News Tag: Diablo 4

In any Diablo 4 season, the real challenge starts when you enter the endgame. This final stage not only means an increase in the quality and quantity of loot, but also more dangerous enemies.

Therefore, after entering the endgame, in addition to the information you already know about the current season, you should also master additional self-improvement abilities and knowledge to successfully pass the level.

It has been more than a week since Season 9 was launched. If you progress quickly enough, you should have entered or will enter the endgame of this season. Next, we will provide you with key suggestions to help you complete these endgame contents.

Farm Mythic And Unique Items

When facing stronger enemies, in order to ensure your own survival, in addition to improving your attack power, you should also improve your defense as much as possible from multiple aspects. For example, get stronger armor or improve your elemental resistance.

The first thing to do is to work hard to farm mythic and unique items, and in the process, you can also get more Diablo 4 gold to get more usable items for subsequent battles.

Some of these mythic or unique items are armor in themselves, while others can increase your defense and resistance through their affix effects or exclusive powers, improving your ability to fight dangerous bosses.

Craft Incense At The Alchemist

Incense is actually a craftable buff in Diablo 4. After utilizing it, you will gain the corresponding buff effect, which can be enjoyed by you and others around you who can access Incense.

All Incense in the game can be divided into Type I, Type II, and Type III, and the effects of each Incense are unique. Some of them can increase your armor or health to help you survive, such as Song of the Mountain or Reddamine Buzz.

Unlock The Best Paragon Nodes

When you are able to enter Diablo 4 Season 9 endgame, you should have reached the maximum level 60. After that, although you can no longer continue to become stronger through upgrading, Paragon board will provide you with additional ways to upgrade.

After that, you will get a Paragon point for each Paragon level you upgrade, up to level 300, which means you will get 300 Paragon points to unlock various nodes in Paragon system.

All nodes can be divided into four degrees of rarity: normal, magic, rare, and legendary, but all the main effect is to provide you with attribute/damage ability/defense ability bonus.

If you are confident in your damage ability, you can prioritize unlocking nodes that can ensure your survival. It should be noted that the path to unlocking Paragon nodes suitable for you will vary depending on your class.

Master Barrier Tricks

Barrier is also one of the status effects that can be utilized in Diablo 4. It can block damage for you for a certain period of time, and sometimes this effect can even affect NPCs.

More specifically, the barrier can absorb damage from all sources for a certain period of time, up to a certain amount of damage. The sources of the barrier include the skills of the three classes of Barbarian, Druid, and Sorcerer, as well as certain item affixes.

It should be noted that currently other classes can only obtain the barrier ability through related items. Don’t confuse barrier with immune, which only provide full protection in a certain area for a certain period of time and cannot be removed.

Another skill that needs to be introduced is Earthen Bulwark, which can provide barrier effects for Druids. As you know, Druids are the weak class in Season 9, so any available help should be valued.

This skill allows you as a Druid to summon protective rocks around you to form a barrier, absorbing a certain percentage of your damage for a short period of time. However, to fully utilize it, you need 300 offering, and the relevant runes can help you.

Utilize Horadric Spells & Jewels

As the exclusive power and item of Season 9, you should find ways to use Horadric Spells & Jewels to provide you with reliable assistance in all stages.

Among them, Horadric Spells uses three rich elements, Catalyst, Infusion, and Arcana, allowing you to create your own power with maximum freedom to protect yourself while attacking enemies.

Among them, the one that can bring you the protection is represented by Magic Arcana Bottled Wind. After summoning Catalyst, Bottled Wind will bring you a barrier, which is equivalent to 30% of your maximum health and lasts for 4 seconds.

On this basis, you can consume the obtained Horadric Phials and Gem Fragments to craft Horadric Jewels. Although the specific effects of different Horadric Jewels vary, except for possible negative effects, they can all increase your armor and elemental resistance, such as:

• Scornful Light
• Brilliant Sigil
• Horadric Crest
• Seal of Denial
• Horadric Crest

It should be noted that Horadric Jewels can only be socketed in jewelry and can only work after you equip Horadric Spells. In addition, you can only equip 1 Catalyst, 1 Infusion and 3 Arcanas in each battle.

The above are Diablo 4 Season 9 endgame survival tips we provide for you this time, I hope it can help your gaming experience. Thank you for reading.

The first thing you need to do after entering the new Diablo 4 season is to create a character and upgrade him to the maximum level as soon as possible so that you can unlock more game content while becoming stronger.

Most of the XP farming methods in different seasons of Diablo 4 are not very different, but there will be some details due to the addition of new seasonal content, and different XP farming locations are suitable for different level stages.

Based on this, this time we will introduce you to how to choose the best XP acquisition method based on your leveling situation in Season 9 based on the playable content of Season 9.

Why Upgrade As Soon As Possible?

Season 9 brings Horadric Spells, but in order to unlock all spells and utilize them to craft new builds suitable for you, you must continue to upgrade. In addition, only when you reach the maximum level 60 can you unlock the paragon board to further strengthen your characters and builds.

Early Stage Upgrade Methods (Level 1-30)

Your character is in the “beginning” stage at this stage, so don’t rush to challenge the difficult content that provides a lot of XP (you may not unlock them yet), but start with the most basic quests.

Choose Normal Difficulty

As you know, there are multiple difficulty settings in Diablo 4, and the harder the quests, the more Diablo 4 gold and XP they reward you. But considering that you haven’t even unlocked class specializations at the beginning, normal difficulty is the best choice.

Although normal difficulty rewards less, the enemies are easier to kill and you can get the required XP in a short time. However, if you play with friends or have mercenaries, switching to Hard difficulty is also feasible, and you can get an extra XP boost.

Focus On Tree Of Whispers Quests

After completing the main campaign, you can start accumulating Grim Favors by completing Tree of Whispers quests to get rewards. These quests are usually relatively simple and can help you complete part of the main content or seasonal journey goals at the same time.

The most important thing about Tree of Whispers quest in Season 9 is that it rewards you with Nightmare Sigils, which is the only thing that can help you enter Nightmare Dungeon and farm more XP or other loot later.

Complete Seasonal Quests

Each Diablo 4 season will have a corresponding seasonal main quest. Although completing them is mainly to advance the story, you can also earn XP as one of the quest rewards.

More importantly, completing these quests in S9 will allow you to unlock and enter the new dungeon Horadric Strongrooms and obtain the desired Horadric Spells.

Utilize Healing Potions And Elixirs

When your character reaches level 10 and level 20, you can unlock the craft and utilize of healing potions and elixirs, respectively. The former can help you restore health to complete combat, and the latter can increase your experience points by 5%, improving your XP farming efficiency.

Intermediate Stage Upgrade Methods (Level 30-50)

At this stage, you should have mastered several Horadric Spells and preliminary Season 9 dungeon clearing tips, so you can try more advanced challenges to earn XP.

Clear Escalating Nightmare

As one of the main dungeons in Diablo 4, Nightmare Dungeon has been upgraded in S9 - Nightmare Dungeon Escalations. It is composed of 3 ordinary nightmare dungeons, which can provide affixes to increase the difficulty and bring you more rewards.

Based on this, besides the regular XP drop, Forgotten Wisdom affix brought by the random Nightmare Sigil will cause the enemy to drop experience orbs, bringing you extra XP.

Upgrade Seasonal Blessings

In addition to the in-game drop rewards, Diablo 4 will also provide you with additional rewards through the supporting upgradeable welfare system, such as you can get Smoldering Ashes to upgrade seasonal blessings by completing specific season goals.

The more levels of seasonal blessings you unlock, the better the rewards and rarity you can get. In fact, in addition to XP or gold, you have the opportunity to get rare materials or gear through seasonal blessings.

Choose The Best Builds

The idea of ​​this method is actually based on improving your combat efficiency. According to the performance of each class, the builds that perform well in Season 9 include Hydra Sorcerer and Quill Volley Spiritborn.

The reason this method is placed at the end of the intermediate stage is that you can only craft these builds after you have obtained enough levels, gear and Horadric Spells.

Final Stage Upgrade Method (Level 50-60)

At this point, your character is basically mature enough to deal with most game content. The methods introduced above and other game events/dungeons can be your XP source, but there is another method that should not be missed.

Clear Strongholds

The strongholds in the game will spawn many enemies, and there are 18 of strongholds, which is very suitable for you to conduct concentrated XP farming after breaking through level 50 to reach the maximum level as soon as possible.

It’s worth noting that the amount of XP provided by a fortress does not change depending on the difficulty level, so you can complete them with normal difficulty and complete them faster.

These are all the ways we have introduced to you to farm XP in Diablo 4 Season 9 to level up as quickly as possible. If your character is still in the early stages, I believe this guide will definitely help you!

Although there are several classes that perform exceptionally well in each Diablo 4 season, it does not mean that other classes are not worth experiencing. In fact, each class should be valued in all seasons, otherwise it will lead to a serious imbalance in class experience.

You should have learned that the most popular classes in Season 9 should be Spiritborn or Sorcerer, but you can still play Rogue in this season as a single class enthusiast or out of preference for high agility classes.

However, the question you need to consider is how to experience Rogue smoothly in Season 9 without having an absolute advantage? We will recommend several good Rogue builds for you in order of priority based on actual conditions.

1. Twisting Blades Azurewrath Build

First of all, the most important thing for this build is that you must obtain the unique sword Azurewrath as a key gear through farm boss Duriel, Andariel, Harbinger or Belial, which can output cold damage and provide corresponding lucky hit bonuses.

On this basis, the skills that need to be matched include Caltrops and Poison Trap, which can increase your damage output, and Shadow Clone can provide additional lucky hits.

In addition, seasonal power Horadric Spells are also essential. For this build, Floaty Bobble Arcana with Dash can help you shuttle faster in battle.

If you want to utilize the build to get more Diablo 4 gold in dungeons such as The Pit, you can replace Floaty Bobble Arcana and Dash with Fractured Core and Subverting Smoke Grenade.

It is worth noting that this build is a melee build, but if you are tired of this play style, you can also change the key passive to Victimize, so that you don’t have to maintain melee distance and move more flexibly - at the consume of reduced damage output.

2. Alchemist Dance Of Knives Build

This build has performed well in Season 8, and it is a good Rogue Leveling Build in Season 9. It works similarly to the previous build in general, relying on weapons with unique sword Azurewarth as the main weapon to deal damage.

On this basis, you can continue to fuse the right skills to stack the lucky hit chance as much as possible, to trigger the fixed damage effect frequently. This will also improve the efficiency of the build’s farm resources.

The best skills and Horadric Spells selection and order for this build are as follows:

Regular combat:

• Trigger Horadric Spells with Smoke Grenade and deals more damage.
• Cast Shadow Imbuement and start rotating.
• Utilize Shadow Clone & health potion every 10 seconds.

After entering the endgame:

• Make sure Shadow Imbuement is always active.
• Utilize Shadow Clone & health potion every 10 seconds.
• Utilize Teleport (Evade) after each elite equipment.
• Cast Smoke Grenade & Caltrops when facing bosses.

3. Death Trap Build

As one of the classic Rogue builds, Death Trap had a wonderful experience until Season 8, but in S9, its overall damage, unique skills, passive skills, and any super mechanism that allowed it to play an extra role were weakened.

But even in this unprecedented downturn, Death Trap is still more reliable than most ordinary Rogue builds, provided that you can accept the gap compared to previous seasons.

In terms of gameplay, this build continues the previous operating mode of fast movement + continuous Death Trap attack + sufficient damage, allowing you to keep moving while outputting damage, reflecting its high mobility.

In addition, it is recommended that you pair it with the following gear to strengthen this build as much as possible despite the nerf:

• Heir of Perdition
• Scoundrel’s Leathers
• Bow of Apogeic Furor
• Sword of Surprise
• Frostbitten Sword
• Trickster’s Gloves
• Beastfall Boots
• Eyes in the Dark
• Ring of Starless Skies

4. Poison Trap Build

Compared to the past, the strength of this build has not changed much in Season 9, the only difference is that it has gained several available variants. If you are bored with Death Trap and don’t want to try other risky new builds, you can continue to utilize Poison Trap.

5. Penetrating Shot Build

Compared to the melee focus of other Rogue builds, this build is special in that it belongs to the ranged type and is relatively rare. Although it was not very noticeable before, it has made a strong comeback in S9, especially with the nerf of Death Trap.

As the core skill of this build, Penetrating Shot can fire a huge piercing arrow to damage the enemy, while Trickshot Aspect can further expand the range of your skills.

On this basis, you can combine Azurewrath’s cold damage affix to make Penetrating Shot Build provide you with a higher lucky hit rate in addition to the output of basic damage.

Is It Worthy To Play Rogue In Season 9?

In terms of overall strength, it is not a terrible choice to continue playing Rogue with the above builds in this season, but you need to accept the reality that it is not as reliable as in previous seasons.

In addition, as you can see, Azurewrath is the key gear that makes most Rogue builds work, compared to the latest unique item Deathmask Of Nirmitruq added in S9. So you need to clarify your farming goals as a Rogue in S9, rather than blindly pursuing novelty.

The above is the information we provide for you to experience Rogue class in Season 9 and the recommended builds. If you are a fan of this class, I hope this guide will be helpful to you!

Although according to various signs, Necromancer should not be the dominant class in Diablo 4 Season 9, it is not impossible if you want to continue to play it, provided that you can choose the right Season 9 Necromancer Build.

As you know, each class has different best builds in different Diablo 4 seasons, some of which are rookies, and some are optimized versions of classic builds according to seasonal changes.

For Necromancer, although there are no new builds available, at least Blood Wave Build in S9 is still expected to help you output enough damage in battle to get more Diablo 4 gold drops.

Based on this, we will introduce you how to make this classic Necromancer Build continue to play a role in Season 9 according to the changes in the seasonal content.

Blood Wave Necromancer Build Overview

In general, Blood Wave is a stable, damage-focused build that performs well in both AOE and single-target attacks, making it suitable for most combat situations. In addition, its gameplay is relatively simple and easy to understand, and even Necromancer novices can quickly master it.

The build works by first casting Blood Wave, and then running to manually collect Blood Orbs when Blood Wave disappears. Although it is a bit cumbersome, the high overall damage and damage reduction of this build make it still one of the top choices for Necromancer builds.

What Skill Rotation Should This Build Utilize In S9?

Generally speaking, the content that determines the strength of a build includes gear, seasonal power, skills, and the skill rotation method. Among them, the choice of skills usually does not change much, but the rotation method needs to be adjusted according to the season.

For Season 9, it is still recommended that you pair the following skills with Blood Wave Necromancer Build:

• Blood Wave: Summons a wave of blood, dealing 500% damage to enemies to repel them.
• Blight: Unleashes a concentrated burst of blight, dealing 40% damage and leaving behind a foul zone that deals 135% Corrosive damage to enemies in range over 6 seconds.
• Decompose: Deals 150% Corrosive damage per hit and creates a usable corpse every 1 second.
• Corpse Explosion: Detonates corpses, dealing 85% damage to nearby enemies.
• Corpse Tendrils: Tendrils burst from usable corpses, engulfing enemies and stunning them for 3 seconds while dealing 20% ​​damage.
• Reap: Deals 50% damage to enemies in an arc in front of you. If you hit an enemy with this skill, your damage reduction is increased by 15% for 4 seconds.

Once you have determined your usable skills, it is recommended that you first utilize Decompose to create corpses, then pull enemies in with Corpse Tendrils and utilize Blood Wave to attack them.

On this basis, Affliction can greatly increase the damage potential of the build by dealing a certain percentage of damage to enemies in vulnerable, crowd controlled or corrupted states. But it should be noted that the core of this build to maximize damage is still Blood Wave.

Harder To Obtain Gear

The reason that usually prevents you from utilizing a good build is that the best gear it needs is very difficult to get, and it must be repeatedly farmed by bosses. This is also true for Blood Wave Necromancer Build.

But honestly, if you blindly fear the challenge and don’t improve the strength of the build, you will only waste the chance to win that the build brings you. Therefore, in Season 9, you still need to obtain the following three pieces of gear for Blood Wave Build:

• Kessime’s Legacy
• Shroud of False Death
• Heir of Perdition

Comparatively speaking, the most important one should be Kessime’s Legacy, because it has affixes that can increase the damage potential of Blood Wave and reduce the cooldown of Blood Wave.

This way, not only can you cast it more often, but you’ll also have a greater chance of dealing double damage to enemies. The item also has a unique ability to cast Blood Wave on either side of you for a wider range of coverage.

As for Shroud of False Death and Heir of Perdition, their role is to provide excellent damage bonuses to push the build’s damage output per second to the limit.

However, all three pieces of gear require you to repeatedly fight the corresponding bosses in Torment difficulty to obtain them, and Kessime’s Legacy can only be dropped by farming Lord Zir. So if you want to maximize the potential of your build, at least wait until you reach the endgame stage.

Which Horadric Spells Should You Choose?

Each Diablo 4 season’s seasonal power provides additional benefits to build, allowing you to output damage in a more seasonal way. In Season 9, that power is Horadric Spells. But if you want to enhance Blood Wave Build with it, it is recommended that you prioritize the following two powers:

Catalyst - Cosmic Anomaly

• Passive effect: Summons up to 5 Anomalies, which will release particles over 4 seconds to damage enemies.
• Active effect: Control these Anomalies to converge and implode, and each explosion can cause damage. When the number of Anomalies reaches 5, not only will you become Unstoppable, but the next implosion will also cause double damage.

Infusion - Nebulous Extract

• Combat effect: On the basis of the shadow damage or corrosive damage caused by Catalyst, the damage caused by the hit enemy is reduced for 7 seconds. And it brings you a Shadow damage bonus equivalent to the highest damage type bonus.

The above is how to make Blood Wave Necromancer Build still usable in Diablo 4 Season 9 or even output more damage. If you think it is feasible, try it in the game!

The official release date of Diablo 4 Season 9 is getting closer and closer. Whether you are fully prepared to welcome it or not, at least the game itself is still committed to making the new season better on the eve of release.

I believe you should have learned about the new playable content through 2.3.0 PTR, but you should also notice through the performance of the PTR that some changes in the inherent mechanism have not made the game better.

In order to ensure that the official experience of the new season will not be affected, Diablo 4 released a new and more comprehensive Season 9 preview on June 25, which not only modified the unsatisfactory parts in the PTR, but also added a small part of new content to improve the new gameplay.

Based on this, this time we will mainly introduce you to the new changes brought by the new unique items added to each class, as well as the relics related to the boss Astaroth.

What Changes Does Each Class Get?

As you know, every season, Diablo 4 will adjust the strength of existing classes to ensure that they can maintain balance in the new season mode. But not every adjustment is perfect, at least for 2.3.0 PTR.

Therefore, before the launch of Season 9, the game adds different degrees of buffs to the new unique items of each class, giving you the opportunity to earn enough Diablo 4 gold and XP in the early stage of Season 9 to smoothly enter the latter stages.

Barbarian

Generally speaking, Diablo 4’s class mechanism adjustments will not target those regular skills (unless there are more fatal problems), but will optimize the newly added parts, so the new unique items that appear in almost every season have become “regular visitors” of adjustments.

The item added to Barbarian in S9 is Hooves of the Mountain God. As a pair of boots, it originally has the following affix effects:

• Attacks Reduce Evades Cooldown by 2.5 Seconds
• +17.5-23% Movement Speed
• +16-25% Basic Attack Speed
• +7-10 Fury Per Seconds
• +2-3 Ranks to Belligerence
• Cleave Radius 135

The new change is to change the radius range value of the last item to 150, allowing you to cause damage to enemies in a wider range.

Druid

As a class that has been ignored for many seasons, Druid is still repeatedly weakened in 2.3.0 PTR, causing many Druid players to feel dissatisfied. Therefore, the game has made the following changes based on its new item, Rotting Lightbringer:

Affix changes:

• 14-18% Willpower changed to 18-22%
• 114-150% Poison Damage changed to 406-550%

Unique power comprehensive changes:

The optimized Rotting Lightbringer will cause Pulverize to form a puddle when there are no puddles around, causing poison damage equivalent to 200-600% of normal damage over 7 seconds.

In addition, Pulverize will cause all nearby puddles to splash damage equivalent to 20-60% of their total damage in and around their area. And the size of the affected puddle and its splash area will increase as the radius of Pulverize increases.

Necromancer

The new unique item for this class is The Hand of Naz, which has three unique powers, the last of which is that Skeletal Arch-Mages will teleport you to a safe area when attacked, and their attacks will occasionally shatter on impact, dealing 50-100% bonus damage to the target and up to 3 additional targets.

On top of that, the new changes not only shorten the time between attacks that shatter this effect by 50%, but also make Skeletal Arch-Mages unlockable for 1 second after teleporting, and slightly increase the size of Arch-Mages.

Rogue

The changes to this class are relatively few, mainly removing the mechanism that consumes health when utilizing Flurry when equipped with the helm Deathmask of Nirmitruq.

Based on this, the mechanism of increasing Flurry damage by consuming health no longer works, but Flurry can directly increase your attack speed by 50% for 5 seconds.

Sorcerer

As one of the most anticipated classes in Season 9, the changes to Sorcerer include two affixes to its unique item Ophidian Iris:

• +10.5%-15.0% Critical Strike Chance changed to Attack Speed
• +1-2 to Primordial Binding changed to Devouring Blaze

Spiritborn

Like Sorcerer, due to its outstanding performance in the PTR, Spiritborn has also received fewer changes, only reducing the thorn damage that Balazan’s Maxtlatl can cause from 200-300% to 100-150%, to ensure that it is not much stronger than the weaker classes.

Corrupted Blood Relics

This relic is not strictly a new item that can be obtained, but is related to the main quest line of Season 9, The Embers Yet Smolder. As you know, the final boss of the season is Astaroth, so your main quest goal is to defeat him.

The story of Season 9 takes place in Cerrigar, where you will meet a Druid named Bryona. In the past, a Horadric mage named Donan sealed Astaroth, but also left behind many troubles, including corrupted blood relics.

So what you have to do is to help Bryona deal with these troubles, find and destroy the corrupted blood relics before the evil forces get them, to avoid extra difficulties when solving the final boss.

In addition to the above content, the game has also added many details to Season 9. You can experience them one by one after the official launch of the season! Let’s look forward to it together!

In order to make progress as quickly as possible in the new Diablo 4 season, you not only need to understand all the new content and changes in the season, but also need to find powerful and suitable builds based on this.

Season 9 will be launched on July 1, 2025. If you plan to show your skills in this season, you need to know in advance whether the strength of each class build has changed after entering S9. Because if the builds you insist on utilizing are weakened in this season, your efficiency in farming Diablo 4 gold will inevitably be affected.

Based on this, this time we selected those builds that have performed well in recent Diablo 4 seasons, and arranged and introduced them from S tier to B tier according to their performance in 2.3.0 PTR, and predicted their official effects in Season 9.

S Tier - Hydra Sorcerer Build

It turns out that if the skill is not weakened after Season 9 is officially launched, then Hydra Sorcerer will definitely be the best build of this season. Hydra itself is a skill based on fire damage, but in the PTR, the game not only enhances the skill effect, but also launches a new unique item Ophidian Iris that can be paired with it.

Compared with the original single fire damage, the current Hydra allows you to combine different types of spells to enhance it, and you can further increase the damage output by increasing the number of heads of the hydra summoned by the skill.

As for Ophidian Iris, it not only increases all your elemental resistance by 30%, but also ensures that you always summon a three-headed Hydra, whose attacks will explode on impact. Each additional head of the hydra increases the damage caused by 50-100%.

It can be foreseen that through the synergy of this core item and other necessary gear, you can utilize Hydra Sorcerer Build in any way you like and earn more loot.

S Tier - Lightning Spear Sorcerer Build

It’s easy to see that Sorcerer will be the most popular class in Season 9, as not only is there a new Hydra build available, but one of the classic builds, Lightning Spear, is still available this season.

Lightning Spear, when paired with the right unique item, can provide powerful AOE damage and crowd control effects through summoning gameplay and a lot of critical hit scaling, and can quickly locate bosses in boss battles.

It’s worth noting that a large part of the power of this build in Season 8 relied on amulet Fractured Winterglass, so it is expected that you will still need to equip this item in Season 9. Or you can try other item combinations.

A Tier - Spiritborn Builds Focus On Thorns Damage

This tier is actually a collection of most Spiritborn builds. The reason why this class is so adaptable in Season 9 is mainly due to the addition of the new unique item Balazan’s Maxtlatl.

In addition to the basic stats, this item deals 200-300% of your Thorns damage to melee enemies every time you attack, and additionally poisons them over 3 seconds. If you utilize Thorns to counterattack, the poison damage will increase over 5 seconds.

With this powerful damage output, no matter what Spiritborn builds you plan to utilize in S9, as long as you have Balazan’s Maxtlatl equipped and can deal Thorns damage, you can deal with most enemies without even farming additional Mythic.

A Tier - Blood Bone Spear Or Blood Wave Necromancer Build

Honestly speaking, Necromancer builds are not worth entering A tier in terms of overall power, because many class-related mechanics have been nerfed in this season, making most available Necromancer builds relatively fragile.

However, in comparison, the damage output of Blood Bone Spear and Blood Wave builds is still very good. So if you are good at playing Necromancer and can farm gear that can enhance defense and life, you can also try to continue to utilize them.

B Tier - Poison Pool Druid Build

Druid and Rogue, which we will introduce later, both performed relatively mediocre in Season 9, so even the best builds they could have for this season were only ranked in the B tier.

Poison Pool Druid Build mainly deals poison damage to enemies through the skill Pulverize and the new unique item Rotting Lightbringer.

B Tier - Death Trap Or Dance Of Knives Rogue Build

In Season 6, these two builds, especially Dance of Knives, made Rogue shine. But with the adjustments and changes in the seasons, although they are still reliable for Rogue, the overall build strength cannot be compared with other class builds.

If you are only looking for Rogue experience, you can continue to play them in Season 9, but if you want to get more gold and gear as soon as possible and advance the game progress, S/A tier builds will be better.

The above is the ranking of the builds expected to be available in Season 9. You can decide which one to utilize based on your needs. Have fun!

Although 2.3.0 PTR has ended and Season 9 has not yet officially started, most of the new season content has been fully demonstrated through the PTR, and it also gives you the opportunity to test your commonly used class or build in advance.

If you are familiar with similar ARPGs or have been playing Diablo 4 for a long time, you should know that the change of seasons will bring a series of adjustments, so the builds suitable for different classes in the new season will also change.

So, according to the PTR test, which build is the most suitable for each of the 6 classes in the game to utilize in Season 9? We will introduce it to you in combination with the content changes in S9.

Overview Of Season 9 Changes

In summary, the most prominent changes in this season are the new dungeons Escalating Nightmares and Strongrooms, the new seasonal power Horadric Spells, and the new ultimate boss Astaroth.

Among them, the most closely related to the crafting of builds should be Horadric Spells and related Horadric Jewels. They are like the boss powers in Season 8, and can be combined with various new and old builds as seasonal elements.

Horadric Spells include Catalysts, Infusions, and Arcana, and each element includes multiple options. You can combine them as needed to create the most suitable spell for you and combine them with builds. Adding jewels can further enhance the effect of spells.

In other words, no matter what class you plan to play and what builds you utilize in Season 9, don’t ignore Horadric Spells. It can not only help you earn more Diablo 4 gold, but also improve your seasonal combat experience.

Necromancer

To be honest, this may be the most average class in Season 9. Although each class has received several new builds in the new season, Necromancer not only has an average performance in its inherent builds, but also has too fragile new builds.

As you know, this class often relies on the power of minions in combat, but the relevant AI in S9 is slow to react and is not friendly to this combat mechanism. If you really like the mage class, Sorcerer will be more suitable for you.

Sorcerer

The most suitable build for Sorcerer this season is undoubtedly Hydra Build. Although it is also a summoning skill, Hydra’s performance is much more reliable and interesting than Necromancer’s minions. It can summon a three-headed hydra in battle to deal fire damage to the enemy.

Builds centered on it can output more different types of damage to the enemy by combining skills such as Fire Bolt and Ice Shards, and attack the enemy from multiple angles. More importantly, the combat fun brought by Hydra Build is also very good.

It is worth noting that the above combat experience is based on PTR. It is difficult to say whether the game will weaken it in S9 because it thinks that this build is too powerful.

Druid

For Druid, in addition to Horadric Spells, the new content that should be added to related builds is the newly added unique item Rotting Lightbringer. The effect of this weapon is closely related to the skill Pulverize. In addition to its own damage ability, it can also increase the chance of the skill to hit twice, and increase the damage to enemies with poison damage.

Every 10 seconds in combat, Pulverize will form a puddle, causing poison damage equivalent to 200-400% of its damage in 6 seconds, and additional splash damage equivalent to 20-40% of the total damage of the puddle in and around it.

You can simply call this build Poison Pool Druid Build. Through the combination of new weapons and classic skills, it will make Druid show its prowess in Season 9.

Rogue

Due to the weakening of some mechanisms, the experience of Rogue in S9 may not be too good (but it should still be stronger than Necromancer). You can try new builds with the new unique item Deathmask of Nirmitruq helm, but this item will consume too many resources, so it is not really effective.

Based on this, if you still want to play Rogue, you can continue to utilize Death Trap Build. Although it lacks novelty, at least it won’t go wrong. However, this build is more gear-dependent, so please be sure to do the relevant farming in time.

Barbarian

The reliable build for Barbarian in Season 9 is also the old Whirlwind Build, which can still make you play most of your strength as a Barbarian on the basis of Gohr’s Devastating Grips brought by Season 8.

However, the reason why we recommend you to continue to choose this build is not entirely because it is reliable, but mainly because Whirlwind has been weakened less than other Barbarian skills or mechanisms.

Spiritborn

The build suitable for this class to utilize in the new season is still Quill Volley Build that has been well received since its launch. The difference is that Season 9 adds a unique item Balazan’s Maxtlatl pants to it, allowing you to output more thorn damage and poison damage.

Based on this, other Spiritborn Thorns builds are actually pretty good, and they become even more reliable when combined with rare gear. To be honest, Spiritborn and Sorcerer based on Hydra Build should be the most popular play styles in S9.

The above is just our classes and builds experience suggestions based on PTR experience. In fact, you can explore more play styles that suit you on Season 9! Have fun!

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.

Barbarian

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.

Druid

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.

Changes To Other Classes

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.

• Rogue: The reduction in health damage after Stealth has reduced the additional damage that can be formed.
• Sorcerer: Lightning Spear’s damage has been reduced by 40%, and the skill effects of Hydra and Shocking Impact have been weakened.
• General nerfs (for all classes): The reduction of some Tempered damage, reduction of critical damage, basic skills, core skills and ultimate damage.

Nerfs Of Unique Items

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:

• Banished Lord’s Talisman
• Locran’s Talisman
• Paingorger’s Gauntlets
• Rakanoth’s Wake
• Shard of Verathiel
• Yen’s Blessing

Barbarian:

• Arreat’s Bearing
• Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus
• Twin Strikes
• Ugly Bastard Helm

Druid:

• Mjölnic Ryng

Necromancer:

• Bloodless Scream
• Deathless Visage
• Indira’s Memory

Rogue:

• Condemnation
• Eaglehorn
• Eyes in the Dark

Sorcerer:

• Axial Conduit
• Esu’s Heirloom
• Fractured Winterglass

Spiritborn:

• Sepazontec

Implicit Affixes Weakened

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!

For Diablo 4, regularly updating seasons is not only to give you a fresher gaming experience, but also to take the opportunity to make the game better by optimizing various aspects of the game mechanics.

Usually about halfway through the current season, the developers of Diablo 4 will hold a campfire chat to summarize the current season progress and give you a preview of the main content of the next season. However, this time the preview of Season 9 seems to come earlier than ever before.

At 11 am on May 22, the official held the latest campfire chat, which was less than a month after the launch of Season 8. Based on this, we will introduce you to the main information announced in this live broadcast to pave the way for your Season 9 experience.

Current Diablo 4 Performance

Although the simultaneous launch of Vessel of Hatred and Season 6 last year amazed you with its rich content and high playability, the new seasons after that have been criticized by players for being too homogeneous, including the ongoing Season 8.

Take this season as an example. The biggest features of boss power and the return of Belial are indeed attractive, but the boss power mechanism itself is actually a variant of the old season power, without substantial innovation, and Belial boss battle does not bring any special mechanism.

And Apparition Incursions event, another major content of the eighth season, actually just forces you to repeat the same battle over and over again, and complete the upgrade and Diablo 4 gold farming by obtaining magic boss power - although this is important, the boring battle is indeed unbearable.

Therefore, it can be seen from the campfire chat that the development team seems to intend to change this situation starting from Season 9, and strive to ensure that you have the opportunity to carry out various activities in the future Diablo 4, rather than being trapped in a specific activity.

What Will PTR 2.3.0 Include?

In Diablo 4, most PTRs are small “new seasons” that allow you to experience the gameplay of the next season in advance in the form of testing, and make corrections and adjustments in time based on your feedback and other players’ feedback, so that the new season will be more perfect when it is officially launched.

The core of this PTR 2.3.0 is Season 9, Sins of the Horadrim. PTR will be officially launched on May 27 and will last until June 3 (about a week like in the past), during which you can experience the new content that is now basically confirmed to appear in Season 9.

Comprehensive Upgrade Of Nightmare Dungeon

As an important source of your gold, XP and basic gear farming in Diablo 4, Nightmare Dungeon is a very important game mechanic. It has been running since the game was launched in 2023, and now it is time to make it better.

First, the dungeon itself will add an advanced mode called Escalating Nightmares, which allows you to challenge three nightmare dungeons in a row, and each dungeon will add new affixes that can increase both difficulty and rewards.

When you complete all the challenges brought by these three dungeons, you will usher in a final boss battle, but the premise is that you have obtained Strongrooms in challenges that require Torment 1 and above, and collected enough Escalating Nightmare Sigil from them to unlock the boss battle.

You may wonder what Strongrooms are, in fact, it comes from another update to Nightmare Dungeons. Season 9 will add a new micro-dungeon called Horadric Strongrooms to Nightmare Dungeons, and the entrance is hidden in Nightmare Dungeon.

Find the entrance and enter, and you can start collecting Horadric ‘attunement’ by killing enemies. This item can increase the number of rewards you get after killing the boss in this dungeon and unlocking its Strongroom.

New Boss Astaroth

This boss, like Belial from Season 8, is a return of an existing Diablo villain (old boss). The value of Astaroth is that when he appeared in the game in the past, his encounters were among the most interesting of all bosses.

In order to avoid the misunderstanding of “old wine in new bottles”, the developers said in the chat that they would not let Astaroth simply integrate into the existing boss ladder directly, but would try to find ways to integrate bosses in different ways to make the main content of the final boss battle more innovative.

Seasonal Power Horadric Spells

Well, Diablo 4 does not seem to intend to abandon the representative mechanism of seasonal power just because of the dissatisfaction of players. To be honest, what you are tired of is not the mechanism itself, but the fact that different powers in different seasons always play the same form in the end in actual battles.

For this reason, the development team said that compared to the boss power or witch power that can be used directly after unlocking, Season 9 Horadric Spells will allow you to customize this power yourself and create your own Horadric Spell in a form similar to build.

Since neither PTR nor Season 9 has been launched yet, it is still impossible to judge the practicality of this mechanism. However, at least from the design concept, it is indeed more creative than the existing seasonal power and worth looking forward to.

In addition to the above three core contents, it is expected that Season 9 will continue to optimize each class on the basis of bringing new content, so that they can ensure it maintains balanced class strength while fitting in with the theme of the new season.

If you are interested in the changes in Season 9, please experience and evaluate it immediately when PTR 2.3.0 is launched. I wish you a happy game!

Whenever you enter the world of Diablo 4, the first step is to create a new character and choose a class for it. After that, all the skills, appearances, unique items and more that you can utilize often depend on your class.

On this basis, game builds that mainly rely on skills and gear to craft will naturally vary depending on the class. And when the game changes seasons, the strongest builds for each class will also change due to changes in bosses or adjustments to dungeon mechanisms.

Based on this, this time we will use Season 8 as the background to introduce to you which build is suitable for each of the 6 classes in Diablo 4 as the mainstream build of the season.

1. Spiritborn - Quill Volley

Compared to other Spiritborn builds, Quill Volley will focus more on damage output, and at the same time have reliable tank capabilities and high mobility. But to enjoy these benefits, you must pair it with rarer gear.

For this reason, in fact, before completing the craft of this build, you need to go through very hard battles to accumulate enough Diablo 4 gold and gear to complete Quill Volley. But the advantage is that it can help you get higher combat efficiency than others after entering the endgame.

To do this, you’ll need the following skills and gear for this build:

Active Skills

• Quill Volley - Advantageous Quill Volley - 5/5 - Core
• Ravager - Measured Ravager - 1/5 - Focus
• Armored Hide - Reinforced Armored Hide - 1/5 - Defensive
• Vortex - Measured Vortex - 1/5 - Focus
• Scourge - Adaptable Scourge - 1/5 - Defensive
• The Hunter - Exalted Hunter - 1/5 - Ultimate

Gear

• Harmony of Ebewaka
• Shroud of False Death
• Aspect of the Moonrise
• Duelist’s Aspect
• Yen’s Blessing
• Banished Lord’s Talisman

2. Sorcerer - Lightning Spear

If you want to quickly clear enemies as a Sorcerer in Season 8, and complete most of the seasonal missions and endgame dungeons with maximum efficiency, then Lightning Spear is still the best choice.

As its name suggests, this build mainly outputs power through Lightning Spear and Aspect of Splintering Energy. On the other hand, you can also match it with the appropriate seasonal power boss power in addition to gear to make this build more powerful.

Gear

• Cap of Disobedience
• Snowveiled Tunic
• Focus of Elemental Constellation
• Dagger of Engulfing Flames
• Storm Swell Gloves
• Everliving Pants
• Flamewalker’s Boots
• Amulet of Control

Boss Powers

• Ashava’s Poison Breath
• Wandering Death’s Chest Beam
• Torusk’s Rage
• Allek’s Talons

3. Barbarian - Call Of The Ancients

Compared to the best builds of the first two classes, Barbarian’s Call of the Ancients may has be forgotten by you for a long time, but it has to be said that after the mechanism of adjustment in Vessel of Hatred last year, it can now play a good effect in Season 8.

This build mainly increases the damage of the build by maximizing the duration of the core skill Call of the Ancients to help you deal with Torment difficulty and the single boss in it. However, due to the characteristics of the skills, this build is not suitable for fast gold farming.

Active Skills

• Bash - Enhanced Bash - 2/5 - Basic
• Ground Stomp - Tactical Ground Stomp - 1/5 - Defensive
• Rallying Cry - Strategic Rallying Cry - 1/5 - Defensive
• Challenging Shout - Enhanced Challenging Shout - 1/5 - Defensive
• War Cry - Power War Cry - 1/5 - Brawling
• Call of the Ancients - Supreme Call of the Ancients - 5/5 - Ultimate

Gear

• Harlequin Crest
• Tyrael’s Might
• Aspect of Inner Calm
• Arreat’s Bearing
• Hectic Aspect
• Locran’s Talisman

4. Necromancer - Blood Spear And Blood Wave

For this class, the focus of builds selection this season is still blood-oriented. Both Blood Spear and Blood Wave can play a good role, but they actually have different advantages and disadvantages. You can decide which one to choose based on our introduction.

Blood Spear

This build mainly uses the main skill Bone Spear and the unique item Indira’s Memory to play a role. It not only has a large enough damage range, but also guarantees overpowers. At the same time, Indira’s Memory can also change the visual effects of the skill, making the battle more enjoyable.

As for the shortcomings, the problem with Blood Spear is that it relies too much on essence during utilization. You must devote your energy to provide a stable source of essence for it. In addition, the freedom of choice when assigning skill points to appropriate skills is low.

Blood Wave

This build can output stable and powerful damage through the skill Blood Wave, easily dealing with groups or single enemies, and the gameplay is simple and easy to understand, suitable for most players. As for the shortcomings, it is mainly reflected in the fact that collecting blood orbs is very time-consuming.

5. Rogue - Death Trap

For Rogue, we recommend that you choose Death Trap as the core build in Season 8. Combining the skill of the same name with the armor Scoundrel’s Leathers, this build will allow you to easily defeat enemies through continuous teaming and gain a lot of cooldown time through the game loop.

Active Skills

• Caltrops - Methodical Caltrops - 1/5 - Agility
• Shadow Step - Methodical Shadow Step - 1/5 - Agility
• Smoke Grenade - Subverting Smoke Grenade - 1/5 - Subterfuge
• Concealment - Subverting Concealment - 1/5 - Subterfuge
• Shadow Imbuement - Mixed Shadow Imbuement - 1/5 - Imbuement
• Death Trap - Supreme Death Trap - 5/5 - Ultimate

Gear

• Harlequin Crest
• Scoundrel’s Leathers
• Crossbow of Apogeic Furor
• Sword of Artful Initiative
• Doombringer
• Trickster’s Gloves
• Eyes in the Dark

6. Druid - Cataclysm

You might be wondering, why the hell is Cataclysm again? But it has to be said that classics are timeless. As a veteran build for a veteran class, Cataclysm is your best choice when you are in trouble as a Druid in Diablo 4.

This build mainly revolves around the key skill Cataclysm and extends its duration and power by matching it with appropriate gear and runes to cope with most game content.

Active Skills

• Maul - Enhanced Maul - 1/5 - Basic
• Pulverize - Primal Pulverize - 1/5 - Core
• Earthen Bulwark - Preserving Earthen Bulwark - 1/5 - Defensive
• Blood Howl - Innate Blood Howl - 1/5 - Defensive
• Debilitating Roar - Innate Debilitating Roar - 1/5 - Defensive
• Hurricane - Savage Hurricane - 1/5 - Wrath
• Cataclysm - Supreme Cataclysm - 5/5 - Ultimate

Gear

• Tempest Roar
• Tyrael’s Might
• Runeworker’s Conduit Aspect
• Stormshifter’s Aspect
• Flickerstep
• Aspect of the Changeling’s Debt

If there are any of the above builds that you think are good and correspond to the class you are playing, then why not complete it and use it in battle? Try it now!