Diablo patch 1.0.2d nerfs Barbarian shout again, but gives Necromancers a huge buff

Diablo 4's latest patch notes are now live.

"The Diablo 4 team has been diligently monitoring your feedback," Blizzard explains in a blog update that details the changes introduced in patch 1.0.2d, which include another Barbarian nerf and a big buff for Necromancer mains.

First up on the docket are "balance adjustments to Classes". Explaining the thinking behind the changes, the team says that while it's "quite happy with the performance of our Classes" overall, it "knows there is always room for improvement".

"While we want players to both feel and be truly powerful, some Class builds and synergies are outside of our bounds for what is reasonable for the health of the game, so we are reducing their effectiveness," the patch notes explain. "As an example, we generally want to avoid creating situations where players can survive unreasonably high amounts of damage for long periods of time because it too greatly warps our vision for how combat should be in Diablo 4."

Consequently, along with reducing the overall effectiveness of Paragon Glyphs, Barbarians will see their Challenging Shout damage reduction gained from Skill Ranks halved, dropping from 4 per cent to 2 per cent, and the Aspect of the Dire Whirlwind increased critical strike chance per second nerfed from 5-10 per cent to 3-8 per cent.

Another big change affects the Gohr's Devastating Grips – the explosive damage gained from Whirlwind has been chopped from 50-70 per cent to just 16-26 per cent. Ooof.

Your maximum cooldown reduction for Blood Chieftain's Aspect has also been nerfed, going from 12 to six seconds.

As for Necromancers? Their Blood Lance damage gets a boost from 67.5 per cent to 80. Army of the Dead also gets a buff and a cooldown reduction – 30 to 45 per cent and 90 to 70 seconds, respectively – and Blood Wave damage is boosted from 90 per cent to 120 per cent.

Other changes include "miscellaneous stability and crash fixes", a solution to that issue where a Sorcerer's Deep Freeze makes others permanently stunned if they are also at the mercy of another freezing effect. For the full list of tweaks and changes, head on over to the official website.

And did you see that this Diablo 4 player has managed to beat the Butcher despite being incredibly underlevelled? The Butcher is – as many of us have learned the hard way – a meat-hooking nightmare that turns up at random in dungeons and has killed off many a hardcore run.

Here, however, it seemingly became stuck behind a wall of minions who beat the Butcher whilst the player idles quietly at the bottom of the screen.

Vikki Blake is GamesRadar+'s Weekend Reporter. Vikki works tirelessly to ensure that you have something to read on the days of the week beginning with 'S', and can also be found contributing to outlets including the BBC, Eurogamer, and GameIndustry.biz. Vikki also runs a weekly games column at NME, and can be frequently found talking about Destiny 2 and Silent Hill on Twitter.