Blizzard has been hard at work attempting to pull a character-balancing act for Diablo IV ahead of its official launch that’s slated for release in just a few hours.
According to the patch notes released this weekend, Blizzard explains that the dungeon crawler’s first patch aims to provide better balancing and an enjoyable experience across the board for all character classes.
The developer came to a conclusion that Barbarians, Druids, and Sorcerers are admittedly more powerful than others and nerfs were put in play to prevent, “situations where players can survive unreasonably high amounts of damage for long periods of time because it too greatly warps our vision for how combat should be in Diablo IV.”
With that being said, it appears the Barbarians were hardest hit when it comes to negative skill changes, with damage reduction from skill ranks reduced from four per cent to two per cent in Bold Chieftain’s Aspect, and maximum critical chance bonus reduced from 20-40 per cent, all the way down to 9-24 per cent in Aspect of the Dire Whirlwind. Both critical skills that allowed for the aforementioned high endurance and high damage rates.
On the other hand, Necromancer and Rogue character classes appeared not as effective as the developers would have liked, so buffs were introduced to increase their strength and overall effectiveness.
Again, the Necromancer class appears to be most affected with respect to buffs, which include; a damage increase from 67.5 per cent to 80 per cent for Blood Lance ability, plus a sizable 20-second cooldown reduction, and 15 per cent increase in damage from 30 to 45 percent for its Army of the Dead ability.
Aside from the character rebalancing, the developer also addressed stability issues that included stuttering occurring on higher-end systems. If you fancy a good read, the full patch notes are available here.
