News Tag: Buy Diablo 4 Items

Since the introduction of Rune system in Diablo 4, runes have been a coveted resource for almost every player. This is not only because they can activate powerful Runewords, providing synergistic buffs for character builds, but more importantly, they are essential consumables for crafting specific Mythic Uniques.

With the developers significantly increasing monster strength and readjusting defensive mechanisms in Diablo 4 Season 11, the days of clearing Pits 100+ without requiring Mythic items may be over. Therefore, runes have become crucial for improving survivability in the endgame, often surpassing the power of support gems, especially in armor sockets.

So, here we introduce a new Legendary Rune farming method introduced in Season 11, which is likely the fastest way to obtain runes in Diablo 4 currently. We will explain step-by-step how to set it up and how to farm efficiently. Let's begin.

Step-by-Step Guide

Upgrading Essence Of Pain

First, you need to upgrade your Essence of Pain Divine Gift to level five. This allows players to have a chance to obtain dropped Socketables such as Royal Gems, Gem Fragments, and Legendary Runes when defeating Pangs of Duriel. However, this is not the only reason we choose this Divine Gift; we will explain later.

To upgrade this Divine Gift, you need to kill monsters in Helltide. When monsters in Helltide die, there is a chance they will provide experience points for this Divine Gift.

However, a more efficient way to upgrade it is to kill as many Duriel bosses as possible in Helltide, as he is guaranteed to provide experience points for this Divine Gift.

Collecting Corrupted Horn Of Duriel

While upgrading your Divine Gift, it is recommended that you collect as many Corrupted Horns of Duriel from the Duriel boss as possible, as you will need them later.

However, please note that each person can only carry a maximum of 20 Corrupted Horns of Duriel. So, if you find that Duriel is no longer dropping this item, it may be because your inventory is full. It's time to clear your inventory.

Once you have upgraded your Divine Gift to the maximum level five, you should place it in the Purified Gift slots. 

Defeat Azmodan & Open Duriel's Chest

Next, head south of Zarbinzet to summon the open-world version of Azmodan. There are usually many players farming there, so defeating him shouldn't be too difficult.

After defeating the boss, three chests will drop for you to choose from. Open Duriel's Hoard chest, which requires five Corrupted Horns of Duriel. However, since the newly upgraded Essence of Pain Divine Gift also works on this chest, it guarantees you at least one Legendary Rune. This is your main source of runes.

Farming Loop

Next, we'll discuss how to continuously open this chest.

These chests also contain boss materials, more specifically, a large amount of Living Steel. Some players have even obtained over 40 Living Steels from a single Duriel chest, which is a considerable amount of wealth. Therefore, in addition to aiming for Diablo 4 Legendary Runes from this chest, Living Steels are also important items worth collecting.

Why? Because we need to use these Living Steels to obtain more Corrupted Horns of Duriel.

After opening all the Duriel chests, you should have a large amount of Living Steel in your inventory. Next, we will use all of this Living Steel to open Grigoire's Hoard chest.

Travel to Grigoire's lair, defeat him, and open his chests as many times as possible, using up all your Living Steel. During this process, you will obtain a large amount of Shards of Agony and some Stygian Stones. You should convert these Stygian Stones into Shards of Agony, and then head to Duriel's lair. Note that this is not the Duriel in Helltide, but the Lair version of the Duriel boss. After defeating him, you can use your Shards of Agony to open the Hoard chests as many times as possible.

We do this because the Duriel Lair boss also drops Corrupted Horns of Duriel. This allows you to collect enough materials without too much effort and provides the motivation to continue farming.

In short, once you have replenished your stock of Corrupted Horns of Duriel, immediately summon Azmodan boss, defeat him, and open as many Duriel chests as possible. Each time you open a chest, you are guaranteed to get a Legendary Rune. This creates a complete farming cycle:

1. Use your Corrupted Horn of Duriel to open the Duriel chest at the Azmodan boss location to obtain a large amount of Living Steels and Legendary Runes.
2. Use these Living Steels to summon and defeat Grigoire, which will grant you a large number of Shards of Agony. You can then use these to summon a higher difficulty version of Duriel to obtain some dropped Corrupted Horns of Duriel.
3. Then, return to the open-world version of Azmodan and use the Corrupted Horn of Duriel to open the chest for guaranteed runes.
4. If you don't get enough Living Steels from the chest, you can supplement them from Helltide chests.

Duriel Chest vs. Kurast Undercity Farming

Finally, some players might question whether this farming method is as good as farming the Tribute of Harmony in the Kurast Undercity. Diablo 4 Season 11 significantly enhanced the Kurast Undercity, especially Tribute of Harmony and Tribute of Mystique, greatly increasing the drop rate of Legendary Runes and other valuable loot. So why would we choose the more cumbersome Duriel boss chest farming method to obtain runes?

The reality is that Tribute of Harmony is difficult to find and limited in quantity, while this farming cycle is sustainable and unlimited. Therefore, it definitely has many advantages.

In short, this is a currently viable and relatively easy rune farming method that allows you to obtain endless Legendary Runes in the early stages of D4S11. If you are lacking specific runes, why not give it a try!

At the recently concluded TGA awards last week, Diablo 4 lived up to expectations, revealing several details about its second DLC, Lord of Hatred.

Of all the announced content in the new DLC, the most appealing is undoubtedly the two new classes, and more importantly, one of them, Paladin, is now playable in Season 11 - provided you pre-order the new DLC immediately.

Unlike the previous new class, Spiritborn, Paladin is not new to Diablo series, having appeared and been very popular in Diablo 2. Now, it finally returns in Diablo 4.

Below, we will introduce the new gameplay and features this class will have in Diablo 4, helping you quickly get started with Paladin if you plan to play it.

Paladin In Diablo 4 Overview

In Diablo 2, the class's main combat style was to strengthen itself or its teammates through various active or passive auras to deal more damage or gain more defense. Its core builds, Hammerdin and Smiter, were both very famous.

In Diablo 3, although Paladin was temporarily absent, another class, Crusader, had similarities. Diablo 4 seems to have combined the strengths of Diablo 2 Paladin and Diablo 3 Crusader to create a more powerful Paladin.

In general, in Diablo 4, Paladin is a shield-wielding melee class, drawing strength from the ability of Faith, and capable of dealing holy, physical, and fire damage. It has a wide variety of weapons and skills available, and a unique mechanism called Oaths.

What Are Oaths?

All Diablo 4 classes have a unique mechanism that serves to embody the class's characteristics and provide additional combat bonuses.

Paladin's Oaths are unlocked after reaching level 15. After that, you can choose one of four Oaths with different bonus effects as your specialization, making yourself a more powerful and specialized Paladin. They are:

• Zealot: Focuses on fast, aggressive attacks and critical strikes.
• Juggernaut: Emphasizes defense and shield abilities, capable of dealing Thorns damage and gaining offensive conversion while defending.
• Judicator: You can apply Judgement marks to enemies and then detonate them to deal high holy damage and AoE damage.
• Disciple: Enhance your damage and mobility by transforming into Arbiter form.

These Oaths are not only a way to increase your power, but also provide possibilities for crafting more Paladin builds in Season 11 and Lord of Hatred, further expanding the gameplay of this new class.

How To Unlock This Class?

Although Paladin is essentially one of the new classes introduced in the new DLC launching on April 28, 2026, if you pre-order DLC now, you can play Paladin in Season 11, combining seasonal powers and dungeons!

In addition, you are expected to be able to continue experiencing this class in other new seasons before the new DLC is officially released. More importantly, pre-ordering Lord of Hatred also directly unlocks the first DLC, Vessel of Hatred!

Paladin Exclusive Items

All gear in Diablo 4 can be simply divided into general and class-specific types, and rarer items often have one or more corresponding exclusive bosses; focusing on farming them gives you a greater chance of obtaining item drops.

Based on this, after Paladin's addition, in addition to the still available general gear, Diablo 4 has also added several new exclusive unique items and Legendary Aspects for this class.

It should be noted that while Paladin unique items can already be obtained by farming the corresponding bosses, Legendary Aspects have not yet unlocked this channel and can only be obtained through random drops, such as Helltide chests or Whisper caches.

However, it is expected that after the new DLC is officially released, new dungeons or other related new bosses added through the new region Skovos will provide you with exclusive Paladin Legendary Aspect drop channels.

All Paladin-exclusive unique items and corresponding bosses are as follows:

• Light's Rebuke - Flail - Grigoire
• Sunbrand - Flail - Varshan
• Herald's Morningstar - Mace - Duriel, Andariel, Harbinger
• Griswold's Opus - Sword - Duriel, Andariel, Harbinger
• Supplication - Sword - Grigoire
• Sundered Night - Two-Handed Axe - Grigoire
• Red Sermon - Two-Handed Sword - Grigoire, Lord Zir
• Bastion of Sir Matthias - Shield - Grigoire, Lord Zir
• Cathedral's Song - Shield - Lord Zir
• Gate of the Red Dawn - Shield - Andariel, Grigoire, Varshan
• Herald of Zakarum - Shield - Duriel, Andariel, Harbinger
• Ward of the White Dove - Shield - Varshan
• Judicant's Glaivehelm - Helm - Lord Zir, Urivar
• Mantle of the Gray - Chest Armor - Grigoire, Lord Zir, Varshan
• Dawnfire - Gloves - Grigoire, Varshan
• Arcadia - Pants - Grigoire, Varshan
• March of the Stalwart Soul - Boots - Grigoire, Lord Zir, Varshan
• Sanctis of Kethamar - Amulet - Lord Zir
• Judgment of Auriel - Amulet - Not clear yet
• Argent Veil - Ring - Grigoire, Varshan
• Seal of the Second Trumpet - Ring - Grigoire, Beast, Urivar
• Wreath of Auric Laurel - Ring - Grigoire, Beast, Urivar

All Paladin-exclusive Legendary Aspects are as follows:

Offensive:

• Aspect of Ascension
• Aspect of Celestial Strife
• Aspect of Chastisement
• Aspect of Excellence
• Aspect of Exorcism
• Aspect of Holy Punishment
• Aspect of Jacques' Fervor
• Aspect of Lagera's Sovereignty
• Aspect of Lapa's Scripture
• Aspect of Proselytizing
• Aspect of the Golden Hour
• Aspect of the Judicator
• Aspect of the Juggernaut's Covenant
• Aspect of the Zealot's Covenant
• Aspect of Tyrael's Jurisdiction
• Aspect of Utmost Glory
• Aspect of Watkins' Law
• Revelator's Aspect
• Squire's Aspects
• The Penitent's Aspect
• Virtuous Aspect

Defensive:

• Apostle's Aspect
• Aspect of Angelic Masterwork
• Aspect of Firm Decree
• Aspect of Glynn's Anvil
• Aspect of Hale's Salve
• Aspect of Heavenly Strength
• Aspect of Loyalty
• Aspect of Militance
• Aspect of the Disciple
• Aspect of the Indomitable
• Aspect of the Light's Mending
• Aspect of Verdant Restoration
• Lord of Blood's Aspect

Utility:

• Aspect of Dazzling Light
• Aspect of the Northern Guard
• Aspect of Valiance

Resource:

• Aspect of Valiance
• Aspect of Contemplation
• Aspect of Dedication
• Aspect of Dominance
• Aspect of Pilgrim's Progress
• Aspect of Salvation

Mobility:

• Aspect of Swift Spirit
• Aspect of the Arbiter's Zephyr
• Aspect of Unstoppable Force

The above is an introduction to the basic content of Paladin class. More specific skills and builds will depend on the actual season/DLC dungeons or quest content. If you are curious about this class, why not pre-order DLC now and give it a try!

If you want to level up quickly or get the gear you want as a Paladin in Season 11, the best option is to buy cheap Diablo 4 items at IGGM now! Easily obtain unique items without the hassle of farming bosses!

If you didn't watch Diablo 4 developer livestream or replay on December 3rd, then there's some bad news you need to know: the new dungeon, The Tower, and its accompanying leaderboard will be delayed.

Originally, these two features were expected to be released alongside Diablo 4 Season 11 on December 11th Pacific Time, but due to various considerations, the developers ultimately decided to postpone them.

Therefore, this article will analyze why Diablo 4 made this decision and what the consequences will be.

When Will The Tower May Be Available?

During the developer livestream, Diablo 4 team stated that the dungeon The Tower and the leaderboard are expected to be released sometime in 2026 with Patch 2.5.2, and will still be in beta form.

This means that even after launch, The Tower and the leaderboard may be subject to temporary modifications and closures, and may even be further delayed. All of this is to ensure that the final product is more stable and enjoyable.

Why The Delay?

Besides ensuring the stability of The Tower and the leaderboard, there's another underlying reason for the delay: when the gameplay was introduced in 2.5.0 PTR, it was essentially an unfinished product.

This is partly because PTR is only for testing purposes, and partly because the developers were using it to gauge player opinions on the mechanism and to determine whether to officially release it based on how the dungeon and leaderboard worked together.

The developers stated in the livestream that they hope The Tower will be a mechanism that truly reflects your abilities through the leaderboard, but is also fun, and not just new content crammed in for the sake of a new season.

Perhaps the less-than-ideal performance of the leaderboard during its initial release has made the developers more cautious this time. After all, the success of many games proves that the leaderboard mechanism itself is not flawed; the key is how it's implemented.

Furthermore, if you played 2.5.0 PTR, you might have noticed that the gameplay of The Tower is quite similar to The Pit in Diablo 4, both involving progressing through a dungeon and defeating bosses to complete each level.

This might make you feel that The Tower, besides bringing back the leaderboard, offers little in the way of new content. The developers stated in the livestream that they understand this and will work to address this in future optimizations.

It's expected that after the initial stages, these two endgame dungeons will gradually differentiate in their mechanics as you progress through them, aiming to provide distinct and engaging gameplay experiences.

To be honest, this is quite challenging, as both gameplay modes are initially derived from Diablo 3 Greater Rifts. Designing something innovative, based on the same source will be a key focus for D4 development team.

Both optimization and adding new content take time, and it's only been a little over a month since 2.5.0 PTR ended, so it's impossible to complete all this work. Therefore, the delayed launch is both unexpected and understandable.

The Tower Basic Mechanics

The Tower is essentially a continuously progressing dungeon system that requires you to reach a specific level and complete related quests in Season Journey (this mechanism will be replaced by Season Rank in Season 11) to unlock it.

Each round of The Tower generates 5 dungeon floors. Before entering combat, you need to bring sufficiently good Diablo 4 items, such as powerful weapons and reliable potions, to defeat the enemies and the boss, Tower Guardian, on each floor.

Note that each floor has a 10-minute time limit; if you exceed the time limit, even if you win, the result won't count. During combat, you can collect progress orbs from defeated enemies. Once the progress bar is full, the boss will appear.

To complete the current round of The Tower as quickly as possible, you need to defeat higher-level enemies that provide more progress and activate up to 4 Pylons in the dungeon to gain related benefits - you need to break the shields protecting them first.

Originally, we predicted that you could farm The Tower for various rewards such as gold, items, and cosmetics, but now that its launch has been delayed, everything has become more uncertain.

However, given its unique nature related to the leaderboard, it's expected that you will only receive a onetime reward for clearing new levels. If it were possible to farm repeatedly, the leaderboard rankings would lose their value.

What Shortcomings Need To Be Addressed?

Besides the points considered by the developers themselves, players have also pointed out many shortcomings based on The Tower's performance in 2.5.0 PTR.

For example, the progress orbs dropped after killing enemies are generated too far away, making collecting them too time-consuming; the generated dungeons vary significantly, potentially preventing you from achieving the appropriate ranking on the leaderboard.

We hope these issues will be completely resolved after The Tower and the leaderboards are officially launched, so that the final product will live up to the expectations of Diablo 4 players.

What Other Important Information Was Revealed In The Livestream?

This livestream announced the specific launch date for Season 11, as well as its official name, Season of Divine Intervention. In addition, it provided more details and changes to the various mechanics of the season based on existing information.

If you want to experience this content firsthand, please download the update and log into Diablo 4 on December 11th at the specific time corresponding to your time zone! As for The Tower, waiting a little longer for a better experience is certainly worthwhile!

Diablo 4 will receive a new season update on December 11, 2025, at 8:30 PM (UTC). The season is called Season of Divine Intervention. This is expected to be the largest update for Diablo 4 to date, bringing a wealth of new content.

Season 11 will see the return of Lesser Evils. Azmodan, one of Lesser Evils of Hell, will become the game's first new World Boss. The item system will also be completely revamped. A new Toughness stat improves the defense mechanics, and the more challenging Seasonal Rank system replaces Seasonal Renown.

Enemies and monsters have been updated, and due to the changes to items and various mechanics, the different character classes will be significantly reshuffled.

The enemies and monsters in the game have been updated, and due to the changes to items and various mechanics, the different character classes in the game will also be reshuffled. This update includes a lot of content, so I will summarize the important updates for you. The following is the main content of this 2.5.0 patch update.

Item Upgrade Paths

In Season of Divine Intervention, item upgrade paths have changed, and the enhancement system has been redesigned.

Tempering

Players no longer randomly obtain Affix from the required Temper Manual; instead, they can choose any Temper Affix they have acquired and add it to their items. This eliminates the previous randomness and makes enhancement more targeted.

The item Tempering Charges have also been changed, as follows:

• Rare: 1 Temper
• Legendary and above: 3 Tempers, plus one per Greater Affix.

Note that Scrolls of Restoration have also been redesigned; they now only restore one temper charge, but there is no limit to the number of times they can be used.

The materials required for Tempering have also been updated:

• Rare: 25 Common Salvage and 5 Veiled Crystals
• Legendary: 15 Veiled Crystals and 5 Legendary Salvage
• Ancestral Legendary: 25 Legendary Salvage and Forgotten Souls

Masterworking

Masterworking has been redesigned. A new attribute, Refinement, has been added to items. Each time a player Masterworks an item, its refinement value randomly increases by 1-3%. The maximum refinement threshold is 20%. Once this threshold is reached, the item is considered Masterworked.

Items can now be Masterworked without tempering. The item quality cap has been increased from 20 to 25. Each Masterwork increases the quality level by 1-3 levels.

Each quality level increases the item's affix stats by 1%, resulting in a 50% increase in random affix stats after full enhancement.

When an item reaches its highest quality, you gain a final affix upgrade opportunity, allowing you to upgrade a random affix to a higher-level one. You can re-upgrade this Masterworked affix using Obducite and Neathiron without resetting the quality.

Neathiron can be obtained in Sanctuary, while Infernal Horde is the best place to farm Obducite.

Sanctification

This season update introduces a new item upgrade stage-Sanctification. It infuses items with angelic power, granting them the following abilities:

• Add an additional Legendary ability;
• Upgrade an Affix to a Greater Affix;
• Add an additional Affix to a set of special Sanctification Affixes;
• Replace an existing Affix with a random Sanctification Affix;
• Make the item extremely tough, preventing it from losing durability.

Sanctification renders your item unchangeable, it is the final upgrade.

Defense Mechanism Changes

Toughness

This update introduces a new defense concept called Toughness, a new attribute in Attack Power that represents how much raw damage you can withstand after all damage reduction measures are in effect. Details are as follows:

• When comparing items, Armor or Resistance difference between items will be displayed as a uniform percentage of Toughness difference, instead of just a fixed Armor difference;
• Toughness will be displayed in Character Stats window;
• Toughness tooltip will differentiate Damage Resistance by damage type;
• Torment difficulty will display a recommended Toughness value when the player selects a difficulty level.

Armor & Resistances

Armor and Resistance will both be part of a rating system. Higher ratings result in decreasing benefits, and Armor now reduces all types of damage, both physical and non-physical.

Below Torment Tiers, the previous penalties for Armor and Resistance have been removed. Damage reduction effects from Skills and Paragon Nodes will now be multiplicatively added to Armor and Resistance.

Healing Potion

Potions offer the best healing in the game, but their acquisition is limited. All players start with only 4 potions. However, players can obtain Renown by exploring map areas and completing various quests. Reaching certain Renown levels will then unlock Potion replenishment.

This update includes significant changes to Healing Potion:

• Potion now instantly restores 35% of maximum Life and no longer provides continuous healing;
• Potion regeneration time is now 30 seconds per potion, down from 12 seconds previously;
• Healing Affixes have been changed; they can now be found on leg armor as Potion Count Affixes;
• Since healing is now percentage-based, Potion level upgrades have been removed.

Fortify

Fortify effect has been reworked. To align with Healing Potion changes, Fortify will now consume additional Life storage instead of Damage Reduction to heal the player.

While a player has Fortify, they will remain in Fortified state, and Fortify stacks will add to the player's Maximum Life. Fortify-related skills, passives, and items have also been updated accordingly.

Enemy And Monster Difficulty Updates

Elites

To accommodate the newly added Champion and Rare Elites, the elite density in Dungeon and Overworld has been adjusted. Undercity Afflicted Monsters have also adopted a new rarity system, reducing the locations where players can gain extra time and increasing the game's challenge.

Meanwhile, the developers have integrated Lesser Evils into the endgame system during Season of Divine Intervention, with these demons joining different events.

Azmodan

Azmodan will be a permanent World Boss during the season and a key dungeon. Players must defeat him in Season Rank V Capstone Dungeon to progress.

Azmodan's resilience has been increased, making it more balanced with other World Bosses, and Shrines will no longer disappear during combat. Defeating Azmodan will reward players with a chest in the summoning area, which can be opened with Corrupted Essence.

Duriel

Duriel will replace Blood Maiden as the main summoned monster in Helltide. Pangs of Duriel will appear instead of Hellborne at the highest threat level, after which you can summon Duriel using Baneful Hearts.

Belial

It will appear in Pit as Lord of Lies. Belial Eyes will randomly appear in limited-time dungeons. Defeating them will stun nearby enemies but also summon a group of Belial Apparitions.

When you destroy enough eyes, Belial will appear. Defeating Belial is a worthwhile challenge; if you encounter it in a dungeon, don't let it go. Defeating Belial will grant additional rewards and an extra Glyph upgrade.

Andariel

Andariel may appear in the limited-time dungeon mode of Kurast Undercity. It corrupts Spirit Beacon, making it quite dangerous but also granting players more Attunement.

Beware of Shades of Andariel and enemies that may appear at any time in the dungeon. If Andariel himself appears as the final boss of Undercity, try to defeat him for even greater rewards.

Divine Gifts And Essences

This season's progression will revolve around Divine Gifts bestowed by the angel Hadriel.

Divine Gifts

Each gift contains the following rewards:

• A Reward (Base Buff)
• A Corrupted Gift (Increased difficulty but same reward)
• A Purified Gift (No negative effects, additional buff and double reward)

Players can socket gifts into special inventory panels. A Corrupted Gift in an outer slot increases the challenge before the reward is granted, while a Purified Gift in an inner slot removes the challenge and doubles the reward.

Essences

Players will receive a Corrupted Essence upon their first kill of each Lesser Evil in the game. Giving these Essences to Hadriel for purification will grant Divine Gifts. The specific Essences are as follows:

• Essence of Pain (Duriel): Socketables in Pangs of Duriel
• Essence of Lies (Belial): Additional upgrade chances in Pit
• Essence of Sin (Azmodan): Activity Keys and more Dungeon Keys
• Essence of Anguish (Andariel): Obols and movement speed bonus

Season Rank System

Season Journey + Seasonal Renown is about to be upgraded to a more challenging and rewarding Season Rank system. Players will need to complete a Capstone Dungeon to advance to the next rank. Renown is currently only effective in Eternal Realms.

The good news is that the difficulty of Capstone Dungeons is fixed and will not increase with rank. Renown is currently only effective in Eternal Realms.

Class-Unique Item Updates

Season 11 also introduces several new class-specific Diablo 4 items, including:

• Chainscourged Mail (Barbarian Pants): Disables damaging Brawling Skills and greatly increases attack power;
• Khamsin Steppewalkers (Druid Boots): Damaging 100-150 enemies with Nature Magic Skills grants maximum movement speed, and enemies you charge at are immobilized for one second;
• Death's Pavane (Rogue Pants): Dance of Knives drops daggers upon hitting enemies; picking them up grants 1 Charge and significantly increases damage;
• Gravebloom (Necromancer Mace): Summons three smaller Golems with faster attack and respawn rates;
• Orsivane (Sorcerer Mace): Provides increased damage and a free Enchantment effect to unused Defensive Skills in the skill bar;
• Path of the Emissary (Spiritborn Boots): Core Skills are automatically triggered when the player moves.

In addition, Necromancers' shields have gained an offensive attribute, unlocking new tanky offense builds. Many players predict that Necromancers will become one of the hottest classes in the new season.

Besides these major updates, Season 11 also addresses many player feedback issues, fixing numerous gameplay problems and other bugs. Stay tuned for the upcoming Diablo 4 Season of Divine Intervention!

Diablo 4 fans are undoubtedly familiar with Torment difficulty system in the open world. From Torment 1 to Torment 4, each tier represents a significant increase in your character's power.

The difficulty difference between each tier is substantial; with each increase, enemy strength nearly tenfold. Therefore, by the time you reach T4, the monsters are exponentially more difficult than your initial encounters, creating a rather steep progression curve.

What's Wrong With The Current Torment Difficulty System?

If Diablo 4 continued to provide highly challenging content, it would be fine. However, the problem is that there are currently only four Torment difficulty levels. T4 is the final difficulty level in the open world, with no higher challenges to overcome.

Once you adapt to T4, the game becomes increasingly easier because your power increases, but enemy strength no longer increases. Ultimately, experienced players with superior builds can easily wipe out all enemies.

This situation creates two main problems.

First, the vast difference in Torment levels requires players to acquire gear that provides dozens of times the damage boost just to barely handle the current enemies. This is why current Paragon boards and glyph nodes increasingly focus on pure damage increases rather than interesting support nodes.

Second, once we reach Torment 4, everything becomes incredibly easy; the only thing we can continuously pursue is faster map clearing speed and faster movement speed. So, since the current dominant farming builds can instantly kill all enemies and loot all Diablo 4 items, why would we need to play other builds? The existence of slower builds is also meaningless, as there's no higher level of challenge to challenge them, and their sustained damage output has no chance to be realized.

These problems not only reduce the original customizability of mechanics like Paragon, because all the difficulty-increasing mechanisms require players to blindly pursue damage, but also stifle build diversity.

Therefore, for various reasons, the developers recently hinted that they plan to add more Torment difficulties in Diablo 4 Season 11 and subsequent season updates, potentially increasing the number from the current four to ten.

But will these changes really solve the problem? Why is increasing the difficulty levels reasonable in the current situation? What impact will it have on endgame content? Let's discuss this together.

What Are The Benefits Of Increasing Torment Levels?

First, if implemented correctly, increasing Torment difficulty levels can solve both problems simultaneously.

Because instead of setting four vastly different difficulty levels, it's better to adjust to ten smaller levels, reducing the damage multiplier of each level from ten times to two times. This makes the leveling curve smoother, meaning you can steadily improve even without gear that provides a significant damage boost.

At the same time, Paragon nodes can return to their role as practical support characters, rather than purely damage dealers, making the entire Diablo 4 gear system healthier.

The bigger benefit, however, is that more Torment tiers make sense for slower builds. They were designed to trade speed for higher damage bonuses, so the Torment difficulty adjustment will give them a greater advantage.

This is the right way to create build diversity, allowing different builds to find the most suitable development method and tier based on their own strengths and weaknesses, rather than forcing all builds to desperately chase movement speed.

New Torment System Predictions

Next, let's propose some ideas on how the new difficulty system will actually work. These are just preliminary ideas, but I think they show potential.

Let's assume they add a total of 10 Torment tiers in Season 11, from T1 to T10. For clarity, we'll associate them with The Pit tiers. T1 unlocks at The Pit tier 10, T2 at tier 20, T3 at tier 30, and so on, up to T10 at tier 100.

This would create a smoother difficulty curve and make it easier to control. You won't encounter insurmountable obstacles, but rather a steady climb.

What's even more interesting is that content and rewards will gradually unlock as you progress through your Torment level; not everything is available in Torment 1. These tangible progress milestones provide players with a greater sense of accomplishment as they advance.

We've also made some predictions about the content unlocks for each level, for reference only:

• T1: The starting point at level 60. The Pit unlocks at this stage. You can also find common unique items, low-level boss materials, and standard items suitable for beginners, but not enough to build a core gameplay mechanic.
• T2: Dark Citadel unlocks at this stage to help players adapt to the endgame system.
• T3: Nightmare Dungeon Escalation unlocks at this stage. It guides them to try higher difficulties and understand the game mechanics.
• T4: Higher-ranking bosses will unlock, such as Andariel, Duriel, and Lord Zir. These bosses drop powerful and unique gear that can define a build.
• T5: The Tower will unlock. The Tower is competitive endgame content with leaderboards. By Torment 5 difficulty, players will have enough experience to understand the mechanics and its importance.
• T6: Belial unlocks here. This is currently the last boss in Diablo 4 and one of the most difficult fights in the game, but it drops top-tier unique items.
• T7: Expansion content may unlock here, including new systems, new events, and legendary Temper Manuals, creating another progression stage.
• T8: Special elite monsters spawn here. These elite monsters are enhanced, possess auras and special affixes, and drop legendary gems based on previous season abilities. This gives you new build options to pursue.
• T9 & 10: Represent even higher difficulty challenges. Not all builds can reach these difficulties, but if you do, you'll receive season-exclusive rewards, allowing players to still have something to strive for at the peak.

Item Power And Rewards Scaling

In addition, here's a suggestion related to Torment difficulty: incrementally increase item power in the late game.

Currently, all Ancestral Unique Items drop the same strength at Torment difficulty. This setting was intended to make it easier for players to select loot in the early stages of the game, but it also resulted in loot drops being too mixed and random. If players wanted to obtain specific items, they could only rely on RNG or buy safe Diablo 4 items from the online store.

What if item strength increased with Torment difficulty? The increase wouldn't need to be huge; a natural progression mechanism for loot strength would suffice. Challenging higher difficulties would yield better base items. This would make item farming more interesting.

Furthermore, the current reward increase from challenging higher Torments is negligible. A 10x increase in difficulty only yields a 10% to 20% increase in rewards, which is clearly disproportionate.

Therefore, increasing Torment levels and smoothing the difficulty curve would significantly improve the chances of obtaining gold, XP, Greater Affix, and material drops with each Torment challenge. While the increase may not be substantial, it is stable and significant.

In short, the current Torment difficulty system has obvious flaws. The four levels with drastically increased difficulty, the bottleneck at T4 difficulty, and the stifling of build diversity all negatively impact the player experience. Therefore, adjusting the Torment difficulty levels in Season 11 might truly solve these problems, allowing different builds to find their optimal level with a reasonable difficulty curve and reward scaling, thus enhancing player enjoyment.

With Season 11 launching soon, are you sure you've got a good grasp of the key content from the previews? Knowing your enemy is half the battle; mastering important information beforehand will help you adapt to the new season faster.

Of all the new mechanics, those related to gear upgrades have received significant changes in Season 11, including more consistent upgrade rates for gear affixes in Tempering and Masterworking, and the entirely new Sanctification.

Furthermore, this season also features new unique items for each class, just like before. Therefore, in Season 11, besides mastering the basic uses of these Uniques, you'll also need to learn how to enhance them using Sanctification - we'll show you.

Rogue - Death's Pavane

The biggest advantage of these unique pants for Rogue is that they allow for better use of the classic build Dance of Knives this season. This is because they give you a higher dodge chance when channeling Dance of Knives skill.

Furthermore, this gear provides up to 11% base critical strike chance and a movement speed bonus. This not only increases Dance of Knives skill level and agility damage, but it's also beneficial for other highly mobile Rogue builds.

However, we highly recommend using it to enhance Dance of Knives in Season 11. It allows you to obtain Dance of Knives items upon hitting enemies, granting a charge that increases skill damage by 20 times for 6 seconds.

More importantly, this damage can stack up to 3 times, meaning your final damage output from Dance of Knives skill, or your entire build, will be multiplied by 3, or 60 times. Combined with your base damage, you'll dominate the dungeon!

Note that many elite enemies have been buffed in Season 11. Therefore, to fully utilize your Dance of Knives build to counter them, you'll also need to buy Diablo 4 items that can coordinate with Death's Pavane.

Sorcerer - Orsivane

This one-handed mace might seem out of place for a Sorcerer on style, but it offers significant buffs, including increases to damage, maximum health, and core skill levels.

More importantly, it has a unique effect: for every defensive skill not on your action bar, your damage increases by 20-40%, and you gain associated enchantments.

Generally, a Sorcerer should have four defensive skills in combat, meaning this mace provides a 40x4, or 160x, damage multiplier - a huge boost.

While this effect might not match the overall DPS of the core skills provided by the various Sorcerer gear in Chaos Armor version of Season 10, the added enchantments make up for it.

Spiritborn - Path Of The Emissary

This new item is a pair of unique boots that increase your movement speed and core ability damage, and these damage effects are expected to stack (otherwise, the buff would be meaningless). It also increases core ability level and debuffs.

The boots' unique ability is that every 12 to 14 meters moved, you can summon a core ability from your Primary Spirit Hall:

• Quill Volley - Eagle
• Stinger - Centipede
• Rake - Jaguar
• Crushing Hand - Gorilla

This effect means you can utilize Spirit Hall mechanic to create more usable Spiritborn builds in Season 11, enriching the class's playability. For example, you can apply different debuffs to enemies.

Barbarian - Chainscourged Mail

This unique pair's special ability is that after casting a damaging melee ability, that ability is disabled. For each disabled ability, your melee ability damage increases by 50-100%. If all melee skills are disabled, they will be re-enabled, and their cooldowns will be refreshed.

Gear's basic functions include:

• + All Stats
• + Maximum Life
• + Brawling Skills
• Cooldown Reduction

When playing Barbarian, you should typically carry five melee skills, activating and cycling them one by one - all you need to do is keep tapping your skill bar.

Druid - Khamsin Steppewalkers

These unique boots increase your movement speed and crowd control duration, and provide a reduction in nature spell cooldowns, further granting you a 25% bonus to your enhanced attacks.

Their unique power grants a charge if you deal damage to at least 100 enemies with your storm ability. Subsequent defensive abilities will grant 1 second of maximum movement speed and Unhindered.

Unhindered means you can pass through enemies. Each charge grants an additional second of Unhindered, and enemies you collide with during the charge will be immobilized.

Therefore, you can add more skills or gear to stack bonuses that enhance stun effects, allowing you to better control enemies with Khamsin Steppewalkers and deal more damage in a short time.

Necromancer - Gravebloom

The value of this one-handed mace lies in its unique power, allowing you to summon three small golems, each dealing 40-60% of normal damage and gaining a 30% attack speed and 50% respawn speed bonus.

Furthermore, when the golems are at full health, they reduce enemy attack speed, and summoning a golem to attack twice grants Golem Mastery. This will be very suitable for the new Golem Necromancer Build in Season 11 craft.

Other gear benefits include:

• + Intelligence
• + Maximum Life
• + Chance for Golem to Hit Twice

Can Sanctification Enhance These New Gear?

As a brand new system, Sanctification allows your gear to be further enhanced after utilizing Tempering and Masterworking, but the final enhancement effect is random and cannot be modified after completion.

At first glance, this mechanism seems good, but the key issue is that if you randomly get a useless new affix, it can ruin the entire gear's value, wasting all your previous efforts to enhance it.

Therefore, from its launch on PTR to its end and even now, the player community has consistently been pessimistic about sanctification, and we also advise against hastily sanctifying new Uniques after acquiring them.

Based on this, we hope that after Season 11 launches, the development team can find a way to optimize this new mechanism, making it a true highlight of the new season, rather than just a filler feature.

That concludes our introduction. We hope this helps you choose and experience classes in Season 11! We wish you all the best on your new season journey!

Even as Season 10 draws to a close, you'll find many Diablo 4 players still enthusiastically farming various materials to upgrade their gear. You might wonder why, since these items and gear can only be transferred to Eternal Realm.

In fact, there are quite a few players who are keen on Eternal Realm, and due to the unique Chaos Armor mechanic, the number of people wanting to continue experiencing these powerful gears in Eternal Realm after Season 10 ends will probably increase.

Therefore, farming materials that can help upgrade gear in Masterworking system before Season 11 launches is indeed necessary. This time, we'll introduce how to farm Forgotten Souls in Season 10.

What Is Forgotten Soul?

It's a legendary crafting material that's indispensable when utilizing Masterworking mechanic to upgrade the affix value of your ancestral gear.

There are 12 available Masterworking levels. Gold and Obducite are always required during the upgrade process, while other required materials vary. The rarity of Forgotten Souls lies in the fact that they only serve Masterworking levels 9 and above.

However, it's important to note that items with the greater affix also require Forgotten Souls during levels 1-8 - in fact, only these types of items have the opportunity to continue upgrading after reaching Masterworking level 8.

Based on this, here are the required number of Forgotten Souls for each Masterworking crafting level:

• Level 1: 2 Forgotten Souls
• Level 2: 3 Forgotten Souls
• Level 3: 3 Forgotten Souls
• Level 4: 5 Forgotten Souls
• Level 5: 6 Forgotten Souls
• Level 6: 7 Forgotten Souls
• Level 7: 8 Forgotten Souls
• Level 8: 10 Forgotten Souls
• Level 9: 11 Forgotten Souls
• Level 10: 12 Forgotten Souls
• Level 11: 13 Forgotten Souls
• Level 12: 15 Forgotten Souls

How To Farm Forgotten Souls?

Although this item is relatively rare, it drops from quite a few sources, the most common being Legion Events, Helltides, and Infernal Hordes. We will introduce each one in detail.

Infernal Hordes

This method is introduced first because Diablo 4 is currently hosting Compass to Carnage event, allowing you to earn more Infernal Compasses than usual by playing the game, thus increasing your chances of unlocking Infernal Hordes.

This event will last until December 2nd. During this time, Infernal Hordes will feature more enemy hordes, and you can earn more Burning Aether by clearing Chaos Rifts, which can be exchanged for more rewards.

While this event doesn't provide an increase in Forgotten Souls drops, you'll likely focus on playing it until it ends, making Infernal Hordes your primary source of Forgotten Souls this week.

Legion Events

With one week remaining before Season 11 launches after Compass to Carnage ends, you should take full advantage of other gameplay methods to acquire Forgotten Souls, such as Legion Events.

These events, officially called The Gathering Legions, are limited-time events in Diablo 4 that only randomly spawn throughout Sanctuary after you complete or skip the base campaign.

Once Legion Events are activated, you need to complete a specialization objective within a time limit to unlock a boss. Defeating the boss completes the challenge and rewards you with various prizes, including Forgotten Souls.

These objectives might include:

• Slay Servants of Hell
• Complete mini-events
• Escort basins

The specific event you encounter and its specialization objective depend on the zone where the event is located. Note that areas marked with Strongholds need to be cleared before Legion Events will appear. All zones are as follows:

• Fractured Peaks - Kor Dragan Stronghold
• Dry Steppes - Norgoi Vigil
• Dry Steppes - Temple of Rot Stronghold
• Hawezar - Crusader's Monument Stronghold
• Hawezar - Haunted Wreckage
• Kehjistan - Alcarnus Stronghold
• Kehjistan - Dilapidated Aqueducts
• Scosglen - Carrowcrest Ruins
• Nahantu - Chakhir Stronghold
• Nahantu - Viz-jun

Legion Events have a group aspect; the more players gathered, the greater your chance of looting! Also, if a campfire icon appears within the event area after it starts, approach it to gain more XP.

If you are playing on Torment 4 difficulty, you will typically receive approximately 200 Forgotten Souls per completed Legion Event, which will be awarded as a loot chest or bonus chest.

Helltides

Helltides often coincide with Legion Events. If you're lucky enough to have both events in the same zone, you can acquire many Forgotten Souls in a short time!

As another limited-time event, Helltides refreshes every 5 minutes and lasts for 55 minutes each time, appearing as a red area on the minimap. It changes the appearance of the area and spawns new enemies.

During enemy kills and after unlocking specific chests, you have a chance to obtain the special currency, Aberrant Cinders. This currency can be used to unlock reward chests earned during Helltides, offering a chance to obtain Forgotten Souls.

Also Read: Why Veterans Are Frustrated With Diablo 4 Season 10's Timed Events? | Too Slow For High-DPS Players

Note that Aberrant Cinders can only be used to unlock chests rewarded by the current Helltide and cannot be accumulated. To avoid wasting them, you need to consume them immediately after completing a round of Helltides.

Tree Of Whispers

This event is part of Diablo 4 endgame content and functions similarly to a bounty system. You'll unlock it after completing the campaign and begin completing its bounty missions to earn exclusive item Grim Favors.

Once you've accumulated 10 Grim Favors, you can return to Tree of Whispers and choose one of three collections as a reward. If you want to farm Forgotten Souls, prioritize the greater or ancestral collection.

Different bounty missions reward different amounts of Grim Favors; choose the more rewarding ones within your ability. If you accumulate more than 10 Grim Favors in a single run, the excess will be carried over to the next run's progress bar.

It's worth noting that Tree of Whispers missions typically spawn 5-7 within a zone, so you can choose to complete bounty missions simultaneously with Helltides or Legion Events in that zone to maximize Forgotten Souls farming efficiency.

While this guide is designed for Season 10, most of the content is expected to remain applicable after Season 11 launches. However, please note the minor changes due to the season update! Wishing you all the best at Sanctuary!

As is well known, the developers significantly increased monster difficulty and reworked the character defense system in the Diablo 4 Season 11 PTR, increasing the overall challenge of endgames but impacting the player experience to some extent.

Therefore, following player feedback on the PTR, they decided to completely overhaul Season 11 class system. In addition to increasing the strength of all classes by 5-10 tiers of Pits, they also modified resource management and removed all damage caps.

Here, we'll discuss in detail the changes to the class system in Diablo 4 Season 11 and the balance adjustments for each class, helping you choose the best class based on your playstyle when the new season launches on December 9th.

Class System Overhaul

Overall, the class system in Season 11 has three major changes. Before delving into the individual classes, you need to understand these major changes, as they affect all builds in the game.

Reduced Pit Difficulty Scaling

The first change is a reduction in Pit difficulty tiers. According to developer interviews, the strength of all builds will increase by 5 to 10 Pit tiers in the new season. This means that players who can easily clear a 100-level Pit on PTR server could potentially reach 110 tiers on the live server. However, the final result remains to be seen.

Melted Heart of Selig

The second change is a complete balance overhaul of Melted Heart of Selig Unique Amulet. On the PTR server, this item provides thousands of resources, allowing Barbarian players to easily generate over 50,000 Fury.

However, the new version will only provide approximately twice as many resources. This means that if you normally have 400 Fury, Melted Heart of Selig will only provide 800 Fury. While this is still strong, it's far less than on the PTR server.

More importantly, the damage-to-resource conversion rate will also change. On the PTR server, damage is converted into 1 point of resource loss. However, in the live server, this ratio might be 1/100, or any other balanced ratio. This means that Melted Heart of Selig will be more defensively oriented compared to the PTR, even though it provides fewer resources. But given the higher threat level of monsters in Season 11, this defensive boost is crucial.

Damage Cap Removal

The last piece of good news is that the developers have announced the removal of the damage cap in the new season, including Ramaladni's Magnum Opus, Hydras' Serpentine, and Ancestral Guidance. This is excellent for the diversity and growth potential of class builds.

All Class Changes

Considering these two changes, let's analyze each class one by one to see their current state.

Barbarian

Let's start with the class most affected by Melted Heart of Selig changes.

On the PTR server, Barbarian, using Hammer of the Ancients, easily cleared 125 tier Pits with 50,000 Fury. Thanks to the combined boosts from Ramaladni's Magnum Opus and Hammer of the Ancients, this build was ridiculously powerful.

However, now that resource generation has plummeted from 50,000 to around 800, the build's power has drastically decreased. Ramaladni's Magnum Opus alone lost about 17 tiers of tier scaling; Hammer of the Ancients suffers an even greater loss, as it scales every 10 resources.

HOTA Barbarian build is about 35 tiers lower than on the PTR server. However, considering the 10-tier gain from the Pit difficulty adjustment, the build can still reach around 100 tiers. This is still very solid, placing it in the top 80% or even higher, but it's no longer the absolute king it was on the PTR server.

For Druid players, the changes to Melted Heart of Selig did have some impact, but not nearly as much as Barbarian build.

Previously, Cataclysm Druid could easily clear 106 pits on the PTR thanks to Ancestral Guidance buff and a large resource pool. However, with resources plummeting from 35,000 to around 750, this build lost approximately 16 pits. But with the introduction of an additional 10-tier boost, Cataclysm Druid's ceiling is now around 100 pits, remaining competitive.

However, the biggest unknown right now is whether Ancestral Guidance cap will be removed. Frankly, we can't be 100% certain of all the details until the patch is released.

If Ancestral Guidance has no cap and improves with the new Melted Heart of Selig buff, then Cataclysm Druid might be even stronger than we expect.

Necromancer

Necromancer performed exceptionally well in Season 11 and even has a strong potential to return to the meta.

So why is it so strong in the new season? This is entirely because most Necromancer builds don't rely as heavily on Melted Heart of Selig as other classes.

Even back on the PTR, many players had already developed various builds that could clear levels 100-105 without relying on unbalanced resource bonuses, not to mention that all of these builds will receive a 10-level boost on the live server.

For example, Shadowblight Necromancer could already clear level 105 during the PTR, and now they can even challenge level 115, which is absolutely top-tier.

While Shadowblight build is stable, reliable, and powerful, what's truly exciting is Golem Necromancer using the brand-new Diablo 4 item - Gravebloom. This build could already clear level 100 on the PTR, and since it's a completely new build, there's still a lot of room for optimization. With the 10-level boost, the target depth for this build is now level 110 and even higher. It's also worth mentioning that this is a summoner build, which is fantastic for players who like to use summons to assist in combat.

Therefore, Necromancer is definitely one of the strongest classes in Season 11. It boasts multiple build options, easily clearing 110 pits, and offers a rich selection of items and skills, along with reliable defenses.

If you want to maximize the power of your Necromancer build, then in addition to a proper skill tree setup, it is also important to get and equip the best gear. It's worth mentioning that to celebrate the Thanksgiving and Black Friday, IGGM is offering a massive lucky draw, with every registered user getting one chance daily and a 100% winning rate! This means you can easily buy Diablo 4 items at lower prices on IGGM!

Sorcerer

Getting back to the main topic, Sorcerer also looks very strong in the new season, with its strongest builds being Crackling Energy or Lightning Spear.

On the PTR server, Crackling Energy Sorcerer can even clear 105 pits without relying on Melted Heart of Selig. This build is inherently powerful and has excellent scaling. With the additional 10-pit boost, Crackling Energy build is expected to challenge 115 pits or even higher.

Even better, there are currently no plans to nerf Crackling Energy. The build is stable and balanced on the PTR server, so it will only receive a pure buff upon release.

Spiritborn

Spiritborn will receive some significant nerfs in the new season, but it will still be very strong.

During the PTR, Evade Spiritborn build had some serious bugs. Primary Eagle Hall damage would stack twice, and Loyalty's Mantle damage calculation, which should have been additive, was multiplicative and caused additional damage.

These bugs are now being fixed. As a result, Evade Spiritborn's strength was significantly reduced, losing approximately 9-11 tier scaling, but subsequently gained 10 tiers because of Pit level adjustments. The end result is that Evade Spiritborn's Pit level is around 108, which is still very strong.

However, it's important to note that since Evade's abilities heavily rely on Temerity shield bonus in the PTR, whether this bonus will be nerfed is crucial to the current strength of this build.

Rogue

Finally, but still worth mentioning, Rogue performed poorly on PTR servers. However, the key point is that Rogue didn't abuse Melted Heart of Selig, so it didn't lose anything due to the nerfs. This means the class simply benefits from the increased difficulty of the 10-level Pit adjustment.

Death Trap Rogue build is approaching 100 Pit levels on PTR server. With the additional 10 levels of buffs, Death Trap build is expected to reach 110 Pit levels; however, a build based on Heartseeker skills is also viable.

Overall, Rogue is understated yet powerful. If other classes are nerfed while Rogue is buffed, it could become a dark horse in the new season. So don't underestimate this class.

In short, the class balance is currently quite good, with multiple classes offering various viable builds, which is definitely beneficial for the long-term development of Diablo 4. However, this is based on what the developers have currently leaked, and there are still some significant unknowns. Are there any other balance changes we don't yet know about? We'll have to wait for the final Season 11 patch notes.

Around the time before a new Diablo 4 season launches, builds focusing on new unique items or seasonal mechanics often become popular in the community. However, some classic builds, while perhaps slightly nerfed, remain worth using.

With Season 11's release date fast approaching, you're probably considering which builds to choose for the new season. If you're used to playing Sorcerer in most seasons, consider continuing with Frozen Orb Build.

Below, we'll introduce how to craft this classic Sorcerer build this season, based on the known content and changes in Season 11.

Frozen Orb Build Overview

This build performed only moderately in the still-unfinished Season 10, perhaps because there were too many builds that could overshadow it with Chaos Armor. However, it's expected to continue its strength in Season 11.

This build primarily utilizes summoning skills, enabling it to deal extremely high AoE damage in combat. It also provides crowd control to manage large groups of enemies and gains an advantage in boss fights due to its high movement speed.

However, to maintain this build's effectiveness, you'll need to buy Diablo 4 items and ensure your mana regeneration is reliable. Therefore, the deeper you progress in the game, the more suitable Frozen Orb Build becomes.

How To Choose Skills?

In Season 11, to make this build work, simply choose enough summoning skills and continuously cast them. Generally, the following Sorcerer skills are recommended:

• Familiar: Summons a familiar with the same element as your last cast skill. For 8 seconds, it tracks enemies and periodically explodes, dealing 70% of its elemental damage. You can have up to 6 familiars active at a time.
• Lightning Spear: Summons a lightning spear that tracks enemies, dealing 15% damage to each enemy hit over 6 seconds. A critical hit will also inflict a 3-second vulnerability status on the target.
• Ice Blades: Summons a pair of ice blades that deal 23% damage with rapid slashes over 6 seconds, and has a 40% chance of inflicting a 2-second vulnerability status on the target.
• Frozen Orb: Releases a frozen orb that inflicts a 34% freeze effect and fires piercing shards at enemies, dealing 52% damage. The frozen orb explodes upon disappearing, dealing additional damage and inflicting the frozen effect.

If possible, it's best to unlock enchantments for all skills to maximize damage output. For example, with Frozen Orb, when enchanted, it has a 30% chance to fire an additional frozen orb at nearby enemies when you cast a non-basic skill.

Generally, the more summoning skills you have, the higher the damage your frozen orbs will deal. By continuously using summoning skills to fire more frozen orbs with each explosion, you can achieve near-perpetual damage output.

How To Pair It With Gear?

It's important to note that Season 11 significantly changed Tempering and Masterworking mechanics, which enhance gear affix effects more stable, and added a new Sanctification system.

These changes mean that after configuring your gear for your build, your affix upgrade choices will become more consistent as the season progresses. However, be aware that gear cannot be modified after Sanctification.

With these Season 11 tips in mind, you can start choosing gear for your Frozen Orb Build. We recommend Heir of Perdition first, as it increases your damage by 60% and offers a chance to steal Lilith's Favor from allies during combat.

Due to its unique effects and its irreplaceable nature in this build, you should continuously farm Tormented bosses after Season 11 begins until you obtain its drop.

The second recommended gear is Shroud of False Death. Its key effect is granting invisibility and a 40% movement speed bonus if you haven't attacked in the past 2 seconds.

Next, add Aspect of Frozen Memories to activate Avalanche Key passive an additional time, increasing damage against multiple enemies. Note that this item is only usable by Sorcerers.

If you want to use Sanctification on these gear for even greater benefits, you need to proceed with caution. Sanctification results are not only unchangeable but also random, meaning a bad buff could ruin your gear.

This is why the mechanic was initially popular, but PTR testing quickly revealed it wasn't as effective as expected. Perhaps Sanctification will be changed after Season 11.

Skill Tree Unlocking

First, you should allocate all points to Frozen Orb to maximize damage. Simultaneously unlock Elemental Dominance to further enhance Frozen Orb's damage and the build's overall resilience.

Elemental Dominance allows your core and mastery abilities to be cast when you have more than 50 mana, and increases their final damage by 3%.

Next, allocate some points to Frost Nova and Hydra to deal more damage. While the latter is a combustion skill and might seem out of place with this build, its burning effect provides resilience, increased damage, and cooldown reduction.

Notably, don't forget to enchant Frost Nova, which affects your Lucky Strike, giving summoning abilities a 30% chance to cast Frost Nova on hit.

Finally, don't forget to unlock Ice Blades and activate Lightning Spear to complement it.

How Effective Is This Build In Practice?

We first tested The Pit in 2.5.0 PTR as an example. With all gear maintaining normal upgrade effects, Frozen Orb Build can help you quickly reach level 75, but it starts to struggle after level 80.

However, this is also related to the damage nerf in Diablo 4, so if you only want to farm resources through The Pit, this level of depth is sufficient.

As for dealing with Tormented bosses, since Sorcerers have been weakened in terms of mobility and damage output, this class is inherently difficult. Frozen Orb Build is one of the best options to maximize its potential.

Overall, Sorcerers are not expected to be a dominant class in Diablo 4 Season 11, but Frozen Orb Build gives you the opportunity to continue experimenting with it. So if you're interested, you can try it out following our guide!

Diablo 4 Season 11 is confirmed for release on December 9, 2025. However, before the new season begins, you might have had a lingering question: does Druids, and indeed all classes, feel significantly weaker overall? This isn't good news for players who enjoy the challenge of Torment 4.

Fortify System Rework

This isn't an illusion. Since PTR 2.5.0, they've not only weakened classes overall and increased monster difficulty, but also added a new defense system. While theoretically easier to understand, it's more complex in practice.

However, the real issue lies with the new Fortify system: it no longer provides passive damage reduction but instead acts as an auxiliary life pool for continuous healing. This change directly impacts Druids, as Fortify was once one of their most powerful defensive mechanisms.

Fortify now functions more like an additional pool of health, an inner shield that accumulates up to your maximum health and slowly regenerates while active. This means that you can gain Fortified simply by accumulating a certain number of Fortify effects, instead of needing to reach a specific threshold.

This change hits classes that rely heavily on Fortify, such as those with abilities like Pulverize, particularly those that previously depended on Fortify for survival. Now, with the reduced percentage of Fortify effects, stacking large amounts of the effect is no longer as effective, depriving this build of a solid defensive foundation.

Let's take a simple example. Previously, suppose your gear or passive ability converted 50% of your maximum health into 45 health. Since you maintained Fortify for most of the fight, all 45 health was enough to keep you surviving.

Now, this percentage might drop to 10% or even 5%, meaning your Fortify pool is significantly reduced. Therefore, when you take minor damage, your Fortify will decrease rapidly. Once you lose Fortify, your damage reduction will also be drastically reduced.

This might be negligible in normal combat, but it makes dying much easier in high-difficulty dungeons like Tier 90 Pits, meaning you'll have to rely on armor and resistances instead of those 45 health points.

In short, the new Fortify system is more dynamic, but also less reliable for Druid players. This means increased survivability; you can no longer simply stack effects, but need to actively manage it with gold and combine it with high armor, resistances, maximum health, and the fortify spawn ability.

Best Druid Builds To Cope With Fortify Changes

Druids aren't entirely helpless against this change in Diablo 4 Season 11; you can still turn the tide with specific builds.

Boulder Druid

Currently, Boulder Druid build is quite balanced in terms of defense and damage output. With a reliable set of gear, it can always give you greater survivability in combat.

And with the introduction of the new Fortify system, this build is one of the most adaptable setups.

Since Season 11 no longer features Chaos Armor, eliminating the seasonal power that would propel our damage to the heavens, gear setups are now much simpler. We're back to practical Ancestral and Unique gear, as well as Mythic gear.

Here are the core components of this build, crucial for its late-game effectiveness:

• Vasily's Prayer
• Shroud of False Death
• Insatiable Fury
• Ring of Starless Skies
• Tibault's Will
• Dolmen Stone

This gear set is suitable for various game content and can even push through The Pits to around level 90-100, which currently seems feasible.

While these Diablo 4 items aren't strictly mandatory, due to changes in the Tempering and Masterworking system in the new season, your gloves and boots will almost certainly need a Dolmen Stone with Greater Affix to reduce Nature Magic cooldown and extend Hurricane duration.

This is why Masterworking no longer increases affixes but only the base armor value of the gear. If you already have a weapon with the Nature Magic cooldown reduction stat and try to upgrade it, the final upgrade won't improve that weapon; it will only improve another weapon without that stat. So, things are worse than before.

Another key point is Tibault's Will. These pants increase damage and are generally very suitable for Druid builds. However, due to current fortify and defensive issues, you can also swap them for Temerity to improve combat survivability, but only for pushing pits.

In short, while all these issues are likely to be fixed before the season starts, Boulder Druid remains a very well-rounded option.

Pulverize Druid

Next up is one of the most popular Druid builds - Pulverize.

Pulverize Druid remains one of the strongest builds for running pits and towers on the PTR. Although it also faces the fortify issues that all Druid builds currently encounter, it remains very reliable.

This build boasts extremely high base damage, meaning it's very flexible in terms of gear selection. You can replace Heir of Perdition with Vasily's Prayer, or even choose an Ancestral piece with defensive stats. Before obtaining the Rotting Lightbringer, you can use a regular two-handed map with Legendary Aspects.

Of course, some people dislike this build because it's slow and unfriendly to mapping. However, with the right farming gear, it's still very powerful. As we mentioned before, it has a complete gear setup and extremely high base damage.

In short, Pulverize Druid remains a popular choice for the next season, offering good defense, huge damage output, and consistent farming speed.

Shred Druid

Finally, let's look at one of the most popular builds in the community, Shred Druid.

In the current Season 10, Shred build excels in every aspect. It's almost omnipotent and incredibly fast. But remember, this is thanks to Grizzly Rage, Chaos Armor, and seasonal Perks.

However, in Diablo 4 Season 11, the Shred build lost all of that. Not only are Chaos Armor and Perks obsolete, but Grizzly Rage was completely destroyed in Season 11; its stacking duration is no longer part of the skill, and its cooldown only begins after the skill ends.

Without Grizzly Rage, this build is incredibly difficult to play, especially in high-difficulty dungeons like those at levels 85-90.

Even so, it remains one of the strongest farming builds on high difficulties. Its advantage lies in its ability to focus on mobility and time management, and it doesn't even require Greater Affix bonus, so we can still enjoy it.

Overall, the gear setup for this build remains unchanged; Heir of Perdition and Shroud of False Death are still our best endgame gear. We can retain Shred skill for daily farming and leveling; it's still a viable option, just significantly weaker than before.

In any case, the changes to the fortify system in Diablo 4 Season 11 have had a significant impact on the defense setup of Druid builds so far. However, it remains to be seen how things will turn out in the new season. Perhaps Druid players can still find some new mechanisms to reverse their current disadvantage.