Diablo 4's next season unshackles so many ridiculous builds it feels like you're breaking it

GamesRPGDiablo 4Diablo 4’s next season unshackles so many ridiculous builds it feels like you’re breaking itWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Tyler C. / Diablo 4)

A rogue in Diablo 4 standing in front of a dark background holding a bow

IfDiablo 4’s season 4 PTRis any indication of what’s to come when it properly releases in May, it’s over for my free time. Blizzard has taken the action RPG that only came out a year ago andturned it inside out.All the numbers and knobs are in front of you now and it’s practically begging you to find a way to break it.

Loot has dramatically changed in function, now providing meaningful ways to empower and shape your favorite skills rather than only offering a bunch of incremental stat upgrades. In place of dull bonuses like increased damage to elite enemies, you can find stats that augment skills, like making your corpse explosion hit the entire screen. The spirit of an action RPG that lets you experiment and discover how you want to play finally exists in Diablo 4 and it makes the live game look like a beta test.

I threw together a necromancer minion build using the PTR’s free level boost and my skeleton posse tore through an endgame dungeon despite my admittedly awful gear. I didn’t follow a guide, nor did I spend all that long optimizing my setup. While I’m sure I’d get crushed against monsters in The Pit, a new endgame dungeon that scales way up in difficulty like Diablo 3’s greater rifts, it’s satisfying to be able to try something without being punished for not having good enough gear to get the build off the ground.

In the old Diablo 4, my next step would’ve been to grind for hours searching for items that specifically boost the stats my character relies on to deal damage and survive. In the new Diablo 4, I can just make them.

The days of spending hours sorting through loot after every dungeon are completely gone.

Masterworking can juice any stat, meaning you could make a build with so much resource cost reduction you wouldn’t even need to follow the classic build formula of a “builder” skill and a “spender” skill. The possibilities aren’t infinite, but they’re varied enough to mean no single build will look exactly the same, which forces you to double down on what you actually like.

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The cost of Diablo 4’s flexible loot is way more time spent in crafting menus for every upgrade you find. To accommodate, Blizzard has sped up leveling and effectively eliminated the need to worry about item rarity and item power once you’re near max level. The days of spending hours sorting through loot after every dungeon are completely gone. Some may still see the lack of a loot filter to hide useless items when they drop as a flaw, but, even with the PTR’s doubled legendary drop rate, I never spent more than a minute reading through stats.

Season 4 has what amounts to an expansion’s worth of changes.

Season 4 has what amounts to an expansion’s worth of changes and new things to do, which is baffling to think about considering there’sa real expansioncoming out later this year. But Diablo 4 desperately needed to loosen its grip on the amount of power players were allowed to have and just let everyone have fun figuring out how they like to play. Thelast two seasonspaved the way for season 4, and on May 14, when it goes live, we’re going to finally play an action RPG that celebrates players finding the most ridiculous ways to break it.

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