August 14, 2025 • 36 mins
I sat down with the Diablo 4 developers to dive into everything coming in the Season 10 Public Test Realm! For the first time, the PTR reveal took place in a brand-new format — the Sanctuary Sit-down — hosted in the Sanctuary Discord. This replaces the old PTR Campfire Chats, but don’t worry, the regular season Campfire Chats are here to stay.
In this discussion, we break down: 🔥 New Chaos Powers 🛡️ Chaos Armor 👹 Big updates to the Infernal Hordes
Season 10 is shaping up to be a wild ride — let’s get into it!
#Diablo4 #PTR #Season10 #DiabloPartner
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Responders Today I joined the devs in the Sanctuary Discord for the upcoming PTR for season 10.
We got to talk about all of the things that will be changing and will be available in the PTR.
I wanted to leave everybody with this before you hop into what the sit down was like.
This is gonna be the public round notes, so there will be changes coming to the upcoming season that we will not see in these notes.
(00:22):
These are not final.
These are absolutely 100% subject to change.
So if there are any nerfs or there are any buffs that you do not agree with, make sure you leave some feedback.
And for those of you out there that wanted to see an actual campfire chat that is still coming.
When we get closer to season 10, they will have a full blown campfire chat, what you're used to.
They're actually working on revamping that setup.
I'm excited to see what they bring in that campfire chat.
(00:43):
They will cover a lot more about season 10 and what we can expect in that.
For now, take a listen to the sanctuary.
Sit down in the Discord server.
This was an audio only.
I put a little visual in there for you guys, but you get to watch it right here.
Wanders.
Welcome to the Sanctuary Sit Down series where members of the Diablo community like me get a chance to chat with the developers about upcoming seasonal content.
(01:06):
I'm your host, Lipes.
Joining me today are three of the developers that are gonna walk us through what to expect during the upcoming public test realm.
Before we get into the good stuff, let's get some introductions out.
Alin, you wanna start? Sure, yeah.
I'm Alin Hall.
I'm a systems designer working on Diablo four, mostly working on seasonal stuff, uh, at the moment, like season 10.
(01:27):
All right, Ben.
Uh, this is, Hey, I'm, uh, Ben Fletcher.
I'm the, the lead designer for season 10.
And, hi, I'm Charles Bun, um, working on the final design team.
I mostly do class design work, um, and for season 10, I worked on the, uh, cast perks.
All right.
Awesome.
Well, thank you for everybody for being here.
Um, so Charles, let's start with you.
(01:48):
What are some of the things that we're working on for season 10? Uh, yeah.
Um, let's talk about, uh, chaos Perks.
It seems like someone's saying, my audio's a little low, so I'm gonna try to talk loud here, I guess.
Or lemme take a look at setting.
Just be right.
Um, you can also update volume on Discord in particular.
(02:11):
But yeah.
Uh, so for season 10, um, I wanna talk a little bit about, um, kinda the concept of, of seasonal powers and kind of, um, you know, how, how we've thought about it in, in previous seasons, and a little bit about how we're thinking about them now here, uh, in season 10 and moving forward.
Um, you know, we've had, we've had a number of seasons where we, we introduced like some seasonal powers.
(02:32):
Um, like, uh, you know, in the season of witchcraft, we had the witchcraft powers and then the boss powers and so on.
A lot of times when we think about, um, building, uh, building your character, uh.
You build up your character in kind of multiple layers where, um, you know, you get your, your basic skills or like your, your skills that you're picking up, skill tree and your items on top of that and your paragon and, and, and then kind of the like, icing on the cake.
(03:02):
The top layer is, is kind of those seasonal powers and we add in, um, you know, new seasonal power.
Um.
And it, it modifies your build a little bit, makes it a little different flavor.
But then, uh, a lot of the com the, the feedback we've heard from players is that, uh, you know, next, next season you kind of scrape off that icing and then put on a new flavor of icing.
(03:23):
And so kind of the, the running joke is like, well, what, what flavor is, is the next season gonna bring.
And, and we thought here for season 10, we really wanna disrupt that, that pattern where we're not looking at just kind of surface layer powers that are just kind of added on and removed.
We're really looking at, you know, to continue the cake analogy, right? Is, is looking at, at changing up the filling of the cake, the, the kind of connective tissue between your builds with our seasonal offerings.
(03:49):
Um, but to be able to be like, Hey, here's something that actually just fundamentally changes how you play your character.
It's not just an extra effect that just, um, you know, is added on, on top of everything else.
And so with that in mind, we built what we call, uh, kiosk perks and calling them perks, kind of differentiates them from, um.
(04:10):
The, the, the kind of power designs that we've had in the past, uh, where it really is focusing in on these, this kind of connective tissue in between, um, the, the kind of layers of your classes, your skills, your actual skills, and your itemization.
And so we built these, this seasonal power system, really all about, um, making sure it hooks into your skills, it influences your build in ways that we have not really done before, um, with seasonal powers in the past.
(04:35):
Um, and also speaking of item builds, we're, we're gonna be talking a little bit later about, um, chaos armor.
Uh, I think Ason will be covering a lot of that.
Uh, which is also kind of another take on, on how we're, we took the learnings of previous seasonal powers and kind of feedback we've gotten around that and use that to iterate and make a, a more interesting and engaging system here moving forward.
Um, actually very excited to hear about these seasonal powers.
(04:59):
Um, so with the way that we're approaching this, so we're.
Still thinking about seasonal powers, but this is now going to be something that we're going to just add extra layers on.
'cause you said armor and now it's gonna be moving to perks.
So is this gonna be something that we're gonna be looking to do going into every season now? I don't, wouldn't commit to, um, future seasons.
(05:22):
You know, we're here talking about the season 10 PTR and how we're, we're really looking at that.
I think it's definitely something that the entire team has, has taken feedback in on, and we're gonna be using that to influence our, our future design, uh, directions.
Um, but, uh, mainly want to talk about, you know, what's coming in season 10 and not necessarily on, on future seasons, which are still in development.
(05:42):
Okay.
That is awesome.
Um, so.
We got Ben here.
Um, we have, um, actually I have a, um, a graphic here that I wanna put up on the screen that maybe we can, um, talk about here.
Let me just get this up.
All right.
Can anybody see the, the graphic here? Uh, it looks like your s.
(06:04):
Screen is loading something.
There it is.
It just popped in for me.
All right.
So what you're seeing there is, uh, a chaos rift.
Uh, so before I really get into to what chaos rifts are, let's just talk about chaos.
The theme of the season, uh, is, is chaos.
So basically kind of the narrative wrapper here is meos been free to wander around sanctuary for a little while.
Now we're starting to see the impacts of that.
(06:24):
Basically as very presence is weakening the veil between heaven and hell, and that's making these chaos riffs pop up throughout the land.
Uh, so in the season, you're gonna be finding, closing these Chaos Rifs the cast Rifs is basically a one-way portal from help bring demons with it.
We've got a new family of demon, a chaos family, uh, that has some unique, uh, fun twists on it.
(06:45):
Uh, but anyways, you're gonna be killing them.
Closing, closing the rifs, and that's how you're gonna be getting your reputation, your seasonal currency, uh, stuff like that.
Uh, so the, the main place that you'll start encountering these, uh, as you begin the game will be in Hell Tides.
You'll be going through hell tides, you'll see these, uh, markers pop up on your map.
It looks a lot like an offering, uh, marker from Infernal Hoards.
(07:05):
And that's because it's got a similar function to it in that these don't just open by themselves.
You actually have to go up and, uh, opt into, uh, the experience.
And so you'll be able to see the RIF name, you'll be able to see the rewards associated with it before you interact with it.
And that, uh, you know, at the beginning you're probably just gonna be opening, closing all the ones that you come across.
(07:26):
But as you get deeper into the experience, uh, and you've, you know, you've encountered a lot of these, you know, kind of what's in each one, what each one entails, then you can start making informed decisions on like, okay, yeah, this one I definitely want do because I'm chasing that reward.
Or, I just really enjoy the gameplay of this one.
Uh, and other ones like, uh, you know what, I'm, I'm not really looking for that thing.
I can just move on with my experience and it's not opening by itself.
(07:48):
It forcing me into, uh, the engagement.
Also, you know, this being in hell tides, if you're actually trying to focus on something else in hell tides like fighting blood maidens, or, um, you know, collecting senders and stuff like that, then because these are opt into, they're not gonna be pulling you away from the thing that you're trying to focus on.
Uh, but it's not all hell tides, especially in that, that pre torment experience.
(08:09):
We wanted to work in some, some more activities kind of into that leveling loop.
Uh, so by closing the rifs in hell tides, uh, you can actually find a new kind of nightmare dungeon sigil that's got the cast rift a affect.
Uh, and by using that takes you into a special nightmare dungeon that's dense with chaos, rifts and, uh, chaos monster family monsters.
(08:30):
So really high density on the rewards that you get from those things.
Um.
And then the third step is closing the risks that are in those nightmare dungeons.
You have a chance to get what's called a fleeting compass.
Sounds awfully close to an feral compass that gets you into feral hoards.
That's the idea.
We've made a pre, an abbreviated pre torment version of infernal hodes for you engage with in the pre torment experience.
(08:54):
Basically, it's shortened down so it's only four waves, and you're only facing off against two, uh, of the fell Council at the end, instead of, uh, all three members.
Um, but um, it's still like monster dense.
It's still reward dense.
Uh, they're gonna be pretty rare to come across, but it's definitely worth your time to do 'em, uh, because of, you know, the extra experience and rewards you're gonna get from, from doing those.
(09:18):
Uh, once you move into the, uh, you know.
Hit level six d max out, your characters get moving into those torment tiers.
Then the focus really shifts into our updates that we've made around infernal hoards.
Uh, so we've made some updates to the existing infernal hoards.
We've taken, you know, the offerings that have been underperforming in the past or just weren't as fun and tried to bring those up to the same level as like the hell born, uh, offerings that have been so, uh, popular in the last few seasons.
(09:46):
Uh, on top of that, we've also made some minor adjustments to the Fell Council fight to make it more interesting and, uh, more enjoyable to do.
Uh, but the biggest changes to infernal hodes come from chaos being injected into them.
Uh, as you're going through your waves, you'll occasionally see a fourth.
Uh, offering option pop up.
And that fourth option will always be, uh, a chaos offering that'll lead to a ca wave.
(10:09):
And the ca cast waves are quite a bit different than your standard in frontal hodes waves.
Instead of, uh, you know, the a or events that you see during a standard wave and, and the boons and bans that are also associated with that, there are no boons and bands for the calero.
They are very dense with ather.
They're, you know, if you can perform well, if you could do good, then you know you're gonna get the most ather from a single wave by doing these.
(10:32):
Also, the gameplay is different.
Uh, they're almost shaped after like a, a mini game type mentality.
Like one of my favorites kind of flips things on its head and instead of destroying.
Etheric masses, they put an etheric mass in the middle of the arena, and then you've got the lunatics, the exploding guys throwing themselves at it from every direction trying to destroy it.
(10:52):
And your job is to defend it from them.
And when you get to the end of the wave, the more health that that mass has, uh, the more ather you're gonna earn from that wave.
Uh, and all that leads into the new boss fight that we have available at the end of Infernal Hordes.
And that's against Bartok, uh, the new boss for the season.
Uh, you can still do the Fell Council fight, but now we've got an additional option, uh, of Bartok.
(11:16):
Uh, but he's not a walk in the park.
He's a tougher boss.
Uh, and he also.
Is harder, uh, you don't just automatically get to do them.
Basically when you get to the end of your waves, now you'll be presented with two offerings.
Uh, one we'll take you to the Fell Council, just the normal experience.
You don't need to buy into it.
But the other offering actually costs, has an upfront ather cost to get into it.
Uh, so you have to have performed well enough, uh, in your waves to be able to afford to fight.
(11:40):
Bar talk, first of all.
And it, the way that we're tuning that for a 10 wave compass, it's pretty doable.
Uh, especially as you get, you know, deeper into torment and get better and better at it.
But then it becomes, starts becoming a lot harder with a six or eight wave compass where you really have to perform well if you're gonna be able to, uh, afford to get into the bar talk, fight.
And the other thing about the Bartok fight is it is a lot, uh, more difficult than the Fell Council.
(12:03):
The, the fight itself is a lot more complex.
It's kind of a bullet hell style where we've got teleporters in the arena and you're having to teleport back and forth and avoid these, these massive, uh.
Uh, just screen clearing attacks that he has.
Um, and it's, you know, it's just got a lot more, uh, flavor to the boss fight.
Uh, but the, the big reason you wanna do him, he's gonna be more rewarding than the foul council.
(12:26):
But the biggest reason is he is your best shot at getting the, the new chaos armor that we have that we haven't talked about yet.
Alan's gonna touch on, on the chaos armor in just a moment.
Uh, but basically you, uh, your, your best chance at, at collecting that armor is gonna be to fight bar talk.
And I'm excited.
The infernal, Hodes are probably one of my favorite content out there.
(12:47):
So you said that this is gonna be pre torment.
You can start unlocking it just by going straight into hell.
Tides at, is there a minimum level requirement to get there? Or you can just open it up.
So the stuff that I was just talking about with the barock fight in the full-blown infernal hoards, that's still only once you get to torment tears.
We have like an, a special like smaller version that actually doesn't even have the cast waves in it.
(13:10):
It's just a smaller version of, uh, the pre chaos, um, infernal hoards that you can do.
Now pre torment.
And there's not a level requirement though.
You know, if you just, you know, take your a level one character and, and go straight into there, you're probably gonna get wiped pretty hard.
Uh, so, you know, a soft level requirement of, yeah, you need to have a little bit of gear, um, which you should have to get in there.
(13:33):
You will had to do hell tides for a little while, found the, the nightmare dungeon with the uh, or the nightmare dungeon s vigil with the cast.
Rift affix.
Run a couple of those and then.
Gotten one of these fleeting compasses to get you into there.
Uh, so we don't have a hard cap on it, but just naturally playing, uh, you should be at a level that that is appropriate once you unlock that.
(13:55):
Okay.
That's cool.
I, I like that we're adding in new stuff to the leveling process to kind of mix up what we're doing and where to go and what we're doing, so that's, that's awesome.
Yeah, we wanted to, to have a little bit more variety to that, that one to 60 leveling experience that we haven't always had in previous seasons.
That is very cool.
Now, I know we've talked a lot about, um, the chaos armor, but I want to share one more graphic.
(14:19):
I'm gonna swap this graphic around and then, um, I'm go back to you Charles, 'cause we didn't get to talk, uh, show the perks.
So I wanted to get that up on this, um, screen.
So lemme just get that real quick.
Yeah, I think we, uh, we talked a little bit about like the, the, the overall philosophy of, of seasonal powers and, and well the perks and, and how they're adjusting here.
Um, to talk through a little bit of the details of like, the exact mechanics of it.
(14:42):
Um, I think that's what I bring up a, a kind of visual of, of how it'll work.
Um, so I think one of the, the.
Cool parts about this system compared to previous systems, um, is that we, we have class specific perks.
So in the past, um, our seasonal powers were, were, uh, generic across the classes, right? Everyone had the access to the exact same set of things.
(15:04):
Maybe some classes, preferred ones over the other, but, um, you know, your tool set was, was identical.
Here we, we, we have the ability with class specific ones to actually make ones that, that directly hook into your class mechanics.
So we see one, an example here with the file, the Dead for Necker answers.
Uh, specifically allowing you to use each corpse twice.
(15:24):
So this way, like, hey, use corps explosion on a corpse.
Uh, the corpse is still there until you do it a second time and then consumes it.
Um, so this really like changes kinda your corpse economy in, in the necro build as well as creating a chaotic burst, which is, um, kind of a, a power that, that many of these, these powers, uh, these chaos perks use.
Um, but I think it's really cool that it allows us to, to look at, at different, um.
(15:47):
Class mechanics and, and there are still some generic effects here, but there are, um, uh, four class specific perks per class.
And so to really get, you know, to see all the things that are available across this entire, um, system, you, you're gonna need to take a look at each class.
In terms of like how you're actually gonna interact with it.
Um, pretty straightforward and, and pretty similar to some, uh, previous seasonal powers, just because we think that a lot of the complexity here is in their actual effects and how they impact your build.
(16:13):
Um, obviously the file the dead here, this example is relatively straightforward in terms of, um, what it does.
But there are definitely ones that have a lot bigger, uh.
Modifications to your build that really ask you to like play very differently.
Um, use your skills in different ways or itemized totally separately than, than you would have before, uh, to really take advantage of it.
And so because there's like a bit more of a complexity of ask, ask there in terms of like what the.
(16:37):
What you want to do to, to use these effects.
Um, actually like getting them socket them in is, is relatively straightforward, right? You can equip three of the non-unique perks, the magic rare and legendary.
So any three of those along with one unique perk, uh, the unique ones are definitely like the biggest, uh, change up.
Um, uh, the biggest, like ones that change up your build, uh, the kind of the most dramatic adjustments and require the, the biggest ask to, to, uh, uh, to work with.
(17:07):
That's pretty cool.
I'm pretty excited to see what the other classes have in store.
Uh, this is definitely a pretty big change going from everything just being generic and used all over, like it should help with some of the, um, diversity with the classes.
I like that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I, I think there you'll definitely, you know, find uses for some of the generics across each class.
But definitely, you know, the class specific ones are, are the ones that have, uh, you know, will definitely make it feel very different from class to class.
(17:31):
It's not just like, oh, I'm gonna run the exact same set of powers on every class, every character that I play, and you're gonna get a lot of, uh, new options across every, every class, uh, to, to kind of empower brand new bills that we may not have seen before because of these, uh, uh, perks.
I think something that's really worth emphasizing about the chaos perk system and how it differentiates itself from seasonal power is kind of what you're digging into here.
(17:55):
Like we see here it says you can consume each corpse twice.
Like that's an effect.
That's going to change how you're thinking about your build.
And that just wasn't something that you typically got from seasonal power before.
Like you'd probably get something that was like, oh, you know, you call a bunch of awesome magic that explodes everything, but it's not necessarily changing the way you're thinking about your core skill or changing the way you're thinking about your other tagged skills.
(18:17):
And all of these chaos perks are, are keying into that.
And the fact that there are some that also key into class specific stuff lets us go even deeper into that philosophy, which is really cool.
Yeah, just to throw out some, some examples to talk through, like, um, unstable power is one of the magic ones and it says that your basic skills are gonna be guaranteed to critically strike and overpower and deal increase damage, which is huge.
(18:42):
But the downside is that your basic skills now have a three second cool down.
And so in order to like really fully utilize this, you need to be looking at cool down reduction for your basic skill build.
You need to be looking at other effects that can reduce that, or possibly you, you do some cool down reduction and you play multiple basic skills so that while one's un cool down, you can cast the other one.
Um, and so this is like a, a new.
(19:04):
Pattern, like we're giving you a huge benefit, right? Guaranteed crit, guaranteed overpower.
You don't need to build crit strength.
You don't need to build overpower, or you build overpower damage.
Um, and, and you get a ton of damage up for front, but you have a different problem to solve.
And I think that's like really the, the sweet spot for these types of, uh, perks where it, it gives you a huge benefit, but also asks you to do something different in your build that you might not have, uh, done before.
(19:28):
Really take full advantage of it.
I cannot wait to get my hands on it.
Now.
We have been talking a lot about chaos armor.
It's come up a couple times.
I am pretty excited to dive into this.
So, Alin, we've already heard about a lot about the season, but let's talk about the chaos armor.
I'm gonna get the screenshot up on the monitor while you hop into it.
(19:51):
Sure.
Sounds good.
Yeah.
So, you know, we talked a little bit about Bart Tuck.
We talked a little bit about the, the seasonal theme of chaos.
So I want you guys to go on a little bit of a word journey with me here.
So, you're the hero of sanctuary.
You're going around, you're bopping demons on the head.
You go into the infernal, hoards bop, the demons on the head.
You finish that, you get to bar tuck here at the end.
(20:13):
What do you do? You bop him on the head, he falls over.
Loot, explodes outward.
And what do you see on the ground? You see a different color that you haven't seen before.
That is chaos armor.
So chaos armor is a new type of itemization that we are adding to the game in season 10.
Uh, it is seasonal itemization, so we didn't want to just do, um, chaos perks this season.
(20:38):
We also wanted to mix up even more because it's a season of chaos.
We want things to get crazy.
Um, and it's gonna live for the entire duration of season 10.
And there are two things about chaos armor that are pretty unique.
For the people asking in chat, it's like a green-ish color.
Yes, it's kind of green.
It will be pretty distinct.
But, uh, anyways, there are, um, two distinct things about chaos armor that you're gonna notice.
(21:01):
So you might see an aian iris here, and you might know that that came in season nine and was a sorcerer unique ambulance.
But you also might notice that in the stool tip, it's not an ambulance, it's a helmet.
So chaos armor transforms the slot of uniques that you've seen before into new slots.
So you can find chaos armor in any of the five armor slots, which is gonna be the helmet, the chess piece, the gloves, legs, and boots.
(21:28):
And this really opens up a ton of build crafting opportunities.
Like for example, you might really wanna find a Chaco or an air of perdition on your helmet.
Um, and then you might also have another helmet unique that you'd really love to wear, but you can't because you know you can't have two helmets.
But with chaos armor, you can, because you can find that unique item as chaos armer instead and put it in a different slot.
(21:50):
Now, not every unique is gonna have, uh, be chaos armor.
We have a curated list, however, a pretty significant majority of the uniques in the game are going to be capable of dropping as chaos armor.
Another thing I wanna touch on with the system is that we know a lot of people are going to layer bosses and, you know, living there, uh, and, and just bopping 'em on the head over and over, and that's where they go to target farm, their unique items.
(22:12):
We don't necessarily want that to always be the case.
Uh, so chaos armor is not going to primarily be found from fighting layer bosses.
There are going to be other places you're gonna go to find it.
In particular, infernal hoards in fighting bar tuck.
We really wanna mix that up so you can actually go to different activities in the game and, you know, have fun with fresh new experiences.
Um, but the second thing about chaos armor, getting a little ahead of myself here, is that.
(22:36):
The unique aspect is more powerful as well.
So you might notice in these tooltips here that the typically, what is the blue number on a unique power is actually like the a little green.
Um, so that means specifically on chaos armor, that it's going to max roll its unique power and it's 20% more powerful.
So it's not only the Max Maxwell, it's better on top of that.
(22:57):
So not only are you getting this interesting build crafting element to chaos armor, it's just straight up better too.
So we're really expecting some wild possibilities that are going to emerge from chaos armor.
Um, and we kind of had like when we had a few primary goals when we were working on chaos armor, but like the big thing is we really wanted to shake up the meta.
(23:18):
Uh, we're really expecting builds that were, you know, either previously underperform.
To be really powerful because of the permutations that are now available via Cas Perks and Ca Armor in Season 10.
And we also expect there to be builds that weren't even like a twinkle in our collective eye to emerge in season 10 because of these systems and go wild.
(23:41):
Um, and so I cannot wait to see what people come up with, uh, with these systems combined.
I think season 10 is gonna be absolutely wild.
I think it's gonna be crazy.
So I'm super excited about it.
Um, and the last thing I wanna touch on before we dive into conversation, I.
Is, um, just a little bit about like what we're looking for in the PTR.
Uh, this, this is gonna be in the PTR chaos arm is gonna be in the PTR.
(24:04):
So our perks or the other things that, uh, Ben talked about like rifs and Bartec and whatnot.
Um, but with chaos armor specifically, we really want to get your guys' takes on like.
Um, are there some items that you'd love to see as chaos armor? Are there some that feel too powerful as chaos armor? Um, like, 'cause right now we have everything balanced on a very level playing field, but we wanna hear what you guys think about, uh, like how the meta emerges and like what's powerful and what's maybe too weak so we can make sure that chaos armor is, is.
(24:33):
Fun is possible when it actually comes out.
So yeah, I definitely recommends getting in there, talking to the art dancing demon boy rack and getting those chaos armor ces and trying it out.
Well, I honestly cannot wait to get my hands on it.
So the, so you want us to focus on the chaos armor, and this is during the public test realm.
(24:54):
See what's strong, what's working, if there's something else that we want to add in.
Was there anything else that we should be focusing on during the public test realm? I think for like, yeah, go ahead.
I just mentioned for, for Chaos Perk, it's similar, right? You know, this is testing.
Uh, we are here to, to test and preview new content.
It's by no means finalized for what we're actually gonna end up shipping.
(25:15):
Um, and so like your feedback on the PTR is really important.
Um, specifically for, I guess, the combination of the Chaos Perk system and the guess Armor system is, as Alin mentioned.
Making brand new builds, new things that like, Hey, I've never been able to do this kind of build before, or I've never had to solve this problem.
Right? Whether it be, you know, getting different, um, you know, stats or cool downs or, or whatever kind of combination you're trying to do.
(25:38):
We, we want things to be, uh, you know, new builds, new um, avenues, new ways to play, and that it should feel very different.
And we wanna make sure that we're hitting that mark.
Uh, and we're like giving you powerful things and reasons to be playing in different ways.
And so we just really wanna make sure that.
Uh, both these systems combined are, are really leading towards that goal.
Okay.
So everybody heard that we gotta get some testing done to make sure that we are just giving as much feedback as we can.
(26:03):
That is the whole purpose of the PTR.
It's super important to get this testing done so we can get the, the best launch of the season possible.
Uh, is there anything else anybody wanna cover or we can hop into the q and a section? Yeah, I think we'd also love to, you know, see people go in, uh, like we made a lot of changes to infernal, hodes with the chaos stuff.
I'd love to see people go in, try out the new infernal, hoard, shake up.
(26:25):
We've got, try out chaos waves, try out the bar, took fart.
How does it, excuse me, fight.
Uh, you know, maybe he does, but whatever.
Um, uh, yeah, try that out.
Um, and yeah, um, I think if I could distill it down to one sentence, I would say, please break season 10 over your knee.
(26:49):
Uh, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on in season 10.
Again, I just really wanna emphasize it's the season of chaos.
So please go in, try all the different combinatorics, show us what insanity you can, you know, conjure up and show us that we've made terrible, terrible mistakes.
Uh, that sounds like a lot of fun.
So, will we be getting RAC right off the bat or are we going to get, um, some, like a day or two to do leveling testing? Oh yeah.
(27:16):
I think we're getting leveling, or excuse me, rack right off the bat.
So you guys should be able to go in there and just get boots on the ground immediately.
That's awesome.
And for anybody that does get to try out the test round the test round, there's gonna be for BC Battle net users.
The leveling process sounds like it's gonna change a little bit with the introduction of these new riffs for the season.
(27:37):
So make sure you do get some level testing in just to see so we can get some feedback for how the leveling is gonna feel too.
Oh, I was just gonna say like, yeah, if you end up, um, uh.
Being one of our wonderful champions that does decide to level test, first of all, we love you.
Thank you so much.
Second of all, please, we'd love to hear what you have to think or what you have to say about like, um, how Tide and Chaos rifts, uh, and the new like nightmare dungeon of effects.
(28:01):
And of course, fleeting Hors, which is the pre torment version of Infernal Hors, which is mostly designed to be achievable for leveling characters, but it's.
Probably gonna be pretty tough.
Uh, 'cause infernal hoards, it's just naturally fairly challenging, especially if your build's not totally ready.
So get in there and try it out and let us know what you think of that too.
One of my favorite parts about this is its leveling process.
(28:22):
So, so I guess we can probably hop into the q and a section.
Um, so user yellow 9 7, 7.
They asked hope later in the chat, we, uh, will be revealed what will be the seasonal and what will go to the eternal realm.
So what's gonna stay and what's gonna go, uh, the chaos.
(28:43):
Uh, perks and chaos armor are seasonal features.
Uh, these are limited to season 10, season chaos.
Um, a lot of the changes, uh, same with, uh.
A lot of the changes to infernal hearts, the improvements to the boons and veins and the, and the updated, um, structure.
There are going to be permanent additions.
Um, so just like we've done in past seasons where a lot of the, the systemic changes to the activities, uh, that we did in like the past two boss ladder changes and, um.
(29:11):
Tide and, and whisper changes and so on.
In previous seasons, those were evergreen.
Those were always, um, in, in eternal, uh, for the rest of, uh, um, but then there was the, the, the new power systems were, were seasonal specific.
Okay.
Awesome.
Ignition asked, will the transition, uh, transitional armor gear always be set, uh, into a different slot, or will the chaos be random? So the armor gonna stay in the same spot, like designated or is this gonna be a random slot that it's gonna go to? Oh yeah.
(29:42):
So when something rolls as chaos armor, it can be any of the chaos armor slots.
There is one exception.
So just to kind of outline this again, there are five slots in which chaos armor can drop, which is the helmet, chest gloves, legs, and boots.
The one exception, or rather what I should say is like, let's use the example of Aian Iris again, which is an ambulance.
(30:03):
You can find a chaos armor version of Aian Iris in any of those five chaos armor slots.
Uh, that is random.
However, if there's a unique item that originally started in one of those slots, like for example, fists, aate is gloves, typically, uh, you won't be able to find a gloves.
Chaos armor, version of fists of fate because it was already gloves, but you would be able to find the other four slots, uh, for fists, aate.
(30:27):
I think a lot of people that were looking at the screenshots and saw the ait Iris as a helmet and wanted to run their sheko probably just had a big sigh of relief there so they can still run their, their harlequins crest and still get the ait iris in somewhere other slot.
That's, that's awesome.
Honestly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, that's the goal.
You know, we want it to be very flexible.
(30:48):
Uh, we also wanna make sure that it's like a, an end game chase, right? Like, we want it to be something really fun to find.
Um, and that was part of the reason why we made them capable of being dropped in those five slots, so that like, you know, you're, you're chasing like the perfect chaos armor that is incredibly fun, that's gonna open up so many opportunities for different builds and different diversity to come out.
So for the next one, Anna asked, is the chaos armor going to be account bound? That's a good question.
(31:14):
That is a great question.
Chaos Armor is going to be account bound, so we want you to kind of go on your own personal chaotic journey, I guess you could say.
Um, we had a lot of conversations internally about that, so, you know.
Drop in, uh, feedback if, or give us feedback if you feel differently, uh, during PTR.
I know that people have mixed opinions on that, so let us know what you think.
(31:36):
Uh, I'd love to hear from you guys, but really we wanted to make sure that, you know, people were finding chaos armor and they were kind of experiencing their own build path basically.
We didn't want trading to be like the best way where, you know, you go and you find you just like, we want you to find a chaos armor drop on the ground from beating Bart Tuck or elsewhere in the game and be like, oh shit.
(31:58):
Like, that's my chaos armor now.
Um, and have your build and your path like diverge from other people.
Uh, and that kind of guides your season journey as a whole.
I like that.
That's a good opportunity also for feedback.
So make sure that if.
You are playing the PTR and you feel differently.
Definitely leave that feedback.
(32:19):
Um, glitch, Meister asked, is there a way that skills on each class could get an additional changes in a way that makes them more unique and have multiple play styles? So an example was making the Drews earth magic become volcanic.
Making his storm magic become frost winds, making the sorc wears infernal.
Instead, summon a giant serpent and spew walls of fire, uh, making deep freeze rain down the cold meteorites or something like that along the lines of those.
(32:49):
Talk to this a bit.
Um, I think that's really some really cool suggestions there.
And, and I think there's definitely an appetite for like, Hey, I like this skill, but I'd love to play it in a different way.
And there's a number of ways, like we try to deliver on that.
Um, you know, obviously we've got existing legendaries and uniques that, that mix up how skills work in the game.
Um, we're trying that a bit more now with the, the chaos perk system where they are affecting some of those skills in, in similar ways where it's like, Hey, what you used to know.
(33:17):
Um, about how the skill worked is now very different, uh, alternative play style.
I think, uh, one of the best examples in the chaos perk system is the Necro Maner, uh, unique one, alter the balance, which affects your core and ultimate skills, and basically swaps them how they work.
Um, that's definitely like science space.
We're really interested in exploring moving forward.
And, and we are starting to do that a little bit here in season 10.
(33:38):
And I wouldn't be surprised if we see more, um, kind of big play style swaps and, and modifications to skills like that, um, in future content.
But, uh, that's not something, uh, we can give too much detail on at the time, at this time.
Okay.
Well, I mean, that sounds good.
So Dante asked, can you bring some seasonal powers from previous seasons into permanent edition, like rings that have powers from season one or an aspect from season two? Um, I know that this is something that people have, have asked in the past.
(34:06):
Yeah.
And that is something that, uh, we did on a couple of those earlier seasons where we brought some of the, the favorite powers back as, as unique items as kind of one-offs.
Um, and that's definitely like something we, we look at and, and could consider for, for future clients.
Definitely ones that really resonate, uh, with players.
Uh, I, I definitely know there were some, you know, previous seasonal powers that the players really loved and would love to see back.
(34:29):
And trust me, the dev team has heard that.
You know, when, when we hear that like, oh, you really like this one power.
I'd love to see it back in some way.
We, we've taken note of that and we'd love to keep hearing that and we'll, we're looking for the right time and right place, right system to kind of put that in.
It's not always just, oh, put it on a new, unique, because then we end up getting a bunch of, um, you know, you limited it on the exact number of uniques you can have.
(34:50):
Maybe there's other, other systems that we can deliver.
Um, some of the fan favorite powers from, from seasons past in, uh, so definitely keep giving us that feedback.
We're listening.
We're absolutely, you know, making note and finding the right spot to, to reincorporate some of those, those favorite powers back in.
Alright, looks like we are at time, but thank you everybody for coming out today.
(35:11):
Thank you for hanging out while we figured out how to get this up and running.
We appreciate your patience very, very much.
This was a really, really great turnout.
I'm very excited to be able to sit down with everybody and talk about all of this stuff.
I'm pretty excited to get onto the public test realm.
Make sure you get on, do your testing.
It is very important to leave some feedback.
(35:31):
You can do that on the forums.
It's a really great place, uh, for everybody to, to leave what you get to do, what you get to see.
So we're really looking forward to this.
It looks like we're gonna be getting, uh, the PTR starting on the 19th is when we're gonna hit.
So if you guys can look out for that, we're gonna be doing that.
You can download that through the Battle Net client.
Uh, but thanks team, everybody.
(35:51):
Um, everybody.
Thank you.
I really appreciate this.
This was a lot of fun.
Yeah, great to be here.
Can't wait to see what kind of chaos you guys get up to.
Thanks for having us.
Responders Today I joined the devs in the Sanctuary Discord for the upcoming PTR for season 10.
We got to talk about all of the things that will be changing and will be available in the PTR.
I wanted to leave everybody with this before you hop into what the sit down was like.
This is gonna be the public round notes, so there will be changes coming to the upcoming season that we will not see in these notes.
(00:22):
These are not final.
These are absolutely 100% subject to change.
So if there are any nerfs or there are any buffs that you do not agree with, make sure you leave some feedback.
And for those of you out there that wanted to see an actual campfire chat that is still coming.
When we get closer to season 10, they will have a full blown campfire chat, what you're used to.
They're actually working on revamping that setup.
I'm excited to see what they bring in that campfire chat.
(00:43):
They will cover a lot more about season 10 and what we can expect in that.
For now, take a listen to the sanctuary.
Sit down in the Discord server.
This was an audio only.
I put a little visual in there for you guys, but you get to watch it right here.
Wanders.
Welcome to the Sanctuary Sit Down series where members of the Diablo community like me get a chance to chat with the developers about upcoming seasonal content.
(01:06):
I'm your host, Lipes.
Joining me today are three of the developers that are gonna walk us through what to expect during the upcoming public test realm.
Before we get into the good stuff, let's get some introductions out.
Alin, you wanna start? Sure, yeah.
I'm Alin Hall.
I'm a systems designer working on Diablo four, mostly working on seasonal stuff, uh, at the moment, like season 10.
(01:27):
All right, Ben.
Uh, this is, Hey, I'm, uh, Ben Fletcher.
I'm the, the lead designer for season 10.
And, hi, I'm Charles Bun, um, working on the final design team.
I mostly do class design work, um, and for season 10, I worked on the, uh, cast perks.
All right.
Awesome.
Well, thank you for everybody for being here.
Um, so Charles, let's start with you.
(01:48):
What are some of the things that we're working on for season 10? Uh, yeah.
Um, let's talk about, uh, chaos Perks.
It seems like someone's saying, my audio's a little low, so I'm gonna try to talk loud here, I guess.
Or lemme take a look at setting.
Just be right.
Um, you can also update volume on Discord in particular.
(02:11):
But yeah.
Uh, so for season 10, um, I wanna talk a little bit about, um, kinda the concept of, of seasonal powers and kind of, um, you know, how, how we've thought about it in, in previous seasons, and a little bit about how we're thinking about them now here, uh, in season 10 and moving forward.
Um, you know, we've had, we've had a number of seasons where we, we introduced like some seasonal powers.
(02:32):
Um, like, uh, you know, in the season of witchcraft, we had the witchcraft powers and then the boss powers and so on.
A lot of times when we think about, um, building, uh, building your character, uh.
You build up your character in kind of multiple layers where, um, you know, you get your, your basic skills or like your, your skills that you're picking up, skill tree and your items on top of that and your paragon and, and, and then kind of the like, icing on the cake.
(03:02):
The top layer is, is kind of those seasonal powers and we add in, um, you know, new seasonal power.
Um.
And it, it modifies your build a little bit, makes it a little different flavor.
But then, uh, a lot of the com the, the feedback we've heard from players is that, uh, you know, next, next season you kind of scrape off that icing and then put on a new flavor of icing.
(03:23):
And so kind of the, the running joke is like, well, what, what flavor is, is the next season gonna bring.
And, and we thought here for season 10, we really wanna disrupt that, that pattern where we're not looking at just kind of surface layer powers that are just kind of added on and removed.
We're really looking at, you know, to continue the cake analogy, right? Is, is looking at, at changing up the filling of the cake, the, the kind of connective tissue between your builds with our seasonal offerings.
(03:49):
Um, but to be able to be like, Hey, here's something that actually just fundamentally changes how you play your character.
It's not just an extra effect that just, um, you know, is added on, on top of everything else.
And so with that in mind, we built what we call, uh, kiosk perks and calling them perks, kind of differentiates them from, um.
(04:10):
The, the, the kind of power designs that we've had in the past, uh, where it really is focusing in on these, this kind of connective tissue in between, um, the, the kind of layers of your classes, your skills, your actual skills, and your itemization.
And so we built these, this seasonal power system, really all about, um, making sure it hooks into your skills, it influences your build in ways that we have not really done before, um, with seasonal powers in the past.
(04:35):
Um, and also speaking of item builds, we're, we're gonna be talking a little bit later about, um, chaos armor.
Uh, I think Ason will be covering a lot of that.
Uh, which is also kind of another take on, on how we're, we took the learnings of previous seasonal powers and kind of feedback we've gotten around that and use that to iterate and make a, a more interesting and engaging system here moving forward.
Um, actually very excited to hear about these seasonal powers.
(04:59):
Um, so with the way that we're approaching this, so we're.
Still thinking about seasonal powers, but this is now going to be something that we're going to just add extra layers on.
'cause you said armor and now it's gonna be moving to perks.
So is this gonna be something that we're gonna be looking to do going into every season now? I don't, wouldn't commit to, um, future seasons.
(05:22):
You know, we're here talking about the season 10 PTR and how we're, we're really looking at that.
I think it's definitely something that the entire team has, has taken feedback in on, and we're gonna be using that to influence our, our future design, uh, directions.
Um, but, uh, mainly want to talk about, you know, what's coming in season 10 and not necessarily on, on future seasons, which are still in development.
(05:42):
Okay.
That is awesome.
Um, so.
We got Ben here.
Um, we have, um, actually I have a, um, a graphic here that I wanna put up on the screen that maybe we can, um, talk about here.
Let me just get this up.
All right.
Can anybody see the, the graphic here? Uh, it looks like your s.
(06:04):
Screen is loading something.
There it is.
It just popped in for me.
All right.
So what you're seeing there is, uh, a chaos rift.
Uh, so before I really get into to what chaos rifts are, let's just talk about chaos.
The theme of the season, uh, is, is chaos.
So basically kind of the narrative wrapper here is meos been free to wander around sanctuary for a little while.
Now we're starting to see the impacts of that.
(06:24):
Basically as very presence is weakening the veil between heaven and hell, and that's making these chaos riffs pop up throughout the land.
Uh, so in the season, you're gonna be finding, closing these Chaos Rifs the cast Rifs is basically a one-way portal from help bring demons with it.
We've got a new family of demon, a chaos family, uh, that has some unique, uh, fun twists on it.
(06:45):
Uh, but anyways, you're gonna be killing them.
Closing, closing the rifs, and that's how you're gonna be getting your reputation, your seasonal currency, uh, stuff like that.
Uh, so the, the main place that you'll start encountering these, uh, as you begin the game will be in Hell Tides.
You'll be going through hell tides, you'll see these, uh, markers pop up on your map.
It looks a lot like an offering, uh, marker from Infernal Hoards.
(07:05):
And that's because it's got a similar function to it in that these don't just open by themselves.
You actually have to go up and, uh, opt into, uh, the experience.
And so you'll be able to see the RIF name, you'll be able to see the rewards associated with it before you interact with it.
And that, uh, you know, at the beginning you're probably just gonna be opening, closing all the ones that you come across.
(07:26):
But as you get deeper into the experience, uh, and you've, you know, you've encountered a lot of these, you know, kind of what's in each one, what each one entails, then you can start making informed decisions on like, okay, yeah, this one I definitely want do because I'm chasing that reward.
Or, I just really enjoy the gameplay of this one.
Uh, and other ones like, uh, you know what, I'm, I'm not really looking for that thing.
I can just move on with my experience and it's not opening by itself.
(07:48):
It forcing me into, uh, the engagement.
Also, you know, this being in hell tides, if you're actually trying to focus on something else in hell tides like fighting blood maidens, or, um, you know, collecting senders and stuff like that, then because these are opt into, they're not gonna be pulling you away from the thing that you're trying to focus on.
Uh, but it's not all hell tides, especially in that, that pre torment experience.
(08:09):
We wanted to work in some, some more activities kind of into that leveling loop.
Uh, so by closing the rifs in hell tides, uh, you can actually find a new kind of nightmare dungeon sigil that's got the cast rift a affect.
Uh, and by using that takes you into a special nightmare dungeon that's dense with chaos, rifts and, uh, chaos monster family monsters.
(08:30):
So really high density on the rewards that you get from those things.
Um.
And then the third step is closing the risks that are in those nightmare dungeons.
You have a chance to get what's called a fleeting compass.
Sounds awfully close to an feral compass that gets you into feral hoards.
That's the idea.
We've made a pre, an abbreviated pre torment version of infernal hodes for you engage with in the pre torment experience.
(08:54):
Basically, it's shortened down so it's only four waves, and you're only facing off against two, uh, of the fell Council at the end, instead of, uh, all three members.
Um, but um, it's still like monster dense.
It's still reward dense.
Uh, they're gonna be pretty rare to come across, but it's definitely worth your time to do 'em, uh, because of, you know, the extra experience and rewards you're gonna get from, from doing those.
(09:18):
Uh, once you move into the, uh, you know.
Hit level six d max out, your characters get moving into those torment tiers.
Then the focus really shifts into our updates that we've made around infernal hoards.
Uh, so we've made some updates to the existing infernal hoards.
We've taken, you know, the offerings that have been underperforming in the past or just weren't as fun and tried to bring those up to the same level as like the hell born, uh, offerings that have been so, uh, popular in the last few seasons.
(09:46):
Uh, on top of that, we've also made some minor adjustments to the Fell Council fight to make it more interesting and, uh, more enjoyable to do.
Uh, but the biggest changes to infernal hodes come from chaos being injected into them.
Uh, as you're going through your waves, you'll occasionally see a fourth.
Uh, offering option pop up.
And that fourth option will always be, uh, a chaos offering that'll lead to a ca wave.
(10:09):
And the ca cast waves are quite a bit different than your standard in frontal hodes waves.
Instead of, uh, you know, the a or events that you see during a standard wave and, and the boons and bans that are also associated with that, there are no boons and bands for the calero.
They are very dense with ather.
They're, you know, if you can perform well, if you could do good, then you know you're gonna get the most ather from a single wave by doing these.
(10:32):
Also, the gameplay is different.
Uh, they're almost shaped after like a, a mini game type mentality.
Like one of my favorites kind of flips things on its head and instead of destroying.
Etheric masses, they put an etheric mass in the middle of the arena, and then you've got the lunatics, the exploding guys throwing themselves at it from every direction trying to destroy it.
(10:52):
And your job is to defend it from them.
And when you get to the end of the wave, the more health that that mass has, uh, the more ather you're gonna earn from that wave.
Uh, and all that leads into the new boss fight that we have available at the end of Infernal Hordes.
And that's against Bartok, uh, the new boss for the season.
Uh, you can still do the Fell Council fight, but now we've got an additional option, uh, of Bartok.
(11:16):
Uh, but he's not a walk in the park.
He's a tougher boss.
Uh, and he also.
Is harder, uh, you don't just automatically get to do them.
Basically when you get to the end of your waves, now you'll be presented with two offerings.
Uh, one we'll take you to the Fell Council, just the normal experience.
You don't need to buy into it.
But the other offering actually costs, has an upfront ather cost to get into it.
Uh, so you have to have performed well enough, uh, in your waves to be able to afford to fight.
(11:40):
Bar talk, first of all.
And it, the way that we're tuning that for a 10 wave compass, it's pretty doable.
Uh, especially as you get, you know, deeper into torment and get better and better at it.
But then it becomes, starts becoming a lot harder with a six or eight wave compass where you really have to perform well if you're gonna be able to, uh, afford to get into the bar talk, fight.
And the other thing about the Bartok fight is it is a lot, uh, more difficult than the Fell Council.
(12:03):
The, the fight itself is a lot more complex.
It's kind of a bullet hell style where we've got teleporters in the arena and you're having to teleport back and forth and avoid these, these massive, uh.
Uh, just screen clearing attacks that he has.
Um, and it's, you know, it's just got a lot more, uh, flavor to the boss fight.
Uh, but the, the big reason you wanna do him, he's gonna be more rewarding than the foul council.
(12:26):
But the biggest reason is he is your best shot at getting the, the new chaos armor that we have that we haven't talked about yet.
Alan's gonna touch on, on the chaos armor in just a moment.
Uh, but basically you, uh, your, your best chance at, at collecting that armor is gonna be to fight bar talk.
And I'm excited.
The infernal, Hodes are probably one of my favorite content out there.
(12:47):
So you said that this is gonna be pre torment.
You can start unlocking it just by going straight into hell.
Tides at, is there a minimum level requirement to get there? Or you can just open it up.
So the stuff that I was just talking about with the barock fight in the full-blown infernal hoards, that's still only once you get to torment tears.
We have like an, a special like smaller version that actually doesn't even have the cast waves in it.
(13:10):
It's just a smaller version of, uh, the pre chaos, um, infernal hoards that you can do.
Now pre torment.
And there's not a level requirement though.
You know, if you just, you know, take your a level one character and, and go straight into there, you're probably gonna get wiped pretty hard.
Uh, so, you know, a soft level requirement of, yeah, you need to have a little bit of gear, um, which you should have to get in there.
(13:33):
You will had to do hell tides for a little while, found the, the nightmare dungeon with the uh, or the nightmare dungeon s vigil with the cast.
Rift affix.
Run a couple of those and then.
Gotten one of these fleeting compasses to get you into there.
Uh, so we don't have a hard cap on it, but just naturally playing, uh, you should be at a level that that is appropriate once you unlock that.
(13:55):
Okay.
That's cool.
I, I like that we're adding in new stuff to the leveling process to kind of mix up what we're doing and where to go and what we're doing, so that's, that's awesome.
Yeah, we wanted to, to have a little bit more variety to that, that one to 60 leveling experience that we haven't always had in previous seasons.
That is very cool.
Now, I know we've talked a lot about, um, the chaos armor, but I want to share one more graphic.
(14:19):
I'm gonna swap this graphic around and then, um, I'm go back to you Charles, 'cause we didn't get to talk, uh, show the perks.
So I wanted to get that up on this, um, screen.
So lemme just get that real quick.
Yeah, I think we, uh, we talked a little bit about like the, the, the overall philosophy of, of seasonal powers and, and well the perks and, and how they're adjusting here.
Um, to talk through a little bit of the details of like, the exact mechanics of it.
(14:42):
Um, I think that's what I bring up a, a kind of visual of, of how it'll work.
Um, so I think one of the, the.
Cool parts about this system compared to previous systems, um, is that we, we have class specific perks.
So in the past, um, our seasonal powers were, were, uh, generic across the classes, right? Everyone had the access to the exact same set of things.
(15:04):
Maybe some classes, preferred ones over the other, but, um, you know, your tool set was, was identical.
Here we, we, we have the ability with class specific ones to actually make ones that, that directly hook into your class mechanics.
So we see one, an example here with the file, the Dead for Necker answers.
Uh, specifically allowing you to use each corpse twice.
(15:24):
So this way, like, hey, use corps explosion on a corpse.
Uh, the corpse is still there until you do it a second time and then consumes it.
Um, so this really like changes kinda your corpse economy in, in the necro build as well as creating a chaotic burst, which is, um, kind of a, a power that, that many of these, these powers, uh, these chaos perks use.
Um, but I think it's really cool that it allows us to, to look at, at different, um.
(15:47):
Class mechanics and, and there are still some generic effects here, but there are, um, uh, four class specific perks per class.
And so to really get, you know, to see all the things that are available across this entire, um, system, you, you're gonna need to take a look at each class.
In terms of like how you're actually gonna interact with it.
Um, pretty straightforward and, and pretty similar to some, uh, previous seasonal powers, just because we think that a lot of the complexity here is in their actual effects and how they impact your build.
(16:13):
Um, obviously the file the dead here, this example is relatively straightforward in terms of, um, what it does.
But there are definitely ones that have a lot bigger, uh.
Modifications to your build that really ask you to like play very differently.
Um, use your skills in different ways or itemized totally separately than, than you would have before, uh, to really take advantage of it.
And so because there's like a bit more of a complexity of ask, ask there in terms of like what the.
(16:37):
What you want to do to, to use these effects.
Um, actually like getting them socket them in is, is relatively straightforward, right? You can equip three of the non-unique perks, the magic rare and legendary.
So any three of those along with one unique perk, uh, the unique ones are definitely like the biggest, uh, change up.
Um, uh, the biggest, like ones that change up your build, uh, the kind of the most dramatic adjustments and require the, the biggest ask to, to, uh, uh, to work with.
(17:07):
That's pretty cool.
I'm pretty excited to see what the other classes have in store.
Uh, this is definitely a pretty big change going from everything just being generic and used all over, like it should help with some of the, um, diversity with the classes.
I like that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I, I think there you'll definitely, you know, find uses for some of the generics across each class.
But definitely, you know, the class specific ones are, are the ones that have, uh, you know, will definitely make it feel very different from class to class.
(17:31):
It's not just like, oh, I'm gonna run the exact same set of powers on every class, every character that I play, and you're gonna get a lot of, uh, new options across every, every class, uh, to, to kind of empower brand new bills that we may not have seen before because of these, uh, uh, perks.
I think something that's really worth emphasizing about the chaos perk system and how it differentiates itself from seasonal power is kind of what you're digging into here.
(17:55):
Like we see here it says you can consume each corpse twice.
Like that's an effect.
That's going to change how you're thinking about your build.
And that just wasn't something that you typically got from seasonal power before.
Like you'd probably get something that was like, oh, you know, you call a bunch of awesome magic that explodes everything, but it's not necessarily changing the way you're thinking about your core skill or changing the way you're thinking about your other tagged skills.
(18:17):
And all of these chaos perks are, are keying into that.
And the fact that there are some that also key into class specific stuff lets us go even deeper into that philosophy, which is really cool.
Yeah, just to throw out some, some examples to talk through, like, um, unstable power is one of the magic ones and it says that your basic skills are gonna be guaranteed to critically strike and overpower and deal increase damage, which is huge.
(18:42):
But the downside is that your basic skills now have a three second cool down.
And so in order to like really fully utilize this, you need to be looking at cool down reduction for your basic skill build.
You need to be looking at other effects that can reduce that, or possibly you, you do some cool down reduction and you play multiple basic skills so that while one's un cool down, you can cast the other one.
Um, and so this is like a, a new.
(19:04):
Pattern, like we're giving you a huge benefit, right? Guaranteed crit, guaranteed overpower.
You don't need to build crit strength.
You don't need to build overpower, or you build overpower damage.
Um, and, and you get a ton of damage up for front, but you have a different problem to solve.
And I think that's like really the, the sweet spot for these types of, uh, perks where it, it gives you a huge benefit, but also asks you to do something different in your build that you might not have, uh, done before.
(19:28):
Really take full advantage of it.
I cannot wait to get my hands on it.
Now.
We have been talking a lot about chaos armor.
It's come up a couple times.
I am pretty excited to dive into this.
So, Alin, we've already heard about a lot about the season, but let's talk about the chaos armor.
I'm gonna get the screenshot up on the monitor while you hop into it.
(19:51):
Sure.
Sounds good.
Yeah.
So, you know, we talked a little bit about Bart Tuck.
We talked a little bit about the, the seasonal theme of chaos.
So I want you guys to go on a little bit of a word journey with me here.
So, you're the hero of sanctuary.
You're going around, you're bopping demons on the head.
You go into the infernal, hoards bop, the demons on the head.
You finish that, you get to bar tuck here at the end.
(20:13):
What do you do? You bop him on the head, he falls over.
Loot, explodes outward.
And what do you see on the ground? You see a different color that you haven't seen before.
That is chaos armor.
So chaos armor is a new type of itemization that we are adding to the game in season 10.
Uh, it is seasonal itemization, so we didn't want to just do, um, chaos perks this season.
(20:38):
We also wanted to mix up even more because it's a season of chaos.
We want things to get crazy.
Um, and it's gonna live for the entire duration of season 10.
And there are two things about chaos armor that are pretty unique.
For the people asking in chat, it's like a green-ish color.
Yes, it's kind of green.
It will be pretty distinct.
But, uh, anyways, there are, um, two distinct things about chaos armor that you're gonna notice.
(21:01):
So you might see an aian iris here, and you might know that that came in season nine and was a sorcerer unique ambulance.
But you also might notice that in the stool tip, it's not an ambulance, it's a helmet.
So chaos armor transforms the slot of uniques that you've seen before into new slots.
So you can find chaos armor in any of the five armor slots, which is gonna be the helmet, the chess piece, the gloves, legs, and boots.
(21:28):
And this really opens up a ton of build crafting opportunities.
Like for example, you might really wanna find a Chaco or an air of perdition on your helmet.
Um, and then you might also have another helmet unique that you'd really love to wear, but you can't because you know you can't have two helmets.
But with chaos armor, you can, because you can find that unique item as chaos armer instead and put it in a different slot.
(21:50):
Now, not every unique is gonna have, uh, be chaos armor.
We have a curated list, however, a pretty significant majority of the uniques in the game are going to be capable of dropping as chaos armor.
Another thing I wanna touch on with the system is that we know a lot of people are going to layer bosses and, you know, living there, uh, and, and just bopping 'em on the head over and over, and that's where they go to target farm, their unique items.
(22:12):
We don't necessarily want that to always be the case.
Uh, so chaos armor is not going to primarily be found from fighting layer bosses.
There are going to be other places you're gonna go to find it.
In particular, infernal hoards in fighting bar tuck.
We really wanna mix that up so you can actually go to different activities in the game and, you know, have fun with fresh new experiences.
Um, but the second thing about chaos armor, getting a little ahead of myself here, is that.
(22:36):
The unique aspect is more powerful as well.
So you might notice in these tooltips here that the typically, what is the blue number on a unique power is actually like the a little green.
Um, so that means specifically on chaos armor, that it's going to max roll its unique power and it's 20% more powerful.
So it's not only the Max Maxwell, it's better on top of that.
(22:57):
So not only are you getting this interesting build crafting element to chaos armor, it's just straight up better too.
So we're really expecting some wild possibilities that are going to emerge from chaos armor.
Um, and we kind of had like when we had a few primary goals when we were working on chaos armor, but like the big thing is we really wanted to shake up the meta.
(23:18):
Uh, we're really expecting builds that were, you know, either previously underperform.
To be really powerful because of the permutations that are now available via Cas Perks and Ca Armor in Season 10.
And we also expect there to be builds that weren't even like a twinkle in our collective eye to emerge in season 10 because of these systems and go wild.
(23:41):
Um, and so I cannot wait to see what people come up with, uh, with these systems combined.
I think season 10 is gonna be absolutely wild.
I think it's gonna be crazy.
So I'm super excited about it.
Um, and the last thing I wanna touch on before we dive into conversation, I.
Is, um, just a little bit about like what we're looking for in the PTR.
Uh, this, this is gonna be in the PTR chaos arm is gonna be in the PTR.
(24:04):
So our perks or the other things that, uh, Ben talked about like rifs and Bartec and whatnot.
Um, but with chaos armor specifically, we really want to get your guys' takes on like.
Um, are there some items that you'd love to see as chaos armor? Are there some that feel too powerful as chaos armor? Um, like, 'cause right now we have everything balanced on a very level playing field, but we wanna hear what you guys think about, uh, like how the meta emerges and like what's powerful and what's maybe too weak so we can make sure that chaos armor is, is.
(24:33):
Fun is possible when it actually comes out.
So yeah, I definitely recommends getting in there, talking to the art dancing demon boy rack and getting those chaos armor ces and trying it out.
Well, I honestly cannot wait to get my hands on it.
So the, so you want us to focus on the chaos armor, and this is during the public test realm.
(24:54):
See what's strong, what's working, if there's something else that we want to add in.
Was there anything else that we should be focusing on during the public test realm? I think for like, yeah, go ahead.
I just mentioned for, for Chaos Perk, it's similar, right? You know, this is testing.
Uh, we are here to, to test and preview new content.
It's by no means finalized for what we're actually gonna end up shipping.
(25:15):
Um, and so like your feedback on the PTR is really important.
Um, specifically for, I guess, the combination of the Chaos Perk system and the guess Armor system is, as Alin mentioned.
Making brand new builds, new things that like, Hey, I've never been able to do this kind of build before, or I've never had to solve this problem.
Right? Whether it be, you know, getting different, um, you know, stats or cool downs or, or whatever kind of combination you're trying to do.
(25:38):
We, we want things to be, uh, you know, new builds, new um, avenues, new ways to play, and that it should feel very different.
And we wanna make sure that we're hitting that mark.
Uh, and we're like giving you powerful things and reasons to be playing in different ways.
And so we just really wanna make sure that.
Uh, both these systems combined are, are really leading towards that goal.
Okay.
So everybody heard that we gotta get some testing done to make sure that we are just giving as much feedback as we can.
(26:03):
That is the whole purpose of the PTR.
It's super important to get this testing done so we can get the, the best launch of the season possible.
Uh, is there anything else anybody wanna cover or we can hop into the q and a section? Yeah, I think we'd also love to, you know, see people go in, uh, like we made a lot of changes to infernal, hodes with the chaos stuff.
I'd love to see people go in, try out the new infernal, hoard, shake up.
(26:25):
We've got, try out chaos waves, try out the bar, took fart.
How does it, excuse me, fight.
Uh, you know, maybe he does, but whatever.
Um, uh, yeah, try that out.
Um, and yeah, um, I think if I could distill it down to one sentence, I would say, please break season 10 over your knee.
(26:49):
Uh, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on in season 10.
Again, I just really wanna emphasize it's the season of chaos.
So please go in, try all the different combinatorics, show us what insanity you can, you know, conjure up and show us that we've made terrible, terrible mistakes.
Uh, that sounds like a lot of fun.
So, will we be getting RAC right off the bat or are we going to get, um, some, like a day or two to do leveling testing? Oh yeah.
(27:16):
I think we're getting leveling, or excuse me, rack right off the bat.
So you guys should be able to go in there and just get boots on the ground immediately.
That's awesome.
And for anybody that does get to try out the test round the test round, there's gonna be for BC Battle net users.
The leveling process sounds like it's gonna change a little bit with the introduction of these new riffs for the season.
(27:37):
So make sure you do get some level testing in just to see so we can get some feedback for how the leveling is gonna feel too.
Oh, I was just gonna say like, yeah, if you end up, um, uh.
Being one of our wonderful champions that does decide to level test, first of all, we love you.
Thank you so much.
Second of all, please, we'd love to hear what you have to think or what you have to say about like, um, how Tide and Chaos rifts, uh, and the new like nightmare dungeon of effects.
(28:01):
And of course, fleeting Hors, which is the pre torment version of Infernal Hors, which is mostly designed to be achievable for leveling characters, but it's.
Probably gonna be pretty tough.
Uh, 'cause infernal hoards, it's just naturally fairly challenging, especially if your build's not totally ready.
So get in there and try it out and let us know what you think of that too.
One of my favorite parts about this is its leveling process.
(28:22):
So, so I guess we can probably hop into the q and a section.
Um, so user yellow 9 7, 7.
They asked hope later in the chat, we, uh, will be revealed what will be the seasonal and what will go to the eternal realm.
So what's gonna stay and what's gonna go, uh, the chaos.
(28:43):
Uh, perks and chaos armor are seasonal features.
Uh, these are limited to season 10, season chaos.
Um, a lot of the changes, uh, same with, uh.
A lot of the changes to infernal hearts, the improvements to the boons and veins and the, and the updated, um, structure.
There are going to be permanent additions.
Um, so just like we've done in past seasons where a lot of the, the systemic changes to the activities, uh, that we did in like the past two boss ladder changes and, um.
(29:11):
Tide and, and whisper changes and so on.
In previous seasons, those were evergreen.
Those were always, um, in, in eternal, uh, for the rest of, uh, um, but then there was the, the, the new power systems were, were seasonal specific.
Okay.
Awesome.
Ignition asked, will the transition, uh, transitional armor gear always be set, uh, into a different slot, or will the chaos be random? So the armor gonna stay in the same spot, like designated or is this gonna be a random slot that it's gonna go to? Oh yeah.
(29:42):
So when something rolls as chaos armor, it can be any of the chaos armor slots.
There is one exception.
So just to kind of outline this again, there are five slots in which chaos armor can drop, which is the helmet, chest gloves, legs, and boots.
The one exception, or rather what I should say is like, let's use the example of Aian Iris again, which is an ambulance.
(30:03):
You can find a chaos armor version of Aian Iris in any of those five chaos armor slots.
Uh, that is random.
However, if there's a unique item that originally started in one of those slots, like for example, fists, aate is gloves, typically, uh, you won't be able to find a gloves.
Chaos armor, version of fists of fate because it was already gloves, but you would be able to find the other four slots, uh, for fists, aate.
(30:27):
I think a lot of people that were looking at the screenshots and saw the ait Iris as a helmet and wanted to run their sheko probably just had a big sigh of relief there so they can still run their, their harlequins crest and still get the ait iris in somewhere other slot.
That's, that's awesome.
Honestly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, that's the goal.
You know, we want it to be very flexible.
(30:48):
Uh, we also wanna make sure that it's like a, an end game chase, right? Like, we want it to be something really fun to find.
Um, and that was part of the reason why we made them capable of being dropped in those five slots, so that like, you know, you're, you're chasing like the perfect chaos armor that is incredibly fun, that's gonna open up so many opportunities for different builds and different diversity to come out.
So for the next one, Anna asked, is the chaos armor going to be account bound? That's a good question.
(31:14):
That is a great question.
Chaos Armor is going to be account bound, so we want you to kind of go on your own personal chaotic journey, I guess you could say.
Um, we had a lot of conversations internally about that, so, you know.
Drop in, uh, feedback if, or give us feedback if you feel differently, uh, during PTR.
I know that people have mixed opinions on that, so let us know what you think.
(31:36):
Uh, I'd love to hear from you guys, but really we wanted to make sure that, you know, people were finding chaos armor and they were kind of experiencing their own build path basically.
We didn't want trading to be like the best way where, you know, you go and you find you just like, we want you to find a chaos armor drop on the ground from beating Bart Tuck or elsewhere in the game and be like, oh shit.
(31:58):
Like, that's my chaos armor now.
Um, and have your build and your path like diverge from other people.
Uh, and that kind of guides your season journey as a whole.
I like that.
That's a good opportunity also for feedback.
So make sure that if.
You are playing the PTR and you feel differently.
Definitely leave that feedback.
(32:19):
Um, glitch, Meister asked, is there a way that skills on each class could get an additional changes in a way that makes them more unique and have multiple play styles? So an example was making the Drews earth magic become volcanic.
Making his storm magic become frost winds, making the sorc wears infernal.
Instead, summon a giant serpent and spew walls of fire, uh, making deep freeze rain down the cold meteorites or something like that along the lines of those.
(32:49):
Talk to this a bit.
Um, I think that's really some really cool suggestions there.
And, and I think there's definitely an appetite for like, Hey, I like this skill, but I'd love to play it in a different way.
And there's a number of ways, like we try to deliver on that.
Um, you know, obviously we've got existing legendaries and uniques that, that mix up how skills work in the game.
Um, we're trying that a bit more now with the, the chaos perk system where they are affecting some of those skills in, in similar ways where it's like, Hey, what you used to know.
(33:17):
Um, about how the skill worked is now very different, uh, alternative play style.
I think, uh, one of the best examples in the chaos perk system is the Necro Maner, uh, unique one, alter the balance, which affects your core and ultimate skills, and basically swaps them how they work.
Um, that's definitely like science space.
We're really interested in exploring moving forward.
And, and we are starting to do that a little bit here in season 10.
(33:38):
And I wouldn't be surprised if we see more, um, kind of big play style swaps and, and modifications to skills like that, um, in future content.
But, uh, that's not something, uh, we can give too much detail on at the time, at this time.
Okay.
Well, I mean, that sounds good.
So Dante asked, can you bring some seasonal powers from previous seasons into permanent edition, like rings that have powers from season one or an aspect from season two? Um, I know that this is something that people have, have asked in the past.
(34:06):
Yeah.
And that is something that, uh, we did on a couple of those earlier seasons where we brought some of the, the favorite powers back as, as unique items as kind of one-offs.
Um, and that's definitely like something we, we look at and, and could consider for, for future clients.
Definitely ones that really resonate, uh, with players.
Uh, I, I definitely know there were some, you know, previous seasonal powers that the players really loved and would love to see back.
(34:29):
And trust me, the dev team has heard that.
You know, when, when we hear that like, oh, you really like this one power.
I'd love to see it back in some way.
We, we've taken note of that and we'd love to keep hearing that and we'll, we're looking for the right time and right place, right system to kind of put that in.
It's not always just, oh, put it on a new, unique, because then we end up getting a bunch of, um, you know, you limited it on the exact number of uniques you can have.
(34:50):
Maybe there's other, other systems that we can deliver.
Um, some of the fan favorite powers from, from seasons past in, uh, so definitely keep giving us that feedback.
We're listening.
We're absolutely, you know, making note and finding the right spot to, to reincorporate some of those, those favorite powers back in.
Alright, looks like we are at time, but thank you everybody for coming out today.
(35:11):
Thank you for hanging out while we figured out how to get this up and running.
We appreciate your patience very, very much.
This was a really, really great turnout.
I'm very excited to be able to sit down with everybody and talk about all of this stuff.
I'm pretty excited to get onto the public test realm.
Make sure you get on, do your testing.
It is very important to leave some feedback.
(35:31):
You can do that on the forums.
It's a really great place, uh, for everybody to, to leave what you get to do, what you get to see.
So we're really looking forward to this.
It looks like we're gonna be getting, uh, the PTR starting on the 19th is when we're gonna hit.
So if you guys can look out for that, we're gonna be doing that.
You can download that through the Battle Net client.
Uh, but thanks team, everybody.
(35:51):
Um, everybody.
Thank you.
I really appreciate this.
This was a lot of fun.
Yeah, great to be here.
Can't wait to see what kind of chaos you guys get up to.
Thanks for having us.
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