Diablo 4 Season 15 PTR: Why Can't Every Class Be Strong Enough to Play?
Diablo 4 Season 15 Patch 3.2.0 PTR has ended, and some players are wondering why the developers are unwilling to make all classes equally strong. In reality, balance adjustments are not as simple as everyone imagines. Will S15 bring us satisfactory results?
Diablo 4 Season 15 Patch 3.2.0 PTR ended on August 11th, and one question has resurfaced: why can't every class be strengthened?
This happens almost every season, with some classes and builds suddenly topping the meta, while others lag far behind. This disparity is especially noticeable for casual players who only play a few hours a day.
Many players aren't aiming for the highest Pit Tier or Leaderboard; they simply want to confidently choose their preferred Diablo 4 class, but that's precisely the problem.
Player Controversy
Completing endgame for all classes doesn't necessarily mean Diablo 4's balance is good enough. Some players believe that as long as every class can comfortably farm Tier 12, the game is already reasonably balanced.
After all, Tier 12 is the main Diablo 4 endgame difficulty, while Pit 120+, higher tiers, and Tower Push can be seen as additional challenges for hardcore players and those with extreme builds. However, the problem is that completing the same content and having the same gameplay experience are not the same thing.
If one class can easily complete the content, while another class requires a lot of gear, perfect rolls, glyphs, transfigurations, or even special mechanics to achieve a similar effect, then it doesn't mean there's no problem with the balance.
Players can accept that their build isn't meta, and they can accept not being able to challenge the highest Pit Tier, but it's hard to accept a build that takes significantly longer to complete even a normal Elite, even if it has the most interesting skills and the most beautiful animations; players are unlikely to invest a lot of time in it.
Meta Problem
Diablo 4 is a continuously evolving Live Service ARPG; each season adds new Diablo 4 Items, skills, aspects, Uniques, and system changes. When numerous mechanics overlap, even adding a single damage multiplier can alter the entire damage formula, drastically increasing the damage of a particular build.
More problematic is that meta mechanics don't always originate from Diablo 4 development team's original design. Sometimes, what truly determines a build's strength is a bug, an unintended interaction, or a bizarre combination of mechanics.
A build might not be theoretically overpowered, but because of an interaction not functioning as expected, it might become the strongest playstyle of the entire season.
This is the most difficult aspect of achieving balance in Diablo 4. Various factors influence each other, and adjusting a single value doesn't guarantee the final result will meet expectations. Adjusting skill damage and multipliers through spreadsheets still won't truly solve class balance issues.
Meanwhile, the development team also needs to maintain the unique positioning of different classes. If, in pursuit of numerical balance, all classes ultimately adopt similar playstyles, the game might approach numerical fairness, but it would sacrifice the most crucial aspect of ARPGs: build diversity.
In fact, meta mechanics themselves aren't a problem with Diablo 4 Patch 3.2.0 PTR. As long as a game has numerous builds, players will inevitably compare damage, gear cost, build complexity, and endgame performance, and the tier list will naturally categorize builds into different levels.
Even if all classes can eventually easily steamroll all content, the meta won't truly disappear. Players will still compare which class has the highest damage, which build is the easiest to gear up, and which playstyle is the most comfortable. The only difference is that the meta will shift from focusing on who has the highest damage to who is the easiest to play.
Players Need Balance
Diablo 4 Season 15 doesn't actually need to make all classes completely identical. Different classes should inherently offer different game experiences. Some builds are like glass cannons, some have extremely high survivability, some rely on complex skill rotations, and some can simply smash things.
High-damage builds can be more fragile, complex builds can have a higher skill ceiling, and easy-to-play builds can sacrifice some maximum damage. These differences are precisely what make class differences, skill expression, and build identity integral to the long-term gameplay of Diablo 4.
Meta builds shouldn't be completely eliminated either. Playing WW Barb in one season, trying HOTA in the next, and switching to Charge builds the season after that - this process of constantly experimenting with new playstyles is part of the fun of Live Service ARPGs. The genuine issue isn't the existence of meta builds, but whether the power gap between different classes is reasonable.
If the strongest build is only 20% stronger than the average, meta builds still exist, but other classes remain competitive. However, if a class is 100%, 200%, or even several times stronger than others, players will naturally question this balance.
For Diablo 4 Season 15 Patch 3.2.0 PTR, what players truly hope for isn't Blizzard eliminating meta builds, but narrowing the excessively enormous gaps between classes. Each class can have its own S Tier build, and it can also have significantly stronger meta builds.
However, other classes should at least be able to comfortably complete the main endgame content, rather than relying on special bugs, extreme gear, or extremely demanding playstyles to keep up.
This is especially important for casual players. If a player can only spare a few hours every few days to play Diablo 4, they don't have the time to re-level a meta class every season, nor the energy to spend dozens of hours researching damage formulas. They might just want to choose a class they like and play it consistently.
Therefore, players don't demand that every class be the strongest, nor do they demand that all builds have the same damage. They simply hope that when they choose a class they like, they won't feel like they've wasted an entire season just because it's not the current meta.
Diablo 4 Season 15 Patch 3.2.0 PTR doesn't need perfect balance; meta can exist, and classes should have their own unique characteristics. What truly shouldn't exist is situations where certain classes cause player frustration because of extreme numerical disparities. For D4 S15 PTR, this might be more worthy of attention than simply pursuing a new S Tier build.