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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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
What can I benefit from this Armor Deep Dive?
So to recap, for Lv85+, we can roughly treat
250 Armor (Skull) as
500 Armor or 10% Armor as
1200 Armor as
2200 Armor from Disobedience as
The lower Level,
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.
Playing games seems to be just one of the simplest daily entertainments, but if you want to improve your gaming experience in all aspects, there are actually many related factors.
Take Diablo 4 as an example. From the game itself, the influencing factors include the richness and rationality of the playable content, whether the style and music are attractive enough; from other perspectives, it includes the configuration of devices and the operation settings.
Therefore, when you are looking for Diablo 4 game guides, in addition to teaching you how to craft builds or how to clear dungeons to earn more Diablo 4 gold, there will also be bloggers focusing on evaluating devices and different game settings.
Recently, Diablo 4 will usher in the 2nd anniversary celebration at the end of Season 8, and then Season 9 will be launched. Based on this, we will recommend you 6 new settings suitable for immediate application to help you improve the game’s operation smoothness from the end of Season 8.
This setting compares the statistics of items side by side to highlight the differences in their attributes to help you determine which items are more suitable for your character. This is very necessary for you to improve your character’s strength efficiently.
Oddly, this setting and the next advanced tooltip information are turned off by default when you first enter the game. As a result, when you compare items, the tooltip only shows the main attributes, the equipment appearance, and the temper it may have.
But if you want to see advanced gear information such as attribute range or lucky hit rate, you must turn on the advanced tooltip compare setting. Since you need to change gear frequently during different battles, more gear information that can be directly seen and compared can help you understand your gains and losses when changing or upgrading gear.
You can think of this setting as a supplementary reference content for tooltip compare, because even if you know all the information about the corresponding gear through tooltip compare, you may not know how to upgrade the gear in a targeted manner next.
Based on this, this setting will utilize different colors to mark the specific circumstances in which your items may gain or lose properties and other modifiers. Although this function is not very meaningful after you enter the endgame, it is very useful when you are upgrading your character in the early stage.
The function of this setting is that when you select a quest or a destination of a quest in the game log, the system will automatically place a map marker at the corresponding location, and then your mini-map will directly show you the route to the selected destination.
On this basis, it is recommended that you combine it with your HUD compass. This will cause an arrow to appear on the screen as a guide to move forward, so you don’t have to keep staring at the minimap. You can also further set the arrow to any color you think is eye-catching to make the guidance more clear.
After selecting a quest, the arrow will point toward the quest. All you have to do is open the quest menu and click on the corresponding quest. You will find a small arrow and a small line pointing to it, and follow the instructions to explore.
When you enter a dungeon or other special area where enemies appear in groups or the surrounding environment is dark, you will find that you may not find your character! This is undoubtedly a big negative impact on your game experience.
The game takes this into account and launches player highlights and other related settings or features. Just turn on this setting and click Save Changes. When you return to the game, you will see a glow around your character, so that you will be able to easily see where your character is in any situation.
It is worth noting that the color of the character’s highlight light can be customized, so you can change it as needed, because the background color of different dungeons or scenes should also be different. In addition, the mouse can also be set to high-contrast highlights like the character. After all, when the battle is chaotic, it is less conspicuous than the character.
When you encounter those enemies and bosses in Diablo 4 that are huge or good at utilizing explosive skills, or your builds have features such as super fast attack speed or super high attack power, then you may find that the screen will shake with certain effects during the battle.
This is actually because your screen shake setting is turned on. This special effect can provide a certain sense of reality in your battle. But to be honest, not every Diablo 4 player likes this, and sometimes it may cause additional lag, so you can turn it on or off according to your needs.
This setting is more suitable for you to enable when you utilize PC to play Diablo 4, because under normal circumstances, when you control the character through PC, you always need to click different directions with the mouse, which is not troublesome, but it will make your hands tired.
After turning on the force move setting, no matter how you operate, even if you stay in the stopped position, you will still move. In this way, as long as you adapt to this function, both fighting in the game and daily exploration will become faster, and you will feel more comfortable physiologically.
There are many adjustable settings in Diablo 4, but the above 6 settings will have the most intuitive impact on changing your gaming experience, and they should still work in Season 9!
Unknowingly, Diablo 4 has accompanied you for two years through 8 seasons. Although it has not always performed well, at least it has brought you a good Sanctuary adventure time. Now the second anniversary will come with Season 9.
Diablo 4 officially launched on June 5, 2023, and the currently confirmed release time of Season 9 is July 1 this year (PTR will end on June 3). Therefore, the two-year anniversary celebration event should actually be held at the end of Season 8.
But to be honest, as the opening work of the third year, even if the ninth season cannot participate in the two-year anniversary celebration itself, it should launch more innovative gameplay besides the content shown in the PTR before the official launch to show that the game itself still has development potential.
Based on this, we will introduce you to the events that may be held on the second anniversary, and what additional content we hope Season 9 can bring.
In June 2024, to commemorate the first anniversary of the game, from June 6 to June 20, Diablo 4 brought a series of celebration events including Treasure Goblin, Mother’s Blessing and more. You can get free cosmetic props and Diablo 4 gold and XP bonus opportunities by playing these content.
Although the celebration method this year has not been fully announced and may change, one thing remains unchanged, that is, everything should be based on providing rewards for you! And this year’s reward method is likely to be Reliquary.
It is expected that this celebration event will provide you with a free Reliquary, which may be a combination of a large amount of gold, new cosmetics, new theme rewards, etc. - after all, the anniversary reward cannot be set too single and simple.
This mechanism is a new form of battle pass launched in Season 8, divided into battle pass Reliquaries and event Reliquaries. The former is related to the daily progress of the game, while the latter is set for special events, such as the upcoming two-year anniversary celebration.
Compared with the previous battle pass, the biggest advantage of Reliquary is that you can decide the priority of obtaining rewards according to your own wishes, rather than in a fixed order. In this way, you can arrange the game progress exploration by yourself.
To be honest, although the mechanism itself is very good, it was complained by players for being too scarce when it was applied in Season 8. It seems that Diablo 4 completely regards it as a profit tool rather than a welfare mechanism.
Based on this, Reliquary provided through the anniversary celebration this time should be the product of the game after learning lessons, so both the quantity and quality of rewards should be better.
Rewards are one aspect, and the way to provide rewards is actually very important! It is fun to get free rewards directly, but it will be more fulfilling to earn rewards through your own efforts. Therefore, in addition to Reliquary, adding new tasks and gameplay should also be good.
To this end, the game can learn from last year’s practice and re-launch the classic Diablo 4 event Treasure Goblin, and get corresponding rewards by hunting these special creatures. In fact, this event was also held in March this year, and the response was still good.
In the past two seasons, Diablo 4 has been considered lacking innovation. Even the highly anticipated Berserk cooperation event was ultimately just another inducement to consumption. Therefore, the game can completely utilize this celebration to combine rewards with new gameplay to change its reputation.
Although the two-year anniversary celebration should end before the launch of the season, it would be a bit ridiculous if the celebration performed better than the new season.
According to 2.3.0 PTR, the known highlights of Season 9 include the new boss Astaroth, the new power Horadric Spells (and a series of related mechanisms), as well as the update of the nightmare dungeon and the addition of Horadric Strongrooms dungeon.
Among them, the new Escalating Nightmares, as a new endgame dungeon, is actually a chain dungeon consisting of three nightmare dungeons. Each individual dungeon has stackable affixes, and the difficulty of the dungeon will increase as you explore deeper.
Season 9 seasonal power Horadric Spells actually allow you to combine Catalysts, Infusions, and Arcana, three abilities that each have multiple types of power, to craft the combat power that best suits you.
No matter what specific power is utilized, the ultimate goal is to kill or weaken the enemy, but in 2.3.0 PTR, you will find that if you utilize Propulsion as a Catalyst, the large-scale explosion effect it produces can be combined with Floaty Bobble Arcana to form a special teleportation effect in the arena.
On this basis, if you further combine it with Bloody Charm Arcana, you can also kill enemies with less than 20% health in the explosion and reset the skill. In other words, as long as there are enemies nearby that will be killed by the explosion, you can achieve permanent teleportation in this way!
In order to accumulate key resources such as gold and XP, you need to actively farm various dungeons after the start of Season 9, and the teleportation effect provided by this series of Horadric Spells will greatly improve your combat efficiency because your speed and accuracy have been improved.
Although Diablo 4 is always used to cancel or weaken such accidental events in the PTR in the official season, this function is completely worth retaining. Because it does not destroy the game balance too much, and also provides game fun for players.
In short, whether it is a new season or a new celebration, it is worth looking forward to. Fortunately, they are not far away!
Because of the mediocre performance of Diablo 4 in the past two seasons, which has caused complaints from players, the game has brought news of the new season faster than ever before, and opened 2.3.0 PTR on May 27.
Although this may divert your attention, no matter what, the work at hand still needs to be done! Even if you have lost interest and confidence in Season 8, completing the reward tasks will lay a solid foundation for you to enter Season 9.
In order to restore the reputation of the season as much as possible before the end, Diablo 4 Season 8 also released patch 2.2.2 on May 27. The patch does not contain many changes, but Masterworking craft-related ones should be the most concerned.
Based on this, we will focus on Masterworking and introduce you to the main content of patch 2.2.2, as well as other details worth paying attention to.
First of all, you need to be clear that Masterworking is actually an endgame system in the game. You can utilize it to increase the value of affixes for specific existing items to make them more powerful because the 8-12 separate upgrade levels Masterworking provides.
It should be noted that Masterworking must be performed at the blacksmith, and the relevant craft materials must be farmed in important dungeons such as Nightmare Dungeons, Infernal Hordes, and Kurast Undercity.
In recent seasons, I don’t know if you have found that even if you have enough Diablo 4 gold and Obducite, the craft materials consumed for a Masterworking are indeed too much. Many players in the game community have also reported this problem and said that it even makes them not want to utilize Masterworking anymore.
But to be honest, this system is really useful for improving your game battle win rate and experience, because the gear upgraded by Masterworking is much more powerful than before, which can effectively solve battles that you could not deal with before.
Perhaps because the players’ resentment accumulated by Season 8 could no longer be ignored, through patch 2.2.2, the game reduced the number of materials required for Masterworking (excluding gold and Obducite as supporting consumables).
This way, you can perform Masterworking more times than before, and the crafting efficiency and combat efficiency will be further improved. However, it should be noted that this “reduction” is only for the number of materials, and does not mean that the difficulty of farming them or the number of drops will change.
Although you may hope that Season 8 will be more interesting with a new patch, unfortunately, apart from Masterworking changes, the other patch contents are mainly to fix bugs and improve the player experience.
Bug Fixes:
Season 8 Content Adjustments (the following issues have been fixed):
Gameplay Adjustments (the following issues have been fixed):
User Experience Improvements:
Finally, I want to mention that in fact, in addition to the gameplay itself, the performance of Berserk crossover event launched in Season 8 is far from what you expect.
Originally, crossover should be a win-win activity, but the excessive emphasis on crossover item trading and the lack of novel gameplay ultimately led to the low evaluation of Diablo 4 Berserk crossover.
Honestly, if Diablo 4 wants to reverse its evaluation and performance from S9, besides improving the quality and creativity of the season, it should change the purpose of development - don’t lose the trust of players for the sake of temporary benefits.
The above is the comprehensive patch 2.2.2 information brought to you. I hope it’s helpful to you and wish you a better experience in Season 8 and PTR!
2.3.0 PTR is in full swing! You can use it to experience and test all the new content you want to experience in the future Diablo 4 Season 9, including finding and utilizing more different builds for each class.
Normally, the strength of all Diablo 4 classes should not differ much to ensure the balance of the game, but due to changes in the mechanism, it is not ruled out that some classes are more suitable for utilizing the new power of the current season-then these classes become the first choice to experience the new season.
Judging from the performance in the current PTR, although Horadric Spells are not exactly the same as the witchcraft power of Season 7, all of them seem to be very suitable for Sorcerer. Going further, you will find that this kind of “mysterious” seasonal power is very compatible with Hydra skills of Sorcerer.
Based on this, we will introduce you how to craft Hydra-centric S9 builds so that you can complete more battles as a Sorcerer as soon as possible in the PTR and the official ninth season.
To understand how Hydra builds work, you must first understand the key skill Hydra. In Sorcerer’s entire skill tree, Hydra is an active skill and part of the conjuration cluster. It can be upgraded to a maximum of 5 levels to deal more damage.
More specifically, this skill allows you to summon a three-headed Hydra in combat, which will damage enemies within range by breathing fire for the next 12 seconds. This attack feature makes this skill can help you to get more Diablo 4 gold drops in small dungeons at one time, but you can only summon one Hydra at a time.
In addition to upgrading, Hydra can also be further enhanced like most active skills. Its enhanced versions include:
Usually, the first step in crafting new builds is to determine the other available skills besides the core skills. As you can see, in addition to the summoning characteristics, Hydra essentially outputs fire damage, so other active skills that match it are also mainly of this type.
As one of the important active skills, Fire Bolt will automatically fire flaming arrows in battle to cause burning damage to the enemy. With Hydra, you will set off a fire war in Season 9! In addition, you can continue to stack Lightning Spear to output lightning damage at the same time.
On this basis, the passive skill selection recommends Devastation, which can provide you with damage reduction and barrier effects, allowing you to output stable damage while ensuring that your own health is less damaged.
The combination of the above skills will eventually bring you a lot of barrier and buff effects, as well as 60% summon damage, 60% movement speed and 120% mana recovery bonus - this is enough to solve most Diablo 4 Season 9 battles.
If you still have spare energy, you can continue to add Ice Shards to the build. Although it brings another type of damage, it can also effectively weaken the enemy and provide additional attack speed, allowing you to complete the battle faster.
Good and appropriate gear can amplify the effect of your skills while ensuring your survivability. For Hydra builds, the preferred helm is Harlequin Crest or Heir of Perdition, which can bring you considerable damage bonus.
Since you can directly obtain all Mythic Uniques in the PTR to facilitate your testing of various gear and the effects of new powers, in order to maximize the strength of Hydra builds, you can give priority to gear that can increase your resource generation and resistance, movement speed, and defensive attributes.
In this way, after sufficient testing through the PTR, you can conduct unique item farming more targetedly when entering Season 9, to get ahead in the new season with higher efficiency.
In addition to other skills, Hydra can also work with new power Horadric Spells to further improve the efficiency of related builds, and the short cooldown of Hydra will play an important role.
Among all Horadric Spells, Reactive Ooze can provide you with reliable resource generation, allowing you to gain 5% of your maximum resource generation per second for the next 10 seconds, Frigid Heart can cause freeze damage to enemies, and then run Volatile Crystal to make your Catalyst Horadric Spells deal more damage.
It is worth noting that after completing Horadric Spells matching, you can also earn Horadric Jewels to attach to these seasonal powers to provide them with richer effects. However, please note that not all Horadric Jewels have positive effects.
But if you want to get these jewels, you need to obtain Horadric Tomes in Horadric Strongrooms in Torment 1+ difficulties in advance (teaching you how to make Horadric Jewels) and farm enough materials to craft them.
The above are the main ideas for craft Hydra builds in 2.3.0 PTR and later Season 9. I hope it helps improve your Diablo 4 experience!
2.3.0 PTR for pre-testing the main content of Season 9 has been officially launched on May 27. If you have almost completed the progress of Season 8, it is time to enter the PTR and experience the new dungeons and new power Horadric Spells for a week.
Although Diablo 4 has brought almost no fundamental innovations or changes in recent seasons, there are always slight differences between different seasons. On this basis, in order to ensure the balance of the game environment, all 6 classes also need to be adjusted regularly.
Take the latest class, Spiritborn, as an example. Because it was considered too powerful shortly after its launch, it was weakened in Season 7, while other classes were appropriately strengthened to maintain the balance of class strength.
As the game progresses to Season 9, the previous adjustments may no longer apply. Based on this, we will introduce you to the nerfs and changes to classes and other related mechanisms that will be brought about in Season 9 based on 2.3.0 PTR and other information.
Of course, the PTR doesn’t blindly nerf every skill, affix, or other aspect of the game class. After all, balance means adding and subtracting in moderation. But in general, there are some major ability nerfs that you need to pay attention to, because this is related to the efficiency of your Diablo 4 gold farming.
For Barbarian, the first brunt of the nerfs is the skill War Cry, which has been reduced from 100% to 65%, and the glyph that can be paired with it, Wrath, which has been reduced from 160% to the lesser. Since they are the core components of many Barbarian builds, these nerfs mean that you will need to adjust your available Barbarian builds in the PTR or Season 9.
In addition, the attack effect of Bash, one of the main damage skills of the class, has been reduced. Although old patches have buffed this skill in the past, nothing is permanent in the game.
As a special ranged governing stone, Lightning Bolt can cause lightning damage to enemies by firing a special arc. Although it is not a Druid-only item, it is very effective for Cataclysm Druid builds - unfortunately, the effect of Lightning Bolt will also be reduced from 200% to 100%.
In addition, as one of the classes that can utilize specific overpower skills, Druid can form overpower domination on enemies through Werebear forms, but it is expected that the effect will also be reduced by half.
Comparatively, Barbarian and Druid have more changes and are more noteworthy. Adjustments to other classes include an overall reduction in overpower effects and Tempered damage. However, it is worth noting that the changes in Tempered damage include both enhancements and reductions.
At present, the specific nerf values of all unique items that will be weakened are not very clear, but it is certain which items will be weakened, including general unique items and those exclusive to each class.
General:
Barbarian:
Druid:
Necromancer:
Rogue:
Sorcerer:
Spiritborn:
In Diablo In Diablo 4, affixes are special magical properties. Each gear will have several affixes, or you can add additional affixes to your gear to make them more powerful.
Generally speaking, affixes in Diablo 4 are divided into three categories: offensive, defensive, and utility, which can provide different types of gains for gear, but the implicit affixes that come with gear cannot be changed or removed. In Season 9, it is expected that the implicit affixes of many weapons will be weakened, such as bows, crossbows, and some other long-handled weapons.
The above content is only part of the weakening reflected in 2.3.0 PTR for your reference. However, I want to tell you that the weakening is actually a normal change when Diablo 4 changes seasons. Listing it for you is just to facilitate your adjustment of your new season and PTR arrangements. Normally, they will not cause too much damage to your gaming experience.
In contrast, if you really want to adapt to the new season rhythm as soon as possible after the arrival of Season 9, you should familiarize yourself with the new content through PTR, such as the new dungeons Strongrooms and Escalating Nightmares, as well as the new bosses and new season powers.
The above is all the content introduced to you this time, you can utilize this as a basis to start your PTR exploration. I wish you all the best!
As you know, there are many items in Diablo 4. Some of them are gear that can be directly utilized, some are currencies with different functions, and some are actually raw materials for making more advanced items, such as Veiled Crystal.
In fact, material items like Veiled Crystal are not uncommon in the game. It is through various different recipes that you have the opportunity to synthesize and obtain more powerful and effective final products, unlocking more game content.
Based on this, this time we mainly introduce you in detail how to obtain Veiled Crystal and its main functions.
As we have mentioned, Veiled Crystal is a rare-level crafting material in Diablo 4, which can be used for enchanting, tempering, master-working, and imprinting legendary aspects on other gear items. Although these tasks also require other materials, Veiled Crystal is indeed indispensable.
In Season 8, Veiled Crystal actually has another important function, which is to be synthesized with other materials to unlock the lair boss hoard.
Most lair keys can be obtained by killing lower-level lair bosses, but the drop rate of keys belonging to high-level bosses is usually lower, so synthesizing through materials becomes a more stable method. Although the synthesis required are a lot of Diablo 4 gold, at least there is no gambling.
Transmute Mucus-Slick Egg:
Transmute Pincushioned Doll:
Transmute Sandscorched Shackles:
Transmute Shard of Agony:
In addition, to upgrade your gear through Veiled Crystal, you must travel to different locations. For example, weapons and armor upgrades require going to the blacksmith, while rings and amulets are related to the jeweler.
If you want to Imprint or enchant, you need to find an Occultist. Like the lair key, these functions also consume a lot of materials and gold, so you have to work hard on farming.
There are three main ways to get this material, namely direct farming, salvage rare or higher quality gear, and opening Whisper caches. We will introduce them one by one.
Considering the wide range of uses of Veiled Crystal and the high consumption of each production, its drop rate and quantity have been increased since Season 4, so you should get this item when you complete the battle in most quests.
However, if you want to do a large amount of farming at one time, clearing the dungeon should be a better choice. As you know, the main function of most Diablo 4 dungeons is to provide you with rich loot, not only crafting materials, but also gold and XP that are essential for playing the game.
In Season 8, it is recommended that you choose Helltides and Nightmare dungeons as the first choice for Veiled Crystal farming. Among them, Helltides has a high refresh frequency and a high density of enemies when they appear, which is very suitable for concentrated farming.
As one of the classic Diablo 4 dungeons, the nightmare dungeon is not so difficult overall, but there are many explorable contents, and farming can be completed easily.
You will intentionally or unintentionally obtain a lot of gear of different levels during the game. As your character level increases and your ability increases, the gear that provides you with basic combat benefits in the early stage will gradually be eliminated.
Since the value of this part of gear is not high, there is no need to sell it, but if it is not processed, it will waste storage space. At this time, you can travel to the blacksmith to salvage them. However, when performing salvage, please be sure to pay attention to the following tips:
This method is actually an indirect way to salvage items. When you complete Whisper bounties posted through Tree of Whispers, you will receive gold, XP, and Grim Favors as rewards.
Once you have enough Grim Favors, you can return to Tree of Whispers to redeem more rewards, including gear. Since completing Whisper bounties is an essential part of playing Diablo 4, you can fully utilize this opportunity while farming more Veiled Crystal.
With the above information, if you haven’t unlocked those higher-level lair boss hoards yet, it’s best to quickly collect Veiled Crystal synthesis keys to complete the related battles!
2.3.0 PTR has begun, it’s important to complete the main content of Season 8 as soon as possible to enjoy the new PTR!
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