Don't worry, Diablo 4's mid-season patch won't nerf your Spiritborn, but Season 7 will - and it's getting a PTR
Diablo 4's next major patch arrives next week, but it won't disturb too much of the Season 6 rhythm.
Although things are being done a little differently this time around, Blizzard has delivered on its promise to keep us all up-to-date on what’s going to change with Diablo 4’s next big patch, which also happens to be the Season 6 mid-season update.
The patch is scheduled for release next week, but Blizzard hasn’t shared the full change log following its developer stream like we’re used to. Prior to all the patch notes arriving later this week, however, the most recent Campfire Chat offered an overview of the high-level changes.
Before we get into the details of what the mid-season update is going to look like, Blizzard confirmed that Season 7 will also get its own Public Test Environment (PTR). We’re going to learn the details about that in another livestream next week. Season 7, of course, doesn’t begin until the end of January, so there’s plenty of time for the PTR to take place.
As for the mid-season patch, the developer confirmed that it won’t actually nerf the Spiritborn. As many players suspected, the Spiritborn is indeed stronger than other classes in the current meta. Blizzard said it has a 62% pickrate among all players, but a lot of its power is sadly the result of unintended interactions and other bugs, which won’t be addressed until Season 7.
Next week’s patch, however, will adjust some numbers to try and bring other classes in line with the Spiritborn for a bit of balance - though don’t expect them to be anywhere near as powerful. You can also expect a buff to some Runewords, lowering their offering costs. Runewords are only available to owners of the Vessel of Hatred expansion, of course, but given how popular the Spiritborn class has been this season, it’s safe to say that’s a large percentage of Diablo 4 players.
Blizzard is also - finally - addressing Shrines to improve their scaling. Artillery, Blast Wave, and Conduit Shrines now all deal more damage and scale with base player level as well as Paragon level.
In general, it looks like a lighter patch than you might expect from the mid-season, but we’ll find out for sure when the full change log is published later this week.