In the latest livestream, members of the Diablo development team talk in detail about the upcoming Season of the Construct that starts on January 23 and we’ve got the highlights!

The Season 3 stream is live from Blizzard Albany and starts at 12 pm ET/ 9 am PT/ 6 pm CET. They are expecting it to run for about 1.5 hours.

Liveblog

• Abbatoir of Zir will not be present in Season 3. Next iterations of the endgame feature may be implemented in the future.
• An upgradable seasonal construct is coming in Season 3.
• Vaults is a new dungeon type and Arcane Tremors are a new overworld activity.
• The Gauntlet is coming soon, but not at the Season 3 launch.
• Season 3 has a new questline.
• The main protagonist in the new questline is Ayuzhan. The main antagonist will be the demon Malphas.
• The Gatehall is a new seasonal town with all the vendors and convenient access to the Vaults for Season 3.

• The Seneshal Construct is a new power chase in the Season of Construct.
• It has its own UI so it won’t occupy valuable inventory space.
• The Seneshal will have two skills and you can customize and empower it further with various stones to suit your playstyle.
• The Seneshal is a “toy you can experiment with”, according to Lead Seasons Designer Daniel Tanguay. It’s an extension of you. It grows with you in power.

• Vaults are a new dungeon for the season and there will be four types of vaults.
• The objectives are not always obvious, there are many danger rooms with environmental hazards.
• Vaults will end with a giant death room.

• As you enter a vault, you can find a statue of Zoltun Kule there. If you can find a special Pearl of Warding, you can offer it to the statue, and in return the statue will grant you Zoltun’s Warding, which gives you additional rewards if you’re able to keep that buff by avoiding the hazards.
• Arcane Tremors is an activity taking place at the entrances to the vaults. The tremors revolve around constructs.
• You must collect cores and use them at a brazier to challenge a Herald of Malphus.
• The Heralds drop loot in addition to pearls that you can use to supercharge your loot elsewhere.
• There are Nightmare versions of the Vaults offering better rewards. They will be accessed via the Nightmare Sigil system that has been adjusted for vaults so the game will reward Vault Sigils.
• An Uber version of Malphus will be available.
• They want players to learn Season 3 before they launch the Gauntlet and Leaderboards. As a result, the feature will not be available immediately upon the Season 3 launch.
• The Gauntlet is another new dungeon type. It unlocks in World Tier 4, targeting endgame players at Level 100.
• The Gauntlet is based on 3 principles. It’s fixed (everyone has the same one, no fishing needed), non-linear (all about how the dungeon is laid out), and proves your might (it is about killing enemies, gathering proofs of might, and your combat efficiency will be recorded in your score).
• The Gauntlet has a dungeon boss right at the start.
• There are new types of shrines, one of them will spawn the enemies around you again so you can collect even more score.

• You can take the Tomb Lord outside of the room, get a shrine, and kill it with more NPCs.
• The Gauntlet will reset weekly.
• Here’s a screenshot of the Leaderboards. Each class has a unique ladder and there are ladders for different person parties, bringing the total to 8 ladders for each mode. There are filters for the various platforms or you can only filter out friends, which is really cool to see.

• Only the top 1,000 players during the week can get on the Leaderboards.
• The Hall of the Ancients is a permanent record of the top 10 players each week; the best of the best.
• The Gauntlet will reward cosmetics and seals.
• Seals are there to tell people you’re still good though even though you’re not in the Leaderboards.
• They’ve added some 925 Item Power legendaries to the Season Journey, based on community feedback.
• Here are some of the Battle Pass rewards.

• They are adding emblems from the season journey and the Battle Pass.
• Season Blessings are getting adjusted for the new season.

• Lead Class Designer Adam Z. Jackson now talks about class changes expected in Season3!
• Patch notes are coming tomorrow (January 19).

Barbarian

• Big improvements are coming to Charge. They are moving power to the baseline skill from legendaries/other effects.
• It’s going to do a lot more damage now.
• Many key passives like Walking Arsenal will be buffed.
• They want to make having multiple shouts on your bar feel like less of a requirement but keep it as an option.

Sorcerer Changes

• Lightning Spear Critical Strikes now have the ability to make enemies Vulnerable.
• Some buffs to Paragon Legendary nodes are planned.
• Meteor build is getting some updates/buffs will get a new Unique.

Rogue Changes

• Buffs to underused skills and skill upgrades.
• Many updates to ranged builds to make them more viable and fun.
• Changes to ranged Uniques, including Windforce, Skyhunter, and Eaglehorn.

Druid Changes

• Buffs coming to Prickleskin’s Thorns, about 4x compared to Season 2.
• Rabies is getting some upgrades, there’s a new legendary and a buff to Enhanced Rabies.
• Lightning Storm is getting a cool new unique.

Necromancer Changes

• Blood and Iron Golems now attack in a small area, similar to the Bone Golem.
• Friendly players and minions can now move through Bone Prison.
• Many Bone Spirit upgrades including a redesign of the Aspect of the Swelling Curse.

New Uniques

Adam now talks about some of the new uniques.

Here’s Starfall Coronet (Sorc Unique)

Here’s Druid’s Unsung Ascetic’s Wraps.

Class Balance Going Forward

• How should we update the game in regard to nerfs/buffs. and how often should we update it?
• We want to balance two competing concepts that we believe players want to make for a fun game.
• Players want to be able to feel like they can have fun with powerful builds that they discover.
• On the flip side, players want the meta to refresh so that the same things aren’t obviously the best choices forever.
• Some builds will be nerfed in Season 3, see below for more details.

Changes and Seasons

• The plan is to update the game twice per season when it comes to class balance. The first tuning will be at the beginning of the season and a second round of tuning will come during the middle of the season.

Season Launch Patch

• At season launch, we can expect new legendaries and uniques for each class.
• They plan to do balance and design updates.
• Lastly, there are larger initiatives and updates not guaranteed every season.

What to Expect During Mid-Season Patches?

• The mid-season patch brings experiments / favorite designs from previous seasons, e.g. Malignant Hearts. The patch could also include legendaries or uniques / 1 per class. There can be from all Seasonal designs, not always previous seasons.
• Balance updates and changes to other game updates.

Mid-Season Patch Examples

The devs now showcase specific examples of mid-season patches. Something like the Violet Hammer of the Ancients would get fixed in a mid-season patch.

Balance Roadmap

The goal is to communicate early and often. At the beginning of the season expect in-depth class changes, new legendaries and uniques, and a ton of bug fixes (both buffs and nerfs).

During the mid-season patch, we will see smaller class balance updates, bug fixes, and few/no design nerfs.

Quality of Life Updates

The team now goes over the various quality-of-life updates planned for the Season 3 patch. They include almost permanent Helltides, WASD key controls, a new respeccing of skill trees, easier gold trading on consoles, higher item scaling in World Tier 4, and more.

• A new Support a Streamer program will launch on Twitch soon. It gives you a horse for 2 subs. It will run for 1 month. More details will be available later today.

Q&A Time!

• They don’t want players to solve CDR and other things because then they can’t give you anything interesting.
• Vaults will work just like Nightmare Dungeons in terms of gameplay.
• The main source of Uber Uniques will still be Uber Duriel, but two really powerful stones for the Seneshal Construct will drop from Uber Malphus.
• They have fixes coming for snapshotting in the near future.
• We won’t meet Zoltun Kule personally in Season 3.
• You can level up your glyphs in Nightmare Vaults.
• The Gauntlet has unrestricted access, you can jump into it as many times as you’d like.
• A massive itemization update is planned for Season 4. No specifics to announce now.
• More optimization toward social features is planned over the course of Diablo 4.
• No additional sources of Uber Uniques will be added in Season 3.
• No plans to the field of view is planned currently.
• Aspects will be cataloged in the codex in a future season to save inventory space.
• You can inspect player builds in the leaderboards, but you will only see their current build, not the build they used when they ran the Gauntlet.
• No commitments to adding Malphus to the boss ladder for now.

Stream Link

You can watch the stream below.