Everything We Know about Diablo 4 Skill Tree

Today, I'd like to talk about some new information we've learned about skill trees in Diablo 4. Now we know more about the latest version of these skill trees, including some examples, information on how respeccing will work, and some pretty big quality-of-life features that will be built into these Diablo 4 skill trees.

We're going to go over all of that information, but first I want to go over a timeline of where these skill trees in Diablo 4 came from and all of their different versions up to this point, which seems to be what's going to be the launch version of skill trees. All of this new information comes from a developer interview that IGN did with some of the higher up developers working on Diablo 4, and they actually said that this system has gone through about four different versions.

So, a lot of work has gone into making the skill system fit what the community has said it wants, and the whole idea behind it has changed a lot over time.

Old Diablo Skill Tree

So that brings us to the first time we saw this system, which was called the talent system back then.

I think that's because the first version of this system didn't have a lot of real skills. It was mostly just a passive talent tree that gave you passive effects or effects that didn't do anything.

It was very small and almost worked like the old World of Warcraft talent trees, where every point you put in mostly just gave you a small boost to a stat. This version of the tree was shown back in 2019, and it was clear right away that it would change a lot in the next three-month updates.

The next time this system was shown to the public was in a later quarterly update, where it had been completely changed. It used to be a talent system, which we just switched over to the big skill tree we have now.

This is pretty much what they've been doing to build up to the skill trade they're showing off now. This was first shown as a work-in-progress graphic of a big tree with all of these passive effects or "enhancements" at the bottom of the tree.

Your skills and direct upgrades or additions to those skills were in the top half of the tree. It was clear that this was still being worked on. It looked like they just had an artist make this tree that looked like something from Diablo, and then they just put all the icons for the different skills on it. Even though this was still being worked on, it was a huge improvement over the original talent trees. This brings us to the newest public version of the skill tree, which works a lot differently than the ones we've seen so far but is still based on the same idea as the last skill tree we looked at.

Diablo 4 Skill Tree

So, the way this is going to work is that the skill tree is a big, sprawling tree with different nodes that you have to unlock with skill points. Then, there are sections of skills you can unlock around this larger node.

So a skill augment includes real skills that can be used and links to all of those skills. Different passive effects or enhancements that are tied to that skill or work directly with that skill. These skill upgrades can now also affect other skills. They talked about this in particular when they talked about bleeding, so maybe you have a skill that makes people bleed.

But the other skill on the other side of the tree has upgrades that affect all of your bleeds, so there is some connection between the skills on the tree and other skills or effects in the game. There are also passive parts at each of these node sections that aren't directly tied to a skill. They didn't talk about any of these, but you could assume that they are just general upgrades or effects that aren't tied to a specific skill and can have an effect on all of your skills or stats.

Keyword System

I also talked about a pretty big improvement to the quality of life that will be in these skill trees: a system for searching for tags or keywords.

So, if you went to this keyword search system and typed in "bleed," it would show you every ability, passive effect, and augmented skill that affects bleeding. You could go through the skill tree and look at everything that might affect bleeds.

If you're making a bleed build, this will just make it much easier to make your builds, since this tree has probably hundreds of different abilities, passive effects, and augments. Being able to search for exactly what you want will be a pretty big improvement to your quality of life.

Keep in mind that when you reach the very end of Diablo 4, you will have a lot of skill points. Because there are a hundred levels in Diablo 4, and every time you level up, you get skill points. I think there are also some ways you'll be able to get more skill points as the game goes on.

So you'll have a lot of skill points to spend on this huge, sprawling skill tree. This will give you a lot of options for making different builds for each class and making the game play the way we want it to.

Respeccing 

I also learned some pretty important new things about how respeccing the skill tree will actually work. 

You will be able to respec each and every node whenever you want. They said that you click one button to put a skill point into that skill and another button to take a skill point out of that skill. However, they also said that every time you respec or take a skill point out, it will cost you some amount of Diablo 4 gold.

They will also have a button that lets you change your skill tree and take all of your points out. For gold, clicking the "Refund All" button will cost the same as removing each skill one at a time.

The idea behind how much it will cost to change your specs is that at lower levels, it will be very cheap to change your specs. You can mess around with whatever you want, but as you level up, it will cost you more and more.

The idea behind this is that once you get to higher levels, like 50 or 80, things like this will be so expensive that you might not even want to respecc that character. You might want to make another character of the same class but with a different build because it will be so expensive once you get to the higher levels.

This doesn't mean that's how all players will interact with the system. When people get their hands on the game, they'll find crazy ways to make crazy amounts of gold. You might not even have to respecc. If you want to completely change your build, you could just farm gold and fully respecc, or you could do what they're saying and make a new character with the same class and make a new belt on that new character. They compared this to hardening cement, so the more you level up, the more your build is set on that specific character.

Conclusion

Above is all about Diablo 4 skill tree. Hold your horses! We have a whole bunch of Diablo IV guides ready for you. Like if you want to know about Diablo 4 classes, or looking for other Diablo 4 guides, our news section awaits you.