While PTR is slowly coming to an end, the Maxroll Diablo 4 Team shares its feedback and thoughts about class balance and changes in Season 6 PTR!
Barb
The nerf train keeps on chugging into Season 6 for the Barbarian with some serious blows to some of its best performing builds. Whirlwind will no longer be able to pump out massive amounts of Dust Devils due to its interaction with animation cancelling being fixed. The Starlight Aspect and Invigorating Fury Passive Skill overheal combo, which enabled Overpower-based builds like Death Blow, Hammer of the Ancients and even Upheaval to thrive, is seeing a rework that pretty much cripples this playstyle. Flay and Rend are on life support, and aren't expected to make a full recovery any time soon (but we can hope).
However, with that said, not all is lost. The newly introduced skill, Mighty Throw, is showing signs of great potential and may likely be one of the best builds - it's already clearing the highest level Pit even with unoptimized setups. Our old friend Bash is also alive and well, and will continue to be a top performer in pretty much all areas of the game. Earthquake and Dust Devil setups of all forms will likely see a rise in popularity with the addition of the Force of Nature Paragon Node and buffs to the Rumble and Twister Glyphs, as well as several other similarly themed Aspects and paragon nodes. Lastly, Thorns is getting some love with the additon of the Barbed Carapace Key Passive, and is looking very strong in its current form. It's unlikely that this new power will remain as is (looking at you, Needleflare Aspect), but who knows, it may prove too sharp for even the devs to touch safely.
— Snail
Druid
With a massive buff to Fleshrender, a rework to Innate Debilitating Roar, and the introduction of Rabid Bear Aspect, the Shout Druid is poised to take the top spot for Druids in Season 6 - keep an eye out for this new endgame guide as we approach the expansion launch! Hurricane, with its duration tempers more widely available in the Utility slot, as well as Boulder and the many variants of Landslide all prove worthy contenders. Outside of some anomalous damage bugs present in the PTR, newcomer Stone Burst has failed to impress except as a support skill when paired with Shattered Defenses. Shred gets a nice perk in the form of the Agile Wolf utility aspect (which is also dealing unintended amounts of damage as of the PTR), but isn't improved enough to warrant strong consideration outside of its bug. And though Companions are improved by the additions of the One with Nature Key Passive and Untamed Paragon board, they still come up short in comparison to the Druid's top builds.
Pulverize received a handy buff to Raging Upgrade and is one of the few benefactors of the reworked Ursine Strength Key Passive and Hunter's Zenith. Still, it likely remains on the high end of the "serviceable" category along with Wind Shear and Lightning Storm. Of all the Druid builds, Tornado is certainly one of them - best to look elsewhere next Season.
— Boiler
Sorcerer
Overall, PTR changes did very little to influence the the Sorcerer builds. Lightning Spear received a very small direct nerf via Conjuration Mastery cap. This cap however, is so high that in most practical cases it doesn't affect the build at all. The only content where you can realistically get more than 30 Conjurations is high teir Pit pushing and even there you can avoid the nerf by playing a less CDR-focused version of the build with Heir of Perdition. Other than this one nerf, Firewall and Blizzard gained useful weapon tempers but they don't do enough to significantly shake up the rankings of the builds. All the other changes (paragon reworks, new passives, uniques and runewords) buff all the builds by roughly the same amount.
New Key Passive Enlightenment is extremely good and goes into nearly every build. It's also way too easy to activate because it works with all spells you cast indirectly. This may be unintended. Familiar is a nice utility skill for builds that have a slot free, but as a primary damage source it's really bad. One exception to that is Fire Enhanced Familiar's Burning aura. This effect is extremely strong in the early game: you cast Familiar and for the next 8 seconds all mobs you run into automatically die. Unfortunately, it's a DoT which tend to scale poorly in the end game, and it also doesn't grow with Familiar Ranks so later on it falls off hard. None of the new Sorcerer Aspects are worth talking about and Sidhe Bindings are a joke.
— Northwar
Necromancer
Season 6 brings a Tidal Wave of options for the Necromancer enjoyers out there. Ultimate Skills are finally on the table for powerful endgame options, with many of our Core Skills gaining tons of damage and new tools for handling every content type. The Builds currently on the rise are Blood Wave, Soulrift, Bone Spirit, Blight, Sever, and Blood Lance. During early game and Leveling, Minion builds will still perform very well, but they sadly fall off in the Endgame. RIP to Minion Necro. Similarly, Bone Spear basically feel off the face of Sanctuary... but there's whispers of a Late Game focused Deathless Visage focused build that is quite powerful.
For the early game, every single build will use the new Ultimate Soulrift! It offers a ton of Damage, Survivability, Utility and Essence management that can't be beat. As well as the new Key Passive Affliction, turning your Iron Maiden casts into free damage and offering an easy multiplier for every build. If you're lucky enough to find Cursed Aura, slap that onto your build to generate free Essence and automatically apply both Decrepify and Iron Maiden, you'll thank us later!
— MacroBioBoi
Rogue
Victimize is back on the menu with Dance of Knives as the main triggering skill for those who enjoyed the explosive playstyle back in Season 4. Having the damage decoupled from the skill that triggers Victimize, it opens up a wide variety of skills to choose from. Dance of Knives appears to be the most solid choice, due to the high number of Knives thrown per second. The Umbracrux also makes a re-appearance as that one gives us an additional target to proc Victimize. The new Helmet, Heir of Perdition perfectly slots into the Dance of Knives Rogue Build, as it has a lot of desirable stats and a strong aspect. Utilizing the whole Poison Synergy Kit around Poison Imbuement with the Mixed Upgrade, Alchemical Advantage, Eldritch Bounty and Poison Trap, Victimize copies the element of the respective skill triggering it, allowing us to benefit from all the juicy Poison buffs. Dance of Knives is also an excellent leveling skill, when coupled with Momentum and Shadow Imbuement in the early game. It allows for fast movement and full screen clears without having to rely on Energy at all.
The big alternative to Victimize is the all new Rogue Key Passive Alchemical Admixture. Buffing up Imbuement Potency is mostly great for Poison Imbuement and one of the best skills to couple it with is likely Twisting Blades which now finaly has access to a Chance to Hit Twice temper. The old glory of TB Poison is back in style! The all popular Andariel's Visage is left in the dust by all the new toys available, but due to it's high Attack Speed and Life per Hit, it might make its way back into some builds that can spare the helmet slot. Ranged builds seem to suffer a similar fate. While still strong overall (and the evergreen of Heartseeker Victimize lurking to emerge from the shadows) they get beaten by the new melee toys in terms of efficiency. Other top permorning builds include a Death Trap focused build and the reliable Rapid Fire with Scoundrel's Kiss.
The new 5 Board Limitation puts Ultimates and No Witnesses in a difficult spot, even though getting enough Ultimate damage is not difficult anymore with how high certain Glyphs can scale it through amplifying magic nodes. Using ultimates mostly requires a large amount of Cooldown Reduction or spending energy for Preparation but luckily, the Petrify Rune Yom can proc No Witnesses instead. The new Board Danse Macabre has a lot of cool things and a strong node going for it, but suffers from not benefitting Victimize. If other builds emerge, that focus more on other key passives, Danse Macabre will surely find a spot in those.
Lastly, a fun and still very potent build that finally comes to fruition is Shadow Step with Victimize or Momentum. With the new Shadow Step Cleave temper and suffienctly available cooldown reduction, it already shows promissing results as one of the fastest Speedfarmers out there!
— M1PY
Season 6 is coming!
Our focus is now on the Season 6 and Vessel of Hatred expansion. As usual, the Maxroll Team will provide you with the most accurate resources and guides out there! We're continuing to work on more updates and bug fixes for D4Planner! Stay awhile and learn!
With that said, head over to our Discord to stay up to date with our content development and to make the most of your Season 5 experience! Also don't forget to check out our Youtube channel!
Written by: Maxroll Team
