Diablo 4 developers Colin Finer (Lead Live Game Designer) and Zaven Haroutunian (Associate Game Director) sat down with content creator Rob2628 for an extensive interview about Season 11. The conversation covered major changes to experience scaling, boss fights, itemization, and endgame systems while dropping a heavy hint about The Game Awards.
Expansion Announcement Expected at Game Awards
When Rob2628 asked if Diablo fans should watch The Game Awards on December 11th, Haroutunian leaned close to his webcam and smiled. "Everyone should be watching it. We're all gamers, we're gonna watch it."
That's about as close to an official confirmation as Blizzard gives before formal announcements. Season 11 launches December 9th, just two days before the show. BlizzCon isn't until September 2026, making The Game Awards the obvious choice for an expansion reveal.
A datamined image showing "December 12" in Chinese characters supports the theory. The date accounts for time zone differences with the December 11th broadcast.
Tower Gets Character-Specific Prestige Rewards
Season 11's Tower mode will feature two separate reward tracks. Milestone rewards unlock at specific tiers (10, 50, 100) and provide functional items that help character progression.
Leaderboard rewards are purely cosmetic. Top performers earn prestige titles and halos, but here's the twist: these rewards bind to the character that earned them, not your account. For Hardcore players, this means your prestigious cosmetics disappear if you die.
Leaderboards reset every one to two weeks, similar to how the Gauntlet worked. All builds appear publicly regardless of privacy settings. Blizzard is also adding Diablo 3-style rank notifications that pop up when you finish a run.
The Tower's map generation represents a major technical upgrade. Maps always go upward for better visibility, side paths never contain important loot, and dead ends have been completely eliminated. Blizzard plans to bring this improved map tech to the Pit eventually.
Bosses Losing 60% of Their Health
PTR testing proved bosses were absurdly overtuned. Tower bosses had double or triple the HP of Pit bosses at the same difficulty.
Dungeon bosses are losing roughly 60% of their health in Season 11. World bosses get smaller cuts around 10%. Capstone bosses are losing the resilience stat entirely. Blizzard wants bosses to feel dangerous without turning into tedious bullet sponges.
Torment Scaling Still Broken
Torment difficulty has a fundamental problem. Each tier multiplies monster HP by 10, which means Torment 4 enemies have literally 1,000 times more health than Torment 1.
This creates awful progression gaps. Builds crush Torment 3, then hit a brick wall at Torment 4. Content feels trivial until you're strong enough for the next jump. Blizzard is considering adding more Torment tiers to smooth things out, but nothing's confirmed.
Monster damage scaling was also too aggressive on PTR. It's been toned down between Torment 1 and 4, though damage will keep scaling past Pit 100 and Tower 100.
Sanctification and Itemization Updates
Cooldown reduction now rolls on gloves and rings with the same weighting as crit chance. This makes CDR much easier to find and fixes one of the most frustrating parts of gearing.
The attack speed cap system is getting reviewed. Right now there's a 200% cap split into two hidden 100% caps, and gear rolls can become completely useless without warning. Blizzard hates the system and might remove the caps entirely.
Sanctification is Season 11's version of Vaal Orbs from Path of Exile. You gamble on items to potentially improve them, then they lock permanently. The "Indestructible" outcome is gone, and Mythic items can't brick anymore. Important stats on items like Harlequin Crest won't get removed either.
Blizzard says sanctification should never feel mandatory, so they kept the power gains modest. After you sanctify, you can't modify items any further.
Toughness Stat Replaces Old Defense System
Toughness consolidates all the scattered defensive stats into one number. Before, damage reduction came from Paragon nodes, passives, and class mechanics with no way to calculate actual survivability.
Blizzard admits Toughness is unclear right now. They call it a "necessary evil" needed to remove resistance and armor caps. Future updates might add suggested toughness values for each World Tier.
Attack Power is changing to show mainhand weapon damage only. It's more accurate than the old system, but still not great since weapon damage barely varies at max level.
Melted Heart Gets Complete Rework
The PTR version of Melted Heart let players stack tens of thousands of max resource. This broke every mechanic that scales off resource pools, giving 20+ tier power spikes for free.
Instead of capping everything in the game, Blizzard reworked Melted Heart completely. It now doubles max resources and buffs the energy shield to compensate. The shield spends less resource for the same protection. This lets the item work without warping game balance around it.
Leveling Changes and XP Scaling
Campaign runs on PTR take about an hour if you rush. Instead of nerfing campaign XP, Blizzard is buffing Helltide and other alternatives. Seasonal Journey now grants XP alongside skill points and Paragon points.
Early levels (1-20) are slowing down slightly. Mid to late game (50-60) is speeding up significantly. Monster HP is dropping by 60% around level 50.
Class Balance and Skill Tree Rework Coming
Power levels dropped hard on PTR when Chaos items and perks got removed. But Pit scaling also dropped 5 to 10 tiers, so most builds will still hit 100-110 range.
Blizzard dislikes passive skills that just add flat bonuses. The major skill tree rework coming with the next expansion will focus on making choices feel impactful. They want "big chunky bonuses you can feel" instead of small percentage increases.
Snapshotting is being phased out for duration-based buffs. Right now you can snapshot effects like Druid's Overpower into Cataclysm for 20 seconds. If you mess up the timing, your Cataclysm deals zero damage for the full duration.
Sorcerer got Teleport nerfs but a new Unique keeps it as the fastest farming class.
Quality of Life and Returning Content
Gold drops are getting buffed significantly. Blizzard wants monster kills to be your main gold source, not selling gear. No "sell all" button is planned.
Boss materials might become stackable currency in the materials tab. This would clean up inventory but make them untradeable.
The Diablo 3 rebirth system is being considered. This would let you convert max-level characters into seasonal characters without losing their name or appearance. With Tower rewards being character-specific, rebirth would let you build a legacy across multiple seasons.
Some Season 10 Chaos Powers might return permanently. Blizzard specifically mentioned Ravens as a likely candidate. Chaos Rifts were extremely popular, and Blizzard seemed surprised they hadn't already confirmed their return.
Long-Term Development Confirmed
Blizzard stated there's "a very long development ahead for Diablo 4." This confirms plans for multiple expansions over the next five-plus years.
Season 11 launches December 9th. Patch notes should drop about three weeks before launch. All signs point to an expansion announcement at The Game Awards on December 11th.
