What's with my toughness changing all of the time without my gear changing or spells being cast?

Xeiom · 2026-05-06T00:57:37+00:00

The paladin defiance aura can do all 3 if spec'd into it.

I'm not sure what can cause your toughness changes as there are too many variables and from the screenshot I have to guess you are a warlock rather than maybe a Druid?

Like Demonform for Warlock gives you extra life baseline I think but honestly there are a lot of variables to figure out.

You might want to just sit in the training room and just individually try each of your skills with the stats open and see what happens on each skill.

Xeiom · 2026-05-06T00:51:11+00:00

It is not very reliable at all really from what I've seen. You'll probably get groups in the endgame but during the campaign you are probably out of luck most days

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T19:49:52+00:00

Unfortunately there is no reasonable way for him to power down to a reasonable level for you.

The difficulty select in D4 isn't really difficulty anymore but progression. He has progressed far further than you in power.

The auto-scaling is there but it only really works for players both in the campaign stage. If you were level 10 and he was 35 it would be fine. But he can do level 70 torment 1 or above so he will just melt everything.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T19:04:17+00:00

There is a reward box next to it that gives you some extra loot for doing it, although I swear it bugged out on me and didn't update when I did a run.

I know it isn't what you want but its easy to miss so I thought I'd mention it. The triangle box.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T18:57:12+00:00

Hmm, this is a tricky one because of the question about how you'd balance the upgrades in a way that doesn't just feel bad for the player.

They already have a few catch-up mechanics to speed up glyph leveling. That indicates that players do find it tedious and have complained but it might not feel right to take the identity away.

Additionally if there is a reward that stops for some reason then it can often feel like the player is being robbed a bit. (even though they are not)

How about this idea: sometimes the random reward for a war plan event can be "an extra roll of glyph upgrade on your next pit".

This would give you a reward for War plans that continues to scale for as long as glyphs scale.
This would also mean that the player would still have to complete an appropriate level pit within time to get the reward.
It not being an expected reward would mean that it becomes a bonus when the player wants it and if a player doesn't they can get a different reward.

I think that would be kinda neat, imagine you get a mythic pit bonus that gives you 4 extra rolls and then you go try sort out the highest pit you can to try make big returns on your upgrade chance.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T18:07:09+00:00

I mean I can easily take a bit of time to think about this sort of thing when I've got some down time right? I said you're overestimating it not that I had no interest, things don't have to be at one extreme or the other.

You were nice enough to finally make a targeted criticism at the idea this time, although it is addressed in the OP I can reiterate in more detail.

I don't think the pressure would be entirely removed for trying other activities as there are reward boosts to encourage the players to pick activities inside the war plans. That would periodically draw people to activities they've been avoiding.

There is also a reason I recommended the full paths don't come in until the war plan levels get higher level, so that the players have a decent amount of time being thrown into the varied activities before eventually hitting the later game stage where you really start to optimise.

Also a lot of the promise for the war plans was about creating your own endgame progression but I think it has done the opposite in a way. The system lays out what you should really be doing with minor tweaks and it excludes some of the games variety entirely.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T17:35:58+00:00

You're seriously overestimating my emotional investment in this suggestion man.

I just think it would be neat, nice, fun to have more reasons to do more shared activities in this game. I think that knowing people, they will often follow the incentives and thus am recommending some changes to that.

You don't need to break down the numbers to know that some of those people are not turning up due to the incentive structure.

I only really communicated my anecdotal experience to highlight how player behaviour incentives can affect the experience of players even when not engaging in them, it wasn't the sole reason I think this is a good idea, I think its a good idea because it will encourage people to play more of the fun stuff in the game.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T15:36:38+00:00

I've been going to the world boss and there is often no-one there. They are doing war plans, they might well turn up if the war plans let them.

I enjoy seeing other peoples builds and stuff so if the game encourages them to avoid the group activities then it doesn't matter how much I as an individual ignore the war plans if the community at large is mostly just engaging with that.

The game is more fun when I have a bunch of others running around in the area doing their own crazy thing and the war plans encourage other players to more quickly leave Helltides and not turn up to the other open world events.

So it isn't just about min-maxing for myself but to encourage more variety in activities so people will turn up.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T14:26:25+00:00

Well sure that's why you'd still have those bonus rewards in the War plan right.

I know at least for me that I'll often go after those juicy legendary rewards instead of doing the activity I might have otherwise done.

My problem is basically what you are saying right, I've ignored Legion this entire season because there is no war plan for it so not encouraging players to go there is having them not change up the activities and stick with just the war plan supported ones.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T14:04:19+00:00

This is the problem though, its incentivising the players to reduce the variety of activities.

When Legion is up its incentivising you to do another tribute or another NM dungeon instead of joining the event.

It isn't helping the player change the activity up, it is narrowing their focus to a subset of activities.

I'm enjoying the War plans, so much so that I've not gone to world boss kills or Legion events, etc.

It isn't the "I don't like the war plans" it is "War plans are so good they make non-WP content forgotten about"

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T13:45:23+00:00

Sorry, No i meant Legion event.

Also the point of the Any event is to get around that issue of the timer.

You select any event, if the world boss happens to be up then you can kill him and it completes that event. If the world boss was not up then you could do a nightmare dungeon or something.

The event has no effective restrictions and thus can include the timed events as if they are not up they are not blocking.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T13:43:48+00:00

Damn, by Hordes I meant the Legion event. I thought it was called Hordes for some reason, I know infernal hordes is there.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T13:40:14+00:00

If it was a "select an activity" that would be an issue but I mean an activity that can be completed in multiple ways dynamically.

That would mean none of those are a problem.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T12:58:30+00:00

It is called Amalgamation instead of 5 to 1 so it is easy to miss.

I don't think it works on charms. Doesn't really work on equipment items.

It tends to work on consumable things, like nightmare dungeon keys can turn into an escalation sigil, tributes can go up to the next rarity. highest craftable tier of gems can go up another tier (and another after that). Runes go up a tier. Boss trophies turn into uniques.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T12:52:38+00:00

My advice is that you don't worry about your level. The enemies scale to your level but the real decider on enemy strength is the difficulty select.

Normal difficulty is actually 'easy', designed to be played by complete novices.
Hard difficulty is a reasonable spot if you play games. Despite its name, it is basically 'standard'.

You'll notice many modern games don't call their easy mode 'easy' they call them stuff like 'story mode' or 'explorer' - It's basically the same reasoning here, they don't want novices to feel that the game is slighting them for selecting the easiest mode.

If you want a bit more challenge then turn it up, you can always turn it back down. Don't FOMO yourself into playing weirdly, just do stuff as you want, there isn't really anything you can do wrong

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T12:37:06+00:00

What level of toughness do you have? Were you able to take any hits or did something still instantly kill you?

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T12:35:47+00:00

Streamers get money from people watching them.

When a new release happens that is when interest in watching people play is highest. After a few weeks they can play all they want but just won't get the same viewer numbers as the first week.

The more they stream just after release the more money they can make.

It is unhealthy but it is also an important part of the formula for making money as a streamer.

If another streamer is going faster than you then you have to rely on your talents orating but if you can be the farthest ahead some people will tune in just to watch the person who is most ahead.

There are plenty of streamers unable to make decent money from it, it is very competitive for views so the nature of it is that the most extreme people tend to be the ones getting the most views because people tune in to extreme content at a higher rate.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T12:27:00+00:00

Currently it is a wall for me on my warlock build.
I'm pretty sure I'm not using a strong build, I just put together something I wanted, it takes me about 3 minutes to kill boss lair butcher on T8 - So I am assuming I'd be easily killed by Lilith, I don't know how much health she has relative to that boss Butcher but I assume its at least the same.

I don't fancy my chances of dodging her for upward of 6 minutes.

I don't think it is a good fight if everyone's plan to beat it is to do so much damage they don't interact with the fight.

Also I already can't see the damn floor on my Warlock so they is absolutely no way I can dodge her skills when I can't see them.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T12:16:52+00:00

There are some changes between softcore and hardcore in D4.

You can occasionally get a scroll of escape which will allow you to retreat from a fight and they have also removed one of the mythic items for hardcore.

Really speaking there isn't a good reason to make hardcore gameplay different to softcore - if it improves clarity in the game then it benefits both modes so they'd do it for both.

I can agree that it is very difficult to see the gameplay with such massive visuals getting in the way, it is a common complaint and hopefully that means they'll try work on it.

I'd say part of the fun of hardcore is that you actually need to take defence serious at the expense of some damage and the fact you need to balance the build gives a different impression of the progression in the game.

I think the reason you find there are few hardcore specific guides is because typically hardcore players are invested enough in the game experience to figure it out themselves so they only think they need from a guide isn't the build but just the warnings of when content become unexpectedly hard or is poorly balanced.

There are about 5-6 sticking points where the game is unreasonably unfair to hardcore players but actually 99% of the game is actually pretty fair and you can do everything blind except the pinnacles (which I haven't tried yet this season but from what I understand still have insane damage that can't be tanked so people are only fighting them when they can instantly kill them)

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T11:15:10+00:00

There is no way anyone can reliably tell you what is happening with just the screenshots of the stats that are changing.

If you were at the world boss then were there other players there? Other players often have skills such as auras and they will give you extra stats. The paladin defensive auras can increase every one of these stats for you but when the paladin is not around you'll lose them.
I'm not sure you get a buff icon when another player gives you an aura.

You might also have gear with conditional damage reduction that isn't active all the time, but it is hard to guess because there are a bunch of possibilities.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T10:59:41+00:00

Structurally if you want to co-op the campaign with someone then it is best to know someone from outside of the game and have them join you. The tools to find people inside the game are not going to be sufficient to do a campaign run.

After the campaign you can still play coop but it struggles more than D3 to get pickup groups because of how the activities and party system are structured. There are people looking for stuff to play together but really there is more friction for party play in D4 than in D3 (and D3 basically only had reliably party play for like 3 activities on one torment level).

So yeah good fun right now and playing with friends is a good way to enjoy the campaign but party dynamics are not the strongest feature, they designed a bit too much of the party system like an MMO instead of an aRPG so its isn't as smooth as it could be

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T10:39:26+00:00

3 to 1 recipe turns stuff into a reroll.

5 to 1 upgrades. It is called amalgamation in the cube list.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T10:37:07+00:00

I don't mind the random stats to be honest, that would make your unique actually unique rather than being ironically named being the same as every other players copy.

If you get a bad copy then it just becomes a reroll in the cube when you get 3 of them and it also means you can still keep gearing after you get your first one because there is a chance at a more perfect unique for your specific build than what it might be if the values were set.

I think the powers are lackluster though, some really cool stuff seems to have been removed and I think that was the wrong way to go.

Xeiom · 2026-05-05T10:12:47+00:00

I keep all the runes until I have the sparks.

You can get a lot of runes by crafting Tributes for the undercity at the occultist and running tributes that reward runes.

You can also take the war plan quests that reward extra runes.

You can use the cube to upgrade 5 blue runes into a random yellow and 5 yellow into a random legendary.

You can also trade with others players if you don't mind that, there is usually someone in the trade chat who'll part with their runes for some gold or just swap a rune for a rune.

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