Diablo 5 wants you to beat bosses with better builds, not perfect reflexes
Blizzard wants your gear and build choices to matter more, but dodging is not going away completely.
Diablo 5 is taking us 100 years into the future, to a Sanctuary where Diablo has already won. But even if we have learned quite a bit about its world and story since BlizzCon, Blizzard has not revealed much about how the game will play. Now, Diablo 5 senior Design Director Joe Shely has shared a little more about the team's approach to combat, and it sounds like building your character will matter more than having perfect reflexes.
Your Build Should Be Able to Beat Any Challenge
In a recent Twitter/X post, Shely explained that Diablo 5 will still feature mechanics that require less moment-to-moment execution and more planning and character investment.
Joe Shely@JoeShely𝕏While Diablo V will continue to feature some DEX (moment-to-moment execution) mechanics, on balance the game will be an INT/STR game (planning and investment). We are designing to the core tenet of ARPGs that any challenge can be overcome with the right build.
If you are confused about this, no, they will not remove your Dexterity stat from the game. He is just talking about the three "RPG attributes" that are also called Dexterity, Intelligence, and Strength:
DEX is your ability to react during combat, like dodging attacks, timing your abilities, and positioning during combat
INT is about planning your character and finding the right combination of skills and equipment
STR is the time and resources you invest in developing that build
Basically, if you are struggling with a boss, you should be able to overcome it by finding better gear, changing your skills, or improving your build, and not necessarily by spending hours learning every attack and getting perfect dodges. Something that will feel very different from Diablo 4.
The post is definitely getting a lot of reactions, and it looks like this change would be very welcome. Most people seem to like the idea, even if a part of the community still has some concerns. This is pretty normal given that we know very little about Diablo 5 for now, especially when it comes to gameplay. Not everyone wants Diablo 5 to become a game where having the right equipment makes every fight trivial. There is also the question of what Blizzard considers the "right build." Will we have plenty of different ways to overcome difficult content, or will we end up having to follow the same meta builds each season? Because the second option was pretty much always the biggest complaint about Diablo 4. We do not have those answers yet, but at least we now have a better idea of what Blizzard is going for with Diablo 5.