Season 2 Campfire Chat Wrap Up!

The Diablo 4 Season 2 Campfire Chat just took place. The panel consisting of Charles Dunn (Associate Game Designer, Class), Adam Jackson (Lead Class Designer) and Adam Fletcher (Associate Director of Community) discussed Season 2 (Season of Blood), major class balancing, Q&A, along with last minute details before Season 2 goes live on Tuesday, October 17th @ 10 AM (PDT). See all the major points below.

Goals with Season of Blood

The Dev Team talked about how they have five main goals for approaching improvements in Season 2 / Season of Blood.

Updated Elemental Resistances

The Dev Team wants to make sure Resistances feel impactful and wanted by the player. In Season 1 Resistances are calculated with inverse multiplicative scaling, essentially you take all your Resistances and multiply them against each other. This means you have higher diminishing returns the more sources, and more of that stat you have.

Going into Season 2, they will be additive. This mean that all sources will just be added together, giving you more use out of your Resistances. Resistances will be capped at 70% however, with certain ways allowing you to reach 85%.

A note on Armor. Armor previously mitigated both Physical and Elemental damage. It will only resist Physical Damage now. We will be able to find All Resistance on Rings and Amulets. Other sources can come from gear, Paragon Boards, The Skill Tree, etc.

With all these changes, Resistances in Season 2 and beyond will be a complex puzzle to solve, but not an impossible one. The Dev Team made sure that reaching cap, while not easy, is not only for the min/maxers.

Make Uniques More Impactful/Exciting

Right now Uniques don't feel too exciting even if they have a good build tied to them. Most of the Uniques in the game have been updated this patch to ensure they are more desirable and useful. The Dev Team is using a new 4-fold strategy when it comes to fixing/making Uniques.

Some examples of the changes they have made:

Three examples of new Uniques coming in Season 2:

Loot Tables for the new End Game Bosses coming in Season 2. Remember, they are a permanent part of the game:

Class Improvements to Address Common Issues

Many quality of life improvements are coming in Season 2. One general change is that Fortify will now be based on your Maximum Life now (formerly Base Life), allowing you to get more out of it. The team reiterated that during Season 1 they recognized the strength of certain stats/builds/mechanics. They are taking a new approach with Season 2 and beyond to make sure they bring overperforming items back in line.

Barbarian

Adjustments

Barbarians Supreme Wrath of the Berserker maximum damage bonus is being capped at 100% now.

Positive Changes

• Barbarian Paragon Boards feel weak. This will be looked at.
• Berserking's Bonus damage is now multiplicative instead of additive.
• Aspect of Ancestral Force now grants bonus damage to the quake and the base skill instead of having a separate damage range on quake.

Druid

Adjustments

The Druids Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast Critical Strike bonus is now capped at 200%.

Positive Changes

• The team felt Druids were in a pretty good place. Two key areas that are being looked at are Rabies and Ravens.
• Rabies damage is getting a buff along with the baseline spread speed from the Natural Rabies (50% of it) baseline to.
• Ravens passive and active damage being increased by a lot. A small increase in the Critical Hit Chance from Enhanced Ravens is coming too.

Editor's Note: It was mentioned during the Necromancer section that all minions in the game will not take any more than 30% of their Maximum Life in a single hit.

Necromancer

Adjustments

For the Necormancer, a predictable nerf to Ossified Essence is coming to bring it more inline with other Key Passives. The Bone Graft Legendary Node Essence per stack is also being reduced.

Positive Changes

• The Death's Defense Passive is now baseline giving huge defensive buff to your Minions. The Passive was said to be reworked to give more defensive value if you still want to take it. Golem was improved almost across the board in all its variations and many Minion Paragon Board Damage Nodes have been increased as well.
• Coldbringer's Aspect works with any Skeletal Mage instead of just Cold Skeleton Mage.
• The "... Inherit Thorns" affix per Minion type have been unified into one affix called Minions Inherit Thorns Affix.
• Shields now have Armor.

Rogue

Positive Changes

The team felt Rogues were in a pretty good place. The one area they could identify that could use some improvement was in Basic Skills. Puncture is widely used and wanted to bring Blade Shift, Heartseeker and Forceful Arrow in line through buffs.

There was also an update to improve the Impetus Passive.

Sorcerer

Positive Changes

• Incinerate's ramp-up time has been reduced to 2 seconds from 4 seconds, with the total damage being the same.
• Enhanced Frozen Orb now grants additional explosion against Elites.
• Winter and Electrocute Paragon Glyphs now have practical use on the Paragon Board.

Update Damage Buckets

In Season 1, Overpower, Vulnerable and Crit Damage were separate buckets, meaning they would multiply together for a lot of damage. Making them the best stats to use across the game. This held back other stats and builds back.

In Season 2, they will are still separate, but there is a cap to how much each can contribute. The many changes made for Season 2 are with this in mind to ensure that you will be able to do the same if not more damage, but no longer totally reliant on these stats to free up affix slots on gear. Ultimately, they want to bring underperforming builds up to the powerful builds, then balance monster power around that for a more strategic way of balancing the game.

Make Our Changes A Bonus

The team acknowledges that if they just did the Critical Strike Damage and Vulnerable stat changes, it could be seen as being a negative. That is why they felt they needed to update other areas of the game to make sure these changes are a net positive for the player.

They do want to give players power scaling, but in different ways, so it doesn't breed the same outcome that exists in the game right now. This will still provide multiplicative power but linked to specific class mechanics/Paragon/etc.

Patch 1.21

Coming out during Season 2, some time before BlizzCon (November 3rd/4th). A Training Dummy will be added in Kyovashad that will allow players to practice against different types of enemies. Also, A "Reset All" will be added for Paragon Boards. More additions and information are coming throughout Season 2.

Community Questions

There are definitely skill that aren't performing compared to others. We want to take this as a case-by-case basis. We have learned a lot since release, but we don't mind if a particular skill fills a niche. It's something we are always looking at.

No, channeling skills will not Overpower as it would breed a player behavior of "fishing" for Overpower procs.

Stay tuned to BlizzCon.

Always looking at bringing more for the future.

No, the new End Game Bosses are just a way to target them - not the only way.

From a design perspective, they made sure that the overall resistance caps would be achievable and not something you had to truly min/max to get to. They didn't want the update to be too burdensome, which these classes would excel at. The team doesn't expect too much of a class discrepancy come season release.

The team hasn't fully resolved the typical Barbarian builds using all their shouts (or Sorcerers with their Defensive Skills). They are aware and want to look into them.

Yes, with new Glyphs coming this season, they have more design space to do this.

No, just from enemies to the player.

Getting the Forges Hot for Season 2!

With the absolute massive amount of changes coming to the game, you can rest assured that the Maxroll Diablo 4 Team will update any and all guides to make your Season 2 a successful one!

If you haven't already, head over to our Discord and select the D4 role in #roles to stay up to date with our content development.

Written by: Dredscythe

Reviewed by: Tenkiei