Welcome to I Talk Games, where I share my thoughts and playthroughs of many different games. Today, I’m showing off some Diablo IV gameplay, Hope you enjoy!

The Diablo series has been around forever, so I don’t really plan on doing a full commentary or review of this game. Truthfully, I’m not super into Diablo overall. Truthfully, I only started playing with III, and even then I just liked making new builds and seeing what type of move-sets I could put together.

I don’t pay attention to any of the storyline or lore at all, really. I just like playing different classes and playstyles, and seeing how strong I can get by stacking multipliers. So, really, you probably won’t find me to be the best source of information for this game any way.

Instead, this post is largely about my build, my girlfriends build, and a bit about the thought processes behind them. Typically, I like to play a magic build, where I can keep enemies at bay and attack from a distance. Knowing that, I try to force myself to play differently from time-to-time. Which is what I was attempting here.

Thought Process

Since the Druid is the new class in this game, I gave it a shot. And, being incredibly creative, I named him Dru. My girlfriend is playing a sorceress — I can’t tell you why; she’s a fairly new gamer so she doesn’t really have a “typical” playstyle. I probably convinced her with my fondness of the sorcerer/ess class.

Sticking with the theme of creatively naming our characters, we named her Sorcia.

In this clip, I’m playing largely as a werebear with some ravens that fly around and assist. It would be dope if there was a bear companion along with the wolves companion — especially given the fact that both wolves and poison creeper somewhat favor the werewolf build, and there’s nothing really that leans werebear imo — but there’s not, so I went with Ravens.

Since you have to start out at level 1, with minimal equipment, It tends to take a while to get to a place with your character where you’re actually able to decide on a build type. There’s several things you need to consider such as:

• The equipment you plan on using and whether it boosts or hinders the skills in your build
• Whether you’ve reached a high enough level that the skills you want are unlocked
• The skill points required to equip the skills you want
• And more, like making you have the resources to unlock or make anything you don’t have from above.

So, typically, what I do is not even really think about it until I’m roughly at the point where my character has all legendary items and I’m selling/salvaging everything rare or below. I guess technically I do try to follow one build/style as I’m unlocking skills the first time through. It’s almost impossible not to. But I don’t do so to the extent where I’m trying to find out how to coordinate my gear or set passives.

Once I am at that level though (32 I believe in Diablo IV to have each section on the skill tree unlocked) I see what bonuses the items that I already have provide, and try to build my character around that. Since the items you pick up in the wild have randomized stats and bonuses, I try to create my build around them, rather than creating a build and hoping my equipment works out. So in this case, the werebear made the most sense.

Druid Skills

On thing that I noticed is that a lot of the werebear attacks and defensive moves gave you fortify, so I tried to also include passives that increased fortify as well. That said, I don’t really know how to use fortify, and can’t say I really felt any benefits using it. Maybe if I find a piece of armor, or an armor set, that boosts the effect of fortify even further, I might be into it more; but as of right now, I’m not sure I see the value.

I touched on this earlier, but I had to think a bit about the companion skill for this build, too. Given the options — wolves, ravens, and vine creeper — only ravens seemed to make sense. Wolves, obviously, would be best suited in a werewolf build. Not much more to say about that. But the vines, they primarily inflict poison on enemies, which would be nice except it doesn’t benefit any other werebear skills (such as fortify) and there are werewolf skills that poison.

So it seems to me that the vines would make the most sense as a poison-inflicting-werewolf build instead of werebear. Maybe, given a future werebear playthrough, I’ll forego a companion for another, more “werebear” compatible option.

In all honesty, I thought the werebear build was a bit slow and difficult to use. Maybe I just don’t understand how to use Fortify; but either way, this wasn’t my favorite build in this character. I’m wondering if there are any armor sets that would make that skill even better; and make this build much stronger, but I’ll have to keep crawling through those dungeons to get there.

Sorceress Skills

I, honestly, don’t have a ton to say about this build. I could see what she was doing while we played, and saw some moves that definite looked cool; but not playing it myself, I was never 100% sure what was going on. Make sure to check out the full video to see what the ice sorceress can do.

Conclusion

Overall, I’d say this build was okay. It didn’t really excite me or devastate enemies, but it was serviceable. As of right now, I’ve already switched it up, and have made a different build; but maybe if I get some better armor that makes the werebear skills more effective (or if I get some tips on how to use fortify (leave them in the comments)), I’ll return to this type of build.

Thanks for reading!