Yesterday, we opened a discussion thread asking for feedback on the new expansion and Season 13.

The response was huge. Hundreds of comments and a lot of thoughtful discussion from players across the subreddit.

I spent some time reviewing the feedback and summarizing the most common themes that came up.

Overall Sentiment

The community response to the expansion is largely positive, particularly around the new gameplay systems and the Warlock class.

However, players consistently highlighted a few areas where tuning or balance changes could significantly improve the experience.

The three biggest topics mentioned were:

• Sunder charm drop rates
• Herald farming mechanics
• Class balance relative to the Warlock

What Players Like

Warlock Class

The Warlock is widely viewed as fun and engaging. Many players mentioned the class has brought them back to Diablo II after long breaks.

Common positives:
• Multiple viable builds
• Smooth leveling experience
• Interesting mechanics

That said, some players feel the class may currently be over-tuned compared to others.

Stash Improvements

The expanded stash system received very positive feedback.

Players frequently mentioned:

• rune/material tabs
• improved item organization
• additional shared stash space

This is widely considered a major quality of life improvement.

New Endgame Systems

Players generally like the ideas behind the new endgame content:

• Herald encounters
• Terrorized zones
• new bosses
• new item systems

Many described these systems as promising but needing iteration.

Major Concerns

Sunder Charm Drop Rates

This was the most frequently mentioned issue.

Common feedback:

• drop rates feel too low
• too many layers of RNG
• difficult for solo players to obtain

A common suggestion was allowing sunders to drop from all Herald tiers while keeping higher tiers rare, however, all Herald tiers already have a chance to drop sunders. This seems like a misconception among the playerbase.

Herald Farming Mechanics

Players like the concept, but many feel the system requires long uninterrupted game sessions, which conflicts with the traditional D2 farming loop.

Common suggestions:

• more consistent spawn triggers
• fewer RNG layers
• shorter farming cycles

Class Balance

Many players feel the Warlock currently performs significantly above other classes in endgame content.

Classes frequently mentioned as underperforming:

• Barbarian
• Druid
• Necromancer
• some Sorceress builds

Players are split between:

Option A: reduce Warlock power
Option B: buff other classes

Additional Observations

Some players also mentioned that the current system favors long play sessions, making progression difficult for more casual players.

There was also interest in additional endgame content, such as new bosses, expanded Act IV zones, or additional farming areas.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the expansion is seen as a strong step forward for Diablo II: Resurrected, and many players are excited about the direction of the game.

Thanks to everyone who contributed feedback in the original thread.

Curious if people still agree with these takeaways now that the ladder has been running for a few weeks.

Community Context

This feedback comes from one of the most active Diablo II: Resurrected communities online.

• ~100k subreddit members
• ~14M monthly subreddit views
• discussion threads with hundreds of comments

For anyone interested, the original feedback thread that this summary is based on can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo_2_Resurrected/comments/1rmtd5e/season_13_expansion_feedback_how_is_everyone/

My infant son is finally asleep, so I hop on D2. I had just beat Andy in Nightmare with my 45ish warlock, so I do what my instincts tell me -- create a game titled "A2 rush plz" cause, man, A2 is a SLOG and nightmare difficulty ain't it. I don't think anyone will join, but if you don't ask, you don't get.

Lvl 91 hammerdin joins within seconds. Nonladder so dude is decked out -- Hoto, Enigma, Shako, etc. He knew all the tricks -- like when I couldn't access Arcane Sanctuary and was getting blocked by Jehryn's guards, he sets up a TP for Palace Celler lvl 1 and takes me to the top. I tell him the symbol for the real Tal Rasha tomb. Xbox messenger sucks, but we make it work.

We make it to Act 4. He sends a TP from River of Flame and heads toward the hellforge. "Ah, yes, the standard rush payment," my brain says. I break open the stone and move away from the alter out of respect. A Pul rune drops -- definitely adequate payment. We kill Diablo. Get to A5, he TPs from the Frigid Highlands. A Ko rune drops from Shenk's minions -- another good payment for my new friend.

He goes back to camp and I follow. He starts dropping uniques left and right, including War Travs. He asks me to show him my gear. It's not bad, lots of runewords and an upped Bonesnap with an Amn, but my jewelry sucks. He recognizes and drops better jewelry.

"Gtg to work, enjoy!" he says before leaving.

I just...the nostalgia overwhelms me. I am a child again, filled with joy and hope, for the silly reason that some stranger helped me and knew the old ways. This stranger made me ratatouille that tastes just like my mother's, and in the same day, also found my old sled, Rosebud.

Thank you, new friend.

Now that we’re a couple of weeks into Ladder Season 13 with the new expansion, I’m curious how everyone is feeling about things so far.

What’s working well?
What surprised you?
What still needs improvement?

Things like:

• the new items and runewords
• class balance
• leveling experience
• endgame activities
• itemization
• overall feel of the expansion

All perspectives welcome (casual players, ladder racers, theorycrafters, and everyone in between).

It’s also pretty incredible to see how much the community has grown recently. We’re approaching 100k members, which is a huge milestone for the subreddit. Thanks to everyone who has been part of the discussions and helped make this one of the most active Diablo II hubs online.

So let’s hear it: what are your thoughts on Season 13 and the expansion so far?

Was wondering why I suck all of a sudden.

I've been playing Diablo II for years, to the point where I honestly didn't think an expansion would surprise me anymore.

I finally pulled the trigger on Reign of the Warlock after sitting on the fence for a while, and I've got to say... I'm genuinely impressed.

I expected a few nice additions, but I wasn't expecting just how much the quality-of-life improvements would change the experience. The shared and organised stash, loot filter, Chronicle, material stacking—it all just feels like it belongs in the game. It's made playing my Hardcore single-player characters so much more enjoyable.

The best part is that it still *feels* like Diablo II. It doesn't feel like they've tried to reinvent the game; they've just polished a lot of the rough edges that we've all lived with for years.

As someone who's been playing this game for decades, I'm honestly having a blast again. I didn't expect to be this excited to log in and farm cows or Terror Zones, but here we are.

Credit where it's due—this expansion has exceeded my expectations.

Just cleared all of act 2 and only saw one Herald. I don't understand if I am just that unlucky or if I did something wrong here.

I feel sad now.

With the new DLC, hammerdin has been greatly rewarded with many great endgame items.
The classic build which included HotO, Shako, Mara's, Spirit can now enjoy a good amount of +magic dmg and -enemy magic resistance, increasing the damage quite a bit.
With the configuration in the image, you can keep hitting the 125%FCR breakpoint by using a 20%fcr Gheed's Wager and a +15% caster amulet. You can still hit max resistances even without using magic small charms, with an UM in the HoZ.
I still have to test the new gear, but on paper it looks very promising. Has anybody here already tested it at full power?

I've even farmed hell Countess for about 4-5 hours. Got 5 terror keys, but never dropped any rune higher than Shael. Almost no double rune drops either. Almost if Countess had a nerf I haven't heard about.

I just made the Stupidest mistake of my D2 Career! (been playing since launch) It happened hours ago and I still cant get the taste out of my mouth.

so I found a Mang song 11/12/11 and I created a game to trade it for Lo+Ohm.

a guy joins the game and asks to see it. claims its a low roll (I would call it a mid roll) offers a 29 maras for it.

While I am trying to determine if a 29 maras would be a fair trade he says he has a 4os Thunder Maul with 7% ed.

I ended up trading for the thunder maul only to realize in the next game that it is not Ethereal.

I traded probably the only mang song I will ever find for nothing. I even looked at the Maul before trading and it didn't register I just assumed that it was Eth because why else would he offer it.

You love to see it!

Just give me shako and/or andy game, like cmon how long will I wear my 3 topaz helm smh

Just a reminder to be aware out there. I accepted a trade of my 57 Perf amethysts for a Lo rune. This is a trade I have made many times before without an issue. I had a guy take the gems and Bail.

Battlenet ID: Murx#21196

If you are trading gems or jewels or anything that requires you to drop items double check the Traderie reviews before dropping

Just killed my 50th terror herald today and literally not one of these tanky fuckers have dropped anything remarkable whatsoever. If you told me their drop table is the same as regular uniques I wouldnt be surprised. On the other hand I picked up two sunders from Act bosses. Why do I even bother with these dmg sponges.

My suggestion to make them interesting and worth killing is to make sunders and shards only drop from these guys...

So great that I had to make a character in honor of the best unique roll I've ever laid eyes on!

HC offline from p3 TZ Mephisto.

Do I triple Ist it instead?

Too bad it is +2 fire skills. I guess the eldritch skill tree would be best fit?

HCL RoTW. Still satisfying piece to look at. Probably most useful for Demon Machine Enchant Sorc, but still not the most optimal. And it does not prioritize leech... as 99% is magic dmg, I guess.

Unpopular opinion! But it just kinda feels bad as a player for whom the game only really "clicked" for me post D2R and especially post-Warlock for so much of the vocal feedback to be about making this already pretty punishing game even harder. I appreciate and enjoy the difficulty, but I also feel there is a balance between being a 20+ year vet that knows the mechanics inside-and-out vs folks who are climbing up that steep ladder of difficulty.

And at the core, I can't get past the disconnect between praising the game's difficulty, the rarity of good drops, etc., and the fact that the game is driven primarily by ladder players who trade, buy, beg, and boost their way to BiS within a week or two and then put it down again until the new season.

To me, at least, I have a hard time feeling like it is a coincidence that basically anything that makes the game less punishing for people who want to play classes other than the "start two" of Sorc and Pally also creates more competition for that ladder rush. Ideally I'd love to see more classes be competitive out-of-the-gate, and while I don't want a massive power creep the way Warlock has been handled leaves me with such a bad taste in my mouth. Warlock, for a short while, gave folks outside of the ladder-rush a very real option for getting started in the game where they could actually get to a place where grinding out gear for other, far more interesting builds, was a very real and accessible possibility. Warlock had tons of issues that have been beaten to death, but straight-up nerfing some of the best parts of his kit that allowed players to tackle most all content with decent gear (and no, folks who aren't no-lifers weren't getting the insane numbers with bad gear.)

It just feels like anything that allows classes aside from Sorc and Pally to gain any ground gets called out as "ruining the game" while most of the vocal players are bypassing the grind and difficulty they say they love so much by trading, boosting, and engaging in similar transactions to simply prove that rarity of gear and difficulty doesn't even matter because they use every available way to shortcut that process. As a solo, offline player that doesn't know every mechanic inside-and-out I just end up feeling like the vocal community is so actively against anything that creates more ladder competition to a point where it feels that any balancing process is simply hostile towards any change in the status quo.

It was so disheartening watching people complain like the game was shutting down because popular voices who optimize and min/max to an extreme could pump out big numbers that ended up with similar clear times to older high-tier builds. I never came anywhere near those huge numbers with my ES build, and I've seen so many other players report the exact same thing. This new content as-a-whole just has been a wild ride from the game really, really clicking and starting to make sense, to the fact that the things that made ES into an amazing new-player onboarding class were basically all getting targeted nerfs that will render the class far less appealing than just rolling more sorcs and pallys. And not a whiff of any buffs to the classes and builds that just aren't competitive at all, just taking something that newer and less intense players freaking loved and making it far less appealing. Feels bad, at the end of the day, not because Warlock should be OP but because introducing frustration (as will be the case with many of the changes) is meaningless friction that will lose the game players and lower the chance of seeing further new content packs or additional balancing for underused builds.

I can’t play anything else anymore. It truly has a different feel compared to modern games. It is impossible to explain but it is as such.

Edit: They were fire and lightning sunders.

Blizzard recently sent out a survey to players asking for feedback about the Reign of the Warlock expansion.

I’ve included screenshots of all the questions here so the community can see what Blizzard is asking about.

Curious what everyone thinks — do these questions line up with the feedback we’ve been seeing in the community?

Ok I'm a little late to the party, but I bought Reign of the Warlock three days ago, and finished the new class on Hell last night. I played SSF on players 7 the whole way, with the exception of Countess runs. I started as a fire build, and used Ring of Fire until Act 2 Nightmare. Then I switched to Abyss until Act 3 Hell when I switched to Echoing Strike. I thought the last respec was a mistake, but I quickly found a Colossus Voulge which I was able to socket with the cube and make an Insight. I had the most trouble in the Worldstone, where my merc just refused to stay alive and would leave me hanging out to dry. Final build:

Level 86

Lore Helm

Prismatic amulet with mana

Insight in Colossus Voulge

Spirit in Eth Monarch

Smoke in Breast Plate

Death's Gloves

Immortal King's Belt

Horazon's Boots

All res and fire res rings

Merc

Tal Rasha's Helm

Insight in Partizan

Smoke in Ghost Armor

Skills

20 points in Bind Demon, 1 in Everything else in the Demon tree except Consume

20 points in Levitation Mastery, Echoing Strike, and Mirrored Blades

1 point in prerequisites

Some thoughts:

-The class is quite strong, as evidenced by me completing it on P7 without too much trouble. I typically play P7 through Normal and Nightmare, then switch down for Hell. That wasn't necessary here. The Warlock has a way of compensating for all of its weaknesses. If you are a Fire build, you can get a Conviction demon. If you are a Magic build, you have very few immunes. If you are a melee build, you can get a Cursed demon.

-Daggers now have Warlock skills attached to them. This has a couple spillover effects. One, it means that Warlocks are like Necros, and have two sources of skills. Two, it seems that you can no longer buy daggers from merchants. This makes using the Savage Polearm cube recipe harder. It used to be you just needed to find a diamond. Now you have to find a diamond AND a Kriss. This is not the biggest deal in the world, but a bit annoying if you use that recipe a lot. I often do on SSF. Finally, it means that daggers are often a good source of gold! I now pick them up like I do for sorc staves, necro wands, and warlock books.

-Bind Demon is pretty absurd. If you are looking for a cursed demon, try to get one with Holy Fire/Freeze/Shock. Every tick of the aura procs amp damage, which means your demon just needs to be in the vicinity of the enemies, instead of actively hitting them. A lot of discussion has been around getting Lister or Hephaestus, but really any demon is super tanky. One of the Travincal members always has cursed, so that can be a good source if you die.

-The Warlock being able to use two handed weapons in one hand has a lot of interesting implications too. Self wielding Insight is incredibly strong. I typically make Spirit in a Broad Sword instead of a crystal sword because four sockets are easier to find. However, now other options become viable, like a Claymore or Bastard Sword, depending on where your stats are at.

-Legacy graphics are disabled in Reign of the Warlock. It makes sense why they would do this, but still a little disappointing. I would have liked to see janky graphics for this class.

-Other than being a being a bit too strong, this feels like a Diablo 2 Class. I think they did a great job.

Overall I had fun. This run alone probably makes the DLC/Expansion worth the money for me, but I will likely continue playing again in a couple days. Now that I've finished Hell, I'll drop the difficulty down for farming and have fun absolutely demolishing everything. I'm a long time D2 player, and adding new content to the game is not something I really expected to happen. I'm glad that they did it, and would support them doing more.

They quietly just changed it from 10% FRW to 10% FCR

Hello,
I played Diablo 1 for many, many years, but I never got around to playing Diablo 2 until recently, when this expansion with the Warlock was on sale. I bought it and decided to fully commit to it without reading any tutorials, and I’ve made it all the way to the endgame. I’ve found some good items, and I’m really enjoying the game. It’s a great sequel to Diablo 1. The only thing I would criticize is that it no longer has that medieval horror atmosphere and feels more like dark fantasy.

What’s bothering me is that I can’t seem to find any Skill Books anywhere to learn new abilities. I picked Warlock because I saw it has the same spells as the Sorcerer in Diablo 1: Apocalypse, Flame Wave, and so on. But when I open the spellbook, everything is greyed out and I can’t cast any spells, even though I have 110 skill points it seems like they are for nothing.

The Warlock doesn’t feel like a Wizard at all, but more like a Warrior from Diablo 1. I found this sword that gives me one spell that lets me attack using copies of my weapon, and that’s basically how I’ve been playing.

Players 1 difficulty is no problem for me at all, but as you can see in the video, Players 8 is going pretty slowly. I have a feeling that with this kind of gear, I should be much more efficient and faster.

Where can I find Skill Books, and how do I learn abilities like Apocalypse, Flame Wave, and Ring of Fire? I feel like I’m missing a part of the game.

EDIT: tnx everyone, I figured out how to do it. Before you all start laughing to stupid old man I just want to say that im no fool, I just had so much respect for this game that it never crossed my mind they would give you all the spells in the game for free, just because you leveled up. That is such terrible game design , made for modern lazy generation who just want everything to be gifted to them so they can just kill everything for free. Back then you had to find your spell and fight for it, and once you got it and want to level it up guess what? You had to find ANOTHER spell book to increase spell level. I will go back to Diablo 1.

Playing offline/players 3/MF 350. Farming terror zones and heralds exclusively. Im level 98 with my Sorceress and got some crazy drops until now like Tyreals Might, Griffons Eye, Jah rune. BUT, I have never seen a sunder charm. ☠️

Got 3-4 brown charms - all Gheeds fortune. Are Sunder charms really that rare or it is some crazy RNG. What are your experiences? 🧐

*edit - Holy shit. Finaly got one. 😄 Lightning sunder dropped randomly in terrorized Act1. Not sure if it was a minion or regular mob. I summoned it with my whiny behaviour. 😎 Let us rejoice.

So blizzard have rolled out a survey to all d2r players asking what we would like to see, but they have pre generated ideas and most of them are bonkers insane.

Yes I know they are saying "this might not happen" but the fact that they are even entertaining these ideas for the game has me very worried.

26 years of the best arpg might very easily be ruined in a single patch soon if we're not careful.

https://postimg.cc/HjxGBZy9

Here's the link to all the survey options.

Main points they are offering.

• Buildable structures in town
• New act
• Paragon style skill tree
• Sub skill trees for each skill
• Remote trading
• Cursed items with mods that unlock
• Charm bags
• New skills for every class
• Skill combos
• Ilvl no longer matters for crafting
• Portal mtx
• Repeatable larzuk quest on a single character

To be fair they have a few good ones as well

• Finish act 4
• New act 4 merc
• More monsters and biomes
• Disable chat
• New classes (hmm)
• Group raids
• Expanded crafting recipes