Verdicts seem to be reversing on Diablo 4 Season 3 after a substantial patch buffs Echo of Malphas

Diablo 4 once again found itself in the eye of the storm with the launch of Season 3 (Season of Construct), as community complaints took aim at unpopular traps that littered some encounters and ineffective loot. But Blizzard's newest patch seems to have reversed the verdict. 

"We first want to thank the Diablo community for the feedback since the launch of Season 3 earlier this week," community development director Adam Fletcher wrote on the Blizzard forums. "This patch helps with some changes and fixes to a few key items we have been hearing in the feedback including the Seneschal Construct, Vaults & Arcane Tremors, and the Echo of Malphas."

Blizzard pushed out the patch last night across PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5, addressing the season's biggest pain points. The team is both buffing the Malphas boss fight and increasing legendary item drops, while also introducing a new item to summon him so you can clutch onto your precious pearls.

In regard to the Seneschal Construct, the mechanical pet introduced this season, the team acknowledges that it becomes adequately powerful upon reaching max level, but getting to that point is way too grindy. To fix that, the patch adds "more sources to earn Governing and Tuning stones" to level up Seneschal. You can read the full patch notes here.

The quick turnaround on Season 3 seemingly smoothed things over with players, as the response on the Diablo subreddit is largely positive. "These are honestly all huge, very fast improvements. I like this a lot," one commenter says. "All fantastic changes," adds another.

But some were quick to point out that Diablo 4 has a habit of launching widely divisive seasons, only to fix them at a later date. Diablo 4 Season 1 was a pretty disastrous start to the game's seasonal updates, and it seems the second season's winning streak didn't carry much momentum. Here's hoping future seasons are in better shape out of the gate.

In other news, Microsoft recently laid off 1,900 employees across Activision, Blizzard, and Xbox.