Diablo 4 is gearing up for another major loot overhaul before its next expansion arrives next year

It's almost hard to believe that a little over a year ago Diablo 4 looked like a completely different game. Blizzard pried it open and rearranged how loot works, giving the action RPG a solid foundation to build off of over the following seasons.

The constantly evolving nature of live service games, however, means that enough stuff has been added over the last year that some of those older changes have grown a little stale in comparison. And now Blizzard has turned its attention back towards them as Diablo 4's second expansion is on the horizon.

Diablo 4's two methods of crafting—if you can call them that—stick out as features that solved necessary problems at the time, but are now more of a nuisance than anything. Blizzard added tempering and masterworking to keep loot from feeling static. Both systems give any piece of gear the potential to be an upgrade by letting you customize what stats are on them and how powerful they are. The problem is that both of them are based purely on luck.

Let me tell you, spamming an upgrade button to see if you got the right result is not particularly fun, especially when you're doing it for every piece of gear you own. It's even worse when it's an item perfect for your build that you have to trash because the limited number of attempts to add a stat onto it all failed. Loot ends up only feeling flexible if everything goes right.

My hope is Blizzard recognizes the same problems and will focus on removing the RNG from masterworking and tempering with the major changes it's making to them in the next season. Other action RPGs, like Path of Exile, have a whole set of crafting items you can use to deterministically craft items you want. Diablo 4 doesn't need to be as complicated, but it definitely needs to give you more tools to work with.

Normally Blizzard doesn't drop news only a few weeks after the latest season launched, but it sounds like it wants to give players as much time as possible to see what's on the way on the next PTR.

"In the coming weeks, we will begin highlighting PTR changes coming very soon," director of social and content marketing Adam Fletcher wrote on X. "A bit earlier than normal as there is a lot of big items to cover including Masterworking/Tempering changes, Combat & Renown updates + more!"

Blizzard has been hinting at another major overhaul to Diablo 4 ever since it put out the 2025 roadmap. The first expansion threw out the old leveling system and I expect the next expansion will do something similar. Based on the fact that they sent several build guide writers to test what's coming at Blizzard HQ recently, I think skill trees are next in line for a rework. And in a game like Diablo 4, where loot accounts for 80% of your character's power, it would make sense to take a look at that in the final season before the expansion.

Fletcher stressed that Blizzard wants as much feedback as possible before season 11. He didn't provide a date for when the PTR will open, but it might be sooner than usual.

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