Blizzard shared some details about Diablo 4 updates and innovations with game lovers.
Diablo 4 Deputy Community Manager Adam Fletcher, along with members of the development team, discussed additional updates coming to the game in Patch 1.2.0, including class and damage balance changes, resistance and item updates, new Unique items, and other improvements from Season of Blood. These changes will be released on October 17th, with plenty more content planned, such as Patch 1.2.1 arriving at the end of October.
Details about Diablo IV updates
The majority of the fun in Diablo IV comes from discovering builds specific to a particular playstyle. These changes are intended to encourage this experimentation without compromising the player’s feeling of empowerment.
Adam Fletcher said this about this:
“In Season of Blood, Elemental Resistances will become an even more important part of your character’s ability to survive. Using methods like item selection, Skill Tree, Potions, and the Perfection Board, the higher your Resistance to a given element, the more valuable each percentage of your total effective Health becomes. For example, getting 60-65% Fire Resistance is much more valuable than getting 20-25%.”
“We’ve received a lot of feedback from our community that Unique items are not as exciting and impactful as they should be. In Season of Blood, we’ve put a lot of design work into our Unique items and updated nearly every one in the game. Unique Items will have completely new stats to make them even more powerful, expanding the scope of existing traits and adding previously unavailable features (like Critical Hits) to slots.”
“The way Damage is calculated is being changed to reward players for investing in primary damage sources and ensuring they can remain competitive while doing so. Different damage stacks will still be available, but the base amount of bonus damage these methods provide will be multiplicative. The remainder of the bonus damage dealt to these categories will be added additively, making Overpower builds much more competitive than before. Monsters and enemies have been rebalanced according to new player power.”
“There are also a number of Class Improvements coming to all classes, such as scaling effects for many mechanics. This includes increased damage to the Barbarian’s Blood Rage ability and the Druid’s Victimization ability, as well as an increased rate at which the Sorcerer’s Incinerate ability strengthens. “These changes are designed to align with the aforementioned adjustments to Elemental Resistances, Uniques, and Damage Sets to provide greater build diversity and flexibility.”