Season 5 Campfire Chat Wrap-Up

The Season 5 Campfire Chat just took place. The panel consisted of Daniel Tanguay (Lead Seasons Designer), Adam Jackson (Lead Class Designer) and Adam Fletcher (Associate Director of Community). The topics included PTR Learnings, class balancing, Season 5, and Q&A. See all the major points below.

Infernal Hordes

Infernal Hordes are a new mechanic coming in Season 5. It is a wave-based gameplay mode with survival-like choices in between the waves including new bosses encounters. You need a Infernal Horde Compass to access Infernal Hordes.

• There are 8 Tiers of Infernal Compasses, which scale in difficulty and World Tier.
• Each Infernal Compass Tier increases the number of waves starting at five for Tiers I-III, increasing until a maximum of 10 waves with a Tier VIII Infernal Compass. It also increases the starting difficulty of Monsters, and increases the potency of your rewards while decreasing your number of revives.
• Abyssal Scrolls can be earned and used to upgrade your Infernal Compass by upgrading their Tier. Infernal Compasses will only drop at Tiers I-III; Abyssal Scrolls will be needed to increase their level to a Max of Tier VIII.

Infernal Compasses can be used at the following levels and World Tiers:

• Tier I
  • Available at World Tier III
• Tier II
  • Available at World Tier IV
  • Includes Bonus Affixes which increase crafting materials, and Legendary and Unique Drop rates!
• Tier III
  • Available at Level 100
  • Includes Bonus Affixes
  • Includes Spoil of Greater Equipment

Burning Aethers are a new currency used to unlock the spoils of Hell at the end of each run. At the end of each wave, you gonna have to choose a boon and a bane that will impact the rest of your run.

On a successful run, you’ll use Burning Aether to unlock Spoils of Hell. There will be four different Spoils of Hell available on completing your Infernal Hordes run.

• Spoils of Equipment
• Spoils of Materials
• Spoils of Gold
• Spoils of Greater Equipment
  • This Spoil of Hell guarantees an item with a Greater Affix!

Infernal Hordes let players access to about 10 new Uniques and 20 new Legendaries.

• If you manage to survive the Infernal Hordes, the Fell Council await. Originally meant to protect us from the Prime Evil Mephisto during the events in Diablo II, these noble priests were corrupted and became Champions of the very demon they swore to oppose.
• There are 5 Fell Council Members in total, each equipped with different unique abilities. Every time you face the Fell Council, there will be 3 different members to fight you – each three will be selected to fight you at random. Be wary of their unique abilities in the various combinations you’ll encounter them.
• Once you inflict enough damage on the Fell Council, the Priests will become more frenzied in their attacks. Stay on your guard if you wish to live.
• Upon defeating the Fell Council, you can spend your Burning Aether on the Spoils of Hell.

Uniques

Quality of Life Updates

• It is now possible to target farm Uniques from 3 additional sources:
  • Obol Vendors
  • Helltide Chests
  • Whisper Caches
• These methods will have a chance to give the player Uniques from the Armor and Weapon slot. For instance if you want a specific Unique Weapon, you can simply target weapons from the Obol vendor and have a chance to get Unique Weapons for your class.
• This is also true for Mythic Uniques. However if you get a Mythic Unique from a non-slot target, then you'll get a random one.

Uniques Updates

• There will be a lot of updates to Uniques.
• Uniques are meants to be powerful, exciting items that direct players to specific builds. They're also meant to be chase items.
• The goal is that players build around their Uniques. Ideally, Blizzard wants players to run about 2 to 4 Uniques in their build.
• The goal is to move away from generic "fits all builds" style of Uniques. Mythic Uniques are more meant to fit this design space since they're insanely rare.
• The upper power of Unique effects and the roll range will be increased from an average of 10 to 20 rolls.
• The Unique stat affixes will be updated to fit more with Season 4 itemization changes.
• The stat power levels and effects of Uniques will now have higher rolls.

Changes to Mythic Uniques are also in the oven:

Class Updates

Barbarian

New Unique

Druid

• Moving power of Shepherd's Aspect to buff Companions instead of the player.
• Lots of buffs to Druid skills to compensate

Necromancer

Golems are now able to jump of the location you point them to and smash enemies!

Rogue

Updates to Flurry

Sorcerer

New Unique

General Updates

• Invulnerability Skills now start their cooldown when the Invulnerability ends instead of when the skill beings. This is to prevent infinite Invulnerability and to open design space for these skills.
• Monster Crowd Control has been reviewed, generaly reduced duration and frequency.
• Potions can now be used while crowd controlled (even stunned).

Notable Bug Fixes

• Rogue Victimize no longer double dips in its damage.
• Damage over time effects are receiving the +%Damage bonus twice.
• Skeleton Reapers are getting both Book of the Dead bonuses when the second option is selected.

Endgame Bosses

• You no longer need to reset the dungeon to replay the same boss. Upon killing them, the summoning Altar reappears and allows you to use more resources to play them again.
• Summoning Varshan now only requires Malignant Hearts. Trembling Hands, Blackened Femurs, and Gurgling Heads have been removed from the game.
• Endgame Bosses now drop additional gold instead of Rare items.

Beast in Ice

• The Beast in Ice boss fight now functions as a standard dungeon; you no longer have to craft a sigil to enter the fight.
  • Any leftover Beast in Ice sigils held by previous Seasonal Realm or Eternal characters can be used to summon Beast in Ice instead of using Summoning Materials.
• The boss fight is now much closer to the entrance, so you’ll no longer need to progress through the Dungeon before the fight.
• Sigil Dust has been removed as a material cost to summon.

Helltide and Whispers

• We’ve significantly reduced the time it takes to complete Whisper bounties. We’ve now made it so that there are always enough Whispers to earn 10 Grim Favors within a given Helltide, should now take significantly less time to complete. Additionally, icons have been updated to be consistent with other Whispers.
• Increasing your Threat now consistently scales with the health of slain Monsters.
• We’re adjusting Baneful Heart drop rates as they were dropping too frequently to feel valuable.
  • Chance to get one from a Tortured Gift starts at 13%, and increases each time you fail to get one. Once you are rewarded a Baneful Heart, the chance resets to 10%.
  • Hellborne and the Helltide Assassin starts at 1% chance to drop a Heart, and also increases each time you fail to get one. It now resets to 2%.
• The Cull Demons Whisper Bounty now includes Fallen, Cull Fallen Whisper Bounty now replaced with Cull Cultists.

Loot Rewards

• Resplendent Spark awards for defeating Tormented bosses can now be earned separately on both Hardcore and non-Hardcore.
• Resplendent Sparks and Scattered Prisms will no longer be automatically picked up. Additionally, these items can now be found in the lost items Stash if forgotten when they drop.
• Unique and Mythic Unique Items can now be acquired through Whisper Caches, the Purveyor of Curiosities, and Tortured Gifts in Helltide.
• The chance to find Mythic Uniques through all non-boss drop locations has been increased.

Treasure Goblins

• The loot Quality from Treasure Goblins has been improved. They can now drop 1-3 Legendary Items and 2-6 Rare Items. The higher the number of Legendary Drops, the lower the number of Rare Drops. The opposite is also true e.g. if 2 Legendary Items drop, then 4 Rares will drop in addition.
• Now drop 1-2 Elixirs and are guaranteed to additionally drop Common Ore, Herbs, Leather, and Gem Fragments.
• Increased the amount of Gold that drops.
  • Examples:
    • Level 1 in World Tier I: 40k Gold
    • Level 100 in World Tier IV: 150k Gold
• In World Tiers III and IV, Treasure Goblins also drop Forgotten Souls.
• Additionally, they now have a 10/20/30% chance to drop 1-2 Scattered Prisms in World Tiers I and II/World Tier III/World Tier IV respectively.

Weapons

• We’re now allowing more classes to use different weapon types. This includes updating innate affixes to be more useful across classes and adjusting their conditional requirements.
  • For instance, Sorcerers will now be able to use One-handed Swords and Maces.

Season 5 Prep Has Begun!

The Maxroll Diablo 4 Team has been hard at work since the PTR to get all our guides and resources ready for this game-changing update! With that said, head over to our Discord and select the D4 role in #roles to stay up to date with our content development to make the most of your Season 4 experience!

Written by: Chewingnom