Some highly summarised takeaways from the notes:

• Items
  • 5 new Class Uniques, 1 new Uber Unique
  • 5 new Class Aspects, 2 new General Aspects
• World & Experience
  • World Tier 2 gives +20% gold and +15% drop rate
  • Higher level enemies give less experience now
  • Powerleveling with one player sitting at the entrance of the dungeon was nerfed
  • Helltides got a bit harder and take more cinders for chests
  • Monsters' HP scales higher with more players in a party (85%/player -> 100%/player)
• Balance
  • Various rebalance changes, most underutilized spells/aspects got buffed, only minor nerfs (to spells/aspects) it seems
  • Various nerfs to item affixes including Vulnerable Damage, Cooldown Reduction, Crit Damage, Damage Reduction
  • Inherent stats for Swords (Crit Damage), Crossbows (Vulnerable Damage) and Offhands (Cooldown Reduciton) have been heavily reduced
  • Damage % affixes have been buffed

I didn't have time to go through all the details and especially the single class rebalances, but I think this is the most relevant info from these patch notes. If I forgot something let me know.

Looks like experience in general got a pretty good size nerf?

Oh my god cinders barely drop anymore regular mobs only drop one half the time. I got about 45 minutes in and got 230 cinders

TLDR; nerfs to play longer and increase engagement time

Oh Wow, these are some awful patch notes. Nerfs all around, no buffs to the deadest of classes. I honestly do not think i will play Season 1. Its like they dont want us to be exicted or look forward to anything. These notes full of Nerfs just leave you feeling Deflated, not the kind of patch you release to advertise your new season.

Already too many affixes, and now they add more! WTF? No UI updates to help us figure out if an item is an improvement or not.

And on top of that they nerfed levelling if you dont want to play the story again. Jeez.

Sigh..blizz

They pretty much nerf everything. They try to force player to use +physical/bone/etc… instead of stacking crit/crit dmg/vulnerable without understanding that if we focus on those, it’s also because it’s simple to figure out.

There are way to many affix, most people can’t tell if an item is an upgrade or not because of it. Instead of fixing this, they add even more useless affix and nerf the useful ones…

We’re increasing the availability of the Affixes below to make them easier to include in different builds.

I swear it’s like they don’t want people to have fun. It feels like WoW all over again when they added useless stats like resilience.

I’m amazed that they didn’t learn anything considering how old WoW is, they should know that what’s gonna happened is people making softwares to do the maths instead of them.

Powerleveling nerfed into the ground wow. My build (that I got bored with around level 65) seemed untouched, but then saw all the global stat nerfs like 30% to CDR, etc. yikes on this amount of nerfs

Short summary : Fixed an issue where players were having fun.

I was solo leveling to level 92 since the release. I was usually doing 1 to 2 paragons a day lately (usually more challenging/longer 2 NMDs to get one). Before patch I had one milimeter to do to get the next paragon, so I run a NMD 15 leveles above me and I didn't reach it? 1mm? So, with the same game time, I am going to make one paragon in 10,14 days? There is already nothing to do after campaign, only the Uber boss to fight on lvl 100 and it took ages to get to 92 and now I really don't feel I want to play it anymore. I possibly could swallow all the other nerfs, but lowering xp gain and slowing the progression for people who can play only a limited time daily or weekly is hearthbreaking.

I am definitely not going to play the first season.

I already didn’t really find Upgrades for what feels like forever. And I am only at level 65. With more stats to look at even noticing an upgrade will be a nightmare.

So, uh... No fix for the lag? No fix for the VRam issue?

Also, is there any overview of what seasonal content will be transfer to non season, that can only be gathered within the season? Or is that just going to be the battlepass related FOMO? Like, if you haven't played D2, there's not going to be season specific runewords that I cannot create non season, but the created runeword would become non season if I make it there. Afaik the whole "legendary gems" stuff from D3 will be just a season exclusive thing with no effect on non season, right? More like a "do some 'fun' stuff this time, and this time only"?

Edit: Are "Halls of the damned" and "Path of the Blind" new nightmare dungeons? I just found sigils for them but I don't see anything in the patch notes.

Edit: Screenshots of the sigils: https://i.imgur.com/xYzM2Dq.jpg & https://i.imgur.com/FeR1T1E.jpg

As someone who was excited for this season despite disliking the leveling speed slowdown as you progress, and didn't like doing helltides: I'm sad now, and it looks like I'm going to have to find something else to play for a while.

Any other druid players totally content with these updates? Reading through the patch notes I found a lot to be happy about:

• New items seem great for build diversity; not much synergy with current meta builds
• Better loot from silent chests; might actually be worth opening now
• Less monster wandering; might help werebear builds by making mobility less of an issue
• More experience for completing whispers
• Stronger Helltide monsters; unpopular opinion perhaps but they always felt a little too easy to me, definitely prefer a more challenging experience to match the apocalyptic atmosphere
• More basic attack options; Storm Strike always had way too much utility to pass up, even after buffing everything else
• Buffs to companion-focused aspects; might even see viable companion builds with the new malignant hearts
• Buffs to unique chest pieces that are currently fun but underwhelming
• More options for CC reduction; not enough to replace bulwark, but a step in the right direction
• More dungeon loot

In fact I have very few objections to these patch notes, nerfs included. Bulwark spam is killing my keyboard - I wouldn't mind having to dodge am attack every once in a while. The cost of mystery chests seems awfully steep, and the XP bonus for completing a stronghold feels a little underwhelming, but otherwise these changes all seem great for build diversity.

In case one didn't dig deep:

New Season 1 Uniques Revealed - Diablo 4

• https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/news/new-season-1-uniques-revealed-diablo-4-334127

Fuck, was so hyped for season 1 but now it's really going down the drain.

Helltides didn't feel really rewarding, never got anything good from the chests. If it wasn't the only place to get forgotten souls I would ignore it completely.

Also I'm playing hardcore, so I think I'm screwed with all these defensive nerfs....

What are some of the takeaways that weren’t mentioned during the announcement stream?

I can't believe the dev note that defense is too good. Yikes, if I die its usually because of a 1-shot. Not looking forward to more rocket tag.

I'm going to withold judgement until season release, but we shouldnt be surprised that this game is going to get ground down into a slog. Let's hope they don't fix said problem with MTX fixes.