My review for Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred Expansion
One little remark... I tried recording somewhat decent footage but game is lagging af so yeah... it is what it is.
#diablo4 #lordofhatred #review #opinion #impression #fullgame
Timestamps for those of you who wanna skip things:
00:00 Introduction and context
02:22 Warplans
05:05 Alts issues
06:03 Skill tree
07:15 Horadric cube
08:08 Talisman
08:54 Seasonal journey
09:47 Loot filter
10:36 Other features
11:28 Other overhauls
11:54 Visual clutter
12:40 On death effects suck
13:54 Game needs combat log
14:57 Lilith and Mephisto boss fights
17:38 Other random stuff - Color for charms, world bosses are weak af etc
19:47 Unique item situation
22:03 Closing remarks
For more content check me out at https://www.youtube.com/@realcsomm
One little remark... I tried recording somewhat decent footage but game is lagging af so yeah... it is what it is.
#diablo4 #lordofhatred #review #opinion #impression #fullgame
Timestamps for those of you who wanna skip things:
00:00 Introduction and context
02:22 Warplans
05:05 Alts issues
06:03 Skill tree
07:15 Horadric cube
08:08 Talisman
08:54 Seasonal journey
09:47 Loot filter
10:36 Other features
11:28 Other overhauls
11:54 Visual clutter
12:40 On death effects suck
13:54 Game needs combat log
14:57 Lilith and Mephisto boss fights
17:38 Other random stuff - Color for charms, world bosses are weak af etc
19:47 Unique item situation
22:03 Closing remarks
For more content check me out at https://www.youtube.com/@realcsomm
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GamingTranscript
00:00Exactly one week ago, I made a first impression video for Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred expansion.
00:06And now the time has come to go a bit deeper, in depth so to speak, in order to see
00:11what this
00:12expansion is all about and whether or not my opinion changed based on the things that I've
00:17said in previous video. So let's get started, shall we? To give some context about what I was
00:22doing in game, well, I played two classes. First I started as a warlock, then I changed to paladin,
00:28but I would say parallel I was playing both of them because I wanted to see the different
00:32mechanics and play styles and how everything changes according to my, well, view of the
00:37classes. In that sense, I played warlock for 61 hours, while for paladin I played only 18 hours.
00:45That is not a lot when it comes to the paladin situation, but keep in mind that I was around
00:50paragon 200 or something like that when I switched to paladin, so it was relatively easy in order to
00:55jump into the endgame and experience it like I was doing it with warlock. Basically warlock was my
01:00main character in order to gear other characters and I fully exploited that particular situation
01:06because obviously why wouldn't you? Also when it comes to builds, I started playing summoner warlock
01:11initially through the campaign, but in the middle of it I switched to dread claws and I pushed all the
01:17way till torment 10 when I switched to apocalypse warlock. And that's essentially the build that I'm
01:22currently playing when I switched back to warlock. When it comes to paladin, I initially started
01:27leveling it normally, not going through the campaign, but rather doing all the normal activities
01:32that you have, but then around level 40 I asked my friend to boost me, which happened, he did it
01:37in
01:37the pit, and because I got that unique amulet drop for me, which is the cornerstone of the wing strike
01:43build, I decided to go with that one, because upon further research it seemed that Auradin paladin,
01:49which is something that I wanted to play initially, was not that potent to begin with.
01:53With the warlock I managed to kill Mephisto on tier 10 in order to unlock seasonal journey,
01:58which is the last one that you need in order to, I suppose, finish the game. And as far as
02:02farming is
02:03concerned, I can do torment 12 stuff easily because apocalypse is overpowered as fuck. I have seen
02:09hitting trillions of damage, it's completely insane. When it comes to paladin, I can do tier 12 with it,
02:14I haven't tried Mephisto, but the damage with wing strike is decent enough in order to attempt that
02:20particular boss fight, but more on that later. I suppose when you look at this whole situation
02:24with Diablo 4, the main thing what everyone wants to know is what's the endgame like.
02:29In that sense, let's start with warplans. I think warplans are a good way to engage players with all
02:35the activities that the game can provide. Back in the day that was a huge problem for me because again,
02:40there was no reason to do nightmare dungeons or any other content that wasn't optimal in terms of
02:46the gear that you're supposed to get. All of this changed with warplans because it fundamentally
02:51changes the way that you play endgame since you can essentially engage with everything and you still
02:57get rewards that you can consider to be really good. The activities that are encompassed by the
03:03warplans are as follows. Nightmare dungeons, helltides, the undercity, lair bosses, infernal hordes and
03:08the pit. When you complete a certain warplan or chosen setup of the warplan, you get rewarded with
03:14activity skill points, which then you can use in the command table in order to level that particular
03:19activity and from a certain point of view customizing it in order to get more loot, but from a certain
03:25point of view to customize it a bit because it doesn't really play exactly like you're used to.
03:30You give it some kind of a flair, so to speak. And while this whole warplan situation seems
03:35interesting, I have a certain problem with it. The main issue here is all about alts. You see,
03:41if you roll an alt, you don't inherit the warplan progress that you already achieved with your main
03:47character. And to be honest, I'm kind of conflicted about the whole situation. Because essentially,
03:52if you want an alt or many alts, you would have to grind continuously in order to reach the max
03:59level
03:59with the warplans. Because again, these modifications that you can put in the command table are a
04:05significant advantage when it comes for you to experience the warplan situation. But at the same
04:10time, if your alt is 100% ready to jump into these things, it might be a bit trivial in
04:16order to
04:16experience the whole mechanic, so to speak. So in this particular sense, I don't know, I feel conflicted.
04:22I don't know what's the right thing to do, whether or not if we should transition the warplan progress
04:28to all characters, so it should be account wide, or we should do it like 50% XP to the
04:35old characters.
04:36And then, you know, if you go and play with the old character, you get 100%, but all the other
04:40characters get 50% XP. That way, you are still achieving some sort of progress. And in the end of
04:47the day, if you decide to roll the third or fourth character, you will have enough experience gained
04:53from the first two characters that it's going to be, you know, you feel like you earned it. So
04:58essentially, you will unlock everything on account-based progress, but not immediately just
05:04playing one class. And when it comes to alts, I have another problem, which is the level of mythic
05:09uniques. Back in the day, the mythic uniques were level 35. Now they're level 70. And that particular
05:16situation is kind of demotivating me to start another character. Or at very least, I should save
05:22my whisper caches in order to get XP from there without paying someone to boost me or to beg someone
05:28to do the same thing for me like I did with my paladin. I would pretty much like to see
05:33the level 35
05:34back so I can go through any content on my own and enjoy the game like that without skipping one
05:40to
05:40level 70 and at least have some fun. But yeah, generally speaking, the situation now with
05:45warplans and the mythical uniques that I already mentioned is not favorable towards alts. And I
05:51would argue, especially now with all these new things, it would be amazing for us to try as many
05:57classes as possible in order to enjoy the new expansion as well as all the elements that it
06:02brings with it. Next point I want to touch on is the skill tree reworks. And while initially it seems
06:08like we have more options, which is true, your build or your skill tree is pretty much done at level
06:1440,
06:15in terms of what you're choosing in order to modify it to fit your playstyle better. And then the rest
06:20of
06:20the abilities or other points that you need to put in the skill trees are exclusively going to the skills
06:25themselves boosting the ranks of them. I don't understand why this is a thing. And to me, it seems
06:31like the whole skill tree, like I said, after level 40 becomes obsolete. Again, this is one of those
06:37things that I cannot really put my finger on because I don't know whether or not this is a good
06:41or a bad
06:42idea. And to be honest, this is not a game breaking problem. I don't see it as an issue, at
06:48least when I
06:49compare it to the warplans situation that I was talking about. So I don't really know. Perhaps this is
06:54some kind of a mechanic for them to, I suppose, control certain builds or power creep. But now
07:01that I think about it, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So I don't really know. If you have
07:05better ideas why this whole situation with skills is the way that it is, please leave a comment.
07:10I'm 100% reading everything. So yeah, I'm also interested about whole situation. Next big change
07:16that happened is the Horadri cube. And I would say finally, we have crafting in this game. Yeah, you had
07:22some type of crafting when it came to rerolling stats, but crafting from scratch, like picking
07:28up a blue item and then gradually improving it to the legendary state, adding affixes and all that
07:35stuff. We definitely didn't have that. But now this is a reality. And I kind of like this whole system
07:41because even now when I'm playing on tier 12, I am looking for blues with greater affix in order to
07:47transform it into the cube and make them a valuable or viable gear piece, which I can use later. And
07:54there are many instances where I actually managed to do that. And now these items are kind of the main
07:59items of my whole build. So when it comes to Horadri cube, I think this is a huge win. And
08:04we really
08:05needed this particular system. Same thing can be said about the talisman system because finally,
08:11we are getting set items back but with a different flavor. If you remember from Diablo 3,
08:17these set items were genuine items. And once you slot them in your gear, that's about it. And those
08:22were the build defining items and everybody was running them. So majority of your build were set
08:28items. However, in Diablo 4, I think this is an ingenious way of making it viable. And whoever came
08:35up with this shit, you should give him a raise because this is an amazing system. We still get our
08:40set
08:41items. But we are not oversaturating our gear because the whole talisman system is like a
08:47secondary gear system, which is somewhere in the background, but it still gives you all the amazing
08:51bonuses and buffs that you get with it. The seasonal progression has also been changed because now we
08:57have more seasonal journeys to begin with or rather quests because back in the day, I could finish
09:02seasonal journey 24 hours provided that the objectives weren't retarded, just like there were back in
09:08season 12. The whole sentiment that I'm getting from seasonal progression is that yes, it's more
09:13grindy, but it's a reasonable grind. I suppose the seasonal change is a response from Blizzard to
09:19us, I suppose, bitching about how fast the seasonal journey can be completed, which by the way,
09:25sometimes it took me around 24 hours in order to complete everything. And I always wanted to engage
09:31with the game more so I reckon there we have it. It's there. It will take several, I suppose, days
09:37in
09:38order to complete the seasonal journey because certain things are kind of tricky to do. But at the end of
09:43the day, I think it's a good thing for the game in general sense of things. Another vital element that
09:49was
09:50added to the game is the loot filter. We finally have it after so many years of begging to give
09:56us the
09:57fucking loot filter. And now it's a reality. And guess what? It's an amazing thing. And this should
10:02have been added ages ago. But you know, better late than never, I suppose. I use it heavily. And you
10:08can
10:08customize it as much as you want. And there is nothing bad that I can say about it. Maybe add
10:13more
10:14options. But again, I didn't use it that much. I just set up a very basic filter where it hides
10:20certain
10:20things and shows only greater ethics gear. And that's about it. I reckon you can do more. But for my
10:26needs,
10:27this is basically what I need in order to avoid the whole loot clutter that can happen while you
10:33are farming stuff or whatever the fuck you're doing. Other features that were introduced are
10:38fishing, which I tried and it's just a gimmick. You can kind of use it in between hell tides if
10:44you're farming that particular activity. Then we have map overlay, which again, was something that
10:50we requested for many, many years. But now I got used to the normal map. So I find it to
10:56be,
10:56you know, eh, it's there, but I don't really use it. I suppose in my situation, it came too late.
11:02So
11:02now I don't see it as a vital upgrade. I just see it as an option that I might never
11:07use properly.
11:09It's a shame because back in the day, it would have been much better if it was from day one.
11:13But
11:13it is what it is. Maybe I just need to rebind everything in order to, you know, put it somewhere
11:19and I'm used to like, for example, tab, which opens everything. So I don't know, I guess I might
11:23experiment later in the season. We will see, but it seems highly unlikely. There were other overhauls
11:29that I didn't specifically mention, like the pit overhaul, the Lairbus overhaul, stuff like that.
11:35And I won't go into details with these things because A, I already talked too much about these
11:40things and B, you can find it online. It's very easy. Go to, I don't know, any site that supports
11:44Diablo and you'll find the whole list what got changed and in what way it got changed. What I want
11:50to focus now is my personal experiences while I was playing the game. I suppose the biggest
11:55problem that I have with this season is the visual clutter and in this expansion is honestly out of
12:01fucking control. There were so many moments where I died simply because I couldn't see what the fuck
12:06was happening on the screen. If you play Apocalypse Warlock, you know what I'm talking about. Between
12:11spell effects, enemy effects, explosions, environmental hazard and all the particles constantly flying in
12:17your face, combat sometimes becomes visual slop. Difficulty wise, it's okay, but if you are dying
12:24because the game buried critical information under 20 fucking layers of effects is frustrating rather
12:30than a challenge. Put it this way, if I fuck up, I want it to be because I made a
12:35mistake, not because
12:36the screen looked like fireworks going off inside a bloody tornado. And speaking about dying, the
12:42on-death effects are getting ridiculous or after death or whatever the fuck you want to call them,
12:48the thing that happens when shit explodes on the ground and you die because you didn't see it.
12:52Do we really need enemies exploding after death and instantly deleting you? Because it feels like
12:58the game constantly punishes aggression in the most annoying way possible. You clear the pack,
13:03your brain naturally relaxes for half a second, you want to, you know, loot shit and then suddenly you
13:08are dead because some delayed explosion triggered underneath your character in between all that
13:13visual chaos. And after a while it stops feeling threatening and starts feeling fucking cheap.
13:18Difficulty should come from engaging combat mechanics, not hidden revenge bombs after enemies
13:23are already dead. I suppose one thing that you can do in order to solve this problem is just reduce
13:28the damage. It should feel punishing because now you need to pop a potion but not in a way that
13:33immediately kills you. I don't know, this thing frustrates me so much and combined with visual clutter,
13:38I died so many fucking times for nothing, especially until I got the upgrade for the
13:43helltide which allows me to retain all my cinders after dying. Because that's the only reason I picked
13:48that fucking upgrade, just so I can play the game properly or at least farm the chests or whatever
13:53I had in mind at that time. Also, since we are on this particular topic of dying from all kinds
13:57of
13:58shit without you actually knowing what killed you, I believe it's high time that the game gets some
14:03kind of a combat text thing, which will show you what the hell happened and how much damage you took
14:08from certain effects in order for you to know what killed you. Because most of the time, sometimes
14:13out of the blue, I don't even know what killed me. Yeah, you get the prompt, ABC was killed by
14:18this,
14:19this and that, or usually in name of the mob, but that doesn't mean anything. I actually want to see
14:23what kind of effect killed me, how much damage I took, and then maybe I can inspect my resistances,
14:29see whether or not I actually made a mistake hearing a character, and then later on, after I
14:33find the resistance that I need, I kind of swap it for something else that's not that important,
14:38and you know, life goes on. But at the moment, identifying what kills you is actually a fucking
14:44pain, because it's impossible to do so. You can kind of deduce what happened, but when you are doing,
14:49for example, Lilith or Mephisto, it would be nice to see what kind of effect killed you, because then
14:55you can kind of learn the fight. And since I'm touching on the Mephisto and Lilith, Lilith is
15:00still a piece of shit fight. I don't think they even revisited that fight, and they were like,
15:04hey, you know, just fuck it, it's there, let's leave it like that. But when it comes to Mephisto
15:08fight, one thing particularly that enraged me was the fucking cutscenes. You absolutely cannot skip
15:15them, and it just kills the whole momentum, because now I'm slogging through, I don't know, 30 seconds
15:21or a minute of cutscenes, and all my focus is going away, because again, game is kind of
15:26sabotaging me in that sense. I understand that you want these cutscenes when you are doing the
15:30whole campaign, but if I'm going to farm him or kill him repeatedly, I want the experience to be
15:36as seamless as possible. I don't expect there will be no cutscene whatsoever, but at least let me skip
15:42them. Also, speaking about the whole Mephisto fight, I get it, it's a primeval, it's the end boss of
15:48the whole campaign, I understand that. But certain one-shots mechanic are actually quite punishing.
15:55I suppose that's probably because the whole situation of the visual clutter issue, so maybe
16:00if we had less visual clutter, we would notice these things, but again, if you don't build your
16:06character in a certain way, you're going to regret it. And what I mean by building in a certain way,
16:12it means that you need to have this charm called Enduring Faith. That essentially stops you from
16:16getting one shot, but then it becomes the whole thing, you know, it becomes a meta. You need to
16:22have it in order to do this fucking thing, unless you have this uber giga chad build that allows you
16:27to one-shot him immediately. Or rather, not one-shot him, you three-time tap him and then he switches
16:32the
16:33phases and that's basically how it works. So I don't think that he is that difficult because it's easy
16:39to figure things around, but having this one particular item to be a game changer in order to kill him,
16:45it feels cheap a bit. Like I said, I already killed him, it took me some time, but stuff definitely
16:50changed after I got the said item, but at the end of the day, I don't think that this should
16:56be a
16:56thing. If you want to make a character that's tanky, which by the way, it's very hard to do in
17:00Diablo
17:01because most of the time everybody's going for the giga damage, then fine, but let me soak these
17:06things by default. And if you want to make a glass cannon characters with all the dodges and stuff,
17:11fine again, but you signed up for that. So my point is the whole combat situation or the boss fight
17:17is okay. I like how the whole phases are working and is definitely better than Lilith, but I believe
17:23that the thing is a bit overtuned, especially with so many one-shot mechanics. But that's just me. I
17:29don't know if other people had issues with it, but you know, I just felt a bit shitty because without
17:35the enduring faith charm, it would still be a struggle. Since I already babbled too much about
17:40the whole situation, I'm just going to put some small snippets of what I found to be problematic
17:45in the game while I was playing. So for starters, it would be nice if there is a different color
17:49for charms when they dropped or set bonuses or whatever. Usually they all have the same color
17:54as uniques, but I would definitely like it to be green because that was the way in Diablo 3. So
17:59I
17:59don't know why they didn't change it or they simply designated it to be a unique item. Another problem
18:04that I noticed is the world bosses are getting killed fast again. And I want to blame as well
18:09because when I hit a world boss with 10 fucking trillion damage, obviously it's going to fucking
18:14die immediately. So I don't know what happened, but again, we are still back at zero or rather what
18:18it was season two or three, where we were just one-shotting bosses with Hota barbs. Next on the list
18:24is a server stability. Servers are still shit. I still have rubber banding. I still have lag no
18:29matter what I do. There are certain talks about game still having memory leaks. I don't know,
18:34when that's going to get fixed, if it's going to get fixed, but it's still a thing. The lack of
18:39in-game trading, as in in-game auction house, is still shitty as fuck. All credit to Diablo.trade
18:46people who made some kind of auction house, but this thing should be in-game. If they can make
18:52a loot filter function in the same way, they can bloody well make it work for auction house because
18:57I really don't want to alt-tab non-stop in order to trade my items. I want it to be
19:02in-game. I think
19:03it's high time for this to happen because this is just ridiculous. I didn't engage with leaderboards
19:09because I believe the system is dumb as fuck. What happens is you are essentially pushing one build
19:14so everyone can reach the top, which is dumb again. Why can't we do something like we had in
19:20Diablo 3, where individual builds are competing with each other and instead everybody is just
19:26piled up per class, which is to me completely fucking dumb. As always, I want more storage. I don't think
19:32that the number of storage tabs that we have right now is enough, especially if you're going to roll
19:37several alts. It kind of messes with your experimentation because if you are trying
19:42several builds, there are several sets that you need to put in your storage. So yeah, it's a fucking
19:46pain. And finally, I want to talk about the unique item situation because as you know, they don't have
19:53fixed affixes anymore. So yeah, I don't know what to think about that whole situation. On one hand,
19:58it kind of pushes you to farm these items to find the perfect or the best thing possible that you
20:04currently can find given the volatility of affixes that are introduced in that particular item type.
20:11But at the same time, if you get a let's say 3GA or 4GA drop and it's just dog shit
20:16stats,
20:17it's kind of infuriating because that happened to me. I saw one of the uniques that I wanted to be
20:21on that particular level, so to speak. And it just was a fucking shit show because the stats were,
20:28I don't know, lifer hit, impaired effects, you know, stupid shit like that and nobody gives a
20:33fuck. Again, at the same time, it's cool because you can farm these items and obviously you can
20:38re-roll them in the cube, but at the same time, it feels like shit. So I don't know really
20:42what to
20:43think about the whole situation. Maybe allow us to modify these things in the cube. So yeah,
20:48I would lean more towards those things being static or at least certain stats being static and then
20:55others are kind of switching back and forth. For example, core stats like life and strength should
21:01be static while the other things are kind of re-rolling or certain affixes for core stats
21:06like plus 3 to something that are definitely orientated to those items should be fixed because
21:12it makes no fucking sense that I get a, let's say, unique for dread claws and it rolls fucking,
21:18I don't know, plus something to apocalypse because that's completely stupid. I can live with the fact
21:23that is rolling, I don't know, attack speed, critical strike chance, critical strike damage,
21:28overpower, whatnot, but that particular stat should be fixed. So I suppose certain stats should be or
21:34must be fixed while the other stats can, you know, fluctuate and then depending on whether or not you
21:39need that or you want that, you can kind of keep it. But if you want to change certain stats,
21:44I reckon
21:44you need the same of the item that you already picked. So for example, I don't know, you have 10
21:50of the
21:50same and then you put it in the cube and then you're using that item to re-roll the stat
21:54that
21:54you want essentially. So you're still farming the uniques, but at the end of the day, you're getting
21:59at least in a deterministic way what you want. And that's pretty much it when it comes to all the
22:05shit that I have written down. Obviously, I didn't script this. I was just talking about things that
22:09I wrote on a piece of paper and I just went with it. The final verdict about this whole expansion
22:15and
22:16the changes that were introduced, I would say it's very positive. There are definitely 100% certain
22:21things that should be re-analyzed in order to see whether or not the benefits are much greater than
22:27the shortcomings of the set change. And I reckon in the following weeks or months, that's going to
22:33be a thing, particularly when it comes to, I don't know, season 14 or something like that. At the end
22:38of
22:38the day, it's just kind of sad that it took, what, two or three years in order to make this
22:42game to be
22:43like this. But I suppose if you want to have a server lining behind all this situation is better
22:48late than never. It's not a awesome thing to say or it's not an awesome feeling to have, but it
22:54is
22:54what it is. All I can say is after a long bloody time, I'm actually having fun in this game,
23:00which
23:00means that the whole situation is going in a proper direction. And now it remains to be seen whether or
23:06not Blizzard or Diablo 4 devs will ride this way further, or they're just going to do stupid shit like
23:13they did in the past. Hopefully that's not going to be a case, but again, being vigilant or remaining
23:19vigilant is not a bad idea when it comes to Blizzard and Diablo 4. But at the end of the
23:24day, that's just
23:25my take. Let me know in the comments what you think about the whole expansion situation and the changes
23:31that happened, and whether or not you would like to change something or keep it as is. And if you
23:36enjoyed
23:37my blabbing, don't forget to like, subscribe and all that good stuff. That's it from me, until the next one.
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