Diablo 4: Blizzard Releases Promo Video And Players Discover New Key Info – “Solves A Big Problem Of Diablo 3”

Blizzard has released a new promotional video that was only supposed to fuel some hype for Diablo 4. Players are still discovering a new piece of information and debating whether it makes the difference for a better item system than Diablo 2 and Diablo 3.

what is this video

• Blizzard has released a promo video for Diablo Hell’s Ink Tour Miami. It takes 3:22 minutes (via youtube).
• The purpose of the promotion is to allow Diablo’s biggest fans to get a tattoo from outstanding tattoo artists to immortalize their love for the franchise on their bodies. The video shows players who were already allowed to play Diablo 4 at the event and who are enthusiastic about the new Blizzard title.
• But people on reddit discover new information about the game Diablo 4 in the video, which they are now discussing.

What detail are they discussing?? In the promotional video you can see at one point for a tiny moment, maybe half a second, the information about a skill in Diablo 4, about “Lightning Spear”.

Here, a user notices that the ability adds 15% of weapon DPS as damage per hit.

This creates a big discussion.

Weapon damage was too important in Diablo 3 – not important enough in Diablo 2

Why is that important? The question here is which criterion the player uses to select an item:

• In Diablo 3, skills scaled extremely heavily with weapon damage: a barbarian skill like “Earthquake” dealt 4,800% weapon damage to enemies
• As a result, weapon damage was extremely important in Diablo 3, and other aspects of the weapon – like bonus skills or stats – hardly played any role anymore

If in Diablo 4 an ability now only gives 15% weapon damage bonus damage instead of 4800% weapon damage, weapon DPS is not an overpowering value, but just one of many aspects of a weapon to consider when you decides which new item to use.

What have been the criticisms of the item systems in previous Diablo titles?

• A big criticism of Diablo 3 is that you want to have high weapon damage on the weapon, because the raw damage of a weapon is extremely important due to the many different multipliers.
• In Diablo 2, on the other hand, the criticism was that the items didn’t play such a big role, and it was therefore even possible to complete the game “naked” with the sorceress: the skills were overpoweringly strong even without equipment.

Like a player on reddit explained, Blizzard’s new decision solves one of Diablo 3’s biggest “itemization problems” with a moderate weapon damage bonus. It is a “good middle ground” between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3.

Another reddit user explains: The big problem in Diablo 3 was always that it was a “mainstat system”. It’s not a problem if a weapon does 1,000 DPS, but it becomes a problem if you add 10,000 main stats and that works as a 10,000% multiplier.

Then you would just want to have only mainstat on each item and nobody would use purely defensive items and that would limit the build variety:

If every single item slot in a game is being used to buff damage, don’t be surprised if the damage increases exponentially and players only pick what does the highest damage and ignore everything else.

Reddit user shapoonkya

The user apparently wants a Diablo in which there is also space for items that strengthen the defense or bring nice improvements such as faster running.

Why is that important? It seems a little odd that half a second in a promo video should spark such a discussion. But people have spent endless hours playing Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 and know the games inside and out. Everyone has their opinion on what a “perfect loot system” should be.

For many it is particularly important that they can go several ways and that they can implement interesting build ideas. That’s why such discussions are exciting for hardcore fans:

• If a stat, like weapon damage or main stat, is too strong, you only look at it and ignore all other systems
• If it ultimately doesn’t matter what you play because the skills are so strong, there’s also a lack of appeal
• In an optimal system, there should be no “absolutely best thing”, but several paths should be playable – and the player decides which path he wants to go

Although there are already first leaks to Diablo 4, we will probably only see in the beta whether Blizzard is right with its decisions:

Diablo 4 announces the first beta and fans are already afraid of a feature