The new patch for Diablo 4 swings the nerf club in almost all areas. Fans also have to do without a popular method for fast leveling.
Irvine, California – A massive new patch for Diablo 4 has arrived, leaving scorched earth in its wake. Blizzard announced extensive nerfs with the pre-season update for Season 1, now the extent of the nerfs is really becoming clear. The patch notes are over 6600 words long, almost nothing in the game has remained untouched. A popular tactic for power leveling is now gone for many players. So the grind to the higher levels should take quite a while longer.
| title of the game | Diablo IV |
| Release (date of first publication) | 06/06/2023 |
| Publishers | BlizzardEntertainment |
| series | Diablo |
| platform | PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC |
| developer | BlizzardEntertainment |
| genre | Hack and Slay, Action RPG |
Diablo 4: Season 1 Patch nerfs power level tactics to the core
Patch nerfs almost everything in Diablo 4: The new update for Diablo 4 should once again provide extensive adjustments and changes in the game before the start of Season 1. It was already known in advance that Blizzard wanted to nerf all classes in Diablo 4. In addition, there were extensive nerfs to dungeons, damage values and earned XP from killed enemies during the update.
This power level method is affected: Since the release of Diablo 4, players have often simply put their lower level characters into a group of higher level characters. The whole group then went into a high world level dungeon. The low level character could then just wait at the entrance and level up while the rest of the squad just cleared the dungeon.
Diablo 4 patch update
Diablo 4: All New Legendary Aspects in Season 1
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Diablo 4: Class Tier List for Season 1
Especially with newly created characters that were started after the first playthough of Diablo 4 at world level 4, the tactic proved to be a good way to get quickly towards the endgame. If you want to know more about world levels in Diablo 4, you will find all the information in another article. Blizzard put a stop to the whole tactic with the new patch, with a few small changes.
Diablo 4: Bonus experience for opponents massively nerfed – fans horrified by the patch
How Blizzard nerfs leveling: Before the patch, even low level characters at world level 4 would get full experience points for killing a level 100 monster, plus a bonus for killing higher level monsters. With the patch, Blizzard lowers the values for both of these factors. The bonus experience drops from a maximum of 25 percent to a maximum of 15 percent. Also, at world level 4, monsters drop one monster up to 10 levels higher than your character – there was no limit before the patch.
- Bonus experience for higher level opponents: 1.5% bonus per level, maximum 15% at 10 levels difference
- Experience rewards for monster level differences:
World Tier II: up to +3 → up to +3 (unchanged)
World Tier III: up to +10 → up to +6
World Tier IV: up to +100 → up to +10
To illustrate this a little, Blizzard has included an example in the current patch notes for Diablo 4.
You are level 1. Your friends take you to world level IV and leave you at the dungeon entrance. They start killing level 100 monsters. Before Season of Spite you will get: (EP for Level 100 monsters) * (1 + 25%) From Season of Spite on you will get: (EP for Level 11 monsters) * (1 + 15%)
Fans are shocked by the new patch: The measures against power leveling are by far not the only thing that fans nerf about the new patch. For many players, the update for Diablo 4 is an absolute disaster. Complaints and criticism on Reddit and YouTube have been piling up since the release, and expert Asmongold has also extensively criticized the update.