Diablo 4 Best Classes, Builds, Skills & Playstyles

Diablo 4 Best Classes, Builds, Skills & Playstyles - D4 Class Ranking & Tier List

3/21/2023 11:27:41 AM

Tag: D4 Class Tier List & Rankings Diablo 4 Beginners guide

Diablo 4 public beta is well underway and players have been playing it crazy. Absorb as much of this game as we can, possibly getting on every class currently available over the small amount of time we have. One of the big questions that we’ve seen come up in the community a lot is, which class should you use? Today we’re going to break down the best Diablo 4 classes in the beta based both on their performance as far as strength, but also just on their feeling of how satisfied they are to play, and how well they match the class fantasy that they set out to reach.

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Diablo IV Best Classes - Diablo 4 Classes Tier List & Ranking

On top of the Diablo 4 class tier list and ranking, we'll be talking about the Druid and the Necromancer, the two classes not currently in beta until next week. Our information on those is comparatively limited as a result, nonetheless, they deserved a bit of time to just talk about what we can expect and what you are likely to experience with them when you can finally dive into them for yourselves. So that you can make a more informed decision about what is the best D4 class you want to play either at lunch or even just at the proper public beta coming up next weekend where we have access to everything and everyone can play.

Diablo 4 Barbarian Class

Barbarian is a classic Warrior type of feel and there are two main builds we've seen popping off so far in the beta. We are limited to level 25 which is a relatively early game, but it still gives us an indication of what will be common at end games so you know how it will feel when we get there.

D4 Barbarian Best Builds

Barbarian Whirlwind Build

For now, the two big ones are the Whirlwind-focused build where you power the hell out of Whirlwind and everything else just exists in the build for the sole purpose of making Whirlwind stronger buffs Fury Generation all of that. This is your classic Diablo Spin to Win play style Barbarian where you just hold down Whirlwind and spin through enemies having a blast while watching their health bar go slowly down.

Barbarian Bleed Build

The other one is the bleed focus build which is new to Diablo 4. This one is a lot more powerful in the section of the game that we currently have and the way that these skills synergize early on actually makes it extremely satisfying to use. The main idea behind it is applying various bleed effects to enemies to make them take damage over time. But as you stack up this damage over time, every tick of the bleed becomes absolutely massive. On top of which you have the ability to just pop your little blood boils and make all the bleed damage you've stacked up explode instantly, making this excel at both wave clear and boss damage in a way that is really fun to experience.

Barbarian Skills

Barbarian requires a bit more thought in the early game section compared to some other classes just because of the way that it's sort of built as a base. As one of the few pure melee classes, you sort of have to be right up in the middle of combat. It's a lot harder to dodge attacks from enemies, especially larger ones. That said, you also have a fair few more tankiness options. A big thing with Barbarian that makes it special and unique is that you actually have four weapons equipped at any given time thanks to the Arsenal system and depending on which you have on, you get different bonuses too.

Such as the two-handed sword converting 8% direct damage into bonus bleed damage or the two-hand axe giving you more damage to vulnerable enemies which is a status that we can proc quite easily as a Barbarian. You can choose for each of your skills on your bar which weapon you want to use for that skill. The main reason that this will get even stronger with time is obviously those four weapon equipment slots. Each one of them can be legendary each one can have its own unique legendary effect. So you simply have more slots for potential legendaries than any other class in the game does. Meaning you have more room for growth later in the game an early game though this won't be in effect all that much.

Barbarian's Strengths & Weaknesses

A barbarian's strength is good defensive abilities and a ton of bleeds so so much bleed and it's quite strong. The weaknesses are that they need to be right in the middle of the fight to actually do any damage. Pretty much all damage that they do is physical, so any enemies that aren't really affected too much by physical damage, you won't be as good against. Also, their mobility is a little bit limited, it exists, it's just a bit limited.

Conclusions

All in all, if you like the class fantasy of swinging around four different weapons or just being a walking catastrophe fleeing metal everywhere, then this class will do great for you.

Diablo 4 Sorcerer Class

This one is pretty obvious from the get-go it's your classic fantasy mage based around big flashy elemental spells and they all look gorgeous in Diablo 4. These are split into three categories. Fire spells that apply burn effects to deal damage over time. Lightning spells are just big nasty AOE attacks and ice spells which are heavy on CC apply both slow and the frozen effect for a stun as well. All of this is very strong and there's a fair amount of mixing and matching that you can do too.

Sorcerer Skills

One big thing to talk about for Sorcerer is the ice armor. This is the main thing that lets you actually exist without being pummeled into the ground instantly with your squishy little health bar. This is a big icy shield effect 6-second duration, 20-second cooldown and it gives you a nice big barrier that gets even larger in relation to the damage that you do while it's active. on top of that, it increases your mana regen which is massive. You also have various ways to make your ice armor active a lot more often than the cooldown would suggest. You can pretty much have it active most of the time.

Sorcerer Skills

The offensive spells seeing the most useful Sorcerer right now are chained lightning which is literally just a lightning bolt that bounces between enemies doing loads of damage and it can even bounce off of your own character if you're only fighting a singular enemy. But this one is much more than anything incredible for area of effect wave clearing type Shenanigans and it will likely be your go-to for that.

Hydra which is arguably the best single-target spell that you have is also still pretty good for AOE. Creating a little hydra on the ground that spits fire out of each of its 3 heads and lasts for 12 seconds. There are ways to have more heads on the hydra and give it things like increased crit chance. So it's extremely solid. The common base attack seems to be a frost bolt, it's not crazy but it does solid damage. It has crazy CC applying chilled and frozen to enemies as you hit them repeatedly. On top of that, there's an enhancement that makes it actively regenerate Mana as you use it which is fantastic for obvious reasons too. Basically, this class is really straightforward it does what it says on the tin and it does that extremely well.

Sorcerer Strengths & Weakness

The only real weakness of Sorcerer is that it can run out of Mana extremely quickly if you aren't careful and outside of ice armor, you are pretty squishy. But this strength is that it has silly damage potential and a great amount of variety within its spells allowing you to easily see wave clear and also run down bosses all with skills that synergize together with each other wonderfully.

Conclusions

If you want to be a wizard this is the one for you and it's performing quite well in the early levels as well.

Diablo 4 Rogue Class

Rogue is quite an interesting one. As realistically there are two separate playstyles that don't really mix or mingle with each other and these are a more melee-focused build with imbuements and tons of AOE and a more range build which lets you say further from the fight while also doing tons of damage.

Rogue Skills

Rogue's bow skills tend to be stronger before you consider things like legendaries or secondary effects. Especially as it lets you stay further away from enemies as you have the least defensive options for any class in the game. Essentially you're just relying on your own ability to dodge attack tax manually. The bow playstyle has lots of options things as piercing shots or barrages of arrows and the melee side of things is quite interesting too. Early on this tends to do less damage than the bow builds, but if you put something together well the melee stuff can reach an even higher potential. Specifically, there's a really fun build based around twisting blades and loads of movement.

D4 Best Rouge Build

Twisting Blade Rogue

As you plunge your daggers into an enemy, then they fly back out of the enemy and back to you after a short delay. When they do this, they damage everything in between you and that enemy. So you build around this, you give yourself loads of movement teleport. Your enemies press twisting blades on the big one, dash away, and let everything in between you get hit by the return of the blades.

The shadow clone ultimate just makes a clone do every action that you do at 60% effectiveness and you're just flying around the battlefield doing loads of damage staying incredibly mobile which lets you avoid most attacks. You've got your little buddy backing you up doing the exact same things right after you. Moreover, you can pretty permanently apply the vulnerable debuff to enemies making them take a load more damage from all sources.

Not to mention that you can also build Rogue around traps and imbuements. Like an effect that makes enemies explode after death when hit by your attacks, so you become an absolute menace. This is just one of the varied ways to play the Rogue.

Conclusions

If you like daggers, there's a great play style here for you. If you like bossing crossbows, it's a great play style here for you as well. If you like the idea of placing down traps and dragging enemies into them, then there's that too. If this sounds fun to you and you like the idea of being super mobile to avoid damage rather than super tanky and taking it to the face, then Rogue is probably a great choice for you. Not to mention it's performing extremely well too.

Diablo 4 Necromancer Class

It will likely work quite similarly to Diablo 3's Necromancer. We know their focus will be well necromancy and this boils down to four different play Styles in this game.

Rogue Skills

-One of them is just mass summoning making an absolute army of followers and letting them do the damage for you. This is obviously quite safe but it also requires some work to get going as it uses the corpses of your enemies as fuel to make more friends.

-Then there are the bone skills. These are much more physically damage based. There will be some defensive bone options too, just things that let you play a bit more in melee range.

-After that, we have blood skills and those are all based on lifesteal and the idea of healing yourself while also pumping out good damage.

-Then there is also darkness which is more of a typical damage over-time type of playstyle where you can just watch your enemies slowly burn away into nothingness from a distance.

Rogue Strengths

The Necromancer will also have the ability to customize their summons which is pretty neat too. Actually getting to choose various options that affect whether their minions are more on the tanky side or the damaging side. They also get skeleton mages too, so your undead can cast their own magic.

Conclusions

Necromancer has the potential to be the most well-rounded class and obviously the more work that you can make your summons do for you, the less danger that you are actually in personally. Not to mention the blood spells to heal you back up. Necromancer is expected to be particularly strong so we'll just have to see how it works out in the second beta weekend and beyond.

Diablo 4 Druid Class

Druids are a pretty unique class in Diablo IV, being mostly melee based but also having some range spell-casting options. Generally, Druid spells will be mixed between earth magic and storm magic.

Druid Skills

The earth-type spells focus most on defense and also closer range damage, whereas the storm will be more focused on knockbacks and also AOE damage. On top of this, the Druid has attacks that transform it into either a werewolf or a werebear. The werewolf attacks were more of focus on high attack speed melee hits and the werebear was more focused on singular larger hits and also a bit of tankiness too.

Druid Mechanics

On top of this, we have the general class mechanic of Druid known as crushing blow and various skills will have different abilities to proc crushing blow. When this proc deals damage to an enemy for a percentage of its total life which for obvious reasons has incredible implications. Especially as you hit further into the game and into the late-to-end game content where every enemy that you see has a massive health pool. Overall because of this mechanic, Druid is expected to be quite strong, it has a lot of potential variety.

Druid Strengths & Weakness

The only real weakness that we are worried about for Druid is its movement. As a lot of what they do requires them to be up in the melee and we know that they'll have decent defensive abilities too. But we haven't heard much about their actual mobility and that can be quite rough to be melee in a game like this without many movement options.

Diablo 4 Beta Class Ranking

As far as the proper best Diablo 4 open beta class goes, it will basically depend on the type of activity that you're doing. The D4 best class is the one that you enjoy the most. Every class in Diablo 4 is theoretically quite well-balanced. They are capable of all the same content just in different ways. They feel different in the class and feel that gels with you are the ones that you'll tend to do the best with.

Top 1 - Sorcerer

Sorcerer has some of the highest potential in Solo content as it has fewer effects and options that actually help out the rest of their party. They have more options that are specifically meant for their solo play. They have high burst potential with the fact that their Mana starts full good sustain and CC good tankiness with ice armor. It has good mobility and so Sorcerer will always be right at the top when it comes to the actual pure strength D4 class tier list.

Top 2 - Rogue

Rogue will probably excel at activities like PVP. There is a stealth mechanic in this class that doesn't seem overly strong in PVE content. But in PvP, the ability to be invisible will be a massive thing to build around and actually take people off guard. Rogue just basically One-Shot people out of stealth, then the fight's already over.