At this stage, Diablo 4 Season 9 Sins of the Horadrim has entered the game. Before the official release, the developers also released the patch notes for this season update, which have many differences from 2.3.0 PTR on May, such as some balance adjustments that each class must undergo.
In fact, this is not surprising. Because Diablo 4 has a tradition that the game content before PTR and the official season are completely different, but there are very few changes based on player feedback, most of which are to adjust the balance between each class.
If you have participated in PTR before but have not entered the official season, then this guide will point out the major specific adjustments made to each class in the current game content on the original 2.3.0 patch, and what impact they will have on your subsequent exploration.
Barbarian
First is Barbarian, who has been unpopular with players in the previous seasons. This class has strong defensive capabilities, but it is not suitable for leveling compared to other characters that can quickly clear all enemies and achieve efficient farming.
However, the developers did not give up and continued to enhance the damage effectiveness of its skills. For example, in the current content, its Enhanced Flay skill will increase the chance of enemies being vulnerable to damage from 15% to 50%, making all subsequent damage more effective.
There is also Wrath of the Berserker. In PTR, players need to repel enemies and use basic skills to gain a total of ten seconds of Berserking and Unstoppable. At present, you only need to activate this one skill to directly obtain these two effects, and they last for ten seconds.
Not only that, the developers also want to give Barbarian, a class with low flexibility, more advantages in absolute strength. So the movement speed gain provided by Unbroken Chain is changed to a certain degree of strength gain.
In addition, Heavy Hitter in Vehement Augments Weapons Tempering Recipe has been replaced with Wallop; the earthquake damage bonus in Rumble Glyph has been reduced from 35.1% to 30.1%.
Druid
Druid, which also has low flexibility, has also received a lot of balance repairs. Among them, Pulverize’s damage ability has been increased from 110% to 150%, and Enhanced Pulverize’s damage ability to enemies which was controlled and bosses has been increased by 30%. They are all to enhance the attack ability of this class in battle.
But in fact, the ultimate reason why players don’t play Druid is that it costs a lot of Diablo 4 gold for sale to level up, and lacks high elemental damage ability, so it is not suitable for fighting monsters or bosses that have high resistance to elemental damage. The developers are also aware of this problem, so they made some changes.
For example, Toxic Claws, which previously only increased your poison damage in steps, now doubles your poison damage while in Werewolf form or within 8 seconds of leaving Werewolf form. In addition, the poison damage buff provided by Aspect of the Rabid Bear has been increased from 20 to 40% to 40-80%.
Necromancer
Next is Necromancer, which has been loved by players for several consecutive seasons. Although the developers reduced the number of Blood Orbs that can be generated by Supreme Blood Wave from 3 to 2, the damage buff provided by Affliction passive skill has been increased from 15% to 45% and the base damage has been increased from the original 100% to 180%.
These seem to be the developers blindly increasing the damage ability of Necromancer, but in fact, it makes the name of the glass cannon it owns more and more famous. So your Necromancer build in Diablo 4 Season 9 might need to spend a bit more time and D4 Gold to buff the very weak defenses it has to get a build that can make it to endgame content.
Rogue
Speaking of Rogue, the most well-known skill options may be Shadow Clone and Death Trap, both of which have been weakened again in the official season, such as reducing the damage they can cause or removing the buffs that reduce the cooldown time.
Given this, if you want to use a Rogue build this season, you may want to invest as much gold as possible in other elemental damage types to successfully complete the task of a given fight.
However, judging from the changes made to the three passive skills Precision, Close Quarter’s Combat, and Alchemical Admixture, the developers want to maximize the other elemental damage they focus on, which seems very contradictory.
But the reason for this behavior is actually very simple: players have been using super strong shadow damage and explosion damage for a long time in the previous seasons to explore all the game content, and the developers want to make the game style of Rogue builds more diversified, such as turning to other elemental types of damage.
Sorcerer
Compared to the previous classes, the changes that Sorcerer has received are more focused on one type, that is, Hydra. Whether it is skills, paragons or Diablo 4 items, they are all related to Hydra.
For example, Invoked Hydra, before it only gave your Hydra skill a 30% chance of critical hit when you cast a critical hit, and it lasted for three seconds; now it will directly give your skill 50% critical damage and 20% critical chance.
And Ophidian Iris, its previous Skill Ranks of Devouring Blaze affix was replaced by Skill Ranks of Primordial Binding, and Critical Strike Chance affix was replaced by the Attack Speed affix, which will make it more flexible and the speed of farming Diablo 4 gold will also become faster.
Spiritborn
The developers seem to be determined to make all players have the Vessel of Hatred DLC, because Spiritborn, a class that only appears in the expansion, has been greatly improved, both in terms of defense and combat capabilities.
For example, Exalted Hunter now gives you a 40% chance to reset the cooldown of this skill when you kill an enemy with a hunter, and Harmonious Devourer will make enemies that have already been damaged by poison suffer an additional 50% poison damage.
It may be because the next expansion of Diablo 4 is not expected to be released until 2026, so the developers are anxious to let all players try the old expansion that has already been released.
The above are the major changes for each class in the current Diablo 4 Season 9 Sins of the Horadrim and S9 PTR, which was released at the beginning of last month. According to the habits of the developers, it is very likely that some modifications will be made to some of the game content this month to achieve the balance they claim to achieve.
But no matter how it changes, it is a very wise approach to learn about the best builds (leveling or endgame) of each class from major player communities and social media in a timely manner. This will save you a lot of time and energy and get the best gaming experience.
