On February 29th, the developers of Diablo 4 talked about the leaderboards in a livestream and finally revealed when they will be coming to the game. You can find the most important information from the stream here.
The most important thing from the stream:
In the Twitch live stream on February 29th, the developers presented the leaderboards that will come into play on March 5th. In a showcase, the team presented two runs in a “gauntlet”. The gameplay was presented and commented on by the two content creators “Annacakelive” and “Macrobioboi”.
Your strategy is crucial in the leaderboards
How do the leaderboards work? Every week you can face a new challenge: a fixed dungeon in which you fight for the most powerful loot and a place on the leaderboard. The challenge is available once you reach World Tier 4. The layout and spawns in the dungeon remain the same for the week, so everyone has the same requirements. Level 100 is not a requirement, but it is an advantage.
The leaderboards are divided into different categories – solo players have leaderboards for their own class, groups of 2, 3 and 4 players each have their own leaderboards. Softcore and hardcore also have their own boards.
In the stream, both the content creators and the developers emphasize that this is primarily about strategy. What matters here is how many “proofs of power” you collect by killing monsters and how many chests you can open within the 8-minute time limit.
The leaderboards will also be available beyond Season 3 and will include seasonal content. So in the current season your seneschal comes with you into the dungeon. A kind of leaderboard event is also scheduled to start on March 19th – a two-week contest in which leaderboard participants can earn art prints.
Diablo 4: The gameplay trailer for Season 3
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Vampiric powers from Season 2 are coming back
What are vampiric powers? The Vampiric Powers were the season mechanic in Season 2. With them you could improve your hero in order to benefit from even more powerful bonuses.
Six of the Vampiric Forces return in Season 3, but as legendary aspects and not as 1:1 copies. According to developer Adam Z. Jackson, you get the powers through drops in the game.
The following powers return:
Adjustments to classes and Uber Unique crafting
What else does the midseason update bring? With the upcoming patch 1.3.3, the amount of Magnificent Sparks you need to craft Uber Uniques in Diablo 4 will be reduced from 5 to 4.
In addition, the midseason update will make adjustments for the classes as well as for the Seneschal companion. The Seneschal is getting a few nerfs after being made stronger in a previous patch.
The Barbarian has the strongest endgame builds in Diablo 4. With the adjustment, the developers also want to make it stronger for the early game. The druid and necromancer pets are also buffed. Below you can see the screenshots from the English-language live stream:
Season 4 brings the PTR and itemization changes
This was revealed for Season 4: According to game director Joe Piepiora, the team is planning numerous updates for Season 4, which they have been working on for months. They can’t say much about it yet, but two features were mentioned:
Tomorrow, March 1st, the patch notes for patch 1.3.3 will be released. And in a few weeks the developers are planning another live stream in which they will tell you more about the test realms.
A few details about the first expansion for Diablo 4 have recently become known. The “Vessel of Hatred” expansion is scheduled to be released at the end of 2024, with a closer presentation planned for summer 2024.
An expert has taken the large list of code and sorted which information from it could be particularly exciting: Diablo 4: Expert summarizes what the first expansion should bring, talks about classes, skills, areas