More thoughts on Diablo 4 after the 2nd beta weekend, about 30 hours of playtime, and trying all 5 classes, 3 of them to max level:
Class Ranking
S tier
Necromancer- Necromancer is a god among men in this game. Necromancer is essentially easy mode for Diablo newcomers. You can pretty easily get an army of 8 companions (more with a certain legendary) in beta, each of them doing more damage than any of companions that druid can get, and with lower skill point investment than you need to get Druid's companions. These companions can tank alot of damage for you, body block enemies from reaching you in chokepoints, and output pretty high damage while you simply support them from range (one of the Necromancer basic skills is even a "beam" attack where you simply need to hold down the A button to do a steady stream of fairly high damage while creating new bodies to use to replenish your summons if they die, explode with a later skill, or use to buff your companions. You need to dodge attacks and watch your health bar far less with Necromancer than you do with any of the other classes. At one point I cleared a level 15 fortress at level 10 with Necromancer on world tier 2 (the highest difficulty available in the beta), while I struggled to clear that same fortress at level 17 on Druid.
A tier
Sorcerer/Sorceress- Sorceress isn't quite the God among men that Necromancer is, but thanks to currently very powerful frost+hydra and lightning+hydra builds, I will slot Sorceress into A tier. The hydra is a pretty powerful summon that is pretty much essential in any Sorceress build unless you really want a challenge, unlike the Druid's rather weak companions which aren't very useful and can and probably should be skipped in your build unless Blizzard buffs them before release, but unlike the Necro's minions, hydra can't draw enemy aggro, tank damage, or body block. What it can do is output steady, constant damage against a difficult boss fight while you dodge attacks and attack from a distance with Sorceress' many ranged attack options. Because you need to dodge more and watch your healthbar more than Sorceress, I am putting it one tier lower.
B tier
Rogue- Unlike Necro, Sorc, and Druid, I didn't get Rogue to high levels during the beta, and only got 3 Legendaries for Rogue, so I didn't get to test it out as well as those other 3 classes. However, I've seen some high level build guide videos on youtube so I know what Rogue is capable of with a good spec and fully optimized legendaries. While Rogue is certainly capable of outputting damage as high as the above 2 classes with a good spec and some good legendaries, the problem is that Rogue is harder to play than the above two classes. It has no companion ability, few tanky skills for increased survivability, and requires more dodging than sorceress above, as well as abilities being used in a more specific order to get the most out of it's builds. It's going to be generally harder to level than the above 2 classes, and as such I am putting it on B tier.
C tier
Barbarian- Barbarian has 2 big problems in my eyes. One, it's an all melee class and Diablo 4 has a fairly common crowd control effect that confuses you and makes you run away from enemies, and two, it has no resource regeneration. Because you are forced to deal damage to generate resource, that means you must go into melee range against mostly melee enemies, so if you're low on health and out of potions you are a bit screwed once you run out of fury. On the plus side, barbarian does have a few things that help to compensate for those 2 weakness, a base movement speed increase skill for getting into melee range, another that reduced the duration of crowd control effects on you, the Leap ability which lets you instantly close the gap with enemies, a chain pull ability that pulls ranged enemies into melee range, etc. With a good spec and good legendaries you can deal alot of damage, but the levelling experience is going to be generally slower, more difficult, and more painful than the above classes, so in C tier it goes.
Druid- It pains me to have to rank Druid as the worst class in Diablo 4 currently as that was the class I was planning on playing on launch, but unfortunately, it is the worst class currently, so unless Blizzard gives it some substantial buffs ahead of release, I can't recommend Druid as your first class in Diablo 4. The first 10-15 levels feel painfully slow and stressful on world tier 2 because alot of Druid's best options are deeper in the skill tree or require legendaries. Like Barbarian, alot of it's abilities are melee and melee generally suffers in Diablo 4 for the reasons listed above, and like Barbarian there is no resource regeneration, you must do damage with your base skills to generate resource for your core skills, but unlike Barbarian, it has weaker movement speed increase options for melee builds, the crowd control duration reduction skill is much deeper into the tree than Barbarian, and there are less melee gap closing skills than Barbarian. As such an all melee Druid build feels like the least viable of all of the various builds of all the classes in Diablo 4 currently. On top of that, the druid companions are completely and utterly outclassed by the necromancer's minions and the sorceress' hydra, so if you wanted to do a Druid companion build it's not particularly viable right now unless you have multiple companion boosting legendaries, though the wolves can at least draw boss aggro and tank for you for awhile, which is nice on certain bosses. On the plus side, there is one ranged basic skill for resource regeneration, and you have lots of ranged attack abilities, so you can do an all ranged Druid build that feels more viable than a melee druid or companion Druid build. Druid is also one of the tankiest classes in the game, able to hit huge damage reduction percentages above 80% with the right spec and good legendaries, with the wolves also tanking some hits and aggro, which is nice if you're planning to play in a group and want to tank for your friends. The solo levelling experience will be slow and painful though unless Druid gets some nice buffs ahead of launch.
Needed Class Balance Changes
- Most importantly, barbarian and druid need to get regen on their resource pools. It doesn't need to be fast regen like Sorceress and Rogue have, it can be quite slow like Necro's regen, but you should be able to go into every battle with max resource at the start, and should be able to just dodge boss attacks while waiting on some needed regen.
- Druid's 3 companion skills, wolves, creeper vines, and crows, each need some buffs to bring them closer in line with Necro's minions. Firstly, since Necro gets multiple types of minions available at once without needing to take up ability slots for each minion type, it would be nice if the basic passive version of all 3 druid companions were available all the time without the active effects slotted onto your ability bar. Secondly, each of the 3 pets needs some buffs, crow and creeper passive attacks need to happen more often than once every 5 seconds and 7 seconds respectively, and all 3 pets need to be doing more damage per hit passively and with their active skill than they are doing right now
- Druid, Rogue, and Barbarian need some smaller buffs on their early tree skills since those first 10-15 levels or with each of the 3 of them are kind of painful right now.
- Druid also needs better movement speed buffs in the skill tree, the current one is only +9% speed for a 3 point spend, and that effect only works with werewolf skills, if you are using a bear build or the melee human basic attack you get no movement speed boost from that skill. A melee build always needs to be able to get into melee range quickly, so make that movement speed skill the same +15% as barbarian and make it available regardless of which of the 3 shapeshift forms you are in.
- The "invincible" Necro build with the always up blood mist skill probably needs to be nerfed somewhat, as that seems a bit gamebreaking, will make even world tier 3 and 4 a cakewalk.
- I personally think that the 6 second dodge cooldown on all 5 classes should be reduced to like 3 or 4 seconds. 6 seconds feels a bit too limiting and really made certain boss fights a pain in the ass.
- Certain abilties for pretty much every class need some tweaks here and there to make them better and more viable compared to other abilities and builds.
