My opinion of Act 4, The Awakening, Gems, Etc.

So I have been watching streamers with the new Awakening Beta, and from what I have learned, and my opinions about some of the changes.

The new level changes that GGG has decided to do is quite "interesting" to say the least

They have drastically changed all of the act 1-3 zones, they made it much more smaller, shorter, and linear

I think that this change is fine, and is actually great for newer players, it alows them to venture and experience more of the game.

The act 4 areas, however, are significantly larger compared to the act1-3 zones, it seems a lot longer, almost even longer (but linear) than Solaris.


The exp gain seems to be weird as well

You seem to gain a lot less exp in some of the "dream" areas, and sometimes a lot more exp than others, though that may be a bug.


I also want to address the iterations of the new auras/buffs but I don't have enough info yet.
From what I have seen, it seems like that the Golems, at hindsight, are new toy for summoners, and that they are only useful to other builds up to some extent, but it seems like GGG has added them to a new heirarchy of "pet" type summons. The benefits and the changes of CWDT makes these new pet as tanks, and essentially important/mandatory to the new meta.
The addition of flat additional damage from wrath and anger is really neat, this definitely will ad more use of those auras. I can see the downsides of the balancing before on older patches, but with the addition of master crafting, and significantly easier to create weapons, spells and attacks can compete with each other.


I'll try to put up more as I watch more of the expansion