Season 2 Developer Livestream Wrap Up!

The Diablo 4 Season 2 Developer Livestream just took place. The panel consisting of Joe Shely (Game Director), Joseph Piepiora (Associate Game Director), Antonio Watson (Associate Game Director, Dungeons) and Adam Fletcher (Associate Director of Community) discussed Season 2 (Season of Blood), major quality of life improvements coming, Q&A, along with what to expect in next week's Campfire Chat on Tuesday, October 10th. See all the major points below.

Season 2 - Season of Blood

• Season Start: October 17th, 10am PDT

• New Big Bad and Our Guide - Lord Zir is leading the new Vampiric threat crossing over Sanctuary.
  • Erys will be our guide through out the Seasonal Questline as we fight our own Vampiric infliction upon Sanctuary!
• New Story Dungeons- New Crypt Dungeons along with a few old Dungeons with Zir's forces taking them over with the ultimate conflict at the end.

• Vampiric Powers - There are 22 new Vampiric Powers which are all class agnostics. These powers have an Activation Cost that must be met through Pacts before you can use them. See below for all the Pacts you can obtain including Minor and Major

Minor Vampiric Powers (1–3 Pacts Required):

• Anticipation (1 Divinity): Your Ultimate Skills gain 20% Cooldown Reduction. Your Ultimate Skills gain 12% increased damage for each nearby enemy affected by your Damage Over Time effects.
• Coven’s Fangs (2 Divinity): Your Conjuration, Companion, Minion, and Bat Familiar attacks deal 52% increased damage to Crowd Controlled enemies.
  • Lucky Hit: Your Conjuration, Companion, Minion, and Bat Familiar have up to a 30% chance to inflict Vampiric Curse when hitting enemies.
• Domination (1 Ferocity): You deal 24% increased damage to enemies who are Stunned, Immobilized, Frozen, or Feared. If they're also Injured and not an Elite, they're instantly killed.
• Feed the Coven (1 Eternity): Lucky Hit: Conjuration, Companion, Minion and Bat Familiar attacks have up to a 60% chance to restore 10 Primary Resource to you and increase your Damage by 10% for 4 seconds.
• Hectic (3 Divinity): For every 5 Basic Skills you cast, one of your active Cooldowns is reduced by 2 seconds.
• Hemomancy (3 Eternity): Your attacks deal 80% of your Maximum Life as Physical damage to nearby enemies.
  • This can only occur once every 4 seconds. You heal for 1% of your Maximum Life for each enemy damaged this way.
• Infection (1 Ferocity): Hitting enemies with direct damage infects them with Pox.
  • Inflicting Pox 8 times on an enemy expunges their infection, dealing 70% Poison damage.
• Jagged Spikes (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity): Thorns have a 10% chance to deal 300% increased damage and Chill enemies for 8%.
• Prey on the Weak (2 Ferocity): You deal 16% increased damage to Vulnerable enemies. Enemies are Vulnerable while affected by a Vampiric Curse from your other Vampiric Powers.
• Rampart (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity): After not moving for 3 seconds, you gain a Barrier for 40% of your Maximum Life for 6 seconds. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds.
• Ravenous (3 Ferocity): Lucky Hit: Up to a 20% chance to increase your Attack Speed by 40% of your Total Movement Speed for 6 seconds.
• Resilience (2 Eternity): You gain 1% Damage Reduction for each 2% Life you are missing.
• Sanguine Brace (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity): When you kill an enemy, Fortify for 6% of your Base Life. While you have more Fortify than half of your Maximum Life, you gain 8% Critical Strike Chance.
• Terror (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity, 1 Eternity): When struck, you have a 14% chance to Fear nearby enemies and Slow them by 80% for 2 seconds. You are guaranteed to Critically Strike enemies who are Feared.
• Undying (1 Eternity): Casting Skills heals you for 3% Life. Double this bonus while below 50% Life.

Major Vampiric Powers (6 Pacts Required):

• Accursed Touch (6 Divinity): Lucky Hit: Up to a 44% chance to inflict Vampiric Curse on enemies.
  • Enemies with the Vampiric Curse have a 15% chance to spread it to other surrounding enemies.
  • Accursed Souls deal 200% increased damage.
• Bathe in Blood (3 Divinity, 3 Eternity): While Channeling a Skill, you form a pool of blood beneath you.
  • While channeling a skill in a pool, your Channeled Skills deal 40% increased damage and you gain 30% Damage Reduction. A pool can only form once every 8 seconds.
• Blood Boil (6 Eternity): When your Core Skills Overpower an enemy, you spawn 3 Volatile Blood Drops.
  • Collecting a Volatile Blood Drop causes it to explode, dealing 60% Physical damage around you. Every 20 seconds, your next Skill is guaranteed to Overpower.
• Call Familiar (3 Ferocity, 3 Divinity): Casting a Mastery, Weapon Mastery, Macabre, Wrath, or Imbuement Skill calls a bat ally to attack nearby enemies, dealing 80% Physical damage with a 30% chance to Stun.
• Flowing Veins (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity): You deal 60% increased Damage Over Time to enemies that are moving or affected by a Vampiric Curse.
• Metamorphosis (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity): When you Evade you turn into a cloud of bats, becoming Unstoppable for 4 seconds.
  • Enemies along your path take 160% Physical damage and are inflicted with Vampiric Curse.
• Moonrise (6 Ferocity): Hitting an enemy with a Basic Skill grants you 4% Attack Speed for 10 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.
  • Upon reaching maximum stacks, you enter a Vampiric Bloodrage, gaining 160% Basic Skill damage and 15% Movement Speed for 10 seconds.

• Pacts - Can only be placed on Armor gear pieces (not Jewelry or Weapons). You can place up to 3 on regular gear, 4 on Sacred and 5 on Ancestral items.
  • There are also three different types (Ferocity, Divinity, and Eternity) that when combined are totaled up in the Sanguine Circle and used to unlock the Vampiric Powers.
    • Ferocity Pacts have a Crown icon.
    • Divinity Pacts have a Chalice icon.
    • Eternity Pacts have a Skull icon.
  • You can only add Pacts to an item until you reach the maximum amount, at that point, you need to use a Cleansing Acid to remove a Pact.
• Potent Blood - Drops from various Vampiric enemies that is used to upgrade your Powers.
• New Enemies - Shadow Vampires (Monster Family) are being added. Here are a few examples given.
  • Blood Skeletons - Have area of denial attacks
  • Blood Seekers - Heroes fallen to Zir who weren't protected by Lillith's Blood. These monsters are found throughout the Sanctuary overworld, as well as in Dungeons to get the jump on you. You want to always kill them as they are a critical source of Potent Blood, a currency

• Blood Harvest - An event that takes over certain zones in a rotation. It will be available from level 1. Unlike Helltide, a Blood Harvest event will always be active. Collect Blood Lures to start mini-events that draws Blood Seekers summoned to be killed off for rewards. You can also used Seeker Keys to free prisoners or open Seeker Caches for Pact Armor, Pact Consumables, and Potent Blood.

• Hunter's Acclaim - An additional progression system that works with the Blood Harvest event. Doing certain tasks or killing high priority targets will earn you Reputation. As you get more, you will unlock crafting materials, Items, and Pact consumables.

Endgame Bosses

• Summon Components Tradable - The items that are required to summon these bosses are tradable.
• Differing Loot Tables - Each Boss has a distinct loot table geared towards allowing the player to target farm specific cosmetics, items, and even Uber Uniques. In regards to Uber Uniques, it was stated that, "You will definitely know people that have these items."

• New End Game Bosses:
  • Echos of Varshan - You need to run Whispers of the Dead (starting in WT3) to get new Malignant body parts which are combined need to summon Varshan in those pesky tunnels.
  • Grigoire, The Galvanic Saint - Collect Infernal Steel from various Helltide Chests (Starting in WT3) to summon this boss He was stated to be Lighting based boss, to emphasize that new Resistance changes that will be talked about in next week's Campfire Chat.
  • The Beast in Ice - Requires parts from completing Nightmare Dungeon Tier 31 and above. You will combine items to form a specific Sigil that brings you directly to the Beast's Lair.
  • Duriel, King of Maggots - Requires parts from Echos of Varshan and Grigoire, The Galvanic to summon this boss.
  • Lord Zir (Hard version) - This harder version requires components from both World Bosses and Legion Events to summon him.

General Improvements

• Scroll of Escape - Are now consumed if you Disconnect (DC) while playing Hardcore.
• Incenses - Now have an Experience bonus tied to them and presets through death.
• Experience Bonuses - All item based bonuses are added up and multiplied by the World Tier multiplier.
  • This is estimated to decrease time to level to 100 by about 40%!
• Ten Unlocked Waypoints - Two Waypoints per zone will be unlocked with the news Skip Campaign.
  • Blizzard wanted to help in traveling around, but not give everything immediately.
• Renown Rewards - All rewards now persist between seasons and characters.
• Overworld Monsters - In World Tier 3/4, enemies no longer trail behind the player's level after level 55/75 respectively.
• Characters Slots - Two Additional Character slots!
• Smoldering Ashes - Will now automatically unlock so you don't have to worry about collecting then assigning them. You also get Smoldering Ashes on the Battle Pass much earlier to actually get use out of them during your Seasonal play.

Town and Vendors

• The Occultist - Has set up by the Tree of Whispers.
• Stashes - Have been added to all small towns and Waypoints.
• More Stash! - You will now find Stashes scattered around all Capital cities.
• The Purveyor of Curiosities - Has been placed closer to other important NPCs/Stash.

Mounts

• Responsiveness - Mounts are less likely to get stuck on terrain or unexpectedly slow down.
  • The mount's ability to jump over traversals has been improved.
• Speed - Base movement speed increased by 14%. Top mount speed is unchanged. Getting to top speed with mouse and keyboard has been improved. Spur now lasts 50% longer and allows you to break through barricades! Cooldowns have been adjusted when quickly mounting/dismounting:
  • Manual Dismount - 10 seconds down to 5.
  • Forced Dismount - 30 seconds to 15.
  • Dismount from Combat Skill - 10 seconds down to 3.

Editor's Note: Blizzard described the Dismount as a "cool up" describing how long after mounting until you will be able to use your Combat Dismount.

Nightmare Dungeons

• Teleporting to a NMD - Teleporting to a Nightmare Dungeon will now place you inside the Dungeon instead of outside.
  • -1 Loadscreen, this is a buff!
• Events - Monster density has been increased and NPCs will no longer be one-shot in higher World Tiers.
  • More adjustments are being looked at for events as well.
• Traps - Being able to tell where to stand, or more importantly where not to, has been improved.
  • Crowd Control (not just traps) has been greatly reduced.
• Objectives - Completely removed objectives from a handful of Dungeons to make them straight forward.
  • The team is looking into if this change is well received and if improvements are required.
• Layouts - Layouts are continuing to be improved to eliminate large amounts of backtracking.
  • The team will continue to monitor any pesky dungeon that the players feel are still out of line with the new guiding principle.

• Afflictions - Several current and disabled Afflictions have been updated to have a better balance of problem-solving and reduce "instant salvaging" of Sigils.
  • Backstabbers - Close monster attacks from behind cause you to become Vulnerable, increasing all damage you take by XX%.
  • Monster Critical Resist - Monster attacks reduce the damage of your Critical Strikes for 3 seconds by XX%, stacking up to Y% times.
  • Death Pulse - Prevent Death Pulse on monsters that already have a similar effect, as well as preventing Death Pulse from stacking or chaining of multiple Death Pulses when layered on top of each other.
  • Lightning Storm - You are now "Shocked" inside the bubble granting 35% movement speed for 5 seconds.
    • It will now ONLY start when in combat, allowing easier travel when not in combat, and only starts when the player has a direct path to the bubble.
  • Drifting Shade - Duration reduced from 5 to 3 seconds.
    • The respawn time has been increased by 2 seconds.

World Events

• Legion Events - Time between instances will be 25 mins. vs. 30mins.
  • Warning time increased from 5 mins. to 10 mins.
  • Lastly fixed Legion Event pin on the edge of a player's map if a Whisper was active for the Legion Event.
• World Bosses - Spawn timers reduced from 6 hours to 3.5 hours.
  • Warning timer increased from 30mins. to 60 mins.
  • A message will be broadcasted to players 15 mins. prior to a World Bose spawn.

Endgame Activities

• Nightmare Sigils - Sigils from Whisper Caches will now always be within 5 levels of your highest level Nightmare Dungeon clear.
• Gold Reward - Whisper Caches reward greatly increased amounts of gold.
• Experience - Whispers of the Dead and Helltide reward more experience.
  • The team is okay with Nightmare Dungeons being a great source of XP, but these events shouldn't suffer, hence this change.
• Whisper Cache Item - All drops now adhere to the slot picked when choosing your reward.
• Helltide Chests - The Mini-map now displays icons indicating the Chest type, no more guessing.
  • The rewarded items also adhere to the slot picked.

UI/UX

• Items - You can now mark items as "Favorite" or "Junk" in Stash or Inventory. Favorite items can not be Salvaged.
• Extracted Aspects - When you have multiple of the same Aspects they will now be grouped together when sorting your inventory.
• Sorting - Normal Affixes have been improved to be more consistent.
• Dungeon Map Tooltips - The Codex of Power Aspect tooltip will now display when it is an active Whisper.
• Stash - can now be sorted and filtered (by custom entry)!

• Combat Text - Options to hide certain status effects (Vulnerable, Fortified, etc.).
• Minimap - Zoomed out to capture more of the world around you.
• Auto-run - When pressed (PC or Controller) will auto run in a direction facing or directed by the mouse pointer until movement action is taken.
• Streamer Mode - A new option for streamers to hide their identity information such as character name or Bnet Tag in the Social Options menu.

Items

• Gems - Players will now earn Gem Shards that drop into the crafting materials pane.
  • These Shards are used to craft various Gems.
  • Unused Gems can be Salvaged back into Shards to re-craft other Gems.
• Enchanting Costs - Costs have been reduced overall.
  • The initial price will be higher, but the ramp up will be much slower between rerolls.
• Crafting Materials - They will drop in place of lower Item Power Normal, Magic, Rare equipment in World Tier 3/4.
  • In WT 3, Legendaries and Uniques (Normal and Sacred) will drop, but Normal items won't, they will be converted into crafting materials instead.
  • In WT 4, only Ancestral items will drop with Normal/Sacred items becoming crafting materials.
  • The same safety net for Legendaries and Uniques will be there, same as WT3
  • This is an effort to help clean up inventory space before other measures need to be taken.
• Normal Whisper Caches - Rewards a +10 Item Power item.
• Upgraded Whisper Caches - Rewards a +20 Item Power item.
• Helltide Caches - Rewards a +20 Item Power item.

Item Power Changes - Editor's Note: There is no way for me to accurately transcribe this important change, I have provided a timestamped YouTube link below:

Post Season 2 Information

Throughout the Season 2 Developer Livestream the team that they have more to show us during the Campfire Chat next week on October 10th. There is already more content Blizzard plans to release during the course of Season 2. We'll get previews of this during the Chat.

Diablo 4 on Steam!

Diablo 4 will be coming to Steam! With Overwatch 2 being the first of Blizzard's games to go on a different platform we were wondering how many others would too. Diablo 4 will be on Steam with the launch of Season 2! You can Wishlist for it now!

Community Questions

Changes are always being worked on. More End Game stuff and bringing these into the game in phases.

The team wants to have a mix of activities. Seasonal events do add more to the open world and now with additional End Game bosses, you will need to traverse the world for the special items to summon them.

The team always talks about power scaling and keeping it balanced as they progress. They are always looking for new ways to do that.

Devs said wait with a wink. Most likely something to this will come next week.

Team wants to add more tools and options in the future.

Nothing for now on Sets. Season 2 is up to 12 new Uniques.

Duriel is designed not to be at the same, high level challenge, compared to Uber Lilith as she was design to be the pinnacle boss.

The new End Game bosses and their items will be part of the Eternal Realme day 1 of Season 2.

Team is talking about many things that relate to this topic.

Would like to add in the future.

Open to ideas and feedback from players as they stress certain systems.

Still talking about it and looking into it.

The team has heard the desire to have them and are currently looking into it.

Team is always taking a look into many features of the game, stash being one of them.

...and there we are! That you for reading our Season 2 Developer Livestream! Remember we'll be doing it all again next week for the follow-up Campfire Chat, next Tuesday!

Video Recap

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