Diablo 4 Developer Update Recap – May 2

The Diablo 4 Developer Update Livestream for the PTR and Patch 1.4.0 was broadcast on Thursday morning May 2nd and featured Associate Director of Community Adam Fletcher, Associate Game Director Joseph Piepiora, Lead Live Class Designer Adam Jackson, Lead Live Game Designer Colin Finer, and Lead Seasons Designer Deric Nunez. The panel discussed what they have in store for the launch of Season 4 along with system features, balance updates, and tweaks to itemization and system updates based on the recent Public Test Realm period.

Overall PTR Experience

• The Developers are grateful to everyone in the Diablo community for all the great feedback.
• Many of the goals for the PTR were thoroughly achieved.
• Players were spending more time hacking and slashing in the game and less time involved with housework, such as inventory management.
• Players have much more autonomy with their class fantasies.
• Greater Affixes have added a lot of excitement and dopamine to the loot chase.

Itemization

• The Devs want to simplify Itemization and make it easier for players to compare and choose good gear.
• Reduced the number of possible different affixes that can drop with an item.
• All Gambling done at Character Level 100 will reward iLevel 925 items, which can drop with Greater Affixes.
• Players will now be better able to use their Obols to target farm good gear.

Loot Drops & Salvaging

• Veiled Crystals were still a significant limiting factor when using some of the crafting systems.
• The salvage output has been increased to double for Sacred items and triple for Ancestral items.
• Salvaging Legendary Items will now also yield Veiled Crystals.
• The Devs are looking for ways to add more materials sinks to the game in order to offer players additional ways to power up their characters.
• Elevating the value of Legendary items above Rare items has measurably reduced the amount of housework for players.
• The Devs are opposed to a system where looting blue and yellow items in WT4 is effectively turned off by auto-salvage.
• The Devs still want blue and yellow items to continue to be part of the crafting process and will continue to explore this issue for future Seasons.
• In the meantime, the balance for salvage inflow and outflow has been noticeably improved for all loot value categories.
• Legendary Loot with Greater Affixes will have items labels that clearly indicate the level of the Greater Affixes.
• Items will Greater Affixes will also be marked accordingly in the player inventory.

Crafting

• A skip button has been added to all crafting animations.
• Masterworking Tiers 1 to 3 no longer have an animation.
• Stacking of Masterworking materials caches will be removed.
• Multiple tiers of Masterworking materials caches will be added.
• The fail chance for Masterworking has been removed and replaced with adjusted materials cost.
• The Devs are continuing to work on the inflow and outflow balance of Masterworking materials.
• Materials costs for Imprinting Legendary Aspects have been substantially nerfed.
• Additional Affixes will be added to the Tempering UI over time.

Endgame Survivability

• There has been a problem with the abrupt transition from being able to defeat enemies easily to players getting frequently one-shotted.
• It is difficult to balance top end survivability due to variability in player defensiveness.
• Damage Reduction will be much more difficult to obtain in order to help balance this.

Armor

• Armor will be changed to be more similar to Elemental Resistance.
• In the current system the amount of armor a character needs to resist an enemy changes as the enemy level increases.
• This system will be modified to cap at Level 100 enemies, which translates to 9230 Armor to achieve an 85% Physical Damage Reduction.
• Once a player reaches that armor level, no further increase in physical damage reduction will be necessary to resist higher level enemies.

Stat Caps

• Item stats can get very high as a result of Tempering and Masterworking.
• This has resulted in some bizarre effects in the game that can overwhelm the servers.
• The changes to stat caps will be reflected in the respective tooltips.
• Cooldown Reduction from gear will be capped at 75%.
• Increased Area Size will cap at 100%.

Balance Changes

• Fortify Damage Reduction will be increased from 10% to 15%.
• There will be many Tempering Affix updates including reducing the damage of Lucky Hit to deal elemental damage affixes.
• Druid Wolves health will be increased by 200% and the respawn rate will be reduced by 50%.
• Changes will be made to computer performance and to balance player power.
• Fewer Dust Devils.
• Fewer Fractured Winterglass Frozen Orbs.

Endgame Changes

• Lots of players were crushing The Pit during the PTR.
• Level 100+ enemy health will be substantially buffed in both The Pit and Nightmare Dungeons.
• At the same time, too many players were getting one-shotted, so enemy damage has been nerfed.
• The Masterworking reward tiers in The Pit have been modified:
  • Tier 1 – Pit Levels 1 to 29.
  • Tier 2 – Pit Levels 30 to 59.
  • Tier 3 – Pit Levels 60+
• The Pit timer will be increased from 10 minutes to 15 minutes to compensate for the increase in enemy health.
• The Obol drop rate for The Pit has also been increased to give players more chances to get Greater Affix Legendary drops.
• Nightmage Dungeons at Level 46+ will also reward Obols.
• The upper limit of Obol Capacity has been increased to 2500.
• All Gambling done at Character Level 100 will reward iLevel 925 items, which can drop with Greater Affixes.
• Players will now be better able to use their Obols to target farm good gear.
• The amount of Glyph XP earned in Nightmare Dungeons has been increased by 25% across the board.
• A Glyph XP boost has also be added to the Smoldering Ashes UI for the Battle Pass.
• The amount of Rune Shards (Pit keys) rewarded from Nightmare Dungeons has also been scaled up.
• The Devs are working to improve the cleanup of persistent Boss powers, affixes, and effects when the Boss dies to help alleviate player deaths from aftershock in The Pit.
• Andariel will be added to the endgame boss ladder.
• The title of Ultra Bosses is being changed to Tormented Bosses.
• The summon material count for Tormented Bosses has been reduced from 5x to 3x to help improve the farming efficiency for Stygian Stones.
• The relative difficulty between fighting the various Tormented Bosses will have better parity.
• Summoning materials for the endgame bossess will randomly drop from a larger variety of endgame activities.
• The first kill for the Echo of Lilith will reward one Resplendent Spark.
• All endgame Ladder Bosses will have a small chance to drop Uber Uniques.

World Bosses

• A good deal of power has been added to the game over the last year.
• The Devs felt it was time to increase the health of World Bosses.
• Scattered Prisms will be much rarer in standard loot tables but will still be a guaranteed drop from World Bosses.

Bug Fixes

Helltides

• Many permanent upgrades with Season 4 for both Eternal and Seasonal Realms.
• Increased enemy density and variety.
• Helltides have now been added to World Tiers I & II.
• Ambient fire meteors and wandering Helltide Assasins will not appear in these lower World Tiers.
• Less enemy density compared to World Tiers III & IV, making the Helltides more easily manageable during early gearing and character leveling.
• All Tortured Gifts are Mystery Chests, that reward a larger variety of better loot compared to the item-specific chests. It should be noted that this also means farming for Living Steel will still have to wait for World Tiers III & IV.

Helltide Threat

• As players battle through Helltides, they will generate Threat.
• There are three Helltide Threat Tiers.
• Players will also become Hell-Marked at Tier 3.
• Each Tier increases the difficulty and frequency of enemy ambushes.
• The rate of progress for the Threat meter is determined by the Threat Tier, enemy difficulty level, and how often players open Tortured Gifts.
• Reaching the maximum Threat meter level will spawn a frenzied ambush of maximum enemy density.
• The frenzied ambush will conclude with a Hellborn spawn.
• There are five Hellborn variants, each representing one of Diablo 4’s player classes.
• Spawning a Hellborn ambush will reset the Threat meter.
• Dying in normal mode will also reset the Threat meter.

Accursed Ritual

• The Accursed Ritual is a shocking testament designed to appease the demonic desires of the manic Cultists.
• Players will need to collect a new consumable called Baneful Hearts in order to activate this event.
• Baneful Hearts are obtained from Tortured Gift chests by depositing at least 75 Aberrant Cinders, as usual.
• Accursed Ritual locations can be determined by searching for the associated icon on the world map.
• Players will need to deposit three Baneful Hearts at the Ritual site in order to spawn the event.
• Players can do this either solo or party members can deposit Baneful Hearts to collectively contribute to the summon.
• Once activated, the Ritual will swarm players with a demonic ambush.
• Other players within the area will also be alerted to ritual.
• This is similar to the Season 2 Blood Harvest mechanic where players deposited Blood Lures at Blood Lure Pedestals in order to spawn a vampiric swarm.
• This ambush will climax with the arrival of the new Helltide mini-boss called the Blood Maiden, an immensely powerful demonic creature who will offer great reward upon her death.

Season 4 Theme & Journey

• The Iron Wolves will become a permanent part of Helltides.
• During Season 4, players will be able to participate in the Call of the Wolves activity during Helltides.
• This activity will involve uncovering the root cause of the rising Helltides along with the mysterious phenomenon that’s is threatening to corrupt and consume the Iron Wolves from within.
• As players fight along the Iron Wolves during the Season 4 Helltides, they will work their way through the Wolf’s Honor reward system, which includes a Resplendent Spark.
• Players will be rewarded with an Iron Wolf Mount Bannner cosmetic for completing the reputation track.
• The Blood Maiden Mount Trophy can be earned by completing the Call of the Wolves Seasonal questline.
• The Profane Mindcage is a new Seasonal experimental consumable that is a guaranteed drop from the Hellborn in WT3 & WT4 Helltides, however they can also be consumed in Helltides on WT1 & WT2.
• A cache of Profane Mindcages is also included in the Wolf’s Honor rewards.
• Consuming a Profane Mindcage will result in a 60 minute effect that will boost the level of Helltide enemies by up to 10x based on the World Tier along with an increase in the drop rate for Aberrant Cinders.
• The Season 4 Journey caches will reward reward a starter set of Legedary gear items for each class:
  • Barbarian – Dust Devil
  • Druid – Pulverize
  • Necromancer – Minion
  • Rogue – Barrage
  • Sorcerer – Incinerate

What does the changes for Season 4 mean for Seasonal powers in the future?
– Season 4 is an opportunity to lift up gear and Affixes because the Devs want getting loot to feel as good as battling with enemies. There will continue to be new Seasonal powers in future Seasons.

Will the length of Season 4 be shorter to compensate for the longer Season 3 due to PTR?
– Season 4 will be one week shorter than usual.

Should items with Greater Affixes have a different colored beam?
-The Devs will be keeping an eye on this.

Will the Season 4 mechanics also be part of the Eternal Realm?
-Everything that has been announced for Season 4 will also be a part of the Eternal Realm except for the Iron Wolves quest line.

What is the next major change coming for Itemization?
-The Devs will continue to work on building upon the new framework in the game.

If a player consumes more than one Profane Mindcage will it stack?
-The timer for this consumable will reset when consuming another one.

Does the Profane Mindcage buff only the player who consumes it when in a party?
-That is correct.

Will Season 4 include any new social features, such as leaderboards for The Pit?
-That Devs have no social changes planned for Season 4, however they are always looking at this issue.

Will Tempering allow for changes to a skill type?
-Anything an Affix can do is fair game for changes in future Seasons.

Will there be any new character customization features?
-Players will be able to change their character’s hair style in the Wardrobe. The Devs are also continuing to look at adding more features in the future.

Watch the Diablo 4 Campfire Chat