In the last Campfire stream, some important things were revealed about the class changes we can expect with the next patch for Diablo 4 Season 3. So, this is about the balancing.
Developers aim to prevent builds from becoming excessively powerful over time, as it could lead players to feel compelled to stick to that one dominant build for competitiveness. This scenario mirrors the situation with the Ball Lightning Sorceress this season, where other sorcerers were scarcely observed, except for a few using Firewall in PvP. Striking a better balance is the goal, incorporating both buffs, nerfs, and bug fixes.
Let’s take a look at the buffs first.
Barbarian Buffs
Barbarian’s Charge skill should do a lot more damage in the future and could possibly even become OP.
Key passive skills that are used less often will get a buff (e.g., Walking Arsenal). And also the Shouts will be balanced in relation to the other skills.
Currently, they are almost a must-have for most Barb builds. This may change now. It should still be an option to use multiple shouts in the skill bar, but it should not feel like a duty.
However, this could ultimately mean that some previous builds will lose a bit of power, but that won’t hurt too bad at all. As long as you have plenty of Diablo 4 Gold, making new builds will be easy.
Sorcerer Buffs
For the Mage class, Critical Strikes from Lightning Spear will also make enemies vulnerable.
Some legendary paragon nodes will be buffed, and the Meteor skill will also get a big push forward, including a new unique Diablo 4 Item. The Starfall Coronet transfers meteor into a cooldown skill with quite a short cooldown time and grants additional Meteor strikes, so that a much larger area is attacked overall.
The preview in the stream looked very impressive. So far, we’ve hardly seen any builds that have used Meteor. Maybe that will change soon.
Rogue Buffs
With the Rogue, some rarely used skills and skill upgrades will be strengthened. Especially, ranged fighters are affected by many updates.
The unique buffs Windforce, Eaglehorn, and Skyhunter will also be reconfigured.
Druid Buffs
The Druids will see some changes in their Spirit Boons, especially those that are rarely used.
Rabies will get a buff, and the new aspect and the Lightning Storm skill will also become much more attractive, including a new unique item.
In this case, it’s a pair of gloves that provides lots of additional lightning strikes and damage boost.
Necromancer Buffs
The Necromancer’s Golems have been adjusted, and party members can now move unhindered through Bone Prisons, so no more disadvantage exists in group play.
Bone Spirit is also being improved, and the corresponding aspect has been redesigned. Instead of increased damage depending on the flight range, there is now increased Critical Strike chance and also some additional Essence, which indirectly increases the damage as well.
Nerfs & Bug Fixes
Now let’s see the nerfs and bug fixes. The enhanced Ball Lightning simply deals too much damage, so it will be scaled down.
As we know, the Rogue has an unintended interaction between Tibault’s Will and the combo points due to a bug. The plus 18 maximum resource also added to the maximum combo points. This bug will disappear.
There is also another unintended interaction between Twisting Blades and Poison Imbuement that causes excessive damage.
With the Druid, we have the Blurred Beast Aspect, which has been causing very high damage since Season 1. Some will remember the Shred Nado build, which is great for boss killing. But also here, it was no intention that the damage stack so high due to the aspect.
And Violent Hammer of the Ancient also has a bug that always triggers the bonus damage. All these bugs will be fixed, so several OP builds will lose their might.
Also, overpower damage is generally too strong and will be scaled down.
My Builds
Within my current builds, the Ball Lightning Sorceress and the Hot Whirlwind Barb will lose a lot of damage.
Without the Vampiric Power Metamorphosis, the Ball Lightning Sorcerers won't be able to generate Mana by Tibault's Will and Evade. And evading with Oculus doesn't work as well anymore. Since Oculus makes you teleport randomly, Metamorphosis had overridden this effect before.
My two favorites, Double Swing Barb and Firewall Sorcerers, will still be strong. I've already tested them extensively in offseason. And they also work very well without the Vampiric Powers, and the release changes don't really hurt them so far.
Who Is Strong In Season 3?
Builds that are strong in Season 3 could be very strong in my opinion, are Meteor Mages, possibly even a mix with Firewall or Fireball, Lightning Storm Druids, Bone Spirit Necros, and also maybe Ranged Combat Rogues.
I'm already looking forward to seeing the new unique bows, a lot will depend on them.
In PvP, the new Rabies Druid could also turn out to be an underdog. We will see in practice.
With the Barbarians, I'm still counting on my Double Swing and Rend builds, and if the new Charge attack is as strong as they say, it might become a new must-have skill.
Hot End For HotA Builds?
But HotA fans shouldn't give up their Barbs yet. Let's wait and see how all the nerfs and buffs will work overall.
You also have to admit that the overpower HotA builds really were too strong last season. Lilith world bosses and Duriel were degraded to ridiculous one-hit victims, so I can understand the nerfs.
But I don't think HotA will become unplayable. It also was strong before we saw those overpower builds.
