Season 25 Compendium for Diablo 3 (2024)

Last updated on Nov 30, 2021 at 09:00by Deadset15 comments

Season 25 introduces a new type of socketable items called Soul Shards, alongwith a slew of set and legendary item changes, as well as new rewards to beearned by completing the Season Journey.

Patch 2.7.2 for Diablo 3 enters PTR testing phase on Thursday, November4th and will last over the course of two weeks. This content hub articlewill guide you through the most important changes in the patch and will showyou the best, strongest builds to take into the new Season 25.

Historically, Seasons end on the Sunday before the week a new patch isapplied to the live servers. It has been announced that Season 24will be over on December 5th 2021 at 5pm PDT (NA servers), 5pm CEST (EU servers),and 5pm KST (Asian servers).

Given the timeframe of the PTR and the usual schedule for the application ofthe tested changes to a live server, it is reasonable to expect Patch 2.7.2 tobe live on Non-Seasonal servers on December 8th, and for Season 25 to starton December 10th 2021.

The Public Test Realm runs for a period of two weeks, with periods ofscheduled maintenance and possible hotfixes, minor patches, and server outages.Should you decide to participate in the PTR, you can expect the followingalterations to the normal state of the game:

• There will be PTR-specific buffs that will assist with accelerated testingof changes. Legendary drop rate is increased, Experience gain is boosted, andBlood Shards (currency used for gambling) are doubled. Additionally, there is aPTR-only vendor, Djank Mi'em, who will exchange Blood Shards for class-specificbags full of Legendary items, greatly increasing the pace at which you acquireany and all items you may need for testing.
• There will be PTR-specific class and item balance changes. This Seasonfocuses on changes to the Witch Doctor and Demon Hunter the most, withadditional tweaks made to Barbarians, Necromancers, and Wizards.
• There will be a test run of the new Season 25 theme, along with all of itsseason-specific items and gameplay alterations.

Season 25 introduces a new type of socketable item called SoulShards. Beyond the quick overview below, we also have a massiveSoul Shards Effects and Mechanics article, where we goin-depth over the effects of this seasonal addition. If you are interested inthe particulars of these bonuses and how they can affect your build, delve rightin!

You can find 7 unique Soul Shards, based on the Lords of Hell,each giving your hero a unique new power based on their demonic origin.Regardless of their differences, they share a few common mechanics:

• Prime Evil Soul Shards (Fragment of Destruction,Shard of Hatred, Sliver of Terror) are only socketable inHelms.
• Lesser Evil Soul Shards (Dregs of Lies,Essence of Anguish, Remnant of Pain, Stain of Sin) are onlysocketable in Weapons.
• At Rank 1, they will grant similar (but potentially stronger)benefits to having all 5 standard Flawless Royal gems socketed at once in therespective slot. At Rank 2, they will provide a random defense- (helms)or offense- (weapons) oriented stat roll.
• You may only equip one Prime Evil Soul Shard and one Lesser Evil SoulShard at a time.
• Each Soul Shard can be upgraded using a new, seasonal-exclusive consumable,the Hellforge Ember.
• Soul Shards can be salvaged, but cannot be traded.
• Soul Shards can used in the Caldesann's Despair recipe instead ofregular Legendary Gems.
• Lastly, Soul Shards and Hellforge Embers can only drop in Seasonalplay and will not transfer to non-seasonal characters once Season25 ends.

Quick overview of Prime Evil Soul Shards:

• Sliver of Terror is a very potent DPS gem with a considerablecooldown-increasing downside. Nevertheless, lots of builds will be trying tofit it in and counter its negative effect with additional CDR stacking.
• Shard of Hatred greatly enhances your AoE, but at the cost of lesseneddamage in single target situations. It forces you to go all in on the rift clear,forcing massive fights and hoping to amass a time advantage to offset the longerRift Guardian fight.
• Fragment of Destruction will mostly be useful to support characters asthey gain an additional source of Cooldown Reduction, Passability and, with theright roll, a Culling effect to assist their parties with.

Quick overview of Lesser Evil Soul Shards:

• Essence of Anguish is a universally useful DPS gem that enhancesCDR and Movement Speed by default, and adds either splash damage on kill, or aconsistent damage increase as its Rank 3 effect. While some of its powers hingeon dealing Poison damage, they can be triggered by your weapon's damage roll— making the gem usable by all classes.
• Dregs of Lies is a pet build-oriented gem, providing a significantdamage buff for that build subtype, as well as an additional stacking damagebuff on its optimal Rank 3 roll.
• Remnant of Pain encourages you to drop all Crit Chance rolls on gearon Crowd Control-heavy builds, allowing you to massively alter your statdistribution on gear to attain other useful, but otherwise sub-optimal stats.Great addition to stat-starved builds!
• Stain of Sin offers a Support build-oriented power that spawns an AoEcircular field once a trash pack is taken down, greatly enhancing damage dealtto elites within. Its additional powers can negate harmful effects towards thegroup, or directly assist progression, further solidifying it as a Supportstaple.

Nov. 5: Soul Shards are an awesome addition to the Season 25 mechanics,and are arguably the most game-changing powers added to the game in quite sometime, easily surpassing the Ethereals of Season 24 in sheer strength andpotential to alter a build.

Much like Ethereal items, it is somewhat of a regrettable decision thatsuccessful and beloved Seasonal mechanics do not roll over into a permanentchange to the game. The only instance of this was the Legacy of Dreams season,which was turned into the Legacy of Dreams gem, which was a universallyliked addition to the game. Perhaps there is still time to change developer'shearts on the matter, so it bears repeating that some of the season-specificchanges we have experienced in Seasons over the past few years can carry oververy nicely into base Diablo 3 and liven up some of the more forgotten orneglected aspects of the game. Even with the scant details we have in theinitial PTR patch notes, Soul Shards will likely fall into that very samecategory.

The effects of Depth Diggers have been changed to encompass all Primaryskills, not just resource-generating ones.

• Personal Thoughts: This is a very welcome change that will not onlybenefit the Arachyr set rework, but is also the doorway to greater generatorbuild variety in the future.

Remorseless has been buffed to increase the damage of Hammer of the Ancients from 200-250% to 600-800%.

• Personal Thoughts: This buff strengthens any Hammer of the Ancients-reliant build — regardless if it uses theImmortal King set, the Raekor set, or Legacy of Dreams mechanics — byabout 7 tiers. This further lessens the discrepancy between Barbarian builds,making the power differences in endgame Barb builds even smaller and making itone of the most balanced classes in the game.

Changes have been made to theEmbodiment of the Marauderset that bring about the return of the automated Sentry playstyleof Season 1!

The 4-piece bonus of the Embodiment of the Marauderset makes it so that Sentry cast your equipped Hatred Spenders whenyou do, but also automatically on their own. They lose their current 400%damage increase from this set tier. The 6-piece bonus of the Embodiment of the Marauderset now applies the 12,000% increased damage bonus to the listed skills peractive Sentry to the Sentries themselves. An addition has been made to Bombardier's Rucksack to also include 150-200% increased damage to Cluster Arrow in the legendary property.

• Personal Thoughts: Considering the sheer impact of the numbers listed,as well as the effectiveness of an automated Sentry playstyle that veteranswill remember from Season 1, this is a serious contender for one of the mostinteresting changes in Season 25. This brings a lot of flavor back to the setand its playstyle, placing huge emphasis on Sentry positioning and how youthink about dealing damage in this build. The addition of Cluster Arrowdamage in the legendary property of Bombardier's Rucksack is also a verysmart addition that practically equalizes the pushing potential of both Multishot and Cluster Arrow arrow Marauder variants, for greaterbuild flexibility even in high end play.

Changes have been made to the 6-piece bonus of theShadow's Mantle set that bring anadditional 25,000% damage to targets beyond the first enemy struck by Impale (and the set retains its 75k damage bonus against that initialtarget).

• Personal Thoughts: While this change pretty much restricts Impale players to Overpenetration, it is also a decent buff tothe power level of the build of about 6 tiers, and shifts its "elite hunteronly" gameplay to something more universal and usable across all sorts ofrifts.

Changes have been made to the 6-piece bonus of theBones of Rathma set, increasing itsdamage bonus to Army of the Dead from 500% to 1750% per active minion, upto 31,500% (from 9000%).

• Personal Thoughts: While this does not address the bigger issues withthe Rathma set — namely, the clunkiness of its use and the lack ofsurvivability — it is still a welcome improvement to the damage potentialof this under-appreciated Necromancer build path, worth about 7-8 GRtiers.

Shukrani's Triumph has been buffed to make Spirit Walk lastuntil you attack 3 times (up from 1) or until an Elite enemy is within 20 yardsof you (from any enemy within 30 yards). It now additionally doubles the damageof attacks made while in the spirit realm (read: while Spirit Walk isactive).

• Personal Thoughts: This change affects how Witch Doctors think abouttheir staple survivability and mobility tool, Spirit Walk. Currently Shukrani's Triumph only applies its restrictions once the initial runtimeof the skill is over (2 seconds base, 3 seconds with Jaunt); assuming thismechanic remains unchanged, this mojo will give Witch Doctors a 2-3 secondperiod of doubled damage whenever the CD is popped, adding an offensive angleto an otherwise defensive cooldown. Most Witch Doctor builds either do not havea defining Mojo or have a somewhat flexible weapon slot in the Cube, so Shukrani's Triumph can be easily taken almost across the board.

Lakumba's Ornament is now changed to reduce damage taken by 60% if youhave at least 1-3 Soul Harvest stacks, plus an additional 2% per stack(the power used to be just 6% DR per stack).

• Personal Thoughts: This is a massive buff to one of the weaker aspectsof Witch Doctor-dom, survivability. It also makes any one-on-one engagements,such as Rift Guardians, much more manageable due to the high baselineDR.

Changes have been made to theArachyr set, as well as to existinglegendary WD items to bring about a Corpse Spiders-oriented build:

• The Spider Queen's Grasp now increases the damage of Corpse Spiders by 600-800% (up from 45-60%), on top of the usualSlowing power it adds to the skill.
• A new belt, Brood of Araneae, now causes Corpse Spiders to dealan additional 75-100% damage, and each spider bite causes the target to take anadditional 1% damage from Corpse Spiders for 5 seconds.
• The 2-piece bonus of Arachyrset now summons a permanent Spider Queen connected to your character by an"infested thread". Enemies caught in the thread are Infested. Corpse Spiders attacks against infected enemies inflict the same damageto all Infested enemies. The Spider Queen is commanded to move where you cast Corpse Spiders. Corpse Spiders now spawn with health. The 4-piecebonus makes the Spider Queen leave behind webs that last for 15 seconds and Slowenemies. Infested enemies remain infested while on the web. You take 75% reduceddamage while in the web and for 4 seconds after. The 6-piece bonus is a 17,500%damage increase to Creature skills.
• Personal Thoughts: The second rework of the Arachyr set in the 2.7.2 PTRresults in a decidedly better, more fluid playstyle that also has a flow of itsown, with the tethering mechanic of the Spider Queen and the necessity toreposition in such a way as to maximize AoE. The changes to the damage reductionmechanic make it more relaxed and practical, with the 4 second leeway offering amore than reasonable window to adjust positioning without the loss of valuablesurvivability.

Changes have been made to the 6-piece bonus of theFirebird's Finery set that disableIgnition mechanics from Pets, thus disabling the popular Mirror ImagesFirebird variant.

• Personal Thoughts: The 2.7.2 PTR nerfed the Firebird set damage in halfin a misguided attempt to mitigate the pervasive Mirror Images meta, butcommunity outcry thankfully reversed the butchering of the set. Instead, whatwas (rightfully) removed was the unintended and annoying to play aroundinteraction with the Mirror Image summons, leaving a very viable and veryfun Flame Blades Wizardinstead.

So far we can only speculate what the absolute best builds for Season 25will be, but we definitely have contenders for the best new ones.

This is a Primary attack-oriented build variant that considers theArachyr set rework with itsnewfound focus on Corpse Spiders. Click on the link below to see thefull guide!

The strength of the Bones ofRathma have been revised for Season 25, revitalizing interest in thisbeleaguered set. This build leans on the Poison synergies of the newEssence of Anguish Shard, as well as the naturally cooldown-heavyplaystyle of Necromancers with the Sliver of Terror Shard.

This will likely be the strongest build for the Embodiment of the Marauder setin Season 25, considering the already existing synergy with Multishotfor speed farming and the inability of Hellcat Waistguard to proc itseffect on Cluster Arrows cast by Sentry. This build followsexisting Multishot build conventions, but adapts them to a pet-reliantplaystyle with damage multipliers from gear rolls with Sentry damage, Tasker and Theo in the Cube, and a socketed Enforcer.