With Season 8, Blizzard is not only bringing new content to Diablo 4, but also fundamentally changing some existing features. The entire game is becoming harder – but is meant to feel more rewarding. MeinMMO was able to talk to the developers in advance.
In Season 8, everything revolves around the boss powers: You take down a boss, take its abilities and build builds from them. After testing on the PTR, Blizzard has made significant adjustments, nerfing all boss powers and buffing all classes.
At the same time, Diablo 4 is supposed to become tougher, the highest difficulty, Torment 4, should no longer be achievable for all players.
Also, OP builds should not be weakened mid-season, but be adjusted much earlier.
Blizzard invited MeinMMO to speak with Lead Season Designer Deric Nuñez and Lead Live Game Designer Colin Finer before the release of Season 8. Finer has been a community favorite since his first Campfire Chat, and both he and Nuñez are known for their in-depth knowledge of the mechanics and content of Diablo 4.
Our final question: Which builds will be strong? Finer will play a Death Trap Rogue, Nuñez a Necromancer. Why and what else they have to say about Season 8 can be read here in the full interview.
Belial fits perfectly with the seasonal mechanics
MeinMMO: Why does Belial return next season? Many people are wondering this, especially in light of the lore.
Deric Nuñez: Lore-wise, we know that the Great and Lesser Evils always strive to assert their dominance and wait for the right moment to return to Sanctuary. As we continue to expand the Age of Hatred – especially with Mephisto and the events after the Vessel of Hatred – Belial simply sees the perfect opportunity to secure an influence zone again and continue his reign of lies. He wants to control the perception of reality and expand his power.
We will learn more about his specific motives, but basically, he sees his chance to return now. From the content perspective, Belial also fits perfectly with the new mechanics of the season – such as the boss focus and the lair boss system.
MeinMMO: Diablo Immortal usually brings new bosses, you bring back old ones like Duriel, Andariel, now Belial. Are all major and minor evils coming back?
Deric Nuñez: We can’t say anything concrete about future plans beyond Belial and Season 8, but we are building something with each season.
Colin Finer: We have a large repertoire of evils that we always discuss – when is the right moment for a comeback? There are no firm commitments yet, but it is definitely a topic that concerns us.
MeinMMO: The story of the seasons has been rather loose so far, without strong ties to the main story or other seasons. Will this change?
Deric Nuñez: In the last seasons, there were more connections to the events after the Diablo 4 campaign. There is now a gentle build-up to the next expansion. While seasonal stories are independent, we try to incorporate small but significant connections that contribute to the overarching plot.
MeinMMO: Will there be such stories in Nahantu, even for people who don’t own the Vessel of Hatred?
Colin Finer: We are currently doing that, I think. In Season 8, you can complete the entire quest line, even without owning the expansion. Some endgame bosses like the Harbinger of Hatred and Urivar are only available to expansion owners. However, the seasonal quest is accessible to everyone.
You should feel like you are playing a completely new build
MeinMMO: Quests have been more of a means to an end for most people. Have you considered linking them to special rewards like sets or cosmetic items – similar to Diablo 3?
Colin Finer: We want the seasonal quest line to be part of the larger seasonal experience. There are plenty of content and rewards outside of the story – like Urivar, the Harbinger of Hatred; we have also made all the bosses a bit stronger. Duriel, for example, has new attacks and is much more challenging.
We want to make sure that this is properly rewarded. A good example of this is the cat pet with many eyes that you receive. However, we still want to ensure that the quest line remains a rewarding experience. Our goal is to immerse you in the endgame experience of Diablo 4.
Deric Nuñez: Even though we want to spread the rewards a bit more, we try to reward the completion of the quest line itself. There is a special cosmetic that players get who complete the line to the end.
MeinMMO: In the last seasons, there have been absurd builds due to interactions between seasonal powers and existing systems like runes. How do you prevent this in the future?
Colin Finer: We put a lot of thought into how these boss powers could affect the meta. Every time you come back, these powers should make you feel like you are playing a completely new build, even if it is the same one. Example: Wandering Death gives you a death ray that is tied to channeling abilities.
The Whirlwind Barbarian feels completely different with this. You are right, absurd builds emerge like that, but we strive to keep such things within reasonable limits. I know those are somewhat contradictory statements: We want these builds to feel broken, but we also want more competitive players to notice that there is a balance between the classes.
This is a constant process; there is no universal solution to keep the balance perfect.
Deric Nuñez: The PTR really helps us, where we get the collective feedback from players about the early stages of the powers and can balance better. We see how much power should really come from the build and how much from the content of the season itself. Sometimes it’s just fun to embrace the novelty and ‘absurdity,’ as we sometimes call it.
We want to ensure that the path to defeating the bosses is fun
MeinMMO: Path of Exile 2 recently talked about its approach and is going the route of avoiding exaggerated builds. Players said that ARPGs don’t work that way. You want ridiculous builds instead. You seem to be doing the opposite?
Colin Finer: Yes, we consider what is best for Diablo and believe that the game thrives on the power fantasy feeling. We don’t want to disregard players’ time by making them feel weak, but rather like bosses. You defeat a boss, you take its power. When you gain a boss power, you should feel that way too. We think about what suits Diablo, and that’s what our designs aim for.
MeinMMO: The new chests after boss fights take too long to loot – especially in groups. Why this step, even though you actually wanted to save time?
Colin Finer: This is a reaction to feedback from over a year. The party finder feature often led to ‘leeching’ experiences, which created a lot of social friction. You create a group and then maybe Belial is on the other side of the screen. He then says, ‘Yeah, sure I summon the boss with my materials,’ and then they leave when it’s their turn. We didn’t like that.
And we wanted to ensure that the path to defeating these bosses is also fun. We found that players were not engaging with the bosses when they were too difficult – they just waited until they could defeat them in one hit.
We believe this was due to how we originally set it up: You had to use your materials to even summon the boss. And that just felt bad – if you spend all your materials on e.g., Andariel and then realize, ‘Oh no, I can’t defeat her,’ then you wasted all your materials. And we know that felt really frustrating – that’s why we wanted to completely turn this approach around.
As for the question about saving time: Since the PTR, we have actually made a whole series of changes to speed this up. For example, we made an adjustment: If each group member opens the chest, the timer simply gets shortened, and you jump directly to the next phase. We also reduced the duration overall.
For us, this is a great example of how valuable the PTR is – it helps us to implement feedback concretely and shape the new season accordingly. It really is a big help, and we are very happy that the community supports us in co-designing the season.
So yes, we’ve made many changes to noticeably speed up the entire experience and process.
MeinMMO: What happens if someone does not open the chest or cannot open it?
Colin Finer: At the moment, it is like this: The timer continues to run even if a person does not open the chest. They are then basically just ‘along for the ride.’ That is something we are currently discussing – we are considering how we can improve this in the future.
The 3 most important changes from the PTR to the release of Season 8
MeinMMO: You just talked about the changes coming from the PTR (Public Test Realm) to the release. Can you summarize the three most important changes based on player feedback?
Deric Nuñez: I can start with the first point – maybe we’ll just pass the ball back and forth. The first major change concerns the rebalance of the boss abilities. As we know from streams, articles, and feedback, the boss abilities were overall quite dominant.
I won’t go too deep into the numbers, but we have brought the maximum power of these abilities overall to a more reasonable level – so they harmonize better with the individual player strength. There will still be an overpowered build appearing now and then, but the experience should differ significantly from what the players experienced in the PTR (Public Test Realm).
Colin Finer: I’ll take over the second point. The PTR was really a testing ground for us. This does not automatically mean that all changes we experiment with there will be implemented in the final game. One of the changes in the PTR was that we significantly slowed down leveling and greatly increased the difficulty – especially in Torment mode. Our goal was to bring the challenge in the game back to a good level.
In Season 7, it was like: Everything collapsed immediately, bosses died in one hit, you were at level 60 in two hours. Okay, that’s a bit exaggerated, but it was just too fast. At the same time, we had pumped a lot of seasonal power into the witch powers, which greatly reduced the challenge – and thus also the feeling of reward. If everyone just gets given candy, what is achieved doesn’t feel earned.
So we significantly slowed leveling down in the PTR and greatly increased the difficulty of the Torment tiers. However, between the PTR and what is now appearing in Season 8, we have found a good middle ground. We have reversed many of those leveling nerfs and toned down the difficulty of the Torment tiers. They are still harder than in Season 7, but much more achievable than in the PTR. Along with the balancing of boss abilities, we believe that the challenge is now rewarding and motivating again.
And one more thing: As part of these adjustments, you can now also upgrade Paragon glyphs even if you don’t delve deep into the Grube mode. So: Everyone can level glyphs up to rank 100 – even if they’re not among the absolute hardcore players.
Sorry, that was a pretty lengthy answer for just one point!
I would say the third point is that we have dealt intensively with the boss materials – and we received a lot of good data from the PTR on this. It was mainly about the question: How many rewards do the chests give, and what is actually our goal with them?
Our vision was: These bosses should feel like special moments – when you summon them, fight against them, and then collect the reward. We wanted to move away from the idea that you have to farm bosses for hours to get the unique items.
Therefore, we have reduced the global drop rate of the materials – in other words, materials drop overall less frequently. However, we have specifically buffed certain activities. One example is Varshan: If you do Whisper events, you now always receive a good amount of Varshan summoning materials. So: less global loot, but more through targeted activities.
And to compensate for that, we have also increased the rewards from boss fights overall. The whole thing follows the principle: You fight less often against bosses, but get a lot more for it. This way, there is enough time for other Diablo activities – and the boss fights feel like special highlights.
Instead of a hard, endless grind, bosses are now more like an occasional ‘loot explosion’ moment that you can look forward to.
Everyone pays for their own loot
MeinMMO: That also promotes group gameplay, right?
Colin Finer: Regarding group play – yes, we have actually softened that a bit. We have now put the materials in the chest, meaning: everyone has to pay for themselves to get the unique items. This way, group play is no longer strictly necessary.
But: We like group play. It’s just fun to take down bosses together – it’s a good social experience in Diablo. That’s why we have at least built in a small bonus to keep groups attractive.
In the past, it was like this: If four people were in a group, you could do the boss almost four times and get four times the loot. Now it’s a bit different: If you kill a boss in a group and open the chest, there’s a bonus chance for an additional item – per player.
With two players, there’s a chance for an extra item; with four players, the bonus item is guaranteed. So, it’s a bit more measured, but groups are still rewarding.
It was important to us that you don’t feel forced to play in a certain way. Diablo should adapt to your playstyle – not the other way around.
You can now summon the bosses for free
MeinMMO: So, do you have to pay materials to open the chest and receive uniques?
Colin Finer: Yes, a major change we made – and this ties back to what I mentioned earlier about social barriers – concerns the system surrounding the summoning of bosses. In the past, you had to provide your materials to even fight a boss. We’ve changed that now.
You can now summon bosses for free – completely risk-free, whenever you want. When you defeat the boss, it drops its loot: a large chest. And in this chest are the unique items.
However, to open the chest, you must pay the summoning materials. So we’ve effectively moved the materials to the end of the boss fight – into the chest itself. Everyone then has to pay to get their rewards out.
With this, we have picked up a lot of feedback from the community and significantly improved the process – hopefully it’s understandable.
MeinMMO: So, it’s roughly like the blood maidens?
Colin Finer: Yes, roughly so, good example.
Torment 4 is not where you really have to be good
MeinMMO: You have softened Torment 4, but it is still more difficult than before – why?
Colin Finer: It has become more difficult because we want to ensure that there is always something to strive for in Diablo, no matter how much time you have. We want the game to always feel rewarding and that there are always new peaks to climb.
We see the game as a series of peaks, where once you reach one, you can climb the next. We found that Torment 4 in Season 7 simply did not provide the right level of challenge for many players to be considered desirable. That is a major reason we made it harder – to offer players more challenge that they can overcome.
MeinMMO: But it is still necessary for the journey like now for Dorian?
Colin Finer: Yes, at the moment it is still part of the season journey, but we believe that through the boss powers and balance changes, many more builds will come to Torment 4. As part of the reaction from PTR to live, we have brought many class buffs and are confident that you will reach Torment 4 with many builds if you invest time in the grind. That’s the sweet spot. […]
We don’t think Torment 4 is where you really need to be good in terms of gameplay; you only need to reach a point where your character is strong enough that you can ignore many mechanics. We believe many players will accomplish that if they put in the time.
MeinMMO: This is indeed an important point. These “broken” builds are a necessity for many players because the game comes down to oneshotting or being oneshotted – except for barbarians. How do you address this mutual oneshot problem?
Colin Finer: This is a constant challenge. We often think about how to ensure that players have actionable opportunities to solve the problems they face. And we believe we will never have enough of that.
We think about ways to scale offensive and defensive aspects for each class and build. One thing we changed about the oneshots is that lair bosses had a habit of building one-shot stacks before Season 8. Every time it hit you, a stack of exponential damage would add up. We think that was disrespectful of players’ time, who have built up their defense.
We didn’t like that you could stack your defensive mechanisms to the moon only to have all these effects eat through your defense. That’s a good example of where we start when trying to avoid wasting players’ time. […]
Deric Nuñez: That’s one of the changes we’re bringing with Season 8 to make Lair bosses more fun again. As Colin mentioned, we are removing this arbitrary stacking for an instant death.
All Lair bosses have received updates regarding challenge and abilities, but since the PTR, we have also adjusted how they scale the difficulty at each tier of bosses. We found that some of them were too strong for their ranking. When Season 8 comes, players can look forward to a smoother path to the new ‘Top Dog’ at the top.
Colin Finer: We have toned down many of the oneshot mechanics. There has been a lot of feedback. We want the bosses to become harder, but we don’t think it’s cool if Varshan one-shots you, even if you’re fully equipped for that Torment tier. […]
With the new Reliquiar system, the player is now in charge
MeinMMO: You have significantly adjusted the Battle Pass for Season 8. How do players benefit from it?
Colin Finer: The changes came with the thought of how we can give you more control over the rewards in the Battle Pass. There were complaints that you get a lot of stuff with the grind that you don’t want at all. With the new Reliquiar system, the player is now in charge and decides what they want, and they can choose what they receive. We think this gives you the choice; that’s what it’s all about in Diablo. You were first able to farm unique items specifically, now you can specifically choose rewards.
MeinMMO: Rod Fergusson recently said that he thinks battle passes are an outdated system. What other changes can we expect?
Colin Finer: Deric and I didn’t work on the Reliquiar, but we can say that the system is much more flexible and that we can use it for more things in the future. […]
MeinMMO: Finally, I would like to hear from you personally which class or build will dominate the next season.
Colin Finer: I will play the ‘Death Trap Rogue’. It’s fun to suck enemies in, and we’ve introduced a unique item for this season that gives you the chance to use double death traps and pull in enemies. I’m really looking forward to that.
Deric Nuñez: I’m an off-meta person; I always play what I feel like. It’s been a couple of seasons since I played Necromancer, so I’m probably going to play that and see what fun boss power combinations I can build. For example, this death ray power that comes from your chest when you channel, I’ll pair that with the Necro abilities and see if I can somehow get to ‘Pew Pew.’
MeinMMO: Great! Thank you for the answers.
Season 8 starts on April 25, 2025, and brings a redesigned Battle Pass, reworked bosses, and new seasonal powers with it. There are also new items that you can farm and a new small story line. In our overview, you will find everything important: Diablo 4 Season 8: Everything about start, end, and the content
