After a painfully long wait, players finally have an opportunity to dive into Blizzard’s new hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, Diablo 4, with the arrival of its Open Beta. Before you start mowing down hordes of demonic creatures, though, you’ll need to pick a class to play as. In the beta, there are three classes available to play (two more are coming with the full game), and each one has distinct strengths, weaknesses, and playstyles.
While every class in Diablo 4 is powerful and can enjoy great success on the battlefield, some are a bit stronger than others overall. Also, depending on how you like to play, you might enjoy some classes more than others. To help you choose, we’ve broken down everything you need to know about Diablo 4’s classes in this guide, including a tier list of the best classes, an overview of each class, and some class suggestions for beginners and solo players.
Diablo 4 beta: Best class tier list
As we said before, Diablo 4 has been balanced so that all of its playable classes are effective. There is no “bad class,” and ultimately, you shouldn’t worry about the metagame at all and should just choose the class that sounds the most fun to play.
With that said, some classes are slightly better than others, and players comfortable with all playstyles will likely want to opt for the best overall class. With that in mind, we’ve ranked the three classes currently available in the Diablo 4 Open Beta in the tier list below.
| Rank | Class |
|---|---|
| S | Sorcerer |
| A | Rogue |
| B | Barbarian |
| N/A | Necromancer, Druid |
Note that since the Necromancer and Druid aren’t currently playable in the beta, we haven’t ranked them since we haven’t been able to get our hands on them yet. When Diablo 4 releases in full (or if Blizzard decides to make them available at some point later in the beta), we’ll update this tier list with rankings for those classes.
Diablo 4 beta: Which class should you play?
Here, we’ll go over the ins and outs of each class to give you an idea of what to expect while using them.
Barbarian
- Strengths: Lots of health, mobile, forgiving to play
- Weaknesses: Short range, not as deadly as other classes
The Barbarian is Diablo 4’s tanky and straightforward melee class, capable of dishing out good close-range damage and staying on top of foes with high movement speed. They can deal damage-over-time with Bleed status effects and also have plenty of health, making them easier to play than other classes.
Barbarians will struggle more than other classes when facing enemies at a distance, as they have few effective ranged options. Their damage output, while good, is also a bit lower than what some other classes are capable of.
Rogue
- Strengths: Versatile, high crit damage, lots of status effects
- Weaknesses: Not very resilient, challenging to play
Rogues are one of the most versatile classes in Diablo 4, as they can attack enemies from afar with bows or up close with daggers. They’re capable of dealing huge critical damage, and can also imbue their weapons with magic or lay deadly traps to inflict various status effects.
Rogues are fairly difficult to play compared to other classes, though, so you may want to start with an easier class like the Barbarian first if you’re new to Diablo. This is because they don’t have a ton of health, and also because managing your skills efficiently is very important as a Rogue.
Sorcerer
- Strengths: High damage, long range, lots of status effects
- Weaknesses: Low health, less effective up close
Sorcerers are essentially the opposite of a Barbarian, as they have low health, but are capable of very high ranged magic damage. Even though they can’t take much punishment, they’re a great class for solo play since they can crowd control groups of enemies very effectively with their spells. Frost spells are particularly effective for this since they Chill whatever they hit, slowing targets down considerably.
Additionally, Sorcerers are also a great addition to teams in group play, since other classes like Barbarians and Necromancers can absorb punishment and draw aggro away from them.
Necromancer
- Strengths: Balanced playstyle, armies of minions
- Weaknesses: Not as specialized as other classes
Though it’s not possible to play as a Necromancer during the Diablo 4 beta, we expect that they’ll be one of the strongest classes (if not the strongest) class in the full game since this type of class historically has not had any significant drawbacks. They’re capable of both ranged and melee combat, can summon armies of undead minions that draw aggro, and even Bone, Shadow, and Blood magic that can be used to crowd control groups and convert damage into health.
The only real weakness of the Necromancer class is that it’s not as specialized as something like the Barbarian or Sorcerer. Ultimately, this class trades maximum potential for versatility, and that tradeoff will likely be worth it.
Druid
- Strengths: Versatile, fairly resilient, good at crowd control
- Weaknesses: Limited ranged options
Based on what we know about the currently unavailable Druid, it sounds like they’ll be similar to the Barbarian in that their primary focus is melee damage. Druids can shapeshift between Werewolf and Werebear forms, with the former boasting high attack speed and crit damage and the latter offering more area-of-effect options and a larger health pool. Druids will also be more resilient than some of the other classes in general, though they’re not quite as tanky as a Barbarian.
Like Barbarians, Druids will have limited options for ranged combat, though they will be able to call upon the powers of nature to crowd control foes with Earth magic and damage them with Wind and Lightning. Even so, don’t expect to be able to snipe or nuke enemies as effectively as Rogues and Sorcerers can.
Diablo 4 beta: Best class for solo play
If you’re playing through the Diablo 4 beta alone, we recommend choosing either the Sorcerer or the Barbarian. If you’re comfortable with carefully managing your health and positioning, you’ll be able to obliterate your foes from afar with the Sorcerer’s incredibly powerful magic attacks. Meanwhile, Barbarians have high defense and can take a lot of punishment thanks to their high health pool, helping to offset the numbers disadvantage solo players have to contend with.
When the full version of Diablo 4 releases, we expect that the Necromancer will become the top solo play class since they can summon hordes of minions and have a very diverse kit.
Diablo 4 beta: Best class for beginners
If you’re new to Diablo and games like it, you should start out as a Barbarian. While Sorcerers and Rogues do have better damage, they also have much less health and will go down much faster than a Barbarian will. While you’re learning the ropes, it’s a very good idea to opt for the most forgiving class of the bunch.
The Druid will also likely be a great beginner class since they’ll be on the tanky side, too. If you want good defenses but don’t want to be locked into the melee-only playstyle, consider picking Druid when Diablo 4 launches on June 6, 2023.
Diablo 4 is slated to fully launch on June 6, 2023, with the Open Beta expected to run from March 17-20 for Early Access owners and then again from March 24-27 for all players. It has the potential to be one of the best Xbox games for fans of dungeon crawlers and hack-and-slash combat, and we can’t wait to jump in now that the initial run of the beta is live.
