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Diablo 4 Season 11 Sanctification & Defense Reworks | Tempering & Masterworking Changes

Posted: Dec 05, 2025 Views: 22

Posted: Dec 05, 2025

Source:  IGGM

Views: 22

Diablo 4 Season 11, Season of Divine Intervention, has been postponed from the previously speculated December 9th to December 11th, specifically at 8:30 PM Pacific Standard Time, unlike the usual 10:00 AM start time.

Season 11 differs significantly from PTR 2.5.0, including a large amount of new content, system rework, and balance adjustments. However, the core theme is a slower overall game pace, increased difficulty, and a general nerf to build strength compared to Season 10.

In PTR, players were generally dissatisfied with changes to crafting aspects such as Sanctification system and Masterworking, and the official response was that these would be adjusted. These changes are now live in Season 11 release. Let's take a look at the specific changes.

Diablo 4 Season 11 Sanctification & Defense Reworks | Key Crafting Changes & Survivability Updates

Sanctification System

Sanctification is a new seasonal mechanic introduced in Diablo IV Season 11. The development team seemed to have considered making it a permanent system, but recent campfire chat hints that it might not be.

Veteran ARPG players will recognize that this system's core concept originates from similar systems in other ARPGs, such as Vaal orbs in Path of Exile and Worldstone Shards in Diablo 2 mod.

Essentially, it's a gambling mechanic with gear. Players can potentially gain powerful buffs to a piece of gear or brick it. Based on strong feedback from the player community, the development team made two key changes to Sanctification mechanic.

Removing Negative Effects On Specific Gear

In PTR, Sanctification could replace an affix on gear. While the new affix might be powerful, it could also brick the gear by replacing Greater Affix on Uniques and Mythic Unique items.

The current official solution prevents the attributes of Unique and Mythic Unique gear from being replaced. This means that the risk of destruction for top-tier gear, which is of greatest concern to most players, is no longer present. This negative effect may only exist on Legendary gear, and its impact is significantly reduced.

Changing No-effect Outcome Result

In PTR, there was approximately a 20% chance that sanctification would result in no change, meaning the equipment neither improved nor damaged. In Season 11 live servers, this 20% probability has been replaced with an increase in equipment quality.

This effect works in conjunction with Masterworking system, as Masterworking can increase equipment quality by up to 25%, with each 1% quality increase boosting all equipment stats by 1%. Sanctification now directly increases equipment quality by 5% to 25%, improving base stats such as armor, resistances, weapon damage, and the values ​​of all affixes, tempers, and mythic equipment stats.

Sanctification Probabilities

Based on official information and player testing results in PTR, the possible results and approximate probability distribution of sanctification are as follows:

10% probability: Replace an affix

  • Approximately 15% probability: Add a new power.
  • Approximately 20% probability: Add a more powerful affix.
  • Approximately 30-35% chance: Adds a random powerful affix.
  • Approximately 10-15% chance: Improves equipment quality.

According to Diablo 4 community manager, the new Might pool contains some incredibly powerful options, and the affixes added by Sanctification come from a specific pool of powerful affixes, which may include:

  • Cooldown reduction
  • Attack speed
  • +2 to all skills on jewelry
  • Doubling the strength of gems
  • Percentage core stats
  • Total resistance
  • Crit chance
  • Movement speed
  • Lucky chance
  • Resource cost reduction
  • Maximum resource
  • Maximum life

Defense System Overhaul  

Diablo 4 has made many changes to the defense system, including a rework of Fortify and Toughness system.

Fortify Reworked

Diablo 4 Season 11 introduced a new attribute, Fortify. It has also been reworked in the live servers of Season 11. It no longer directly provides damage reduction. The new mechanism is: when you take damage, Fortify points are converted into health regeneration, essentially a second health bar.

Fortify can coexist with Barrier, but they function differently: Barrier adds a shield to health, while Fortify quickly regenerates health after it is depleted.

New Defense System

Season 11 introduced a completely new Resistance and Armor system, but the specific workings (such as the cap) are somewhat unclear.

Additionally, UI displays a comprehensive Toughness value as a reference for survivability at each difficulty level, but you shouldn't blindly rely on this value. You must balance improving all resistances; otherwise, too low a single resistance can still lead to instant death.

Intelligence class can equip Skulls gems. For non-Intelligence classes, if the primary attribute is Armor, socket Diamonds to increase all resistances.

Affix Updates

Rings and gloves will have new affixes such as life on hit and coldown reduction, and Life on hit will be a crucial survival affix.

Crafting Changes

Tempering System

Tempering changes are consistent with PTR, and each item can now only be tempered once. As compensation, Diablo 4 items will drop with an additional base affix. While player control over affixes is reduced, the total number of affixes remains unchanged.

Masterworking Upgrade Rework

Masterworking has received some adjustments compared to PTR. Its maximum level has been increased from 12 to 25. While the increase per level is smaller, the cumulative increase may be greater, perhaps providing a 50% increase in base stats. Furthermore, there is now a chance to critically strike upon upgrading, resulting in an even greater boost.

Potion System Changes

Basic potions can no longer be upgraded, and players will only have four basic potions. As compensation, your character will automatically replenish one potion every 30 seconds to cope with prolonged battles.

These are the main changes to crafting and items in Diablo 4 Season 11 live server. Compared to PTR, it restores the strength of builds, preventing players from struggling this season.

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