Ladies and gentlemen and Herod of all ages, with the PTR4 Diablo 4 season 4 wrapping up pretty much very soon after this, we’re in the last stages of our time testing out all the changes that are being made. One of the largest changes is both how the classes work with changes being made all around, but also simultaneously changes to equipment in general that has a larger effect on the classes and builds too.
Overview of Class Changes in Diablo 4 Season 4
So today we’re just going to go over essentially the results of how this has left the classes feeling on the PTR, and I will attempt to not judge things solely by their numbers as developers have already stated that numbers are not final. So, I wouldn’t expect Dust Devil Barbarian, for example, to still be doing exactly what it’s doing by the time it hits live servers. But that said, Barbarian is still going to be first up today at the top of the projected Power Rankings.
Barbarian: A Force to be Reckoned With
There were some minor Nerfs to parts of Barbarian’s kit, but that comes hand in hand with a ton of gain that Barbarian is getting from the new systems in general. Tempering lets you be more specific with your affixes, and Barbarian has more equipment slots than any other class, which just means you can have more aices total. So Barbarian can achieve a level of build personalization and uniqueness that makes them special even in this new setting.
Past that, there were also Buffs to Dust Devil, massive ones as well as a new legendary that makes Dust Devil damage scale with their size. Tempering and masterworking lets you make Dust Devils absolutely insanely screen-wide large if you want to. Cooldown reduction is another thing that you can focus really hard on with the new equipment system between greater affixes and masterworking put together, and that lets Barbarian benefit massively mostly just by increasing shut up time.
Optimizing Barbarian’s Skill Rotation
Charge got nerfed by reducing the cooldown reduction it gets by using it when hitting enemies, but that doesn’t really matter if you lower the general cooldown reduction of Charge a massive amount in the first place. So that lets it use that without having the Nerf really affect it, but it also affects every other skill in your kit at the same time. So you don’t even have to use Charge for that purpose anymore, and that just gives Barbarian a ton of defensive benefits and a ton of other options as well as the clear offensive ones that I can give you too.
To put it bluntly, even if they were to reduce the flat numbers on Dust Devil damage itself, Barbarian is just positioned
Analysis of Class Strengths in Diablo 4 Season 4
So well with the nature of these changes and the way the class works in general that it will, barring some sort of unforeseen game-breakingly strong synergy and seasonal mechanics or something, be the strongest Class come season 4. Just as it has been honestly before this but hopefully the Gap will be a bit smaller between this and the other classes than it has been up to this point.
Sorcerer: Rising to Prominence
Second up, then I’ve got the Sorcerer. Sorcerer was already in a great place before these changes, and while getting pretty much no Nerfs of actual note, sorcerer got a lot of Buffs and avenues for potential synergy thanks to the tempering system especially. Such as things like more damage types to push the bonuses from the Taria effect for more bonus damage in general, various types of cooldown reduction, as well as being incredible for sorcerer in just nearly any build.
There are also lots of ways to build in insane amounts of resource cost reduction now too which could have some larger ramifications on multiple different building for the class. The class as a whole is looking way stronger, and I think while Barbarian is likely the strongest of all the classes currently, one of the best features that it has is that it has about eight different viable strong endgame playstyles.
Expanding Sorcerer’s Playstyle Diversity
The thing about sorcerer here is even though I think its peak is going to be lower than barbs, I think its previously less powerful styles of play have now been given the potential to be far closer to sorcerer’s high-end, creating a lot more build parity and letting you experience more different playstyles without feeling like you’re falling behind too much.
There, the new Frozen orb conjuration infinite Loop unique and builds around that are just really really fun looking. It does depend on the seasonal Mechanics for season 4 as well, but if there is anything particularly lucky hit chance-based, sorcerer may have some interesting interactions due to just how many conjurations you can make with this freely creating from this unique while you’re also firing out tons of Frozen orbs. It could be quite fun and quite potent.
Necromancer: Master of the Shadows
Third up, I’m actually putting Necromancer. I think it is pretty close to Rogue right now, which I’m going to have in fourth for how things are looking at the immediate moment. But I am leaning slightly necro mostly just because I think that they have gained far more improvements across the board, more widespread and more impactful.
A big interesting interaction that’s popped up on the PTR is tempering affixes to add bonus projectiles to blight. Blight has high lucky hit chance and for whatever reason they made every bonus projectile also have equal lucky hit chance. So combo that with some lucky hit chance things that will boost your build like the earlier mentioning tempering AIC lucky hit chance to apply Shadow damage working the shadow BL keepy passive for necro and you’ve got a ridiculous feedback loop of damage creation.
But most players are assuming that that is unintended and that they will probably fix that up in some way. But I would hope that they won’t ring it in too hard just the bright amount to let necromancers still have a bit of fun with lucky hit effects next season.
On top of that though, we also have the overarching minion changes that completely revolutionize the concept of minion builds.
Exploring New Possibilities with Minion Builds
Revitalize the concept of Minion builds and there were so many different kinds of Minion builds before that were just nearly unusable in proper end game at least so the fact that all of these just now function completely properly because minions get 100% of player stats transferred over makes a massive amount more viable play styles for this class and really just lets you experiment with whatever side of the class fantasy that you actually want to play.
Rogue: Embracing Versatility
Fourth up then I’ve got Rogue, and Rogue is a pretty passive one really for me on the way that it’s improved. There’s no like crazy balance changes there’s no one thing that really sticks out there’s no singular ability Synergy looking absolutely nuts breaking the game. But they are just fundamentally getting a lot of goodness to the kit with the changes that are coming.
People have recently been playing around with stun grenade builds because they changed all stun grenade legendary aspects in the game to increase the damage of all of your other grenade skills, and this has made some pretty interesting builds because if you put all these together it just makes stun grenades themselves scale to the moon and make them actually quite viable as a full play style focusing around the stun grenades themselves.
Enhancing Rogue’s Equipment Customization
As far as general power increases to the class, the main things of note in my opinion are that Rogue has three weapon slots, so the second most slots of any class, and tempering and masterworking functionally give an even larger boost to the classes that have more equipment slots than there was even in the old system.
And there was definitely a difference but then even past that, there is also a specific tempering AIC for rogue for resource lots that increases the amount of uses that you get from an imbuement skill cast so you can literally just imbue more hits per cast which means that you can have more of your hits imbue just in general which has so much interesting potential Synergy creation that it just leaves me sort of frothing at the mouth thinking about how that could turn out come the actual season release.
Druid: Consistency and Adaptability
Then in the final slot today for our classes, I have the Druid. Druid is still doing well honestly Druid is doing great. I think the gap between the top and bottom class is actually far smaller come season 4 than it used to be at least until we do the seasonal mechanics of course cuz those could change things up but Druid I think sort of has gained the least the biggest changes for the class are companions just being improved in their scaling all across the board so now all of them are viable and using them together is pretty solid too but that doesn’t do much for the builds that don’t use companions so again it does raise up a lot of the unused later game play styles for Druid like it does for a lot of the other classes but rid specifically.
Assessing the Druid’s Changes
I think is gaining less to their General class power than the others. On top of that, they have a very standard amount of weapons, either two one hands or two and so limited tempering effect. Though their weapon tempers are definitely not bad by any means, including one of my personal favorites being additional Boulder projectiles when you cast it. Put that into the standard Boulder builds have been running around recently and you could basically double your Boulder actual output which is really funny for that kind of style of play.
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