Diablo IV: Season of Divine Intervention is Coming on December 11

Get ready for a whole slew of patch notes! This update looks great, and I am very excited to see it in action.

In times of greatest strife, that which can stand against overwhelming evil is most often the light of the Just. Season of Divine Intervention goes live on December 11 at 8:30 p.m. PST. The Lesser Evils return to spread chaos, with Azmodan driving the assault. An unbound angel descends—granting Divine Gifts to those who resist this demonic invasion. Major permanent updates arrive to itemization in Masterworking and Tempering, and strike against advanced foes as monster combat evolves to provide a fresh challenge. Advance through an all-new Season Rank system to earn rewards, face Heaven and Hell as Sanctuary awaits judgment.

Item Journey Reworks: Tempering and Masterworking

The many smiths of Sanctuary have unlocked new potential in the arms proudly forged in their workshop, a new age of armor and weaponry is upon us. In the Season of Divine Intervention, the item journey is changing in a big way.

Tempering has changed in a few significant ways. Tempering is no longer randomly applied; Masterworking has a distinct and linear path, leading on a far more direct item journey relative to the power you seek.

Tempering and Masterworking have been refocused around their most core elements: customization, and prestige. Players now always get their desired Tempering Affix, and Masterworking has a direct path towards perfection.

Tempering

You can now select which specific affix you want to apply to your item from a Tempering Recipe. No longer will you have to have it randomly applied! Considering the lack of randomness, items can now only have one tempered affix. Tempered affixes applied to Ancestral items can sometimes even upgrade to Greater Affixes.

Additionally, Tempering Charges can be restored indefinitely, so you can buildcraft to your heart’s content.

Masterworking

Masterworking now uses item Quality as a metric of progress, which gives a bonus to the base damage, armor, or resistance of an item as well as any affixes on the item.

Items can be Masterworked to a maximum Quality threshold of 25 20. Each time you Masterwork the item, it adds a random amount of Quality to the item (from 2-5 1-3 levels). Quality will also slightly boost all affix values by 1% per Quality level. Note that the cost to Masterwork now scales based off the Quality of your item.

Once at maximum Quality, you can roll it one last time for a Capstone Bonus. This Capstone Bonus upgrades a random affix on your item by 50%, including Greater Affixes a random non-greater affix on your item into a Greater Affix. You can then choose to re-roll the Masterworked Greater Affix, without resetting your Masterworking Quality. Re-rolling the current Masterworked Affix will cost Obducite and Neathiron.

Additionally, we’re increasing the amount of base affixes found on non-unique items from three to four.

Monster Combat Evolved

The many bloodlusted creatures that burrow beneath the many hovels and bogs of Sanctuary may seem mindless. But there’s a reason they have not yet been eradicated from the land of Sanctuary. They mutate and adapt to overcome their prey... slowly becoming more formidable.

Monsters will better react and adapt to combat in their express desire to end your life. Each monster should now have its own clear role and own identity when fighting. Monster behavior was previously too predictable; they’ll now be more dynamic in how they respond to you in combat.

Deadlier Enemies Lurk

Expect your defenses to be regularly tested by your enemies; you’ll more regularly be dealt damage from these intelligent packs. Monsters with affixes will also be more powerful, making them more necessary to deal with before moving on to other less important enemies. Take heed as Enemy Affixes have become even more potent. More of the older affixes (ie. Resistance based affixes) have been moved to Torment difficulties, letting you encounter more of these new affixes in Pre-torment difficulites.

Monster packs will also group up less, making them harder to take out in one fell swoop. Their tactics have improved, and so should yours. Additionally, Champion enemy rarity has been reworked to form champion packs. Nightmare Dungeons affixes that grants Elites additional damage will now also apply to Champions.

Elite Enemy Updates

There are 20+ new monster affixes to learn and conquer, and Elites now spawn with minions that inherit some of their affixes. We’ve also updated enemy affixes to be more engaging, reduced overlap in their designs, and made some visual clarity improvements.

These changes apply to all monsters across Sanctuary. Take care the next time you encounter what you think will be a familiar pack of foes.

System Updates: Defense, Healing, Renown

Season of Divine Intervention revitalizes the way you defend, use Potions, and how Renown is changing across both Seasonal and Eternal Realms.

Defense Overhaul: Introducing Toughness

In an effort to better equalize effective Health across classes and builds, we’re making several changes to the way effective Health interacts with Damage Reduction and how those individual stats are calculated. Our goal is to properly test you defensively as you climb through difficulty tiers, putting more emphasis on gearing your builds towards survivability.

Armor and Resistances

Armor and Resistances will both become rating systems, with diminishing returns at higher values. Armor now reduces all damage taken, both Physical and Non-Physical.

We’re introducing a new type of Damage Resistance: Physical Damage. Additionally, the Armor and Resistance penalties per Torment difficulty have been removed. When selecting each Torment difficulty, it will also provide a recommended Toughness level. Each Skills and Paragon Nodes are also being reworked with these changes in mind.

Paragon Nodes and Skills that provided various form of Damage Reduction now grant a multiplicative bonus to your armor or all resistances.

Toughness

To help you understand your defenses better, we’re adding a new stat called Toughness that represents the total amount of raw damage of each type you can take after considering all damage mitigation sources.

Toughness is displayed under your character stats beneath Attack Power. The Toughness value summarizes your average defense against each damage type, hovering over this value will give a detailed view of how effective your defenses are against each specific damage type. You’ll also be able to compare the Toughness of items between tooltips to help inform your decision.

Healing Updates

Potions are changing significantly to make their use more impactful and tactical.

Base Potion capacity has been reduced to 4 (regardless of previous Renown progress, expect more on that later). Potion healing is now an instant, percentage based heal. Using a Potion heals you for 35% of your total Health immediately on use.

In addition to the Potions you pick up, you’ll also slowly regenerate a Potion every 30 seconds. To help compensate, Life on Hit has been improved and re-added as a potential affix to see or equip on items.

We’ve also increased values for Life Regeneration, Life on Kill, Healing %, and made them more readily available. Healing Potion upgrades have been removed considering Potions are now a portion of your overall Health, still stop by to say hi to the Alchemist sometime though.

Fortify Re-design

To work in tandem with the changes to Healing and Potions, Fortify is shifting from a type of Damage Reduction to an additional reservoir of Life that’s drained to heal you over time.

When you now gain Fortify, it will stack up to your Maximum Life. When you have Fortify under Maximum Life, you’ll heal for a percentage of your Maximum Life per second in exchange for an equal amount of Fortify.

You will be considered Fortified as long as you have any amount of Fortify. Specific changes to Skills, Passives, and items related to Fortify are detailed in the 2.5.0 Patch notes found at the bottom of this blog.

There is a lot to look forward to with this update. Be sure to check out the full blog or check out the summary below!

Features of Season of Divine Intervention include: 

• Azmodan’s Return: Joined by Belial, Andariel, and Duriel, Azmodan and the Lesser Evils wreak havoc on Sanctuary, taking advantage of the chaos surrounding Akarat’s mysterious return. Players utilize Nightmare Affixes to gain Divine favor.
• Monsters Evolved: Smarter and deadlier enemies plague Sanctuary with clearer combat roles. Enemies’ dynamic behavior encourages players to adapt their approach to confrontations. 
• Itemization Overhaul: With Tempering and Masterworking streamlining the item journey, players can directly set affixes from a Tempering Recipe. Masterworking improves the Quality of an item, which gives a bonus to the base damage, armor, or resistance of an item.
• Sanctification: The powers of the High Heavens grace player items as one final and powerful upgrade, channeling Angelic power into gear. Sanctifying items has the chance to apply a bonus Legendary power, improve an Affix, add or replace an Affix, and, in rare instances, even make items indestructible. 
• Season Rank: The Season Journey evolves into a more challenging version with even greater rewards. Known as Seasonal Rank, this system requires players to complete a Capstone Dungeon before progressing to the next Rank.