In this guide, we’ll take a deep dive into the exciting changes coming to Helltide in Diablo 4 Season 4, which starts around May 14th. From dynamic gameplay events to improved drop mechanics, Helltide is becoming a game changer.

We’ve seen a few changes to Helltide in the past, but nothing quite like these, and here’s a quick overview of what’s coming soon.

Multiple new events make Helltide gameplay feel more dynamic, opening up helltide-specific drops to other areas and bringing outside drops into Helltide. All in all, Helltide is probably the best leveling place in Season 4. Let’s get right to the point.

How Does Helltide Work?

Helltide in Diablo 4 is a game feature unlocked after completing the story. You can tell Helltide is happening by the red appearance on the map. They will go up for 55 minutes, go down for 5 minutes, and then appear again in a new area.

When you enter Helltide, you’ll see new elements in the heads up display in the upper right corner, including your Aberrant Cinders, Baneful Heart, and the bar that determines your level of threat in Helltide.

All enemies in Helltide have a chance to drop Aberrant Cinders, which can be used to open special chests called Tortured Gifts. Tortured Gifts are located in fixed and random locations around Helltide. Their icons on the map determine the types of items you can get when you open them, and they cost between 50 and 275 Aberrant Cinders to open.

There are 2 unique chest types, and Gift of Mysteries chests provide a wide variety of crafting materials and Diablo 4 items. If you want to farm the endgame boss Grigoire, you need to target Tortured Gift of Living Steel. This boss has its own target farming loot table and is one of four bosses that can now be farmed for Uber Uniques.

Keep in mind that when you’re defeated in Helltide, you lose half of your Aberrant Cinders, making targeting expensive Tortured Gifts very dangerous.

Sometimes you’ll encounter Doomsayer Pira, and interacting with Pira will cause random things to happen, such as spawning enemies, spawning Goblin, and even spawning new, cheaper Tortured Gifts.

Helltide Threat Meter

As you play Helltide, defeating enemies and opening Tortured Gifts will increase your Threat Meter. The higher the meter, the more ambushes you’ll encounter as you continue through Helltide. Your Threat Meter can be found in the upper right corner.

Maximizing the meter will start a new Helltide event where you will be constantly ambushed. The meter decreases as you approach the final ambush. The final ambush will include a new elite enemy called Hellborn, which will be harder to defeat than typical elite enemies.

New Accursed Ritual Event

Collecting Baneful Hearts mainly occurs when opening any Tortured Gifts in Helltide. You will see how many Baneful Hearts you have in the upper right corner. These can be spent at Accursed Ritual locations in Helltide, and finding these locations requires you to be within a certain distance of the event before you can see it on the map.

When you arrive at the event location, you’ll see 3 Accursed Altars, each of which requires a Baneful Heart to activate. It is worth mentioning that activating Accursed Altar can be done by different players.

This event is very similar to Blood Lure Pedestals during Season 2 Blood Harvest. Once activated, the area will spawn waves of enemies, all of which help to free the boss in the center.

Eventually, Blood Maiden will appear. This enemy is powerful, can deal high damage, and has a large health pool similar to World Boss. During each phase of Blood Maiden, they will fire telegraph projectiles in random directions, which will also spawn 4 Hellborn enemies.

Throughout the battle, be careful when you become the target of a circle that stalks you. The best way to deal with this is to run in a circle, out of the path of nearby allies. Defeating Blood Maiden will drop loot, and will also drop Exquisite Blood, which is used to generate the endgame boss, Lord Zir.

Add New Whisper Objectives

Coming to Season 4 Helltide, you’ll also notice new Whisper Objectives exclusive to Helltide. This means that when you play Helltide, you also gain Grim Favors.

These Objectives are simple, like killing some demons, destroying Accursed Ritual, or defeating Hellborn. Most of these are easy to complete by playing Helltide and will be a great way to farm Varshan Body Parts for summoning the endgame boss Varshan.

Helltide Is No Longer The Only Way To Get Specific Items

Additionally, Forgotten Souls, Fiend Roses, and Grigoire summoning items are no longer locked behind Helltide. They are available outside of Helltide at a lower and possibly more unstable rate. Therefore, Helltide will probably remain the primary method for target farming these items.

To collect Forgotten Souls, you need to look for Screaming Hell Veins, which are rarely found in Helltide region. To collect Fiend Roses, be aware of Fiend Rose interactables. Don’t forget to collect 5 pieces of Living Steel immediately and open Living Steel Chest to get 275 Aberrant Cinders.

It’s worth mentioning that in Helltide, goblins and elite enemies appear to drop any endgame boss summoning items.

Structures From The Past Return

By the way, in Season 4 Helltide, we will also find some returning structures from past seasons.

You’ll find Sanguine Altars mini-event in Season 2, where you have to defeat endless waves of enemies while having less and less health over time. You’ll also find Trap Altar from Season 3, which is the same idea, but the altar itself emits a dodgeable telegraphed attack.

Helltide Will Become The Best Leveling Location

All of these new additions will be coming to Helltide, which has been available since World Tier 1, so this will probably be the best leveling location in Season 4.

Helltide itself has a hit or miss mob density. Threat Meter will help fill the monster density with ambush. Finding many people participating in Accursed Ritual will result in a huge XP boost, similar to Cursed Chests in Nightmare Dungeons. This will be the basis for Whisper Objectives you complete during Helltide to earn another boost in XP.

Best of all, opening Tortured Gifts will grant you more XP. The main thing you miss when leveling up from level 1 to 100 in Helltide is Glyph XP, so that’s the major drawback.

The above are all the changes in Helltide in Season 4 that we know so far, but we still have to look forward to the official launch in half a month for the specific content. Good luck and have fun.

In this guide, I’ll be showcasing another unique build we tested in Season 4 PTR, which is the powerful Frozen Orb Sorcerer with Fractured Winterglass unique Amulet at its core. This is an incredible endgame build that combines Frozen Orb with a spell, creating an effect that can easily reach high levels and permanently freeze enemies.

It’s no problem with Pit of Artificers endgame newly introduced in Season 4. Personally, Pit Tier 159 was the highest we could open with this build at the time. So, at least with the scaling we have on PTR, getting all the way to Pit Tier 200 is pretty easy. So it’s safe to say this is one of the best builds out there, especially for a Sorcerer.

How Does It Work?

How it works is that Fractured Winterglass gives it a chance to spawn any random Conjuration whenever you cast Frozen Orb. So Ice Blades, Lightning Spear or Hydra and those Conjurations will spawn and throw their own Frozen Orbs. These Orbs can move back and forth and explode around like you know.

Basically, you’ll see about 20 Frozen Orbs exploding all the time. What’s more, if you have Aspect of Frozen Orbit, it can also cause Frozen Orbs to explode three times.

What this means is that you actually have a lot of Lucky Hit triggers, you have a lot of opportunities to trigger those Conjurations summon spawns, and you have Lightning Spears flying around all the time to deal a lot of damage.

Additionally, Frozen Orb synergize well with Conjuration Mastery Passive, providing additional damage and mana regeneration. So the more Conjurations you have, the more these scales up, the more you can spam everything. So it all synergize with each other in a really crazy way, making this build powerful.

Fractured Winterglass

You might feel that with the build going roughly the way I’ve shown it, it might be a little weak. Since our goal in Season 4 is to get into Pit Tier 200, the bar is a little higher, but the unique Fractured Winterglass will definitely help you get there.

This is one of the new Diablo 4 items dropped by Lord Zir in World Tier 4. It gives you a 35-50% chance of generating random Conjuration when casting Frozen Orb Explosion. If Lucky Hits, your Conjurations have a whopping 70-100% chance of launching Frozen Orbs at nearby enemies. Before getting Fractured Winterglass, Frozen Orb Sorcerer dealt mediocre damage and struggled to maintain mana.

While this build will still work on the starting Sorcerer, we strongly recommend switching to Chain Lightning Sorcerer build before you get Fractured Winterglass. Because Frozen Orbs deplete resources quickly, starting at a whopping 40 mana, and requiring specific equipment to maintain mana to continuously cast Frozen Orbs.

Pros And Cons

They’ve buffed Frozen Orbs quite a bit since I played it in Season 1. As I mentioned, this is pretty good, especially for leveling. When you're not looking for truly high-end content, and you don't have to fight millions of monsters like a boss, Frozen Orb Sorcerer is always the best choice.

But like I mentioned before, Aspect of Frozen Orbit has great synergy with Frozen Orbs, so you have to find it at least once. This will change your settings for more Conjurations.

And in Season 4, you can now choose where to detonate Frozen Orbs. When you play the game using your mouse and keyboard, it moves to your cursor. I think when you play with the controller, it just goes to your target or, like, a random set distance.

So it’s not like there was always a fixed long range where you had to constantly reposition yourself to really cast accurately. If you want, you can even stand on top of your enemies and throw Frozen Orbs into their faces. This also makes using it easier and better. Because you are guaranteed to always explode on the target, and the radius is very large.

But I have to say, I think this build will last a long time against all of these bosses. Therefore, boss battles are definitely a weakness of Frozen Orbs. But don’t worry, you can increase boss damage by optimizing settings. Once you are fully equipped, you can enter Pit Tier 200 and even clear speed will be fast.

Paragon Board Explained

We can also take a quick look at Paragon Board. We have six boards, six glyphs, and one or two very influential legendary nodes.

First, Icefall causes you to deal extra damage to vulnerable enemies. Additionally, we have Frigid Fate here, which also deals extra damage to vulnerable targets based on your cold damage. This number may seem a bit low, but you can actually Temper the cold damage, or non-physical damage, to maximize the effect of this Frigid Fate board.

There are also Paragon nodes that are basically just for stacking a lot of defenses. So we have a lot of life and similar damage reduction here, such as Damage Reduction from Vulnerable, Damage Reduction from Burning, Damage Reduction from Chilled. Because we need to be as tanky as possible to ensure we can survive the high-end content in Pit and those Uber bosses.

The rest is just like you know, grab some really important stuff like damage modifiers like Winter Glyph, and Destruction Glyph which can crit scale. Additionally, there’s a Conjurer Glyph here that increases their duration, so you have a really nice damage bonus.

All in all, this Frozen Orb build is a powerful and fun build for Sorcerer in Diablo 4 Season 4. But anyway, we still need to wait for the final patch notes. Let’s wait and see!

Here, we’ll take a deep dive into the newly introduced endgame activity in Diablo 4 Season 4: Pit of Artificers. With this guide, you’ll learn the requirements for entering this new endgame, the mechanics of Pit, and what rewards you’ll receive for completing it.

From dungeon mechanics to Masterworking materials and Stygian Stones, we’ve broken down all the essentials to help you overcome this challenge. Don’t miss it if you like concise and informative guides. May your adventures in Pit of Artificers be both meaningful and enjoyable! Let’s start!

How To Unlock Pit Of Artificers?

Pit of Artificers is a new endgame activity in Diablo 4 Season 4. Before entering, you first need to be in World Tier 4, and then you must run Tier 46 Nightmare Dungeon to complete this Priority Quest.

Obelisk for entering Pit is located in Cerrigar next to Waypoint. But please note that every time you enter Pit, Runeshards are required to enter. Runeshards come from completing most endgame activities, such as Nightmare Dungeons, Helltide Chests, Legion Events, and Whisper Caches.

Mechanism Explanation

This Pit has a tier system like Nightmare Dungeon. The higher the dungeon tier you enter, the higher level enemies you will fight, and of course, the more Diablo 4 Gold and loot you will receive upon completion.

After entering Pit, a timer will start, and defeating enemies will fill up the progress bar. Your goal is to fill this progress bar before time runs out.

There are multiple tilesets in Pit containing different types of enemies connected through portals. But I must remind you, try to avoid dying in Pit of Artificers! Because this will reduce your remaining time depending on how many times you die.

Once you complete the progress bar, you’ll get a portal to the boss stage. Defeating the boss will stop the timer and complete your dungeon run. Depending on how much time you have left, this will determine how many additional levels you will unlock.

Rewards

After completing Pit of Artificers endgame, you will be able to obtain some equipment, but more importantly, some Masterworking materials and Stygian Stones.

For Masterworking materials, you have Obducites, Ingoliths, and Neathirons. The materials you get depend on the tier of Pit you run. You can use these Masterworking materials at Blacksmith to upgrade your gear, which replaces the old Blacksmith upgrade system.

You can masterwork your gear a total of 12 times. Every level up except every 4 will increase all your affixes by 5%, while levels up to 4, 8, and 12 will increase random affixes by 25%.

Neathirons and Ingoliths can be converted by Alchemist at a conversion rate of 1 to 5. This avoids the trouble of being unable to upgrade the gear because we cannot find suitable materials.

Stygian Stones can be used on any endgame boss to generate a level 200 version of that boss as well as summoning materials. These bosses have a much higher drop rate than the original version. In order to defeat these bosses, you need to be well geared or have extensive experience in mastering the boss mechanics.

Anyway, that’s it for this quick guide to Pit of Artificers. Let’s look forward to what other exciting new content there will be in Diablo 4 Season 4. Good luck and have fun!

With Diablo 4 Season 4 PTR over, I’m back with my brand new Firebolt Sorcerer. This is a new Firebolt build for Season 4 based on Flameweaver Unique Gloves. So in this guide, let’s talk about how this new build works and what the highlights are.

Why Is This Build Worth Trying In Season 4?

I believe many players know that the new season will introduce a new endgame system with 220 tiers, Pit of Artificers. Even though I haven’t fully unlocked all tiers in PTR, this build can be easily run and even go all the way through T200, at least on PTR.

I also don’t expect this build to be significantly nerfed compared to other builds that have performed so well. So I think this will be relatively close to what we see in the live patch.

Gameplay & Mechanics

The build centers on Flameweaver Gloves, which allow players to unleash devastating Firebolt attacks. This Diablo 4 items will split Firebolt into multiple projectiles when you fire it. These projectiles can also fire at the same target, so you can produce pretty crazy single target damage output.

Basically, you have these Unique Gloves and you know where to put Firebolt. It’s actually a positioning-like game where you have to try to place Flameweaver in the right spot, such as right in front of an enemy, and Firebolt will impale all enemies.

You can also choose to keep Firebolt away from AOE and knock down the entire pack with a single attack, or you can try to place it in front of the elite and then hit them with many projectiles.

All in all, this build has a very interesting new play style that differs completely from other builds I’ve played so far.

Build Setup

The way this build is setup is based on DoTs, as Firebolt actually attaches a sizeable portion of DoTs damage. You could also try to make it like a hit-crit build, but I think DoTs might be the more correct choice. Because it’s actually one of the few similar non-crit builds.

Since your burning effect stacks on enemies, you can burn monsters easily. Then you just watch them melt as you run away, dying in your wake. So that’s really fun.

But for a more precise setup, I guess we’ll have to wait for the final patch notes, as I expect there will be quite a few balance changes. There will be more of these builds as we progress and once we have the final patch notes.

Survivability

Beyond that, this build has incredible survivability. Because this is a basic attack build with a very high attack speed, you can have effects like starting a new life on your item with each click. But more importantly, you can also have other Legendary Powers, like Hectic.

Hectic is something very useful in building. Every time you attack five times with a basic skill, it reduces your cooldown. Since this is basically what you’re doing all the time, you can refresh your cooldown often. Especially useful for your Flame Shield.

Some players may be concerned that Flame Shield is at risk of being nerfed in the new season. But regardless, even if it is nerfed or even removed, you can still provide the benefits of this Hectic effect to all other skills here, such as Frost Nova, Teleport, and Inferno.

So you can do different combinations here. It will constantly reset your cooldown with this Hectic Power. In fact, you could even try putting it on an amulet if you want to reset your cooldown faster.

Excitingly, I also took down some level 200 Uber Bosses with this build. Because you only need to press more on your Flame Shield and Ice Armor to further increase the efficiency of your build. Even if you don’t play all the mechanics perfectly, it’s easy to survive these bosses.

Final Thoughts

Anyway, for now I just wanted to highlight how this new Flameweaver Firebolt Sorcerer build works. I think it’s pretty cool and definitely something to look forward to.

While Firebolt build isn’t expected to be the absolute best in Diablo 4 Season 4, it’s expected to be one of the best-performing Sorcerer builds. Overall, Season 4 promises to offer a wider range of viable Sorcerer builds for players to explore. Let’s wait and see!

Those playing Diablo 4 Season 4 PTR will probably find that the developers have made massive changes to the core system, and on top of that, there’s also been a ton of additions to the endgame content. This includes some major changes to the endgame boss ladder.

In Season 4, we will have a new boss that can be used to farm Uber Uniques. This new boss is called Tormented Echoes. They spawn at level 200 and have a huge amount of life.

In this guide, we’ll detail everything you need to know about these Tormented Echoes. Let’s get straight to it!

New Uber: Andariel

First, they added a new member to Boss Ladder, Andariel. She will be in the same camp as Uber Duriel and share the same loot table.

So this just gives you another boss you can face without having to target farm Andariel. It gives you a chance to get more summoning materials to get Uber Uniques.

Looking past Andariel now, the developers have actually made a big addition to the boss slider, and Tormented Echoes will affect all boss ladders.

So with the addition of Andariel and these bosses, they’re all going to have Uber versions that are going to be very difficult and drop more gear. Therefore, it is crucial to create a build that is entirely focused on killing very difficult bosses before Diablo 4 Season 4 begins.

New Summoning Material: Stygian Stones

Season 4 will have six Torment bosses, each requiring a special material called Stygian Stones to summon them. You can get it by completing Pit.

You’ll first unlock Pit of Artificers dungeon in this Torment World tier via a priority quest, which will introduce you to Runeshard currency required to open it. You can obtain Runeshard from Whispers by opening Legion or Helltide chests, or completing Nightmare Dungeons.

To start, you’ll get one or two Stygian Stones per run, and you’ll need three in total to summon Tormented Echoes.

It’s also important to note that, like other boss materials, Stygian Stones can be traded between players. So when Season 4 arrives, you’ll be able to purchase them with Diablo 4 Gold. Remember, if you complete Pit of Artificers with a team, only the team leader will be rewarded with Stones.

But you’ll also need a lot of normal boss summoning materials, so you can go to Helltide or Nightmare Dungeons to defeat any of the other ladder bosses, and collect materials to face some of the more tough bosses.

Torment Bosses Have More Chance To Drop Uniques

It should be noted that these Torment bosses require more summoning materials than the normal version of the boss, but these bosses will also give you a lot of loot. No matter which level 200 Torment Boss you face, they will all drop 925 Item Power gear.

This change is important because if you face Beast in the Ice or Lord Zir, they are not guaranteed to drop level 925 gear on normal difficulty, like Duriel.

This means you have a better chance of getting your top unique items. And because these Torment bosses simply drop more unique items and loot, you’ll increase that chance exponentially, too.

And considering Season 4’s upcoming Greater Affixes system, where Legendaries and Uniques will drop Greater Affixes, increasing that affix’s stats by 1.5x.

This means that being able to farm many unique items is important to making your build incredibly powerful. Once your character is strong enough, you’ll be able to kill any of these level 200 bosses with ease.

Also Read: A Potential Top-Tier Build For The Bone Spear Necromancer In Diablo 4 Season 4 Revealed

How To Summon Tormented Echoes?

You can summon these Torment bosses in common lairs and altars in Torment World Tier. But like I said, each boss summons requires five times the materials. For example, to summon Torment Varshan, you need five of each Malignant Body Part instead of one. Thankfully, it’s now easier to get boss materials, as they drop more frequently.

Although Tormented Echoes don’t appear to have any new attacks, they will spawn at level 200, and any elites they summon in battle will also have a higher level, so before facing any of them, make sure your The characters are at their best.

Defeating these Torment bosses will net you better rewards than the regular version, including 925 Item Power gear, and a guaranteed Resplendent Spark on your first kill.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think one of the best things about Diablo 4 is that there are so many bosses and the range of different difficulties faced when challenging them. You can focus almost entirely on killing bosses to get almost all the loot you want.

So instead of having a good build to get into Nightmare Dungeons super fast, you can just make a boss-killer build and go face off against increasingly hard bosses. That’s all I wanted to discuss.

Recently, the developers announced the updates they plan to release in Diablo 4 Season 4. Because of the lackluster reception of Season 3 and the launch of other ARPG games, if Diablo 4 is to remain relevant in the genre, the developers will really have to strengthen their game with some updates.

By looking at the fundamental changes they’ve made to the game so far along with the introduction of multiple new systems, overhauls of major items, and more, it seems like they’re on the right path to making Diablo 4 a better game.

Season 4 Risks Becoming A Pay To Win Game

But now, I’m skeptical. The first is because we don’t actually have updates yet. Secondly, Diablo 4 developers are known for making terrible changes that no one asked for. Like nerfing all the good builds to the ground before Season 1 starts, or adding expensive cosmetics to the game.

Therefore, in this guide, we will focus primarily on the immense danger to the potential success of the upcoming Season 4: this is the risk of Diablo 4 becoming a pay-to-win. We’ll discuss the impact this change has on the game, and how it itself may cause carefully crafted updates in Season 4 to become wasted.

Players Can Buy Materials From Third Parties

The ability to pay real money for items and consumables is now in the game. Players can purchase items with Diablo 4 Gold or even with real money on some websites.

In particular, the demand for buying and selling Duriel materials was and is very high. Because Uber Unique items have ridiculously low drop rates and high-power levels, players are forced to run Duriel hundreds of times.

Granted, collecting the materials to summon Duriel isn’t difficult, but overall it’s time-consuming and troublesome, so it’s no surprise that many players choose the easy way out.

Of course, paying third parties for actual in-game services is against the game’s terms, but the chances of getting banned are low. They don’t really stop many players from using wallets to get the best items in the game faster.

Uniques & Legendaries Cannot Be Traded Between Players

To this day, only rare items can be traded between players, but trading of Uniques and Legendaries is not possible. This way, players can’t simply buy all the items they need. The downside to this is that group members cannot provide each other with items they find, which creates some frustration within the player base.

Possible Impacts Of Season 4 Update

Excitingly, this will all change in Season 4. Once the new update goes live, you will trade unmodified Legendary items and Uniques. But this has some huge implications.

First, players on the same side can now easily share loot, which is a positive thing, but at what cost? It is not difficult to predict that this change will result in an increase in the number of items sold for D4 Gold. On top of that, more and more items will be sold for real money, eventually and potentially making Diablo 4 a pay-to-win game.

Now, thankfully, modified items cannot be traded. So technically, you won’t be able to get the best items.

Issues With New Trading Options

But items with Greater Affixes can be traded. These are the base items that will be used to create the best items through Masterworking.

So, with these trading options, the question becomes: Will players in Diablo 4 feel forced to use real money to get really good items? If so, this would create a similar experience to the beginning of Diablo 3, where the auction house offered far better items than you could find while actually playing the game.

The major difference between them is that in Diablo 3, transactions are conducted through a controlled system, while in Diablo 4, funds will be processed through third-party websites.

The most important consequence is that the easiest way to obtain these top items is to buy them instead of playing the game. Then no matter how good the game is, no matter how many new systems are added, no matter how hard the developers try to fix the problems, players will spend money buying items instead of actually playing the game. This will simply overwrite all the good stuff in this patch.

Most players will complain about this situation. But if the developers don’t respond to that, they’ll quit and move on to one of the other A-RPGs in the market.

All in all, I firmly believe that this new update may push Diablo 4 further towards its demise. But what do you think? Is this new patch a step towards pay-to-win game for Diablo 4? Let me know what you think and I’ll see you next time.

I can’t wait to show you my Ice Shards Sorcerer build for Diablo 4 Season 3 today. It’s been a lot of fun to play with. However, it’s important to note that this build isn’t particularly optimized for the Gauntlet. If you’re looking to tackle the Gauntlet, you might want to consider a different build. Nevertheless, it performs admirably in other situations and gameplay scenarios.

Skills

Teleport: This serves as our source of Unstoppable and can transform into lighting.

Ice Armor: Provides a barrier for defense and utility. While active, 5% of damage dealt is added to the barrier. Attacking vulnerable enemies contributes 50% more to the ice armor’s barrier. While active, your mana regeneration is increased by 25%.

Flame Shield: Grants immunity to all damage for 2.5 seconds. Also provides a 25% movement speed and mana cost reduction.

Deep Freeze: Grants immunity for 4 seconds and resets the cooldown of all other abilities. Upon its end, gain a barrier equal to 10% of your base life for 6 seconds for each frozen enemy. It also damages all enemies around you.

Lightning Spear: Another source of vulnerability.

Ice Shards: Launches 5 shards that deal 25% increased damage to frozen enemies. They have a 40% chance to ricochet and always ricochet off of frozen enemies. Hitting an enemy with 5 shards makes them vulnerable for 2 seconds.

Fire Bolt: Causes all abilities to apply burning damage, which amplifies fire damage.

Gear & Aspects

For the helm, use Harlequin Crest. It’s not required, but if you don’t have this Uber Unique, I would suggest using the Everliving Aspect. You take 20 to 25% less damage from crowd controlled or vulnerable enemies.

For the chest, use the Aspect of Shared Misery. When you hit a crowd control enemy, there’s up to a 50% chance for that crowd control effect to spread to another unaffected enemy.

For the gloves, use Frostburn. This gives you a 25% chance to freeze enemies for 2 seconds. If you do not have Frostburn, you could use gloves with attack speed, critical strike chance, and plus skills to Ice Shards. For the aspect, I would use Accelerating or Aspect of Control. Which gives you 25% increased attack speed or you deal up to 35% more damage to immobilize, stunned, or frozen enemies.

For the pants, use Tibault’s Will. You deal up to 40% increased damage while Unstoppable and for 4 seconds after. You also gain 50% of your primary resource. So every time you use teleport, you’re going to increase your damage and gain mana.

For the boots, use Esu’s Heirloom. Your critical strike chance is increased by up to 30% of your movement speed.

For the main hand, use Aspect of Piercing Cold. Ice Shards Pierce up to 4 times dealing 20% less damage per subsequent enemy hit.

For the off-hand, use Storm Swell. You deal up to 30% increased damage to vulnerable enemies while you have a barrier. Another good option would be the Accelerating Aspect.

For the first ring, use X'Fal's Corroded Signet. Your damage overtime effects have up to a 50% chance to erupt, dealing up to 40,000 damage of the same type to nearby enemies. This is great for this build because with the Fire Bolt Enchantment, we will be applying burning damage to all enemies hit and Ice Shards ricochet toward other enemies.

For the next ring, use Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop. For each type of Elemental damage you deal, gain up to 15% increased damage for 4 seconds. Dealing Elemental damage refreshes all bonuses. This is going to essentially be a 45% increased damage buff at all times as long as you’re attacking something.

And for the amulet, use Ancient Flame. While both bonuses from the Esu’s Ferocity key passive are active, your attack speed is increased by up to 75%. Of course, you can also choose appropriate gear based on the amount of Diablo 4 Gold you have.

Skill Tree

For the skill tree, our basic attack is going to be Fire Bolt. For the core skills, I put 5 points in Ice Shards, 1 point in enhanced and Destructive Ice Shards, 1 point into Devastation, and 3 points into Elemental Dominance.

Defensive Skills: Put 1 point into Flame Shield, Enhanced and Mystical Flame Shield, 1 point into Teleport, Enhanced and Shimmering Teleport, 3 points into Glass Cannon, 1 point in Ice Armor, Enhanced and Mystical Ice Armor, 1 point in Elemental Attunement, 3 points into Precision Magic, 1 point in Align the Elements, 3 points into Mana Shield, and 3 points into Protection. 1 point of Inner Flames and 3 points in Devouring Blaze.

Ultimate Skills: We’re going to be putting 3 points in Permafrost or Frost and Icy Touch, and then 3 points in the Frigid Breeze. Full damage against vulnerable enemies has up to a 20% chance to generate 15 mana. For the Ultimate Deep Freeze, 1 point in the Prime and Supreme Deep Freeze, 1 point of Fiery Surge for extra mana regeneration.

Key Passive - Esu’s Ferocity. This is currently bugged where it will buff all your damage, not just fire. Ice Shards will receive 25% increased critical strike damage and 5% increased critical strike chance against enemies that have above 50% of life. When you kill an enemy with a critical strike or hit a boss, you will be granted both bonuses for 3 seconds, which will give us the 75% increased attack speed from the Ancient Flame aspect.

Seneschal Construct

For the construct, I recommend using Flash of Adrenaline and Tactical Support. Then comes Genesis. If you do not have Genesis, you can also use Safeguard. Next, use Tempest. Resource Support, Efficiency Support and Arcing Support. If you have Evernight, you would replace Arcing Support.

Paragon Boards

Winter: Whenever you chill or freeze an enemy, you deal 3% increased skull damage for 10 seconds, up to 15%. This effect stacks and refreshes, remaining active as long as you are attacking. It also buffs non-physical damage and resistances.

Burning Instinct: The legendary node is not taken. The glyph, Unleash, triggers after spending 50 mana, granting 7% increased damage and 7% mana regeneration. This is crucial for maintaining a steady flow of Mana between Ice Shards.

Enchantment Master: The glyph is Elementalist. Killing fire, cold or lightning damage to an enemy increases all damage you deal to them by 5% for 10 seconds, stacking once per element. This buff stacks up to 15% of increased damage and refreshes with continued attacks.

Frigid Fate: The legendary node is taken. You deal bonus damage to vulnerable enemies equal to 10% of the total amount of your bonus damage with cold, up to a maximum of 30%. The glyph, Flamefeeder, grants 10% increased direct damage to burning enemies.

Ice Fall: The legendary node is also taken here. Your Frost skills deal 15% increased damage to vulnerable enemies, doubled if the enemy is also Frozen. The glyph, Control, provides 10% increased damage to slow or chilled enemies, or 20% increased damage to stunned or frozen enemies.

Searing Heat: The glyph, Exploit, increases your damage by 1% for 6 seconds, stacking up to 10%, when dealing damage to a vulnerable enemy.

Ceaseless Conduit: The glyph, Destruction, increases all damage the enemy takes from you by 2% for 10 seconds, up to 12%, upon landing critical strikes. This effect stacks and refreshes.

Diablo fans, I believe you have noticed that the developers revealed a series of new changes in Season 4 in the latest Diablo 4 Campfire Chat. Indeed, with the current poor state of Diablo 4, some improvements are urgently needed. The large-scale itemization overhaul announced by the developers of this time seems to have really achieved this goal.

However, I have some major concerns with the changes, especially the large amount of RNG involved in the process of obtaining actual Diablo 4 items using the new and updated system. Here, I’ll discuss the most important itemization changes and the potentially huge flaws that could push Diablo 4 back into failure.

Itemization Changes

But first, I’ll cover the major changes related to itemization. In general, itemization has many variations, and I will only mention the most influential ones here.

• Base items will have fewer affixes: 3 for rare items and 4 for legendary items.
• Only Sacred items will drop in World Tier 3, and only Ancestral items will drop in World Tier 3.
• Legendary and Unique items are now tradable, but Uber Uniques are still not.
• Monsters of level 95 or higher will always drop 925 item level gear.
• Codex of Power will store all Legendary Aspects you extract, and you will apply the strongest Aspects you extracted to items an unlimited number of times.
• Three brand new systems will be added that can be used to improve the new items you loot. These are Masterworking, Tempering and Greater Affixes.

New System

Masterworking replaces the current item upgrade system and makes it more complex. Players will be able to “masterwork” each item 12 times, and most of these upgrade levels will increase all the item’s affixes by one point, once every 4 levels. Therefore, a random affix will be added at levels 4, 8, and 12, and the same affix can be added multiple times using this system.

Tempering is the name of the second newly added system, which involves adding entirely new affixes to items. Recopies that add affixes drop randomly, and once you get them, you can randomly add an affix to an item from 4 different affixes.

You will temper Ancestral items twice, so you can add 2 new affixes to these items. But you cannot adjust Unique items.

Greater Affixes are affixes that only Ancestral items can have. These affixes always roll max, and the value of these affixes is increased by 50% compared to normal items.

An item can have multiple Greater Affixes. These Greater Affixes can be increased through Masterworking, but items with Greater Affixes cannot be crafted or re-rolled.

Is Too Much RNG Really A Good Thing?

All of this looks great, but I have some very serious concerns about each of these systems: they involve too much RNG.

This, in itself, is not necessarily a problem. Some items dropped, or some low-probability events do not break immediately. For example, the rarest rune in Diablo 2 was really hard to come by because of its rarity, but Rune System was, and still is, beloved by the community.

However, RNG case that Diablo 4 is about to add is not a pleasant or exciting type of RNG. Unlike the excitement of rare drops, you just need to farm materials to keep re-rolling items until you get the perfect result. The difference is that repeatedly re-rolling items to get rare results is more frustrating than farming for rare drops.

Potential Problems With The New System

But let’s look at the specifics of each system one by one!

Tempering

The problem with Tempering comes from its randomness: you randomly add an affix to your item from a list of 4 affixes. This means you can easily get the wrong affix, which will most likely be useless to you. You can re-roll it, but only a limited number of times. The number of times you can re-roll Tempered Affixes is called Tempering Durability.

So what happens when you use up all your re-rolls and still don’t get a good affix? Then the item is destroyed.

This is new in Diablo 4: you can easily and irreversibly destroy an item if you don’t get the right affixes using this new Tempering system.

Masterworking

Not only is Masterworking more complex than the current item upgrade system, it also involves more RNG. Keep in mind that levels 4, 8, and 12 of Masterworking process involve randomly adding an affix to an item, which may affect the same affix multiple times.

Obviously, you want to spend hundreds of materials to masterwork your item until you randomly roll the correct affix for an increased number of times?

Let’s look at an example. If you have an item with 4 affixes, one of which is critical strike chance, you want to maximize that. In this case, you have a 1.5% chance of getting 3 critical hits. Therefore, if you want this to happen, you have to masterwork your items until you reach the 1.5% chance.

Greater Affixes

Greater Affixes are not inherently bad. Although RNG obtains them through random drops, you don’t have to farm some hard-to-summon boss to get Greater Affixes. You farm them just by playing the game, without forcing you to do any targeted farming.

But Greater Affixes can become problematic when they interact with other systems. Ideally, if you want Greater Affixes with Masterworking, then you can only hope that RNG gods will bless you.

All in all, I like the changes the developers have planned for next season, but I’m definitely worried about the execution. But what do you think? Will Season 4 have too much bad RNG? Or will it be better than Season 3 situation? Let’s wait and see!

Hi, gamers! Allow me to present a guide on the Metamorphosis Barbarian build in Diablo 4 Season 3, which currently dominates the Gauntlet. If your goal is to achieve a score exceeding a million, this build is essentially a must-play. The support of a large amount of Diablo 4 Gold is essential for this strong build.

About Metamorphosis

The new Metamorphosis aspect enhances your mobility significantly and substantially reduces the cooldown of your dash ability. Observe how quickly it resets when you continuously spam your Wrath of the Berserker skill.

Metamorphosis proves incredibly useful, especially during transitions between long intervals or when faced with a lack of monsters. Unlike Charge, which requires hitting a monster to reset, Metamorphosis eliminates this necessity.

Gear & Aspects

First and foremost, obtaining Metamorphosis is of utmost importance. Serving as the key to the build, it's indispensable to equip it on your amulet. Despite only reducing evade by 3.3 seconds, it significantly bolsters evade cooling, making it pivotal for enhancing mobility. Prioritizing Shrine Buff Duration and Movement Speed is crucial for optimal performance in the Gauntlet.

We will rock the Bold Chieftain’s Loop. This one is just to reset our charge with our shouts, and whenever you shout, you also proc Artillery Shrine, which is basically the key of this build. Then we also have the Ring of the Ravenous like charging applies bleed and also just makes you switch your weapons, which we use in combination with Earthstriker’s Dead Mace.

Next, we have the Grandfather, a very standard weapon. I’m still playing Overpower on my weapons, but there is a good argument to add crit damage here because you have the Lethal Shrine almost, and you have Artillery Shrine. And it has a lot of value to stack crit damage.

Instead of Overpowering, crit damage makes a lot of sense. You can also go with swords because that’s further boosting your crit, and the Shrine will always crit with the Lethal Shrine. Then we have the Brawler’s Aspect. This is also changed. This just basically procs your charge in a bigger AOE and also kills all the monsters consistently.

Then we have the Ghostwalker Runic Cleats boots, and with this we can add Movement Speed. Even though we are already at capped Movement Speed whenever we have Berserking and Unstoppable up, we are already at 200%.

This is a very important change because you’re going to be spinning a lot, and you’re going to just basically spam it. If you’re moving a few frames more because you have Movement Speed, it helps you. Also very important to have attacks reduce evade cooldown. This is like the only way we can reset our Metamorphosis and evade.

Then we have Tibault’s Will. Obviously, like you get Unstoppable from your charge all the time, which is very standard. This is standard as well. Ideally, you want main stat here instead of Overpower.

At last, we have the Rage of Harrogath. This one reduces the charge cooldown even further. In combination with Ring of Ravenous, we always end up using our slashing weapon, and that counts as a weapon switch.

Seneschal Construct

Now, let’s turn to the pet aspect of the build. The Pet Construct comprises several essential components. The inclusion of Tempest, Efficiency and Fortified is crucial, as it provides the sole means to obtain Fortify, which is highly advantageous. Additionally, the presence of Flash of Adrenaline, Genesis, Tactical Support, and Duration further enhances the pet’s effectiveness and utility within the build.

Skill Tree

We’re basically like HotA, and then we have 2 points in Whirlwind, just pretty standard stuff. You don’t really need damage. It’s just to proc your cooldown and to proc your Artillery. Then we have a bunch of support skills. You can go for more damage like Heavy Handed or something.

Then obviously, you want Unconstrainted. And in this build, we play rough the Berserker because it still snapshots Berserker as long as you don’t drop your Berserker. This run where you spend Fury is still snapshotted. So, you’re gaining about 50% more damage from your Berserking because you get another double multiplier on the multiplier that you currently have. So, that’s pretty insane.

Paragon Board

Then, there is the Paragon board. We'll first rocking the Exploit glyph, make everything vulnerable. We don’t need Warbringer because we get our Fortify from our pet, still have the Maximum Fury for the HotA. We are rocking Mortal Draw because we are switching our weapons all the time again.

Next, we’re dropping Bone Breaker for extra Overpower. We are rocking Ire with big berserk multipliers with Decimator and Dominate. We have Crusher for more Overpower damage because you still want to one-shot those bosses, especially at the start and whenever you’re dropping your Artillery Shrine.

Then we have Blood Rage, and up we have the Marshal. This is very important, just reduce your cooldown even further. We stack some physical damage as well because getting extra physical just helps you because you’re not Overpowering with every hit all the time.

The Bleeding Barbarian build I'm about to introduce to you is surprisingly powerful. It's hands down the quickest setup I've ever assembled, boasting not only incredible speed but also the highest and most reliable damage output in Diablo 4 Season 3.

This build operates with seamless efficiency. It effortlessly plows through tier 100 challenges, annihilating foes with a single blow from the Ring of the Ravenous. If by any chance the enemy survives, use Rend to quickly dispatch it. It's also the setup I started off with in the Gauntlet. I think you're just as obsessed with this build as I am right now.

Build Overview

This build stacks a ton of bleed damage by picking up the Hemorrhage node in the Paragon board. We can easily get multiplicative scaling on our bleeds. It then unleashes all of this bleed damage with Rend, using Ring of the Ravenous for destroying bosses. It also uses Rupture.

The build shoves this ability, making your enemies explode with ease. For staying alive, the build also uses Iron Skin. When combined with the Disembowel and Marshal glyphs, we can keep up Iron Skin permanently.

Gear Setup

Let’s take a look at the gear and aspects making this build possible. If you have any issues with survivability, then I recommend swapping on Diablo 4 Items for more defense.

I’ll first show you items for the helmet. You definitely need the Shako. However, it is difficult to obtain. As an alternative, you can grab Tuskhelm of Joritz the Mighty, which is equally good.

As for the chest, you want to get the Juggernaut's Archon Armor. For the Gauntlet, you can also use Rage of Harrogath. We need a good defensive chest for Tier 100 farming or else we’ll die.

On our gloves, you should look for the same as I have with 1 exception: you don’t need the crit chance. Swap it for all stats if you can, since damage over time abilities can’t be crit. As for aspect, take Aspect of Elements for insane DPS.

For pants, we’re using Tibault’s Will. This is pretty important as it's our main source of Fury in this build, and the increase in damage is absolutely insane.

When choosing boots, we need to consider movement speed and resistance. The Ghostwalker Aspect is great, as we will be permanently unstoppable in this build. The stats that we want on them are all stats, strength, damage while berserking, and vulnerable to damage.

Then, let's talk about weapon. On the hammer, you’re going to want to imprint the Conceited Aspect. If you’re only interested in pushing Gauntlet and not Tier 100 farming, then you can drop the Conceited Aspect and Iron Skin to instead grab another aspect. You would then also pick up Leap.

For the dual wield weapons, just grab the correct stats. You also want to imprint Aspect of Ancestral Charge and Aspect of Berserk Ripping and easy-to-hit charges. If you have the Doombringer, then you can replace Aspect of Berserk Ripping.

As for the slashing weapon, you want to get a two-handed sword for the bleed damage and imprint Aspect of Limitless Rage. If you have the Grandfather, then you can use it as well for higher survivability, but since we can’t crit, the damage it brings is huge.

For the amulet, we can get some stats. We definitely want cooldown reduction and movement speed. I also recommend grabbing Brawling Skill ranks in case you miss a charge and need the cooldown reduction from it. Other than that, the Counteroffensive passive is a great damage option as well. For aspect, you’re going to want to imprint the Edgemaster’s Aspect. If you have any issues with survivability, then you can easily grab some defensives as well.

For rings, you first need to grab Ring of the Ravenous, as it is pretty much mandatory. For the other ring, we can get Ring of Starless Skies. It’s so good that it can double your damage if you find it. The stats that you can grab are damage to close enemies, damage while berserking, vulnerable damage, and max life. You can also use Aspect of Unrelenting Fury to more easily spam.

Seneschal Construct

Here are some stones I recommend: Tempest, Evanite, Resource, and Bleeding Support. These stones are not only enjoyable but also incredibly powerful. I utilize Bleeding Support to amplify my bleed damage and Resource to maximize my Rend spamming capabilities.

On the flip side, I employ Flash of Adrenaline for increased damage output, accompanied by Duration Support and Tactical Support, to prolong its effects. While I currently use Safeguard, I plan to switch to Genesis once it becomes available.

Skill Tree

Let's optimize our skill selections for maximum effectiveness. First, prioritize maxing out Rend and selecting Enhanced and Violent Rend for added damage. In terms of defense, focus on bolstering your defenses with skills like Rallying Cry for continuous resource generation and Fortify, alongside Iron Skin and Enhanced Iron Skin to ensure its effectiveness.

Transitioning to brawling skills, prioritize War Cry for significant damage output, and maximize Charge for reduced cooldowns and increased damage. Additionally, acquire Power Charge for easy Charge resets. For those opting for speedruns and skipping Iron Skin, Leap becomes a viable alternative. Battle Further, our primary source of berserking, is also crucial for maintaining permanent uptime as long as we utilize Charge. Lastly, incorporate Swiftness to enhance our mobility significantly.

Let's delve into Weapon Mastery skills, which can prove highly valuable. Prioritize acquiring Rupture and Enhanced Rupture for potent boss-killing potential. Don't overlook key passives to enhance our damage output significantly. Moving on to ultimate skills, prioritize Invigorating Fury for self-healing upon using Rend, followed by Wrath of the Berserker for added offensive prowess.

When it comes to key passives, we consider Unbridled Rage, offering substantial damage boosts, albeit limiting Rend usage to twice before exhausting Fury. This remains my preferred choice for most scenarios, especially with Starless Skies equipped.

Alternatively, Unconstrained becomes viable for those prioritizing Rend spamming and facing Fury depletion issues. However, unless facing specific circumstances, Unbridled Rage typically remains the optimal choice.

Paragon Board

Let's then turn to the paragon board. Starting with the Exploit node on the initial board, prioritize acquiring as many dexterity nodes as possible to maximize vulnerability. Transition to the Blood Rage board next, securing the legendary node to amplify damage during berserking and socketing for additional damage while berserking.

Proceed to the Carnage board to obtain the legendary node for increased attack speed and slot the Marshall glyph for continuous cooldown resets, offering significant advantage. Moving to the Decimator board, prioritize acquiring the legendary node for enhanced damage and select Disembowel glyph, not only for its damage boost but also for its ability to reset cooldowns upon killing bleeding enemies.

Transitioning to the Hemorrhage board is essential to make vulnerability damage multiplicative and to secure additional damage nodes. On the Warbringer board, focus on acquiring maximum Fury nodes to allow for an additional Rend press and conclude by selecting the Mortal Draw glyph for its high damage scaling. This strategic skill tree progression ensures maximum damage output and efficiency.