DIABLO 4 SEASON 8 WINDING DOWN / SEASON 9 INFO & PREP

HAIL WANDERER!

Wanted to take some time and more than likely talk to myself about my experience with the last couple weeks of this very short D4 season and what next season looks like and my plans for it! There are a slew of people/communities/creators WAY more affluent with D4, and most things gaming, than I am. But in this little corner of the internet its sometimes nice to share the thoughts I have and share with anyone generous enough to spend their time with us!

Season 8

  • Druid - Druid has ALWAYS my go to to season starter, and I’ve been playing a Companion build since S1 (lonnnng before it was good lol). Most people will see that and INSTANTLY dismiss what I’m saying because the Druid “17 Damage” meme lol. It was true, and in some ways Druid can still perform fairly bad in a lot of tough content, but I just have the leveling process down to a science at this point and they’ve made the spirit bond Lvl15 class mechanic WAY easier to max out. I used to not even touch it until endgame, now by Lvl20 or so its attainable entirely and you can spec into which ever spirit animals you need. Cataclysm has been the S Tier Druid build as long as I can remember, and that style of gameplay is pretty braindead and boring to me, snapshotting is super lame and any build that has that mechanic as mandatory isn’t worth your time imo. Blizz says its not intended on any class/build OTHER than Druid, but I think if they just make the skills good enough to clear content on their own without what feels like a game bug/exploit, I don’t think anyone would complain.

    • Builds:

      • Pulverize - I always play companion , so wanted to check back in on Pulverize and its still very fun, easy leveling and I love how satisfying the gameplay is. It does fall off fairly hard late game where single target DPS becomes ALOT more important. There is a new unique 2H mace “Rotting Lightbringer”, that looks to hopefully address this EXACT complaint by adding some DoT to Pulverize, and adding this new mechanic where Pulverize will form a puddle every 10 seconds that will deal extra damage as poison damage over time, AND repeatedly slamming the puddle will splash an additional 40%(x) of the total damage within an AoE around you. Maybe this unique with the normal Pulverize setup and some Paragon respec to DoT can bring this build up a tier or so by helping the Boss pushing aspect. I imagine leveling with this will still be easy, hard to tell how much the Overpower nerfs will affect Druid since there is a lot of baked in Overpower/Werebear buffs in the Tree and in Paragon so well see. I’m kind of thinking this new mace will be nice, and for single target burst adding Aspect of Inner Calm may not be a meme anymore…

      • Stone Burst - this build was also a lot of fun, more of a caster build, a lot like lightening storm and actually playable without Tempest Roar, so maybe more of an attainable ranged caster build for the Druid. Fun to play with Insatiable Roar/Vasily’s to just cast spells as a big werebear, looks even funnier with the Wandering Death chest beam from this seasons boss powers. Eventually moved on from this build to tray something a little new/old…

      • Shred - Shred has been an awesome change of pace for me playing Druid. INSANELY fast pace, Rogue like speed, really good burst damage, similar to Stone Burst. Also, i was afraid of not being very tanky at first but i feel like this build can just face tank a lot of stuff. I’m helping a friend level through T3 right now and this build can AFK like anything on that. If i wasn’t bouncing around helping friends level and making so many alts i would EASILY be in T4 with this and with better roles/Paragon Glyphs done this build would prob breeze through that as well.

  • Rogue - Season 8 I actually started a Dance of Knives Rogue to shake it up and had a good amount of fun with it. It seems to have the same satisfying gameplay as a Barb spin to win build, but with that, the same problems that build has too, less than stellar single target dps. Rogue movement and utilities they have in their kit was a nice change of pace from Druid for sure.

    • Builds

      • Dance of Knives - as mentioned above, fun and fast just not awesome boss clear. I got bored seeing all the other ppl playing this build so i did shift to another build later on and moved on to alts.

      • Penn. Shot - changed it up to this later on and am having fun with it. The resource consumption is a lot, and most of the guides online say to use Combo Points or Preparation for your Rogue Spec. but to me the ONLY one that feels good without like absolute BiS gear is Inner Sight to get that burst of infinite resource hitting your mark. Shadow clone seems to come off cooldown enough that I don’t feel too hamstrung not running Preparation or anything. I’m still building this setup and I wanted to bake my own rather than following Wudi or DiEoxidE word for word (which, if playing rogue you ABSOLUTELY should just do what they tell you to do) so this is still in the lab and kind of inconclusive.

  • Sorc - I have played to like level 45 or so as somewhat of a dry run for a possible Season 9 run with Sorc. None of the current builds for Sorc are exciting to me, I absolutely hate lightning spear, its been single handedly ruling the Pit leaderboards since like Season 4 or something. I’d take S2 Ball Lightning ANY day over that garbage. I liked Blizzard a lot when i played it, it was the first build i beat a lot of the pinnacle content with so hoping that comes back at some point too. I’m running firewall/hydras to try and get a feel for it bc in S9, hydras are gonna be GIGA sick with their new unique and I’m already seeing insane clears in the PTR, and tbh even in the live client ppl have spun up some super interesting hydra builds, they may relive some S0 glory days soon.

2nd Anniversary Event!

Make sure to log in for extra XP and bonus Whisper caches via the Mothers Blessing events, along with other perks! From June 3rd -> June 17th!

Info here via Maxroll!

Season 9 (PTR from 5/27->6/3, Release July 1!)

What’s new?!

  • Nightmare Dungeon Escalations

    • Excited for this! Nightmare Dungeons have kind of been a nothing burger since the Pit became the go to endgame activity for Paragon Glyph leveling and for moving up in the Torment tiers. The only reason to do them was to unlock aspects for your codex if you needed them. Now, it seems like this will be a multi-layered dungeon that may award you with new “Horadric Strongrooms” that will get you caches of the new Gems for this season, more on that below!

  • Horadric Spells (more info below)

  • I saw something about Astaroth being a new Lair Boss, which could be cool! He’s a dope character, and only fighting him in the base game campaign was kind of lame. With Mephisto’s Lair fight being so cool, I hope they do a cool fight with Astaroth too so there’s mechanics and stuff. The older style fights that were just DPS/Gear checks which was just not as engaging.

Which Season Starters?

  • I’m thinking I’ll prob go back to a Druid companion build just bc its SO versatile and these days with companions gaining your player damage (similar to Necro Minions) and improved aspects and additional aspects like Stormcrow and the newish companion key passive “One with Nature”, these builds are super strong and can do MOST speedfarming well enough to push to T4 and it absolutely CRUSHES bosses. Not to mention, it doesn’t need a lot of uniques to be effective. Storms Companion is amazing but it does seem to be one of the rarer uniques to drop, sometimes an item with the Alpha aspect are hard to find too but this build is def. pilotable from Lvl1 and those things just help min/max into later Torments and more accurately, higher Pit tiers.

Changes were most excited about?

  • I’m glad a lot of the builds that have run the meta for a long time are getting taken down. I don’t normally love nerfs, I’d much rather them buff other builds to make ALL builds feel strong, but some of the Lightning Spears and Overpower exploitation stuff needs to be hit hard since its like exponentially stronger than most other builds in the same class in most cases, so I understand sometimes why they get the nerf hammer, but I hope a lot of the builds getting hammered by this (Overpower Druid builds, Enlightenment Sorc etc.) have a way to make their way back up in a more organic and elegant way that makes them feel strong in their own right.

  • The new uniques look fun as hell, HUGE shoutout to one in particular:

    • Druid - The Rotting Lightbringer….I’m HOPING is very good to buff boss DPS and Pulverize crawls back up to Mid A tier. Shred isn’t getting hit too hard, and neither is companions which are both A tier (which I cant believe I get to say Druid companions are A tier, if you would’ve told me that a year and a half ago I wouldn’t have believed you).

      • UPDATE: Wudi put up a vid. about testing this exact thing on the PTR and its…less than I hoped for BUT this is the PTR, so hoping theres room before the full release to buff this and maybe even Pulverize in general. The overpower nerfs have this build hard stuck in mid 80 Pit tiers on a good build….

    • Necro - The new “Hand of Naz”! - This may have me run an alt Necro for the first time since S1 Blood Spear w/ Black Heart of the Barber (insanely fun…). This unique looks freaking awesome. You basically sacrifice your warriors and golem to get all Skelly mages and they get the ability to become “Arch-Mages” where they can teleport to avoid attacks and gain an AoE shatter mechanic on some attacks getting splash damage with a +100%(x) modifier. That in addition to a Ring of Mendeln, good LORD this is going to fry. MacroBioBoi is already cooking on the PTR and put up THIS VIDEO cooking with this setup already.

    • Sorc - This is shaping up to be “Season of the Hydras” with Ophidian Iris coming, I’ve seen some insane damage numbers from people already rolling with this build. I doubt lightening spear builds are down and out completely, but I’m ready for some other Sorc metas to come and make that class not boring anymore.

    • Barb - Basic attack builds MAY come back with a mix of Crown of Lucion/Hooves of the Mountain God. Basically a mix of basic attack costing resource, and at max resource, you start to drain on hit to get cleave on your basics with a +100%(x) modifier, which sounds kind of sick. Flay barb may be wicked with this setup, Ill be keeping my eye on Rob2628 for the Barb and this new unique.

    • Spiritborn - New unique will be Balazan’s Maxtlatl. I admittedly don’t know like anything about Spiritborn, I took a break right at the launch of VoH and have just come back recently. I know the class was super OP on release of course, and as most ppl know that know me know I don’t really spend time doing anything thats popular lol. I usually wont ever play OP/Popular builds. I find it much more enjoyable to try and to min/max less played builds or roll my own when I can. I think since its initial season, Spiritborn has been pretty unimpressive other than the flash in the pan that was the bugged Varshan Quill Volley build a week or so back that lasted like 2 days. This class is ok, but I just don’t really care for the class fantasy of a monk reskinned as like a jungle shaman or whatever its supposed to be. Maybe a fun build will come out and change my mind. If i had to call out one build that looks fun, the Crushing Hand builds look pretty cool, and I always wish a good build using “The Devourer” ultimate would be viable, that ability just looks so damn cool. Every build just running the Hunter Ulti just makes it remain “meh” on the fun scale to me, hoping that will change!

    • Rogue - So finally Flurry is getting some love with Deathmask of Nirmitruq. I love Flurry for a speedfarm and leveling build but the damage always fell off late game and it made it kind of only looked at like a season starter. That on its own is ok, but I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t prefer that every build could be endgame viable if that could be the case across the board. This unique will make Flurry cost health, which MIGHT be cool, maybe open up some synergies? I haven’t seen someone in the PTR with it yet, and haven’t tried it myself but we will see!

Seasonal Mechanic (Horadric Spells) thoughts

  • So this mechanic at first sounded like a lot more of the same BUT looking into it a bit more, there seems to be alot more player agency here than in the Boss Powers from our current season:

  • It seems like you can craft your on spells or actions by combining Catalysts, then use Arcanas to alter them to fit into your rotation in a more advantageous way, could be awesome if they execute it well. Looking forward to playing with these.

Nerfs & Buffs

  • Info from D4’s patch notes pulled from Maxroll:

    • Overpower Damage scaling was too oppressive and powerful. The additive damage scaling is getting reduced by roughly 80%.

      • This was a good change for builds that exploited Overpower, but are they going to compensate builds that RELIED on Overpower (Pulverize/Earth Druids?)

        • I think that new 2H Mace will be nice, but its not going to make up for an 80% damage loss on anything other than MAYBE single target stuff.

    • Additive Damage has been rebalanced to be healthier for the game.

    • Basic Skills' base damage is getting doubled (and even tripled in some cases!) to make them feel more impactful.

      • This will be interesting to see with that new Barb unique mixed with Lucion.

        • Maybe a Great Staff of the Crone/Druid build can come back with this increase to basic damage?

    • Max Resistance is getting increased from 70% to 75%, and certain Unique items will have their All Resistance reduced.

      • I’m not really sure what this impact will be without playing the PTR, seems like a whatever change to me.

    • Key Passives for multiple classes are getting capped or significantly reduced for balancing purposes.

      • Looking at you Enlightenment/Combustion…if they touch One with Nature after all the shit Companion druid went through I’m going to be BIG pissed.

Thanks for stopping by The Corner! On your way out, these Maxroll articles have some awesome info. See you soon!

Maxroll.gg 2.3 PTR First Thoughts Article

Season 9 Campfire Chat Recap

Patch 2.2.3 is Live!

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