique seems fun. Hopefully, the unique rework adds more variety to sorc builds.
Flamescar still can't compete with Tempered weapons and a 2H staff being a whooping 510% multiplier to Incinerate. They have to buff it tremendously and make its unique effect not a meme if the build is to have any hope next season.
Let's be honest, patch notes for this game are mostly pointless. Whatever bugged interactions exist will make the best build, as has been the case every season.
We've got to give them a ton of PTR feedback on sorc. That said, this is insane:
Aspect Of the Firebird
* Gain the Flame Shield Enchantment for free.
* When Flame Shield activates, Meteorites fall around you dealing (50%-70%) Fire damage.
With the flame shield nerf coinciding with this the only thing I like about it is it gives you some protection while playing hardcore without sacrificing an enchantment slot.
That said, just give sorcs their third enchantment slot back please.
The core skill buffs for Druid are coming from the deletion of Shepherd 180% multiplier (only affects companions now) and the nerf of Thunderstruck from 160% to 40%. It's actually a nerf in terms of damage.
Don't worry, Druids are still clearly the worst class.
They had us in the first half not gonna lie. Druid will still do about 18 damage. They didn't compensate core skills enough with the Thunderstruck + Shepherds nerf.
I reeeeeaally wanted to main a druid in this game, but it’s clear they’re never going to properly balance the classes. Looks like I’ll just have to settle with rogue. :/
All things shown in the campfire are W. But honestly after reading this patch, I want Blizzard to remove the Sorc from the game completely. They don't know how to fix this class.
Sorc needs at least a 100k barrier to survive at high content and all they do is nerf the barrier of ice armor to the ground, so why do you need to buff this skill at the last patch to kill it completely at this patch? A 40% barrier of 22k hp is a 10k barrier, getting one shot of a normal mob in pit 100 is still dead. Do they know the only way for Sorc to survive in high content is the permanent flame shield and this is lame?
Why increase the cooldown of teleport 3s more? Do people can't have fun in this game?
Why are all the legendary paragon nodes of Sorc being capped now? They are the weakest in temp of dmg deal in the game right now alongside Druid. Why are Sorc's paragon nodes being capped and other classes don't? What is so wrong with this class?
>Why increase the cooldown of teleport 3s more? Do people can't have fun in this game?
Meanwhile, Barbs can Leap with 0 cooldown with just a single aspect (just gotta make sure you land on 2 mobs or on a boss, something very easy to do), and Leap essentially works just like teleport, including phasing through walls.
I hope they completely rebalance the game, all the damage numbers..multipliers, literally everything for the expansion. It's too much of a mess right now.
I'm not getting the expansion unless they figure out their class balance to some degree. I was playing Sorc this season and already had to get insane gear to even slightly compete with Barb in endgame. They now removed the only thing that allowed Sorcs to actually do endgame.
This is just wild.
How tf do they nerf Sorc by caping multipliers while barb is hitting for Billions of damage? How anything of this makes sense? I don’t want to bash my keyboard 10 times per second to do damage, like wth?
Not merely ‘pretty much,’ it’s fully removed now.
I’d rather they have changed Flame Shield to not be full invulnerability but let it stay at 100% uptime. As it is, Blizzard probably thinks they’re helping things by kneecapping the current Sorc endgame solution for defense (and it absolutely did need to be removed), without realizing the class does not have a functional fallback.
Invulnerability skills are nice as an "oh shit" button or planned usage during key moments of a boss fight, for example whenever a shade boss ability pops up in the pit. I think it has its place in the game.
Considering they also nerfed so focuses don’t have CDR anymore, yeah, no way you can reach the required CDR/shield duration buff to have it permanently up.
Everyone: PLS BUFF SORC AND DRUID
Devs saying: Yeah we see druid and sorc are weak.
Devs work:
- Don’t change barb (otherwise rob loses his job)
- Rework rogue
- Nerf necro’s best build, buff others
- “Buff” druid
- Nerf all sorc defensives, including teleport for whatever reason, nerf major core paragon traits but give them some very low % buff on core spells so they can’t say we didn’t buff! Genius!
No but fr, the devs are so out of touch with sorc its insane. At this point they can just remove the class and focus on the 4 others.
Sorc has been struggling since pre-season and only had time to shine when some interactions where broken beyond believe (ball lightning, infinite shield) while other builds where 10x worse. Meanwhile rogue and barb have been one shotting bosses for 4 seasons now while having 5x more hp with 10 different builds each.
The "buff" for druid comes at the cost of a massive multiplier nerf to them, it will probably net at a slight nerf but does bring back some options to the builds which helps alot.
>Debilitating Roar
>Damage Reduction decreased from 70% to 40%.
Okay.. they definitely hate druids. Challenging shout untouched but they nerf this to hell? LMAO
“Resplendent Sparks and Scattered Prisms will no longer be automatically picked up. Additionally, these items can now be found in the lost items Stash if forgotten when they drop.”
Most pointless update ever.
Current design means your pet auto-collects them, so you don't have to really worry about it. This change means you could actually lose them, because the pet won't auto-collect and forgotten items in stash caps out at 10.
It's a pointless change that just makes it worse overall.
They will just reference the infinite Flame shield build and say they will finally bring down sorcerer to expected levels with s5... That expected Level is obv the delete character Button...
I'm not so sure about these Druid changes so far. Getting rid of Shepherds and capping Thunderstruck makes these 'buffs' not as impressive as they look. Somebody smarter than me can do the math but I'm skeptical.
Not sure why you are downvoted. This is true, at best this results in no change, but overall seems like a nerf. The only advantage is this is a better baseline moving forward for the next round of buffs. Hopefully by then they get a clue on what they are doing with Druid.
>Burning Instinct Critical Strike bonus reduced from 1% per 25 Intelligence to 1% per 50 Intelligence and now caps at 40%|x|.
Oh thank god, fire sorc was way too strong, thank you for nerfing this OP build blizzard. Now you need 2000 intelligence to get it capped. Lmao. Garbage node now.
Can they please let each player pay to open the Pit, and then get the same amount of reward materials at the end? We want to be able to play with our friends and not be penalized or having to rotate who opens the pit. Please let each player in the party pony up to open the pit and get the same amount of rewards. Thank you.
Finally my sorc can use a azurewrath. Lol thanks blizzard! To add to this I hope they tweak and adjust some uniques. Some were severely lacking.
Side note: for those who don't know azurewrath is a phase blade and all classes could use them in D2.
Some beefy changes to Landslide and once again Pulverize for Druid but nothing new to bring more variety in it’s build options.
Yea I’m convinced we’re not getting significant changes to Druid or Sorc until the expansion. They acknowledge both classes need help so with my coping ass I’m guessing they won’t receive significant changes(new/reworked skills) until the expansion.
Blizzard absolutely hates sorcs using Defensive Skills. I don't think any other class has the "for each x skill not on the bar".
Also I love how they want lightning sorcs to be melee, but lightning spear zooms around the room. Classic. Big fan of losing more CDR because off-hands don't have it as the implicit too.
I don't understand, they took away sorcererss immortal and to compensate they are nerfing Ice Armor??
When they made the change in Diablo 3 to only make invulnerable skills go on cooldown when they are not active, they at least lowered their cooldown heavily.
Am I missing something or sorceress are just dead?
Sorc main forever and always, When I started Season 4 there were a variety of builds and power combinations that made that class feel powerful. Endgame some dropped off earlier than others. For a game that has so many abilities and combinations, I hate that there are usually 1-2 end game builds per class.
I'm not saying every skill/build should be OP but I think the gap shouldn't be as far. You shouldn't have only one build capable of breaking say, Pit 110 and the majority of other builds can't break 90 etc because that forces people that are pushing to inevitably use the same builds.
I like that they are buffing other builds for Necro (blood, bone spirit, etc). But why nerf shadow necro? It makes no sense. Even if the items get stronger, we are no where near Barb level strong.
Yikes, better luck in S6 or like after the official patch notes come out lol.
This makes me have even more reason to not play.
There are some decent balance changes overall but Sorc is still soooooo ick.
Class is just hardly fluid at all 😔and feels super underwhelmingly bad on a casual level.
Blizz: Yea maybe giving classes like Barb and Rogue multiple wep slots over the other classes is out of band and unfair
Also Blizz: Buffs barb and rogue AGAIN while kneecapping Sorc, Necro, and Druid.
Imbecilic
Missed the stream, but sounds like no social tools with the season? Damn, guess it's hoping that they ship with the expansion.
Otherwise looks ok from the notes, will have to watch the stream later.
It could still come with the expansion, this stream was strictly Season 5 PTR. Didnt talk much at all about the new expansion. July 18th is the next livestream where they are going to dive deep into spiritborn, so hopefully something there.
Word has it that barbs and necros sell the most RMT shop cosmetics.
In other words: the metrics want us to play barb or necro.
Product decisions are business decisions.
Look at all those hardcore Sorcerer Nerfs.
Cooldowns nerfed. Staff nerfed. Focus nerfed. All Defensive Skills nerfed. All Paragon Node multipliers nerfed. They even mentioned in the Campfire Chat that all Crowd Control Duration will be nerfed. Sorc now has zero defenses left, and they gutted the already bad damage even further.
But hey you get shiny Chain Lightning pants that drain your mana like crazy in return. Oh, and we also gave you a 4-second cooldown nerf on your Chain Lightning enchants just so you don't get any stupid ideas.
Ice Armor
Max Life Base Shield amount increased from 25% to 40%.
No longer gains increased Shield based on damage.
Flame Shield
Cooldown begins when Invulnerability ends.
Are you fucking kidding me. I guess sorcs have to have +100k life just to be playable. How are we supposed to kill bosses?
These sorc changes is this for real what the fuck em I reading no survivability buffs but nerfs less cooldown reduction because rip offhand implicit longer cooldown on teleport. No more gain more Ice Armor from attacks and there are even damage nerfs in there lol? What is this?
Tell me you dont know what you are doing without actually telling me you dont know what you are doing.
Im not even mad anymore, im more like dumbfounded by these dev's cluelessness on how Sorc should work.
So let me get this straight - they cut sorcs survivability in half, they remove flame shield from the game, so how are sorcs supposed to survive in the pit now again?
Wtf??? Burning Instinct nerf, why?
Blizzard buffed Incinerate in season 4 only to nerf it to the ground in Season 5?? What is the point of this at all? So confusing.
Who is in charge of these changes, these are hot garbage.
Wtf is going on, basic skills are boring as fuck, why are basic skills being pushed to be meta
I wanna do epic things not spam the same basic attack over and over even if it's powerful, that's so lame
They really shot themselves in the foot when they made crit and vuln damage additive. The entire game and itemisation was balanced around them being multiplicative. Now attack speed is king and basic skills benefit from that stat the most.
Minion attacks can Overpower, Minions more aggressive, Golem will now Leap into a distant target, and... Hellbent Commander: While you control at least 7 Minions, they deal 10/20/30%[x] increased damage. Let's fucking GO, Necros!!! :D
Blood Necro still forgotten...
Oh, and implicit on Scythes changed to Summoning damage. Guess it's time to work on getting one to replace my sword. :P
They apparently gave Blood Wave a huge buff from 150% base damage to 450% damage.
That’s fun. I was using Blood Wave just because I hadn’t before and using the aspect that gives it three waves and the one that gives it shadow damage and it was doing decently. Now it might clear the board? I don’t know. I’m pretty new to the game and wanted to try a bunch of different stuff
Blood wave from 150% to 450%.
Looks like they buffed Blood Lance and huge buff to Blood Wave, it’s something at least. Will have to test next week!
The corpse tendrils nerf undoes all of that, Blood builds are beyond dead still.
Blighted Aspect got a big nerf to most builds that uses shadow specialy minions
Yeah, this seems to be overlooked. They said they buffed shadow core skills to compensate, completely overlooking that Blighted Aspect was used for shadow minions.
It might be the full intention to move Minions to the non-Shadow version to limit bleed on future design decision between the two.
I think this is the real answer. Blighted aspect was so powerful other builds were taking shadow skills and Shadowblight key passive with no intention to do real damage with them, but ONLY to trigger Blighted. That’s a clear sign of a design issue that needs to be fixed.
> Active ability - If the Golem is far from the targeted location, it will now leap to the target. This one is super nice too. The fact it doesn't leap now is kinda dumb. The base / corpse rune golem in D3 leapt to the target location, they should have copied that.
Excellent, my glorious minion necro is continuing it's journey to being top tier
I'm just glad my stupid Golem will never get stuck in a map and stand there like a big derp cos it couldn't path to the enemies I told it to smash. HULK LEAP! PUNY MOBS! :D
several hefty sorc nerfs and some minor buffs what the fuck is going on?
It feels like - YOU WILL PLAY BARB AND ENJOY IT!
Season 2 people thought ball sorc would dominate but it turned out to be Barb. Season 3 there were hopes for lightning storm druid but it ended up being Barb. Season 4 was all about minion necros except Barb dominated again. Season 5 there might not even be a contender. Glad they’ve sorted the balance issues in Barbablo.
I feel like they keep barb strong because certain top streamers love barb
They love barb because this class is that strong. That's easy maths 😆
Honesty, it took me 4 seasons to play Barb. It’s only been 2 days and I have already got it to 100. Barb go brrrr, good fun
Just take Sorc out of the game already. They've had literally a year to fix this class and they just fucking can't
They upped druid spells 2x. I was excited to see sorc being upped finally. I was shocked when I started reading sorc notes. They're fcking kidding us. Okay, let's see how far the new lighting build will go… I guess that's another season of only one viable build (I don't wanna count firebolt abomination - literally the worst build ever gameplaywise.
Diablo is a barb game and other classes are just living in it.
D4 sorc devs are a joke. I would love to see them try and play live on stream and justify any of their decisions.
Devs: A nice QoL change would be to let sorcerers rez right next to their bodies since they're dead all of the time. Lets do that!
Season of the Barb, Part IV
Somehow Bab returned
Another barb season, yeay. Almost like we have been playing barb for 1 entire year
I'm a casual who just returned from S0 a few weeks ago and it's comical to me just how insane Barb feels compared to, well, everything else. I rolled a Barb a few hours ago for the first time and I'm already in my mid 50s facerolling wt4. I bet i can be 8/12 on everything and already bored of it by Monday if I no life tomorrow. What the hell took me so long?
I feel you bro. The worst part, it has been like that for the 12 months now. Nothing changed. They simply can’t balance barb.
They don’t need to balance barb. They need to bring the other classes up, A LOT, to compensate for barbs having 4 main weapons, two of them being two handed getting the big buff multipliers on aspects. Sorc could get their third enchantment back, druids could get their pets super buffed like minions, necro are pretty much there and rogues just need new kits/builds. Seems like rogue is always the one with the fewest amount of op builds pop up each season. Albeit, I’ve never played rogue as it just hadn’t made it to the rotation yet (next season starter). It seems like I never see a lot of rogue specific content on YT and such but all the other classes I see a ton for.
Nah necros arent up there,barbarians are on a league of their own
The problem is that enchantments and spirit buffs are not tied to anything gear related. So they won’t scale into late endgame
Let me preface this by saying I love D4 ever since Season 4 improved so much. But these class skill devs are total clowns. Sever and blight needed 10x buffs to be competitive, so they nerfed its key aspect Blighted by 66% and only buffed those two skills by 50% and 30% respectively. A net nerf to extremely underpowered builds.
Tona of conj additions. Conj builds might be buffed. If you can play FO with wintergladd and it counts as the cast, then this might be a rebalanced of the nerf beforehand. That's a decently big multiplier that scales and helps your resource gen. Sorcs being able to use uniques might be hidden power we haven't tested yet. Azurewrath and doomvringer come to mind. I still expect them to be dead in a ditch, but I have a feeling the minmaxer streamer community will possibly find something in the ptr
As someone who has tried, and tried, and tried to make conjurations work, they don't. They hit like wet noodles and don't scale at all. The buffs in this patch don't change that. They are lucky hit proc generators and buff you with conjuration mastery, that's it really.
In fo builds conjunctions add a bit of damage outside fo procs, it wasn't the main focus and even then they did a lot. People mathed it out and it was decent We don't know what's going to be new, but them adding more casts may signify something in terms of a unique. If you were trying pure conjugation, yeah that sucks because you can't generate them fast enough, that's where winterglass made that a viable option. It's possible they add some conjugation unique and it breaks that build wide open, we don't know yet. I'll wait for ptr to see what happens and make my judgements, but I still expect nothing right now
Druids got some hefty buffs and Sorcs didn’t seem to get much. Both classes also got a couple of nerfs as well. Better loot for treasure goblins again.
Not really. Shepherds aspect used to give you a 180% [x] damage multiplier. Thankfully they completely reworked shepherds so it doesn’t work with core skills and compensated by buffing most core skills by 80% [x]. You free up some aspects but not enough to make up the total dps loss, but the biggest benefit is druids don’t have dead skills. Additionally storm skills were heavily reliant on the thunderstruck passive being uncapped and could easily get to like 160% [x] multiplier whereas now it’s capped at 40%[x]. But there were some other buffs so maybe it kinda works out power wise. TLDR: thankfully shepherds isn’t the meta anymore but it appears on the surface that druids actually received a net nerf. But not having dead skills is huge just for how people engage with the class so at least it’s potentially a stronger baseline I suppose to start with and buff from there. Maybe I missed something big in there though.
The Earthen Bullwark change makes it finally somewhat usefull. But Thunderstruck ist a heavy hit. If Druids go out at least breakeven its luck. And the nerf to Debilitating Roar is also a major letdown
Buffing Cataclysm and neutering Thunderstruck seems to be the lightning trade off.
Storm builds didn't use cataclysm. There's no tradeoff if people probably still aren't going to use cataclysm, it's just a nerf.
Druid td:lr it's a nerf no matter how you looks at it. They didn't compensate it right.
Correct. Druid’s are weaker in the ptr than they are in season 4.
So still barbarian, barbarian, and barbarian.
Lightning skills now can´t be played as human anymore. They have literally 0 more multipliers as aspects and have to be played as werewolf or shapeshifter to get any dmg out of them. This sucks so fkng hard, i can´t believe they did not compensate this in any form.
Didn’t realise about this but lightning storm in human form was my fav build so I’m abit annoyed if it’s receiving bug nerfs plus I don’t want to be a bloody animal all the time , let me be nature man not wolf the cast lightning thematically it doesn’t make sense , Druid dead now for me if they keep that change
Might want to read the notes again. Druids got nerfed... pretty badly. Shepard aspect and Thunderstruck got nuked from orbit.
And Debilitating Roar
That's just them telling everyone they should just switch to barbarian if they want a functioning class
No. They nerfed sorcs pretty heavily.
Well judging by the numbers, the damage seems to break even, not only do you lose the companion aspect which you lose about 160% multiplier or so (correct me if im wrong), you also lose thunderstruck now it is capped at 40, you use to be able to get like 150%-200% multiplier. So them doubling the base damage is like giving 100% multiplier to every skill, and yes now you can use other aspects other than the companion one which will increase your damage but I don't think it is that much of a buff though.
Yeah it’s a positive move design-wise. But it actually appears that druids saw a small net nerf in overall power level with these changes. I hope it’s a stronger base to build off at least.
Yeah, I thought we were going back to grizzly rage builds but the CD got nerfed so it kind of annoying to play around, I think they might need to triple the base damage or make storm build not require tempest roar so they can run shako.
Yeah they need a full rethink on tempest roar. If they want it to be “mandatory” for storm/wolf builds they really need to buff the item significantly. All the affixes are awful atm. It’s so weird/annoying when everyone else is running around with a shako with CDR/max life/20% DR and druids have a helm with max spirit, poison res (which every druid already automatically caps through their paragon) and some tiny additive damage numbers.
Ice armor, flame shield nerfed. No defensive replacements or additions added as of right now. Totem and focus implicit changed to lucky hit chance. I hope someone PTRs the fuck out of sorc.
Sorcs can now use Swords, I'm not sure, but couldn't that be a buff by itself?
Azurewrath could be an interesting sorc weapon.
As is, there's absolutely no universe where any endgame sorc with any build gives up an aspect and set of tempers for an item that adds as little as Azurewrath adds. I could see Doombringer *potentially* making the cut 'cause Sorc can benefit from the extra element if they're running Tal Rasha's, but that's quite niche.
>> No longer gains increased Shield based on damage. We, sorcerers, are definitely gonna be eating shit and pushing up daisies
Fire shield also starts its CD after it ends. We will definitely need SOME sort of survivability buff. But at least it gets rid of the degenerate infinite flame shield stuff. That was just awful and would never have been healthy.
Yea, I don’t have an issue with this change. It needed to be fixed, but to then absolutely gut the rest of our survivability was batshit insane
I honestly don’t get the reason why they removed the damage added to shields. It’s not like shields lasted very long anyways in endgame. But I am excited. Almost all changes and additions sound great.
It was easy to have the ice armor last the full duration, and they added a temper for ice armor duration, but then nerfed ice armor to the point where the duration will never be met in end game. One hit and it’s gone.
40% of sorcerer Max HP is nothing. That's still not even 5 digits for a Decently progressed sorcerer...
This feels like the Monk mitigation nerf from EQ all over again. I swear every game I play, you can be guaranteed whatever class I pick will be shit on and ruined for no reason. Sorcs aren't OP, so let's nerf their survivability across the board for no reason. And also buff barbs again. And ignore Druids.
I just finally gave up this season. Was excited to get in and play with all the new changes and more things being viable. Better build variety. But it’s still Barbie, Barbie, Barbie and now Necro bring up the rear.
Someone in charge at Blizzard absolutely detests sorcerers and licks barbarian nuts.
They don't like Druid either.
Too busy banging bears in BG3 that they forgot about D4.
The devs claimed they used D2 as a basis (Or so I've read) and it seems to me that they're purposely doing this shit to avoid Sorcerers becoming super strong like they were in D2. Nevermind the fact this is a completely different game.
What kills me is that sorcs were just strong because the gear requirements in D2 were minimal. A well geared paladin was arguably stronger than a well gear sorc. People picked sorc for mf hunting because tele was inherent and mf gear was fairly easy to come by for them. It's not like they were heads and tails above everything else, they just needed less to get there.
And then when creative sorc users succeed in finding a way despite their efforts, they nerf the F\*\*\* outta whatever technique was made effective. It's almost like we're playing against the devs instead of against demons... or wait..
I paid 70$, I want my screen to be filled with explosive shit, flying objects and bunch of elements falling from the sky, not a dude hitting shits with 2 swords or ballet dancing.
World Bosses are now more resilient to damage. Hopefully this means they last more than 2 seconds
It's flattering when they only last 2 seconds though
2 whole seconds is when half the group is afking or just not paying attention
That's the proper way for minion necro to play it
avarice literally jumped out as a corpse
I sure hope so… Missing a world boss just because you were a literal 10 seconds late feels REALLY bad…
That’s what she said
These Sorc changes are a joke, right?
If you add the Druid changes you have enough material for a standup routine.
Another rays fan!
So the acknowledged that sorc sucks so they nerf the class to oblivion What out of touch dev team
Acknowlegde sorc sucks, lets nerf, Acknowledge barbs are to strong with there weapons, lets buff them more.
And refuse to enable more weapon slots for the other classes so balance is never possible!
Doesn't feel like Sorc got a buff, overall. I'm gonna run a chain lightning sorc. I bet there will be a lot of those.
My incinerate Sorc is losing a whooping x50% dmg from Burning Instinct getting capped, lol what. The buff to Engulfing Flames and Combustion wouldnt even break it even.
Good thing I got my fill of Incinerate this season. Just like Lighting Storm Druid last season. A magical moment in time, never to return.
Yeah, I have x125% right now. I can't think of any decent fire builds for S5. Blizzard still seems viable and that chain lightning unique seems fun. Hopefully, the unique rework adds more variety to sorc builds.
Flamescar still can't compete with Tempered weapons and a 2H staff being a whooping 510% multiplier to Incinerate. They have to buff it tremendously and make its unique effect not a meme if the build is to have any hope next season.
They got some buffs then got a bunch of Paragon nerfs. And the sorc Paragon board is already one of the worst boards there is.
Thats what other class players dont get. Ok, they capped everyone. But ours was already shitty uncapped lol
Yeah, going from 150% to 40% is going to be terrible.
Let's be honest, patch notes for this game are mostly pointless. Whatever bugged interactions exist will make the best build, as has been the case every season.
We've got to give them a ton of PTR feedback on sorc. That said, this is insane: Aspect Of the Firebird * Gain the Flame Shield Enchantment for free. * When Flame Shield activates, Meteorites fall around you dealing (50%-70%) Fire damage.
With the flame shield nerf coinciding with this the only thing I like about it is it gives you some protection while playing hardcore without sacrificing an enchantment slot. That said, just give sorcs their third enchantment slot back please.
Druid buffs: Base spell damage gets doubled Sorc buffs: Your base spells get 0.01% more damage, but 3s more CD on teleport
Well druid loses like 300% multiplier between the aspect and thunderstruck.
The core skill buffs for Druid are coming from the deletion of Shepherd 180% multiplier (only affects companions now) and the nerf of Thunderstruck from 160% to 40%. It's actually a nerf in terms of damage. Don't worry, Druids are still clearly the worst class.
They had us in the first half not gonna lie. Druid will still do about 18 damage. They didn't compensate core skills enough with the Thunderstruck + Shepherds nerf.
I reeeeeaally wanted to main a druid in this game, but it’s clear they’re never going to properly balance the classes. Looks like I’ll just have to settle with rogue. :/
Necro: Bloodwave dmg from 150% to 450% Sorc: Inferno base damage increased by 20%
All things shown in the campfire are W. But honestly after reading this patch, I want Blizzard to remove the Sorc from the game completely. They don't know how to fix this class. Sorc needs at least a 100k barrier to survive at high content and all they do is nerf the barrier of ice armor to the ground, so why do you need to buff this skill at the last patch to kill it completely at this patch? A 40% barrier of 22k hp is a 10k barrier, getting one shot of a normal mob in pit 100 is still dead. Do they know the only way for Sorc to survive in high content is the permanent flame shield and this is lame? Why increase the cooldown of teleport 3s more? Do people can't have fun in this game? Why are all the legendary paragon nodes of Sorc being capped now? They are the weakest in temp of dmg deal in the game right now alongside Druid. Why are Sorc's paragon nodes being capped and other classes don't? What is so wrong with this class?
>Why increase the cooldown of teleport 3s more? Do people can't have fun in this game? Meanwhile, Barbs can Leap with 0 cooldown with just a single aspect (just gotta make sure you land on 2 mobs or on a boss, something very easy to do), and Leap essentially works just like teleport, including phasing through walls.
I hope they completely rebalance the game, all the damage numbers..multipliers, literally everything for the expansion. It's too much of a mess right now.
I'm not getting the expansion unless they figure out their class balance to some degree. I was playing Sorc this season and already had to get insane gear to even slightly compete with Barb in endgame. They now removed the only thing that allowed Sorcs to actually do endgame. This is just wild.
Don't see Sorcs/Druids catching up to the rest for S5. Maybe S6...but then everybody will be playing the new class, lol.
They are doing ptr before season so these aren’t final
Last time they nerfed our FO before launch so I wouldnt count on improvements to anyone other than barbs
if anyone posts a half decent sorc build with the new lightning pants, it's just gonna get nerfed pre-launch :(
That just means they'll hit them again like with Frozen Orb while buffing bullshit barb... again lmfao.
oh, they certainly aren't final friendly reminder that they nerfed the shit out of frozen orb after the s4 ptr
Wouldn’t hold my breath on them buffing sorc mid-PTR. Last time they just nerfed sorc even when people said pls buff lol
How tf do they nerf Sorc by caping multipliers while barb is hitting for Billions of damage? How anything of this makes sense? I don’t want to bash my keyboard 10 times per second to do damage, like wth?
They capped a bunch of those multipliers for different classes including the Barb bleed one and poor Druid with their storm one.
Holy fucking sorc nerfs. what?
Hey, at least we can use maces with their native ... overpower damage ...
That change to the off hand affix from CDR to lucky hit is a nerf to anyone that uses an off hand. Like wth is that even about?
Flame Shield Cooldown begins when Invulnerability ends. This pretty much kills the perma flame shield right?
That's the plan
I understand the nerf, but they should have given substantial buffs in return. This almost completely guts endgame for Sorc.
Not merely ‘pretty much,’ it’s fully removed now. I’d rather they have changed Flame Shield to not be full invulnerability but let it stay at 100% uptime. As it is, Blizzard probably thinks they’re helping things by kneecapping the current Sorc endgame solution for defense (and it absolutely did need to be removed), without realizing the class does not have a functional fallback.
Invulnerability skills are nice as an "oh shit" button or planned usage during key moments of a boss fight, for example whenever a shade boss ability pops up in the pit. I think it has its place in the game.
Considering they also nerfed so focuses don’t have CDR anymore, yeah, no way you can reach the required CDR/shield duration buff to have it permanently up.
Everyone: PLS BUFF SORC AND DRUID Devs saying: Yeah we see druid and sorc are weak. Devs work: - Don’t change barb (otherwise rob loses his job) - Rework rogue - Nerf necro’s best build, buff others - “Buff” druid - Nerf all sorc defensives, including teleport for whatever reason, nerf major core paragon traits but give them some very low % buff on core spells so they can’t say we didn’t buff! Genius! No but fr, the devs are so out of touch with sorc its insane. At this point they can just remove the class and focus on the 4 others. Sorc has been struggling since pre-season and only had time to shine when some interactions where broken beyond believe (ball lightning, infinite shield) while other builds where 10x worse. Meanwhile rogue and barb have been one shotting bosses for 4 seasons now while having 5x more hp with 10 different builds each.
The "buff" for druid comes at the cost of a massive multiplier nerf to them, it will probably net at a slight nerf but does bring back some options to the builds which helps alot.
Will edit it, thanks!
Season 5: Season of the Barbarian Vol. 5
Yeah. Getting old at this point. No reason a class needs to be hitting for billions more than the others
The teleport nerf is insane to me.... Or any mobility nerf... There is no other reason to do this other than to slow the pace of the game.
They noticed not enough Sorcs were dying to the Waller affix. They wanted to fix that.
>Debilitating Roar >Damage Reduction decreased from 70% to 40%. Okay.. they definitely hate druids. Challenging shout untouched but they nerf this to hell? LMAO
“Resplendent Sparks and Scattered Prisms will no longer be automatically picked up. Additionally, these items can now be found in the lost items Stash if forgotten when they drop.” Most pointless update ever.
Nah they’re an important drop so it’s nice to know when you actually get them
Current design means your pet auto-collects them, so you don't have to really worry about it. This change means you could actually lose them, because the pet won't auto-collect and forgotten items in stash caps out at 10. It's a pointless change that just makes it worse overall.
Can’t wait to lose those Sparks because your stash can’t hold more than 10 items!
Sorc survivability is even worse?? And some of the more versatile damage passives get nerfed? I like change, but how about some love?
Dude wtf are they doing with sorcs? Minimal increases to some skills and complete nerfs to defensive and legendary paragon nodes? I don’t get it.
Even druids debilitating roar got hit by like 30% just why...because they buffed the ultimate? What if they don't use the ultimate blizzard?!
Sorc is already shit compared to the other classes except for druid, so why all these nerfs?? S5 sorc is going to blow
Druid got nerfed too.
Blizz needs to demo some viable sorc and druid builds running deep into the pit. That will never happen of course.
They will just reference the infinite Flame shield build and say they will finally bring down sorcerer to expected levels with s5... That expected Level is obv the delete character Button...
If they wanted the devs to do it, it would be the first time any of em ever touched the classes.
Sorcerer Fixed an issue where Vyr's Mastery applied to Non-Shock Skills. Lol
WHAT IS THE ISSUE WITH BUFFING SORCS AND DRUIDS, I WANT TO RAIN METEORS OR ICE
Well, that would make sense, and is therefore wrong.
It's insane to me how few abilities and passive there are in this game and blizzard still can't seem to balance them 🤣
I'm not so sure about these Druid changes so far. Getting rid of Shepherds and capping Thunderstruck makes these 'buffs' not as impressive as they look. Somebody smarter than me can do the math but I'm skeptical.
Not sure why you are downvoted. This is true, at best this results in no change, but overall seems like a nerf. The only advantage is this is a better baseline moving forward for the next round of buffs. Hopefully by then they get a clue on what they are doing with Druid.
Lmao they fucking buffed Bash what the fuck is wrong with these people?
Every class got some sort of nerf to combat except for the favored Barbarian.
Burning instinct nerf is a severe kick in the teeth.
Yeah but now our hydras can have 9 heads /s
Sorc is forgotten man. They literally nerfed druid and sorc got some nerfs too lmao... TP cooldown nerfed for some reason and meaningless buffs
They didn't forget us, they made changes to the class. They just hate us, so the changes make us worse.
They distracted sorcs with a shiny new chain lightning build while nerfing everything else, lol.
>Burning Instinct Critical Strike bonus reduced from 1% per 25 Intelligence to 1% per 50 Intelligence and now caps at 40%|x|. Oh thank god, fire sorc was way too strong, thank you for nerfing this OP build blizzard. Now you need 2000 intelligence to get it capped. Lmao. Garbage node now.
Can they please let each player pay to open the Pit, and then get the same amount of reward materials at the end? We want to be able to play with our friends and not be penalized or having to rotate who opens the pit. Please let each player in the party pony up to open the pit and get the same amount of rewards. Thank you.
Has anyone outright asked them why they hate sorc so much ?
Finally my sorc can use a azurewrath. Lol thanks blizzard! To add to this I hope they tweak and adjust some uniques. Some were severely lacking. Side note: for those who don't know azurewrath is a phase blade and all classes could use them in D2.
RIP sorcs
No mention of official Pit leaderboards, for directly ranking oneself against others and inspecting top builds, is disappointing.
Some beefy changes to Landslide and once again Pulverize for Druid but nothing new to bring more variety in it’s build options. Yea I’m convinced we’re not getting significant changes to Druid or Sorc until the expansion. They acknowledge both classes need help so with my coping ass I’m guessing they won’t receive significant changes(new/reworked skills) until the expansion.
Blizzard absolutely hates sorcs using Defensive Skills. I don't think any other class has the "for each x skill not on the bar". Also I love how they want lightning sorcs to be melee, but lightning spear zooms around the room. Classic. Big fan of losing more CDR because off-hands don't have it as the implicit too.
If I'm reading these notes correctly, bash is remaining as multiplicative and the only OP build being killed is immortal firebolt.
I don't understand, they took away sorcererss immortal and to compensate they are nerfing Ice Armor?? When they made the change in Diablo 3 to only make invulnerable skills go on cooldown when they are not active, they at least lowered their cooldown heavily. Am I missing something or sorceress are just dead?
Sorc main forever and always, When I started Season 4 there were a variety of builds and power combinations that made that class feel powerful. Endgame some dropped off earlier than others. For a game that has so many abilities and combinations, I hate that there are usually 1-2 end game builds per class. I'm not saying every skill/build should be OP but I think the gap shouldn't be as far. You shouldn't have only one build capable of breaking say, Pit 110 and the majority of other builds can't break 90 etc because that forces people that are pushing to inevitably use the same builds.
I like that they are buffing other builds for Necro (blood, bone spirit, etc). But why nerf shadow necro? It makes no sense. Even if the items get stronger, we are no where near Barb level strong.
“Shadow Necros were clearing t100 pits so it was obviously getting out of hand. We should buff Bash.” —*D4 dev team*
Yikes, better luck in S6 or like after the official patch notes come out lol. This makes me have even more reason to not play. There are some decent balance changes overall but Sorc is still soooooo ick. Class is just hardly fluid at all 😔and feels super underwhelmingly bad on a casual level.
Why are the devs so bad at their job? Why isn't Sorc getting a massive buff?
And you guessed it. Sorcs got nerfed. Lol. By season 10 sorcs will have no enchantments and only 1 skill slot on the action bar.
So again, only a few % change for sorcerers and nothing fundamental... Why do I even expect anything of Blizzard nowadays...
There are many significant % changes. Theyre just all in the wrong direction.
Blizz: Yea maybe giving classes like Barb and Rogue multiple wep slots over the other classes is out of band and unfair Also Blizz: Buffs barb and rogue AGAIN while kneecapping Sorc, Necro, and Druid. Imbecilic
RIP sorc. Back to necro or barb as usual I guess.
Just take Sorc out of the game at this point. They have no idea what to do with it.
Missed the stream, but sounds like no social tools with the season? Damn, guess it's hoping that they ship with the expansion. Otherwise looks ok from the notes, will have to watch the stream later.
It could still come with the expansion, this stream was strictly Season 5 PTR. Didnt talk much at all about the new expansion. July 18th is the next livestream where they are going to dive deep into spiritborn, so hopefully something there.
Oh, a unique that makes rogue immune; surely that won’t ve abused 🙄
This is mental. Sorc will be even worse than now.
No one: Absolutely no one: Blizzard: sorcerer must be nerfed
These are the worst patch notes since S1
Word has it that barbs and necros sell the most RMT shop cosmetics. In other words: the metrics want us to play barb or necro. Product decisions are business decisions.
Look at all those hardcore Sorcerer Nerfs. Cooldowns nerfed. Staff nerfed. Focus nerfed. All Defensive Skills nerfed. All Paragon Node multipliers nerfed. They even mentioned in the Campfire Chat that all Crowd Control Duration will be nerfed. Sorc now has zero defenses left, and they gutted the already bad damage even further. But hey you get shiny Chain Lightning pants that drain your mana like crazy in return. Oh, and we also gave you a 4-second cooldown nerf on your Chain Lightning enchants just so you don't get any stupid ideas.
Ice Armor Max Life Base Shield amount increased from 25% to 40%. No longer gains increased Shield based on damage. Flame Shield Cooldown begins when Invulnerability ends. Are you fucking kidding me. I guess sorcs have to have +100k life just to be playable. How are we supposed to kill bosses?
Devs say - “we’re trying to catch other classes up to barb” Devs - buff barb while nerfing other classes.
Ultimatum?
These sorc changes is this for real what the fuck em I reading no survivability buffs but nerfs less cooldown reduction because rip offhand implicit longer cooldown on teleport. No more gain more Ice Armor from attacks and there are even damage nerfs in there lol? What is this?
Tell me you dont know what you are doing without actually telling me you dont know what you are doing. Im not even mad anymore, im more like dumbfounded by these dev's cluelessness on how Sorc should work.
So let me get this straight - they cut sorcs survivability in half, they remove flame shield from the game, so how are sorcs supposed to survive in the pit now again?
Sorc get rekt
The last news: The game change name to : Barbarian IV
Wtf??? Burning Instinct nerf, why? Blizzard buffed Incinerate in season 4 only to nerf it to the ground in Season 5?? What is the point of this at all? So confusing. Who is in charge of these changes, these are hot garbage.
Why tf sorcerers best nodes are capped ?! 😭
Wtf is going on, basic skills are boring as fuck, why are basic skills being pushed to be meta I wanna do epic things not spam the same basic attack over and over even if it's powerful, that's so lame They really shot themselves in the foot when they made crit and vuln damage additive. The entire game and itemisation was balanced around them being multiplicative. Now attack speed is king and basic skills benefit from that stat the most.