Diablo 4 Necromancer Gets Buffed Back Up, But Barbarian And Sorcerer Get Nerfed
Diablo 4 hasn't even released outside of Early Access yet, and already Blizzard is working on rebalancing its classes, bringing back more viability to Necromancers while scaling back the powers of some other classes, like Barbarian and Sorcerer.
The notes for the most recent patch, 1.0.2d, were published Saturday on Blizzard's website, and one of the most toyed-with classes, the Necromancer, is seeing a lot of changes. Firstly, three of its skills are getting a damage increase: Blood Lance (up to 80% from 67.5%), Blood Wave (up to 120% from 90%), and Army of the Dead (up to 45% from 30%). Additionally, Army of the Dead will be available more often, as its cooldown was reduced from 90 seconds to 70.
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There has been some scaling back to Necromancer, as the essence gained from its Grim Harvest has been reduced from 3/6/9 to 2/4/6, and the critical chance of Serration has been brought down from .5/1/1.5% to .3/.6/.9%. Still the overall changes, which also include a Shadowblight damage increase from 20% to 22%, have been an overall boon for the class.
All these changes to Necromancer come after the last Server Slam event, held in the middle of May, saw a multitude of fans complaining about Necromancers getting nerfed, and particularly when it came to the amount of damage its summoned skeletons could endure. The new patch will make some improvements to Necromancers' summons in a few different ways. Skeleton Warriors and Golems get a 10% boost to attack, while Blood Golem's Life Drain damage more than doubles (from 40% to 90%) and increases healing (from 4% to 5%), and Iron Golem's Shockwave and Slam damage increase significantly (from 30% to 40% and from 25% to 175%, respectively). Additionally, all summons from both Necromancer and Druids will take less maximum damage over time, reducing the per-instance rate from 2% of their maximum life to 1%.
Not all classes have been so lucky, however, as a lot of them have seen their skills and abilities dulled down. Barbarian is one such class — the damage reducton from skill ranks of its Challenging Shout have been reduced from 4% to 2%. Additionally, Aspect of the Dire Whirlwind will see heavy reductions in its maximum critical strike chance bonus (down to 9-24% from 20-40%) and its increased critical strike chance per second (down to 3-8% from 5-10%).
Likewise, Sorcerers have seen some of their abilities doing a little less than they did before. Aspect of Control takes a dip in bonus damage, reduced to 25-35% from 30-40%, and the lucky hit chance of Arc Lash is going down to 14% from 30%. Meanwhile, Glinting Arc Lash's cooldown reduction has gone down from .25 to .15 seconds. There's a defensive nerf as well, as Shimmering Teleport will only provide damage reduction for three seconds instead of the previous five.
For a full list of changes to the character classes, you can check out the full patch notes here. And if you're not an Early Access player but are eager to get into Diablo 4, you'll get your chance very soon, at 5 p.m. PT on June 5.
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Source: DualShockers
