My secret to success in Diablo 4 (open in new tab) is simple: barbarian, bash, upheaval, repeat this until there is nothing but blood and flesh as far as the eye can see. You better believe it. That said, there are some people who would like a more complex method of minimaxing as a substitute for action RPGs. For those people, this Diablo 4 Build Planner will be very useful.

Officially named "Diablo 4 Character Skill Tree Planner/Calculator (opens in new tab)," it allows you to try out character builds even if "Diablo 4" itself is not currently available. You can select a class (Barbarian, Druid, Necromancer, Rogue, Sorcerer) in the drop-down box and duplicate Diablo 4's zig-zag skill tree. Skill points can be added by left-clicking on the appropriate box and removed by right-clicking.

As in the game, skill points must be spent to unlock more advanced branches of the skill tree. For example, you cannot put points into a "core" skill until you have spent at least two points on a "basic" skill. Each branch has an indicator bar that shows how close you are to accessing each skill group.

If you get sick of a character you created and want to start over, the "reset" button at the top of the build planner will take you right back to the drawing board. On the other hand, if you really like it and want to share your creation with friends, there is a "Share" button, but really you can just copy the URL and it will change as you add or remove points.

For example, after reaching the level cap in the beta, my barbarian looked roughly like this:

https://d4planner.io/skilltree/Barbarian/A1:3;B2:5;B4:1;E2:1;E7:1;I2:3;N1:3;P2:3;S7:3;U1:5;V2:1 Very cool. Unfortunately, the build planner does not include the Paragon Board (opens in new tab), an end-game system that is opened after a player reaches level 50. The creator of this planner, identified as lowpoly_nomad on Reddit (opens in new tab), states that he excluded it because he did not have access to the 2022 endgame beta (opens in new tab) and does not know how this will work, but that in the future (weaponry expertise and other features) will be added, he said.

Speaking of Diablo 4 classes, here's our take on all of them (opens in new tab) based on time spent in the demo; we disagree with Robin's assessment of the Barbarian, but Blizzard apparently agrees (opens in new tab). Diablo 4 will be released on June 6.