A lot has happened since the early release and launch of Diablo 4 and we wanted to take time to go over some of the updates, patches, findings and community highlights. Like everyone else, we've been in game testing things out and churning out a lot of new content this last week. This is still just the beginning of our coverage as we fill in the rest of our Side Quest and Dungeon Guides as well as start working on many new Endgame Build Guides.
We also released D4Planner yesterday, so everyone can go make their own builds and share them with the community on our Public Database. We've recently updated our Tier Lists to better reflect the recent changes and plan to do this on a regular basis since the game is often changing in its early days. Let's get into what's been going on this last week and go over what we're planning for in the future.
Diablo 4 Global Launch & Reception
Since the Early Access period it's been clear that Diablo 4 has been well received by long time fans and newcomers alike. Reigning in high scores across a vast array of review sites and organizations, the game is shaping up to be one of the most popular and highly rated launches in recent memory. There are a lot of reason why Diablo 4 is getting such great feedback and why the future for the game is looking amazing.
Solid Foundation
The game has unmatched graphics and audio throughout. The Campaign has proven to be an amazing journey filled with some of the best cinematic scenes we've ever seen in a video game. Blizzard has always been known for their ability to deliver on these metrics and they haven't disappointed. Another thing they always get right is the smooth, fluid gameplay across all classes helps you be effective while playing your character. When you hit or cast a spell you can almost feel it, and the effects on screen make everything look so real. At the end of the day, the core foundation of the game is solid, which is a key first step to becoming an amazing game.
Smooth Launch
Launches for a game of this size always go just how we expect them to, terribly. However, Blizzard had other plans for Diablo 4. The vast majority of users were able to log in right away during early access and global launch. There were some queues and downtime here and there, but overall I think it's fair to say the launch was an absolute success. Unfortunately PlayStation players weren't as lucky, massive log in issues were present for them early but at the end of the day they all got in there and started slaying demons with the rest of us.
Marketing
Blizzard has gone above and beyond marketing Diablo 4 and making sure the whole world knows about it. Let's recap some of the things they've done: Hell's Ink, Commercials, KFC, Halsey and SUGA song, Developer updates, Celebrity Appearances, Race to 100 Lilith Statue, Twitch Mount giveaway and so much more. Plastering Diablo 4 everywhere and anywhere has all eyes on them, and nearly everyone liked what they saw.
It's reported that Diablo 4 has earned more than $666 Million dollars in the first 5 days of sales, setting a new Blizzard Record. Let's look at some other staggering #'s they've reported
- 276 billion total monsters killed
- 317 million player deaths
- 276 million total hours played
- 5.8 million total deaths
- 430,000 players killed in PvP battle
Dev Grind Continues
They have kept this going after launch as well, teasing that they're already working on the next two major patches for the game while doing regular updates and bug fixes to show that they're heavily invested in the success and longevity of their game. What we currently have with Diablo 4 feels great and has shown incredible promise for the future. When a company this big has a game that starts off this solid, it's hard to imagine it going anywhere but somewhere fantastic. I'll enjoy looking back at this post at the end of the year to see how far Diablo 4 has come and to fantasize more about its future.
On June 16th at 11 a.m PDT, Blizzard is hosting their first Campfire Stream to discuss the launch of the game, feedback from the community and the future of Diablo 4. It will include general manager Rod Fergusson, game director Joe Shely, associate production director Tiffany Wat, and associate director of community Adam Fletcher. Visit the official Diablo Twitch and YouTube channels to watch!
Updates and Patches
Updates, patches and bug fixes have been going on since early access and many builds and items have been effected by it. Below is a quick rundown of a few more notable patches:
- June 3rd, just a couple of days after things kicked off, Patch 1.0.2d brought with it significant changes to most classes.
- June 8th brought more hot fixes focused on making Pinnacle Lilith and World Bosses harder.
- June 9th is when they took out Edgemaster’s Aspect and Aspect of Berserk Ripping to fix their associate bugs.
- June 12th, Edgemaster’s Aspect and Aspect of Berserk Ripping were re-enabled
- June 13th, Adjusted Elite monster density in dungeons, read developer note below. Looks like they really want us riding that horse around instead of leveling up..
Community Highlights
Many notable things have happened in this first week and we'd like to recognize some achievements in the community. It's always a treat when a new game comes out to be able to see the races to max level or players trying to kill the hardest bosses. People had many triumphs and unfortunately plenty of tragic deaths along the way, but these legends below will be remembered forever:
- Rob2628 - First softcore player to reach level 100. Anyone who knows Rob already knew that he would get there first, the man is unstoppable when it comes to grinding and seeps efficiency out of every pore.
- Carn -- First hardcore player to reach level 100. Blasting with a solid group Carn, nugiyen, Zizaran and Steelmage were all able to get there very quickly.
- Wudijo - First solo self found hardcore player to reach level 100. Coming just behind many others playing in groups, wudijo made impressive time on his solo climb.
D4Planner
D4Planner is Live! Yesterday we revealed the newest comprehensive character builder from Riv! It allows you to build your character with every detail. It has a full Skill Tree, Paragon Board Renown and Calculations (calculations are still being worked on and don't show skills or Legendary Effects yet). You can log in to Maxroll, create your own profiles and share them on our Public Builds Database!
Public Builds Database
Included in D4Planner is the option to post your own builds into the public database for others to see and even rank! The filter systems at the top let you sort by relevant class or part of the game, and the search function can even filter by a content creator's name! Go check out the builds, add to the collection, and let's see which builds rise to the top!
Build Guides & Class Overview
Build guides are changing often and sometimes the changes are widespread, this makes it difficult to balance keeping up with the current meta and leaving guides up that people are currently half way though. We understand it's hard to see a guide you've been following go through some drastic changes before you've finished your build, but we feel it is imperative to keep our content up to date so the builds you do make get the job done.
In light of this, we have recently updated all our current build guides and will continue adjusting them and reformatting them as we move forward as the game settles down. We hope as more bugs are sorted out and things normalize that we'll end up with some of the most comprehensive and effective build guides possible. On top of the updates, we are working on several new Endgame Guides across all classes and are heavily focusing on filling in our catalog of build guides as much as possible before Season 1. Let's talk about each class a bit.
Barbarian
The Barbarian has seen some of the most drastic changes since launch. Whirlwind started off as an incredibly powerful yet buggy build. Some nerfs and adjustments addressing the bugs with this build have brought it back down to reality as it finds itself much more on par with other Barbarian Builds. After more testing, Hammer of the Ancients is proving to be the new powerhouse build, not only for Barbarian but for all classes. Thorns is also making a name for itself and we plan to write an endgame guide for that build soon.
Druid
The Druid has had some adjustments, specifically impacting the Pulverize build. Pulverize is still an incredibly strong build but has been nerfed a bit. Due to this and further testing we've found that the Werewolf Tornado build is moving to the top of the Druid ranks and after some more testing with a Stormclaw build we think it may scratch S tier in Endgame content as well. We have plenty of Bears on our team, so this class will have several new Endgame builds coming very soon!
Necromancer
Necromancer is one of the only classes that has mostly seen buffs in the patches and updates. Bone Spear and Bone Spirit are still running through the game with ease and other Necromancer builds are coming online on an almost daily basis. We're posting an Endgame Sever guide right around the time of this post, and will be cooking up many other Necromancer builds as we keep testing them out.
Rogue
Twisting Blades has been a crowd favorite since launch and it continues to perform exceptionally well even after a few nerfs. Melee Rogue isn't the only option though, Penetrating Shot, Flurry, Barrage and Rapid Fire are all performing at a very high level and with more tweaking will show that ranged Rogues are one of the strongest archetypes in Diablo 4. Flurry and Barrage Endgame Build Guides are coming soon, and Rapid Fire should follow shortly after.
Sorcerer
Sorcerer feels very balanced and allows the player to follow the element of their choosing without any major drawbacks to power or quality of life. They're arguably the best class for overall leveling experience and can take you decently far into the endgame with the majority of their builds. As we continue to play this class, we find it does struggle in high end Nightmare Dungeons, resulting in the majority of Sorcerer builds dropping a Tier or two on our Nightmare Dungeon Pushing Tier List recently. Like the other classes, new things come to light every day and new builds may arise!
Tier Lists
Tier Lists are tough to get right at any point in a game's life cycle, especially difficult early on. We've recently met with our entire team to discuss and update these recently, and will be doing so on a regular basis. With the game rapidly changing, don't be surprised if a build topples down from S tier to the bottom or rises from the ashes to suddenly be competitive. We have multiple creators playing each class, so as we continue to play and learn more, these Tier Lists will become rock solid over time. Check out the Tier Lists below to see where your build stacks up in different game modes in this constantly changing environment!
Side Quests & Dungeons
We've built a Side Quest filter that allows you to sort them by each zone. Shattered Peaks, Dry Steppes and Scoglen are finished, and we're working on the rest as we speak. This section should be complete in a week or two!
Like Side Quests, we've also been working on finishing the rest of our Dungeon Guides. In total, we've published about 50 new Side Quest & Dungeon Guides in the last week. So, if you need to find what dungeon has a certain Aspect just search for the Aspect on the dungeon page!
Comments from our Creators
Many creators across all of our branches have been diving into Diablo 4 this last week, We wanted to share some feedback and comments from some of them to see how players of other ARPG's have been enjoying the game or what they're planning for their adventures.
"The more I dig into the Necromancer and see the awesome setups that everyone in the community has been testing out, the more i'm inspired to try the wildest builds I can think of. From zDPS Proc Blood Lance, to no-spender Miasma Corpse Explosion builds, the Necromancer has a lot of depth to explore. Maybe some day we'll get a movement speed skill, but until then Evade will have to do!" -Macrobioboi
Diablo 4 is a brutal entry into this beloved franchise. Playing multiple test builds and seeing where the difficulty has landed has forced me to rise to the challenge. Searching for the right Legendary Aspect, parsing Rare items to upgrade, making every Skill & Paragon point matter is a breath of fresh air, if only before another encounter with the Butcher - I owe him a few more kills. The bones are good, waiting to see the depths of changes for the first Season." - Dredscythe
"A beautifully simple ARPG experience with visceral combat and an addictive endgame-loop, only held down by its incredibly tedious MMO aspects and time-wasting town-trips. The cracks of low longevity began to show after some time, but way later than any average player would mind and nothing some content patches can't fix. This will be an ARPG behemoth for years to come." - Palsteron
"The core gameplay been pretty fun with the slight MMO-like aspect that they've approached with seeing people walking in towns or in random world events or world bosses makes this world feels livier, have been messing around with different builds for the rogue during early stage of the game and stuck with Death Trap Rogue for the 1st 50 levels as it provide a ton of crowd controls that basically carried me into World Tier 4 with ease but recently after re-specing to Penetrating Shot Rogue, It feels satisfying watching packs explode like firing a .50 cal, especially when partnered with a couple of friends playing classes that has ability to vacuum packs together." - Reitear
"We're in the golden age of ARPGs, Torchlight Infinite recently released, Last Epoch got a massive patch, at Exilecon there's going to be more news about Path of Exile 2, and last but not least Diablo IV released! A new Diablo title is a once-in-a-decade occurrence, and Diablo IV is perfectly positioned to be the best thing to ever happen to the ARPG market. Not because it's the best ARPG ever made (though there is a lot to like!) But because it's the most accessible, the perfect entry point to the genre for people who looked at the Path of Exile passive tree and immediately uninstalled. Over the past 10 days, I dove into the world of Sanctuary to find out what makes Diablo IV Tick. The campaign, and story started strong and ended strong, the minute to minute gameplay is great and character building is more in-depth than it first appears. That isn't to say the game is perfect, personally I find monster crowd control to be excessive and dread re-doing my renown grind... but hopefully these things can be addressed in a future patch! Overall I've had a lot of fun with Diablo IV, I've played a Lightning Sorc, then swapped to Ice Shards (because frozen enemies can't CC you!) and now I'm following in Rathma's footsteps by experimenting with a bit of necromancy." - Tenkiei
"Season launched - Honestly did not expect it to go as smooth as it did. Servers were stable, and no issues whatsoever getting in. Not even a queue. Played through the story and enjoyed it for the most part. Some things I did not enjoy though, like Rathma dying just like that and Donut losing to a wall. After being a campaign/lore andy the real game began. I've gotten a Barb, Druid and Sorc to 80+ in search of my favorite build and what I’ll be looking to main in s1. The most promising so far is Druid because of its diversity, there’s a lot of really strong builds you can start on that class, like Pulverize, Claw and Shred. I did not enjoy Tornado even though it does insane single target. Just felt too clunky. Sorc was a lot of fun, but unfortunately the Arc Lash nerfs early left the class with one strong build: Ice shard Shatter. It was a really fun build, but it fell off tankiness wise as I tried taking it into higher tier nightmare dungeons. I hope Blizzard looks into this class and buffs skills to bring more variety to it. The Barbarian is the class I’m currently playing as Whirlwind which imo is the best build in the game, even after many nerfs it still feels great, however damage and survivability is not as good as the druid builds, once I got the aspects I needed for it to sustain Fury it just popped off. I’ll try HotA next and see just how strong that really is, hopefully enjoy it before it’s nerfed since Blizzard seems to hate Barb (still waiting for aspects to be re-enabled btw) I look forward to future updates to the game, there are so many glaring QOL issues that I’d love to see fixed but for a start I think d4 left me with a good impression. A great start to hopefully many more good seasons to come. - Crouching_Tuna
Future Plans
This is just the beginning of our Diablo 4 coverage. Over the next few weeks we'll be finishing up the Side Quests and Dungeons for all Zones while working on new endgame build guides. We plan to have a interactive World Map with all the goodies coming soon as well as many other new articles and updates before Season 1 comes around.
If you haven't already, head over to our Discord and select the D4 role in #roles to stay up to date with our content development. Sanctuary here we come!