Diablo 4 has big plans for the upcoming Season 8. Some of the key systems are being revamped: bosses, leveling, and endgame. The first players have already tested the season on the PTR, and the opinions on the changes are… mixed.
This is changing with Season 8:
- However, the focus of the new season is primarily on the endgame. One of the main changes is that you will now summon bosses in a completely different way.
- Additionally, there will be seasonal powers that you will steal from the bosses this time. As a bonus, Belial from Diablo 3 is making a return.
- However, the perhaps biggest change is for the difficulties. After Blizzard just adjusted the hardness levels, they are now tweaking the highest difficulties: only 10% of players are supposed to play on Torment 4 – and that seems to be correct.
In our hub, we have summarized all the information regarding the start, patch notes, and content for Season 8 for you.
This is how difficult Season 8 really is: Season 8 is currently running on the public test realm (PTR) of Diablo 4. One user on Reddit writes: leveling now takes much longer and feels significantly harder than usual.
The Diablo expert wudijo confirms this impression in his video on YouTube. He says that even with the top builds from Season 7, which easily cleared Torment 4 there, he can now only barely manage to play at the highest difficulty and that’s also rather sluggish. Wudijo states:
I think we will see many of these builds that simply are not good enough to master Torment 4. And we will see people staying on Torment 3 in the future. Torment 4 is no longer the goal for many and certainly not achievable for builds that are not top tier. […] Everything is much harder now. I think that’s a good thing, not a bad one.
wudijo
In addition to the already higher difficulty, bosses are now also individually harder. Where the toughest fights in Season 7 and before were sometimes one-shots, even the best builds may no longer deal enough damage and will need to play mechanics, the expert explains.
“Woe, we need Torment 4”
Wudijo further explains that in Season 6 and 7, it went so quickly into the endgame that players had pretty much nothing to do early on except push higher dungeon levels. There was nothing left to achieve.
The community has mixed feelings about the change. Some players on Reddit argue that the endgame is actually the content of Diablo and that leveling should hence go quickly. Others, like wudijo, see that higher difficulty allows for longer goals that can be pursued.
However, some users argue that Torment 4 should no longer be a prerequisite for the seasonal journey (via Reddit). Currently, you need to complete activities on Torment 4 to receive the flying raven companion. If that is no longer accessible to everyone, a cool reward suddenly only being available for the elite would be disappointing.
Season 8 is still in testing, so all current changes are not final and may still be adjusted. Furthermore, there could be significant changes in how you earn cosmetics and other items, as Rod Fergusson seems to have plans in that regard: Diablo head finds battle passes “outdated”, teases something new for Diablo 4.
