Diablo 4 update 1.1.0.a patch notes are here ahead of Season 1

18 July 2023 , 17:34
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Diablo 4 update 1.1 is here at last and the patch is available to download now (Image: Shabana Arif)
Diablo 4 update 1.1 is here at last and the patch is available to download now (Image: Shabana Arif)

It's the day you've all been waiting for! The Diablo 4 Season 1 patch notes reveal ahead of the Season of the Malignant officially kicking off on Thursday, July 20.

Most ardent Diablo 4 players will have waded through the campaign, are perhaps feeling a little mired in the endgame content. Things are about to get shaken up with Season of the Malignant when Season 1 goes live this week. Activision Blizzard is deploying update 1.1.0.a today which includes new seasonal content listed in the early Diablo 4 patch notes as well as other tweaks and balance changes for players who won't be partaking in the new season of the Diablo 4 Battle Pass and its Season 1 rewards..

The devs weren't exaggerating when they said the update would be a big one. There are reams of patch notes! The points of note are the six new unique items and seven new Legendary Aspects, of course. Melee characters are getting a break with monster tendency for moving around in combat reduces so you won't have to chase them down too much.

World tier monster levelling has been adjusted so that a monster's level will begin to trail behind the player after a certain point (up to a maximum of five levels behind). More XP boosts have rolled out which is always great – Whispers in World Tiers 3 and 4 reward XP has been "significantly increased", while bonus experience rewards for killing monsters that are a higher level than the player has also been increased.

In terms of character balancing, Diablo 4 update 1.1.0.a focuses on "clear itemisation disparities over redesigns of Class features." Most of it is on "numeric increases to Skill Upgrades and Legendary Aspects", "changing Critical Strike Damage Paragon Glyphs to empower all damage," and a "few Class stat decreases on sources which grant extreme amounts of damage, healing, or Unstoppable."

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The Barbarian is a point of contention already, with the bug that saw the "outer edge of the quakes granted to Hammer of the Ancients via The Aspect of Ancestral Echoes was dealing far more damage than intended," fixed. That means the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian build is going to suffer, but as the devs point out, its strength shouldn't rely on an underlying bug.

PS5 DualSense Edge Wireless controller support for PC has also been introduced. Here's the full (and very long rundown) of Diabolo 4 patch notes for update 1.1.0.a.

Diablo 4 patch notes: update 1.1.0.a

New Unique items and Legendary Aspects

New Unique items and Legendary Aspects have been discovered in Sanctuary. Use them to enhance your characters in the Eternal or Seasonal Realm. These Unique items can be obtained from World Tier IV and the Legendary Aspects can be obtained from any World Tier.

6 Unique Items
General

Developer’s Note: Ahavarion Spear of Lycander is an extremely rare drop. We wish you luck in recovering it from the armies of the Burning Hells.

Barbarian
Druid
Necromancer
Rogue
Sorcerer

Developer’s Note: The Azurewrath and Fleshrender Unique Items have flat damage effects, which scale with power. For example, at 820 Item Power, Azurewrath deals between 3359-6718 damage.

7 New Legendary Aspects
General
Barbarian
Druid
Necromancer
Rogue
Sorcerer

Bug Fixes

Accessibility

Challenges

Cooperative Play

Dungeons

Gameplay

Barbarian

Developer’s Note: We recognize this adjustment is a significant decrease to the Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian build, but we do not want its strength to be reliant on an underlying bug.

Druid
Necromancer
Rogue
Sorcerer
General
Helltide and the Fields of Hatred
Items and Aspects
Monsters
Quests and Events
User interface and User Experience
Miscellaneous

Loading Screen Updates

We've added more dynamic loading screens with the release of Season of the Malignant. This includes adding more assets to the loading screen, such as your player character.

Gameplay Updates

General

World Tier

Developer’s Note: We like where World Tier II has landed overall but are increasing its reward pace to better align with its difficulty.

Developer’s Note: We want to give players a better sense of their power progression and mastery over the world while still challenging themselves with structured End Game activities.

World Tier III Example:

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World Tier IV Example:

Experience

Developer’s Note: We have observed that the experience bonus rewarded for killing higher level monsters escalates too fast when compared to the relative challenge involved. We still want to reward players for taking on this challenge by encouraging them to participate in powerleveling together instead of one player killing enemies while another member of their Party waits at the dungeon’s entrance.

Helltide

Developer’s Note: We're looking to increase the danger in Helltide's risk-reward gameplay by making the monsters a bit more challenging and the Tortured Gift of Mysteries harder to open.

Balance Updates

Developer’s Note: As our community continues to battle the Burning Hells, the builds emerging from new players have shocked and delighted us. We've chosen to focus Season of the Malignant’s balance updates on clear itemization disparities over redesigns of Class features. The Class changes are largely focused on numeric increases to Skill Upgrades and Legendary Aspects that players haven't yet found compelling. Additionally, we're changing Critical Strike Damage Paragon Glyphs to empower all damage—instead of only Core Skills—to enable more build strategies.

There are also a few Class stat decreases on sources which grant extreme amounts of damage, healing, or Unstoppable. In general, we prefer build-specific changes to be bonuses instead of decreases, but we feel these changes are necessary for the overall health of the game. Diablo IV is a game that is continually evolving through its Seasons, thus the adjustments we make will evolve with them.

Barbarian

Skills
Passives
Paragon
Aspects
Items

Druid

Skills
Passives
Spirit Boon
Paragon
Aspects
Items

Necromancer

Skills
Passives
Book of the Dead
Paragon
Aspects
Items

Rogue

Skills
Passives
Paragon
Specialization
Legendary Aspects
Items

Sorcerer

Skills
Passives
Paragon
Enchantments
Legendary Aspects
Items

General

Aspects
Items
Monsters
Miscellaneous
Item Affixes

Developer’s Note: Many Affixes are too efficient and are outshining alternatives. We’re looking to refine the outliers, improve the number of meaningful choices on competitive slots, and increase the overall flexibility of items. We know these changes will reduce the total amount of possible power a character can possess, so we'll be monitoring how these changes affect players’ ability to conquer expected milestones throughout the Season.

We’re increasing the availability of the Affixes below to make them easier to include in different builds.

Developer’s Note: The Core Stat bonus on Weapons has been overperforming, so we're pulling back on this bonus.

Developer’s Note: Cooldown Reduction affixes often felt mandatory due to their raw power. We imagine Cooldown Reduction will remain a highly desirable stat, but the penalty for not prioritizing it won’t be as harsh.

Developer’s Note: We're seeing Critical Strike Damage and Vulnerable Damage often viewed as a hard requirement for a build's success in Diablo IV. We believe this is a step towards allowing more builds to flourish and will continue to make changes in support of this goal.

Developer’s Note: Disparities in inherent affixes can rule some Weapons out before the rest of their stats are even rolled. These are receiving harsher reductions than their normal affix counterparts to increase Weapon flexibility.

Developer’s Note: Damage Bonus to Crowd Controlled Enemies was overperforming relative to the ease of activating it versus stricter, Crowd Control type-specific affixes.

Developer’s Note: We have seen that skillful players are frequently slaughtering monsters many levels above their own. We want to support this, but the current situation is beyond what we believe is correct for the long-term health of the game. To chase this goal, we're shifting power to many offensive Affixes from defensive Affixes. We know this will make our end game content more deadly, particularly for those chasing our pinnacle boss, an encounter not meant for the faint of heart. Overcoming the pinnacle boss will take every ounce of grit you can muster and all tools at your disposal. We will continue to evaluate feedback from the community and make changes to our combat mechanics.

If you made it to the bottom, congrats! That was a long read. Now you have just a few days to prep for Diablo 4 Season 1.

Shabana Arif

Xbox, PlayStation, PC Gaming, Diablo, Diablo 4

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