As per the norm:
Timestamp is 14:05 just in case: https://www.youtube.com/live/xZvEKK9UE_E?si=PnjtZGxqzuzm2Omw&t=845
Also: The 2.3.0 PTR: What You Need to Know — Diablo IV — Blizzard News
Patch Notes: The 2.3.0 PTR: What You Need to Know — Diablo IV — Blizzard News
State of the Game
State of the Game
- Leveling Pacing has been slowed down in S8, we’re happy where the pacing is.
- May not be enough activity variety while you’re leveling up
- We know about lair boss fatigue
- Trying to push people to different content types
- Should always be a reason to go do something else
- Permanent Improvements coming
- Broadly speaking, class balance is in a pretty good spot
- Lightning Spear Sorc is maybe a little higher than we’d like
- Spiritborn is lagging a little behind
- Pillars for class balance is that all builds are able to complete all content
- build is coherently put together, and you should be able to get into T4 and complete the seasonal journey, be able to kill the lair bosses, may not be the fastest, but it’s possible
- OverPower builds are dominating right now
- Previous S7 builds are still dominating S8
- We didn’t shake up the meta going into S8
PTR Features
PTR Features
Horadric Strongrooms
- Potent Micro-dungeon, hidden entrance found in a nightmare dungeon
- While inside the strongroom collect Horadric Attunement from slaying enemies
- Feels like the gauntlet
- Attunement improves chest earned by defeating the mini-boss
- Maximize attunement through interacting with the strongrooms different gizmos
Escalating Nightmares
- Fight through a series of Nightmare dungeons (3 specifically)
- Each time you enter a new nightmare dungeon New Affixes are added with each dungeon, increasing both difficulty and reward efficiency
- Culminates with a boss fight
- Requires an Escalating Nightmare Sigil, which currently starts dropping in Torment 1 from Strongrooms
- At the end of the dungeon look for a gizmo that opens a portal that goes into the next dungeon, you don’t have to back out if you don’t want to, don’t have to go into your inventory and open up another portal, you just click this gizmo and go into the portal spawned
Astratoth Reignited (dude mounted on top of the multiheaded amalgam of rage)
- Making a comeback
Season 9 Content
Seasonal Content:
Horadric Spells
- Several spell components, 30 different components to combine together
- Build your own spells
- Unique Utility
Catalyst - Foundation of your spell - can rank up to 20
- 6 slots on the UI
- When you put in a Catalyst in one of these 6 slots, it’s linked to your one of your 6 hotkeys.
- When you use an ability, the catalyst will go off.
- Some catalysts have a cooldown, which may be able to be reduced upon ranking up
- Example used was a Rogue throwing out a smoke bomb, the Catalyst was some kind of barrage of stars raining down that dealt damage in an area
Example: Cosmic Anomaly
- Summon Tag - Scales off of Summon Damage Bonuses
- Passive: Manifests up to 5 Anomalies that emit particles which deal damage
- Active: Command your Anomalies to all converge and implode, dealing damage per detonation.
- At Rank 10: While at 5 Anomalies, you are Unstoppable, and the next series of implosions will deal double damage
Infusions
- Socketable into your Horadric interface
- Changes the elemental damage type that your Catalysts deal
Example: Smoldering Ember
- Your Catalyst now deals Fire and or Burning Damage. It destroyes enemy structures and has a 10% chance to ignite the ground beneath enemies, dealing burning damage over 5 seconds.
- While Equipped, your fire Damage Bonus is equal to that of your highest Damage Type Bonus (so if you have a lot of cold damage stacked, it will count toward this fire damage)
- Deactivates monster Chilling Wind effects for 5 seconds
- Shows a rank of up to 10
- Can only have 1 infusion
- Rank 5 allows you to deactivate monster affixes depending on the damage type you’re using
- Fire infusion deactivates chilling winds, those walls of ice that freeze you, waller walls, lightning totems, and tether points
- Fire infusion deactivates chilling winds, those walls of ice that freeze you, waller walls, lightning totems, and tether points
Arcana
- Modifiers to add to your catalyst
- 3 total can be chosen
- Examples:
- Gleaming Conduit - Effect size of your Catalyst is increased by #%
- Tranquil Stone - Invoking your Catalyst grants Unstoppable for # seconds
- Potent Alloy - Your Catalyst destroys enemy Barriers and Knocks them Down for # seconds after the removal
Legendary Arcana
- Properties change depending on the Catalyst they are attached to
- 5 different variations per Legendary Arcana
- 5 total Legendary Arcana
Examples:
-
Nightmare Orb #1 - Catalyst gains a specialized Fear effect that lasts # seconds: Anomalies Fear and apply and an 80% Slow to unaffected enemies they come into contact with.
-
Nightmare Orb #2 - Catalyst gains a specialized Fear effect that lasts # seconds: Celestial Surge stars Fear unaffected enemies. After the Fear ends, there is a 25% chance for another star to fall.
Horadric Jewels
Similar to Occult Gems from Season 7
Earn Tomes from Strongrooms starting in Torment 1
Craft with Horadric Phials and Gem Fragments (not as many gem fragments as making occult gems)
Socket into Jewelry
Example:
-
Liminal Echo
- +120 Armor and 6% all resistance
- If you would take fatal damage, instead prevent that damage, invoke Propulsion, and become Invulnerable for 3 seconds.
- This can only occur once every 75 seconds.
-
Tyrant Bane
- +120 Armor and 6% all resistance
- After you deal Damage Over Time to an enemy, they take 0.33% more Damage Over Time from you forever.
-
The Starflux
- Your Catalysts deal 100% more damage.
- However, you lose control over Horadric Spellcraft, causing your Catalyst to inherit Infusions randomly.
-
Idol From Below
- +120 Armor and 6% all resistance
- You gain 6% Primary Core Stat, 8% Maximum Life, and Unhindered.
- However, you will be hunted in Sanctuary’s darkest places by Jewel Guardians who were entombed to protect this relic.
Character Class Changes Overview
Character Class Changes Overview
Overpower will be getting nerfed as it has been dominating over the seasons. Was meant to help convert defensive stats into damage. Reducing some of the calculations by 80% (roughly), will still be better than not doing it, but won’t be so infinitely far ahead like we’ve seen it.
Additive Damage Rebalanced - Whenever you got Overpower on your items it would be a a much bigger amount than any other amount such as Critical Strike Damage. Plans to rebalance this so you have more options and don’t feel bad because Overpower was obviously much larger.
Basic Skill Buffs - Comprehensive pass on every single basic skill and retuned them, double or tripled their damage output for the most part. Helps to compete right out of the box. We want basic skill builds to exist into the late game and be competitive. Will be looking at other categories of types of skills in following seasons (Basic Skills are the first to be hit)
Max Resistance - Max Resist increased from 70% to 75% (max cap is still 85%). Some items that had all resist (Yen’s Blessings Boots) have been toned down.
Key Passives - Balance pass toward Key Passives, they’ve seen certain keys passives that basically skill infinitely, set a bar of about 75% multiplicative damage bonus. Some will have more conditions, it’ll vary, but if it had a previous uncapped scaler, it will be changed to 75%, or for passives that were too weak are getting buffed up to meet this mark.
Class Changes
Class Changes
Legendaries - Previous seasons we’ve always had a new unique item and legendaries per class. We’re doing reworks to a lot of existing legendaries, so a handful of legendaries on each class have been substantially reworked. No new legendaries this season.
Uniques - 1 new unique per class this season
Barbarian
Barbarian
- Earthquakes - Being Nerfed
- Legendary Paragon Nodes Simplified - Do a thing, get a bonus
- Basic Skill Cleave Unique
- Hooves of the Mountain God (Boots)
- +Movement Speed
- +Basic Attack Speed
- +Fury per Second
- +ranks to Beliigerence
- When attacking with a Basic Skill while at Max Fury, your Fury will increasingly Drain until you run out while all your Basic skills now cleave dealing 70-100% increased damage.
- Hooves of the Mountain God (Boots)
Druid
Druid
- Cataclysm - Suffered from being too powerful from snapshotting, which we intended but not to this degree where it’s the best way or mandatory way to play the class, expect nerfs
- Grizzly Rage - Updates to legendaries that affected Grizzly Rage
- Splashing Poison Puddles (new unique)
- Rotting Lightbringer (two-handed mace)
- Inherent Affix - 170% Damage to Poisoned Enemies
- +Willpower
- +Poison Damage
- +Chance for Pulverize to Hit Twice
- Resource Cost Reduction
- Every 10 seconds, Pulverize forms a puddle that deals 200-400%(x) of its damage as poisoning damage over 6 seconds
- Pulverizing the puddle splashes an additional 20-40%(x) of the puddle’s total damage within the area around it.
- Rotting Lightbringer (two-handed mace)
Necromancer
Necromancer
- Soul Rift - Reduce it’s functionality by taking away the barrier
- Blood Wave - Reducing damage output of uniques that involve Blood Wave
- Skeletal Arch-Mages (new unique)
- The Hand of Naz (gloves)
- +Max Life
- +Attack Speed
- +Skeleton Mage Damage
- +Skeleton Mage Mastery
- Sacrificing both Skeletal Warriors and Golems grants an additional Skeletal Mage for each Minion sacrificed.
- When a Skeletal Mage attacks, enemies 25 times without dying it upgrades to a Skeletal Arch-Mage.
- Skeletal Arch-Mages teleport to safety when attacked and their attacks occassionally shatter on impact dealing 50-100%(x) increased damage to the target and up to 3 additional targets.
- The Hand of Naz (gloves)
Rogue
Rogue
- Death Trap - Does a lot of everything and a ton of damage. Unique Pants are being tuned (nerfed)
- Infiltrators and Bursting Venoms - Buffs coming to poison traps
- Eaglehorn Buff - Penetrating Shot Unique bow buffs
- New Flurry Unique
- Deathmask of Nirmitruq (helm)
- +Max Life
- +Armor
- +Movement Speed
- +Ranks to Flurry
- You can now overexert yourself while Casting Flurry, spending 10% life when you don’t have enough Energy. Spending life to Cast Flurry increaseses its damage by 30-50%(x) and your attack speed by 50% for 5 seconds.
- Deathmask of Nirmitruq (helm)
Sorcerer
Sorcerer
- Lightning Spear - Only or best way to play Sorc, Splintering Energy too powerful of an aspect, buffed base line damage of lightning spear itself, but nerfed Splintering Energy
- Burning Rebalance - Combustion Key Passive had uncapped scaling, now has a cap, buffing base line skills damage to compensate
- Enlightenment - Rebalanced
- Huge Hydras New Unique
- Ophidian Iris (Amulet)
- Inherit Aspect - Casted Hydras have +2 Heads
- +% Int
- +Critical Strike Chance
- +Pyromancy Damage
- +Ranks to Devouring Blaze
- Hydra is now a Core Skill and always summons a 3-headed hydra whose attacks explode on impact.
- For each head above 3 that it would have had, the hydra instead grows larger and deals 50-100%(x) increased damage.
- Ophidian Iris (Amulet)
Spiritborn
Spiritborn
- Deflection + Razor Wings - More multiplicative damage support for the skill
- The Hunter Resets - 90%+ of all Spiritborns are using this, other options aren’t being explored, reworking the reset aspect to it
- Poison Thorns New Unique
- Balazan’s Maxtlatl (Pants)
- +Dex
- +Max Life
- +Thorns
- +Ranks to Bastion
- Each attack damages Close enemies for 200-300% of your Thorns and also deals 100% of this damage as Poisoning over 3 seconds.
- Each time you’ve retaliated with Thorns, for 5 seconds the Poisoning damage is increased by 100%, up to 300%
- Balazan’s Maxtlatl (Pants)
PTR Feedback
Do these unique items, legendary reworks, and other balance changes, are these builds good? Is it reasonable to play at Torment 4?
Looking for feedback on the changes to basic skills. Some may be too strong or too weak.
They want S9 to have new options instead of the same thing over and over again.
System Updates: Seasonal Activity Variety
Elites and Bosses granting Seasonal Reputation
- Season 8 added Seasonal Currency/Reputation to the Lair Bosses, which we liked
- Want to keep that going forward, on top of other ways to earn seasonal reputation or currency
- Whenever you kill any Elites or Bosses in S9 it will earn Seasonal Reputation
System Updates: Nightmare Sigils
Side Note: You can now teleport to a NMD from inside a NMD
Permanent Upgrade to the game.
New Nightmare Sigils Affixes:
- New Positive Affixes in varying rarities
- Examples: Blast Wave Shrines, Horadric Materials Reserve, Forgotten Wisdom
- Negative Affixes avoid penalizing specific elements or builds
System Updates: Legendary Item Drop Updates
Increased quality of items per difficulty Tier
- When you go into T2 through 4 you’ll have a better chance to find Ancestrals
- Also applies to Lair Boss Unique drops
- Not so intense that it feels required to go into higher Torment Levels
System Updates: Resource Economy
- Overall increase of Legendary Rune drops
- Tribute of Harmony increased Rune drops
- All Undercity Tributes now drop a Rune
- Whisper cache resource increase
- Gold, Materials, and Gem Fragment Caches weren’t giving you enough, these have been buffed
- Chance to find whole gems in a Gem Fragment Cache (low chance to find the best whole gem)
- Jewelry cache costs reduced and give more jewelry
- Increased Gems from Infernal Hordes
PTR Goes Live: 2025-05-27T17:00:00Z Through 2025-06-03T17:00:00Z
- The above should be adjusted to your own date/time zone
PTR Boost has more options now
Q&A
: Are there any updates on Reliquaries?
: Looking to make changes, no current details yet, another event coming soon
: Will you be able to find Horadric Strongholds inside Escalating Nightmare Dungeons?
: Yes, absolutely. Escalating Nightmares are Nightmare Dungeons
: These new dungeon changes will be available in the Eternal Realm right?
: Yes the Nightmare Dungeon Affix changes will be permanent additions to the game.
: Where is M+KB support on Consoles?
: Still coming
: With Soulrift not generating Barrier, how will Necromancers gain defense?
: Lots of different options. New options in the Seasonal Horadric Spellcraft, Fortify through blood magic, other ways of generating barrier from legendaries that may have been underutilized. Maybe look to Bonestorm as well as an alternative.
: Any updates on Tempering and Masterworking?
: We’ve been talking about it internally, nothing to share at this time. However we are updating material costs (not gold or obducite) in an upcoming patch for Masterworking from rank 1-4 and on the reset.
: With a system like horadric spells being this awesome, are you looking to maybe make it a permanent part of the game?
: Nothing is ever truly gone, but can’t say any definitive, who knows for the future.
: Will there be a possibility that Nightmare Sigils can have active whispers shown on them?
: It’s something we’re interested in exploring that space, but it won’t be in S9, we’re still looking to make changes going forward.
: Will there be anymore balance changes for the current season?
: No plans for anymore balance changes on Season 8. We’re committed to making fast rapid changes within the first couple of weeks then just let it ride out for the rest of the season.
: Would you consider the possibility to allow us to tone down the visuals of other players?
: Something we’re considering, with the horadric spells we’re making changes for some spell affects so they’re dimmed out for other players.
: What changes will be made to Reliquaries in Season 9 to add more value to paying players?
: We do have more changes coming to add more content, probably not in S9, but definitely in the future.
: Are you bringing out anymore new items, ancestral, or mythics into the new season?
: 1 new Unique item per class that we highlighted. No additional new items. However since we did rework some of the legendary aspects those are kind of new, but not brand new in terms of a brand new legendaries to collect. Testable in the PTR, also available in the patch notes.
