Season 1 Patch Notes - 1.1.0a

news.blizzard.com Diablo IV Patch Notes

We will continually update this article with all patches the development team implements for Diablo IV.

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Some highly summarised takeaways from the notes:
Items
5 new Class Uniques, 1 new Uber Unique
5 new Class Aspects, 2 new General Aspects

World & Experience
World Tier 2 gives +20% gold and +15% drop rate
Higher level enemies give less experience now
Powerleveling with one player sitting at the entrance of the dungeon was nerfed
Helltides got a bit harder and take more cinders for chests
Monsters' HP scales higher with more players in a party (85%/player -> 100%/player)

Balance
Various rebalance changes, most underutilized spells/aspects got buffed, only minor nerfs (to spells/aspects) it seems
Various nerfs to item affixes including Vulnerable Damage, Cooldown Reduction, Crit Damage, Damage Reduction
Inherent stats for Swords (Crit Damage), Crossbows (Vulnerable Damage) and Offhands (Cooldown Reduciton) have been heavily reduced
Damage % affixes have been buffed

I didn't have time to go through all the details and especially the single class rebalances, but I think this is the most relevant info from these patch notes. If I forgot something let me know.

Looks like experience in general got a pretty good size nerf?
Oh my god cinders barely drop anymore regular mobs only drop one half the time. I got about 45 minutes in and got 230 cinders
- In general it looks like they have made Helltides a giant waste of time.
  Tougher mobs and more cinders to open a mystery box? Listen, Blizzard, I didn't get anything special from the boxes anyway. 95% of the time I sold it or broke it down.
  I get the impression they've misjudged how valuable we find Helltides.
  
  Cinder drop rate is a confirmed bug, so at least they'll fix that.
  The mystery boxes were definitely worth running if you were looking for legendary aspects. 2+ legendaries per mystery box, I usually got 4 or 5. It didn't take very long to get 175 cinders and you collected lots of obols at the same time.
  Now at 250 cinders it's just going to be slower. Ugh.

TLDR; nerfs to play longer and increase engagement time
- Which, for me, just makes me want to play less.
  
  Absolutely. Not only was I already avoiding trying new builds because of the hassle of respecting, but now the build I do have is less effective and I'll have to respec anyways? No thanks. I'm out. The game felt like too much of a chore even before this patch.

Oh Wow, these are some awful patch notes. Nerfs all around, no buffs to the deadest of classes. I honestly do not think i will play Season 1. Its like they dont want us to be exicted or look forward to anything. These notes full of Nerfs just leave you feeling Deflated, not the kind of patch you release to advertise your new season.
Already too many affixes, and now they add more! WTF? No UI updates to help us figure out if an item is an improvement or not.
And on top of that they nerfed levelling if you dont want to play the story again. Jeez.
Sigh..blizz
- The entire Malignant Heart mechanics should be some pretty major buffs in themselves though.
  Not to mention the season journey buffs.
  Better to actually play the season and decide instead of just guessing how things will be with only a sliver of info and ignoring info we have outside of these notes.
  Have to look at everything together

Powerleveling nerfed into the ground wow. My build (that I got bored with around level 65) seemed untouched, but then saw all the global stat nerfs like 30% to CDR, etc. yikes on this amount of nerfs

They pretty much nerf everything. They try to force player to use +physical/bone/etc… instead of stacking crit/crit dmg/vulnerable without understanding that if we focus on those, it’s also because it’s simple to figure out.
There are way to many affix, most people can’t tell if an item is an upgrade or not because of it. Instead of fixing this, they add even more useless affix and nerf the useful ones…
We’re increasing the availability of the Affixes below to make them easier to include in different builds.
I swear it’s like they don’t want people to have fun. It feels like WoW all over again when they added useless stats like resilience.
I’m amazed that they didn’t learn anything considering how old WoW is, they should know that what’s gonna happened is people making softwares to do the maths instead of them.
- Not many developers make games with the main purpose being to have fun anymore.
- I'm torn over this point, I agree there's way too many affixes and they make everything confusing, but having all builds go with Vuln/Crit is pretty boring.
  I wish they grouped all the +% damage affixes in a couple more generic ones, and made them more impactful, to the point you'd have some freedom in deciding stats for your build without being overwhelmed by the amount of fodder affixes.
  
  Everything goes with vuln/crit though because that's the best general damage stat. Every class can vuln super easily and crit is always just generally good, if we had vuln split into phys/elemental vulns that could potentially top out at higher numbers than the general vuln that would be cool but as it is designed now every class will always stack those 2 stats until they're nerfed into the ground and considered useless. And Crit just hinges on so many affixes and it's so generally good with all damage types that it's here to stay as like you said % damage is way to specific with what types of damage it buffs. If they had nerfed those stats but then turned around and gave us itemization to work around the nerfs that would actually be interesting instead of just a flat nerf to every build in the game.
  
  Agreed but if they want people to use other affixes, first they need to remove a lot of them.
  One of the main point of an aRPG is looting, if you can’t figure out easily if a loot is an upgrade or not, you’ve done a shitty job with your game.
- WoW started improving again around the time they started moving people over to work on D4.
  It's the same idiots making the same mistakes.

Short summary : Fixed an issue where players were having fun.
I was solo leveling to level 92 since the release. I was usually doing 1 to 2 paragons a day lately (usually more challenging/longer 2 NMDs to get one). Before patch I had one milimeter to do to get the next paragon, so I run a NMD 15 leveles above me and I didn't reach it? 1mm? So, with the same game time, I am going to make one paragon in 10,14 days? There is already nothing to do after campaign, only the Uber boss to fight on lvl 100 and it took ages to get to 92 and now I really don't feel I want to play it anymore. I possibly could swallow all the other nerfs, but lowering xp gain and slowing the progression for people who can play only a limited time daily or weekly is hearthbreaking.
I am definitely not going to play the first season.

I already didn’t really find Upgrades for what feels like forever. And I am only at level 65. With more stats to look at even noticing an upgrade will be a nightmare.
- Levels 50-70 felt like a drag. Better equipment starts dropping once you get to WT4. At least until level ~80, then it appears to just drag again.
  
  There is no way I'm getting past level 59 at this rate. I'll finish the campaign, but...
  
  I went in to WT4 at level 60 with my Barbarian. I just hate sitting around in WT3 where it feels like there's no point optimising equipment because it's all going to be obsolete the moment you step into WT4.
- I don’t really replace my gear very often either, all the power I gain seems to really be coming from paragon, which has much bigger bonuses to things like damage.
  I don’t see any gear with +20% damage like I do on the paragon board

So, uh... No fix for the lag? No fix for the VRam issue?
Also, is there any overview of what seasonal content will be transfer to non season, that can only be gathered within the season? Or is that just going to be the battlepass related FOMO? Like, if you haven't played D2, there's not going to be season specific runewords that I cannot create non season, but the created runeword would become non season if I make it there. Afaik the whole "legendary gems" stuff from D3 will be just a season exclusive thing with no effect on non season, right? More like a "do some 'fun' stuff this time, and this time only"?
Edit: Are "Halls of the damned" and "Path of the Blind" new nightmare dungeons? I just found sigils for them but I don't see anything in the patch notes.
Edit: Screenshots of the sigils: https://i.imgur.com/xYzM2Dq.jpg & https://i.imgur.com/FeR1T1E.jpg
- Once the Season has ended, the character you made and its progress will be transferred to the Eternal Realm. All items you collected, including in your Seasonal stash, will be transferred too. You can take this character into Sanctuary whenever you please, but Season-specific features such as Malignant Hearts will no longer be accessible.
  From the Season introduction page, so it seems that what you'll miss if you don't play will be only the season cosmetics. And the chance to play with new mechanics for the duration of the season.
  
  Cool. Hopefully the FOMO passes aren't going to be too much of a chore then.
- Yeah, new dungeons this time.

As someone who was excited for this season despite disliking the leveling speed slowdown as you progress, and didn't like doing helltides: I'm sad now, and it looks like I'm going to have to find something else to play for a while.
- Don’t worry, Baldur’s Gate 3 is around the corner and it seems it will be the new RPG gold standard of the decade.
  Devs from other companied are whining about it, including Blizzard, because players are gonna compare what Larian is capable to do with their own work and they know they don´t stand a chance.
  Hollow Knight and Starfield are coming soon too.
  
  BG3 is a completely different game, one you need to pour your heart and soul, and most importantly mind, into. I don't have the mental capacity to play a full RPG after a full day of work and then playing with my kids and then chores. I have an hour maybe to chill out and BG3 would only stress me because I would forget the story between my gaming sessions and couldn't keep up.
  Whereas with a Diablo game I can log in for half an hour and have fun. I can be rewarded finding some loot, or making some progres in my build. It's scratches a completely different itch than BG3.
  
  If you’ve only got limited time per day I’d suggest Vampire Survivors or one of the clones.
  I’m really digging Halls of Torment, it’s basically Diablo 1 survivor style. 30 minute time limit with Diabloesque unique equipment you can send up a well to have for future runs. Early access on Steam.

Any other druid players totally content with these updates? Reading through the patch notes I found a lot to be happy about:
New items seem great for build diversity; not much synergy with current meta builds
Better loot from silent chests; might actually be worth opening now
Less monster wandering; might help werebear builds by making mobility less of an issue
More experience for completing whispers
Stronger Helltide monsters; unpopular opinion perhaps but they always felt a little too easy to me, definitely prefer a more challenging experience to match the apocalyptic atmosphere
More basic attack options; Storm Strike always had way too much utility to pass up, even after buffing everything else
Buffs to companion-focused aspects; might even see viable companion builds with the new malignant hearts
Buffs to unique chest pieces that are currently fun but underwhelming
More options for CC reduction; not enough to replace bulwark, but a step in the right direction
More dungeon loot
In fact I have very few objections to these patch notes, nerfs included. Bulwark spam is killing my keyboard - I wouldn't mind having to dodge am attack every once in a while. The cost of mystery chests seems awfully steep, and the XP bonus for completing a stronghold feels a little underwhelming, but otherwise these changes all seem great for build diversity.
- All the nerfs to resists and armor amounts to a quite significant buff to the damage of the bulwark explosion build in PvP. I was unable to kill Barbs and some rogues before the patch but now they go down pretty quick if they choose to stay and fight.

In case one didn't dig deep:
New Season 1 Uniques Revealed - Diablo 4
https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/news/new-season-1-uniques-revealed-diablo-4-334127

Fuck, was so hyped for season 1 but now it's really going down the drain.
Helltides didn't feel really rewarding, never got anything good from the chests. If it wasn't the only place to get forgotten souls I would ignore it completely.
Also I'm playing hardcore, so I think I'm screwed with all these defensive nerfs....

I can't believe the dev note that defense is too good. Yikes, if I die its usually because of a 1-shot. Not looking forward to more rocket tag.

What are some of the takeaways that weren’t mentioned during the announcement stream?
- Nerfs, nerfs all the way down.
  They really do not like that everyone has figured out damage buckets and is prioritizing crit and vulnerable.
  Nerfed cooldown reduction affix pretty hard
  Made mystery chest in Helltide 250 instead of 175 cinders.
  Buffed nightmare dungeons again.
  
  Oof. Okay sounds like I should read it, thanks
  
  I really don’t get the helltides nerf. They’re supposed to be special events. If you don’t catch the helltide immediately at the start getting to 250 is way too stressful.
  
  I think it’s nerfs with the expectation hearts will cover what was lost and then some. Here’s hoping that’s right

I'm going to withold judgement until season release, but we shouldnt be surprised that this game is going to get ground down into a slog. Let's hope they don't fix said problem with MTX fixes.

I know everyone is focusing on the nerfs but there's still those slotted gems we're in the dark about. I'm thinking some of those might make up for these nerfs along with whatever season journey rewards we get. If everything stayed the same but then they added whatever these gems do then we could all well have been too strong making most of the content a breeze. At least that's what I'm hoping so I'm not totally put off for now.
- Its hidden, but there's a link to them from the post. See them here: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/23976339/season-of-the-malignant-coming-soon?blzcmp=blizzard-news#Transmute
  The "regular" ones look fine, but nothing crazy. A couple of the super ones seem potentially very powerful, but also some of them seem like trash.
- It's a good theory, but...
  A) these gems won't be on eternal so those characters are going to feel rough.
  B) those new will be obsolete at the end of season 1
  Because of these two points, they really shouldn't be balancing the game around these temporary season exclusive items.

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New Season 1 Uniques Revealed - Diablo 4