Fifteen days after the launch of Lord of Hatred, the Diablo 4 expansion, Henip shares his full verdict. And the conclusion is set from the start: Diablo 4 is a good game again. But with nuances. Here is an honest breakdown of what works, what doesn't, and what to watch going forward.
The campaign: solid but divisive
Henip gives it a solid 8/10. The Lord of Hatred campaign is well-crafted overall, enjoyable to follow, and most players came away with a positive impression. Hard to argue with that.
There is one caveat for lore purists, however. Lord of Hatred introduces an authoritative narrative figure who essentially declares that everything told before was just stories. It is a storytelling device that leaves a bad taste — it lets the developers rewrite the canon at will, without much effort at justification.
Beyond that point, the verdict remains positive. The expansion is a success, and with that conclusion in mind, let's get into the details.
Itemization: the real win
If Lord of Hatred is so convincing, it is first and foremost thanks to its itemization and character progression. The era of legendary loot spam is over. That time when your inventory overflowed with pieces you never even looked at, where gear simply did not matter. Now you pay attention to what you wear, especially as you push through Torment tiers.
Henip illustrates this with a telling anecdote. He reached level 70 still wearing yellow items. Extreme situation, sure, but it says everything. You want to gear up fast, you are looking to progress, and that is precisely why looting your first ancestral piece feels genuinely rewarding. That feeling of reward, many players had lost it.
The Horadric Cube changes things on one specific point. It lets you work yellow items into something decent, quickly. It is accessible, it is practical. But it does not make good bases easy to find either. Looting solid pieces is still a grind. You go out hunting for them, you farm them, and you are genuinely happy when they drop.
The Greater Affixes question perfectly captures this return to loot enjoyment. Dropping an item with the right GA actually triggers a reaction. Before, in older versions of the game, it was unremarkable. You thought "normal, I have ten of those". Now, the reaction is completely different. That feeling, Henip clearly appreciates it.
Self-described hardcore player, he would accept a slight easing of the grind difficulty if Blizzard decides to adjust. But not too much. For him, this gear progression, this tension between effort and reward, is the heart of what works. And he believes many players felt the same.
War Plans and the mechanics tree
These two systems did the most to sell Lord of Hatred. And Henip has a clear opinion on each of them — pointing in opposite directions.
War Plans have a fundamental problem. Diablo 4 is, in his view, the best co-op hack-and-slash on the market, ahead of its competitors on that front. Yet War Plans work poorly in multiplayer. You cannot really share them or pool progress with a group. What should be freedom becomes a constraint. To rack up points in the mechanics tree, you end up doing activities you would not have chosen otherwise. And that does not fit a co-op experience. It runs counter to what makes the game good.
The May 13 patch was supposed to fix several of these issues. Henip remains skeptical. Even after reading the patch notes, he is not convinced the core problems will be addressed. Verdict on War Plans: mixed, clearly.
The mechanics tree fares better. For a first season, the result is honest. The interconnections between mechanics are interesting, some nodes offer real synergies. A few points fall flat, which happens, but the whole thing remains stimulating to explore. What he hopes above all is that Blizzard updates this system every season, letting it grow naturally over time rather than being sold once and forgotten. No waiting for "the mechanics tree rework season" as if it needs a special event to be touched. It should evolve continuously, as a matter of course.
Overall, the mechanics introduced by the expansion interest him. All of them, except one: Infernal Hordes. That is where things fall apart most. The activity is simply not worth it. No item drop is compelling enough to specifically farm there. One node in the tree is even supposed to make gem farming easier through this activity, but the payoff is too weak against the astronomical quantities the game demands elsewhere.
Gem farming: a failure
The idea of very high-level gems, Henip does not object to it. It is a grind, it is a concrete goal. What is problematic is the method. The best way to farm these gems involves one specific dungeon, reset on loop, in normal difficulty. An "old school" pattern everyone thought was buried since the Tunnel Domain era.
This is not acceptable in 2026. Henip suggests a direction: if the mechanics tree allowed investing points to unlock gem sources, the farming would have depth and meaning. For now, it is repetitive resetting with no flavor.
Nightmare Dungeons: the pleasant surprise
As seen with the gems, reward balancing leaves something to be desired. But Henip still wants to highlight some positives. Nightmare Dungeons offer some fun content, there just is not enough of it. His idea: being able to craft your own Nightmare Sigils to open the NM Dungeons of your choice. There is clearly something worth building on there.
The real surprise of the season is that Nightmare Dungeons genuinely won him over. Especially Escalation Dungeons. The more he ran them, the more he enjoyed the activity. It is rare to feel that growing enjoyment on an endgame activity. He thinks there is real potential here, particularly by pushing NM Dungeon affixes further to make them even more engaging.
On the other hand, the Pit and the Tower leave Henip completely cold. The Pit of Calamity is often cited as a problematic activity, and he agrees. But he makes no distinction between the two — climbing the Tower or venturing into the Pit, he cannot find any enjoyment in either. Too mediocre for his taste.
He keeps hope for Nightmare Dungeons. But until Blizzard pushes in that direction, it will remain an untapped potential.
Mephisto: the aspirational boss
Mephisto on Torment 12 is a very good fight. A true aspirational goal, the kind of boss that makes you want to push to get there. Except not everyone gets there the same way. He had to abandon his Rogue 
Penetrating Shot build — impossible to clear Torment 12 with it. The reason is simple: the Rogue's defensive state is abysmal. One hit that connects and you are dead. No margin, no room for error.
On the other hand, with his Warlock in Demonform, the objective was achieved relatively easily. That is where the gap between classes becomes glaring. Some blow through it because they are either overpowered, bugged, or both. Others simply do not have the defenses to survive. The Rogue falls into that second category, and it raises questions.
What is good about Mephisto is that the boss fulfills its role as an aspirational target. Once you have beaten it, you want to crush it, go faster, optimize the run. There is always a next step. That design is good work from Blizzard. The goal exists, it is reachable, and once reached, it transforms into something else.
But then, the cinematics. Blizzard, in what world can you not skip the cinematics of a boss that throws two or three at you per fight? Over 2 to 3 hours of runs, that is an entire hour spent watching the same sequences play out. An hour. For cinematics you have already seen a hundred times. It is unbearable. That is not an exaggeration, it is literally unbearable.
On Torment 10, it becomes even more absurd — you spend more time in cinematics than on the boss itself. Ridiculous. There is no other word for it. The May 13 patch may have fixed that, but the fact that it existed so long without being fixed immediately says a lot about priorities. This is the kind of detail that turns a good experience into a needless source of frustration.
The loot filter: indispensable
Another positive point this season: the loot filter. A feature that is deeply appreciated, and when you think about it, its absence this season would simply have been a disaster. With the loot density that Lord of Hatred activities generate, without a filter the ground would have been unreadable at all times. Blizzard made the right call adding it, and players are making full use of it.
But the loot filter does not fix everything. The pet, supposed to automatically pick up items on the ground, still refuses to collect Horadric Cube components. The result: dozens of extra clicks every session to retrieve those materials. It is a small thing, but it is annoying. The pet can distinguish items, so why can it not simply decide "I'll grab the components" ?
These small friction points — unskippable cinematics, the pickup issue — do not need a full season to be fixed. Blizzard does not have to wait for the next major content drop. These are quick adjustments that would concretely improve the daily quality of life. Do it, and the experience will be noticeably better.
War Plans: the reroll trap
War Plans are not account-wide. This detail, seemingly minor, is actually absurd. Henip has put dozens of hours into the game. His War Plans cap at rank 10, and only because he has two characters at rank 8 each, including a Rogue. The result: when he wants to reroll, he starts from zero on War Plans.
The problem is that everything else in Diablo 4 encourages fast rerolling. You open 7 chests, you are level 70, the character is ready. The very principle of the game is that rerolling should be smooth and accessible. Once you master your class, rerolling should be a pleasure, not a chore. But forcing the player to redo their entire mechanics tree on top of War Plans is a real and unjustified barrier.
Why redo all that just to enjoy a reroll? Henip's suggestion is simple: give the choice. An option along the lines of "do you want to import your War Plans?" would be enough. Nothing revolutionary. Just common sense.
This mechanic has concretely discouraged many players. They started a reroll, saw they had to redo War Plans from scratch, and went straight back to their main character.
Blizzard's right response
Abandoning your reroll because of bugs is genuinely shameful. A big failure, honestly. It is an expansion launch, there will always be bugs, that is part of the deal. But here, some classes are completely wrecked. You no longer know what to play without running into something broken. That is the real problem.
But at least, Blizzard is reacting. The May 13 patch is supposed to fix the majority of bugs, not all, but the majority. Not bad. The important thing is that they did not let it drag. They put an end to the absurdities quickly. They did not let the Spiritborn wreck everything like at the previous expansion. They cut the stupid thing short and they are going to fix it. That is a good point.
What Henip would have really hated is Blizzard letting the game fill up with things that break it. Balance issues, characters so overpowered that they are the only option. When Blizzard fixes things, that is a good thing. Simple as that.
The May 13 patch is a source of hope. But not the last one. Henip hopes that Blizzard takes advantage of this launch — the fact that after two weeks players are still having fun — to push even further. To make the foundations of the game even better than what has already been done.
My one real concern going forward
Overall, Lord of Hatred is a success. Genuinely. But there is one real concern, and I sincerely hope I am wrong. The fact that Blizzard fixed bugs quickly, that they removed the truly stupid things without dragging their feet, is a good sign. Except it could also mean something else: that we will have to wait for the next expansion to see the real transformations. The ones we have been waiting for.
What I want is for this ship not to stall in the middle of the ocean. Right now, momentum is there, the dynamic is real. Let it continue. No stagnation. Because the last thing I want is the old pattern making a comeback: "oh, the return of seasonal powers". No. Or worse, "the talent tree rework season". No either. Even less "the War Plans rework season". Please, not that.
Improving the talent tree and War Plans must happen naturally. Continuously. Through regular patches, not by making them the centerpiece of an entire season. That progression must last until Blizzard is satisfied with the product. And until we, the players, are too.
What I want to see are real seasons. Seasons that bring new content, not mechanic reworks dressed up as novelty. The mechanics tree should evolve without it becoming a seasonal theme. War Plans too. Give us cool things, fresh things, without it systematically being recycled content. Because honestly, at least half of Diablo 4's seasons have been reworks of something that already existed. At least half.
So Blizzard, prove me wrong. Do not make me wait for the next expansion. Do not make me drop 40 or 60 euros to see the real changes arrive. That is my one real concern. The rest? Overall, Lord of Hatred is a solid success.
Verdict: did Lord of Hatred save Diablo 4?
Henip is not fully reconciled with Diablo 4. There are still things he dislikes, and he makes no pretense otherwise. But overall, his verdict is clear: Diablo 4 is a good game. And that already means a lot, because we have come a long way.
This season genuinely changed the game. Lord of Hatred did too, for the better. Those are two sentences that would have seemed unlikely just a year ago. Yet they sum up the core of this review.
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