While Diablo 4 is the fourth installment in a great series, it has been compared to other games in the same genre since its release. The general consensus among players is that Diablo 4 is an excellent ARPG, but not the best.
More than two years have passed since its release, and Diablo 4 has undergone many changes, even adding a new class, Paladin, in Season 11. Many players have praised Season 11, so is Diablo 4 worth playing in 2026?
Leveling Up Stage
Diablo 4 excels among all ARPGs in its leveling up and new player tutorials. This is because players have many choices from the start.
You can choose to experience the campaign story with beautiful cutscenes (which they've always excelled at), or jump straight into the opens world for free exploration.
During leveling up, you can conquer Strongholds, participate in Legions events, challenge World Bosses, and experience various dynamic events. Helltides events, which occur every hour, are filled with random events and dense enemy encounters, and are a major source of enjoyment and the primary method for players to level up.
While the developers adjusted the difficulty of monsters in Season 11, they weren't as powerful as in Path of Exile, and they simply returned to their expected level and didn't significantly interfere with the leveling experience.
Early Endgame Stage
When players reach around level 60 and begin accumulating Paragon Points and challenging Torment Ranks, they enter the early endgame phase. At this point, the core activities can be summarized into four main categories (although there are others):
- The Pit: Used to upgrade Glyphs.
- Nightmare Dungeons: Acquire equipment and items like Diablo 4 gold.
- Infernal Horde: Provides XP, equipment, and materials.
- Kurast Undercity: Farming Runes.
These activity systems provide players with ways to obtain materials and equipment, and the overall process is smooth. From the start of leveling to experiencing the early endgame content, experienced players may only need one to two days. While these activities lack sufficient variability and room for modification, the player experience remains good at this stage.
Deep Endgame Stage
However, once the player character is fully developed and enters the true endless farming phase, Diablo 4's current endgame content lack reveals a significant weakness, which is precisely why Diablo 4 lacks competitiveness compared to similar games.
The core gameplay loop in the late game is extremely monotonous: either constantly challenging higher levels of The Pit to level up glyphs to 100 to test the character's limits, or collecting materials, summoning Lair Bosses (which generally don't survive more than 10 seconds), and then checking the loot. This cycle repeats endlessly, switching between different bosses.
The occasional World Bosses are insufficient to break this monotonous loop, constituting the entirety of the current Diablo 4 Season 11 late-game content, which is undoubtedly a weak point that needs improvement.
Diablo 4 needs a deep endgame experience similar to Atlas in Path of Exile or Monolith of Fate in Last Epoch, allowing players to customize their goals and immerse themselves in long-term gameplay. If the developers could add existing gameplay elements to a system like Atlas in exchange for improved endgame content in 2026 update, it would be well worth it.
Crafting System
Besides new classes, the biggest change in Season 11 is the significant overhaul of the crafting system, making it almost entirely deterministic, retaining only the final step's randomness.
If you want to craft a piece of equipment with two Greater Affixes, you first need to add a Legendary Aspect to the equipment, then add sockets through a jeweler- both are guaranteed to succeed.
You can choose to reforge an undesirable affix until you get the desired attribute, then use Temper to select and add a new affix from the provided affix library. Although one less affix is manually added compared to previous seasons, the overall strength remains essentially unchanged due to the increased affix count of items.
Masterworking allows you to progressively upgrade gear quality, with the chance to upgrade common affixes to Greater Affixes.
Sanctifying gear is the only non-deterministic step. After sanctification, all item attributes are locked, but a comprehensive stat boost is granted, with a chance to upgrade multiple affixes to Greater Affix level.
Through this series of steps, you can transform an initially ordinary piece of gear into a top-tier item with multiple Greater Affixes. This highly controllable crafting system further reduces the game's difficulty, allowing players to almost always craft the gear they need by the endgame.
While some would prefer more randomness, the current system is actually quite reasonable. However, Sanctification is a seasonal mechanic for Season 11, disappearing after the season ends, much like Chaos Armor in Season 10.
Retaining Sanctification and Chaos Armor as endgame content would be a great option, allowing players to strategically cultivate their gear in the endgame.
Is It Worth Playing?
Overall, Diablo 4 Season 11 continues to excel in its core gameplay and social co-op aspects, performing almost as well as Season 10 and well worth your time.
However, its shortcomings cannot be ignored. Besides the lack of endgame content, the current skill and build options for each class remain limited, restricting character build diversity and exploration enjoyment. Diablo 4 needs a deeper, more expansive skill tree or similar system to truly allow players to build their characters.
Encouragingly, the developers have revealed future update plans, including expanding the skill tree, adding fishing gameplay, more boss battles, a new endgame system, and classes for the next DLC. This indicates they are moving in the right direction.
Diablo 4 Season 11's performance proves the game is on the rise. If you're willing to enjoy a 1 to 2-week in 2026 start, enjoyable journey with friends, now is a great time to return.
