News Tag: Diablo 4 Season 9

2.3.0 PTR is in full swing! You can use it to experience and test all the new content you want to experience in the future Diablo 4 Season 9, including finding and utilizing more different builds for each class.

Normally, the strength of all Diablo 4 classes should not differ much to ensure the balance of the game, but due to changes in the mechanism, it is not ruled out that some classes are more suitable for utilizing the new power of the current season-then these classes become the first choice to experience the new season.

Judging from the performance in the current PTR, although Horadric Spells are not exactly the same as the witchcraft power of Season 7, all of them seem to be very suitable for Sorcerer. Going further, you will find that this kind of “mysterious” seasonal power is very compatible with Hydra skills of Sorcerer.

Based on this, we will introduce you how to craft Hydra-centric S9 builds so that you can complete more battles as a Sorcerer as soon as possible in the PTR and the official ninth season.

Hydra Skill Overview

To understand how Hydra builds work, you must first understand the key skill Hydra. In Sorcerer’s entire skill tree, Hydra is an active skill and part of the conjuration cluster. It can be upgraded to a maximum of 5 levels to deal more damage.

More specifically, this skill allows you to summon a three-headed Hydra in combat, which will damage enemies within range by breathing fire for the next 12 seconds. This attack feature makes this skill can help you to get more Diablo 4 gold drops in small dungeons at one time, but you can only summon one Hydra at a time.

In addition to upgrading, Hydra can also be further enhanced like most active skills. Its enhanced versions include:

• Enhanced Hydra
• Invoked Hydra
• Summoned Hydra

How Should Hydra Builds Be Crafted?

Usually, the first step in crafting new builds is to determine the other available skills besides the core skills. As you can see, in addition to the summoning characteristics, Hydra essentially outputs fire damage, so other active skills that match it are also mainly of this type.

Skill Selection

As one of the important active skills, Fire Bolt will automatically fire flaming arrows in battle to cause burning damage to the enemy. With Hydra, you will set off a fire war in Season 9! In addition, you can continue to stack Lightning Spear to output lightning damage at the same time.

On this basis, the passive skill selection recommends Devastation, which can provide you with damage reduction and barrier effects, allowing you to output stable damage while ensuring that your own health is less damaged.

The combination of the above skills will eventually bring you a lot of barrier and buff effects, as well as 60% summon damage, 60% movement speed and 120% mana recovery bonus - this is enough to solve most Diablo 4 Season 9 battles.

If you still have spare energy, you can continue to add Ice Shards to the build. Although it brings another type of damage, it can also effectively weaken the enemy and provide additional attack speed, allowing you to complete the battle faster.

Gear Selection

Good and appropriate gear can amplify the effect of your skills while ensuring your survivability. For Hydra builds, the preferred helm is Harlequin Crest or Heir of Perdition, which can bring you considerable damage bonus.

Since you can directly obtain all Mythic Uniques in the PTR to facilitate your testing of various gear and the effects of new powers, in order to maximize the strength of Hydra builds, you can give priority to gear that can increase your resource generation and resistance, movement speed, and defensive attributes.

In this way, after sufficient testing through the PTR, you can conduct unique item farming more targetedly when entering Season 9, to get ahead in the new season with higher efficiency.

What Needs To Be Added To Season 9 Hydra Builds?

In addition to other skills, Hydra can also work with new power Horadric Spells to further improve the efficiency of related builds, and the short cooldown of Hydra will play an important role.

Among all Horadric Spells, Reactive Ooze can provide you with reliable resource generation, allowing you to gain 5% of your maximum resource generation per second for the next 10 seconds, Frigid Heart can cause freeze damage to enemies, and then run Volatile Crystal to make your Catalyst Horadric Spells deal more damage.

It is worth noting that after completing Horadric Spells matching, you can also earn Horadric Jewels to attach to these seasonal powers to provide them with richer effects. However, please note that not all Horadric Jewels have positive effects.

But if you want to get these jewels, you need to obtain Horadric Tomes in Horadric Strongrooms in Torment 1+ difficulties in advance (teaching you how to make Horadric Jewels) and farm enough materials to craft them.

The above are the main ideas for craft Hydra builds in 2.3.0 PTR and later Season 9. I hope it helps improve your Diablo 4 experience!

Although the operation methods are similar, the names and specific functions of the seasonal powers of each Diablo 4 season are different. In order to quickly master them at the beginning of the new season, it is best to understand them in advance.

In fact, for several seasons, Diablo 4 has been criticized for being too homogeneous in seasonal power and lacking real innovation, so that the specific game experience has also declined. Therefore, Season 9 seems to intend to make changes to this.

According to the campfire chat held on May 22, it can be known that 2.3.0 PTR will be launched on May 27 to show you some of the main contents of Season 9 in the form of testing. Next, we will show you the relevant content of Season 9 seasonal power based on this.

What Are Horadric Spells?

You can call Season 9 seasonal power Horadric power like Season 7 witchcraft power or Season 8 boss power, but this power actually works by fusing three elements to allow you to output more spells.

The three elements are Catalysts, Infusions, and Arcana, each of which has its own purpose and contains multiple specific content with different powers, which we will introduce one by one.

1. Catalysts

Catalysts are the basis and main source of damage for your final customized Horadric Spells, and need to be activated through specific action bar skills - different skills correspond to different Horadric Spells slots.

This component can be upgraded, with level 20 being the highest level, and they will gain additional bonuses when you upgrade your Catalysts to level 10. All 5 Catalysts and their functions are as follows:

• Astral Pillar - Astral Magic: Form an aether pillar that taunts enemies for 3 seconds, after which a piercing wave emerges from it to deal substantial damage to enemies until you create another aether pillar or get far enough away from them.
• Celestial Surge - Astral Magic: Awaken an Oracular Rune that creates a special area, and all nearby enemies are pulled into the area. A torrent of stars will then strike the area 20 times at random, dealing damage each time.
• Cosmic Anomaly - Astral Magic: Manifest up to 5 anomalies that emit particles that damage enemies over 4 seconds.
• Disintegrate - Arcane Magic: Form an arcane conductor and fire a continuous beam between you and it, dealing steady lightning damage over 8 seconds.
• Propulsion - Arcane Magic: Creates a blast of mana that deals damage and knocks back all enemies. Enemies hit by the collision will also take another hit.

2. Infusions

Catalysts are already quite helpful, but if you want to further improve your Diablo 4 gold farming efficiency with Horadric Spells in Season 9, you’ll need to continue to fuse the power of Infusions.

Infusions provide additional power and magic to existing Catalysts, and determine their damage type. Unlike Catalysts, Infusions gain a bonus when they reach level 5, allowing your Catalyst to remove special effects possessed by the enemy.

• Corrosive Vapor - Poison or Poisoning damage
• Glacial Nimbus - Cold or Frostbiting damage
• Nebulous Extract - Shadow or Corrupting damage
• Smoldering Ember - Fire or Burning damage
• Thunderous Particle - Lightning or Sparking damage

3. Arcana

You can think of Arcana as a positive modifier that further improves Catalysts, including magic, rare, and legendary levels (I don’t know if it reminds you of boss power). Arcana can make your Horadric Spells more powerful by synergizing with Horadric Jewels that will be introduced to you later.

Magic Arcana:

• Bottled Wind
• Invigorating Helix
• Jagged Bramble
• Luminous Gem
• Murky Essence
• Reactive Ooze
• Shifting Powder
• Tendrilous Bundle
• Tranquil Stone
• Volatile Crystal

Rare Arcana:

• Fractured Core
• Gleaming Conduit
• Potent Alloy
• Sapping Crux
• Siphoning Gizmo

Legendary Arcana:

• Bloody Charm: Grants your Catalysts a special execution against non-boss enemies at or below 10% health, +2% per level.
• Floaty Bobble: Grants Catalysts a flickering effect that allows you to be unhindered for 2.0 seconds, +0.4 seconds per level.
• Frigid Heart: Grants Catalysts a freeze effect that lasts 3.0 seconds, +0.4 seconds per level.
• Nightmare Orb: Grants Catalysts a fear effect that lasts 4.0 seconds, +0.4 seconds per level.
• Pressurized Steam: Grants Catalysts a stun effect that lasts 1.0 seconds, +0.4 seconds per level.

What Are Horadric Jewels?

As we have already mentioned, Horadric Jewels can bring you more additional effects by combining with Arcana. However, first, these effects may contain negative effects; second, they cannot be farmed through combat and can only be crafted at Wayfinders.

Before crafting, you need to complete Horadric Strongrooms at Torment 1 and above to obtain Horadric Tomes, which can teach you how to craft Horadric Jewels.

In addition, crafting Horadric Jewels also requires Horadric Phials and gem fragments, and after crafting, they can only be embedded in jewelry. All craftable Horadric Jewels are expected to include:

• Seal of Control
• Seal of Power
• Seal of Denial
• Horadric Crest
• Reverie Horn
• Scornful Light
• Tyrant Bane
• Liminal Echo
• Idol From Below
• Myriad Stone
• Spark of Creation
• Luminate Eye
• Brilliant Sigil
• Elemental Brand
• The Starflux

As a source of Horadric Tomes, Horadric Strongrooms is a seasonal dungeon that will be added to the game in Season 9, similar to Rootholds in Season 7, and its random entrance can be found in the nightmare dungeon. Besides Horadric Tomes, it should also drop gold, XP, and more rewards.

The above is all the information introduced to you this time. You can fully test them in 2.3.0 PTR under the guidance to welcome the subsequent Season 9. I wish you a happy game!