Major Changes Coming To Diablo 4 Season 2 - In Depth Community Discussion
I wanted to have an open discussion with the Diablo IV community to see what players are thinking about for the new content. We’re seeing a lot of changes coming to Diablo 4 Season 2, and when there’s a massive amount of changes it can be difficult to navigate what the new best practices are.
Whether the balance and content updates are good or bad, only time is going to tell. But one thing I know is, right when Season 2 launches and I create a new seasonal character, I just have no idea what content I’m going to tackle first.
Gold Farming Dilemma
The first topic I want to talk about is how exactly are we going to farm Diablo 4 Gold in Season 2?
We know from the live stream that “whispers are going to have a substantially increased amount of gold”. But beyond this, I mean Greed Shrines are probably still going to be a meme. But this still leaves me thinking, did they nerf gold farming?
Other than picking up ambient gold dropped from enemies, normally we would just farm gold from picking up trash rare Diablo 4 Items and sell them at a vendor, hence the saying Salvage Oranges and Sell Yellows. But with the new update, these junk yellows are now just going to drop as crafting materials instead.
So, I’m not really sure what the new best method is going to be. The best ways to farm gold might just be climbing high tier Nightmare Dungeons. Hopefully from the update, whispers are in a much more competitive position in endgame that people actually have a reason to do them besides just leveling 1 to 50.
And it’s also important to mention it was revealed in the live stream that we have a new content type downstream from whispers in the form of an endgame boss, but the relevance of this content will largely depend on its loot table for unique items.
I think that Nightmare Dungeons still have a competitive advantage anyway, considering they’re still the only way to level glyphs for the Paragon Board.
It was also mentioned during the live stream that glyph leveling got buffed, meaning they’ll give more glyph experience. So, maybe this will give us more time away from nightmare dungeons to pursue new content without worrying about glyph leveling as much.
Vampiric Powers & Theory Crafting
It’ll be interesting to see what we come up with as a community moving forward for the best practices in farming gold in endgame. So, let’s talk about Vampiric Powers.
We’re looking at a total of 21 new Vampiric Powers, 14 of which require 1 to 3 pacts, and the remainder requiring 6 pacts. We know the sanguine circle has 5 total slots, armor I believe can have a total of 5 pacts at once. So, technically, we should be able to equip 5 of the strongest vampiric abilities, right?
The question I think is how hard are pacts going to be to line up properly. It would be miserable if you got a god roll armor drop in terms of affixes, just to realize you’re missing all the pacts you need to finish your build.
They said in the live stream that there will be a way to inject or remove pacts from armor. I just hope there are no restrictions that only allow us to do this a limited number of times. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want this system to be easy, but I also don’t want it to be impossible.
It’s going to be interesting to see how these affect our build options and to also see if there’s any Vampiric Powers that are basically going to be so overpowered that it’d be dumb not to pick it.
Here’s a full list of the Vampiric Powers coming to Diablo 4 in Season 2:
- Anticipation (1 Divinity)
- Coven’s Fangs (2 Divinity)
- Domination (1 Ferocity)
- Feed the Coven (1 Eternity)
- Hectic (3 Divinity)
- Hemomancy (3 Eternity)
- Infection (1 Ferocity)
- Jagged Spikes (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity)
- Prey on the Weak (2 Ferocity)
- Rampart (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity)
- Ravenous (3 Ferocity)
- Resilience (2 Eternity)
- Sanguine Brace (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity)
- Terror (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity, 1 Eternity)
- Undying (1 Eternity)
- Major Vampiric Powers (6 Pacts Required)
- Accursed Touch (6 Divinity)
- Bathe in Blood (3 Divinity, 3 Eternity)
- Blood Boil (6 Eternity)
- Call Familiar (3 Ferocity, 3 Divinity)
- Flowing Veins (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity)
- Metamorphosis (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity)
- Moonrise (6 Ferocity)
From a quick observation, it’s obvious that some of the lower pact requirement ones are going to be weaker and probably switched out later.
Accursed Touch kind of reminds me of a marked for death type ability that spreads out like Rabies on Druid.
Bathe in Blood is the channeling Vampiric Power that we saw in the developer live stream. Personally, I don’t see this being used much. I mean incinerate Sorcerer isn’t really in a good spot and I can’t think of many channeled abilities off the top of my head.
Call Familiar, the Vampiric Power that spawns the bat seems like it might be another meme ability. But I mean, this could potentially be great on Death Blow Barbarian or on a Firewall Sorcerer.
I could totally see a Pulverize Druid or Blood Lance Necro using the Vampiric Power called Blood Boil. It just seems like it’d synergize easier with existing builds that are centered around overpower.
Flowing Veins sounds like it’d be great on any damage over time classes like Poison Rogue or Blighted Necro. And maybe we’ll actually see a Poison Druid build for season 2.
Metamorphosis sounds like it’d be absolutely hilarious on a Sorcerer using Oculus. The unique item that makes you bounce around randomly from using Evade.
It also looks like we might see some interesting basic attack builds come out finally using the Vampiric Power Moonrise. I know that I’ve been reading comments on Reddit from people who want to use basic attacks in a build that’s more competitive. And this might be the way to do it.
Looking at some of the lower pact Vampiric Powers, it looks like Undying might be great on any class that spams abilities like Corpse Explosion.
Unless Vulnerable gets nerfed to death from the Damage Rework, Prey on the Weak might be an absolute must have on most classes. It says that any mob affected by Vampiric Curse is automatically made vulnerable, which provides a new route for any build that needs an extra source of damage.
I’m seeing some good attack speed opportunities like on Moonrise and Ravenous. Even if you don’t go a basic attack build, this could be an answer for any classes that are resource hungry.
Endgame Exploration
The other thing I wanna talk about is how do you guys plan on spending your time in endgame?
Personally, for me, I’m definitely going to rush endgame to check out the new bosses. I’m actually curious to see how difficult these new bosses are going to be. Are they more like dungeon bosses? Or are they challenging to fight and it’s going to take time to learn the fight?
I think if they’re like dungeon bosses, I’m going to be pretty disappointed, because right now dungeon bosses even with the added health, are just really meant for casual players. I think Duriel King of Maggots is most likely going to be like the Uber Lilith fight, which I’m kinda crossing my fingers. They have news on an Uber Lilith rework in the campfire chat on October 10th.
I’m hoping with the new endgame flow that I’ll find it worth it to switch between running Helltides, doing some Whispers, grinding some high tier Nightmare Dungeons, and after all of that actually getting some decent loot from The Ice Beast, the Galvanic Saint, Lord Zeer, and Varshan.
So, Item Power is going to more closely follow enemy level in Season 2.
Multiplicative Experience Points
I’ve been thinking, do I prioritize gear or prioritize experience points?
The way I’ll first tackle it is I’ll see how fast the new leveling experience is in Diablo 4. And if it’s fast enough, I might actually just continuously raise the tiers of the nightmare dungeons I’m doing. At least until I find some really good affixes on gloves, weapons, boots and amulets.
After that, I’ll probably consider the odds of finding anything better will be so slim that I might as well just level more efficiently instead.
By the way, if you didn’t catch it in the live stream, experience point bonuses in Diablo 4 are now going to be multiplicative, not additive. This is huge considering once you’re in World Tier 4, you’re getting 400% more experience points, which means your 15% bonus on top of the 400% bonus isn’t like a 6% increase in experience points anymore. You’ll get the full 15% of whatever the 400% value is after it’s calculated.
Overall, I’m really pleased with how all of these changes sound. I’m excited to see the live stream on October 10th with information on the balance changes to damage, gear and classes. We’ll ultimately have to be the judge on whether or not it’s executed properly on October 17th.
