YMMV / Diablo IV

• Alternative Character Interpretation: How sincere is Lilith in her grief over Rathma's murder at the hands of Inarius? Is she truly mournful over the death of her son? Or is she more saddened and angered that one of the most powerful of her firstborn children is dead and thus cannot be of use for her plans?
• Angst? What Angst?: The player character dialogue is highly limited both in frequency and variance, meaning that your adventurer will frequently underreact to things that should theoretically be quite important to someone of their background. Nowhere is this more true than when a Necromancer (a priest of the Cult of Rathma) discovers that the founder of their religion was quite recently murdered by his father. Even for a veteran death-priest, that should probably warrant a little more reaction than their scant voice-lines on the subject demonstrate.
• Anti-Climax Boss: In story if not gameplay. Team Lilith caused tremendous anguish to summon Andariel into the world, effectively sacrificing an entire kingdom in order to accomplish it. Then, she is killed almost immediately upon entering Sanctuary. Though Taissa's questline latter shows that as usual death hasn't stopped her from torturing the young witch from inside her mind.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Just as it always is in these types of games, AoE damage is key. The bigger the Area of Effect? The better. As a result? You'll see a lot of things such as Whirlwind Barbarians.
  • In Season 1, the Caged Heart of the Barber converted a large portion of damage dealt to enemies into secondary AoE damage. Most builds recommended the Heart in place of any other Wrathful heart.
  • If your class can Fortify in anyway? You will want to build it and then stack overpower damage. Overpower adds a bonus if you are fortified, while Fortify will reduce incoming damage. Overall a win/win.
  • Every Sorc build regardless of element of choice ends up pretty much having to use Firebolt as an enchantment simply because the amount of damage you do to burning enemies, especially when paired with the Devouring Blaze passive plus a lot of the damage buff and reductions from gear, makes not taking it a hefty handicap. In the late game not having all four defensive spells on the task bar will basically tank any hope of survivability. Which means the only real difference between any sorc build is at best three spells and a single enchantment.
  • Sorc leveling builds often include one rank of Fireball just to include it as an enchantment - as it can cause a lot of Area of Effect damage. When Fireball is an enchantment, an enemy that dies will explode into a half-strength fireball... which can cause a chain reaction.
• Complete Monster:
  • Astaroth, the Charred Duke, is a demon servitor of Mephisto whose actions are still remembered in infamy. Arriving in Scosglen in years past, Astaroth brought about the "Days of Ash" where he rampaged across Scosglen. Torturing and murdering everything he found, Astaroth annihilated entire villages and condemned the souls of some victims to eternal agony before being defeated and contained. Upon being granted freedom by possessing his jailer Donan's son, Astaroth gleefully massacres an entire populated area before mocking Donan how his son suffered under Astaroth's possession.
  • Tyrant King Brol was once merely the leader of a vast clan of savage cannibals that terrorized the Dry Steppes before they were pacified and imprisoned by the armies of Guulrahn. When Elias arrives to create a summoning trap for a Lesser Evil, he unleashes Brol from prison who in turn leads his cannibals to massacre, torture, and devour most of the populace of Guulrahn. Left to his own devices by Elias, Brol sends his cannibals to rampage across the Steppes and slaughter caravans and entire settlements both for fun and to provide human sacrifices for Lilith's demon summoning cult.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Elias at the end of act three survives so much abuse the player and Lorath throw at him while being completely unphased about it that players instead find killing him over and over again to be downright hilarious.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Any enemy with the "Vampiric" modifier is very likely to make the player either groan in frustration or murmur Oh, Crap! when they get spotted - especially if they are an elite. Vampiric enemies will life-steal a lot of health, undoing a lot of damage that the player just did to them. Bonus points if this overlaps with Increased Health - fortunately it's rare, but it can happen.
  • Some enemies in the Dry Steppes (Act 3) area can inflict a nasty stun on the player that will last several seconds. This leaves them highly vulnerable to being ganged up on and require the player to mash a defensive button to try and break it. Unfortunately, they can often come in groups...
  • Skeleton Bows have long enough range to shoot the player from off-screen and at high levels of Nightmare Dungeons can become powerful enough to make that attack a one-hit kill. The only warning players are likely to get before suddenly dying is a distant "clunk" sound.
  • Khazra Maulers are some of the tankiest enemies in the entire game and hit extremely hard, especially when they use their Ground Pound attack that stuns you if it hits. Combine that with the fact that their normal attacks can inflict Vulnerability, and they become prioty one whenever you fight against Khazra packs.
  • Plague Wasps only have one attack, firing a string of small, poisonous flies at you. The problem is that these flies each deal a deceptively high amount of damage, meaning that if you're not careful, or get swarmed by them, you will die in seconds.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Lilith, even despite the fact that just like her father and uncles before her, she leaves a trail of death, destruction, and demons everywhere she goes, not to mention her actions during the Sin War, still has many fans question if she is really evil and more than a few who think instead of stopping her we should probably be helping her. It helps a lot that Inarius and the Cathedral of Light aren't exactly subtle in their contempt for mankind.
• Ending Fatigue: The game has a whooping six acts of campaign story, with extra content to unlock the remaining world tiers afterwards. From Act 4 on most story arcs feel like a logical place for the story to end, only to plow onward for dozens more hours.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sister Octavia has proven to be quite popular with Diablo fans, despite only appearing in a few early-game sidequests. Not only is she seen as funny (albeit with some Black Comedy), but because Octavia gives a rare glimpse of a played-straight Good Shepherd in a Dark Fantasy game with multiple Corrupt Churches. The fact that she actually survives her own Demonic Possession and tells off a few members of the so-called "holy" flock who wrote her off as dead probably helps, too.
• Evil Is Cool: Lilith is acclaimed by fans and critics alike to be perhaps the best villain in the series, being an impressive combination of intelligence, sophistication, good looks, and being a classic show of demons being The Corrupter in a modern work.
• Fake Longevity: The biggest issue plaguing this game.
  • Many players are complaining of the game being a boring grind fest with a Season Journey that feels like a chore list of basic actions rather than actual achievements. The nerfed exp gain on launch isn't helping.
  • Meanwhile, the loot system is blasted for having too many confusing affixes compared to previous games which bogs down the player in comparing affixes over actually playing the game and diluting the odds.
• Game-Breaker:
  • During the Open Beta, the Exploding Mist Necromancer build became easily the most overpowered build discovered. The Build involves Corpse Explosion, a powerful aoe attack and Blood Mist, a spell whose main job is to help you escape damage by making you temporarily immune. The two on their own are powerful but certainly not over powered, the OP part comes with a legendary gear aspect called Exploding Mist, the aspect takes the two abilities and gives them synergy they never had before. With the aspect your Blood Mist ability now unleashes Corpse Explosion on nearby corpses automatically, with each explosion you can reduce the cool down on Blood Mist. This means that with some other corpse producing skills and cool down reducers you can become completely immortal while at the same time doling out insane amount of damage, melting bosses and monster waves in seconds without a scratch. The only downside is Exploding Mist is a random legendary drop so its not a build you can easily attain without a bit of luck. The build, like many people predicted, did not make it to the main release.
  • The Harlequin Crest/Shako Head Armor. It gives an unconditional 10-20% damage reduction, and +4 ranks to all skills. Simply put, it's the best helmet in the game, as there is no class and/or build that won't benefit from an item this powerful, and its buffs are not very flashy, but an incredibly solid base to build on. The only problem is finding the thing is going to be a Luck-Based Mission of the highest order, since its drop rate is appropriately rare — in the first week after the game's launch, out of millions of enemies slain and items dropped, only one Harlequin Crest was found.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Any enemy with the "increased Health" modifier will end up becoming just plain annoying to beat because they will have randomly high levels of health. They can veer into Demonic Spiders territory when this modifier is combined with something such as "Vampiric".
  • Vampires will routinely teleport around the battlefield, sometimes outright spamming it, much to your players' annoyance.
  • Ranged enemies have a habit of attacking from their maximum range, which often means being offscreen, and will actively back away from the player if approached. This can be especially irritating in events where the objective is to kill every enemy in a wave and a handful of ranged enemies are scattered around the area.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The items bought from Obol traders all share the same "?" icon to hide the actual details, but a bug at launch caused them to glow if they were Sacred or Ancestral quality. Player used this to identify the best items to purchase until it was patched.
  • Super unique monsters in the overworld initially were guaranteed to drop a unique item which had the potential to reach a power level of 840, well in excess of the standard 820 cap. They also had a 1 gold sell price, which allowed for essentially infinite enchanting rolls at practically no cosst. The developers patched them to have a lower drop rate, gave them an appropriate sell price, and adjusted their power cap.
• Guide Dang It!: Several regions have quests which start from drops after completing a prominent side quest chain. Examples include: returning pieces of a bear totem to a druid in Scosglen after helping said druid seal off a wolf totem which caused mayhem, and recovering items for Lyndon after helping him put down a mutiny. Not only is the player not expecting a continuation after the quest chain is completed, where the quest items are found are also not communicated in-game.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Some people have found the Russian-sounding accents amusing - including how nasal many people sound, making them joke they all have a cold.
  • Horse armour has gone full circle. ^ExplanationHorse Armour is literally a microtransaction item in the game.
  • Welcome to Hell, New York. ^ExplanationA poster with Lilith's image and this phrase was posted in New York City to promote the game. By sheer coincidence, shortly after the game's release, wildfires from Canada ended up covering the city in a thick blanket of wildfire smoke, causing the air quality and visibility to drop significantly, as well as causing an orange hue to blanket the city. The picture of the poster in NYC during the smoke storm spread as a bit of dark humor, along with jokes that it was Not Hyperbole and Lilith had literally sent New York to Hell.
  • That cutscene. ^ExplanationThe endgame features a prerendered CG cutscene depicting Inarius's assault on Hell and subsequent conflict with Lilith is regarded as one of the best moments of the game, and one of the best cutscenes Blizzard has ever produced.
  • So... where's Diablo? ^ExplanationMany have pointed out the oddity how the game is called Diablo IV, yet this is the first game of the series to not feature the Lord of Terror in any capacity. Most players are just assuming that he's being saved as a boss for a later expansion, which would flip the script to actually have Diablo as the Final Boss of the overall Diablo IV era rather than where he ending up as a Disc-One Final Boss before Baal in Diablo II and Malthael in Diablo III. However, that still doesn't stop people from pointing out how weird it looks that Diablo makes no appearances whatsoever throughout Diablo IV's main storyline.
  • Referring to Whirlwind barbarians as Garen - especially when they use a sword.
  • Freezer Burn/Burning Ice/Gliese 436 b sorcerer.^ExplanationAs mentioned under Complacent Gaming Syndrome, most sorcerer builds include at least one rank of Fire Bolt regardless if they intend to use it - simply for its ability as an Enchantment. This also includes ice builds - meaning sorcerers can literally set enemies on fire with ice. Some memes of course refer to this as the "Gliese 436 b since this phenomenon exists on such an exoplanet thanks to pressure
  • FOLLOW THE RATS ^Explanation A rather eccentric post by a user on the Diablo IV subreddit claims that following the skittering rats on the floor of every dungeon will lead you to amazing loot by sensing which enemies have the spoils. Cue a bunch of players doubting, then immediately confirming the phenomenon as they suddenly find rare uniques because "the rats smell the cheese". The rats are now being revered for their loot-seeking abilities and many a meme have been made of the fact.
  • 40% ^Explanation The Season of Blood gameplay trailer immediately caught heat by faulty math being presented, where a 40% increase to 1000 incorrectly is listed as 1040.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Inarius crosses this in Act I when it's revealed that he murdered his and Lilith's son, Rathma, solely for opposing his wishes to gain the key to Hell and kill his ex-spouse in his crusade for redemption back into the High Heavens. The fact is that The Prophecy he uses to justify this does not state Inarius is the one that will slay Lilith, yet it doesn't stop him from contorting it in his favor to be The Chosen One and makes him do this entirely in a self-delusional "necessity" — and then he left Rathma's corpse there with the Key inside his own staff, meaning he murdered his son for nothing. It's enough to make Lilith, who in her first in-game scene corrupted a churchful of villagers and turned them into cultists, explicitly look sympathetic by comparison.
  • How does the Cathedral of Light, the only shining hope left for humanity in the wake of another demonic incursion, opt to punish an incidental guardsman who took a bribe and unwittingly let Lilith through his post? Stick him in a giant suit of armor that is an iron maiden on the inside, cursing him to either eternal painful service as a protector of their faith, or to die in agony as atonement for his sins. This is your first major sign past the usual iron-fisted crusader motifs that this conflict might be trudging towards Evil Versus Evil.
    • The invasion and subsequent sacking of Caldeum in the endgame. While its true that Caldeum had been largely taken over by Lilith's forces, its made clear that there were still hundreds of innocent civilians trapped inside. The Cathedral doesn't care and slaughters both the cultists and the innocents with such bloodthirsty ferocity that they're ironically not unlike the demons themselves. By the end of the siege, the streets of Caldeum are choked with the blood and corpses of innocent, cultist and demon alike.
  • Lilith might have a pretty reasonable argument for her actions, the Cathedral is full of fanatics who are more likely to throw you on the pyre then help you, Heaven is at best indifferent to humanity and their problems, while The Prime Evils of Hell are just biding their time to wreak havoc once again. With this in mind you might be willing to excuse some of her actions in Act 1 as necessary for the greater good. Your adventures in Scosglen during Act 2 however show that deep down Lilith is a vindictive and hateful person who causes untold suffering not for any noble cause, but out of sheer spite. There is also the fact that these actions in the end have no benefit for mankind, simply setting herself up to take over hell for her own personal gain.
• Narm:
  • The scene where Neyrelle temporarily resurrects her mother Vhenard to help with a ritual is clearly supposed to be serious and tragic, but the comically overexaggerated way in which Vhenard sways on her feet whenever she stands up rather ruins the effect. It looks less like she's been raised from the dead, and more like she's just staggered in from an epic bender at the local tavern.
  • Most of the sidequest 'Sight to Madness' is bizarre but effective Surreal Horror, where you're helping out a poor unfortunate who's had his eyes stolen by a cult leader and is now Forced to Watch through dark magic as she carries out various atrocities. Then you come back to him after killing her and retrieving his eyes, and the whole thing rapidly descends into farce. He pushes his demon-tainted eyes back into his skull, is instantly overwhelmed by Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, and runs off into the distance screaming and on fire. It's absolutely hilarious, and very unlikely to be intentionally so given the tone of the rest of the quest.
• Narm Charm:
  • The scene at the end of Act 2 wherein Donan mourns over his dead son is genuinely heartbreaking that many players don't even care that Donan's cries sound almost like he's trying to laugh silently.
  • Donan's death in Act 6 feels somewhat contrived since he just gets attacked in a cutscene by a background element and is essentially killed in a cutscene. However, many people didn't mind this Shoot the Shaggy Dog moment.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The game utilizes a sort of Level Scaling to make sure that the player is never too out of sync with the content and that everything is "relevant" and worthwhile in playing. The problem is that this means until you get distinctly good gear, enemies just get tougher and eat up more and more punishment. Even more awkward, with the open nature of the overworld and other players running around who themselves see the same enemies at their own level, it's entirely possible to be a Legendary-toting, max level force of nature — and then see a low-level player with not even a single Rare kill things as fast, if not faster, than you, making stronger players feel weaker without their Legendary affixes and aspects.
  • Druids and Barbarians get their masteries at about the same level others do - but the locations for their quests are rather far out of the way compared to where you are when you become eligible. Druids in particular not only have their questline be very out of the way, but the recommended level is always two above the player's level due to taking place in a Stronghold. This can cause players to be confused as to when they should tackle the questline.
  • The game's permanent on-line status, even when in single player (especially so since Diablo III had the same problem at release before eventually allowing offline play). A number of Hardcore players have lost their characters when their games got disconnected from the servers. Even in softcore where death is usually just a slap on the wrist, there are still times when death can have major consequences, such as in PVP areas, Helltides, and Nightmare Dungeon where a random lag caused death can undo a lot of progress which cause more than a few rage quits.
  • The lack of a Loadouts System makes switching builds a huge pain in the ass. In order to try out a new build, you have to manually swap every piece of gear, refund your Skill Points and Paragon Points, and then manually redistribute them on your Skill Tree and Paragon Board. While players are mostly okay with the cost associated with respeccing your character, the sheer amount of time and hassle involved has turned a lot of players off of experimenting with new builds.
  • There is no confirmation before buying the premium battle passes. So for those who just want to see what it does or mis-clicked on it, say goodbye to around $10 USD. Many streamers are shocked at how easy it is to click the button by accident and quickly spread the news to prevent others from getting their wallet emptied. This was later patched such that the cursor defaulted to "Season Journey" instead.
  • The Season 1 battle pass was disliked for its stingy rewards. The $10 premium battle pass only offers 666 Platinum (the in-game currency), which not only isn't enough to buy the next season's battle pass (presumably priced at 1000 Platinum), but can't even buy the cheapest item from in-game store at 800 Platinum. Understandably, many fans felt stiffed by the battle pass especially after Blizzard's other recent title, Overwatch 2, had similar controversies over its unrewarding battle pass.
  • There are items that take up inventory bag space in exchange for buffs. However, it is very easy to accumulate them and you have to resort to using "mules" to carry them all in response to the relatively smaller stash space.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Manages to do both this and Sequel Difficulty Drop. On the one hand, compared to Diablo III on launch, IV feels like an easier game. On the other hand, III got a difficulty readjustment post-launch that made the game substantially less difficult, so compared to the current state of Diablo III, IV feels like a step up in terms of difficulty.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Because the game is much more open world, there are a lot of sidequests and optional dungeons to complete. It's not impossible for someone to level up to the max before even completing the first act or two. There are also a lot of side events that pop up in the open world that are also fairly rewarding as well.
• Signature Scene: The cinematic of the clash between Inarius and Lilith along their forces is seen by both supporters and detractors alike as one of the best moments IV and even the series.
• Special Effect Failure: Diablo IV is a very very beautiful game - however, sometimes if a player character has long hair, a rogue frame may cause it to clip around their neck and dangle around their neck like a scarf during a few cutscenes.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Seasonal variant; the Season of Blood has been much better received then the Season of the Malignant. Not only did the Season of the Malignant have the misfortune of releasing alongside the notorious 1.1 patch (which was infamously despised by much of the fandom as described under They Changed It, Now It Sucks!), but the season itself was widely seen as lukewarm as best, as the mechanics were seen as boring, the loot rewards not worth it, and the grind incredibly tedious. By contrast, the Season of Blood has seen a massive improvement in player reception due to buffs across the board for the classes, much more interesting and rewarding mechanics, much better loot drops (both from the seasonal activities and in general), and adding numerous QoL improvements to the base game, such as a new stash tab for gem fragments and new endgame content.
• That One Boss:
  • Vhenard is a Wake-Up Call Boss that will shove the danger that is the Vulnerability status down your throat if you have been disregarding it so far. With minions summoned in multiple phases as they practically fill the screen with attacks, you also have to constantly move back and forth between projectiles specifically designed to stack Vulnerability on you, while the specific enemies you have to kill to progress are repeatedly getting away to cheap shot you with more projectiles. And the sides of the arena will blast you if you stand in them. A melee class or build will have a nightmare of a time closing the distance, especially once the Pit Lords start spawning; with a Vulnerability stack, one of their heavy attacks can tear off most of your health in a single strike.
  • Despite being only a minor quest boss, Zombie Infectee Mahjoob can be this for one simple reason: he has the "Vampiric" ability common among elite mobs, but a health pool closer to that of an outright boss, meaning that he can instantly heal himself for an amount of hit points unmatched by any other enemy in the game, forcing the player to very carefully avoid his siphoning attacks in order to kill him. His high health was later confirmed to be a bug and was significantly reduced.
  • The rematch against the Woodsman of Nevesk at the end of the titular questline. He is far more powerful then he was when you last fought him, capable of inflicting massive damage and coming with no less then three affixes, and he constantly summons ghosts of Magdelena throughout the fight.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The first major patch of the game, Patch 1.1, got hit hard with this as it consisted of many class Nerfs and increases in fighting difficulty while doing very little to counter-balance the drop in power for the player, such as a lack of buffs to underused skills and such. Thus, leaving many players unsatisfied to the point of them making claims that the developers are purposefully taking away the fun of the game and "increasing" play time to impress shareholders, leading to review bombing on Metacritic.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some feel that Inarius is severely underutilized for a game that centers around his relationship with Lilith. He really only gets two noteworthy scenes on screen. The first of which is Inarius basically just standing around doing nothing other than ignoring the player character's existence.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The whole idea of Lilith's goal being to end the Eternal Conflict between Heaven and Hell is thought to be a neat idea that could have been delved into more. Many even wishing that you could choose to side with Lilith in the end rather than kill her just to go down this path.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The cinematics are as top notch as they ever were. In particular, the scene where the armies of Inarius and Lilith clash on a battlefield, while Inarius hunts Lilith amongst damned souls is a standout. Not only are there a ton of people, monsters, and effects on-screen that are being rendered all at the same time, but the effects of the sequence are downright stunning to look at. There's small details like the effects of magma, the ground cracking underneath feet, and up-close textures that look amazingly realistic. Plus, the special effects like magic look great, and the cinematography and lighting is appropriately dramatic.
• The Woobie:
  • Aneta, the subject of The Heritic sidequest series in Act V. Apparently she is a cursed girl who accidentally summons demons and burns people to death. As a result, everyone fears and hates her - including (and especially) her own mother. It turns out that Aneta was born as a witch - but could actually learn to use these powers for good. Yet even as Aneta's mother brings lynch mobs to kill her, Aneta wants nothing more than to heal her because she still loves her mother. The entire questline is so hard to follow because no matter what happens, things just get worse and worse for poor Aneta. When her mother dies, Aneta leaves, but leaves a letter thanking you and her witch mentor Gulyas - the only two people who ever protected her and saw her as anything but a heretic who must be killed.
  • Donan. His entire story is just one big Trauma Conga Line in Act 2 where nearly everything he worked for gets taken away from him. By the time you join up with him in act 4, he's a broken man from the betrayal of his comrades and the death of his child - in such a traumatic way, too. He finally starts getting over his grief and trauma in act 5 and 6... but sadly he dies in act 6.

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