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. 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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? 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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
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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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.
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
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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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.
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 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 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 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 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. Blizzard has additionally disabled the Twilight warning. It really I try that again. My god. There's too many w's in here.