One prevailing criticism levied against Diablo 3 over the years has been its preferred reliance on items over skill trees when it came to character progression, and the open beta for Diablo 4 revealed that the upcoming title may follow in its predecessor's footsteps, much to the concern of its audience. Whereas Diablo 3's skills and its runes were openly offered to the player as they leveled up, Diablo 4 sees the return of skill trees in a major way. From Necromancer and Sorcerer, to Druid and Barbarian, each Diablo 4 class comes with a tailor-made tree of abilities, passives, and skill perks to personalize their playstyle.
In theory, it brings class philosophy back to Diablo 2's approach, where players make meaningful choices on how to build their character not by the items they're wearing, but by the skills they favor from their class arsenal. Though Set items won't be in Diablo 4 at launch, Legendary items will still play a pivotal role in pushing the boundaries of a player's build and making certain spells or class mechanics shine.
The concern in Diablo's community seems to be that this reliance on Legendary items to enhance individual spells and abilities is an unnecessary leftover of how Diablo 3 was forced to fix its character progression system into the version seen in Reaper of Souls. The topic was put up for discussion by Mazisky on the official Diablo 4 subreddit, though many voices from the fandom shared similar sentiments across social media platforms like Twitter, or even on the game's official forums.
The heart of the issue that people seem to have with Diablo 4's itemization is that the skill trees themselves offer a bland, chopped-up version of an ability that has to be enhanced through specific Legendary items or by hitting certain attribute thresholds. Namely, important legendary powers such as a honing feature for the Druid's Tornado ability are locked behind farming for specific items, rather than being part of the skill tree as an upgrade. It remains to be seen if Blizzard balances out the classes for launch, as even streamers such as Asmongold find the Druid in Diablo 4 to be underwhelming compared to heavy-hitters like the Necromancer.
That being said, it is important to note that Diablo 4 removes some of the randomness by letting players target specific legendary powers, as the dungeons scattered across the open world reward players with Aspects for use in Diablo 4's Codex of Power system. Unfortunately, the stats from these player-created legendary items tend to roll by default at a minimum value, making dropped Legendaries preferable to crafted ones. While the consensus seems to be that Diablo 4 is slated to be a better game at launch than Diablo 3 was, many fans believe that there's still work to be done.
Diablo 4 launches on June 6 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
