You can already test Season 5 on the official PTR of Diablo 4. Many players and experts are looking at what the next season has to offer and giving feedback. One of them, Raxxanterax, has extensively talked about what Season 5 is already doing well and what definitely needs improvement.
This is what you can currently test:
- Until July 2, 2024, the PTR for Season 5 is ongoing, where you can test the new content, including: the season quest, new items, and especially the new season event or the mechanics.
- As a new activity, Season 5 introduces the Roguelite mode “Infernal Hordes”, where you must defeat waves of monsters. You will receive buffs and curses, and at the end, you must defeat bosses for rewards.
- The content is supposed to keep you busy the entire season, similar to the Hell Floods and the Pit in Season 4. However, at least Diablo expert Raxxanterax sees a major problem here.
Here you can find all info about the release and content of Season 5 in Diablo 4.
What Raxxanterax says: According to the expert, the hordes are simply not fun. In a new video on YouTube, he analyzes his approximately seven hours of gameplay at that time. The biggest problem is actually the core functions of the activity:
- Too much time passes between waves where you do nothing and have to wait.
- The “Boon & Banes”, or pros and cons between each round, are simply not good. The buffs do nothing, and the disadvantages feel boring.
- Even the bosses at the end are a disappointment: For some reason, you have to leave the arena and walk into a new room. After the fight, there is not even loot from the opponents. It only comes with the reward chests.
It is already difficult to interact with the activity at all. You need an Infernal Compass to activate it. You can obtain these roughly through the chests of the Hell Floods – but not guaranteed. The drop rate of the compasses is far too low.
Additionally, it is extremely difficult to actually get decent loot from the event. With the largest chests for 250 ether, the new reward currency for the hordes, you can get guaranteed legendaries with Greater Affixes, but obtaining so many is nearly impossible:
“I have not heard a single person think that [the rewards] are appropriate. I assume they will get better by Tier 8, but at Tier 3, where I played the most, the monsters were already at level 100. Most people will never get past Tier 3. The most ether I have gotten in a run was 69 […] and the Greater Affix chest costs 250. I wasn’t even in the dimension to spawn one of the best chests.
And ether does not carry over when you leave [the activity], so you can never open the best chest. […] I spent the entire 69 [ether] on the gold chest, and that gave me less than three million gold. So my best performance there is worth less than three million.”
Raxxanterax gives a few ideas in his video on how the content could be improved, such as with new buffs and curses and especially better rewards and higher mob density. However, he is very satisfied with the season in general.
After Season 5, the 1st expansion of Diablo 4 will already start. Here you can find all info about Vessel of Hatred, in the video the rather bloody intro:
“Season 5 goes in the right direction”
The expert praises most of the changes that will come to the PTR with Season 5 and thus presumably also in this form to the live servers in August. According to Raxxanterax, good improvements include:
- the ability to hide damage numbers and effects for better visibility
- clearly visible and audible drops of the new Mythic items
- Buffs for Uber Uniques, which will become significantly better for many builds
- the change that you can now simply summon bosses in a row
- Improvements to minions, which no longer just mindlessly follow you
Raxxanterax particularly highlights a little-noticed change to world bosses. They are now actually a challenge. He was there with a barbarian who had several Mythics and Uber Uniques equipped, a perfect build.
Nevertheless, the boss lived for a minute: “It took eight level 100s one minute to defeat a boss […] If you don’t have super strong characters, that could take the full 15 minutes. [The fight] went from an instant one-shot to a one-minute fight.”
However, there is still criticism of some of the content. Raxxanterax says that the hardening system introduced with Season 4 is now better, as recipes are somewhat more targeted. However, it is still not perfect, as there is still too much randomness.
However, the “rerolling“, that is, fishing for the right stats at the enchanter, is worse. Here he spent over 170 million gold in just a few moments to find a stat he needed.
Furthermore, balancing remains a problem. Barbarians are far too strong, while sorceresses and druids still linger somewhere at the bottom. Blizzard is already working on implementing feedback from the PTR and will certainly make several changes before the start of Season 5.
Raxxanterax believes: Diablo 4 is currently on a good path and is steadily improving – especially when feedback is taken into account. One of the biggest topics here will probably remain class balance. After all, the discussion about classes has dominated the community for a while: Player wants to show off with his barbarian with almost 500,000 health, immediately causing criticism of the class
