Diablo 4 is making its most criticised systems much better for Season 2

Season of Blood, the second season of Diablo 4, is less than a week away. After spending nearly two hours last week dissecting the new content coming with Season 2, and diving even deeper into all of the quality of life updates arriving with the season patch, the next topic on the agenda was balance.

More specifically, class rebalance, resistances, Uniques, and damage buckets. For that, Blizzard hosted another livestream that went into the nitty gritty of how much the underlying game systems are going to change with Season 2.

Though the livestream was a little shorter than last week's, the content was nevertheless as important, particularly to players who like to craft builds and really care about the synergy between different classes and endgame.

As explained on the show, Blizzard wanted to make clear systemic improvements to much of what governs combat balance. This all starts with elemental resistances, which are now calculated additively, with a cap of 70%.

The cap can reach 85% with the help of effects like skills, Paragon Boards, Elixirs and so on. On the flip side, armour now only protects against physical damage, no more elemental resistance stats on armour. The goal is to make resistances a major part of builds, giving players enough tools to build up their resistances.

Blizzard reckons you should be able to get your elemental resistances to 70% (the base maximum) at around level 80.

Another major point of controversy has been the effectiveness and power of Uniques. Season of Blood brings updated versions of almost all of them, and the key to making them exciting is allowing them to have unique stats not available anywhere else.

Outside of the new unique stats, every unique will now have wider stat ranges, entirely new stats, and more straightforward effects. In addition, cooldown reduction is now a stat that could roll on weapons.

You can't talk about Uniques, of course, without talking about how to earn them. Blizzard is officially making it possible to target farm Uniques with Season of Blood. Every one of the new/updated endgame bosses now has a higher chance of dropping certain Uniques. That said, Uniques can still drop from anywhere else in the endgame, but your chances are lower compared to farming.

The patch will tackle class balance in an interesting way, too. All classes are getting some of their over-performing builds nerfed, but the goal is to create a more balanced medium where multiple builds can be powerful.

Blizzard is also adding scaling effects to many mechanics for all classes. For instance, the Barbarian's Blood Rage now increases all damage while Berserking, and the Rogue's Victimize explosion damage builds up as the player increases their vulnerable damage bonus.

Blizzard has a blog post that goes into more detail on all that, including the revamped damage buckets. You can read it all for yourself at the link.

Season of Blood arrives with patch 1.2.0 on October 17.