Diablo 4's new class is safe, for now. On a livestream discussing class balance changes in the next patch, Blizzard said it won't take away the spiritborn's ability to deal quadrillions of damage until the next season.
"Until then, enjoy what you've got now," lead class designer Adam Jackson said.
The patch, which drops next week, will instead buff all the other classes, but not to the level of the spiritborn. Jackson said he wants to avoid getting stuck in an endless cycle of buffs that exponentially raise player power beyond what the game can handle.
You won't have to wait very long to hear about what's changing: Blizzard will have another stream next week to talk about everything coming in season 7. Along with spiritborn nerfs, it said to expect a boost to how often ancestral items drop, an increase to crafting material rewards from Legion events, and some changes to runewords. I could be reading too far into it, but the developers also made it sound like the long-awaited armory system—which would let you swap between builds like presets—could be coming in season 7 too.
The full patch notes for next week's mid-season patch aren't out yet, but some of the highlights include:
- Damage increases to core skills and popular legendary aspects to keep barbarians from falling too far behind
- Big damage increases to druid key passives and legendary aspects to help with bosses
- Much-needed buffs to necromancer basic skills to fuel more builds
- Small buffs to weaker core skills and key passives for rogues
- Significant buffs to sorcerer key passives and legendary aspects to expand their build choices
- Small buffs to the most underused spiritborn skills, like Toxic Skin
- Reworked shrine powers that scale off of player level and paragon level (read: no more useless conduit shrines)
Blizzard also confirmed that the Midwinter Blight event will return as well as a second Mother's Blessing event for a limited-time XP bonus—which will be even more important now that everyone is grinding away at their paragon levels. Additionally, there will be a 'welcome back' boost that will give you a premade level 50 character on the non-seasonal mode of the game.
Sometime after Thanksgiving in the US, Blizzard is going to run a short playtest, or PTR, for season 7. The details of that will all be in next week's stream and it sounds like there will be plenty of new toys to play with.
