What does the balancing of Diablo 3 look like? What Blizzard considers there and whether they will allow Greater Rifts higher than level 150 will be revealed here.
This is what Blizzard says: In a blog post, Blizzard addresses the Diablo 3 community and discusses balancing and the design of class sets in upcoming patches.
With the recent Patch 2.6.7 from November 2019, two new class sets were introduced that redefined the meta. Blizzard intended this. Work on Patch 2.6.8 is underway, and the team wants to give players insight into what they pay attention to in balancing.
In the future, the Diablo 3 team wants to ensure more variety in gameplay by implementing additional new builds and improving existing builds. They will focus on existing builds that are currently underperforming.
What does Blizzard pay attention to in patches? When developers tweak the balance of sets in Diablo 3, they look at the “ideal” performance of the class sets. Thus, for 5000 Paragon points, they expect to reach level 130 in the Greater Nephalem Rift.
- If classes are 1 to 2 GR levels away from this calculation, it’s still okay
- If classes are 3 to 4 GR levels away from the ideal performance, they keep an eye on the class
- Anything over 5 levels difference means for Blizzard: Something is too strong or too weak, we need to change that
A few weeks after the release of Patch 2.6.7, the overall picture for seasonal players looked like this. By then, however, some players had not yet reached Paragon level 5,000:
| Avg. GR Level | |
| Barbarian | 135 |
| Crusader | 136 |
| Demon Hunter | 124 |
| Monk | 134 |
| Necromancer | 118 |
| Witch Doctor | 120 |
| Wizard | 130 |
Keep in mind that this is an overview of the total data. Blizzard filters the data based on build performances and then analyzes how the classes perform with those.
Will there be higher Greater Rifts than level 150?
What is this about? In the community, the topic often comes up whether Blizzard is planning higher levels in the Greater Nephalem Rifts for Diablo 3. So far, it has been the end after level 150. In Season 19, a four-player group reached this level after just 4 days.
Will it get harder? No, Blizzard does not want to implement higher levels in the Greater Rift. The reason is that this would only bring additional problems, more than it would solve.
It can be recognized that the “stretching of long-term content through additional levels of Greater Nephalem Rifts was not beneficial for Diablo III.”
Problematic Playstyles – Here Blizzard intervenes
Which builds are we talking about? Blizzard discusses that zDPS builds are something special. These are playstyles that are not designed to deal damage. Rather, they are about providing support for groups. Although D3 is generally about annihilating monsters, the developers tolerate these builds.
However, there are problematic playstyles that Blizzard does not tolerate. Specifically, the “Bazooka Wizards” and “Stutter Runners” are called out. The Bazooka Wizard ranks at the top of the Tier List of Season 19 in Diablo 3.
When we make bug fixes and new problems arise from player experimentation, it admittedly feels like we’re plugging holes. Initially, we will focus on disabling the cancellation of certain skill animations. Crusaders are particularly (but not exclusively) affected, and we will ensure that no class falls too far behind because this “trick” can no longer be used.
Source: Blizzard
So we can be excited about what surprises Blizzard has in store for Patch 2.6.8. New sets and balance changes are expected. The patch will first be playable on the PTR server and then activated on the live servers.
Blizzard also had to intervene with this “method” that gave players great success:
