What’s coming to Diablo 4 in Season 9: May 2025 Campfire Chat Recap

With the recently concluded Diablo 4 Campfire Chat, we were given a look at what’s coming in Season 9: Sins of the Horadrim.

Season 9 PTR

The Season 9 PTR will run from Tuesday, May 27, at 10 AM PST until June 3. This means this PTR will last for the standard week duration.

As always, the Diablo 4 PTR is only available on PC, via the Battle.net client. This can be accessed by selecting the Public Test Realm in the Server selection dropdown before launching the game.

New Content: Dungeon Escalation

Dungeon Escalation is a new Endgame Activity coming with Season 9 and aims to enhance Nightmare Dungeons. This includes adjustments to Affixes, as well as some seasonal additions and gameplay variety.

Hoardric Strongrooms are mini-dungeons within a Nightmare Dungeon. These utilize some of the scoring mechanics of The Gauntlet and the Attunement System of the Kurast Undercity to determine their rewards

Escalating Nightmares are special Sigils that only drop from Horadric Strongrooms, and throw us into a series of Nightmare dungeons, ultimately culminating in a Boss Encounter, in this case, Astaroth.

Astaroth has been updated from his original encounter to be more challenging. He will only be able to be challenged via Escalating Nightmares, and will not be immediately joining the Boss Ladder.

Seasonal Powers: Horadric Spells

Horadic Spells are the new Seasonal Power for Season 9. These are highly customizable powers made of three parts: A Catalyst, an Infusion, and up to 3 Arcana.

A Catalyst is the main part of a spell, that determines how it deals damage and applies other effects. This can be bound to any skill on our Action Bar, which determines where it will activate. Catalysts have a cooldown that decreases with rank, allowing it to be triggered more frequently.

An Infusion will determine the damage type of the Catalyst Skills. This damage also is empowered by Damage Increases, for instance, Bonuses to Cold Damage will still apply to the Fire Infusion.

Each of these Infusions has special effects that change how they interact in Combat, from dealing extra damage, applying Statuses, and at higher ranks, even disabling Monster Affixes. Sounds incredibly useful for a season focused on Nightmare Dungeons.

Arcana are smaller modifiers that can be applied to the Catalyst Power. Up to three of these can be applied at any time, and come in rarities from Magic to Legendary. Thee can affect various aspects of the Spell like its Area of Effects, granting Unstoppable or even granting specialized effects in the case of Legendary Arcana.

Additionally, there are Horadric Jewels, which can empower us as well as our Horadric Spells.

System Changes

Seasonal Systems are getting adjusted. Seasonal Reputation will always be granted Elites and Bosses as the main source of Seasonal Reputation. Lair Hoards will be a permanent way to get Seasonal Currency. These are in addition to any other ways the Season provides to earn these resources.

Nightmare Dungeon Affixes are getting reworked, with many new positive Affixes being added, akin to the EXP or Gold bonuses ones that already exist. The Negative Nightmare Affixes no longer nerf builds and instead lean more towards the more passive. Additionally, Nightmare Dungeons can now be teleported to from inside another nightmare Dungeon.

Increased Item Quality per Torment Difficulty, or rather higher Ancestral Drop Rates, as well as higher chances for even better Ancestral Items.

Runes are getting some love, with Legendary Runes becoming a bit more common. Additionally, Kurast Undercity always drops a rune, with Tributes of Harmony dropping even more Runes.

Whisper Caches are getting buffed to provide more resources. The Jewelry Crafting Caches are now cheaper and provide more items. Infernal Hordes will also provide more Gem Fragments to further improve the ability to craft these caches.

Balance Changes

All Classes

Overpower is getting nerfed, primarily aimed at the Life and Fortify bonuses, cutting them down by roughly 80%. It will retain it’s same initial multiplier, and scaling with Gear, but.

Additive Damage is being rebalanced, allowing Affixes and Inherent Stat bonuses to be roughly equal across different values, like Vulnerable Damage, Critical Strike Damage, Overpower Damage, etc. This makes brings parity to the previously differing values.

Basic Skills are getting buffed, with many of them getting doubled or tripled in power. Items like Shard of Verathiel’s Unique Affix and similar damage increases will be tuned down to keep their power in line.

Baseline Maximum Resistance is being increased to 75%, with the upper cap remaining at 85%. In addition, Uniques like Yen’s Blessing, which were often used solely to solve Resistances, will be toned down to provide less resistances.

Key Passives are also being tuned, with many of the previously uncapped Key Passive effects getting capped to prevent outliers. Many currently underperforming Key Passive are also being buffed alongside this change to hopefully bring everything closer in line.

Barbarian

Barbarian’s Earthquakes have been tuned down, particularly to the Force of Nature Paragon Node. Many of their Legendary Paragon Bonuses are also being adjust to have less stacking effects, instead granting bonuses immediately without repeated triggers.

Hooves of the Mountain God are Unique Boots that empower basic Skills, allowing them to cleave and hit multiple enemies while at full Fury and lasts until Fury is depleted or skill is no longer held.

Druid

Druid’s Cataclysm is getting balanced, it’s keeping its snapshotting ability, but many of its bonuses are being brought down to bring it in line. Grizzly Rage is getting Buffed, with some reworked Legendary Aspects.

Rotting Lightbringer Unique creates a Poison Puddle when casting Pulverize. Casting Pulverize again deals the puddle’s full damage immediately to enemies within the puddle and around it.

Necromancer

Soul Rift is getting tuned down, losing some of its offensive and defensive power, shifting more toward it’s utility. Similarly Blood Wave is getting hit, mostly in the form of the Unique Pants being nerfed.

Hand of Naz Gloves empowers Skeletal Mages, increasing their damage and allowing them to teleport away when targeted. Further bonuses are applied for each other minion type Sacrificed.

Rogue

Death Trap is getting nerfed, mostly targeting the Eyes in the Dark Unique to bring its power in line. Legendary Aspects for Poison Trap are getting further buffs, to allow them to be more powerful. Eaglehorn is also getting buffed to provide a more powerful effect.

Deathmask of Nirmitruq allows Flurry to enter an overexerted state when casting without Energy, costing Health instead but becoming fast and heavily increasing its damage.

Sorcerer

Lightning Spear is getting hit again, this time with Splintering Energy taking the brunt of the nerf, as it not only made the Skill strong, but the sole focus of the build. To compensate, Lightning Spear itself is getting an increase in base damage.

Burning Skills have been adjusted, shifting more power to the base damage of these skills and away from the Combustion Key passive. Hydra has had its base Mana Cost removed, similar to the other Conjurations.

Ophidian Iris makes Hydra a Core Skill and summons a Hydra that summons a 3-headed Hydra that deals AoE damage, similar to Fireball. Every Hydra Head past three increases the Size and damage of the Hydra instead of adding another head.

Spiritborn

Razor Wings are getting buffed, including reworked Legendary Aspects. The Hunter Ultimate Skill is also adjusted to have its Resets be less Feast For Famine, offering more consistent and predictable Cooldown Reduction instead.

Balazan’s Maxtlatl Attacks against close enemies deal our Thorns Damage as Poisoning Damage. It further increases the Poison Damage for each time Thorns has been triggered in a short time up to 3 time.

QandA Summary