“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
-Albert Einstein
Sorry for the random quote, but it feels very applicable to Diablo 4 with the Season 2 Campfire chat that just ended. In the roughly 1 hour and 15-minute stream, the Diablo team highlighted all the big changes coming to the ARPG with the launch of Season 2, Season of Blood.
I have to say, I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve seen from this devstream and last weeks. While the previous stream focused on the new content coming with Season 2, today’s instead highlighted the bigger core changes coming to Diablo 4 including class changes, quality-of-life updates, and more. I’m not willing to bet the house just yet. But, I will say this: Diablo 4 Season 2 looks promising, and I will be giving it a try. Here is a full recap of the Diablo 4 Season 2 Campfire Chat.
Diablo 4 Season 2 Campfire Chat recap
The first topic was a rework of Elemental Resistances. First and foremost, they will now be Additive instead of Multiplicative. This works very similarly to Path of Exile, which honestly handles resistances pretty well, so this is a good thing. Elemental Resistances will have a base cap of 70%, with item effects that can increase the cap to 85%. With things being Additive, you will have a clear picture of where your defenses hold up. If you currently have 20% Fire Resistance, and equip an item that gives 10% Fire Resistance, you now have 30%. It’s that easy.
As part of the change, Rings and Amulets will have All Resistance modifiers, making it easier to cap all of your resistances. You’ll still have to utilize other gear, your Paragon Board and Skill Tree to get the rest of your specific resistances.
This is a good change all around. It will make it easier to understand where exactly your defensive capabilities lie, while also giving a direction solution for increasing your survivability.
According to Blizzard, as long as players update their Rings and Amulets they should not fall behind on resistances. Players should be able to hit the base cap of 70% around Level 80.
Unique Items rework
Nearly every Unique Item in Diablo 4 has been updated to a new system. Under this new system, Unique Items will have stats that don’t exist anywhere. Blizzard provided a fake example just so we could have an idea of what to expect. In the example, an item could have “Increased Tornado Duration”. Once again, this isn’t a real stat, but shows that the Unique Item stats are truly unique.
Also, the stat ranges for Unique Items have been increased. This will make it so there’s more variability when a Unique Item drops. It will still always be a good thing, but you may be tempted to keep farming for a better one. Alongside these changes, you can now also target-farm specific Unique Items. Each of the new bosses coming in Season 2 has their own Unique Item drop table, with a much higher drop rate than currently exists for Unique Items.
Finally, Unique Items can override existing slot rules. For example, weapons cannot typically have the Cooldown Reduction stat.
Class Buffs
Every class has been buffed, which I think we can all agree was needed. Season 1 just felt slow, like we were being intentionally handicapped from becoming powerful. According to Blizzard there was a few situations they targeted with these buffs.
First is builds and playstyles that dramatically outperformed others. Blizzard wants players to be able to have diverse build viability, and not feel like they have to play one or two specific ones. Next, they aimed to fix unintended interactions that created some extreme outliers. Situations like this OP Rend Bleed build. Finally, they wanted to change certain builds that had the potential for infinite power scaling.
Of course, with such sweeping changes, the team made it aware that they might have to make adjustments on the fly if some builds end up way overperforming with the changes.
The full patch notes are supposed to drop any minute now, but based on the examples on the Devstream here are some highlights I could see:
Berserking bonus damage for Barbaisn is now multiplicative instead of additive (more damage). For Sorcerers, Incinerate will now ramp up faster, and Enhanced Frozen Orb grants additional explosion damage to Elites. As a Necromancer, the Death’s Defense passive is now baseline and does not require a skill point. The damage of golems has been increased across the board, and most Minion Paragon Damage nodes have had their values increased.
We’ll have to wait to see the full patch notes, but at a glance, it all seems like quality changes to make each class more fun and viable.
Damage Buckets, and New Paragon Glyphs
Critical Strike, Vulnerable, and Overpower will now have all their multiplicative damage bonuses capped. Vulnerable will have a cap of x20%, while Crit Damage and Overpower Damage will cap at x50%. Once you reach that cap, they will instead gain additive extra bonus damage. According to Blizzard, Overpower has also been reworked to be much better now.
The goal of these changes is to reward players for investing in a primary damage vector. Monsters are also being tuned a bit to fit appropriately with the new caps and changes.
As such, more Multiplicative stats have also been added to gear, Paragon Nodes, and Aspects. This will give more options to build a specific damage bonus type.
Lastly, each class will be getting two new Paragon Glyphs.
As you can see, there are a plethora of fundamental changes coming to Diablo 4 with Season of Blood. From all that I have seen, these are good changes. I’m cautiously optimistic that this is going to be a good season, of course as long as the seasonal content is fun. Only time will tell, but things definitely appear to be headed in the right direction, at least.
Oh, and a Training Dummy is being added to Kyovashda in patch 1.2.1.
Diablo 4 Season 2, Season of Blood launches on October 17 on all platforms.
