Diablo III Season 28 was the most fun I have had in a very long time with the game. In fact, I spent more time playing Season 28 and was more entertained than I was with Diablo IV. Now, Diablo III is getting ready for Patch 2.7.6 and Season 29, which will carry the “Visions of Enmity” seasonal theme, introduce the Solo Self Found mode, and add other features. The Patch 2.7.6 PTR will start on August 15 and the team is looking to gather feedback on the Visions of Enmity seasonal theme.
The most exciting news about the upcoming patch is the introduction of Solo Self Found mode, a feature that has been in high demand since Diablo III introduced seasons. While many players embarked on Solo Self Found on their own, the official inclusion into the game with Leaderboards will fulfill many people’s wishes. In case it’s unclear what Solo Self Found is, it’s a single-player experience, which means no grouping up and no trading. You won’t have any friends to support you on your grind, and a Hardcore version of the mode will also be available.
Season 29 will introduce Visions of Enmity, which are pocket dimensions that are accessed by stepping through Diabolical Fissures found in the open world. Entering one will bring the player to a Vision of Enmity, which can be very unstable and has the potential to produce additional Fissures after the enemies inside are killed. In other words, there’s a possibility of chaining these Visions of Enmity instances for drops. But to ensure it isn’t just a reskinned rift of sorts, there will be new affixes on the enemies inside the Visions of Enmity. Here are the three that Blizzard shared:
- Enervating: Creates an area of effect around the monster that reduces the player’s Movement Speed by 65% and Cooldown Reduction by 50% if the player is in the vicinity of the monster.
- Necrotic: The player’s healing is reduced by 65%. Monsters have a damage-over-time effect that deals 180% of the player’s max health over 30 seconds. This effect is removed if the player is healed above 95%.
- Resource Leech: Hitting a player removes 65% of their maximum resource.
Another change that will be part of the patch is Paragon Ceiling. For Season 29, players will only be able to assign a total of 800 Paragon Points to their character. To balance that, players can now assign up to 200 points in each attribute, instead of 50, but each category can only have 200 Paragon Points placed into them. It does open up build possibilities quite a bit, since you could spend all 200 points into Attack Speed if you wanted to and ignore it on your gear entirely, for example. The team did note that Movement Speed was changed to 0.125% per point, because the old value would give players with 100% Movement Speed.
You can view the complete patch notes for PTR here and see what balance changes are heading to each of the classes.
