With Diablo 4’s first Public Test Ream (PTR) having come and gone, we glimpse what’s the future of the game based on it. This article takes a look at the big changes coming for Diablo 4’s Fourth Season.
Now that the PTR for Diablo 4’s upcoming fourth season has concluded, we wanted to share our experience with the systems as they were on the PTR. There was a ton of feedback posted, both from myself and others who played the PTR. I hope they take in the feedback and improve some of these systems prior to Season 4.
Itemization Updates
A lot of the major changes for this season are focused on crafting and itemization. These changes bring two new systems in the form of Masterworking and Tempering and adjust some of the pain points of Gear and Gear Affixes in general.
Together these changes are a huge net positive for the game, and it’ll be interesting to see if PTR Feedback affects the new season.
Masterworking
Masterworking is a system designed to add more Item progression in the end-game, via a new tiered dungeon called The Pit, which is much like Greater Rifts from Diablo 3, or even the Abbatoir of Zir from the end of Season 2. Complete a dungeon in a time limit and get some loot. More importantly, we also get materials for the Masterworking System.
We should take these materials to the Blacksmith, who will upgrade the affixes on our chosen item up to 12 times.
Every rank but ranks 4, 8, and 12 will upgrade all affixes by small amount. Ranks 4, 8, and 12 are pivotal ranks that provide a larger boost to a single Affix, chosen at random.
Once everything is said and done, we’ll end with every affix (except Unique Affixes) being boosted anywhere from 45% up to 120%, depending on where the big upgrades land.
If we don’t land the big upgrades on what we want, we can reset the process to start again. This doesn’t refund any spent materials, so it’s more of an end-game chase for min-maxers.
We’ll have a full guide availabke detailing the Masterwork System as we get closer to Season 4’s launch.
This system is great for the added end-game chase it provides, but it wasn’t without flaws on PTR. Many players, myself included, disagreed with the design choice for there to be a Failure Chance at higher ranks.
The Devs often say they want to reward the time a player puts in, but this system felt like it did the opposite due to this failure chance. Thankfully, it does at least have a Pity System in place, so you’re not fully relying on RNG to get through.
This Failure RNG is only compounded by the fact that the higher tier you reach in the Pit, the more frequently you’ll see “invading bosses” during the fight with a Pit Boss.
The invading bosses often deal absurd amounts of damage, one-shotting even bulky builds that are stacked up on Life, Armor, and Resists. Unfortunately, avoiding these higher tiers often means dealing with getting fewer Masterworking Materials.
We sincerely hope that the devs find a reasonable way to address these pain points for the Season 4 release, but otherwise, the system is a great way to keep itemization relevant in the end-game of Diablo 4.
Tempering
Tempering is a new Crafting option available as soon as you reach Kyovashad during the Prologue of the Main Campaign.
This system allows you to Temper your gear, adding new Affixes to them through the use of Tempering Manuals. Rare and Legendary Items can be Tempered once, while Ancestral Legendaries can be Tempered twice with Affixes of different Categories.
These Tempering Manuals contain small sets of 2-5 Affixes, focused around a different set of skills, or affixes. There are generic options that give general Damage or Defensive Affixes, while others specialize around a theme, say Blood Skills, Traps, Minions, or similar categories across the different classes.
Tempering Manuals are earned through gameplay. We often found them dropping randomly from Elites, but more commonly found as Nightmare Dungeon Rewards, Defeating a Boss on the Boss Ladder, or by hunting Treasure Goblins.
When you initially apply any Tempered Affix to a slot, this only has a material cost. Then you have 5 shared Tempering Re-rolls to use between these two Affixes to land what you want. Once the Re-rolls are used up, you’re stuck with what you got.
We’ll have a full guide detailing the Tempering System as we get closer to Season 4’s launch.
Unfortunately, this system also was not without its flaws either on PTR. My biggest pain point with it was the total lack of control it presented. Sure we get to pick the Tempering Manual used, which is already better than Enchanting in some regard.
Our control ends there, and we have just 7 total chances with an Ancestral Legendary to get the two Tempered Affixes we want.
It’s hard to tell what the intention was behind this being the only Crafting system in the game with any kind of hard limit to it. The lack of control and limited re-rolls can lead to amazing items that would be Best-in-Slot (BiS) becoming effectively worthless by nature of not hitting the desired Tempered Affixes.
Again, we hope the devs can find a good solution to fix the flaws so this system isn’t nearly as painful when it comes to min-maxing a build.
Greater Affixes
If you’re at all familiar with Last Epoch, you can compare these to Exalted Affixes. Greater Affixes are Affixes that always roll at their maximum value and get an additional 50% boost on top. This makes them ideal for min-maxing a build, or generally improving your offenses or defenses.
These drop-only affixes are powerful, but you won’t see them until World Tier 4, as they will only appear on Ancestral Legendary or Unique Items. They’re pretty uncommon as well, appearing on what felt like around 5% of those items. And since multiple Affixes on an item can be Greater Affixes, they’re excellent chase items, especially for Uniques.
Unironically, this may be one of the only adjustments made to Itemization for the upcoming season that doesn’t feel unfair and still rewards your time. However, it would still be great if they were much more prominent as drops and in your inventory.
Condensed Affix Pools
One of the more direct changes you’ll see to items right away in the new Season is that there are much fewer total Affixes, along with some new ones. This overall “Affix Squish” as I like to call it, makes it much easier, or at least more likely, to get what you want on most items.
The Newly added resource Affixes are an exceptionally good alternative to the ever-popular Resource Cost Reduction Affix. Getting Resource on Kill, or even better Resource per Second in combination with increased Resource Generation finally gives us options to sustain higher resource costs if it benefits us.
With Damage Reduction (DR) mostly being removed, it also removes the need for every piece of armor to have 1-2 different DR Affixes. Maximum Life was made more plentiful as well, which helps to offset some of the loss of DR.
Overall this was a great change for the game. They just need to fix a weighting issue where every slot has an extremely high chance to roll Maximum Life, Life Per Second, Resistances (collectively), or Attributes whenever possible. These appear in ~20% of all rolls, even in cases where that are 20 total affixes more often compared to all other affixes. If this gets cleared up, they’ll be in a great spot.
Helltide
Helltides have been expanded, not only in the amount of content available within but also to lower World Tiers. This makes them accessible much earlier in the game, and they might be a top-tier leveling method, if not the best.
Helltides have adopted a lot of content from the Blood Harvests of Diablo 4’s 2nd Season and adapted to the Helltides themselves. This includes a Threat System, which is made more prominent in Helltides, but still summons a Blood Seeker, or Hellborne as they’re called now.
There are many other small events added around the area as well. This includes Doomsayers that randomly turn into a weak Demon, Elite Demon, or Treasure Goblin; as well as the Health Drain and AoE Survival Altars. These all become excellent ways to grind out Cinders to loot more chests.
Speaking of chests, there’s a new addition to the lineup of Helltide Chests that’s worth making note of; Tortured Gift of Doomsaying. These new, extremely low-cost chests are the only Guaranteed source of Baneful Hearts. They sit at a mere 50 Cinders, always grant a Baneful Heart, and some loot to go with it.
What’s a Baneful Heart do? Why, it enables you to take on the new bosses of Helltides, Blood Maidens. These Blood Maidens are called in via a set of three baneful Hearts, similar to the Blood Lure Altars of Blood Harvest.
What ensues is easily one of the most challenging and rewarding fights you can find in a Helltide, which we highly recommend you’re prepared for or it can take you out very easily.
Overall, the Helltide Changes are a huge win. Looking forward to seeing how they do in an actual leveling situation.
Class Changes
Not going to go too deep here, as there are a lot of changes overall, but wanted to cap this off with a brief overview of what to expect from the classes. We expect a lot of this to change come release, as there were a lot of broken builds due to bugs that just dominated everything.
Barbarian
Lots of buffs via Tempered Affixes to Leapquake Builds and Dust Devil Builds. Plenty of AoE to be had for other skills. Dust Devils in particular were extremely powerful on PTR, but I doubt they’ll stay that way as they caused massive lag and screen clutter. Their new Uniques and Aspects add more support for Dust Devil builds, and seem to focus heavily on Double Swing.
Druid
Companions are way more viable then ever, since they inherent 100% of player stats. This lets you scale yourself and them simultaneously. Also had a bug that resulted in a broken build around Hurricane, which also will likely be fixed.
Uniques and Aspects seems to try to make a full Shapeshifting archetype more viable, but hard to say if it’ll work out that way. There’s also a ring for Landslide which has a lot of potential to be very powerful depending on interactions.
Necromancer
Much like Druid Companions, Necro Minions are incredibly viable. They’re even worth considering slotting in for many builds now. They have better interactions with most builds, including Shadow Builds and even Bone Spear. New Uniques make Blight and Blood Surge Builds far more interesting for build potential. New Aspect adds more support for Shadow Minions.
Rogue
Still somehow the most balanced class, nothing that seemed to be exceptionally broken for them. New Uniques adds some interesting options to their kit, but hard to say how viable they will be just yet. New Uniques add more support for Traps and Grenades, as well as an alternative way to play Rapid Fire.
Sorcerer
Much like Druid and Necro, Sorc Conjurations are stronger as well. A lot of interesting options for build potential with the new Tempered Affixes giving many of their skills a chance to double-cast. This combined with their new amulet for Frozen Orb creates an interesting hybrid build. Incinerate has a new Aspect that also makes it a fair bit more viable.
