Here’s everything we know about Diablo 4’s skill system

Diablo 4 is the next major entry in the hack-and-slash isometric RPG series from Blizzard Entertainment. While it’s still in active development, we know a decent bit about how the skill system will work and some changes compared to past titles. Blizzard is actively taking feedback on endgame progression and just how to balance experience systems for both players who are casually interested and those who will spend thousands of hours in-game. Here’s everything we know about Diablo 4’s skill system.

Skill Points

The first half of the progression mechanics in Diablo 4’s skill system is in gathering Skill Points. Skill Points are acquired through one of two ways: leveling up or finding certain rare tomes in the game. Unlike Diablo III, which had seperate trees for Passive Skills and Active Skills, it appears that in Diablo 4, each class simply has one skill tree. Players can save points up for later abilities or use them immediately upon earning them, when, where and what skills are spent on is always up to the player. Most of these are general boost, such as making a Sorceress exchanging Skill Points in order to make an ice spell deal more damage.

Talent Trees

Talent trees are the second half of the skill system in Diablo 4. Unlike Skill Points, these don’t provide a general boost. Instead, it is based around specializing your character. Talents provide massive boosts to particular abilities but at the cost of giving up another, equally useful upgrade. For example, a Druid character might boosts his werewolf form, at the the cost of not improving his werebear form. Talents seem to be aimed at truly customizing a character, allowing players to emphasize certain aspects for a particular playstyle.

Class Trees

So far, we have the skill trees for the Barbarian, Druid and Sorceress classes. Two more classes will be in the game but have not been revealed so far. When they are revealed, we’ll be sure to add their skill trees here.

Preparing to fight evil

As Blizzard provides further details on the development of Diablo 4 and reveals more information on how skills and talents will work, we’ll continue to update what we know, including providing full skill trees for the different classes. Diablo 4 does not currently have a release date but whenever it does become available, it’s coming to Xbox One, PC and PlayStation 4.

Diablo 4: Lore and story we know so far