d3 Season 17, the Season of Nightmares Starts May 17th

[Starym 3,800]

 

We finally know! Season 17 aka the Season of Nightmares, is coming on Friday, May 17th! The launch date has been a mystery for a while, but a lot of people guessed correctly, and we'll be getting a week between the seasons. Blizzard have also detailed everything that's coming with the new season in the patch notes below, including the item changes, Conquests, cosmetic rewards, new Torment difficulties, Haedrig's sets and more!

The new season beings on of the best, if not the best seasonal affix yet, and we've already covered why it's the perfect time for players to get back into the game. We also have a whole lot of coverage from the season's PTR, as well as other Diablo 3 articles in our hub.

Season 17 (source)

Season 17 begins May 17, alongside the latest Diablo III patch. Read on to learn more about upcoming legendary item updates, new Torment levels, a slew of quality of life changes, and a nightmarish Seasonal buff!

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Table of Contents

• Season 17 Theme
• Season 17 Cosmetic Rewards
• Season Journey Rewards
• Seasonal Conquests
• Haedrig’s Gift
• Quality of Life
• Legendary Updates
• Patch Notes
• FAQ

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New Season Theme

Season 17 is introducing an all-new buff that’ll change up the way you evaluate your gear! For the duration of Season 17, all Seasonal players will benefit from the Set bonus provided by Legacy of Nightmares. This means that everyone will enjoy the powerful benefits of the “no Set” Set and any and every Ancient Legendary you find is that much more valuable.

Classes with especially powerful Legacy of Nightmare builds will be able to experiment with new combinations, particularly ones centered around their ring slots. Meanwhile, classes traditionally dependent on a heavy amount of survivability from their ring slots have more freedom to experiment with build-changing Legendaries that don’t rely on a Class Set.

We’re looking forward to seeing the strange and unusual things players put together at all Torment levels, so let your creativity run wild and see what combinations of Ancients you can combine to play your own way!

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Season 17 Cosmetic Rewards

For the first time, we are re-introducing previous Seasonal rewards to make them available to players who may have missed them the first time around. Awards originally available in Season 5 will be available for Season 17 by progressing through the Season Journey.

In addition to the Pants and Boots slots of the exclusive Conqueror Set, players will be able to earn a series of portrait frames themed around the nightmarish Greyhollow Island. If you’re a pet collector and missed out on it the first time around, the adorably creepy Wickerman will be available to add to your collection.

We’ll continue to cycle through previous Seasonal rewards going forward, but we also have something new to chase for the player who has everything! Players who complete all nine chapters of the Season Journey will be rewarded with a new cosmetic item—and for Season 17, that means the Galactic Wings could be yours!

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Season Journey Rewards

If you’ve been diligently slaying demons for the past few Seasons and reached Conqueror in the Season Journey each time, you’ve surely accrued a few extra stash tabs. You’ll earn one additional tab each Season by finishing the Conqueror tier, up to a maximum of five:

• Guardian of Sanctuary: Finish a level 70 Nephalem Rift on Torment XIII within five minutes
• Gem of My Life: Level three Legendary Gems to level 55
• All I Do IS Win: Complete two Conquests this Season
• Show Me What You Got: Kill Diablo at level 70 in under 1 minute and 30 seconds on Torment XIII difficulty
• Money Ain’t a Thang: Slay Greed on Torment XIII difficulty
• Take U There: Reach Greater Rift level 60 Solo
• Power Amplification: Use Kanai’s Cube to augment an Ancient Legendary item with a level 50+ gem
• Cubic Reconfiguration: Use Kanai’s Cube to reforge a Legendary item

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Seasonal Conquests

The Seasonal Conquest rotation continues! For the speedy, Sprinter and Speed Racer return, challenging you to complete all five Acts of the campaign in under 1 hour. Greedy nephalem might be more suited to completing Avarice or Avaritia, where you’ll need to rack up a gold streak of 50,000,000 outside of The Vault. Complementing our Seasonal Buff, The Thrill and Superhuman request that you complete a Greater Rift Level 45 without the assistance of any equipped Set Bonus. It’ll be a Season for alt-aholics, as Years of War and Dynasty requires completing a Greater Rift Level 55 with the set bonuses of six different Class sets, while Masters of the Universe and Masters of Sets ask you to complete eight different Set Dungeons. Flex those muscles and show us your class mastery, heroes!

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Haedrig’s Gift

Finally, the Class Sets rewarded for completing certain chapters in the Season Journey courtesy of Haedrig’s Gift have rotated once more. We’ve listed the available Sets below. For those new to Seasons, here’s how it works:

Completing Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of the Season Journey will reward you with three of Haedrig’s Gifts. Each Gift contains a few pieces from one of your Class Sets. Players can only unlock one Class Set in this manner per Season across Hardcore and Non-Hardcore, so choose wisely!

The set you will receive depends on the class of the character you’re playing when you open each Haedrig’s Gift. To collect a full Class Set, you’ll need to open all three on the same character.

Here are the sets granted by Haedrig’s Gift in Season 17:

• Barbarian – Might of the Earth
• Crusader – Thorns of the Invoker
• Demon Hunter – The Shadow’s Mantle
• Monk – Monkey King’s Garb
• Necromancer – Grace of Inarius
• Witch Doctor – Raiment of the Jade Harvester
• Wizard – Firebird’s Finery

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Quality of Life Changes

Several major quality of life changes are also incoming to Season 17 in Patch 2.6.5. We want to address some of the longest-standing and most requested quality of life features that the community has brought to us.

First, we’ve added three new Torment levels to the game, so that there’s more variety and efficiency in farming for players deep in late-game content.

Higher Torment levels means more experience, gold, and Blood Shards, along with improved rewards from activities like Bounties and Nephalem Rifts. Don’t worry; we’ve made some tweaks since the PTR to ensure that additional rewards abound, including a higher drop rate for Greater Rift Keys for these new difficulty settings.

We’ve also added a new search functionality to the Stash (on PC only). You can search by the name of any item to highlight it in your Stash space—sure to help you organize, equip, and get back out there fighting demons more quickly than ever.

There are a few other small changes coming, such as an Expand/Collapse All button for recipes on Crafters (PC only), most Bounty indicators appearing immediately after entering the Bounty area, and Death’s Breath now dropping from Horadric Caches. With all these changes, Season 17 is sure to be the greatest Season yet!

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Patch Notes

PATCH 2.6.5

Note: All changes apply to all versions of Diablo III, including PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC unless otherwise indicated.

Table of Contents:

• General
• Quality of Life
• Seasons
• Items
• Bug Fixes

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General

• Torment 14, 15, and 16 have been added to the game
  • Reward and difficulty levels of all new Torments closely match Greater Rift 65, 70, and 75 respectively
• Portals left behind by Treasure Goblins may occasionally lead somewhere udderly ridiculous
• Using an Ancient or Primal Puzzle Ring in Kanai’s Cube will produce a new result
• Party portraits now display if a player’s Cheat Death buff has been recently used (PC Only)
• When a boss is killed in a Nephalem Rift, a permanent ping will mark the location of the boss’ death until the Rift is closed
• The Boss Notification screen has received a rework (PC Only)
• The Greater Rift Notification screen has received a rework (PC Only)
• The Greater Rift Completion screen has received a rework (PC Only)
• Matchmaking no longer prevents players from joining a game while a Greater Rift is already in progress
  • Players who join the game will still be unable to join a Greater Rift in progress
• The progress bar for a Greater Rift is now visible to all players in the game, regardless of whether they are participating in the Rift or not
• Challenge Rifts
  • The amount of Death's Breath rewarded by completing a Challenge Rift has been increased

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Quality of Life

• Seasons
  • The cap for earning additional stash tabs through the Season Journey has been raised from 4 to 5 (PC Only)
• Search functionality has been added to Stash (PC Only)
• All Crafters now have an Expand/Collapse All button for recipes (PC Only)
• Most Bounty indicators are now displayed immediately after entering the Bounty area
• Death’s Breath now drop in Horadric Caches

Developer Comment: With 2.6.5, we’re aiming to address some of the longest standing and most desired quality of life features the community has brought to us. We’ve hit a little bit of everything, from adding additional Torment levels, making Ancient/Primal Puzzle Rings feel rewarding, and adding some Stash space improvements. Other changes were made to help smooth out overall gameplay, such as making Bounties feel like less of a chore and more rewarding and reworking a few of our notification screens.

In addition, we encountered a lot of technical issues with increasing overall stash space for players. Unfortunately, as these issues caused significant degredation of the overall gameplay experience, we ultimately had to take a step back on this quality of life improvement and table it for now.

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Seasons

• The Season Journey Journal now displays all chapters, regardless of current progression
• There is a new reward for completing the entirety of the Season Journey (Guardian)
  • For Season 17, the Galactic Wings are available
• Added the buff for Season 17
  • Player’s damage dealt is increased by 750% and damage taken is reduced by 4% for every Ancient Item they have equipped while having no Set Bonuses Active

Developer’s Comment: The Season of Grandeur was by far our most popular Themed Season yet. In the wake of having a free Ring of Royal Grandeur active, we saw a lot of requests to try the same thing with the Legacy of Nightmares set power. We had been toying with the same idea internally, and the community request really nudged us over the edge of giving it a go!

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Items

• (NEW) Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered
  • Become immune to control-impairing effects for 5-7 seconds after drinking this potion
• Akkhan’s Leniency
  • Each enemy hit by your Blessed Shield increases damage of your Blessed Shield by 15-20% 35-40% for 3 seconds
• Bloodtide Blade
  • Death Nova deals 80-100% 300-400% increased damage for every enemy within 25 yards
• Carnevil
  • The 5 10 Fetishes closest to you will shoot a powerful Poison Dart every time you do
• Chantodo’s Will
  • Every second while in Archon form you expel a Wave of Destruction, dealing 1000% 4000% weapon damage to enemies within 30 yards. Every time you hit with an attack while not in Archon form, 1000% 4000% weapon damage is added to the Wave of Destruction, stacking up to 20 times
  • Wave of Destruction damage now scale with attack speed
• The Dagger of Darts
  • Your Poison Darts and your Fetishes’ Poison Darts now pierce and deal an additional [400-500%] damage.
• Grace of Inarius
  • 6-Piece Bonus
    • Bone Armor also activates a swirling tornado of bone, damaging nearby enemies for 1000% weapon damage and increasing the damage they take from the Necromancer by 3750% 10000%
• Iron Rose
  • Attacking with Siphon Blood has a 40-50% 100% chance to cast a free Blood Nova
• Jekangbord
  • Blessed Shield ricochets to 6 additional enemies and has its damage increased by 225-300% 300-400%
• Sage’s Set
  • Now doubles the amount of Death’s Breaths that drop
    • Previous: Increases Death’s Breath drops by 1
• Sin Seekers
  • Now also adds 250-300% damage to Rapid Fire
• Wojahnni Assaulter
  • Rapid Fire deals 60-75% 75-100% increased damage for every half second that you channel. Stacks up to 4 30 times.
    • The stacks gained from Wojahnni Assaulter now also stack much more quickly

Developer’s Comment: With Patch 2.6.4, we focused on making a lot of changes to different class sets to open up build diversity and level out the comparable power between classes. With 2.6.5, we’re continuing that trend through adjustments to (mostly) Legendary powers we feel have a very strong, fun fantasy, but needed some damage bumps.

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Bug Fixes

• Necromancer Simulacrums now benefit from the Trag'Oul's Avatar 6-Piece Bonus
• Fixed and issue where Xbox One/PS4 Voice Chat within public games was failing to work (Xbox One and PS4 Only)
• Fixed an issue where The Immortal King’s Set Dungeon objective numbers were incorrect
• Fixed an issue where Greater Rift 70 first-time completion Primal drops were occurring for players even if they did not succeed at the 15-minute completion time
• Fixed an issue where Bounties that required interacting with an object would not update the next objective immediately after completing one
• Fixed an issue where a second Puzzle Ring tab would be shown in the Kanai’s Cube UI when a Puzzle Ring was equipped (Console Only)
• Fixed an issue where Keywarden icons would not show up on the map in Torment level games (Switch Only)
• Fixed an issue where some subtitles in the Taiwan localization would exceed the screen limit (Switch only)
• Fixed an issue where the mouse cursor may be hidden when launching the client (Mac only)

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FAQ

Q: When does Season 17 start?

A: Season 17 begins Friday, May 17 at 5:00 p.m. PST in North America, 5:00 p.m. CEST in Europe, and 5:00 p.m. KST in Asia. For time zone conversion, see this site.

Q: When do Seasons go live for players on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch?

A: Seasons go live for all console players globally Friday, May 17 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, regardless of which regional version of the game you may have. Please note that Seasonal Leaderboards for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch are still separate by hardware platform.

Q: When will Season 17 end?

A: We are no longer providing anticipated end dates for Seasons. However, we are committed to keeping Seasons roughly three months in length (give or take a few weeks based on development needs) and will continue to provide a minimum of two weeks advance notice for when the Season will be ending.

Q: When are the non-Seasonal Leaderboards being wiped?

A: Non-Seasonal Leaderboards are tied to what we call “Eras,” each of which lasts about 6–12 months. The most recent era began January 8. For more information on Eras, please see this post.

Q: What will happen to older Seasonal and Era records?

A: Starting with Season 10, we removed old personal bests from Season 1. When Season 17 arrives, we will remove old personal bests from Season 8, and so on. We will be doing the same for personal bests from the previous Era when the next one goes live.

Seasonal Leaderboard records are not being cleared and will remain archived both in game and on our website.

Q: I saw something about additional stash tabs being added. Why isn’t that in the patch notes?

A: During the course of the 2.6.5 PTR, we encountered technical issues that caused us to have to step back from adding additional stash tabs to Diablo III. Specifically, it caused performance issues for the game and, while we know stash tabs are highly valued and desired by our community, we strongly believe in providing a smooth and enjoyable gameplay experience first. For more information about the issues we experienced, please refer to this forum post.

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Themed Seasons are continuing to evolve as we venture into the future, and we’re quite excited to see where this one leads. Are you looking forward to the Season of Nightmares? Is there a Legacy of Nightmares build you plan on using? Share your thoughts below and we’ll see you in Season 17!

May 17th is the season start date and we have all the details on what's coming with it!

[Trepide 6]

So, in the end, it is just ONE additional stash (cap increased from 4 to 5). Let's hope the cap will be increased in next seasons. All this has a taste of "much ado about nothing".

[Guest]

Adding more stash-slots will cause "significante degredation of the overall gameplay experience"

Are they *filtered* kidding me? Why exactly?

How incompetent are they?

I am reminded of the last "patch" on Anthem that fixed absolutly nothing and the only thing about the loot everybody is complaining about was: There is even LESS loot after the patch.

I do not play Anthem, but the fun reading in Reddit about it is incredibly.

[Arkpit 101]

I'm looking forward to playing the season but I'm furious over the fact we got the date barely a week before... As one with a job I like to plan for a season and perhaps request a few vacation days etc so you really want a few weeks in advance to plan ahead and this just was a kick in the nuts for me.

PTR ended 27th of April and if they knew then already, why wait 2 weeks to announce it?

[Valks 2,375]

7 hours ago, Arkpit said:

I'm looking forward to playing the season but I'm furious over the fact we got the date barely a week before... As one with a job I like to plan for a season and perhaps request a few vacation days etc so you really want a few weeks in advance to plan ahead and this just was a kick in the nuts for me.

PTR ended 27th of April and if they knew then already, why wait 2 weeks to announce it?

Exactly the same here. It should have been next week IMO and with how long they waited, it felt like they were trying to hint that it wasn't going to be this week.

[pwnz0r 11]

I really hoped they would update the seasonal journey at least a little bit, to include the new torment difficulties and adapt to the dmg buffs from last patch. Super excited about seasonal themes getting better and better tho ?

[tyraelpl 4]

All fine and dandy but both the pet AND portrait frames have already been there once as rewards (s3 iirc) which sucks for me since I already have them. It's the 1st time it happens which only assures me in the notion that blizzard is sloppy and the "old" blizzard is long dead.

This whole debacle about more storage is honestly beyond belief. To limit storage so much in a game that's about getting loot is plainly dim witted.

[Valks 2,375]

On 5/14/2019 at 4:28 PM, tyraelpl said:

All fine and dandy but both the pet AND portrait frames have already been there once as rewards (s3 iirc) which sucks for me since I already have them. It's the 1st time it happens which only assures me in the notion that blizzard is sloppy and the "old" blizzard is long dead.

This whole debacle about more storage is honestly beyond belief. To limit storage so much in a game that's about getting loot is plainly dim witted.

I mean, the wings reward is new and they look pretty cool, so there's definitely something to work towards.

[tyraelpl 4]

5 hours ago, Blainie said:

I mean, the wings reward is new and they look pretty cool, so there's definitely something to work towards.

Yes but from my standpoint that's a third of rewards to work towards to and the least they could do is to make sure the rewards are unique. Or, at the very least, do both: old rewards to give people another chance to get those and new rewards for those who already have the old stuff.

My incentive for even doing seasons are those cosmetics since I have no time nor patience to grind for 2 months to have a shot at leaderboards.
Since official forums are basically policed to the point of censorship and any heavy critique is either removed or insta-locked alongside a monthlong ban I am voicing the dissatisfaction here. It feels less hostile of an environment. If you or anyone else still loves the game, good for you and I envy you, truly. At the same time though I'm allergic to blind and ardent  fanboyism which is overabundant on the official forums.
It's just that for every seemingly good decision they make there is always a some greater or lesser "but".

Cheers!

Edited May 15, 2019 by tyraelpl

[Ralle 0]

I wont get the bonus provided by Legacy of Nightmare if i have a set on right? Or do this season allow you to have both a set bonus and Legacy of Nightmare bonus? 

 

Edited May 16, 2019 by Ralle

[tyraelpl 4]

On 5/16/2019 at 5:22 PM, Ralle said:

I wont get the bonus provided by Legacy of Nightmare if i have a set on right? Or do this season allow you to have both a set bonus and Legacy of Nightmare bonus? 

 

The way LoN has always worked is that you mustn't have ANY other set bonus on your character. A single set item would be ok though.
So all in all you are correct, you would get LoN seasonal bonus only if you don't have any other set bonus active.

Edited May 18, 2019 by tyraelpl
Minor mistakes correction