We guided humanity, hid from harmful humans, and saw what the world is like once people are gone. Which game gave you the best human experience in the month of May? 

How does it work? At the end of every month, PlayStation.Blog will open a poll where you can vote for the best new game released that month. Soon thereafter, we’ll close the polls, tally your votes, and announce the winner at PlayStation.Blog. PlayStation Store will also showcase some top Players’ Choice winners throughout the year.

What is the voting criteria? That’s up to you! If you were only able to recommend one new release to a friend that month, which would it be? In keeping with our long tradition in the Game of the Year Awards, remastered or re-released games won’t qualify. Ambitious, larger-scale rebuilds and remakes like Shadow of the Colossus and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy will.

How are nominees decided? The PlayStation.Blog and PlayStation Store editorial teams will gather a list of that month’s most noteworthy releases and use it to seed the poll. Write-in votes will be accepted.

Diablo IV’s potential for adventure knows no bounds. With its remarkable replayability and highly customisable gameplay, delving into the depths of diverse builds is an integral part of the excitement. Today, we present three favorite builds personally chosen by the developers themselves.

With the official launch just around the corner, why not try one of these for yourself? Perhaps you’ll find your personal preferred playstyle within Diablo IV’s endless possibilities…

Bad to the Bone-Spirit (Necromancer)

by Adam Z. Jackson – Lead Class Designer

The first build I would like to talk about is what I’m planning to run with for Diablo IV’s launch, which is a Bone-Spirit Necromancer!

Bone Spirit is one of our bolder skill designs in that it both has a long cooldown and removes ALL of the player’s Essence when cast. In exchange, it deals a significant amount of extra damage to enemies for every point of resource spent. The Enhancement for Bone Spirit also reduces its cooldown significantly when it Critically Strikes an enemy, adding an additional goal for players to chase.

Putting this all together, the goal for this build is to get to a place where the player can both increase their maximum Essence as well as their Essence Regeneration to the point where they can cast Bone Sprit on cooldown while reliably being able to generate enough Essence to be full again for the next cast. We’ll be prioritizing Maximum Resource, Resource Regeneration, and Critical Strike Chance as the primary stats to chase. Other stats like Critical Strike Damage or effects like bonus damage to Bone skills are also desirable. One thing that’s also very interesting about this build is that I expect it to change a lot over time as I get more gear and certain Legendaries and Uniques that I’m going to target.

Among the key effects we want is Ghastly Bone Spirit, which grants an additional 10% Critical Srike Chance and helps us reliably Critically Strike enemies that is crucial to the build until our Critical Strike Chance is high enough via gear and other methods to do it without this upgrade. At that point, we can switch over to Dreadful Bone Spirit (generates 30 Essence over the next 4 seconds after each hit) to help with our Essence generation. The Ossified Essence Key Passive causes Bone Spirit to deal even more damage when cast with a lot of Essence (1% increased damage to Bone Skills for each point of Essence above 50).  Since we plan to always cast Bone Spirit at full Essence, this is going to greatly increase the damage that we’ll be able to put out.

For this build, I’m going to try only running a Bone Golem, and sacrificing my Skeleton Skirmishers for extra Critical Strike Chance (6%) and my Skeletal Mages for additional maximum Essence (18).

As far as skills, to start the game I’m going to use Bone Splinters, Bone Spear, Bone Spirit, Golem, Corpse Explosion, and Blood Wave.  This set of skills gives me a way to use Corpses effectively while also having the control tools needed via my Golem and Blood Wave to keep enemies grouped up and at bay while I annihilate them with Bone Spear and Bone Spirit.

Legendaries and Uniques will improve this build further. Blood Artisan’s Cuirass greatly upgrades the build by giving an alternative method of spawning Bone Spirits by collecting Blood Orbs. After getting this Unique, my build will also be

Since its very first announcement in 2019, Diablo IV has ignited infernal anticipation among players worldwide. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve had the chance to immerse ourselves in a preview build of the game and were ensnared by its exhilarating gameplay, sinister lore, and boundless replayability. Below is an interview we’ve conducted with the minds behind the game, shedding light on the depths of this highly anticipated hellish adventure.

Can we share any features or gameplay mechanics in Diablo IV that you believe will excite some of the longtime fans of the series?

Dorottya Kollo, Lead UI Designer, Diablo IV: I always like to kick it off with the classes, because of how in-depth we went with them. We created a lore to make sure that they’re not just classes, but you actually believe in what class you’re playing as. Like Druid, this is probably one of my favorites, they can talk with animal spirits, they can actually make an offering and get something in return so there’s that transaction. And I love the fact that other players if you are not a Druid, then you cannot actually see them and interact with them. Apart from classes the skill tree is something that we’re really proud of as we put a lot of effort into it. It looked extremely different six months ago. In general when it comes to lore and gameplay, giving players the opportunity to explore the world, to explore dungeons and strongholds.

Adam Z. Jackson, Lead Class Designer, Diablo IV: There’s a series of progression systems that I think a lot of long-term fans will enjoy. You start out with the skill tree, you start out with some very simple itemization, and then as you go through the campaign, you get more and more layers on top of ways to customize your character. Late in the game, you get unique powers that give you even more ways to customize your player, and then the Paragon board comes online. So we start gentle and then there’s more systems and ways to make your character really special and powerful.

How has the studio reapproached its design philosophy for activities outside of the main story campaign in consideration to Diablo IV being an open world?

Jackson: One of the things we did that’s very unique to Diablo IV is the Codex of Power. Normally, in other games it’s a bit random, you’re just killing enemies and hoping to get the gear that you want. The Codex of Power marries two things together, we

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com!

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS, or download here

This week the team chats with Director Nakayama Takayuki and Producer Matsumoto Shuhei on redesigning classic characters in Street Fighter 6 and more. Plus the team dives into their personal fighting game journeys.

Stuff We Talked About

• Diablo IV Q&A
• Amnesia: The Bunker Combat Blog
• Immortals of Aveum Hands-on
• Street Fighter 6 – Capcom Cammy Redesign Blog
• Vampire: The Masquerade PS VR2
• Interview w/ Nakayama Takayuki and Matsumoto Shuhei (starts at 15:00)
• Street Fighter 6

The Cast

View and download image