Diablo 5 Director Reaffirms Build-First ARPG Philosophy as Combat Debate Grows

Diablo 5 is still years away, but one of the biggest questions surrounding Blizzard's next action RPG is already taking shape: how much will success depend on a player's character build, and how much will it depend on fast reactions during combat?

Senior game director Joe Shely has offered a concise but meaningful answer. While Diablo 5 will include some mechanics based on moment-to-moment execution, Shely says the broader experience is intended to reward planning, character construction, and long-term investment. In his words, the team is building around a foundational ARPG principle: every challenge should be conquerable with the appropriate build.

That statement does not unveil Diablo 5's classes, item systems, skill trees, enemy design, or endgame. It does, however, establish an important design priority at a time when fans are debating where the series should sit on the spectrum between classic, numbers-driven role-playing and more immediate action combat.

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An ARPG question with major implications

Diablo has always been associated with rapid monster-slaying, loot drops, and increasingly powerful character combinations. But the balance between direct player execution and RPG-driven preparation has shifted across the series' history.

For useful background on this topic, read The Witcher 3 Remastered PC Players Are Disabling Bloom for a Darker Visual Style.

For some players, the ideal Diablo experience is primarily about understanding systems. They want to compare affixes, assemble gear sets, identify defensive breakpoints, experiment with skills, and discover interactions that transform an initially modest ability into the centerpiece of a devastating build. In that model, the most difficult encounters are solved before the fight begins through smart choices in town, in menus, and during hours of character progression.

Other players prefer combat that places a greater burden on immediate movement, targeting, timing, positioning, dodging, and ability use. Those elements can make battles feel more tactile and tense, particularly against bosses, but they also raise concerns among players who do not want Diablo's central challenge to become reflex-heavy.

Shely framed Diablo 5 as a game that will contain both approaches, but not equally. He characterized the title as one where planning and investment will take priority over dexterity-based execution. That is likely reassuring to players who view builds as the heart of the genre.

"While Diablo V will continue to feature some DEX (moment-to-moment execution) mechanics, on balance the game will be an INT/STR game (planning and investment)," Shely said. "We are designing to the core tenet of ARPGs that any challenge can be overcome with the right build."

The wording leaves plenty of room for action-oriented systems. A modern Diablo game can still ask players to avoid dangerous ground effects, reposition around enemy attacks, aim abilities, manage cooldowns, and respond to rapidly changing encounters. The key distinction is that those demands should complement a build rather than replace it as the primary measure of progress.

Why the conversation is happening now

The discussion follows commentary from Chris Wilson, the Grinding Gear Games co-founder and original Path of Exile designer. Wilson recently shared a lengthy reaction to Diablo 5's announcement, describing himself as tentatively hopeful about the project while raising questions about its potential direction.

Among his concerns was the trajectory of Diablo's combat. Wilson argued that the series has become increasingly arcade-like and action-focused since Diablo 3. His preference is for a more thoroughly build-centered model closer to the first two Diablo games, where a character's setup has an especially large impact on what content is realistically achievable.

Wilson's perspective carries weight because Path of Exile was built by a team with a deep appreciation for the early Diablo formula. Its audience is particularly familiar with dense passive systems, elaborate itemization, theorycrafting, and the satisfaction of finding a powerful interaction that changes how a character plays.

At the same time, Diablo and Path of Exile have long pursued different balances of accessibility, complexity, and combat feel. Diablo 5 does not need to recreate another game's systems to embrace the underlying idea that role-playing decisions matter. Shely's comments suggest Blizzard recognizes that distinction.

For Diablo 5, the design challenge will be determining what "the right build" truly means in practice. It could mean that players can answer particular enemy types and bosses with specialized defenses, damage types, crowd-control tools, mobility options, or resource-management strategies. It could also mean that the game expects players to refine their gear and skill choices until a difficult encounter becomes manageable. Ideally, it will mean more than simply finding one universally dominant setup.

What Blizzard has and has not confirmed

Diablo 5 has a spring 2029 release window, making it a very early announcement by most standards. Major details are consequently still absent, including the structure of its combat systems and the specific ways players will build characters.

Blizzard has confirmed that the game takes place roughly 100 years after Diablo 4. It has also indicated that the sequel will not use towns or safe zones in the usual sense. Instead, players will have a traveling caravan of companions, compared to the party-based travel setup in Baldur's Gate, serving as a mobile point of connection.

That caravan concept alone suggests that Diablo 5 may take a different approach to world structure and social spaces than its predecessor. Yet it does not answer the finer questions that are most relevant to the current combat discussion. Fans still do not know how customizable the skill system will be, how equipment will function, how often builds can be changed, or whether the game's enemies will scale closely with player power.

Those missing details matter. A game can say builds overcome every challenge while still delivering very different experiences depending on how systems are implemented. If leveling and enemy scaling continually keep opponents near the player's current strength, progression can feel less dramatic. If gear and skill choices create large, noticeable power leaps, players may feel a clearer sense of mastery and growth.

The monster-scaling issue remains unresolved

One of the more persistent topics in ARPG design is monster scaling. In a heavily scaled world, enemies rise alongside the player, helping ensure that areas remain relevant and that cooperative play can function across a wide range of levels. The trade-off is that players can sometimes feel as though they are running in place, gaining new tools without becoming meaningfully stronger relative to ordinary threats.

A less scaled approach can make a world feel harsher and more grounded. Some regions are simply dangerous until a character is ready, while others become easier as that character gains power. That structure can reinforce the appeal of an RPG power curve: returning to a formerly punishing area and overwhelming its inhabitants is tangible evidence that the build has improved.

Wilson argued that monster scaling should be removed or at least reduced substantially. Blizzard has not explained where Diablo 5 will land on that question. It is an issue worth watching because it directly affects Shely's promise. The more a game allows a well-designed build to reshape a player's relationship with the world, the more convincing its build-first identity will feel.

There is also a balance to strike. Completely static content can be compelling, but it can leave fewer opportunities for friends of different progression levels to play together or for players to revisit favorite locations with a continuing sense of challenge. The best outcome may not be an all-or-nothing choice, but a system that preserves dangerous places and meaningful advancement without abandoning flexibility altogether.

Execution still has a place in Diablo

Shely's remarks should not be read as a rejection of active combat. Even the earliest Diablo games required positioning, caution, resource awareness, and decisions made under pressure. The question is not whether players should have to pay attention during a fight. They should. The question is whether a mechanically gifted player using a weak or incoherent build should consistently outperform someone who has deeply understood the game's RPG systems.

Diablo 5 appears to be aiming for the latter player to have the advantage. That does not mean skill will be irrelevant. A well-built character may still fail if its player ignores telegraphed attacks, mishandles abilities, or enters a fight without adapting to its mechanics. But the promise is that difficult content will not be reserved only for players with exceptional reaction speed.

That philosophy can make an ARPG more welcoming without making it shallow. It creates room for different kinds of expertise: the player who loves optimizing statistics, the one who finds unusual skill combinations, the one who builds for survivability, and the one who adapts a character to solve a specific encounter. In a genre founded on loot and progression, that variety is essential.

A long wait for specifics

For now, Diablo 5's combat remains more philosophy than feature list. Shely's comments offer a direction rather than a detailed blueprint, and a great deal can change before a game targeted for spring 2029 reaches players.

Still, the message is clear enough to set expectations. Blizzard wants Diablo 5 to include active, moment-to-moment play, but it does not want mechanical execution to overshadow the core role-playing loop. Builds, investment, and planning are meant to be the tools that let players break through seemingly impossible obstacles.

That is a promising foundation for fans who want the next Diablo to preserve the thrill of turning a collection of gear, skills, and carefully considered choices into a demon-destroying machine. The remaining question is how deeply the final game will support that promise--and how many meaningful paths it will offer for players to find their own answer to any challenge Sanctuary puts in front of them.