The new Diablo 4 PTR period is right around the corner, and Blizzard's revealed what changes players can tinker with ahead of the full update. The druid class is receiving some significant tweaks, war plans are getting deeper and more intricate, and more.
"Some features from the Season of Hell's Legacy will be carrying forward into Season 16," the introduction says. "However, these will not be part of this PTR, as we want to focus on new features for testing."
The notes from the devs start with what's happening to war plans, and it's a good place to kick off. Firstly, there's a new progression system specifically for the endgame quests. Conveniently called War Plans Tactics, the notion is to make the missions you do and what you get out of them more specific.
"Earn points from completing War Plans activities, then invest these points into nodes to increase the chance of preferred activities or rewards appearing," the official description reads. "This allows you to tailor your War Plans more closely with both your goals and playstyle."
You can add up to three points into any given selection, which will increase the odds of it coming up for you as a potential choice, and you can do the same for the type of reward you'll get. On top of this, Marks of Wisdom, a currency for war plans, is being introduced.
These are what allow you to change nodes across your war plans and tactics skill trees. It's mentioned they're capped at 20, but I don't know if that's the amount you can carry or have in use - one to clarify once you're in the public test realm.
The druid rework is pretty hefty, and according to the dev team, it's based around two guiding principles. First, prevent druids from stacking tags as much, and second, to give resolve and fortify more pep in their step as builds.
They go about the former by removing Nature Shift and Shapeshifting tags from skill upgrades. Instead, either will simply be tied to the base ability, and if one or other was part of the tags on an ability, it'll now be removed.
The second is achieved more roundly through changes across how druids are built up. There's a lot to go through in terms of what Blizzard's changing, and I'd expect a lot of experimentation when this PTR arrives. It kicks off on October 27, and runs until November 3.
