Let's dive into the Diablo IV tier list and rank the best classes, covering each class's strengths and weaknesses in providing some details as we go along. This is an early look at the best classes in Diablo 4 as with all beta content, keep in mind that the game can change rapidly before release and game metas will change even faster.
Diablo IV Best Classes Tier List (Strengths & Weaknesses for Each Class)
Now regardless of the rankings here, keep in mind that Diablo 4 is a dynamic game and each class has a unique feel. So regardless of which class you choose to play, there's a fun and rewarding playstyle for you. Finally, we expect that Diablo 4 will be frequently updated after launch and each season will offer new content for players, so expect to see these rankings change rapidly in the future.
Related Read:
Diablo 4 Open Beta Class Pick Guide - Which Class To Play in Open Beta?
Top 5 Best Diablo 4 Builds for Open Beta (Barbarian, Rogue, Sorcerer, Necromancer, Druid)
1 - Barbarian (S Tier)
Barbarian is the strongest class in Diablo 4 in Early Bate. Equipped with party wide buffs, the Barbarian shouts offer incredible resource generation. The class also has passive fortify mechanics that will make you tankier than anyone else, this combined with the ability to equip four weapons at once make this class both tough as nails and deal incredible damage.
Barbarian Strengths
Arsenal System is insanely strong
While every class has their own specialization system, the Barbarians Arsenal system gives them 4 weapon slots on your character not only is this useful when leveling when you might want to use your strongest weapon for all of your attacks, but when you start are collecting legendary and unique items, the bonuses on all of your weapon slots apply during combat. You can equip both a two-handed bludgeon weapon and a two-handed sword along with two one-handed weapons, this extra two-handed weapon that you can equip is extra strong because two-handed weapons scale most legendary powers at double the amount of their one-handed counterparts or the glove and ring slots. What's more, each weapon type has an expertise that can be ranked up by hitting enemies with that weapon, this expertise is active anytime that you're using that weapon. Needless to say by itself, Barbarian's specialization is the strongest in the entire game offering them a total of three extra legendary powers over any other class one of which is that double effectiveness.
Skill tree gives you every benefit
Both the Rogue and the Sorcerer have sort of a focus on a particular kind of skill tree, the Barbarian on the other hand has everything, you could ever want including enough fortify to keep you at 100% at all times, enough movement speed to get your character at the maximum movement speed in the game. Percentage based life healing on resource usage it has three party wide Buffs including one that increases your damage reduction by an insane amount. It has two mobility skills including leap which is as good or better than sorcerer's teleport and a variety of damaging skills that allow you to conquer any content that the game can throw at you.
Legendaries augment damage and defense
Do you want infinite 4 to 5 but don't want to build your skill tree for it? No problem, equip a legendary that gives you free fortify for each point of Fury you generate over your maximum fury. It seems like regardless of which skills you want to use with Barbarian that there's a viable build for it and there are supporting legendaries that we carry you through at least all the way to end game.
Buffs are good for solo and group
The Barbarian has three shouts and especially challenging shout are incredibly strong, giving you insane Buffs both for your solo and group builds, your teammates will always love you for buffing their survivability, movement speed, and resource generation at all times.
Barbarian Weaknesses
Most Skills are melee range
The best defense in any Diablo Style game is never getting hit, with Barbarian that's very unlikely to happen as almost every skill is in melee range with upheaval being a notable exception. Some skills like Rend are even right up on top of the enemy melee range making gameplay really challenging when you have a high density pack of enemies, others like Hammer of the Ancients are a bit more forgiving but still if there's an enemy with a ranged attack or a very long melee reach, you're probably getting hit. Early on during the leveling stage of the game, you'll find that some mobs are just going to crush you beware of bears and hardcore players.
Some attack animations are long
Unlike Rogue or Sorcerer, the Barbarian has some of the longest attack animations in the game, upheaval is a good example here giving you a massive AOE with high damage but putting you at significant risk if you miss your target, this results in a gameplay style that requires a little bit of planning and practice.
Ultimate skills are weak
It seems like most classes have relatively weak ultimate skills but the Barbarians ultimates are worth avoiding entirely. In fact even when leveling, choose to either pump points into my main damage ability or one of the many powerful passive nodes on the tree overtaking an ultimate skill first, eventually at the end of the tree the ultimate passive will definitely be worthwhile and powerful. Perhaps the best out of them is Wrath of the Berserker which might be worth picking up when you first reach this part of the skill tree.
Basic skills are slow
A natural consequence of long attack animations and melee range skills means that barbarian's basic skills aren't as useful as other classes for generating primary resource, you'll mostly encounter this at the beginning of leveling your character, as Barbarian has many other options for free regeneration at higher levels. Especially when warcry and leap come online for your Barbarian, you'll start fueling Fury extremely quickly and you'll want to avoid avoid those basic skills as soon as you have any other option for Fury gen Generation.
2 - Rogue (S Tier)
Rogue can do both melee and ranged attacks as well as lay down traps to destroy advancing enemies, practically speaking ranged attacks dominate the Rogue play style with faster attack speed and higher damage than most other builds. Still the possibility of a melee Rogue with stealthy damage or traps or some other hybrid between those seems pretty exciting in the future, but at least right now ranged is King of the Road builds.
Rogue Strengths
Mobility allows players to do high difficulty
Approaching combat at range with high Mobility allows the Rogue to dodge all damage while simultaneously dishing out massive hits and doing crowd control. Penetrating shot shines here allowing you to deal AOE to large packs of enemies and still retain excellent single target damage, especially through imbuement skills, your movement skills aren't dependent on enemies being present, so you can effectively Sprint forward or speed through empty sections of the game and maximally blast through easy content as well. Since you speed through the game as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog, the Rogue will be the class of choice for speedrunners and players who value high-intensity combat.
Basic skills are strong
Rogue is one of the only classes in the game with comparatively strong basic skills, as a result, you will have a very strong start to leveling. The combination of mobility and access to basic skills that can deal massive damage early on may make Rogue the best leveling class in the entire game.
Imbuement skills are amazing
The Rogue can imbue any attack with cold Shadow and poison damage, this is hands down Rogue's strongest and most flexible set of skills. Cold here is best for crowd control, Shadow is best for AOE damage, and Poison is best for single Target DPS. Each imbuement skill only has a few charges through any choice here is good and the particular damage type that you pick will depend on the rest of your build. Almost every build will certainly invest in this part of the skill tree and even during leveling there's a huge damage Spike when you reach these skills.
Strong ultimate skills
Many classes have underperforming ultimate skills but not the Rogue, both Shadow clone and Deathtrap do excellent damage and offer incredible utility. Reign of Arrow's primary job is doing AOE damage and unfortunately, most Rogue attacks already do a great job at AOE damage, so this skill should probably be avoided. Shadow clone is especially useful because it can give unstoppable.
Rogue Weaknesses
Survivability relies on dodging damage
Rogue doesn't have any sources of barrier and fortify that are easily accessible through the skill tree and other survivability options rely on triggers like Critical Hits for example. Fortunately, it's quite easy for the Rogue to stay at range and blow up the screen with massive AOE damage and crowd control, but there are a few times when you would get cornered by mobs that you could not escape from and when that happens it's very dangerous.
Some mobs force melee range
Some mobs are particularly good at gap-closing you and dealing melee damage, this is where you can quickly get yourself into trouble. Some ranged builds might be able to get around this by including a trap skill like poison trap or death trap in the build but otherwise, beware of melee-heavy mops.
Traps have extremely limited range and area of effect
While you can augment the range of death trap a little, poison traps area of effect is very limited making it almost impossible to use offensively with any consistency. There are some strong trap Legendary Synergy possibilities, so we haven't really completely ruled out a trap only based rogue build for the future.
Stealth mechanics seem weak
Because most strong mechanics in Diablo 4 hit a small to large AOE, it's almost impossible to avoid enemies who drop damage all over the ground, this means that stealth slash concealment mechanics are mostly useless offensively and might only be used as an escape, and who needs an escape when you already have the insane Mobility that the Rogue provides.
3 - Sorcerer (A Tier)
Complete with three different elements, massive amounts of lucky hit chance, and some highly mobile abilities like teleport, the sorcerer is an excellent choice for veteran and new Diablo players alike. The class mechanics make this class the best for players new to Diablo, casting at range with Fireball, opening up up the skies with Blizzard, or shocking enemies with chain lightning is a very easy to understand play style. At higher levels, even newer players can understand the simple mechanics behind Lucky hit chance and put together a build that excels at blasting down enemies at the range now.
Sorcerer Strengths
Strong builds for each element lightning, fire, cold
Many classes only have one or two strong builds at least right now in the early beta stages of the game, but sorcerer is the exception to this rule and it comes out strong with three very easy-to-understand identities. These revolve around lightning with its melee range and AOE damage, fire with its high damage output and high lucky hit chance especially with Hydra, and cold with crowd control devastating the battlefield with chill and frost. While this isn't necessarily the class of choice for the ultimate RPG veteran who has 10,000 hours and every single arpg. Sorcerer is a class that every beginner should play as it offers the most friendly way of getting to know the game's mechanics.
Lucky Hit Chance
Lucky hit chance for the sorcerer is just absolutely incredible, especially with Hydra - Hydra has an incredibly High lucky hit chance if you get yourself a really good lucky hit effect. We'll just constantly be procking just all the time with that lucky hit chance, it really is an incredible strength of the sorcerer that no other class can even come close to.
High range damage output
Sorcerer just really excels in this, especially in single Target damage with fire builds, definitely try out fire and try going for some more of that single Target high-range damage output on the Sorcerer and you'll do really well.
Teleport
Teleport may be the best Mobility skill in the game alongside Barbarian's leap, it not only allows you to instantly move from location to location, but it also grants Unstoppable, deals damage, makes you take less damage, and can even buff the damage from your crackling energy mechanic or reduce the cooldown per enemy hit. Unstoppable is incredibly important for any class as it allows you just to escape the terrible fate of being stuck on Frozen or knocked down and killed in the process, so make sure teleport is on your bar, it's almost a required skill for the class.
Sorcerer Weaknesses
Completely ignorable ultimate skills
On paper, Deep Freeze, Inferno and Unstable currents are all good ultimate skills, but in practice it's challenging to make them incredibly useful. They don't really do much to help fill in the sorcerer's weaknesses such as giving Unstoppable or adding important sources of fortify or additional barrier. So many times you'll pop one of these and you'll have already destroyed the enemies around you. Still it can be useful as your leveling and when you first access them, you'll want to have one of these ultimates on your bar. Maybe they'll continue to be useful later on, we'll have to see what Blizzard shows us past level 25.
Difficult to find sources of Fortify
Most classes have at least some skills that offer a consistent source of Fortify, but sorcerer really has absolutely nothing on the skill tree that offers it.
Low mobility and can't effectively stutter step
Sorcerer has some decent Mobility with teleport, but when it's on cooldown you're going to be in a tight spot. Unlike Rogue, you don't really have that constant mobility of skills buffing your movement and letting you dash and stealth all over the place. It's still important to think carefully about how you're going to approach a fight as a sorcerer and not get too close because that might be the end.
Few sources of Unstoppable
Sorcerer again gets the short end of the stick here defensively with almost no sources of Unstoppable. Teleport here is of course the notable exception but this is actually kind of problematic at times because you use teleport for movement all the time. As a result, you might find that teleports on cooldown when you really need to extract yourself from a bad situation. Flame Shield here does have a really strong option if you're facing enemies that are crowd-controlling you often as it does give you immune, but even Flame Shield only lasts for a couple of seconds and it's on a long cooldown it would be infinitely more useful if it gave you Unstoppable and it lasted twice or three times as long. You'll have to rely more on keeping enemies stunned, frozen, or chill or you're just going to have to blow up the entire screen to stay alive as a sorcerer.
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