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Блоги, встречи, инсайты / MMOexp-Diablo 4: Sanctification Was a Game Changer
« : Февраля 05, 2026, 05:19:13 am »
After more than six weeks of near-constant playtime, Diablo 4 Season 11 stands out as one of the most engaging seasons the game has seen so far. From early December through the heart of the season, player engagement was high, community sentiment was largely positive Diablo 4 Items, and the overall "vibe" around Diablo 4 felt healthier than it has in quite some time. For many players, this season marked their most-played stretch of Diablo 4 yet-and for good reason.
Between major system revamps, elite reworks, crafting changes, and the introduction of the Paladin, Season 11 felt like a turning point. It wasn't perfect, but it laid important groundwork heading into Season 12 and the upcoming expansion.
The Paladin: Fun, Flexible, and Overpowered
The headline feature of Season 11 was undeniably the Paladin. As a new class, it offered a glimpse into Blizzard's evolving design philosophy-and in many ways, it succeeded brilliantly.
The Paladin's skill tree stands head and shoulders above the other classes. Skills come with multiple meaningful branches that drastically alter how abilities function, often changing damage types, playstyles, or synergies entirely. This resulted in exceptional build diversity. Nearly anything could be made viable, and many builds landed at a comparable power level thanks to flexible aspects, paragon boards, and shared passives.
That said, the Paladin was also blatantly overpowered.
While it didn't reach the absurd "delete everything instantly" levels of some historical Diablo builds, it trivialized large portions of the game. In Hardcore Torment 4, Paladins could often AFK through content that should have been lethal. The class flattened progression far too quickly, making most endgame challenges feel optional rather than earned.
This imbalance was likely intentional. Blizzard clearly wanted the Paladin to feel strong, exciting, and accessible, especially alongside increased difficulty from elite changes. In that sense, it worked-players came back, played more, and had fun. But long-term, the Paladin's multipliers and defensive scaling will need to come down to align with the rest of the roster.
Still, as a preview of where class design is heading-especially with the expansion's new skill tree systems-the Paladin is extremely promising.
Skill Design: A Blueprint for the Expansion
One of the Paladin's biggest strengths is how its utility skills still meaningfully contribute to combat. Cooldowns like Arbiter don't just buff stats-they deal damage, interact with multipliers, and feel impactful when used.
This highlights a major issue with older classes. Many utility skills simply don't scale, making them feel hollow. Pressing Ground Stomp on Barbarian or certain Rogue utilities often results in nothing happening damage-wise, which feels unsatisfying.
Historically, Diablo 4 had more hybrid-style builds-Season 0's Kratos Barbarian or Flurry Rogue being standout examples. While not every build needs that complexity, moving closer to Paladin-style multi-skill relevance would dramatically improve combat depth across all classes.
Crafting and Progression: Better Systems, Worse UI
Season 11 introduced major changes to progression systems, including tempering, masterworking, and difficulty adjustments. Mechanically, these updates were a success.
Tempering felt good. Selecting your temper and hunting for Greater Affix rolls added excitement without excessive frustration. Masterworking provided clear power growth, and GA hits felt rewarding without being trivial.
However, crafting quality-of-life was abysmal.
The sheer number of clicks, confirmation windows, and slow UI interactions made item creation unnecessarily painful-especially during sanctification-heavy gameplay. Simple improvements like hotkeys, batch imprinting, repeat actions, and reduced confirmations could cut crafting time by 80% or more.
The systems are solid. The interface is not.
Progression Curve: Too Fast, Too Early
One of Season 11's biggest issues is how quickly players reach endgame power. Legendary temper manuals, full masterworking, and key uniques are obtained almost immediately. As a result, players skip entire Torment tiers after just a handful of drops.
Paladin exaggerates this problem, but even other classes often leap straight to Torment 4 after securing one or two critical items. Progression feels compressed, removing the sense of steady growth.
Staggering key drops-such as locking legendary temper manuals or certain uniques behind higher Torment levels-would create a more satisfying power curve. Players should tinker with suboptimal setups longer before becoming fully "online."Elite Revamp: Better, but Messy
The elite rework added champion packs, blue mobs, and more varied affixes, making encounters more interesting on paper. In practice, visual clarity became a serious issue-especially in high-density fights.
Certain affixes, like Explosive, are overtuned. They're unavoidable, unblockable, and hit harder than anything else in the game, making them a top Hardcore killer. Bugs exacerbated the problem, with some elites firing affixes far more frequently than intended.
While elites are more engaging overall, they need tighter tuning, better visual clarity, and fewer bug-induced death scenarios-especially in Hardcore.
Endgame Loop: The Pit Problem
Season 11 shifted focus away from the Pit, and it shows. XP gains and rewards were heavily nerfed, making Pit progression largely pointless beyond a certain tier. Since rewards barely scale, running Pit 60 or Pit 90 feels functionally identical.
This is a major problem. With only four difficulty tiers, the Pit should be Diablo 4's primary scaling endgame system. Instead, it's unrewarding and boring.
The upcoming expansion's Vault and Tower changes offer hope, but the Pit needs more than minor tweaks. It needs to be engaging, rewarding, and capable of sustaining hundreds of hours of play-not just a checkbox activity.
Keys and Rewards: Too Much of a Good Thing
Season 11 flooded players with keys. World bosses dropped absurd numbers of sigils, Ascendance keys became effectively infinite, and rare items lost their excitement.
Keys should be rare and meaningful-not clutter. Fewer keys with better rewards would dramatically improve the endgame loop. A 90% reduction in key drops paired with significantly enhanced loot would make each run feel special again.
Sanctification: A Huge Win (With Caveats)
Sanctification was one of Season 11's best additions. Long requested as a Diablo 4 version of Vaal Orbs, it finally allowed players to gamble on their gear in exciting ways.
The system was generous-perhaps too generous-but undeniably fun. Mythic sanctifications, in particular, were thrilling to chase, even if the RNG was brutal.
The main issue lies in power disparity. The gap between average outcomes and "god-tier" results is enormous, creating an all-or-nothing experience. Introducing more mid-tier outcomes would smooth progression while keeping top-end rolls exciting.
Sanctification should absolutely return as a permanent system, albeit with refined balance.
The Tower: Undercooked but Promising
The Tower arrived late in the season and felt unfinished. Bugs, exploits, and balance issues dominated early impressions. While leaderboard pushing was briefly fun, the mode lacks long-term replayability.
Once a character is optimized, there's little incentive to return week after week. To fix this, the Tower needs dynamic modifiers-similar to Mythic+ affixes-that change weekly and meaningfully alter gameplay.
With the right structure and rewards, the Tower could become a compelling weekly activity for all players, not just leaderboard chasers.
Class Balance: Paladin Dominates, Others Lag Behind
While Paladin had dozens of viable builds, other classes struggled. Necromancer, in particular, was left behind, with few compelling options. Most classes had one or two "good enough" builds-but nothing close to Paladin's depth or flexibility.
With expansion changes looming, this imbalance is understandable-but for Season 12, players need reasons to log into every class, not just Paladin.
Final Thoughts buy D4 materials
Despite its flaws, Diablo 4 Season 11 was a strong step forward. It delivered fun, engagement, and momentum heading into the expansion. The systems introduced this season-sanctification, improved skill design, and progression revamps-show real promise.
Between major system revamps, elite reworks, crafting changes, and the introduction of the Paladin, Season 11 felt like a turning point. It wasn't perfect, but it laid important groundwork heading into Season 12 and the upcoming expansion.
The Paladin: Fun, Flexible, and Overpowered
The headline feature of Season 11 was undeniably the Paladin. As a new class, it offered a glimpse into Blizzard's evolving design philosophy-and in many ways, it succeeded brilliantly.
The Paladin's skill tree stands head and shoulders above the other classes. Skills come with multiple meaningful branches that drastically alter how abilities function, often changing damage types, playstyles, or synergies entirely. This resulted in exceptional build diversity. Nearly anything could be made viable, and many builds landed at a comparable power level thanks to flexible aspects, paragon boards, and shared passives.
That said, the Paladin was also blatantly overpowered.
While it didn't reach the absurd "delete everything instantly" levels of some historical Diablo builds, it trivialized large portions of the game. In Hardcore Torment 4, Paladins could often AFK through content that should have been lethal. The class flattened progression far too quickly, making most endgame challenges feel optional rather than earned.
This imbalance was likely intentional. Blizzard clearly wanted the Paladin to feel strong, exciting, and accessible, especially alongside increased difficulty from elite changes. In that sense, it worked-players came back, played more, and had fun. But long-term, the Paladin's multipliers and defensive scaling will need to come down to align with the rest of the roster.
Still, as a preview of where class design is heading-especially with the expansion's new skill tree systems-the Paladin is extremely promising.
Skill Design: A Blueprint for the Expansion
One of the Paladin's biggest strengths is how its utility skills still meaningfully contribute to combat. Cooldowns like Arbiter don't just buff stats-they deal damage, interact with multipliers, and feel impactful when used.
This highlights a major issue with older classes. Many utility skills simply don't scale, making them feel hollow. Pressing Ground Stomp on Barbarian or certain Rogue utilities often results in nothing happening damage-wise, which feels unsatisfying.
Historically, Diablo 4 had more hybrid-style builds-Season 0's Kratos Barbarian or Flurry Rogue being standout examples. While not every build needs that complexity, moving closer to Paladin-style multi-skill relevance would dramatically improve combat depth across all classes.
Crafting and Progression: Better Systems, Worse UI
Season 11 introduced major changes to progression systems, including tempering, masterworking, and difficulty adjustments. Mechanically, these updates were a success.
Tempering felt good. Selecting your temper and hunting for Greater Affix rolls added excitement without excessive frustration. Masterworking provided clear power growth, and GA hits felt rewarding without being trivial.
However, crafting quality-of-life was abysmal.
The sheer number of clicks, confirmation windows, and slow UI interactions made item creation unnecessarily painful-especially during sanctification-heavy gameplay. Simple improvements like hotkeys, batch imprinting, repeat actions, and reduced confirmations could cut crafting time by 80% or more.
The systems are solid. The interface is not.
Progression Curve: Too Fast, Too Early
One of Season 11's biggest issues is how quickly players reach endgame power. Legendary temper manuals, full masterworking, and key uniques are obtained almost immediately. As a result, players skip entire Torment tiers after just a handful of drops.
Paladin exaggerates this problem, but even other classes often leap straight to Torment 4 after securing one or two critical items. Progression feels compressed, removing the sense of steady growth.
Staggering key drops-such as locking legendary temper manuals or certain uniques behind higher Torment levels-would create a more satisfying power curve. Players should tinker with suboptimal setups longer before becoming fully "online."Elite Revamp: Better, but Messy
The elite rework added champion packs, blue mobs, and more varied affixes, making encounters more interesting on paper. In practice, visual clarity became a serious issue-especially in high-density fights.
Certain affixes, like Explosive, are overtuned. They're unavoidable, unblockable, and hit harder than anything else in the game, making them a top Hardcore killer. Bugs exacerbated the problem, with some elites firing affixes far more frequently than intended.
While elites are more engaging overall, they need tighter tuning, better visual clarity, and fewer bug-induced death scenarios-especially in Hardcore.
Endgame Loop: The Pit Problem
Season 11 shifted focus away from the Pit, and it shows. XP gains and rewards were heavily nerfed, making Pit progression largely pointless beyond a certain tier. Since rewards barely scale, running Pit 60 or Pit 90 feels functionally identical.
This is a major problem. With only four difficulty tiers, the Pit should be Diablo 4's primary scaling endgame system. Instead, it's unrewarding and boring.
The upcoming expansion's Vault and Tower changes offer hope, but the Pit needs more than minor tweaks. It needs to be engaging, rewarding, and capable of sustaining hundreds of hours of play-not just a checkbox activity.
Keys and Rewards: Too Much of a Good Thing
Season 11 flooded players with keys. World bosses dropped absurd numbers of sigils, Ascendance keys became effectively infinite, and rare items lost their excitement.
Keys should be rare and meaningful-not clutter. Fewer keys with better rewards would dramatically improve the endgame loop. A 90% reduction in key drops paired with significantly enhanced loot would make each run feel special again.
Sanctification: A Huge Win (With Caveats)
Sanctification was one of Season 11's best additions. Long requested as a Diablo 4 version of Vaal Orbs, it finally allowed players to gamble on their gear in exciting ways.
The system was generous-perhaps too generous-but undeniably fun. Mythic sanctifications, in particular, were thrilling to chase, even if the RNG was brutal.
The main issue lies in power disparity. The gap between average outcomes and "god-tier" results is enormous, creating an all-or-nothing experience. Introducing more mid-tier outcomes would smooth progression while keeping top-end rolls exciting.
Sanctification should absolutely return as a permanent system, albeit with refined balance.
The Tower: Undercooked but Promising
The Tower arrived late in the season and felt unfinished. Bugs, exploits, and balance issues dominated early impressions. While leaderboard pushing was briefly fun, the mode lacks long-term replayability.
Once a character is optimized, there's little incentive to return week after week. To fix this, the Tower needs dynamic modifiers-similar to Mythic+ affixes-that change weekly and meaningfully alter gameplay.
With the right structure and rewards, the Tower could become a compelling weekly activity for all players, not just leaderboard chasers.
Class Balance: Paladin Dominates, Others Lag Behind
While Paladin had dozens of viable builds, other classes struggled. Necromancer, in particular, was left behind, with few compelling options. Most classes had one or two "good enough" builds-but nothing close to Paladin's depth or flexibility.
With expansion changes looming, this imbalance is understandable-but for Season 12, players need reasons to log into every class, not just Paladin.
Final Thoughts buy D4 materials
Despite its flaws, Diablo 4 Season 11 was a strong step forward. It delivered fun, engagement, and momentum heading into the expansion. The systems introduced this season-sanctification, improved skill design, and progression revamps-show real promise.