Diablo 4’s Season of Blood is a week away, and players have already been treated to some positive news and changes coming in the upcoming season. Now, just before the season kicks off, the developers have hosted another Campfire Chat livestream that detailed several major changes coming to the game in the upcoming season, specifically to the game’s classes and resistances.
We have all the details on what was revealed in this guide, including the new improvements to classes, damage types, resistances, and plenty of other gameplay and the upcoming patch 1.2.0.
Related: All Announcements from the October 4 Diablo 4 Developer Update Livestream
All Announcements From the October 10 Campfire Chat
The main points of this live stream were to go over changes to several aspects of the game, with the main points being elemental resistances, Unique changes, class improvements, and damage-type updates, all of which were detailed in the stream, and aimed to make classes and the many aspects of them more fun, rewarding, and easier to tweak and adjust going forward.
Elemental Resistances
Resistances will now be additive instead of multiplicative, so they will now add together, meaning if you have 20% resistance in poison, and get another 20%, it will be 40% resistance and resistances will be capped at 70% and some effects can take it up to 85%. Additionally, armor will only affect physical damage now, and rings and amulets will now have all resistances along with a random extra one on top of that. The aim is to make sure players don’t fall behind, have ways to have some form of resistance, and make it more of a puzzle and fun to get it and make you feel more powerful. Because of this, elixirs have also been reworked to complement these changes, and gear and the Paragon system will play a bigger part in how you gain resistances.
New and Reworked Unique Items
Uniques have been tweaked to make them more exciting to get and work towards and as a part of that, every unique has been reworked. This includes some rather big changes. which are:
- Uniques will now have their own unique stats that cannot be found anywhere else in the games.
- Uniques will roll much higher stats and have larger ranges than normal gear.
- Many unique effects have been simplified and tweaked so they can proc more often and be more useful.
Because of these changes, many Uniques will be getting changes which will be detailed in the patch notes, including certain stats and their effects.
There will also be some new Uniques coming in Season of Blood, including Flickerstep for all classes, Scoundrels Leathers for the Rogue, and Dolmen Stone for Druid
They also revealed which of the new bosses will have which Unique items, so now players will know exactly which boss to hunt down and defeat in order to get the Uniques they want. This comes back to the target farming that the developers have been making a big point about for the upcoming season, which will also be detailed in the patch notes.
Class Adjustments and Tweaks
Now we get to one of the main points of the stream and biggest points, class changes. These are aimed at targeting pain points for each class, as well as some specific aspects of classes to bring builds more in line, offer more ways for players to play, and balance out some unintended results from builds and certain design choices. We have detailed some of these in this section, but the full breakdown will be in the upcoming patch notes.
Some of the main changes include Barbarians Paragon Baords getting some reworks, Sorcerers getting a few spell changes, including Incinerate and Enhanced Frozen Orb, as well as some paragon Glyphs,
Rogues aren’t getting a lot of changes compared to others, but the main one involves the Basic Skills, which will all be getting some buffs to bring them up and make them more competitive with Punture, a current favorite for the class, and Impetus, which will have a slight reduction to its distance but will now increase the damage of your next non-basic attack. The druid has also only seen a few tweaks, including the Ravens and Rabies moves, which will see hefty buffs to their damage and other aspects.
Necromancer minions will be getting buffs, including to Deaths Defense and to all active damage from the minions, including a 100% increase for the Golem, and many Paragon Glyphs will also get some damage value increases.
Damage Types
There have also been major changes to the damage buckets, particularly Critical Damage, Vulnerable, and Overpower, which will now be different damage buckets, meaning mixing them will give multiplicative damage bonuses, but will now be capped per type. So, Vulnerable will be capped at x20%, Critical Damage will be at x50%, and Overpower at x50%.
As for the overall impact that will have, mixing damage types will no longer be the only way to get the most powerful builds, it’s less required than it has been before, and with other changes, the idea is that players should and will be more rewarded for pursuing specific damage buckets. As a result, this may reduce some damage scaling for players, but as monster power is adjusted too, this will account for any changes like this and even out. Additionally, it does not make pursuing builds with multiple damage types worthless or weak but brings them more in line with others, which will see them all buffed and tweaked thanks to these and other changes, as well as make finding and adding to these builds with other types through different means a more rewarding expereince.
Related: When Does Diablo 4 Season of Blood Begin?
On top of these, more multiplicative stats will now be added to gear, Aspects, and Paragon nodes, which will not only compensate for it being less involved with your class builds, but also give players more control over how and if they want these bonuses, how they can use and unlock them, and make them a bit more interesting to work with the other changes to damage, classes, and damage types.
Extra Bits and Patch 1.2.1
In addition to all the mentioned changes, there were a few details shared at the end of the live stream, namely that there will also be 2 new Paragon Glyphs per class, and some patch 1.2.1 details, including the addition of training dummies so you can practice your builds and test new skills, and they will finally be adding in a full reset option for Paragon Boards, so it no longer will it take ages to reset and resort your Paragon Boards.
Published: Oct 10, 2023 03:01 pm