Diablo IV update nerfs everyone’s damage output, experience gain, and stats

Despite a generally positive reaction to the game's launch, Diablo fans are harshly criticizing Blizzard's latest patch, which affects all players regardless of class, with some claiming that the update "ruined" many endgame builds.

The details:

• Diablo IV had a highly successful launch, becoming Blizzard's fastest-selling title in history and being well-received by both fans and critics alike; however, the latest 1.1 patch notes have turned fans' opinions sour just days before the game's first season begins. Damage reductions, lower survivability, status effect reductions, and longer cooldowns have been implemented across the board for all five playable classes.
• Many players believe that most of the changes were unnecessary, pointing out that despite the Sorcerer class only having three realistically viable endgame builds in 1.0, the developer still decided to nerf chances, standard and critical strike damage, and mana regeneration. Multiple Barbarian class builds have also crumbled as a result of the changes, with a "bug" involving the Hammer of the Ancients skill being patched, as well as the aforementioned nerfs making characters significantly weaker.
• There have also been numerous nerfs to the open world and dungeons, including the removal of power leveling, which allowed players to party up on a new character with a max-level friend who could then boost them by killing level 100 enemies. Lower-level characters will now receive capped XP with significant reductions in bonuses for killing higher-level enemies, lengthening the grind to the endgame on additional characters. A level 1 character, for example, will only receive XP equivalent to killing level 11 monsters at most, even if their friend is slaying level 100 enemies.
• Another big change has come to the game's itemization. The core Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Willpower stats have been halved when on weapons, and Barrier Generation, Lucky Hit Chance while You Have a Barrier, and Mastery Skill Damage are now available to all classes. On the surface, this appears to be a build-related issue, but many players have complained about a significant amount of loot being nothing more than "vendor trash," and with more affixes that can be useless to certain characters, this only gets worse.
• On the plus side, Blizzard has fixed an array of in-game bugs as well as accessibility issues and has added six new unique items for players to find at world tier 4 and above, including the "extremely rare" Ahavarion Spear of Lycander, each with their own set of abilities.

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