Diablo 4: A Full Guide On Armor & Damage Reduction
As I play more Diablo 4, the relationship between Armor and Damage Reduction confuses me more. So, I did a few research on Armor and Damage Reduction, and would like to share my findings. Knowing this, you won’t be wasting Diablo 4 Gold on unnecessary gear.
There are 3 sections in this guide:
- Basic Damage Reduction Formula with Armor and Resistance
- Armor Damage Reduction Deep Dive (Armor Efficiency, Armor vs Higher Level Enemy & % Armor Mechanism)
- What do I do with this knowledge?
The armor mechanism is complicated and dynamic. The aim of this guide is to give you a high level idea on the relationship between Armor and Damage Reduction and offer the necessary tools for you to find out the specific gains in your specific situations.
Basic Damage Reduction Formula With Armor And Resistance
Let’s first start with the background, the basic formula. There are two main cases, Physical Damage and Non-Physical Damage.
For Physical Damage, let’s say an enemy’s attack is 100 Physical Damage. I am Lv87 and have 6557 Armor. This gives me 60% Damage Reduction from the same level enemy. So, let’s assume the enemy is the same level for now. I will then take 100 x (1 - 60%) = 40 Damage.
For non-Physical Damage, let’s say an enemy’s attack is 100 Lightning Damage. Armor will contribute to Damage Reduction to half of the Total Damage while Resistance contributes to the other half. So, it will be 100 x 50% x 60% = 30 Damage Reduction from Armor.
Let’s say I have 40% Lightning Resistance. In World Tier 4, Monsters’ attack overcomes 40% Resistance. So, it will be 40 x (1 - 40%) = 24% Lightning Resistance. Then, Resistance will contribute to 100 x 50% x 24% = 12 Damage Reduction from Resistance.
In total, I have 30 (from Armor) + 12 (from Resistance) = 42 Damage Reduction. And I will take 100 - 42 = 58 Lightning Damage Armor Efficiency.
Armor Efficiency
Now that we know the basic formula, I’d like to dive into why my 6557 Armor equals to 60% Damage Reduction. This section contains lots of and lots of numbers. Skip to the last section if you are only interested in the conclusions and the best practices.
Diablo 4 Dev shared a few examples on Armor to Damage Reduction in their Livestream from the 1st Screenshot, per unit Armor to Damage Reduction Efficiency decreases as players level up. Also, it seems that for a specific Level, per unit Armor to Damage Reduction is constant.
For example, at Lv 88, the Damage Reduction per armor is around 0.018%. I did some local testings and found out it is partially true. I swapped gears on and off on my Lv88 Sorcerer and recorded the following Armor to Damage Reduction Data Points. Then, I calculated the differences between Armor and Damage Reduction at each stage and got the per Armor Damage Reduction.
So, the trend is that as Armor goes up, the Damage Reduction per Armor goes up, too. I assume what Dev shared is the Cap of the Damage Reduction Per Armor. Which in this case, it is approaching 0.018% gradually.
Also, one important note is that this Damage Reduction is more powerful than it looks.
Let’s pick 2 data points from the 1st graph. I have 5284 Armor that leads to 41% Damage Reduction and 5817 Armor that leads to 48% Damage Reduction. This 5817 - 5284 = 533 Armor difference leads to 7% Damage Reduction.
But the actual Damage Reduction is 11.9%. Because let’s say the damage is 100. In the 5200 Armor case, we are taking 100 x (1 - 41%) = 59 damage. And in the 5800 Armor case, we are taking 100 x (1 - 48%) = 52 damage. Relatively, we are taking 52 / 59 = 88.1% of the previous damage. That leads to 1 - 88.1% = 11.9% Actual Damage Reduction.
So, I calculated each stage for Actual Damage Reduction. It also goes up as Armor goes up, to a point of 3.5X efficient or more.
One extra note is that for the first 3 rows, I took some Armor down to just collect data points. But they are not the common cases. The last 4 rows are the common cases where I have all gear equipped but swapping with % Armor Stats or not.
To make it easier to understand, I made 2 common cases: one is Skull 250 Armor, the other is 10% Armor stat from gear, which usually leads to 500 Armor.
And we can see on average, 250 Armor is roughly 6% Actual Damage Reduction 500 Armor is roughly 14% Actual Damage Reduction.
One thing to note is that all the Damage Reduction I mentioned above are Physical Damage Reduction.
For Non-Physical Damage Reduction, I will skip the calculation steps and put the results here. Assuming the All Resistance is 35%. In World Tier 4, that is going to be 21%. In common case, roughly the actual Non-Physical Damage Reduction for 250 Armor is 3% and for 500 Armor is 7%. The higher the Armor or the Resistance, the higher the Actual Non-Physical Damage Reduction is.
Armor VS Higher Level Enemy
Now, we have an idea on how 6557 Armor leads to 60% Damage Reduction at Lv88. And Diablo 4 Dev also shared a graph on how Higher Level Enemy makes Armor less efficient. I checked what the Dev mentioned in the Livestream and here are the keys.
First, Armor Damage Reduction Caps at 85%. So, the first flat line doesn’t mean enemies within 17 levels higher than the player. Do not depreciate the Armor Efficiency. But the 2000 Armor is too much at Lv1 that a Lv17 enemy starts to depreciate the Armor Efficiency enough that the value hits below 85%.
Second, when first looking at this graph, I am not sure whether the Armor Efficiency Depreciation is dynamic to the level difference between the Attacker and the Player.
For example, if I am Lv1, a Lv88 enemy would treat my 2000 Armor as 7% Damage Reduction from this graph. What if I am Lv50 or Lv88? Will the 2000 Armor be treated as some other value from a Lv88 Attacker?
So, I checked the Livestream more closely and the Dev explicitly mentioned that “Usually players can acquire 2000 Armor at around Lv30” “If the Lv30 Character fight a Lv100 Monster, the 2000 Armor can only absorb 5%”. This means that the Armor Depreciation is only related to the Attacker Level, not to the Level difference.
After doing a local testing that I tried to get around 2000 Armor for my Lv88 character, it says 7% too here. This confirms that the Armor Depreciation is only related to the Attacker Level. This also explains that why Armor Efficiency drops as Player level up from the screenshot earlier. Because Attacker levels up, too.
So it is a kind of designed to be always hungry for more Armor to better survive as players level up. That there won’t be a point that Armor is enough to hit 85% damage reduction cap because of the ultimately 54 levels of higher enemies in Nightmare Dungeons.
Percent Armor Mechanism
Now,we understand what Armor means to both the same level and higher-level enemies. But how can we acquire more Armor?
There are two types of Armor Source. One is the base armor. It comes from Gears, Strength and Elixir or Incense. The other is % Armor, it comes from Stats on Gears or Aspects like Disobedience.
After doing some testing on % Armor, I find it is additive, meaning that if I have 4800 Armor and 20% Armor. And if I get another 10% Armor, it will be 4000 x (1 + 20% + 10%) = 5200 Armor instead of 4800 x (1 + 10%) = 5280 Armor.
Does that mean stacking % Armor is bad? No. As I mentioned earlier, Armor Efficiency gets higher as Armor grows. And for Actual Damage Reduction, it can grow as much as 3.5X efficiency. Plus, it makes all Armor from Elixir or Incense even more effective.
To give you an example, I have around 6600 Armor and around 30 % Armor. Once I use a 900 Armor Elixir, my Armor goes to 7800, which is another 1200 difference and the Actual Damage Reduction is 1 - (1 - 80%) / (1 - 62%) = 47%. So, this 900 Armor means I am going to take only half of the Physical Damage. Isn’t that insane?
So, you may wonder, how would the Disobedience % Armor work with this? I find it is additive to the current % Armor And to my gears, its Actual Damage Reduction is as crazy as 69%! Imagine how effective it is to combine the 900 Armor Elixir and Disobedience!
Also Read: How To Calculate Damage Increases In Diablo 4? - Damage & Defense Mechanics Explained
Conclusions And Best Practices
What can I benefit from this Armor Deep Dive?
So to recap, for Lv85+, we can roughly treat
250 Armor (Skull) as
- 6% Actual Physical Damage Reduction
- 3% Actual Non-Physical Damage Reduction
500 Armor or 10% Armor as
- 14% Actual Physical Damage Reduction
- 7% Actual Non-Physical Damage Reduction
1200 Armor as
- 47% Actual Physical Damage Reduction
2200 Armor from Disobedience as
- 70% Actual Physical Damage Reduction
- When it has 100 stacks
The lower Level,
- The higher the Actual Damage Reduction per Armor is
For example, 300 Armor is roughly 10% Actual Physical Damage Reduction at Lv75. We can start comparing the % Armor stat with other Damage Reduction Stats. When compared to Conditional Damage Reduction, like from Burning/Close/Distant Enemy, % Armor is worse when the condition is met. When compared to % Damage Reduction, % Armor is better since the majority damage is Physical Damage.
Also, as Armor Damage Reduction Efficiency greatly increases (to 3.5x or more) as Armor goes up, the more Armor, the better. This means the Item Power of defensive gears matters. The 200 Armor on Paragon Board from the Burning Board matters. And the Armor from Elixir plays a great role in Survivability.
And all these get multiplied by % Armor from Gear Stats Try to collect as many % Armor stats as possible on your Helm/Chest/Pants/Amulet I was able to use this knowledge to switch my gears to decently survive in Tier 66 Nightmare Dungeon and beat it as a Level 85 Lightning Sorcerer.
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Diablo 4 Season 10 Mother's Blessing and Seasonal Splendor Events Guide: How To Maximize XP, Gold & Infernal Warp?
It's been a month since Diablo 4 Season 10 launched, and players are already showing signs of fatigue with Season of Infernal Chaos. It's time for a new event to reignite player enthusiasm and help them smoothly navigate the long mid-season and complete their season journey.
With Halloween approaching, you've likely seen themed events in almost every RPG, enjoying the spooky yet fun holiday atmosphere in online games. Unfortunately, Diablo developers don't seem to want to join the holiday celebrations. However, this doesn't mean we get nothing; in fact, they've released two limited-time events: Mother's Blessing and Seasonal Splendor.
While the lack of a specific Halloween-themed event is a bit of a disappointment, the rewards from these limited-time events are enough to quickly reach the level cap and gather all the resources needed for a complete build.
Here, we'll discuss everything you need to know about Mother's Blessing and Seasonal Splendor events, and how to use them to maximize your gains.
Mother's Blessing
Mother's Blessing is a familiar event to all Diablo 4 fans, returning almost every season midway through. The current Mother's Blessing officially began on October 28th. As is customary, the event typically lasts only one to two weeks, which might be easily missed if you have a busy real life.
However, if you do see it, please participate actively, as the extra 35% XP boost and 50% Diablo 4 gold drop rate are the best way for new or returning players to catch up, especially those struggling to level up their characters to 60.
Even if you've already reached the level cap, we still recommend returning to season 10 during this event, as the high extra gold drop rate will help you quickly accumulate more resources for a greater advantage later in the season.
More importantly, this reward applies to all difficulties, whether you're playing an Eternal Realm or a seasonal character. In addition, any potions and modifiers that can increase XP and gold can stack with the event's buffs, which means that as long as you properly match consumables and equipment and specify an efficient farming route, you can achieve twice the result with half the effort.
Seasonal Splendor
Additionally, Seasonal Splendor event launches on October 28th alongside Mother's Blessing. Based on historical data, this event will probably only last for one week, until November 3rd, during which time players can enjoy all the reward bonuses.
Compared to the XP and gold boosts from Mother's Blessing, Seasonal Splendor primarily increases the Infernal Warp available to players. These Infernal Warp are the seasonal currency in Infernal Chaos, used to upgrade your Chaos Perks to maximize their damage output and utility. Therefore, more Warps are key to consistently dominating Season 10 endgame.
Any Diablo 4 fan looking to quickly level up their Chaos Perks will want to take full advantage of the increased Infernal Warp drops during Seasonal Splendor event. Even if your Chaos Powers are already maxed out, these Warp will still be incredibly useful. Besides upgrading your Chaos Perks, you can also use this seasonal currency to exchange for Warp Scrolls at Shyan at Yelesna, which provide a small amount of Viz Jaq'taar Veneration reputation. Note that you must complete Season Questline before you can find Shyan.
Clearly, the developers seem to want to make you overlook the lack of a Halloween-themed in-game celebration with these abundant Diablo 4 limited-time events. But if you're still really bothered by it, check out D4gold's current Halloween sale! As a thank you to our users, we're offering promo code "HW2025" during the event, giving you a 10% discount on Diablo 4 products and services here! Please note that this holiday event only lasts until November 5th, so don't miss out!
How To Take Advantage Of These Two Limited-time Events?
Since both Mother's Blessing and Seasonal Splendor have limited durations, it's crucial to focus on maximizing the rewards available during the events.
First, the biggest highlight of Mother's Blessing is its 35% XP boost and 50% Gold boost. This applies to all aspects of the game, from defeating regular enemies in Sanctuary open-world map to exploring Diablo 4 dungeons and Helltides.
During the event, there are no dedicated challenges to earn XP and Gold, so it's recommended to focus on existing high-difficulty dungeons or world events on the map.
Depending on the difficulty level you play, XP and Gold boosts from Mother's Blessing can stack with other buffs. For example, if your character drinks Elixir, which provides an XP boost, the effect of that potion will stack on top of the event's bonus.
For Seasonal Splendor, since the main effect of this event is to increase your Infernal Warp drops, it's best to focus on farming warp during the event. Running Nightmare Dungeons with Chaos Rifts affix is the best way to farm them, so drop everything and dive into these dungeons during Seasonal Splendor!
In short, maximize your bonuses by using various consumables during the event. Stock up on potions to boost XP and gold, upgrade your gear, refine your favorite character build, and schedule your activities around periods when you can focus on long play sessions. Dungeons like Nightmare Dungeons, Chaos Rifts, and Helltide are especially worthwhile during this time, as the rewards accumulate quickly.
In any case, Mother's Blessing and Seasonal Splendor events are short-lived, so participate promptly and experience the thrill of rapidly increasing your power! We look forward to seeing you in the game during Halloween!
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Diablo 4 Season 11 PTR 2.5.0 Review: The Tower Dungeon & Leaderboards Return | Worth Playing Or Just Recycled Content?
For most ARPGs with a history measured in years, it's not uncommon for certain mechanics to appear, be removed, and then return. Even if a mechanic has shortcomings, it can continue to be beneficial after improvements.
For Diablo 4, the most representative of these mechanics, and perhaps the one that's recently received the most attention, is probably the leaderboard. It's a competitive ladder system designed to incentivize competition among players.
This feature first appeared in Diablo 4 Season 3, but was later removed due to poor performance caused by cheating and other issues. However, it recently returned in 2.5.0 PTR, along with new The Tower dungeon.
How effective is this return? Will the leaderboards be better than before, ensuring their inclusion in Season 11 and beyond? We'll evaluate and predict their performance on 2.5.0 PTR.
The Tower In Season 11
It's important to understand that the current leaderboards are integrated with The Tower and only reflect your performance within that dungeon, not your overall Diablo 4 progress or other events.
The Tower is essentially a multi-stage, timed dungeon, with 10 minutes to complete each round. It operates similarly to The Pit, but accessing The Tower requires you to first unlock The Pit, which is then activated through Obelisk in Cerrigar.
As you progress deeper, you unlock more floors within the tower - like climbing a building - each with a randomized tile set and monster family. To advance, you must kill these enemies while collecting orbs and XP.
When you destroy a tower on your current floor, Pylons appear. Four Pylons appear during the game. The first three appear in a random order, while the fourth is a random repeat of a previous temple. Pylons provide short-term buffs.
When you reach sufficient progress in a dungeon round, a random boss will spawn. Defeating this boss before the end of the round completes the game, and your ranking will be determined based on your performance.
Leaderboard Overview
Season 11 leaderboards are categorized by your class and party size when you complete The Tower, and include both hardcore and normal levels. The leaderboard displays the following real-time information:
- Character rank
- Character name
- Tower Tier completed
- Time taken to complete a round
- Date you listed on the leaderboard
How Is The Tower Performing On 2.5.0 PTR?
Overall, while the new content is noteworthy, once you understand the mechanics, you'll notice that The Tower still follows the traditional Diablo 4 dungeon formula: fight monsters, level up, then fight higher-level monsters, with the requisite rewards and buffs.
This isn't to say that The Tower isn't worth experiencing, but rather that it doesn't seem to offer enough new content to truly engage you, leaving it feeling like "old wine in new bottles."
The few novel experiences it offers are, on the one hand, the enemy types, which at least mean you can earn richer rewards for defeating them. On the other hand, they're reflected in the leaderboards.
Compared to the limited comparisons you had with friends while exploring The Pit, the return of the leaderboard system at least encourages competitive players to play The Tower more actively, generating a surge of community engagement in the short term.
So, if I were to rate The Tower based on its performance on 2.5.0 PTR, it's only passable. It doesn't have any fatal flaws, but it does lack the allure to keep you playing, unless you enjoy demonstrating your skills through leaderboards.
If the leaderboards don't suffer from the same issues that led to their removal, they might attract a wave of veteran Diablo 4 players who were interested in them. Ultimately, however, everyone will realize that the leaderboards could have been placed directly within The Pit.
The fact that The Tower's similarities mean it can not offer novelty and has the potential to make gameplay systems become redundant. While you can earn Diablo 4 gold by playing, the rewards can also be distributed through The Pit or other events.
How Can The Tower Be improved?
While 2.5.0 PTR hasn't yet revealed the rewards for achieving high rankings on the leaderboards, and you can currently only complete 20 floors at most, if The Tower is indeed implemented in Season 11, these rewards should be interesting enough.
In addition, it would be ideal to update the leaderboards not only with the change of seasons, but also regularly throughout the course of a single season, allowing more players to prove their prowess by earning rewards like special titles.
Tips For Completing The Tower
While The Tower isn't a particularly innovative Season 11 mechanic at this point, it is certainly a way to earn seasonal rewards, so it's still necessary to understand the relevant tips for participating.
To do this, you need to understand how it works, earn sufficient resources early in the season, and craft a build suitable for completing this endgame event. This way, you can quickly complete a dungeon run, earning rewards, and achieving a good leaderboard ranking.
In the end, while the new content is certainly exciting, The Tower lacks any truly outstanding innovations beyond the leaderboard system.
However, the development team also stated that they will continue to update the mechanism in the future. Let us look forward to it getting better!
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Diablo 4 Season 10 Lunging Strike Barbarian Build Guide | Maximize Fury And Damage
Typically, the transition between seasons is the busiest time for Diablo 4 players, as you need to simultaneously experience the next season's PTR and wrap up the current one.
Thankfully, the two aren't mutually exclusive. The results of your efforts in the current season can be validated or carried forward in PTR or the new season, especially some new builds.
With this in mind, this time we'll introduce Lunging Strike Barbarian Build for Diablo 4 Season 10. Its strength lies in its simple control and powerful enough to decimate enemies and delve into dungeons in the endgame.
Assuming Barbarian isn't nerfed, this build is expected to remain available in 2.5.0 PTR and even Season 11. The difference lies in Chaos Perks being replaced by better new season mechanics.
Key Skills
As the name suggests, Lunging Strike is the core skill addition for this build. It generates Fury in addition to dealing physical damage, and attacks by dashing forward and attacking.
Later, you'll need to upgrade this skill to Combat Lunging Strike. This way, if you land a critical hit while using a skill, you'll enter a Berserking state, increasing your speed and damage output in combat.
All of these form the foundation for this build to work. Next, you'll need to unlock other skills with the primary goal of increasing damage reduction, distributing skill points evenly.
- Warpath: After gaining Overpowering effect, your damage output increases by 4% for 4 seconds.
- Endless Fury: All basic skills generate an additional 12% Fury, ensuring you always have enough Fury to consume.
- Imposing Presence: Grants you 5% additional maximum health.
- Martial Vigor: Increases damage reduction by 6% when encountering elite enemies.
- Belligerence: Attacking enemies with basic skills for 4 seconds deals additional damage.
- Outburst: Gain thorns and a maximum health increase. Tough as Nails: Increases the damage you deal to enemies with thorns and bleeding.
As you progress, you'll need to continually unlock more skills for this build, but your primary focus should be on increasing Fury generation or boosting damage and health.
It's worth noting that some gear, such as Shard of Verathiel or Hooves of the Mountain God, requires Fury consumption to achieve better combat effectiveness.
Hooves of the Mountain God, a Barbarian-exclusive piece of gear, not only generates additional Fury per second but also consumes Fury to deal with additional damage with basic skills.
While Masterworking in Season 10 didn't receive the same positive changes as in 2.5.0 PTR, it's still important to earn Diablo 4 gold and other materials to enhance gear through these mechanics to improve the overall effectiveness of your build.
How To Plan Your Paragon Board?
Paragon Board is the best way to continue improving your character after max level, so careful board planning can help you refine your build and further improve your overall combat effectiveness.
For Lunging Strike Barbarian Build, unlocking Paragon nodes remains crucial, focusing on consistently generating and utilizing Fury and managing it while Berserking for as long as possible to deal extra damage and maximize damage reduction.
- Wrath: Ensures you generate additional Fury when you land critical hits, and gains a critical hit damage bonus.
- Warbringer: For every 75 Fury you consume, you gain a 15% increase in maximum health.
- Blood Rage: Upon killing an enemy with bleeding damage, you have a 10% chance to enter Berserking for 5 seconds, increasing your damage by 45%.
- Challenger: Grants a 20% bonus to normal nodes within its radius.
- Carnage: If you land a critical hit while Berserking, your attack speed increases for 6 seconds.
You need to utilize all available Paragon Points to earn them. Just like unlocking skills, you should continue to develop your Paragon Board according to the core objectives we've outlined until you've used up all your points.
How To Choose Gear?
We actually recommended two suitable pieces of gear when we introduced skill builds. The advantage of Season 10 is that with the addition of Chaos Armor, you have more freedom when choosing your gear, without having to worry too much about slot placement.
So, while Ramaladni's Magnum Opus is a unique sword, you can obtain its Chaos Armor version and place it in any slot you want. This gear's primary purpose is to deal bonus damage by consuming Fury - a perfect fit for the crafting core of your build.
Other gear worth adding is Fists of Fate, which grants a chance to apply random crowd control effects and bonus damage, making enemies vulnerable and easier to eliminate.
It's important to note that Hooves of the Mountain God deals bonus damage by repeatedly casting basic skills until Fury is depleted, which then causes basic skills to deal with additional damage through slashing.
So, as you continue to add gear, you'll want to avoid weapons that prioritize consuming your Fury over Hooves of the Mountain God, otherwise they won't function properly and you'll waste a slot.
Season-Specific Chaos Perks
Every Season 10 build should include Chaos Perks. These seasonal mechanics are one of the easiest and most effective ways to gain additional boosts to your build, though there are limits on the number and types of perks you can carry.
For Lunging Strike Barbarian build, if you're too lazy to change your perks before each fight, we recommend prioritizing the following:
- A Beast Cornered: Increases your damage output by losing life.
- Raging Chaos: When you're at low health, you enter a Berserking state, and your core skills deal fire damage.
- Dual Threat: Casting a basic skill simultaneously grants you another basic skill on the target, dealing 50-80% more damage.
- Brown Over Brains: If you feel your character is too fragile and unsuitable for A Beast Cornered, you can opt for this perk instead.
You'll find that while the process of unlocking skills or Paragon nodes is lengthy, crafting and using the entire Lunging Strike Barbarian Build always maintains a clear core and purpose, preventing unnecessary frustration during gameplay.
We hope this introduction will enhance your Season 10 experience, and we wish you all the best in 2.5.0 PTR - which already started on October 21st!
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Diablo 4 Season 11 2.5.0 PTR Preview | New Changes, Features, And More
On October 16th, Diablo 4 held its Sanctuary Sitdown preview for Season 11 and the associated 2.5.0 PTR, providing a preview of a host of new content and changes expected in the new season and PTR.
While Sanctuary Sitdown didn't include any further details about the second DLC and the 2026 plans as previously predicted, it's clear that Season 11 will feature significantly more changes than previous seasons.
Based on Sanctuary Sitdown and other official information, we'll provide a preview of 2.5.0 PTR content.
When Is 2.5.0 PTR Expected To Launch?
While the release date for Season 11 remains to be determined, we can confirm that 2.5.0 PTR will be available to all PC Battle.net users on October 21st. As is customary with Diablo 4, PTR typically lasts about a week, so it'll likely end around October 28th or 29th.
You can actually infer a possible release date for Season 11 from this, but honestly, that's not the main point right now. Understanding the content in 2.5.0 PTR will help you get started with the new season.
In general, 2.5.0 PTR consists of three main components: a major overhaul of existing core mechanics, the return of previously removed features, and new dungeons and bosses.
Interestingly, most of this content wasn't announced on 2025 content roadmap. Clearly, Diablo 4 intends to utilize Season 11, the season connecting 2025 and 2026, to deliver a surprise at the end of the year.
What Changes Will Be Included?
The changes primarily focus on item upgrades, Renown system, and reworks or optimizations to how potions work. We'll cover each of these.
Tempering And Masterworking
Once you've acquired your ideal gear in Diablo 4, as your abilities increase, you can enhance it to match your character's strength through the specialized systems. These systems are primarily Tempering and Masterworking.
Tempering allows you to add one affix to your gear, but each Tempering session can yield three possible affixes. Unlucky enough to randomly receive a poor affix can actually lower the value of your gear.
Similarly, the results of Masterworking are also tied to luck. This system requires you to consume Diablo 4 gold and other necessary materials to upgrade your gear's existing affixes, but if the desired effect isn't achieved, you need to reset.
This can easily lead to wasting time, effort, game materials, and gold on enhancing your gear, especially with Masterworking, as resetting only returns a small portion of the materials.
However, in 2.5.0 PTR, both systems are undergoing changes, arguably with the sole purpose of improving your experience.
First, Tempering recipes allow you to directly select the specific affix you want, eliminating the need for randomized modifiers and allowing you to change them at will. However, to balance this change, gear can only receive one Tempering affix in total.
Masterworking, on the other hand, will now improve the overall quality of gear, up to level 20. After that, you can continue to roll for a Capstone bonus, upgrading a random non-premium affix to a premium affix.
Building on this, 2.5.0 PTR will also introduce Sanctification, allowing you to select another random buff for gear after completing Tempering and Masterworking. However, after Sanctification, the gear cannot be modified.
Changes To Healing And Defense Mechanics
The changes in defense mechanics are truly revolutionary. By making armor and resistances a rating system, Diablo 4's defensive potions are rendered useless.
In 2.5.0 PTR, equipped armor will reduce damage taken from all types, and the armor and resistance penalties associated with Torment difficulty will be removed. All your defensive attributes will be represented by the new Toughness metric.
Regarding healing, potions will now instantly restore 35% of your total health. This translates to a reduction in the amount of base potions you can carry, but they will recharge faster. Additionally, the stats of all health-boosting affixes will be increased.
Renown System Rework
In most previous Diablo seasons, you earned Renown points by progressing through the season, which in turn led to rewards for progressing through Renown system.
Starting with Season 11, while you will still be able to progress through Renown system in Eternal Realm, it will be merged with Season Journey into a new system, Season Rank, on seasonal servers.
In fact, the changes are minimal functionally, because you'll still need to complete various objectives to earn seasonal rewards, but the merger will clearly streamline these seasonal systems.
What's New Content?
New content expected to be exclusively part of Season 11 will primarily focus on the multi-level dungeon, The Tower, and the new world boss, Azmodan.
The Tower requires you to kill enough enemies within 10 minutes to summon a random boss. Defeating the boss ends the dungeon and stops the timer.
Notably, the leaderboard feature, previously removed from Diablo 4, returns with the release of The Tower. All your Tower dungeon battles will be ranked by class and number of players.
The development team stated that The Tower in Season 11 is more of a pilot, and they will continue to refine and expand the dungeon content based on actual player feedback.
Return Of Capstone Dungeons
In addition to the leaderboard system, Capstone dungeons will also return to Diablo 4 in 2.5.0 PTR. There are five returning dungeons, each with a different recommended challenge level and difficulty, allowing you to choose one based on your ability.
Above is a preview of 2.5.0 PTR highlights. Use this information to prepare for PTR over the next four days!
While efficiency has been improved, Masterworking gear still requires the consumption of specific materials. To reduce farming time and focus on PTR itself, it's best to get safe and cheap Diablo 4 items trading at D4GOLD!
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Diablo 4 Season 10 Lair Bosses | Best Farming Guide For Uniques & Mythic Loot
If you've been playing Diablo 4 since at least the beginning of this year, you're probably aware that starting with Season 8, the game's most dangerous endgame bosses (also known as ladder bosses) have been fully upgraded to lair bosses.
This change isn't just in name; more importantly, the mechanics shift from gathering materials to summoning a boss to starting the fight, to allowing you to directly fight them, but you must first collect lair keys to unlock the boss's corresponding hoard upon victory.
To ensure you're getting the right lair keys, lair bosses are now divided into three different tiers: initiate, greater, and exalted. Higher-tier lair keys may require killing lower-tier lair bosses, while others can be obtained by completing regular Diablo 4 events.
The reason you should continue farming lair bosses in Season 10 is that they drop Unique or Mythic Uniques. While some may not be as powerful as Chaos Armor, the overall value is still worth the effort.
So how should you farm lair bosses in Season 10, and what tips should you keep in mind? We'll explain below.
Lair Bosses And Related Keys
There are nine lair bosses in Season 10, each with its own lair key and loot pool. While you can theoretically farm a specific set of lair bosses, you'll need to complete other gameplay or boss battles to obtain the keys needed to unlock their hoards.
One thing worth noting and encouraging is that after defeating an initiate lair boss, in addition to the higher-level lair keys, Stygian Stones will also drop. This item can be converted 1:1 into any desired greater lair key.
All lair bosses and the lair keys/Stygian Stone drops they can provide are as follows:
- Varshan (initiate): Required 12x Malignant Heart, drops Shard of Agony or Stygian Stone
- Grigoire (initiate): Required 12x Living Steel, drops Shard of Agony or Stygian Stone
- Beast in the Ice (initiate): Required 12x Distilled Fear, drops Pincushioned Doll or Stygian Stone
- Lord Zir (initiate): Required 12x Exquisite Blood, drops Pincushioned Doll or Stygian Stone
- Urivar (initiate): Required 12x Judicator's Mask, drops Abhorrent Heart or Stygian Stone
- Duriel (greater): Required 3x Shard of Agony
- Andariel (greater): Required 3x Pincushioned Doll
- Harbinger of Hatred (greater): Requires 3x Abhorrent Heart
- Belial (exalted): Requires 2x Betrayer's Husk
In addition to defeating low-level bosses, you can also earn specific lair keys by completing the following Diablo 4 events or gameplay:
- Malignant Heart: Whispers or Helltides
- Living Steel: Helltides Chests
- Distilled Fear: Nightmare Dungeons
- Exquisite Blood: Legion Events, Helltides, and World Bosses
- Judicator's Mask: Helltides, Whispers, and World Bosses
- Betrayer's Husk: Belial's Ambush
What Is Belial's Ambush?
Belial's Ambush is essentially an ambush that randomly triggers after defeating any initiate or greater boss, ensuring you have a chance to unlock Belial's hoard.
While this small Belial isn't as dangerous as a full-fledged boss, you must remain vigilant during the fight. During battle, it will attack you with a combination of blood and poison magic, requiring you to dodge quickly and carry gear with appropriate resistance.
How To Find Lair Bosses?
While you no longer need to collect summoning materials in advance, it's recommended to wait until your character level is high enough to handle endgame content before finding and challenging a Lair Boss.
You can find the corresponding lair boss on the map by its unique icon. Right-clicking it will teleport you to the boss and begin the fight. However, before doing so, you'll need to understand the boss's lair keys and drop information and find reliable allies.
Lair Boss Loot Patterns
First, all lair bosses have the potential to drop either Uniques or Mythic Uniques. These drops are categorized as general available to all classes, and gear specific to each class.
When you defeat a boss and receive your first Unique drop, it will be a class-exclusive item. If you obtain other Unique loot or defeat the boss later, your chances of receiving general or exclusive loot are equal.
In addition, it's recommended to complete the lair boss fight in a group, not only because it's more efficient, but also because each additional team member increases the boss's chance of dropping additional Unique loot by 33%.
Alternatively, you can increase the boss's loot drop rate by increasing the difficulty. Typically, at Torment 3 difficulty, the current lair boss will drop one additional Unique loot. At Torment 4 difficulty and with enough players, the boss may even drop seven.
Best Season 10 Lair Keys Farming Strategy
In addition to lair keys, you'll also need to complete other tasks to earn gold and other crafting materials. Therefore, it's not recommended to directly challenge initiate boss after entering the endgame. Instead, first obtain Undercity Tributes through Helltides.
To do this, you must first own Vessel of Hatred DLC, which qualifies you for entering and farming Kurast Undercity. You can then earn more Undercity Tributes by repeatedly defeating Blood Maidens in Helltides.
The more Tributes you use before entering Kurast Undercity, the greater the rewards you'll ultimately receive, significantly increasing your chances of obtaining lair keys by completing Kurast Undercity.
That's all you need to know before farming Diablo 4 lair bosses in Season 10. While you're doing the quests, don't forget to challenge the new boss Bartuc in Infernal Hordes to obtain Chaos Armor!
If defeating lair bosses to obtain Unique or Mythic Uniques on your own is too tedious or difficult, you can also trade safe Diablo 4 items at D4GOLD! Simply enter the name of the Unique item you want to instantly retrieve and buy it!
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Diablo 4 Season 11 Sanctuary Sitdown Preview | 2.5.0 PTR, Format Changes & Twitch Drops Guide
Although it's only been less than a month since Diablo 4 Season 10 officially launched, the development team has already begun preparing for a new round of Sanctuary Sitdowns for Season 11, previewing information about the new 2.5.0 PTR.
To be honest, this seems a bit rushed compared to the pre-release schedules of past seasons. After all, Season 11 is typically released in January of the next year, while pre-release Sanctuary Sitdowns typically take place only about a month in advance.
Therefore, we can speculate on two possibilities for this sitdown: either Season 11 holds special significance for Diablo 4 (such as being the final season), or further plans for the game in 2026 will be announced through this discussion stream.
Below, we'll combine the official information already released about Diablo 4 Season 11 Sanctuary Sitdown to provide you with an introduction and speculation.
When Will The New Sanctuary Sitdown Take Place?
Sanctuary Sitdown event for Season 11 and 2.5.0 PTR will take place on October 16th at 11:00 AM PDT, and the format will differ from previous events.
Before the release of 2.4.0 PTR, Diablo 4 switched from its traditional Campfire Chats, livestreamed on Twitch or YouTube, to a Sanctuary Sitdown, a Q&A format held on Discord. You had to join Sanctuary Discord group to ask questions.
This upcoming Sanctuary Sitdown will combine the two approaches. The development team will first broadcast live on Twitch and YouTube, announcing the next steps for the game through a conversation with the host, followed by an additional Q&A session in Sanctuary Discord.
What Does This Format Change Mean?
While it's still unknown what new Diablo 4 developments of this Sanctuary Sitdown will reveal, or how satisfied players will be, the combination of a livestream and Q&A will undoubtedly provide a more comprehensive answer to your questions about Season 11 or 2.5.0 PTR.
If you're familiar with or participated in Sanctuary Sitdown on August 14th, you'll know that it was quite restricted. You had to log in to Diablo Discord server and click "Interested" on Sanctuary Sitdown Event page to ask questions.
Furthermore, August 14th Discord Q&A didn't feature a recording or replay feature. This means if you missed it, you'll only be able to access relevant content through screen recordings or summaries uploaded by other players.
The upcoming 2.5.0 PTR Sanctuary Sitdown will initially feature a livestream similar to Campfire Chats, hosted by veteran ARPG player and creator Rhykker.
This means he'll ask more specialized questions, allowing you to gain key insights from the development team's answers. After the livestream, you'll have a clearer idea of what you'd like to learn more about, allowing you to better utilize Q&A session.
This shift in format suggests that Diablo 4 development team is, at least for now, more attentive to player feedback and suggestions than before. It also suggests that the upcoming Sanctuary Sitdown may reveal even more content than before.
Will This Sanctuary Sitdown Preview Anything Else?
While this Sanctuary Sitdown is likely to focus on previewing and introducing Season 11 and 2.5.0 PTR, the content of both the livestream interview and Q&A will not be strictly limited.
Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that both the host and players will raise popular questions about the second DLC and the number of seasons Diablo 4 will have. However, how the developers will respond remains unknown.
The second DLC, originally scheduled for 2025, has been delayed to 2026. With 2026 less than three months away, it's honestly worth it to tease some information to pique player interest.
How To Get Twitch Drops?
Whenever Diablo 4 hosts a content preview livestream before a new season or PTR, and Twitch is included, you have a chance to receive a drop - usually new gear or cosmetics - by watching the livestream on Twitch.
Twitch Drop for Sanctuary Sitdown on October 16th is Rogue class-exclusive, one-handed cosmetic Penitent's Poniard. To receive it, you'll need to meet the following requirements:
- Watch at least 30 minutes of exclusive Diablo 4 content on Twitch between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM PDT on October 16th.
- Link your Battle.net and Twitch accounts.
- To claim the drop, watch through a PC browser, Android, or iOS Twitch app.
- Claim your rewards manually on the livestream's Twitch channel or through your Twitch inventory (rewards will not be automatically added to your game account).
- Claim your rewards within 7 days and ensure they are successful, otherwise the drop will be lost.
This concludes our understanding of the new Sanctuary Sitdown. Since the livestream will take place mid-week next week, if you don't have time to watch, you can watch the replay or other people's summaries to get a head start on the next PTR.
While staying up to date on game developments is important, now your primary focus in Diablo 4 Season 10 is still farming! This is especially important if you want to become stronger or unlock enough hoards for the lair boss.
To this end, D4GOLD Buy Diablo 4 Items page provides nearly every item you need for Season 10, ensuring a secure and convenient shopping experience!
