Maxroll Season of Witchcraft Thoughts
Season 7: Season of Witchcraft and the patch 2.1 will be released in a few days! With that in mind, it's time for the Maxroll Team to share their Season of Witchcraft thoughts, findings and feedback! Our tier lists have been updated yesterday and all of our guides will be updated before Season 7 release! Stay tuned!
Barbarian
Be on high alert and ready to take shelter heading into Season 7, because the Barbarian just got some explosive buffs (quite literally in some cases) to all things Earthquake-related. The newly introduced Mantle of Mountain's Fury is at the epicenter of the seismic disturbance, turning Hammer of the Ancients into an Earth-splitting weapon of mass destruction that delivers carnage unparalleled by anything else in the Barbarian's arsenal. By many magnitudes, "HotaQuake" is the build of the season for pretty much any content in the game.
Earthquakes aren't limited to this specific archetype however; Whirlwind, Double Swing, and even Rupture are all able to utilize this newfound power to bolster their offenses due to the reworked Heavy Hitter being readily available via weapon tempers, as well as supporting Aspects such as Executioner's and Incendiary Fissures.
Our beloved Overpower-based builds, most notably our reigning champion Mighty Throw, are still in a great spot too - in fact, better in all cases due to the addition of Witchcraft powers. Bash, Thorns, and Bleed builds such as Rend are still lagging behind a bit but aren't dead by any means - if you're looking to play something off-meta, these are all perfectly viable. Aside from that, we'll be looking into exploring even more playstyles in the coming weeks. Iron Maelstrom? Power Kick? Minion Barb? These are all on the radar, so stay tuned!
— Snail
Druid
For Druids, Ultimate skills reign supreme in Season 7! Between new Aspects like Apogeic Furor and Vehement Brawler's and extremely favorable Witchcraft Power and Occult Gem combinations, they're off to a pretty good start. Add in a massive multiplier from the reworked Ancestral Guidance and things like Lacerate's Rank 5 multiplier or Runeworker's Conduit functioning as a multiplier for Cataclysm, and it's pretty easy to see why they've risen to the top.
Not a fan of ultimates? No big deal. Boulder can now be cast while moving, Blurred Beast gets a significant buff, Wolves now have Lucky Hit chance and the tags granted by Alpha and Storm's Companion are fully functional, Heightened Malice and Obsidian Slam have been reworked to more consistently apply their bonuses... all in all, Druids are eating great this season. There's no wrong choice and all of our builds are expected to clear upwards of Tier 100.
— Boiler
Sorcerer
Nearly every Sorcerer build has been hit by the removal of Conjuration Mastery and Devouring Blaze. However it's not all that bad, because for most of them the buffs to our other passives and paragon nodes more than compensate for the lost damage. As a net result, most builds become stronger and move closer to the power level of Lightning Spear (which received about 100 different changes and bugfixes but should stay roughly as strong as it was last season). On top of that, we are no longer forced to go Burning and Conjurations on every build, so they can actually use slightly different skills now!
The only unfortunate victim of this big rebalance is the Frozen Orb build. Its main Unique no longer supports the skill itself, so the build gets into a weird spot where the Frozen Orb itself is just a vehicle to create Lightning Spears and it's worse at it than Unstable Currents. Luckily for the Orb enjoyers, there's a way to play Frozen Orb without using Frozen Orb: Ball Lightning with Strike of Stormhorn offers nearly identical gameplay experience, except your orb is slighty darker shade of blue.
— Northwar
Necromancer
Welcome to the Season of the Necromancer! Shadow Blood Wave was already a top tier build, and in the PTR the added scaling for Rank 5 Ultimates blew the roof off pit push ability. Even after the balance patch, Blood Wave will easily clear tier 150 Pit and eventually speed farm it.
But this isn't a one build show. With the addition of Indira's Memory, Bone Spear splashes back into the S tier. With Bone Spear becoming a Blood skill and auto-Overpowering with Bone Duster's, it's become the strongest Blood Core Skill we've ever seen.
But what about non-Blood builds? Well it turns out, even our "weakest" build will be able to clear Pit tier 100. So whether it's the hugely buffed Blight build, newly refurbished Minions or anything in between, you won't go wrong on the Necro class.
Rogue
Shadow Clown is no more. We now truly have a worthy Shadow Clone! It's fixed, buffed and no longer serves as a gimmick for Unstoppable. With it actually working, it will find its way into many builds! Ultimates in general have been tremendously buffed, which is why we also see Death Trap and Rain of Arrows rising up.
Remember the glorious days of Poison Twisting Blades Rogue in Seasons 1 and 2? These are back on the menu, with a lot of amazing, stackable buffs to Twisting Blades. Some of Witchcraft Powers slot excellently into the build and due to its high mobility, high sustained dps and tankiness, Twisting Blades is looking to rise back to the apex. The true Jack Of All Trades is back!
But if Melee is not your thing, Rain of Arrows received massive buffs as well and can clear screens worth of monsters in no time! So if you want to darken the Skies, this might be the build for you! Rapid Fire is still performing outstandingly well and the staples of Barrage, Heartseeker and Flurry firmly hold the middle ranks.
Season 6's fan favourite Rogue Build, Dance of Knives has received a few bug fixes, which unfortunately hampered its overall performance. It's still going to be a great Torment 4 farmer and slaying Infernal Hordes will still be fast, but it's endgame pushing potential has weakened a lot unless some new, groundbreaking discoveries are made.
But if you like to go extra fast, Shadow Step featuring the new Boots Assassin's Stride is the zoom-zoom build for you. Constantly teleporting around and clearing dungeons at nauseating speeds is the name of the game for this build. Overall, Rogue is eating very well in Season 7.
— M1PY
Spiritborn
The Spiritborn were crazy during Season 6 thanks to several bugs that the class launched with making it x1000 or more stronger than the rest of the pack (we even made a S+ tier on our tier list just for Spiritborn!). Main offenders were bugs with Viscous Shield, Jaguar, Fell Soothsayer's, infinite block stacking with Redirected Force + Interdiction + Max. Resolve tempers causing several damage multipliers to scale completely out of control. All of these bugs have now been fixed and the class received little other changes besides a noteworthy nerf to Rod of Kepeleke, which is now going to be much less frequently included in builds.
All in all, the Spiritborn are still looking solid thanks to their well-rounded kit and high mobility, but the feeling of being an untouchable god that destroys the highest pit tiers with the click of a button won't return. For Season 7, we expect them to land in the middle of the pack, retaining most of their existing playstyles but at a much weaker power level compared to before.
— Wudijo
What's Next?
We hope you enjoy the Season of Hatred Rising and the Vessel of Hatred expansion with the aid of our Season 6 compendium update. Our focus for the start of Season 6 is to make sure our Build Guides are solid with all the new Item updates, new features and mechanic changes while following vrious Vessel of Hatred hotfixes. We're continuing to work on more updates for D4Planner!
With that said, head over to our Discord to stay up to date with our content development and to make the most of your Season 6 experience! Also don't forget to check out our Youtube channel!
Written by: Maxroll Team
