Devolution of the Buff UI in Diablo 4
Over the last year, Diablo 4 has evolved into a game with many different statuses that affect the player character. The addition of new Unique item effects, new boss encounters, and other gameplay mechanics provide a plethora of buffs and debuffs with the goal of enhancing the overall gameplay experience.
Diablo 4's Buff User Interface, however, has hardly evolved — in fact, it feels like it has gone back in both time and development of modern-day user interface architecture. With Patch 2.0, Blizzard has increased the displayed buff limit from 8 to 16: a band-aid fix, at best, for something that is becoming more and more of a burden on players.
But what exactly is so unwieldy about Diablo 4's Buff UI? How does it compare to Diablo 3, and what is needed to fix it in the short and long term?
The Current State of Diablo 4's Buff UI
First off, let's define what a Buff UI should do in an ARPG. In essence, players want to track important buffs and debuffs at a quick glance due to the fast-paced gameplay of an ARPG. Elements like procs and uptimes need to be easily accessible in your peripheral vision while playing the game, because some of those elements can have a big impact on gameplay.
A perfect example of a key buff to track would be Enlightenment, the Sorcerer's new key passive introduced with Patch 2.0. Enlightenment provides a powerful damage buff once it reaches 100 stacks — casts of the same element as the last cast only provide 1 stack, while casts from a different element give 15 stacks. Players who optimize their rotation while keeping track of their Enlightenment stacks will be rewarded with more damage buff uptime.
However, in Diablo 4, it is very hard to track such important effects for multiple reasons — even with a buff limit increase from 8 to 16 displayed buffs. Let's take this image of the Buff UI from the Patch 2.0 PTR as an example:
What we can see here are two Runeword buffs, one Elixir buff, three Incense buffs, and two stacking class
