Diablo 4 Waypoints

It's a tradition in Diablo 4 to equip each new season with its own unique seasonal power. While not every new power is fun or useful enough, they do reflect the season's theme to some extent.

In Season 10, Chaos Perks were a hit with players due to their powerful abilities, which puts even more pressure on the upcoming Divine Gifts mechanic - if it doesn't perform as well as Chaos Perks, it could ruin Season 11.

Therefore, this article will focus on this mechanic, explaining its operation to analyze whether it's worth paying attention to and experiencing.

What Are Divine Gifts?

As the seasonal power for Season 11, Divine Gifts actually has two systems: Corrupted and Purified. Equipping Corrupted increases both the difficulty and rewards of subsequent games, while Purified only provides additional buffs.

Defeating the four bosses - Duriel, Andariel, Azmodan, and Andariel - in this season will reward you with two Corrupted Essences from each. Find Angel Hadriel, who will purify these essences, transforming them into equipable Divine Gifts.

Corrupted slots corresponding to these Corrupted Essences will unlock immediately after defeating the boss. However, to unlock their Purified slots, you must unlock higher ranks in Season Reputation system. The required ranks are as follows:

• Duriel: Rank II
• Andariel: Rank IV
• Azmodan: Rank VI
• Belial: Rank VIII

In addition to Corrupted and Purified slots, Divine Gifts can also be placed in the slots corresponding to each boss to unlock exclusive rewards. You can then earn XP by repeatedly farming these bosses or other related enemies to upgrade existing Divine Gifts.

How To Obtain Divine Gifts?

Four key bosses will appear in different game events or dungeons. Defeating them, converting them through Hadriel, and ensuring your reputation level meets the requirements will allow you to equip a full Divine Gift.

Therefore, to enjoy this seasonal mechanic, you must be strong enough to defeat all four bosses. Some are easier, while others may require you to equip better Diablo 4 items to beat them.

Each boss can provide up to two Divine Gifts (before conversion, they are Corrupted Essences). Each Divine Gift consists of three parts: boss reward, Corrupted effect, and Purified effect.

It's worth noting that if you obtain the boss reward after unlocking Purified stat, its contents will be doubled. The rewards will continue to increase as Divine Gifts are upgraded.

Duriel

This boss will appear in Helltides. The corresponding essence and specific buffs are as follows:

Essence of Pain:

• Boss Reward: Can drop socketable items.
• Corrupted Effect: The boss will ambush you more frequently and has a 100% chance of breaking your barrier or empower itself.
• Purified Effect: If you take damage, you will briefly gain maximum barrier value every 20 seconds.

Essence of Squalor:

• Boss Reward: You can encounter Maggots while farming Helltide; killing them will drop Experience Globes.
• Corrupted Effect: Maggots spawn from falling meteorites, consuming 1 Health Potion per attack.
• Purified Effect: Gain 1 Health Potion every 20 seconds.

Andariel

This boss will appear in Kurast Undercity. The corresponding essence and specific buffs are as follows:

Essence of Anguish:

• Boss Reward: Obtain more Obols by clearing dungeons.
• Corrupted Effect: You may encounter Manifestations of Anguish in dungeons; they will reduce your movement speed by 70% when they get close.
• Purified Effect: Grants a 30% movement speed increase.

Essence of Screams:

• Boss Reward: Obtain more Salvage materials by clearing dungeons.
• Corrupted Effect: May encounter Agonized Souls, causing you to lose 12% of your maximum health per second.
• Purified Effect: Grants a 20% increase in resistances.

Azmodan

This boss will appear as a World Boss. The corresponding essences and specific buffs are as follows:

Essence of Sin:

• Boss Reward: Obtain more keys to play other events.
• Corrupted Effect: You will be in a Vulnerable state when fighting all World Boss enemies.
• Purified Effect: Armor effectiveness increased by 20%.

Essence of Hellfire:

• Boss Reward: Obtain more lair boss keys.
• Corrupted Effect: Triggers a meteor shower attack when fighting all World Boss enemies.
• Purified Effect: Your direct damage has a 10% chance to stun the enemy for 1 second.

Belial

This boss will appear in The Pit. The corresponding essences and specific buffs are as follows:

Essence of Lies:

• Boss Reward: Gain additional upgrade opportunities in The Pit.
• Corrupted Effect: The boss will fire beams at you, causing you to lose 10% of your maximum health per second.
• Purified Effect: You can recover 1% of your maximum health per second.

Essence of Shadows:

• Boss Reward: Gain more gold by clearing The Pit.
• Corrupted Effect: The boss's phantom attacks can stun you for 3 seconds or knock you back.
• Purified Effect: Enter an Unstoppable state once every 12 seconds of being affected by crowd control effects.

How To Maximize The Effect Of Divine Gifts?

As you can see, Divine Gifts buffs or rewards corresponding to different bosses, have highly limited effects, usually only suitable for use in specific events.

Therefore, we recommend that you prioritize defeating the bosses corresponding to the buffs you want to unlock their Divine Gifts, based on your needs or playstyle. Then, while farming other bosses, acquire enough XP to upgrade existing gifts.

What Is The Relationship Between Divine Gifts And Sanctification?

If you've been following Season 11, you should know that Sanctification is the final mechanism for upgrading gear - once completed, the gear cannot be modified.

The relationship between this mechanism and Divine Gifts is that when you fight the relevant boss for the latter, if you win, you may receive an invitation to travel to Heavenly Forge to begin Sanctification. Unlocking this forge requires completing Season 11 main quest.

Afterward, to complete Sanctification, you need to consume Heavenly Sigils, which can be farmed by completing various endgame events.

While completing Sanctification isn't difficult, especially for players already in the endgame, the reward - a gear upgrade - is randomized and cannot be changed afterward, making this mechanism less appealing to players.

That concludes our introduction. We would be honored if you found it helpful in preparing for Season 11!

Diablo 4 fans are undoubtedly familiar with Torment difficulty system in the open world. From Torment 1 to Torment 4, each tier represents a significant increase in your character's power.

The difficulty difference between each tier is substantial; with each increase, enemy strength nearly tenfold. Therefore, by the time you reach T4, the monsters are exponentially more difficult than your initial encounters, creating a rather steep progression curve.

What's Wrong With The Current Torment Difficulty System?

If Diablo 4 continued to provide highly challenging content, it would be fine. However, the problem is that there are currently only four Torment difficulty levels. T4 is the final difficulty level in the open world, with no higher challenges to overcome.

Once you adapt to T4, the game becomes increasingly easier because your power increases, but enemy strength no longer increases. Ultimately, experienced players with superior builds can easily wipe out all enemies.

This situation creates two main problems.

First, the vast difference in Torment levels requires players to acquire gear that provides dozens of times the damage boost just to barely handle the current enemies. This is why current Paragon boards and glyph nodes increasingly focus on pure damage increases rather than interesting support nodes.

Second, once we reach Torment 4, everything becomes incredibly easy; the only thing we can continuously pursue is faster map clearing speed and faster movement speed. So, since the current dominant farming builds can instantly kill all enemies and loot all Diablo 4 items, why would we need to play other builds? The existence of slower builds is also meaningless, as there's no higher level of challenge to challenge them, and their sustained damage output has no chance to be realized.

These problems not only reduce the original customizability of mechanics like Paragon, because all the difficulty-increasing mechanisms require players to blindly pursue damage, but also stifle build diversity.

Therefore, for various reasons, the developers recently hinted that they plan to add more Torment difficulties in Diablo 4 Season 11 and subsequent season updates, potentially increasing the number from the current four to ten.

But will these changes really solve the problem? Why is increasing the difficulty levels reasonable in the current situation? What impact will it have on endgame content? Let's discuss this together.

What Are The Benefits Of Increasing Torment Levels?

First, if implemented correctly, increasing Torment difficulty levels can solve both problems simultaneously.

Because instead of setting four vastly different difficulty levels, it's better to adjust to ten smaller levels, reducing the damage multiplier of each level from ten times to two times. This makes the leveling curve smoother, meaning you can steadily improve even without gear that provides a significant damage boost.

At the same time, Paragon nodes can return to their role as practical support characters, rather than purely damage dealers, making the entire Diablo 4 gear system healthier.

The bigger benefit, however, is that more Torment tiers make sense for slower builds. They were designed to trade speed for higher damage bonuses, so the Torment difficulty adjustment will give them a greater advantage.

This is the right way to create build diversity, allowing different builds to find the most suitable development method and tier based on their own strengths and weaknesses, rather than forcing all builds to desperately chase movement speed.

New Torment System Predictions

Next, let's propose some ideas on how the new difficulty system will actually work. These are just preliminary ideas, but I think they show potential.

Let's assume they add a total of 10 Torment tiers in Season 11, from T1 to T10. For clarity, we'll associate them with The Pit tiers. T1 unlocks at The Pit tier 10, T2 at tier 20, T3 at tier 30, and so on, up to T10 at tier 100.

This would create a smoother difficulty curve and make it easier to control. You won't encounter insurmountable obstacles, but rather a steady climb.

What's even more interesting is that content and rewards will gradually unlock as you progress through your Torment level; not everything is available in Torment 1. These tangible progress milestones provide players with a greater sense of accomplishment as they advance.

We've also made some predictions about the content unlocks for each level, for reference only:

• T1: The starting point at level 60. The Pit unlocks at this stage. You can also find common unique items, low-level boss materials, and standard items suitable for beginners, but not enough to build a core gameplay mechanic.
• T2: Dark Citadel unlocks at this stage to help players adapt to the endgame system.
• T3: Nightmare Dungeon Escalation unlocks at this stage. It guides them to try higher difficulties and understand the game mechanics.
• T4: Higher-ranking bosses will unlock, such as Andariel, Duriel, and Lord Zir. These bosses drop powerful and unique gear that can define a build.
• T5: The Tower will unlock. The Tower is competitive endgame content with leaderboards. By Torment 5 difficulty, players will have enough experience to understand the mechanics and its importance.
• T6: Belial unlocks here. This is currently the last boss in Diablo 4 and one of the most difficult fights in the game, but it drops top-tier unique items.
• T7: Expansion content may unlock here, including new systems, new events, and legendary Temper Manuals, creating another progression stage.
• T8: Special elite monsters spawn here. These elite monsters are enhanced, possess auras and special affixes, and drop legendary gems based on previous season abilities. This gives you new build options to pursue.
• T9 & 10: Represent even higher difficulty challenges. Not all builds can reach these difficulties, but if you do, you'll receive season-exclusive rewards, allowing players to still have something to strive for at the peak.

Item Power And Rewards Scaling

In addition, here's a suggestion related to Torment difficulty: incrementally increase item power in the late game.

Currently, all Ancestral Unique Items drop the same strength at Torment difficulty. This setting was intended to make it easier for players to select loot in the early stages of the game, but it also resulted in loot drops being too mixed and random. If players wanted to obtain specific items, they could only rely on RNG or buy safe Diablo 4 items from the online store.

What if item strength increased with Torment difficulty? The increase wouldn't need to be huge; a natural progression mechanism for loot strength would suffice. Challenging higher difficulties would yield better base items. This would make item farming more interesting.

Furthermore, the current reward increase from challenging higher Torments is negligible. A 10x increase in difficulty only yields a 10% to 20% increase in rewards, which is clearly disproportionate.

Therefore, increasing Torment levels and smoothing the difficulty curve would significantly improve the chances of obtaining gold, XP, Greater Affix, and material drops with each Torment challenge. While the increase may not be substantial, it is stable and significant.

In short, the current Torment difficulty system has obvious flaws. The four levels with drastically increased difficulty, the bottleneck at T4 difficulty, and the stifling of build diversity all negatively impact the player experience. Therefore, adjusting the Torment difficulty levels in Season 11 might truly solve these problems, allowing different builds to find their optimal level with a reasonable difficulty curve and reward scaling, thus enhancing player enjoyment.