Diablo has always been about slaying demons, leveling up, and acquiring new abilities. Diablo 4 is no exception, but takes a new approach to how these abilities are learned, featuring a complex web of abilities that allow the player to choose their progression path, creating an experience that feels much more personalized to each individual’s playstyle. It brings together the best aspects of Diablo 2 and 3’s skills systems.
Progression was much simpler in Diablo 3, where each class received a specific ability each time they levelled up. Diablo 2 featured a similar skill tree to Diablo 4, but the new additions make it much more customizable. Diablo 2 let you work towards specific powerful abilities over time, and Diablo 3 offered a variety of different augmentations for abilities similar to enhancements and upgrades. Namely, Diablo 4 also allows you to spend skill points to improve abilities you already have in three distinct ways: skill ranking, skill enhancement, and skill upgrades.
Skill ranking lets you spend skill points up to five times to improve the statistics of a skill (such as damage), but doesn’t change how the skill functions. You may additionally choose to enhance the skill once, improving the statistics but also adding new mechanics. An example of this is the Barbarian’s ‘Flay’ attack sometimes applying the “vulnerable” status to increase the damage a target takes. After enhancing a skill, you have the choice between 2 possible skill upgrades that add new mechanics once again. The Barbarian’s “Flay” can be upgraded to either increase the skill’s damage over time or increase the Barbarian’s durability when used, for example.
Re-speccing is another thing that Diablo 4 gets right. Diablo 2 was fairly unforgiving when it came to experimenting with different builds, as you could only respec three times per character during a playthrough. On the other hand, Diablo 3 allowed you to respec whenever you were outside of combat, which made choosing improvements feel insignificant since they could be changed at any time. Diablo 4 allows you to respec at any time as well, but costs more and more in-game currency the more abilities you try to refund. This means you can choose to discard a skill you were experimenting with that you don’t like, but means you can’t rebuild your character any time. Leveling a skill still feels like an impactful decision, but not a mistake that can never be corrected.
The amount of choice Diablo 4 gives the player for how to expand through the skill tree makes it feel like you can really make a character that’s truly your own. The fact that 2 Barbarians can enter a fight together with one acting as a tank and the other as pure damage because of their skill decisions alone is a testament to what a great job Blizzard have done here, and I can’t wait to see it implemented and polished in the full game come June.
