Diablo 4
We’re a couple days away from the reveal of Diablo 4’s season 1, which will contain a new storyline and battle pass to work through with seasonal characters. But the game will also get a major patch with buffs, nerfs and quality of life changes.
One thing I’m hoping to see in season 1? I already think it’s time for World Tier 5.
I know it’s soon, just a month or so after launch, but once you get to 75+ or so in World Tier 4 and start to have a coherent endgame build, the difficulty of Diablo 4 gets…weird. The only thing that becomes a challenge is pushing yourself to go into higher and higher level Nightmare Dungeons that dramatically overlevel enemies. Right now I’m running ones 15-20 levels higher than me, which is getting close to my max.
However, the entire rest of the game is not like that. World Tier 4 World Bosses are deleted in seconds. Legion events have huge groups of enemies die before you can cast more than a skill or two. Tree of Whispers things are all at-level with close to zero relevant rewards. Even Helltides are always only two levels above you, which is effectively nothing at higher levels, and when you’re doing higher tier Nightmare Dungeons all the time, it’s like swinging with a weighted bat, and you will obliterate Helltides once you switch to them.
Blizzard
Another issue is that rewards usually correspond to this level of difficulty too. Nightmare Dungeons have the best XP totals, the best gear quality plus glyph leveling. Helltides, World Bosses, Tree turn-ins, they’re not even close, reflecting their super easy difficulty.
As such, I think it’s time for a World Tier 5. If not 6 and 7. The rest of the world needs to be scaled up dramatically to remain relevant in the endgame. I’m not even talking about level 90-100 players, but this happens well before that. I would argue that a World Tier 5 should probably take enemies at least ten levels higher than you, but even that is still a somewhat easy Nightmare dungeon level for most. Having things at-level or just two levels above you simply does not work with the way Diablo difficulty functions, and it herds everyone into Nightmare dungeons and little else because of that. I would love for Helltides to still be truly challenging like they were 30 levels ago, as right now you just crush through everything until you get the mystery chest and that’s pretty much it.
While I don’t mind Nightmare Dungeons, I just wish the rest of the game was as engaging and we aren’t just finding ourselves in another “Greater Rift” situation where there’s little else to do. I really did enjoy the range of endgame activities when you first beat the campaign, but once your ramp up your power, they all get left behind pretty quickly outside of Dungeons. I hope that can change with season 1 here.
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