Season 5 Developer Chat Recap – 1 August

With Season 5 about to kick off, the development team held their latest Diablo 4 Season 5 developer chat live stream going over some of the changes coming to the game. There’s a lot, especially when it comes to all the Unique items.

We already know what’s coming in Season 5 with the Infernal Hordes and most of the changes which you can read about on our Season 5 page which includes drop locations of the new Uniques added in this Season.

The content below is being updated live so refresh periodically if you want to follow the updates.

Live Recap

The host was Marcus Kretz, Community Manager and he was joined by Adam Fletcher, Community Director, Adam Z Jackson, Lead Class Designer in Irvine, and Daniel Tanguay, Lead Seasons Designer joined them from Albany, NY.

PTR Learnings

Feedback from players during the second PTR suggested that the tools available in PTR were not the most efficient for players to test the content.  Blizzard is planning to improve this, equipping more tools, and building on what they did with the Season 5 PTRs copied characters and boost feature for newly created characters.  The new tools will be rolled out gradually over the upcoming PTRs.

Infernal Hordes

The PTR provided a great deal of feedback and even though they have not been able to address it all, the most common trends of feedback were addressed.

Improving access to the Infernal Hordes

• Compass drop rates have been updated to 4 – 5 dropping per hour
• Helltides – 50% from Item Chest; 100% from Mystery, Steel, Doomsayer Chests
• Nightmare Dungeons and Whispers – 75% from Dungeon completion
• Compass Tiers 4-8 drop naturally in higher-tiered activities such as Nightmare Dungeon and The Pit
• Compasses are craftable at the Occultist with Sigil Powder and Forgotten Souls
• Compasses are still upgradeable with Abyssal Scrolls for players  on-the-go
• First Compass that drops from the Eternal Quest better matches the Player’s Level.

Combat Pacing

• Fixed Boss Health bugs that caused all bosses to be super tanky
• Fixed bug where difficulty wasn’t scaling appropriately in multiplayer
• 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)
• Returned the wave counts based on the shorter timer
• Pets now pick up Aether

Rewards

• 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.

The PTR was focused on features that will be rolled out on both the Eternal and Seasonal realm but several features will be exclusive to the Seasonal realm.

Seasonal Progression

Seasonal progression through the Reputation System was a feature of Season 4 and some previous Events and will make a return in Season 5 but with a few tweaks.

• How reputation is earned has been broadened with more choices available.  In Season 4 we earned reputation from fighting in the Helltides but with Season 5 the Reputation can be earned by killing certain types of monsters anywhere in the game such as Helltides, Strongholds or Infernal Hordes.  When killing Elites, Champions, Hellborne and Bosses they will drop Mother’s Gift which can be exchanged rewards ranking from Tier 1 to 20.
• When you pick up reputation there is also a small boost to XP
• As you work your way through the Mother’s Gift Reputation Rewards there are certain Tiers that will unlock the next part of the Seasonal quest, weaving the narrative through the progression more than in previous seasons.
• Rewards will include class-based Uniques, big drops of crafting materials and at the very end of the Reputation System (Tier 20) will be a Resplendent Spark (allows you to craft a Mythic Unique)

Seasonal Questline

This season has a unique narrative flow because it introduces a new feature that takes you back to hell so Blizzard wants to ensure the main questline “Eyes of the Enemy” is available not just to Seasonal players but also to those on the Eternal realm.  This questline will be available on World Tier 3 and will not disappear after the Season ends because the ultimate reward is access to the Infernal Hordes which will also be a permanent feature of the game.

As well as the main questline there will be a secondary Seasonal Questline called “Of Lambs and Wolves” that sets out to guide you to become more powerful before you take on the hordes in hell. This Questline will be exclusive to the Seasonal realm.

Hellbreach Dungeons

These are all new micro-dungeons that convey that Hell is taking root in Sanctuary.  This is content targeted at those playing World Tiers 1 and 2 allowing them to find powerful items, Burning Aether, and earn Seasonal reputation.  These dungeons will feature simplified elements from the Infernal Hordes and will serve to introduce players to that much harder end-game content.

Helltides

Baneful Hearts

• Readjusting the drop rate of Baneful Hearts to close the gap between what players had in the Season 5 PTR (not enough) and Season 4 (too many).
• This includes increasing the drop rate from chests.
• Guaranteed heart drops off Helltide Commanders.
• Include heart drops in World Bosses (multiple) (it’s 3 if in the Helltide zone).
• Small drop chance in local events, mastery chests and Harbingers.
• Blood Maiden in World Tier 1 and 2 the Baneful Heart requirement is reduced from 3 to 2.

Tortured Gifts

• Cost in World Tier 1 and 2 has been reduced from 100 to 75.

Whispers

Easier to complete in one subzone. Always grant to 10 Grim Favors.

Profane Mindcage

• These increase Helltide Monster Level by 10 and the rate at which Aberrant Cinders drop.  They were first introduced during Season 4 but removed from the Season 5 PTR but based on feedback they are being reintroduced to Season 5
• These stack up to 3 times so you can effectively boost the Helltide Monster level by 30.
• Will be available on the Seasonal realm only.

Game Updates

• Legendary Drop Rates
  • Boosting this for any monster level 100 or higher in Helltides, Nightmare Dungeons, and Infernal Hordes.
• Enchanting
  • It no longer costs Angel’s Breath, instead uses the respective Legendary Salvage materials.
    • Enchanting Armor will require Coiling Wards
    • Weapons will require Baleful Fragments
    • Jewelry with require Abstruse Sigils
• Crowd Control
  • Overall reduced Crowd Control durations with the 2.5 second average being reduced to 1.5 seconds
  • Can now you potions while Crowd Controlled.
• World Bosses have “Resilience”
  • Resilience of World Bosses was rolled out for PTR Season 5 but never mentioned in any notes for Campfire chats.
  • This means that damage is effectively ‘normalized’ in this shared world content so the WB will feel more tankier with more players so fights will last longer.
• 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 – 3rd stack is the final stack and damage will be the same Loot Reborn.
  • Remove some of the one-shots and allow for more flexibility.
• Group Play in Pits
  • Pit material rewards in group play will always be 100% for all players and no longer just 100% for the party leader  (previously players who didn’t start the Pit using a Runeshard would only get 50% of the rewards)
• End Game bosses
  • Experience
    • XP bonus from killing higher-level monsters is no longer capped at 10 levels but instead at 30 levels and that is across all World Tiers.
  • Boss Ladder bosses no longer drop Rare Items, just additional gold.
  • Can now resummon bosses without having to leave the Dungeon.
  • Beast in the Ice
    • Beast in Ice no longer requires a sigil and he’s much closer to the entrance.
      • No more Sigil Dust is required for summoning.
      • Eternal players can use leftover sigils to immediately resummon without needing material costs.
  • Varshan
    • Just Malignant Hearts are required to summon.
    • Eternal players can convert old body parts to Hearts at the Alchemist.
  • Tormented Bosses
    • Now drop 5 times as many Boss materials.
    • All Tormented Bosses have a better chance of dropping a Mythic Unique.
    • The Cost to summon is reduced from 2 to 1 Stygian Stone.

Generic Class Balance Updates

• High-Level Theme – Barbarians are too strong compared to other Classes
• Mostly due to having 2 Class Mechanics – Expertise and more item slots
• Don’t want to only nerf Barbarians
• Also want to keep Class identity – don’t want to make all Classes have the same number of item slots
• Tackling this in multiple ways:
  • Changing how much damage classes get from their Core Stat
  • Reducing the power of Barbarians
  • Buffing other Class Mechanics
  • This was already done in Season 4 with the Necromancer’s Book of the Dead.  Blizzard now intend to do this to other Classes after Vessel of Hatred

Core Stat Updates

• Changing the amount of damage each Class gets from their core stat
  • Before: 1% more damage per 10 Core Stat (example: the Sorcerer would get 1% more damage for every 10 Intelligence)
  • Now: Will depend on the Class what that ratio is
    • Barbarian – 1% more damage per 10 Strength
    • Rogue – 1% more damage per 9 Dexterity
    • Sorcer, Druid and Necromancer – 1% more damage per 8 Core Stat

Remaining Details Including Uniques

Much of the chat covered has already been discussed in the previous chat and recent notes from Blizzard such as the new naming of Uber Uniques to the purple Mythic uniques.

Further details on specifics such as all the unique updates, unique additions, and class changes are detailed in the new 1.5.0 patch notes, These notes are huge so it’s worth spending some time sifting through those, The new uniques can be found at the bottom of the notes.

The remainder of the chat includes a Q&A but there wasn’t a lot to discuss. Blizzard were unable to answer the most interesting questions as they’re not willing to discuss them at this time,

Watch the Diablo 4 Season 5 Developer Chat