Diablo 4 Season 5 will finally retool some of the game’s bosses on August 6, making it so its massive world bosses aren’t giant pushovers while also majorly reducing the damage done by boss enemies in the endgame Pit dungeon.
Blizzard detailed all the changes coming as part of Season 5 in a recent livestream, and revealed that world bosses will have a new mechanic that was tested on the game’s public test realm but wasn’t actually listed among the changes–Resilience. This new system will “normalize” damage against bosses out in Diablo 4’s open world, which should make it so players will actually have to engage with the boss and their attacks instead of instantly deleting the world boss the moment it spawns, as was the case in Season 4.
As for the floor bosses in The Pit, the multi-level endgame dungeon introduced as part of the game’s Season 4 Loot Reborn overhaul, they will have their damage reduced by a massive 66% across the board. In addition, the Shadow Pit bosses that spawn in for one-off attacks at higher Pit difficulties will now be much less likely to one-shot players who get hit. Instead, these phantom enemies will give players a stacking debuff that increases the damage players take, therefore rewarding careful players who are able to avoid being hit.
There’s big changes to Diablo 4’s summonable endgame bosses as well. For starters, each boss can now be resummoned multiple times without needing to leave its dungeon and reset it–a nice quality-of-life feature that should make farming the bosses more efficient. The Beast in Ice summoning location will be moved much closer to the entrance of its dungeon and won’t require Sigils to summon. Another boss, Varshan, is having its summoning process simplified, with players simply needing Malignant Hearts to summon him instead of numerous different items. Players will be able to convert existing parts into Malignant Hearts at the Alchemist.
Updates to bosses are just some of the major changes coming when Diablo 4 Season 5 launches. Almost every Unique item in the game is getting significant buffs and changes, and each class will see buffs in an attempt to bring them up to the power level of the Barbarian, which is having its overall power reduced. For more, check out the full Diablo 4 Season 5 patch notes.
Season 5 will be shorter than previous Diablo 4 seasons. The game’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, and Season 6 will begin on October 8. We recently went hands-on with the expansion’s new class, the Spirit Guardian-summoning Spiritborn, and came away impressed at its unique gameplay and aesthetic.
