Since the news that Season 7 was extended and Season 8 was postponed, most Diablo 4 players have become more excited about Season 8. Although you have to wait more than a month to enter Season 8, the good news is that you will be able to experience Season 8 PTR first in a few days!
Setting up a PTR for a new season is a common practice for Diablo 4. This allows players who experience it to find some deficiencies through early testing, so that they can make improvements before the new season goes online. On the other hand, it can also raise your expectations for the next season through positive feedback from these players.
As for Season 8, although the PTR has not yet been officially launched, there is already a lot of surprising news about the PTR and the season itself. Based on this, we will introduce it to you.
Season 8 PTR Overview
The developer released a new “What You Need to Know” article on March 7, bringing you a preview of Season 8 PTR. According to the PTR content shown in the article, this 2.2.0 PTR will officially start on March 11 and last for a whole week until March 18. During this period, you will be able to test the new content of the future Season 8 through the PTR in depth, and you will encounter the return of Belial.
In addition to these new content or bosses, the most important change in the eighth episode shown by the PTR is that the endgame will become more difficult. Although this may make your Diablo 4 Gold farming journey more challenging, it will also exercise your game level. In fact, the current Season of Witchcraft, as well as the sixth or fifth seasons that have ended, were once considered having dropped too much difficulty and ruined the game experience.
What Does The Return Of Belial Mean?
This boss first appeared in Diablo 3. As a disciple of Mephisto, he showed great destructive power and dark power. He is a boss that you need to be alert to deal with. In the future Diablo 4 Season 8, Belial will return as the most difficult lair boss in the game so far, showing you the difficulty changes of Season 8 from his perspective.
In order to push the endgame difficulty to a new height, Diablo 4 Season 8 will implement a new lair boss ladder through Belial, and it is even said that this battle is more challenging than Duriel or Andariel boss battles you are familiar with in the past. Perhaps in 2.2.0 PTR, you will experience Belial’s ambush on you and the chaos he creates.
In fact, in addition to Belial’s return, various special boss powers will also be introduced through Season 8, which means that in the future you will be able to use their powers to further strengthen your Diablo 4 builds by defeating various bosses, whether these bosses are world, event or endgame (now called lair) bosses.
According to the information revealed by the current 2.2.0 PTR, it is expected that 24 Diablo 4 bosses can provide these powers, including Lilith. It can be imagined that in the future, these new powers originally from hostile forces will inevitably set off an unprecedented Diablo 4 innovation in Season 8, thus completely changing the rules of the game.
Why Adjust The Endgame Difficulty?
According to statistics, Diablo 4 developers have found that since Season 6, the number of players who can quickly enter the endgame and reach the speed of Torment 4 has doubled, and in Season 7, 50% of players have even reached a higher level.
Although this means that more and more people are willing to play the game, if the endgame and higher-level difficult content of an ARPG become less challenging, it may cause players to lose interest in the future, which is not conducive to the long-term development of the game.
Based on this, the developers of Diablo 4 will first show you the difficulty of adjustment of the eighth season through 2.2.0 PTR, such as the reduction in the drop frequency of legendary items, the increase in the difficulty level of Torment, and the changes in the combat mechanism related to the final boss, so that you can get real training in the next season.
Main Content Of 2.2.0 PTR
In the latest “What You Need to Know” article, the developers showed you the main content of 2.2.0 PTR, many of which are very important mechanism changes and are closely related to your game experience. Based on this, we will introduce you to some of the main contents.
New Mechanism Of Boss
As we have already introduced, the power of 24 bosses may be used by you. Specifically, each boss can provide you with 2 kinds of power, and you can get the corresponding power after killing the target boss. These two powers include primary effects and modifiers. You can activate up to 1 primary power and 3 modifier powers at a time.
The primary power will become the main component of your future builds, while the modifier power is used to enhance the primary power of your equipment to bring it to a new level. Therefore, it is recommended that you learn how to combine primary power and modifier power in the PTR effectively to find the best combination for you to enter Season 8.
New Apparition Incursion Event
This may be the seasonal event of Season 8. The returning Belial brought his minions into Sanctuary. You need to work hard to eliminate them in order to ensure the safety of Sanctuary and obtain gold and other event rewards. In fact, completing this event should also help you obtain boss power.
The above is the new content related to Season 8 that we can provide you with at present. Please prepare for the upcoming PTR!
