Fans of Diablo IV also held a celebration of their own, despite the fact that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom continues to dominate headlines across a variety of media outlets. Considering that the game won't be available to the public for another nearly a month, the Server Slam event that took place over the weekend went surprisingly smoothly. The exasperatingly long wait times that plagued the game's beta version a few months ago are no longer an issue. My entry into the world of Sanctuary took barely a minute, a significant improvement from the previous wait time of forty-five minutes that I had to endure. The number of bugs was practically nonexistent, and numerous balancing tweaks improved what was already a satisfying experience. But it wasn't long before players found a nerf that had been taken too far: users on Reddit and Twitter went into an uproar because the new Necromancer nerfs turned their overpowered minions into harmless toys. The potent life-stealing abilities possessed by the Necromancer worked well in conjunction with a horde of skeletons that, ironically, served as meat shields. There are three distinct varieties of this ally: close-combat warriors, ranged mages, and sturdy golems.
Each category also has subtypes that were created with specific situations in mind, such as the icy skeleton Cold Mages and the tanky Bone Golems
1. Your minions are made to be expendable, and you don't even have to put much thought into the process of calling forth more of them
2. A nerf was warranted, particularly in light of the fact that the Necromancer class breezed through Diablo IV's higher difficulty levels during the open beta
3. The developers wanted the minions to run out of health quickly and to have multiple opportunities to be summoned during battle
4. During the beta, this was not the case, and there were very few instances in which minions fell to the ground
5. However, as a result of the cheap d4 gold Server Slam, the skeleton warriors suffered a significant reduction in their health, which allowed more powerful foes and bosses to quickly reduce them to bone piles
6. They were as sturdy as sticks that had been wrapped in duct tape and strung together
7. When the world boss Ashava sneezed, piles of bone were instantly tainted with poison
8. Because your minions aren't exactly the brightest bulbs in the box, area attacks quickly made quick work of them
To defend yourself against large bosses, you had to search for dead bodies and resurrect a large number of them. This was a time-consuming process. Even though the Necromancer wasn't completely useless when playing alone, most builds that relied on minions were rendered obsolete. Blizzard was alerted to the issue relatively quickly after it was discovered. The General Manager of Diablo, Rod Fergusson, was quick to reassure players that a patch was being developed. A quick fix was implemented to address this issue in a timeframe that was less than six hours. Blizzard took care of this on the back end of the servers, so players did not need to download anything new. Observing a developer who is so responsive to the comments and suggestions of players is a welcome change. As a player, I was genuinely impressed when I saw the changes take effect because Blizzard is a AAA studio that works on a massive scale, and that's why I was so impressed. After applying the hot fix, I'm happy to report that my performance against the monsters in the Fractured Peaks was significantly improved. The developers have guaranteed that there will be additional polishing done before the release.
This time, the nerf hammer did its job a little bit too well, which is a decision that is made fairly frequently when trying to balance video games. The developers of Sanctuary will most likely take a more methodical approach in order to perfect the game's many different ways to stay alive. The fact that the launch of Diablo IV won't be a "one and done" kind of event due to the fact that expansions and events will be filling up the calendar gives me reason to be optimistic about the game's development plan. There will always be metas that need to be reshaped and bugs that need to be squashed, so I'm excited to see how Blizzard's trigger finger reacts to these challenges.
