Diablo 4's season 7 PTR is coming for your broken Spiritborn build, Blizzard has confirmed with newly revealed details about its plans for class balance in the next season.
We knew this was coming. From the moment Diablo 4 players figured out how to deal literal quadrillions of damage using exploits unique to the new Spiritborn class, we could hear the clattering of keyboards from within Blizzard's offices portending the arrival of a massive nerf. However, to the delight of Spiritborns everywhere, Blizzard said it would leave the class alone so long as it didn't cause any performance issues with the game... at least until season 7 when an "upheaval" would arrive.
Well, now we have a decent idea of what that upheaval will look like. In the latest Diablo 4 Campfire Chat livestream, community director Adam Fletcher was joined by design director Colin Finer and game designer Charles Dunn to talk everything that's coming to the PTR 2.1 update, which will let players test and provide feedback on the big changes coming to season 7.
Unsurprisingly, the glaive-wielding elephant in the room came up at some point in the livestream, and the trio previewed the major changes that'll bring the Spiritborn class down to Earth.
"We warned at the start, Spiritborn we recognize has been one or multiple steps above most other classes," Dunn said. "Players have fun, people love playing Spiritborn, very powerful, and we really like that, but we do have to recognize that for the long-term health of the game it's important that we have a little bit better class parity across the born, so you don't feel like you're doing it wrong if you're not playing Spiritborn."
Blizzard correctly identified the Rod of Kepeleke as "one of the biggest offenders, or one of the biggest power points, rather" that's been making Spiritborn builds so overpowered. After the nerf, its bonus critical strike damage will be "substantially less" than before, specifically from 1-3% down to 0.1-0.5 per point of Vigor.
"We think this will bring it to a much healthier spot, but still retain the core fantasy and the core build implications of this item," Dunn added. "It just won't be pushing quite the same trillions of damage we were seeing before."
Finer added that the devs fixed various issues with other items, including the Viscous Shield Legendary Paragon node, which perhaps coincidentally was just this week being used in conjunction with bugged Elixers to gain millions of life. The Ring of Writhing moon is also being nerfed down to a more reasonable level.
"Definitely some unintended bugged interactions that were maybe double dipping or scaling too high," Dunn said. "We've taken a pass to make those more in line with our expectations."
The season 7 PTR starts December 3 and the full patch notes will be published on November 27, presumably detailing all of the more minute changes to the Spiritborn class as well as other class balancing tweaks.
In the meantime, here are some games like Diablo we'd recommend checking out.
