Diablo 3 Game Review: 11 Years Later

This is my review and personal thoughts on my time playing Diablo 3 in 2023, over 11 years since launch and 1000 hours of game time.

Credit: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 3 launched with huge sales, but was not received well by most of the player base. Sounds familiar to Diablo IV doesn't it? Fans of Diablo 2 hated that the game got away from the dark, gritty, and slow paced action of D2. 

Casual players hated how grindy it was initially, especially with the bad itemization and difficulty of enemies compared to builds that relied heavily on mana generation spells that hardly did any damage. After a while Blizzard released an expansion, Reaper of Souls, which completely changed how the game plays and re-worked its itemization. This really saved the game and made it from a boring dumpster fire into a fun playable game. 

Since then Blizzard also released the Necromancer pack, further improving the game. Now the game is in a very good state that is fun to play for a week every few months. It's unfortunate that new content and patches won't be coming ever again, but I've had a blast playing this game in 2023 with the new seasons. 

Overall here's the general review I have of the game...

Look and Sound: A-

The game looks and sounds really good, even though it's a bit brighter and more "cartoony" compared to Diablo 2. When I compare it to other games, even 11 years later, the graphics and sounds of the game still hold up. The effects can be a bit much but can also be adjusted. 

Character Customization: B-

When it comes to character creation, you're stuck with a very specific looking hero (male or female) for each class. This is why I rank customization lower but D3 makes up for it with cosmetics. The cosmetics system in this game are pretty good for an 11 year old ARPG and are on par with WoW's. The game unlocks every item's cosmetic look when acquired and you can pay a small sum of gold whenever you want to change the look of all your weapons and armor. You also have the choice of a few different colors dyes so you can mix and match how you look.

Progression: B

Progression is an interesting topic and I rated it middle of the field because this game is very easy to progress in. The base game progression takes a few hours to level (or minutes to power level) and from there it's very easy to acquire gear and paragon ranks to become very powerful on day 1. However, it's nice to have a clear path towards progression, unlike D4 which is a complete mess when it comes to player progress. Additionally, the seasonal progression is laid out for you so you have the exact path to progressing your seasonal journey every 3 months. The game rewards you with gear and cosmetics as you achieve each rank of the seasonal journey and it forces you to play just about every piece of content the game offers. I hope other games learn from this if they plan to achieve a decent seasonal model.

Gameplay: B+

At this stage in the game there's very few bugs, very little lag, and the game works near flawlessly. The gameplay is very smooth and every class has about 5-6 viable builds that all look and feel different. Overall the gameplay is just a fun run and destroy ARPG, but also has the ability to push harder content (enemies with more health that deal more damage). The downside is the game can be too easy in the early end game and there's nothing mechanics wise in the game that make it interesting, other than gear up, mash buttons, and everything on screen dies.

User Interface: A

The UI is very good. The character screen, inventory screen, skills screen, skill bar, health and mana globes, buffs/debuffs icons, etc.. are all very excellent. It's a very clean UI that's easy to understand and use. This is the best UI that I've experienced out of all Diablo games.

Endgame: C

There's no real end game in Diablo 3 other than greater rift pushing. You essentially run rifts to get keystones to run greater rifts. The goal is to get the perfect gear and higher paragon level so you can keep pushing GRifts up until 150. It is cool that there's leaderboards though, and the start of every season has a race to specific achievements, which can be fun. I also applaud Blizzard for adding a few new end game pieces of content in the last couple years with echoing nightmares, visions of enmity, and Rites of Sanctuary. They should all stay in the core game after this last season is over.

Monetization: A

Monetization is something I give credit for. This was truly Blizzard before Activision took over. You buy the game and expansion and you get access to everything. New seasonal content has been completely free every few months for years now. There's no battlepass, cash shop, or loot boxes. This is truly the last Blizzard game I can think of that had no monetization beyond buying the game.

Overall Grade: B+

Diablo 3 is one of my favorite ARPG's of all time but I tried to be less biased in this review as I understand the ease of leveling and gearing, along with the lack of a real end game, has turned off a lot of hardcore ARPG players. If you're looking for a fun week of hack and slash gameplay every few months then this is a great game. If you go in with higher expectations than that, then you'll be very disappointed. However, it's currently way better than Diablo 4.

My Favorite Diablo 3 Builds and Plans for Season 29

I have been playing Diablo 3 religiously since the disastrous launch of vanilla D3 and Deckard getting killed offscreen by a butterfly. After the expansion and seasons became a thing, I have loved this game and the variety of builds and itemization it brings, even though it's a much more casual experience compared to other ARPG's, which I also love. D4. PoE, and Last Epoch will eventually take over my play time for D2 and D3 which have been my primary ARPG's for the last decade. 

Credit: Diablo 3 blizzard.com

For Diablo 3 season 29, the final new season in the franchise 😔, I will be playing wizard. Wizard is the first class I ever played in D3 so it's a got send off to the franchise for me. However, I've played every class multiple seasons as outlined below: 

Crusader: 5 seasons 

Monk: 5 seasons 

Wizard: 4 seasons

Barbarian: 4 seasons

Witch Doctor: 4 seasons 

Necromancer: 3 seasons

Demon Hunter: 3 seasons

With all that said I wanted to break down my favorite build for each class. These will not necessarily be the best builds but are still viable and fun. Keep in mind top end builds vary depending on the season but any viable build can clear any season journey. I'll be using Icy-Veins build guides as the closest guide to how I usually build my characters, although I always use my own builds that vary slightly from the websites and ladder ranks.

• Crusader - Akkhan thorns bombardment build: This was a tough choice but the downside of the hammer build (the one I want to like more), the mobility of the hammer crusader sucks in D3 and this game is all about speed. The Akkhan bombardment build is literally sprinting around on a horse non-stop dragging enemies and dropping bombs from the sky. This is a very trivial but fun play style. 
• Monk - Sunwuko's Wave of Light build: Monk has 3 really good top tier builds with mystic ally, wave of light, and tempest rush. I enjoy all of these but my favorite season was when Sunwuko wave of light was top tier. In that build you got to drop flaming bells that exploded on packs of enemies. It was really fun and a lot less boring from mystic ally (where the summons do all the work) and tempest rush (where you hold down one button and run around). 
• Wizard - Tal Rasha's Meteor build: Wizard is tough because there's been some good builds, but most of them were newer and centered around legacy of dreams. Firebirds was my go-to most often but I dislike how disintegrate specific it is. Tal Rasha's got big lately because you can essentially spam meteors non-stop and it's fun to watch the destruction. 
• Barbarian - Might of the Earth Leap Earthquake build: Barbarian has a lot of fun builds, especially Raekor's where you can just zoom around shoulder charging non-stop. However, I always enjoyed the Might of the Earth play style where you leap from pack to pack summoning an earthquake and slamming enemies. It's a very fun build with lots of AoE damage. 
• Witch Doctor - Arachyr's Corpse Spider build: Witch Doctor has a lot of the same features with spirit walk, soul harvest, locust swarm, piranhas, and voodoo. However, there's 3 builds I've enjoyed with zuni's darts, jade harvester, and mundunugu's stand there while spirit barrage does the work for you. However, Arachyr has the right amount of ease and mechanics to make it feel like you're still doing something while your queen spider destroys everything you throw your jar of spiders at. 
• Necromancer - Rathma Army of the Dead build: Necromancer was added as a mini-expansion which brought the highly sought after minion, blood, and bone master that witch doctor wasn't quite good at. My favorite is controlling an army of skeletons and occasionally summoning hoards of them. 
• Demon Hunter - Unhallowed Essence Multishot build: Demon hunter actually has a cool variety of builds from arrows, to pets, to turrets, to daggers. I don't think there's a DH build that I don't like but by far the best to me is the multishot build where you can clear the entire screen by spamming a fan of arrows in front of you. 

In summary Diablo 3 has 3-6 viable builds for each class which brings over 20-40 different build combos to try out. Between the easy leveling, raining legendaries, the seasonal journey every 3 months, and build variety; this is why the game has been so popular for over 8 years. 

Season 29 Visions of Enmity: I'm looking forward to playing demon hunter this weekend and beating my final seasonal journey in the game. The seasonal mechanic looks fairly basic as enemies randomly spawn portals and portals within portals to kill increasingly harder enemies for more loot and xp. This feels like the old PoE mapping system where you can do a map within a map (I think it was the old way Kirac's missions worked). 

For the season I will always run the challenge rift first to get the crafting materials and currency. 

I then focus on leveling first and ignore the journey. For leveling I often change difficulty and run rifts at the maximum possible difficulty I can handle, upping and lowering it as I go. I will use a makeshift build based on whatever legendaries I can find, as well as anything Kadala drops for me based on the shards I get from the challenge rift. 

I then craft a 2 handed weapon for my class that has level requirements -20 so I can cheat with damage and jump up into higher torment for quicker XP. That's because you're doing level 70 dps at level 50. 

The first thing I focus after hitting 70 is getting the Kanai's cube and then focusing on the seasonal journey. 

I want to get haedrig's gift as soon as possible so I have a full 6 piece set to make a build around. This season for demon hunter is shadow's mantle, which is my least favorite set for DH, but I'll make do with it. Keep in mind there's a seasonal challenge to solo rifts using 6 different sets so you'll want to collect all of them and their corresponding legendaries that make them good. 

Another hint is to utilize nightmare essences to satisfy getting 3 gems to 55. For some reason the game counts completed essence of nightmares as leveled legendary gems, so as long as you can get 3 essences above 55 (super easy barely an inconvenience) then you will satisfy this requirement. 

I am super hyped this season because they got rid of my least favorite challenge, mastering a set dungeon. You have no idea how many times I rage quit day 1 when this journey milestone got in my way. 80% of the set dungeons are incredibly annoying to master and there's usually only 1-2 sets per class that are worth trying without wasting your time. 

Path of Exile: All My Builds So Far, Oldest to Newest

As indicated in the last article I have played 10 leagues of PoE and have learned a lot. My last build is by far the best I've played; as I have a much better understanding of the game, but I have 10 builds here that have different levels of playability. With some tweaking, some of these could potentially turn into a good build for others in future leagues. 

1. Blazing Salvo - Fireball - Elementalist (5/10): In my first ever PoE league (Ritual) I decided I wanted to make a fire sorc, but couldn't find a legit build at the time, so I tried to make my own. It was a harsh reality check due to my ignorance about the game and how it works. I struggled through the campaign and early mapping, before asking friends to power level me, so I could try to fix my build. I was able to somewhat salvage it as I learned how spellslinger worked, but I was so defeated that I gave up on this league. I do believe there's still a way to fix this build, but never wanted to re-visit it. Here's the PoB for those interested: https://pobb.in/Yw4Z0HlnVVYm

2. Essence Drain (ED) - Contagion - Trickster (7/10): In Ultimatum a friend highly recommended I try ED contagion. Typically you'd see this build on something like an occultist, but at the time Trickster seemed like a more survivable version. Back then occultist wasn't that great and trickster was pretty good with the ghost shrouds. I wouldn't say this exact build is still viable after the trickster re-work in 2022, but PoE-Vault recently created a viable version. Clear speed was decent but boss damage sucked.  Here's the PoB I used for anyone interested: https://pobb.in/eFgYsqQXWTQI

3. Arc Miner - Saboteur (6/10): In Expedition I decided to run an arc miner. My friend and I had a competition to each make our own version of a mines/traps build to see whose was better. I think mine ended up going further, but his was an easier and smoother experience, especially during leveling. For me this miner was VERY clunky. Having to stop for a couple seconds to toss all your mines and then detonating them twice was a bit annoying. The great part about expedition was I could setup my mines around the bombs and then detonate them once the enemies spawned. Since then saboteur has been re-worked and is arguably worse. Here's the PoB: https://pobb.in/1gfxrzhoujzH

4. Toxic Rain - Champion (9/10): Toxic rain is one of the most popular skills in the game, especially for leveling any bow build. In this instance I watched Zizaran and Asmodeus play this and decided to play it. I always tweak my builds to my playstyle for the way I play, and also for the items I know I can find/afford compared to what a streamer uses or crafts. This was a fun build and an easy league to use it in. Toxic rain has very good clear, and ok boss damage; while champion is incredibly survivable. Here's the PoB: https://pobb.in/bmX6X2jvqLHh

5. Absolution - Necromancer (8/10): In Archnemesis I wanted to play a minion build and I heard GhazzyTV is the minion master of PoE so I checked out some of his builds. I landed on Absolution, which is a very good build for league start and bossing, perfect for archnemesis. I played a tweaked version of Ghazzy's build because I couldn't afford the exact items and doryani's is a weird playstyle to understand with the lightning resist. I also swapped in a vaal summon skeletons over animate guardian or raise zombie. I had no major issues with this build and played through the game just fine with it. Here's the PoB: https://pobb.in/9gc45sY-V0m_

6. Lightning Strike - Raider (8/10): In Sentinel league I wanted something tanky with good single target DPS. I decided to try a lightning strike raider build and it didn't disappoint. I was able to carry my friend through the campaign and mapping with this build. It is a bit annoying to play a melee build in PoE, but this one was probably the least annoying one I have experienced. However, it took a little bit to understand how trinity and nightblade worked at first. Fuzzy Duckzy has a decent guide and here's the PoB I used: https://pobb.in/i9MmAkcIU3kp

7. Purifying Flame - Inquisitor (5/10): For Lake of Kalandra I wanted to theory craft my own build. People kept trying to push me to a Pohx righteous fire build, but that seemed boring to me and it's just way too popular. As a result I went all in on a high life regen concept where I'd maximize my use of consecrated ground for damage and healing. Overall I could survive and tank anything in the game without taking any damage but I struggled with DPS. If you want to be unkillable and do very slow DPS then this isn't such a bad build, but you could build into a slightly less tanky build and blow through content faster. Here's the PoB if interested: https://pobb.in/u3hGGEFY-oAG

8. Herald of Agony - Juggernaut (9/10): In Forbidden Sanctum I chose an interesting combo of storm brand and herald of agony. This is a very safe, very tanky, and great DPS choice. I completely destroyed all content in the game ONCE I FIGURED IT OUT. If you do not understand how HoA works let me explain it. You need a chance to poison enemies to be able to spawn your scorpion. You also have to have your herald active, which reserves a ton of your mana. Then your damage over time (poison damage, chance to poison, and poison length) needs to be very high. This ensures you can always spawn your agony and it does max DPS. The storm brand is just an easy and safe way to apply a poison. Zizaran gave me this idea in his build guide here. Here's the PoB I used: https://pobb.in/L8mv8UvqS4k5

9. Holy Relic - Scion (4/10): For Crucible league I wanted to play a Scion. I heard it's complicated and there's not many guides for it. One build I wanted to try was a cast when damage taken ice spear build that looked awesome. However, the build was nerfed into the ground and required very expensive gear to keep it working (guess I missed it by a league). Instead I tried to make my own build based on a variation of CaptainLance9's build. The leveling experience with righteous fire actually worked great, until Scion's ability to maintain life regen hits max and then you can't maintain it and RF kills you (happened around lvl 40-50 to me). Once I swapped to the holy relic cyclone portion of the build it was clunky. The sound effects are cool but the build is slow and requires being in melee range with a class not very well suited to be in melee range. I also topped out in red maps as the damage was very good but survivability sucked. When you're stuck spinning in cycle there's not an easy time reacting to major potential damage. There's a huge budget to do well in end game. Here's the PoB for those interested: https://pobb.in/XJ2XgfnhaO37 

10. Impending Doom - Occultist (10/10): In the current league, Challenge of the Ancestors, I decided to try an impending doom occultist. This was a build I almost ran during crucible but didn't. I wish I discovered this sooner because this is by far the best build I've run. It has enough survivability that you get a second to react to damage but the DPS output is huge and safe. You can spam your curses from range safely, you can flame dash everywhere, and you can allow your DoT do the work for you while you stay safe. With this build I destroyed every map in the game through T16 and killed Eater and Exarch. The only content in the entire game I struggled with was expedition because it has immune to curses as a modifier sometimes and you literally can do nothing against it. I must admit I'm still piecing together how to gear it in the end game but here's my current PoB: https://pobb.in/xKRLBCEUmGUd