Diablo 5 Is Ditching Diablo 4’s Action-Heavy Combat for Diablo 2-Style Builds

Diablo 5 is still more than two years out, but Blizzard keeps filling in the picture piece by piece. After BlizzCon 2026 confirmed multiplayer and a return to procedurally generated dungeons (see our full rundown of that announcement), and game director Joe Shely detailed how the game is handling monster scaling differently, Shely is now putting Diablo 5’s combat philosophy on record too, in a series of posts on X that outlets including PC Gamer and TweakTown picked up on September 29.

Back to Diablo 2’s Build-First Design

Diablo 4 leaned hard into fast, reflex-driven combat, with dodging, timing windows and constant repositioning doing much of the work. Shely says Diablo 5 is pulling back from that in favor of planning and preparation. “Any challenge can be overcome with the right build,” he wrote, framing it as a core tenet of the genre that Diablo 5 wants to honor more directly than its predecessor did.

DEX Takes a Back Seat to INT and STR

The shift shows up in how Blizzard is rebalancing the game’s core stats. Shely says Diablo 5 will still lean on some Dexterity mechanics for moment-to-moment execution, but on balance, the game is shifting toward Intelligence and Strength, stats built around planning and investment rather than twitch timing. That tracks with the monster scaling changes Shely already confirmed for Diablo 5, where enemies won’t automatically level up alongside the player the way they do in Diablo 4.

Diablo 5 is targeting a Spring 2029 release.

What It Means for Build Variety

Blizzard hasn’t published a full design breakdown yet, and Shely’s comments so far have come through social media rather than a dedicated interview or blog post. Still, the direction is clear enough: Diablo 5 wants build choice, not reaction speed, to be the main thing separating a character who struggles from one who steamrolls. Combined with the procedurally generated regions and the scaling changes detailed in earlier interviews, Diablo 5 is shaping up to pull much more directly from Diablo 2’s DNA than Diablo 4 ever did.

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Picture Source: Blizzard Entertainment