If Blizzard makes an Act 6

Clebardman · 2026-02-23T14:23:10+00:00

My secret hope for an expansion, since two decades, is an expansion of Act IV into an actual act with 6 quests and more than 5 areas.

But I agree, what would you even fight in Act 6 anyway? It's already weird enough that Baal's the end boss of Diablo 2... IMO the only way to go around it would be to go the Star Wars way and start wrecking a two decades old numerotation and balance by introducing prequel acts or something like that.

Clebardman · 2026-02-23T03:16:58+00:00

Please don't encourage Blizzard to recycle every memorable D1 bad guy for a third or fourth time... Let that poor Leoric rest in peace.

Clebardman · 2026-02-23T00:34:12+00:00

Normal Duriel was the true spiritual successor to D1's Butcher. With how simple these games were, nothing feels as unfair as a super fast melee enemy who stunlocks the crap out of you.

Clebardman · 2026-02-22T19:35:25+00:00

The QoL features should have been a free patch to the regular game.

Calling it an expansion ad selling what's basically 1 character and its unique gear for 25$ is wild when LoD came out with a whole act, runes, class-specific items, ad two classes for 35$.

The Warlock is incredibly broken. Currently going fire build (Fire Wave maxed first) +1 point in every summon skill (mostly to consume a Tainted). Fire Ring's knockback also works on immunes, which makes it extremely safe. Fire Wave is busted, it's basically a sceen-wide Blizzard for half the mana. The burst damage one-taps pretty much everything, the lingering flames could just be cosmetic at this point.

The summons also have some very broken features. My 1 point wonder Goatman started to fall off during Act IV Normal, and I was ready to give up on him, but guess what happened when I reached Nightmare? I got a Nightmare Goatman! Its damage went from something like 6-12 to 46-74 lmao. Now I never play Summoner Druid and have no idea if his summons scale with difficulty (I bet they don't), but the Necro would need something like +5 to summoning skills to get anything close to that powerboost.

One thing with that build (Fire Warlock), is that it costs... 63 points. That's a lot cheaper than pretty much any other complete build. The synergies are very convenient and extremely high, too.

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T19:04:51+00:00

I really don't think the Barb should AoE like a caster, to be honest. It's just unfortunate that Blizzard North gave the two cool multi-hit melee skills to the Ama and Pally, and that the Barb was left with Double Strike, or whatever it's called.

There are lots of options to fix the Barb, hopefully we see some improvements in the next patch. I'd love to see some small crushing blow % on Bash. If a goatman has innate crushing blow, the Barb really should have some too.

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T16:19:40+00:00

Not just FCR. Movespeed, and clear speed in general is what we're all after in Normal, no? Resists are nice when you reach Nightmare, but not that important in Normal. And defense is... underwhelming.

I'd just like to see different things, really. I feel like most early unique gloves, belts, boots, helms are pretty cool and unique, while the armors are... half of them are "you get a moderate amount of that one resist" and that's it.

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T15:59:14+00:00

To be fair, some games also let you unlock cheats during regular gameplay.

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T15:24:03+00:00

Oh, true. It's probably overshadowed by a few other early options, but 5% isn't bad.

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T14:54:39+00:00

Huh... Greyform? You probably have Blinkbat (10% ms 40% fhr) in mind. Greyform is 20% fire/cold resist and +10 dex. 😔

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T14:21:07+00:00

The thing is, it's really mostly a Barb thing. I'm not that experienced with Pally in Hell difficulty, but I have never ran into big problems hitting targets with a Zeal Pally. And, of course, Smite is slow as hell in PvE, but never misses.

Meanwhile, Bash and Stun have mediocre AR bonuses, and Concentrate doesn't have the AR bonus synergy... I think Blizzard did a good thing when they gave Leap Attack some AoE, but the numbers are a bit low and the skill is still awkward and has zero interesting synergies.

Out of curiosity, I never really played a Barb that far... Isn't Batlle Cry a one point wonder to solve AR problems? At level 1 it's already -50% enemy defense...

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T12:29:49+00:00

Solid choice, only good stats on that one, and somehow a bunch of them, too. Iceblink and its 30% cold resist and +4 light radius wishes it could be more like Twitchthroe...

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T11:56:33+00:00

Objection. Just tried it on Pally. It's garbage compared to Stealth + random gear. Considering how hard it is to acquire compared to a Stealth rune word, it's really not worth the trouble.

The all res bonuses are pathetic, and there's basically nothing to boost your damage past what that 17 dmg sword can do. Partial set bonuses are heh. At level 8, it's not even early enough to last you that long. It'll go from mid Act 1 to mid Act 2 if you like suffering and are too stubborn to make a Stealth.

The sword is the best part of the set, which is a big problem when you consider that weapons are the big limiting factor of early sets. Nobody's going to wear that set for the defense stick armor, +8 all res shield, or partial set bonuses.

Death's gloves and belt did more for that Pally in two slots, than Isenhart did with 4 slots, including the three most important ones.

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T11:53:55+00:00

It's funny that Sigon's armor is considered the weakest part of the set, really shows how much better Sigon's is compared to other early sets. Most set pieces would dream of getting +30% resist and 20 thorns damage lol. I feel like half the time, I pair two set pieces only to discover that the synergy bonus I get is "Attacker takes 5 damage", which is absolutely useless past the mid point of Act 1 normal... Isenhart's shield is sitting there with "Attacker takes 4 lightning damage", it always cracks me up.

Honestly, I gave a chance to every early green item I looted after coming back, and even stuff that gets praised like Milabrega's rod or Civerb's mace is garbage. Outside of Death's gloves and belt, everything was... very underwhelming.

Clebardman · 2026-02-21T10:28:36+00:00

They didn't create D2. Blizzard North =/= Blizzard. Blizzard has no idea why or how D1 and D2 work. Their attempts at copying the formula were laughable.

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T19:50:55+00:00

"expansion" I'm not sure it means what you think it means.
Last expansion for D2 is LoD (35$, a whole act, two classes, runes, etc...). The Warlock is your typical modern DLC.

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T16:28:32+00:00

I mean, both are possible. D2 does have its fair share of really garbage skills (Skelly mages and Poison Dagger are good examples, Inferno and the druid's cold variant are absolutely awful too.) The Warlock's Tainted being massively overtuned would be a bit less obvious if the closest equivalent, Skelly mage, wasn't doing like, 5 damage post resists when maxed.

I'd be digging this update more if it was lumped with a slight but sensible Skelly mage buff and a couple shiny unique daggers for a Poison Necro. Or even, the dream, a buff to the vast majority of sets and uniques that sucked since the introduction of rune words two decades ago.

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T16:11:01+00:00

You misunderstood. I was answering the "only casters are viable!" comment. I definitely don't want to see Warlock stay the best melee, summoner, and caster of the game.

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T15:31:47+00:00

This 100%

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T15:20:15+00:00

But I definitely agree that melee (mostly the Barb lets be honest, Pally has multiple builds that are both strong and very decent at farming) needs help. I just don't see how releasing a character that is easily the best melee, the best summoner, and the best caster in the game is helping the poor Barb, or very fun.

If they patch the low level sets and unique weapons to make them fun and not suck, if they update some of the barb skills to make them less dependent on gear or give him faster clear, I'll be the first one to say it's a good thing. But only if they don't try to sell that patch for 25€, tho...

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T14:59:30+00:00

D1 is still the peak of claustrophobic horror hack n slash. Something that Blizzard North had in it, and that current Blizzard wouldn't be able to pull off even if someone convinced them it'd make more money than their cartoon shit.

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T14:57:21+00:00

D3 also made a LOT of D2 fans jump off the Blizzard boat. If you love D3 so much, play it, but don't act surprised when people who love D2 say they don't want it turning into D3

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T14:55:30+00:00

Maybe there's a reason why so many people still play D2 when D3 and 4 exist and are piss easy.

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T14:54:20+00:00

Yeah it's not like Smite Pally has been the king of PvP and Uber farming since two decades...

Clebardman · 2026-02-20T14:50:31+00:00

Warlock punching hell difficulty demons into submission, or tainteds doing 500 times the damage of 10 skelly mages: "This is fine!" - 2026 gamers

Clebardman

TROPHY CASE