Blame the speedrunner kano who got it nerfed by 50% because " too strong in normal and nightmare for speedrunning" no joke, these are the people Blizzard listens to for game balance. Pre PTR the build was weak end game in pvm. 10x worse than Hammerdin, they cut it's dmg 50% on ptr, it's a joke. Lot of warlock builds were c and b tier end game, they gutted things not overpowered.
They really really need to stop listening to streamers, or at least those who say things are overpowered mid game when mid game things being powerful spell and skill wise is fine. There are suppose to be power spikes that eventually balance out toward the end game. It's why people enjoy specific builds until late nightmare where immunities and resistances start becoming something you have to work around.
It was funny to hear most of the streamers talk about the shield nerf saying it doesn't matter since ars is better. Basically all I heard from that each time was that they are getting donations to reach end game gear quickly so they don't use mid tier gear. Stupid takes are common when you aren't playing the game from a normal players perspective. All those "lucky early trades" really come in handy for kitting yourself out in full multi-HR runeword sets in the first week.
This post was edited by BlakeXeal on Apr 21 2026 05:07pm