Diablo 4’s Paladin might finally be here soon — plus Season 10’s Chaos theme fully revealed

Something is going on with Diablo 4 behind the scenes, and no I'm not talking about Rod Fergusson stepping away from the helm. For the past few weeks, Diablo Partners have been making some very obvious, very similar noise on social media. First, it was copy-paste style posts along the lines of, “Had a meeting with Blizzard about Diablo 4 changes, changes sooo good.” Then more recently came the photos, creators flown out to Blizzard HQ to “test something.”

Last time this kind of buzz was happening, it was early testing for the Spiritborn class. Which means it's not a leap to think we're about to get another new class. If you've been anywhere near the Diablo community in the last three years, you’ll know exactly which class people have been begging for: the Paladin.
Since launch, the player base has been begging and pleading for the return of Sanctuary’s armored holy warrior, and those pleas haven't gone ignored.

Fergusson himself has said multiple times that a more classic archetype would be coming. "We know people are excited about Paladins."

Well it looks like the cat is out of the bag, or should I say the Paladin out of the err... patch notes. Thanks to a leak reported on by Wowhead it seems the wait may be over.

Is Paladin finally coming to Diablo 4?

The source for this not so covert leak, was Blizzard’s own internal content delivery network, which briefly displayed a build of Diablo IV labeled “2.5x Paladin.” Oh dear.

The significance of this apart from the obvious, is that Gamescom is next week and Blizzard is expected to have something playable there. To make that happen, they had to push the build to external machines.

Either someone forgot to rename it… or Blizzard is having a bit of fun trolling us. I wouldn't be surprised at either possibility.

If it is a deliberate misdirection, it would be a particularly cruel one, considering the Paladin’s status as the single most requested post-launch class.

News from the Sanctuary Sitdown

The 'Sanctuary Sitdown', previously known as Campfire Chats just took place too and Blizzard just dropped the full Season 10 reveal. The content reveal and Q&A landed alongside the patch notes.

Powers are dead. Long live 'perks'. Yep, Seasonal Powers are getting a major shake up. They're now called Perks and it's not just like when they changed the name of Uber Uniques to Mythic Uniques, they're designed to be genuinally build defining.

In the sitdown, Blizzard devs compared past seasonal powers to “icing on the cake”. Nice, but essentially superficial. "A fun, temporary bonus layered on top of skills, gear, and paragon. But each season, that “icing” gets scraped off and replaced."

Chaos Perks, launching with Season 10, aim to change the filling of the cake. "The connective tissue between your skills, gear, and class mechanics"

They’re meant to force you to rethink your skill loadout, your gear choices, and even your core playstyle. Hopefully it should be a refreshing change from the standard borrowed power themes that have been criticized from previous seasons.

How Chaos Perks will work

You will have four perk slots in total: one unique, one magic, one rare and one legendary.

Each class gets 16 perks, including 4 class specific ones.

For example:

• Unstable Power: Basic skills always crit and overpower, but have a 3s cooldown.
• Bronn Over Brains: Massive boosts to life, healing, and overpower damage, but -25% max resistances and armor DR capped at 60%.
• Barbarian: All shouts are permanently active (with buffs), but reduce max Fury.
• Necromancer: Core skills become ultimates (no cost, long cooldown), and ultimates become core skills (cost essence, no cooldown).
• Sorcerer: 99% reduced max life, but damage hits mana before health (Mana Shield).

There'll also a be a new armor type, Chaos Armor, to shake up the itemization. Many uniques can now drop in a different armor slot (helmet, chest, gloves, legs, boots). For example the Spear of Lycander could drop as a pair of boots.

These new pieces always roll max stats plus an extra 20% boost, and let you equip combos that were impossible before (e.g., two “helmet” uniques by moving one to another slot).

Other changes coming in Season 10 include a significant overhaul of Infernal Hordes which I'm personally happy to see as it's one of my favorite activities in the game but was definitely getting a little stale. We'll even get 'Chaos Monsters' added to the enemy pool!

How to play the Diablo 2.4.0 Public Test Realm (PTR)

The 2.4.0 Public Test Realm (PTR) for Diablo 4 will be available from August 19 to August 26 and lets you test Season 11's Chaos theme for a whole week.

1. Open the Battle.net launcher.
2. Navigate to Diablo 4.
3. In the bottom left corner, select the dropdown and you'll find Public Test Realm.
4. Click Install.
5. Click Play and select a test server.
6. Create a character (create a Seasonal one for anything related to the Seasonal themes)
7. Skip Campaign if you started anew.

If you are an Xbox Game Pass player on PC, you can access the PTR through the Xbox app and follow the same steps above.