When Blizzard Entertainment released Diablo III in May 2012, the game was fraught with issues. The servers were overloaded, which caused an uproar among players. The game itself was wildly unbalanced, with only a handful of classes actually being viable for end-game progression. The real-money marketplace was a detriment to the in-game community as a result. Diablo IV had similar, but not as disastrous, hurdles to overcome. The game was arguably in a much better state, and those that experienced Diablo III at launch already understood Blizzard would more than likely tune the game after player feedback. Despite very much enjoying my time with Diablo IV pre-launch, I knew that it would be months or potentially a yearbefore Blizzard would course correct. Diablo IV Season 4 Loot Reborn is a great step in the right direction.
For those unfamiliar with those changes, either because they haven’t had interest in Diablo IV up to this point or dropped the game after launch due to an otherwise middling end-game, Blizzard has done a complete overhaul of how items work and the systems surrounding them. I fell into the later camp. I was so uninterested in the Codex and Paragon systems that my overall interest in Diablo IV dropped off and I went back to play the latest season of Diablo III instead. Blizzard made acquiring Codices a lot simpler this time around, with passive attributes salvaged from gear storing itself in a compendium any and all characters across your account can use. Certain passives are still entirely locked to Dungeons, but this means that I only have to run through them once per Season instead of once per character. This is already a huge change.
Diablo IV Season 4 Loot Reborn also added Affixes through Tempering. These are additional attributes you can add to your weapons that can range from increasing damage to specific skills, their size, or even increase your elemental resistances. Masterworking items is also a new addition, which further empowers your items which results in a stronger character build. There is a lot to fiddle around with and, while Diablo IV still lacks some of the basic quality of life features of Diablo III like saving gear sets, it’s a massive improvement over how the Codex system worked at launch.
But one of the most important updates, at least in my opinion, involved making Necromancer a viable class in Diablo IV. Before, you could kind of work Necromancer into being fun to play at a casual level, but your minions felt insignificant. Now, I simply summon my hoard of skeletons and tear through Helltides and Diablo IV‘s version of Rifts. I love Necromancer so much that I’ve effectively abandoned my Rogue, opting to burst into a swarm of bats as I rush through Dungeons with my skeleton army in tow. A friend of mine that is a dedicated Barbarian main also loved the item adjustments done to make their build more viable as well. It feels like there haven’t been as many, if any, nerfs this Season, and instead Blizzard has focused on empowering the player.
Everything is fun now. Helltides, Rifts, even the leveling experience is exciting because it goes quick and rarer item drops feel more plentiful. Season 4 started on May 15, 2024 and I’ve already completed my Battle Pass at over twenty hours played on my Seasonal character. I had so much fun I even used what currency I had accrued through the previous Battle Passes to get a skin for my Necromancer. I just hope Blizzard continues down this path with Diablo IV, and characters keep feeling strong and item drops keep exploding out of enemies at the same rate that they have been. Because it would be a shame to see a step back from this, when Diablo IV is in the best state it’s been in since launch.
Diablo IV is available for the PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X. It is also available through the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.
