Back To Hell – Episode 464

In this episode, I talked about Diablo III Season 34; David Bevik; Quoth The Raven: You Have Died; Diablo Immortal Season 35

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is Jen, and you are listening to
the Shattered Soulstone podcast. I've always, I always
gather stuff up because I it just entertains
the hell out of me literally. And,
it's a lot of fun. So here's some
of what we're doing today. This one is
I'm gonna call this one back to hell
because that's the first thing that I saw
when I started collecting stuff for this show.

(00:21):
And,
this one is from the Diablo account on
x, and it says back to hell you
go. Season thirty four is now live in
Diablo four, and there is an image of
some of the characters from Diablo I'm sorry.
Not Diablo four. Diablo three. You know, it's
just there. There's, like, it's just an image
of two,
characters player characters

(00:44):
hill with all these monsters coming after them.
It's live now. It's always been Diablo three
the way this is, and it's a lot
of fun. I'm probably gonna try to play
that as well. I've also been playing a
lot of Diablo four, and I'll get there
in just a minute.
There's also this thing on MSN
apparently from Windows Central,
and it has to do with David Brevick.

(01:07):
So here's what I'm, you know, picking up
from this. The title of this is a
bit long.
It says, you've cheapened the entire experience. That's
in a quote. Diablo creator bemoans the current
state of ARPGs and MMOs. It was written
by Jennifer Young. So here's the article.
Original creator of the Diablo franchise, David Brevik,

(01:27):
was interviewed recently for the Video gamer podcast.
And while the episode
isn't live yet, the guys over at Video
gamer have published some of the best bits
which are sure to get some tongues wagging
in the ARPG community. As the battle between
Diablo and Path of Exile rages on among
fans,
Breivik bemoaned the faster paced nature of current

(01:49):
day ARPGs.
And I can't help wondering if his comments
were more focused on Diablo four than anything
else. This latest season has certainly had the
dial turned up to eleven for loot reign,
but I did enjoy season seven a lot.
Do modern gamers really want the slower methodical
paced gameplay that Brevik is harking back to
his to in this interview? David Brevik, the

(02:11):
original creator of the Diablo franchise, recently shared
his thoughts in an interview for the Video
Gamer podcast. While the full episode isn't live
yet, the video gamer team has teased some
highlights that are already stirring up conversation in
the ARPG community.
As fans continue to debate the merits of
Diablo four versus Path of Exile two, Brevett
lamented the faster paced gameplay seen in today's

(02:33):
ARPGs
and MMOs. Though I stress he didn't name
any titles specifically,
it's hard not to wonder if his criticism
was aimed directly at Diablo four, especially with
its latest to loot heavy season season of
witchcraft.
Season seven certainly ramp things up, and I
quite enjoyed it a bit, says the author
of this. But it does raise a question.

(02:55):
Do modern gamers really crave the slower, methodical
gameplay Brevik is reminiscing about? Here's a bit
on Brevik on the current pace of ARPGs
and MMOs.
Quote, I think that an RPG in general
have started to
to lean into this, kill swaths of en
swaths of enemies all over the place extremely

(03:16):
quickly, Brevik said in the interview. Your build
is killing all sorts of stuff so you
could get more drops, you can level up,
so you can, like and the screen is
littered with stuff you don't care about. Although
he acknowledges Diablo two wasn't perfect, Breivik elaborated
on why he finds modern gameplay less engaging.
Quote, I just don't find killing screen fulls
of things instantly and mowing stuff down and

(03:38):
walking around the level and killing everything very
enticing.
I just don't feel like that is a
cool experience. I find it kind of silly.
While the full interview has not yet been
released, these snippets are already fueling online debates.
And the the writer of this says, I
bet there are multiple YouTube videos incoming
considering Brevik status in the gaming community. Although

(03:58):
Brevik doesn't mention Diablo four or Path of
Exile two by name, here the implications are
clear and fans on both sides are taking
note. So here's a little bit more. I'll
give you one more couple of paragraphs here.
What do the Diablo four audience actually want?
So there's a thing in here. Let me
share a little secret. The writer says, is
impossible to please Diablo players. When Diablo four

(04:19):
launched in June 2023, it was praised for
its story and campaign,
arguably the best in the franchise. But its
endgame, not so much. Players criticized its pacing
and lack of meaningful endgame. Ironically, while Diablo
two fans have spent years farming bail without
reaching match max level, The same grind is
considered intolerable in a modern Diablo game. Our

(04:40):
interview with the developers last year or in
an interview with the developers last year, Rod
Ferguson addressed this discontent.
Quote, when you launch something, you're always doing
it with a set of assumptions. We had
the assumption that d four was meant to
be more d two like. And so one
of the assumptions was that people were going
to be okay with the long grind for
the unique or an Uber unique in particular.

(05:02):
Because in Diablo two, it could go years.
You could go three years before you find
the Uber you're looking for. And in fact,
there's a name called the holy grail, which
is getting one of everything, which literally takes
years. And so we were like, okay. This
is what people love about the progression of
d two, that idea that the very long
of that very long chase. And so we
launched that way with d four, and we

(05:24):
found out very quickly that if you don't
give me my Uber in my season, then
I'm upset. Translation, Blizzard tried the slow burn
approach of Diablo two but faced immediate backlash.
The result now is increased mob density and
a legendary loot reign closer to Diablo three,
a shift I personally know the writer says,
but, actually, who was it? Was it Brevik?

(05:44):
I can't see. I well, whatever.
But this faster pace comes at a cost
with updates feeling increasingly buggy, something Blizzard has
openly acknowledged. There's more of this in here
if you wanna do it, and everything will
be in this show notes. But thinking about
this, I've been playing the season for Diablo
four, the current season with, New Barbarian,
and

(06:05):
it it does seem like you're getting tons
more gold than it seemed like they intended.
I mean, maybe it was intended. Intended. Maybe
they thought if we give them everything, all
the gold, all the resources,
all the the, you know, clothing and stuff,
that people would be really happy and keep
going. And it's possible some people don't want
that, but they were still they like the

(06:25):
game. They like the the scenarios. They like,
you know, running across different quests you could
do to help, you know, people that aren't,
you know, a barbarian or any other class
in the game,
you know, like NPCs, basically.
And it just seems kind of strange that,
you know, like, I'm having trouble with that
is what I'm trying to say. Because when

(06:45):
my new barbarian I had to make a
new one. When that one went in, it's
it was like, you know, tons and tons
of gold everywhere, which wasn't too bad to
pick up because I have, like, a frog
from the witches
and,
that, like, definitely likes to break things,
a dog that picks up gold, gems, other
kinds of loot, and stuff like that. So

(07:05):
that part's not really the problem, but the
problem comes when
your stash is full of things that seem
like something you need.
And I'm at the point now where I'm
having to stick a whole lot of stuff
inside
the I guess I'd call it the stash,
like like you would in d three, you
know, but different. And I'm running out of
room for things, leaving things on the ground

(07:27):
because I don't have any place to put
them anymore.
I don't think I'm the only one having
that experience. So when I saw this article,
I'm like, okay. Maybe this is, like, part
of something that other people are also experiencing.
Now I'm not irate about it. It appears
David Brefik is not so happy with how
this is going, but I thought it might
be an interesting thing. And I'm reading this
out because it's on MSN, and Windows Central

(07:49):
was, like, the, I guess, direct source of
it.
And, again, there's way more in this article
that, you know again, everything will be up
on shatteredsoulstone.com
when I'm done with this episode
of recording. But, yeah, that's that's what I've
been doing. And it's just like at first,
it was, like, really fun. Oh god. Here's
all this gold. Here's all these things. I've
got a couple of, you know, helpers here

(08:10):
doing stuff, you know, that kind of thing.
And,
it's a lot. And then I found myself
just earlier way earlier this,
maybe it was yesterday,
that all the stuff I get, you go
to there's the, there's the seasonal stuff where
you go to this, like, purple dot and
the the character in there, tries to give
you stuff and it's tons of stuff, but

(08:31):
you don't have room for it anymore. And
I'm just kinda like, maybe I don't need
all this stuff. You know what I mean?
So if that's your experience, you know, then
you're feeling the same as I am. If
it's not, then that's how it goes, I
suppose.
Moving on. We have some Diablo,
stuff, and this kinda leans into the thing
that I was just talking about, sort of,
kind of. So this one is on x.

(08:53):
It's on the Diablo account on x,
and it says quoth the raven. You have
died. Complete the season of witchcraft,
season journey, and Dorian the raven pet can
be yours. There is a two second video,
literally two seconds
of a character, a Diablo four character watching
the raven fly toward her,

(09:13):
and I think that's pretty cool. I'm hoping
I can get that because I really love
birds a lot. So,
I'm gonna, you know, see what I can
do here. We've got a Diablo Immortal one
from February 6, which is just a couple
days ago.
And it says the time for slaying demons
and climbing your way through the ranks is
running out. Earn rewards from our season 35

(09:35):
battle pass, traveling blade before it's gone on
February 13.
So you have some time to do that.
And, again, this one's a twenty second video
clip on x. That's all it is right
now
that I can see. And it's got, like,
a whole group of what could be somebody's
clan that all have, like, the same costume
type things on. You know? I haven't dug

(09:55):
into Diablo Immortal
recently, but I'll get there
possibly. Now we're going into some Diablo four
stuff. So over here from eight days ago,
on Wowhead, this was posted by Varad, and
it's titled decay augmentation and twilight warding, witch
power disabled,
unique items, fix item fixes incoming, Diablo four

(10:17):
season seven. So here's what's going on. There
was an update on January 31. Blizzard has
additionally
disabled the twilight warding
witchcraft power for the weekend, citing hardcore player
deaths and unintended
interactions. So there's a little block of blue
text here from Blizzard.
Says we have gone ahead and also disabled

(10:37):
the twilight warding as well as this as
well this weekend. This was causing some weird
interactions that could result in players, especially
hardcore, dying unintentionally.
We have a fix being tested over the
weekend, and we'll roll that out over the
next week once verified. Blizzard has disabled the
decay augmentation witch power in Diablo four season

(10:58):
seven due to gameplay issues until further notice.
Global communications director Adam Fletcher also stated that
the development team is working on some unique
item fixes for Ring of Medellin and Mantle
of Mountains Fury. Then there's a thing here
specifically from Blizzard. It says, hello all. We
have seen the reports related to some very
egregious numbers coming from a few builds slash

(11:20):
classes. The team has some fixes underway, but
in the meantime, we will be disabling the
augmentation witchcraft power in the game as this
is tied to some of these issues. This
means players will not be able to equip
the power at this time. The players can
still purchase this power, but you will not
receive it. So we do recommend against doing
this until the power has been re enabled.

(11:42):
We will be working on a fix and
bringing this back to players next week. The
team will attempt to see if we can
do this via a server hotfix. But if
we can't get this in via a hotfix,
then we will look at doing a quick
client patch shortly after two point one point
one is released. Additionally, we did want to
provide a few other updates on some other
class items we have seen bubble up to
the top of conversations.

(12:04):
Necromancer.
There is currently an issue with the ring
of Mendelein and its iterations with minion builds.
We do have a fix for this, and
it is slated for 02/2002.
Barbarian, we implemented a fix for the mantle
of mountains fury back during our first hotfix
for 02/2000.
Since then, we have seen some much better
results but have noticed that there was some

(12:26):
confusion related to damage over time from the
quakes and the explosion damage being inconsistent.
We do plan on addressing this, which will
result in some further strength to this build.
We do want to note that we will
be looking at this build and doing some
balance tweaks as we start the next season.
This is just a few items we are
looking at, and there are more including game
loading issues, client stability, and other class related

(12:48):
items that go beyond the list mentioned above.
We appreciate the feedback and everyone hope hopping
into season seven to check out our new
witchcraft powers. We will provide an update soon
regarding the above after the weekend. Now if
you don't know who Mendolin is,
Mendolin is the first necromancer in Sanctuary.
And,
yeah, there's a whole lot of story for
him. You can track it down, look it

(13:09):
up, find some of the Diablo books that
are, you know, out there for you to
check out if you don't, you know, wanna
find them here or dig through the Internet
for them. But that's what's going on with
this particular part of Diablo four season seven.
Also, we have, looks like is this a
video? There's a video in here. So this
is a video from Wowhead posted by Wowhead,
and it's titled Diablo four season seven, the

(13:30):
coven, new powers, quality of life, and more
Blizzard video highlight. This was posted eleven days
ago by Therid,
and, there's a video in here. And that's
pretty much it. So you've got a picture
of, you know, Therad and then, like, those,
those,
the heads from the
tree of whispers that have, like, absconded somehow
and pulled together a body for themselves, that

(13:53):
kind of thing. There's just a couple little
paragraphs in here, and there's also a video.
So the little paragraph says, Blizzard has released
a video highlight about Diablo four season seven,
the season of witchcraft. In the video,
community managers Marcus Kretz and Ruben Marquez
showcase the season's most essential features like the
witch powers, the much requested armory system, and

(14:13):
much more. That's pretty much all that's saying
in there. I've got another one here. New
champions of the silver city, Diablo four cosmetics,
angelic council themed sets. These look really cool
in my opinion. So this is written by,
Jez Artross
on Wowhead
from ten days ago. So if you missed
it, I'm pretty sure, you know, it it's

(14:34):
cosmetics.
You can buy it anytime you want. I
don't think it's gonna disappear entirely from all
of the game, but, you know so here
we go. A new cosmetic collection has been
released in Diablo four, the champions of the
silver city sets, with each class gaining a
cosmetic set corresponding to a member of the
Anguirus council. The angelic collection consisting of Acolyte

(14:55):
of Inarius,
Acolyte of Malthael, Acolyte of Tyrael, Acolyte of
Imperius, Acolyte of Aureole, and Acolyte of Ethereal
along with the special companion mount bundle pride
of the acolytes
make their debut with small lore tidbits associated
with each member of the Angieris Council, the
archangels of sanctuary. Take a look at these

(15:15):
sets below, which you can't see now, but
you can you'll get it when I put
it into the show notes. And that's really
all it is. Like, there's a mount, pride
of the acolytes.
There's acolyte of Venerius, acolyte of Malthiel, acolyte
of Tiriel, acolyte of
and acolyte of Ethereal. They're asking which one
is your favorite?
Do you think any missed the mark? This

(15:36):
could mean an increase in angelic presence coming
to sanctuary
sooner than we might think. Let us know
in the comments below. So the imperious one
is aimed at the barbarian, and it's very,
very gold and shiny, and it comes with
a spear. And then there's,
Aclaid Vethiriel is a druid build. And, again,
all of it's very, very gold and shiny,

(15:56):
and there's, like, some sort of scroll.
Then there's Maltheal, a necromancer,
build that, you know, is exactly
it's all they're all gold. You know? The
sets themselves don't match
everything, but it's, like, kind of trying to
pair it up with all the stuff. Someone's
gonna buy these. Aclash Tyrael is a rogue
set.
Again, all gold. And and that one comes

(16:18):
with the sword. And then there's, Ariel the
sorcerer, so you can see that one. And
they're all very gold and shiny. And then
there's Inarius
spiritborn,
in here. And so that's, again, a bunch
of gold and shiny things. And that's kind
of where that one ends up. Now I
don't normally purchase these things because I generally

(16:39):
just kind of forget about them, but, that's
where we're at with this, Diablo
four season seven class lead deep dives. This
was posted twelve days ago. So if you
missed it, there's a bunch of stuff in
here I can kind of read out to
you that
probably
is still

(16:59):
valid, sort of, kind of. So that's where
we're gonna start is with
that. Season,
Diablo four. Let's see who wrote this one.
Jezartraas
wrote this one. Diablo four season seven is
in full swing, and players jump straight into
sanctuary to see what witchcraft powers and headhunts
have to offer. With typical season
tuning
tuning typical season tuning upended by the introduction

(17:20):
of spirit born in season six, players were
eager to see what would become of their
classes, and now we're settling in and gearing
up. Our class leads took the time to
analyze some of the buffs and nerfs that
is now season now that season seven is
live and shared their thoughts below on the
good, the bad, and the future. So the
state of the barbarian.
The sea the it's a season of earthquake.
Almost everything is centered around earthquakes because of

(17:42):
the massive multipliers on executioner's
aspect, aspect of incendiary
fissures and force of nature.
Mantle of Mountain's Fury gives barbarian some flavor
that has been missing from the class for
a long time, especially after how brutal season
five and six were for those who didn't
want to swap to mighty throw when VOH
launched. The only thing barbarians should be worried
about at the moment is how devastating the

(18:04):
eventual nerfs will be whether that happens at
the midseason patch or with the launch of
season eight. State of the Druid. For us
Druids, the season of witchcraft has essentially become
our season of the werewolf with werewolf form
dominating our two s tier slots in the
form of lacerate and cataclysm builds. Lacerate centralizes
around using lacerate as often as possible by

(18:25):
stacking many forms of cooldown reduction and ultimate
damage. We might label aspect of apo Apogeic
fur Fuhrer and vehement brawler's aspect as our
top aspects for season seven given that some
combination of these two are used across both
of these builds. Ultimate skill builds are definitely
running in the meta right now. The cataclysm
build is another beast, and there's reason to

(18:45):
believe it's flying too close to the sun.
If you've been paying attention, you're likely to
have seen several videos about this build damage
numbers reaching into the trillions.
Rob's video on the topic gives a good
look as to what's going on. Essentially, the
build work off works off of a snapshot
mechanism from,
Zan and Kax, which are

(19:05):
I don't know if that's like a skill
or item. I'm really not sure. Allowing players
to continue using Cataclysm on cooldown
given there's enough CDR baked into the build
to keep its uptime consistent. Combine this with
the Mielnic ring, providing Cataclysm with the base
passive present benefits from our lightning bolts and,

(19:27):
rune workers conduit aspect, scaling the damage of
our lightning bolts off of willpower, and you
get this video in the player featured in
Rob's video, Catout.
There's more there. Necromancer's got a bunch of
stuff in here as well. These things just
get longer and longer, so I'm just gonna
read some of it. After many seasons of
the bone spirit necromancer being the top dog,

(19:48):
we have a new contender in the form
of Shadow Bloodwave.
This build has been around for a while,
but many buffs in the introduction of Kasumi's
legacy have propelled it to new heights this
season. There's also a new twist on a
classic build with Indira's Memory, giving bone spear
necromancer new life by reimagining this skill in
the blood arc archetype alongside bone based synergies.

(20:09):
Blight has received some well deserved love, making
this build a true damage over time powerhouse.
Alongside these, nearly every build in the class
such as blood surge, sever, bone spirit, and
the soul rift based soulmaker build remain powerful
options.
Season seven changed the foundation of the minion
archetype as the phrase you and your minions
has been phased out. Now most multipliers are

(20:32):
applied to both yourself and your minions. Minions
were also given a lucky hit chance, which
adds robust utility rather than relying on other
skills from mechanics such as fortify and barrier.
Despite these changes, minions remain viable but a
bit underwhelming in the end game. This is
a complicated issue as they tend to stand
in crowd control effects, and we lack a
way to direct them. The necromancer minions are

(20:54):
a common topic in recent campfire talks by
Blizzard with many paths it can take to
improve this. Only time will tell which they
choose. And then there's the state of the
rogue. This is going a little long, but
somebody is playing one of these builds or
one of these character types out there. So
the rogue is currently in a good place,
but necromancer and barbarian take the cake when
it comes to power level. While we've gotten

(21:15):
some buffs to favorite builds, it feels like
Blizzard thinks rogue is one of the best
balanced classes. So we haven't seen much creativity
in terms of uniques or aspects like other
classes have received. Rogue is one of the
last classes that have yet to see a
completely
new play style that hasn't existed in some
form or another since release, and it's beginning
to feel in the same builds being meta

(21:36):
over and over without any meaningful changes. Rain
of arrows is currently the strongest rogue build
in part due to it having the least
amount of bugs associated with it. Unfortunately, not
every player will enjoy this build because of
its annoying play style. It requires keeping enemies
distant for max damage, which can lead to
a lot more running around for positioning than
some players like in an ARPG.

(21:57):
Meanwhile, two other ultimate based builds are currently
bugged to rather serve severe lengths. Twisted blades
currently utilizes shadow clone, but the interaction between
that and poison imbuement does not work. Meaning
the build does about 10 times less damage
than it should if the bug between shadow
clone and poison imbuement is fixed. Expect to
see the TB build catapult to the top

(22:18):
of the tier list. It would likely become
the strongest. There's a little bit more in
there. And then we have sorcerer. In In
their last development talk, Blizzard mentioned how past
changes to the sorcerer class increased build variety
but hurt overall power level and how adjustments
in season seven were meant to tip the
scales. Confusingly, the new season's first few days
showed that even the additional last minute buffs

(22:40):
did even more of what Blizzard tried to
avoid. Cold builds builds perform a lot better
now, which adds to build variety, but can't
make up for the fact that fire is
still the elemental play style to beat. Both
new unique items, strike of stormhorn
and Oaken's catalyst, showcase great design ideas to
open up design space in the lighting department,
but poor execution simply because of ball lightning,

(23:04):
a skill that has been changed so many
times since launch, simply doesn't offer enough damage.
However, there is hope for the sorcerer community.
Leveling the class is much more fun than
ever because Blizzard constantly improves a fan favorite
leveling
builds like chain lightning,
but also offers new and flavorful builds for
leveling like hydra familiar.

(23:24):
An endgame example of improved
source design is fire bolt enchantment, which was
changed last minute to include fire bolt procs
on burning damage, an excellent design approach that
fills the lack of efficient AOE damage
design space
of one of the best sorcerer endgame builds
in season seven, fire bolt sorcerer endgame b's

(23:44):
build seven season seven Diablo four. We can
only hope that all sorcerer enchantments will receive
this kind of rework in the near future.
And then we have the spirit board. Well,
nerfs to Rod of Kapell
Kapellki and the legendary
paragon node, vicious
viscous viscous shield ended season six total dominance
of spiritborn, it's still an incredibly strong class

(24:06):
that's a lot of fun to play. The
new razor wings aspect, aspect of endless talons,
lend some new flavor to the popular eagle
centric builds and is showing great promise as
yet another s tier spirit born build. We
have while we have enjoyed virtual godhood in
season six, it's a welcome to balance to
bring the spirit born a little closer to

(24:27):
earth, allowing more build diversity and experimentation.
It'll be fun to see where this class
goes. And that's what I have for this
one. It's kind of a shorter show, but
maybe not. I guess it's pretty much a
good one. Hopefully,
you know, everything that I've talked about probably
has
something you're interested in or didn't know about

(24:48):
or that kind of thing. And I'm just
trying to, like, you know, help you out
with all the things going on in there.
And that's gonna be it for this episode.

(25:15):
Blizzard has additionally disabled the Twilight warning.
It really I try that again. My god.
There's too many w's in here.