Season 5 Dev Livestream Wrap-Up

The Diablo 4 Development Team just had a livestream to reveal the Season 5 Patch Notes! Season 5 will start on August 6th! Learn everything about this dev update livestream with Maxroll! You can find the full Patch Notes here!

Season 5: Season of Infernal Hordes

The livestream starts with an amazing presentation of Season 5: Season of the Infernal Hordes!

Season 5 PTR Learnings

• Developers acknowledged that players need better tools to test out stuff instead of grinding.
• This was already improved from Season 4 PTR learnings with character boost.
• This will get better for the next PTR sessions.

Season 5 Infernal Hordes

• Infernal Hordes unlock at Torment III difficulty.
• In the Infernal Hordes, you will fight the Fel Council returning from Diablo II in order to get rewarded with your spoils. There are several types of spoil types to choose from to focus your rewards!
• There will also be a special spoil chest with items having a guaranteed high roll on a greater affix!
• Improved access to the Infernal Hordes:
  • Compass drop rates have been updated so players earn around 4-5 per hour.
  • Helltides: 50% from Item Chests. 100% from Mystery, Steel and Doomslayer Chests.
  • Nightmare Dungeons & Whispers: 75% from Dungeon completion.
• Compass Tier 4-8 drop naturally in higher-tiered activities (Nightmare Dungeons, The Pit).
• Compasses are craftable at the Occultist with Sigil Power and Forgotten Souls.
• Compasses are still upgradeable with Abyssal Scrolls for players on-the-go.
• Your first Compass drops from the Eternal Quest to better match the Player's Level.
• Improved pacing of wave combat :
  • Fixed Bos Health Bugs that caused all bosses to be super tanky.
  • Fixed a bug where difficulty wasn't scaling appropriately in MP.
  • Increased the pace of mini-events' spawn rates at higher tiers.
  • Increased monster spawn rates to increase the feeling of being overwhelmed.
  • Reduced the wave timer to 60 seconds (from 90 seconds).
• Pets now pick up Burning Aether.

The Infernal Hordes rewards have been improved across the board:

• Raised the minimum amount of Burning Aether earned from a single run :
  • All sources drop 2 minimum Aether instead of 1.
  • Add Aether drops from defeating the Fell Council.
• Retuned the Spoils of Hell costs:
  • Spoils of Greater Equipment: 60 Aether.
  • Spoils of Equipment & Spoils of Materials: 20 Aether.
• Retuned all rewards to feel more generous so that:
  • The minimum amount of Aether earned better rewards the time invested in that run.
  • The maximum amount of Aether earned better rewards the effort spent optimizing Aether.
  • The rewards scale more aggressively from Tier 1 to Tier 8.

Season 5 Reputation System

The reputation system has been improved :

• The reputation is coming back.
• You now gain reputation with way more activities.
• You get an experience buff when you gain reputation.
• You can get powerful crafting materials and items.

Season 5 Questline

• The seasonal quest has a unique narrative flow.
• There is a seasonal questline exclusive to season 5.
• There is an additional "secondary" questline for both game modes.

Season 5 Changes to Helltide

There are many changes to Baneful Hearts:

• Readjusting the drop rate of Baneful Hearts to close the gap between what players had in S5 PTR and S4.
• This includes bumping the drop rate off chests.
• Guaranteed heart drops off Helltide Commanders.
• Include heart drops in World Bosses (multiple, 3 if in the zone).
• Small drop chance to local events, mastery chests and Harbingers.
• Blood Maiden in World Tier 1/2, Baneful Heart requirement has been reduced from 3 to 2.

There are also many other changes to Helltides:

• Tortured Gift cost in World Tier 1/2 has been reduced from 100 to 75.
• Whispers are easier to complete in one subzone and always grant 10 Grim favors.
• Profane Mindcages are back as seasonal content only and now stack up to 3 times.

Season 5 Game Updates

• Legendary Drop Rates are boosted post level 100 in Helltide, Nightmare Dungeons and Infernal Hordes.
• Enchanting now longer costs Angel's Breath, instead it just uses the respective Legendary Salvage Armor Coiling Wards, Weapons Baleful Fragments and Jewelry Abstruse Sigils.
• Crowd Control:
  • Overall reduced CC durations (2.5 seconds average to 1.5s average now).
  • You can now use potions while you're CC'd.

There are also many changes to Bosses:

• World Bosses now have "Resilience". Damage is effectively normalized in this shared world content.
• Now in The Pit, group play will be as rewarding for everyone in the party.
• Many changes to Bosses:
  • Pit Boss damage has been reduced by 66% across the board.
  • Shadow Pit Boss affix now applies a stacking debuff up to 3 times. The third stack is the final stack and damage will be the same as Loot Reborn.
  • Some of the one shots instances have been removed and this allows for more flexibility.
• End Game Bosses:
  • They can be resummoned without needing to leave the dungeon.
  • Boss Lader doesn't drop Rare Items, just additional gold now.
• Beast in Ice:
  • Beast in Ice no longer requires a sigil and is much closer to the entrance.
  • Sigil Dust is no longer required for summoning.
  • Eternal players can use leftover sigils to immediately resummon without needing material costs.
• Varshan:
  • Now only requires Malignant Hearts to be summoned.
  • Eternal Players can convert old parts to hearts for summoning at the Alchemist.
• Tormented Bosses:
  • They now drop 5 times as many Boss Materials.
  • All Tormented have a better chance of dropping a Mythic.
  • The cost to summon has been reduced to 1 Stygian Stone.
• There are no more diminishing returns on experience for killing very high level monsters compared to your own character's level.

Season 5 Class Balance

Barbarians are too strong compared to other classes:

• They have 2 class mechanics (Expertise and more item slots).
• Devs don't want to just nerf Barbarians. And they want to keep class identity.
• Here's the solution chosen:
  • Changing how much damage classes get from their Core stat.
  • Reducing the power of Barbarians, mainly nerfing its Key Passives.
  • Buffing other class mechanics (like Necromancer's Book of the Dead in Season 4).

There are updates to Core Stat mechanics in regards to class balance:

• Changed the amount of damage each class gets from their core stat. As of Live game, it is 1% damage per 10 Core stat. It now depends on the class:
  • Barbarian: 1% more damage per 10 Strength.
  • Rogue: 1% more damage per 9 Dexterity.
  • Sorceress, Druid and Necromancer: 1% more damage per 8 Core stat.

A brief resume of class changes:

• Barbarians
  • Buffs to underperforming builds like Upheaval.
• Sorceress
  • Received a lot of buffs to Uniques.
  • All core and mastery skills are buffed by 15-20%.
  • Sorcerers got multiple defensive buffs.
  • There have been many buffs to paragon boards.
• Druids
  • Multiple quality of life and damage buffs. Boulder has been buffed from 46% to 70% weapon damage. Cataclysm now consistently targets enemies with lightning strikes without its Unique.
  • Perfect Storm Key Passive damage increased from 30% to 40%
  • Seismic Shift Aspect no longer adds a cooldown to Earth Spike.
  • Many buffs to Paragon Nodes.
• Rogues
  • They are in a very good spot so there are not as many changes compared to other classes.
• Necromancers
  • They get a lot of love with Season 5.
  • The chance of Lucky Hit of many skills has been buffed.

Video Recap

Infernal Hordes are Almost Here!

The Maxroll Diablo 4 Team hopes you enjoyed this Season 5 Livestream wrap-up post and can't wait to test out all the new things coming our way with the Season 5: Season of Infernal Hordes!

With that said, head over to our Discord to stay up to date with our content development to make the most of your Season 5 experience! Also don't forget to check out our Youtube channel!

Written by: Chewingnom

Reviewed by: Dredscythe