The Diablo team is hot today with information as they just released the Visions of Enmity Season 29 Preview! Per the usual, we learn the Seasonal Sets, Conquests, Patch Notes, etc. For the TL;DR, the Patch goes live September 12th with Season 29 starting the usual time on September 15th. For all the information, just read below.
Time unravels before your very eyes in Season 29 Visions of Enmity, which goes live on September 15 at 5 p.m. PDT/CET/KST. For an in-depth look at the seasonal theme, addition of the Solo Self Found single player mode, Paragon Ceiling changes, and quality-of-life updates, take a gander below.
What the Future Holds: A Message from the Diablo III Team
Valiant Nephalem have hack-and-slashed hordes through Seasons introducing gameplay-alerting themes, experience-defining quality-of-life updates, and hellastic events for the last 11 years. Diablo III will continue to burn bright in Season 29 and beyond—this Season sets the bedrock for the game’s future and introduces our final brand-new theme.
Season 30 will bring fresh gameplay balances and bug fixes to reinvigorate your adventures but introduce no new theme. Instead, this Season will usher in the permanent return of a community-favorite theme, Rites of Sanctuary, which will be playable across all modes. Following Season 30, iconic themes and features from Seasons past will be reintroduced roughly every 3 months, ensuring there will never be a shortage of twisted obstacles to overcome and demonic blood to spill.
Season 29 Theme
There it is. Out of thin air it appeared, flashing a welcoming gleam accompanied by a whirring hum...and yet it vanished as quickly as it arrived. This isn’t the first portal you’ve encountered before, Nephalem, but is it innocuous in nature or a ploy by your adversaries? There is only one way to be certain: muster the courage to step into the unknown. Temper both your body and mind to blossom into an unrelenting force.
Season 29 introduces the new theme Visions of Enmity. Curious portals known as Diabolical Fissures have sprung up across Sanctuary’s wilderness, and entering them triggers both dangerous memories from your past, and even more dangerous emissaries of Hell to slaughter.
Season Cosmetic Rewards
Long-forgotten treasures see daylight once more in Season 29. Let the Old Growth pet extend you a branch of fortitude in these uncertain times, ride the cosmos using the Galactic Wings, and steep yourself in mythos with the Greyhollow portrait.
Two new End of Journey cosmetic rewards will drop into Sanctuary with Season 29 as well. Soar through the darkness with the majestic Quoth pet at your side, and proudly display your allegiance to Leoric with the Mad King’s Favor portrait.
Seasonal Conquest
Feast your eyes on returning Seasonal Conquest challenges! Do you have enough fire in your heart to complete them all?
- Avarice: Complete a 50 million Gold streak while outside of The Vault and The Inner Sanctum.
- Avaritia: Complete a 50 million Gold streak while outside of The Vault and The Inner Sanctum in Hardcore mode.
- Dynasty: Reach Greater Rift Level 55 Solo with the full bonuses of six of the following Clan Sets in Hardcore mode.
- Masters of Sets: Master 8 of the following Set Dungeons in Hardcore mode.
- Masters of the Universe: Master 8 of the following Set Dungeons.
- Speed Racer: Complete Acts I through V at max Level in under 1 hour in Hardcore mode.
- Sprinter: Complete Acts I through V at max Level in under 1 hour.
- Super Human: Reach Greater Rift Level 45 Solo without any Set Items equipped in Hardcore Mode.
- The Thrill: Reach Greater Rift Level 45 Solo without any Set Items equipped.
- Years of War: Reach Greater Rift 55 Solo with the full bonuses of six of the following Clan Sets.
Haedrig's Gift
It’s that time again! The Class Sets rewarded for completing certain chapters of the Season Journey, courtesy of Haedrig’s Gift, have rotated once more.
Completing Chapters II, III, and IV of the Season Journey will reward you with three of Haedrig’s Gifts. Each Gift contains a few pieces from one of your Class Sets. Players can only unlock 1 Class Set in this manner per Season across Hardcore and Non-Hardcore, so choose wisely.
The set you receive depends on the Class of the character you’re playing when you open each Haedrig’s Gift. To collect a full Class Set, you’ll need to open all three on the same character.
The sets granted by Haedrig’s Gift in Season 29 are:
- Barbarian: Might of the Earth
- Crusader: Thorns of the Invoker
- Demon Hunter: The Shadow’s Mantle
- Monk: Monkey King’s Garb
- Necromancer: Grace of Inarius
- Witch Doctor: Raiment of the Jade Harvester
- Wizard: Firebird’s Finery
Patch Notes
Below you’ll find patch notes for the upcoming update to Diablo III: Patch 2.7.6. It goes live on September 12.
Note: All changes apply to all versions of Diablo III, including PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC unless otherwise indicated.
Solo Self Found
Demon slayers seeking to up the intensity of their journey through Sanctuary can try out the new Solo Self Found mode. In this mode, you’ll only have yourself to rely on to overcome the hordes from Hell. That’s right, it’s a single player experience. If you’d like to up the ante even more, a Hardcore version of this mode is available.
We decided to bring Solo Self Found, an officially supported single player mode, to Diablo III. Without the experience bonus from being in a Party, or other players to protect your back as you carve through demonic legions, this mode will test you. To celebrate the accomplishments of those brave enough to roll a character in this mode, we have also created specific Leaderboards for Solo Self Found, which function like those for other modes.
To create a character in Solo Self Found, select the Solo Hero option in the character creation screen. You’ll still be able to play the Campaign and Adventure Mode just as you would in other modes, but only the Private Game option will be available to use. Challenge Rifts can be completed with a Party while the mode is seasonal. Solo Self Found is a solitary journey, so you will be unable to start this mode while in a Party or access Multiplayer aspects of Diablo III, such as trading. Rebirthing is available for Solo Self Found.
The Season 29 Visions of Enmity theme and the other components of Patch 2.7.6 were designed with Solo Self Found in mind. Please let us know your thoughts—we encourage feedback about your experience.
Season 29 Visions of Enmity
The nefarious machinations of the Burning Hells have permeated every corner of Sanctuary, warping reality in the process. This disturbance has given way to Visions of Enmity, pocket dimensions accessed by stepping through Diabolical Fissures.
Nephalem Level 1 or higher have a chance at encountering a Diabolical Fissure by slaying demons in the open world. Should your smiting of hellspawn trigger a Fissure, press onward into a Vision of Enmity—what horrors await on the other side are unknown, but these instances are rich in rewards. The Visions are quite unstable and have the potential to produce additional Fissures after enemies are dispatched inside—keep an eye out for these opportunities to maximize your chance of earning useful gear.
New Monster Affixes
Watch your health, Nephalem! New powers originating from the Burning Hells have been bestowed upon all enemies inside the Visions, making them more lethal than before. These Affixes are only available in Visions of Enmity.
- Enervating: Creates an area of effect around the monster that reduces the player’s Movement Speed by 65% and Cooldown Reduction by 50% if the player is in the vicinity of the monster.
- Necrotic: The player's healing is reduced by 65%. Monsters have a damage-over-time effect that deals 180% of the player’s max health over 30 seconds. This effect is removed if the player is healed above 95%.
Paragon Ceiling
We are introducing changes to Paragon Points to work in tandem with Solo Self Found and the Season 29 theme. You can now assign a total of 800 Paragon Points to your solo Self Found character. Previously, you were only able to assign a total of 50 Paragon Points to each attribute within the Core, Defense, Offense, and Utility categories, but now you can assign up to 200 in each attribute. Each category can only have 200 Paragon Points placed into them.
This change is exclusive to Season 29.
Developer's Note:We understand that Paragon was king in terms of character power. With the change this Season, we wanted to shift that power from Main Stat grinding to gameplay knowledge and gear hunting. We chose 800 as our initial starting point and would appreciate your feedback on this cap. There are a few changes within the Paragon system to keep in mind:
- Movement Speed: We changed Movement Speed to 0.125% per point because the old value would have provided players with 100% Movement Speed, which was too much. Players now have the option to place points into this stat, allowing them to surpass 25% Movement Speed from item bonuses.
-Area Damage: Area Damage should perform the same, if not a bit better, and with substantial improvements to performance.
Community-led Changes
With each Patch and Season, the community has communicated quality-of-life improvements they would like to see added to Diablo III. We always take the time to review and evaluate the feedback we receive, and implement changes that align with our design principles for the game. Below is a series of highly requested quality of life updates that are included in the Patch 2.7.6 PTR. Thank you for your continued feedback over the years!
Orek’s Dream
- Dark Berserker (Monster Set 1) and Toxic Lurker (Monster Set 8) have been removed. Hellions (Monster Set 19), Vile Swarm (Monster Set 23), and Savage Beast (Monster Set 33) have been added in their place.
Monk
- Added a buff icon when proccing the legendary item Flying Dragon.
- Moving your mouse underneath the character while casting Tempest Rush Flurry stacks should no longer reset randomly.
Necromancer
- Haunted Visions used to remove Skeletal Mages from the Simulacrums only if the player had Grim Scythe on their action bar, now it will remove Skeletal Mages regardless.
- Requiem Cereplate was not calculating the correct amount of Essence and was adding way too much overflow excess Essence per tick. This has been fixed.
Miscellaneous
- Removed Mastermind from the Champion portion of the seasonal journey. This means you no longer need to master a Set Dungeon. Instead, it has been replaced with Overcoming the Trials, which asks you to complete an Echoing Nightmare.
- Due to the unique animation of how Hamelin dies, there were many issues with how it rewards kill credit. Hamelin now rewards kill credit to the closest player on death.
- Corrupted Angels and all variations would sometimes do an attack that does double damage without any indication that it was a unique move. This has been changed to deal the same damage as normal attacks.
- Added Greater Rift map checkpoints to Battlefields and Boneyards.
- Corvus, Ice Caves, and Spider Caves maps can no longer spawn in Greater Rifts.
- Orek's Dream versions of Desolate Sands and Shrouded Moors have had their monster densities increased.
Class Balance Changes
The Patch 2.7.6 PTR introduces various balance changes for the Crusader, Demon Hunter, and Witch Doctor classes. We can’t wait to see how certain builds change for each Class because of these adjustments. For reference, the text in red font denotes the old effect description, while green font denotes the new effect description.
Crusader
- Akkhan's Leniency:
- Each enemy hit by your Blessed Shield increases the damage of your Blessed Shield by 35-40% for 3 seconds.
- Each enemy hit by your Blessed Shield increases the damage of your Blessed Shield by 35-40% for 6 seconds. Stacks up to 100 times (No more individual stacks).
- Vigilante Belt:
- No previous bonus.
- While riding your war horse, Fist of the Heavens deals increased damage equal to your movement speed, and is automatically called down on a random nearby enemy at an interval based on your attack speed if it is on your action bar.
Demon Hunter
- Gears of Dreadlands:
- Gain 4 seconds of Momentum when attacking with a Primary skill, at a maximum duration of 20 seconds. Your Primary skills deal 10% increased damage per second of Momentum.
- Gain 4 seconds of Momentum when attacking with a Primary skill, at a maximum duration of 20 seconds. This duration begins counting down after a delay of 5 seconds after each application. Your Primary skills deal 10% increased damage per second of Momentum.
Developer's Note: We wanted Gears of Dreadlands to be easier to play optimally, and had to forego the visual indicator that showed stacks.
Witch Doctor
- Cluckeye:
- 25-50% chance to cluck when attacking.
- Casting Hex - Angry Chicken turns all your pets into exploding chickens. Chickens deal 150-200% increased damage, and Angry Chicken deals 50% more damage per exploded chicken.
- Cluckeye now only drops for Witch Doctors.
- As a result, Cluckeye no longer spawns with the Max Discipline secondary attribute.
- Cluckeye has been updated in Djank Mi’em’s Follower Items bag.
- Manajuma's Way:
- Your Hex - Angry Chicken lasts 15 seconds and movement speed as a chicken is increased by an additional 100%.
- While you are an angry chicken, you spawn a chicken every second that seeks enemies and deals 25% of your Angry Chicken explosion damage.
- Your Hex - Angry Chicken lasts 15 seconds and movement speed as a chicken is increased by an additional 100% while gaining 75% damage reduction and for 5 seconds after.
- While you are an angry chicken, you spawn a chicken every half second that seeks enemies and deals 100% of your Angry Chicken explosion damage.
Bug Fixes
Diabolical Fissures
- Diabolical Fissures now denote on screen and in the chat box once spawned.
- Diabolical Fissures can no longer spawn in Greed's Realm.
- The placeholder text for the Chest at the end of a Diabolical Fissure has been replaced with a name.
- Slightly increased the number of Greater Rift keys that can potentially drop inside a Diabolical Fissure.
- Fixed the collision on Diabolical Chests and removed the collision that was present upon opening them.
Gameplay
- Fixed an issue where the Witch Doctor’s Angry Chicken skill was not dealing as much damage as indicated in the description.
Stability
- Fixed a crash that could occur when players opened achievements.
- Fixed an issue where interacting with Mail at the end of a Season had the potential to cause a crash.
- Fixed a game crash that occurred when Demon Hunters utilized specific Item and Skill combinations.
UI
- Fixed an issue where the number of Wizard Mirror Images were barely visible on the game icon.
- Fixed an issue with some icons in the Altar of Rites having hard edges.
May the Diabolical Fissures provide you with powerful boons!
-The Diablo III Development Team
Join Us for Season 29!
We hope you are just as excited as we are for Visions of Enmity and season 29 as a whole! If you haven't already, head over to our Discord and select the D3 role in #roles to stay up to date with our content development.
Written by: Dredscythe