Since Microsoft bought Activision and the Blizzard franchise things seem to have quickly deteriorated. When long time players of their Diablo IP thought it couldn’t get worse than Activision, Microsoft clearly came in, doubled down saying “Hold my beer”.
Current game state is a complete train wreck. It doesn’t matter if you are the mobile crowd, MMO or RPG group. There simply is no joy in playing this game.
The grind for materials and quality item drops have been complaints of players since Diablo 4 first released. Each “look we are listening” update this continued to get worse.
Suddenly the Microsoft marketing hype train kicked in high gear. Massive changes coming to the Vessel of Hatred expansion. More skill options, increased ability to make your perfect gear. War plans coming as a new end game activity marketed as play your way, choose what you want to do while you continue chasing build improvements. Then April 27, 2026 the expansion drops.
Many build defining passive skills gone, all powerful legendary aspects were moved to the skill tree and then removed from the base game if you do not purchase the expansion. Yet before the expansion these legendary aspects were able to be placed on our gear and they all were found in the wild from dungeons and loot drops. All of it gone, now paid for through expansion purchase only.
Custom making your gear is now massive random roll chance to hit what works for your build. Reduced material drops for the new Cube to craft your gear. Bottlenecked further by a massive increase of loot drops that absolutely are nothing more than junk to recycle.
You got the season flavor where the majority of high power builds are sorcerer using lightening and broken overpowered items. We see this right out of the box. The sorcerer blizzard skill, typically cold and now having an option to be a static field. Great for build identity. However the static field option with 15 points spent on blizzard does 11 million damage without any aspect boost. While the standard cold blizzard gives a mere 500 thousand damage.
Further we see this in the new class Warlock, release with the expansion. Most of those builds see what streamers call B-Tier, weak not going to get you far in the game.
Great a new “loot filter”, so players can set what loot they see to ease the garbage dropping. Even that wasn’t done right. It is an account setting so one filter for all classes you play? Changing specific items such as you want a greater affix of dexterity for Rogue and intelligence for Sorcerer. They couldn’t just label it primary stat? Doing so would make it work for whatever class you were playing. Now with the hyped up loot filter you have to set it specifically in the game settings for each specific character. Limited on how many you can have so it becomes more that a toggle on/off based on class.
War Plans, just WOW… No you cannot play what you want. You have three options to reset the random generated tree of choices they provide you. Once three are used, you MUST play that plan. Of course the plan has the things you don’t want to do locked in. So you are FORCED to take the option in some cases. This isn’t play what you want in any way.
The affix pools have changed greatly. This creates a 90% chance of failure in crafting your item. Then you run out of materials and speed a week farming them. Rinse and repeat. But wait, I only reference materials, what about the item you had as a base to start from. Well that will take up to months to replace. Plenty of time to find more materials, to tank again and start over.
This neither progression nor fun. It is ball and chain.
No, I don’t want my gear all at once. But I want to find gear I can improve much quicker. If tanking is 90%, items with build defining stats need to rain down. Not garbage to leave on the ground.
With all of this I have managed to get my perferred cold sorcerer through a pit level 105. I can run her on torment 10 giving the best option for more quality drops to fall. This outside of any meta or bugged interactions. More than enough to crowd control even the unstoppable Butcher, and the Greater Boss Andariel. Pit bosses stagger three times throughout my fight. The build is solid and works great. Then elemental ground clutter with one-hit mechanics wipe me out every time. Every time.
Even fighting Andariel, she is staggered and still casts the massive fire ground attack. Really, staggered and still casting ground effects? Every player even partners that are streamers complain about the massive one-hit and ground effect mechanics. Those beat you not the bosses.
Clearly I have more to say about the state of this game. I will also share my build, including video in a future post.
Marketing thinks time in game drives more cosmetic sales. But they miss one part of the equation. Happy players spend money and their players are not happy. And I will not buy another expansion until it is on massive discount and only if it is proven to fit my gaming needs to the point the game is fun again.