Diablo 4's Paladin and Season 11 make it better than ever

With a live-service game like Diablo 4, it can often be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff of the community’s outrage cycle. That’s especially true when observing it from the outside, or even from the semi-inside if you’re an occasional, on/off player (as I am with Diablo 4). Excitement at new content and changes is followed by disappointment, frustration, and boredom as regularly as night follows day. Is it really all over? Are we really so back? Or is it still essentially the same game it’s ever been?

The stats don’t lie, though, and I’ll tell you this: I am currently way deeper into the endgame of Diablo 4 than I’ve ever been before, and I’m not done yet. I am almost as obsessed as I was with Diablo 3 at its height. It has just clicked. This game is absolutely purring right now.

There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that the current season, Season 11 — also known as Season of Divine Intervention — gives the game’s systems a thorough overhaul that stops short of a complete revamp, but tunes everything just so. The second is the early addition of the Paladin, one of two new classes included in the game’s second paid expansion, Lord of Hatred, which launches on April 26. The Paladin is available to play now if you pre-purchase Lord of Hatred.

I’ll get to impressions of both shortly, but first, a quick recap. Diablo 4 launched in a decent state in 2023, but with a somewhat drab, underwhelming item game — the process of collecting and customizing loot that is at the heart of this action role-playing game. This was successfully refurbished in the excellent fourth season, Loot Reborn, in mid-2024. Later that year, the Vessel of Hatred expansion landed with a muffled thud; the Spiritborn class was cool, but the campaign storyline didn’t go anywhere and players were underwhelmed by the new features. In 2025, Diablo 4 seemed to be marking time, with a steady procession of largely uninteresting seasons, and the community grew more and more restless.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

When the Paladin and Season 11 dropped in December alongside Lord of Hatred’s Game Awards reveal, it was the former that was the instant draw. The Paladin, a heavily armored holy warrior type, was a fan favorite in Diablo 2 and was strongly echoed in Diablo 3’s mighty Crusader. Seasoned Diablo players knew exactly what they would be getting and knew that Blizzard’s developers, drawing on the many refined and impactful skills already baked into these classic designs, could hardly disappoint. As long as we can carry a shield and cast Blessed Hammer — which fires out spectral hammers of holy justice in spiralling arcs that smash through waves of monsters — we’ll be golden.

Golden we are. Diablo 4’s Paladin delivers, and has jumped straight to the top of many players’ personal rankings. Some of this is down to the current overpowered state of the class, which is sure to be nerfed at some point, but most is down to Blizzard’s comfortable command of this archetype, which the studio has also explored to brilliant effect in World of Warcraft (and, arguably, in Overwatch’s Brigitte).

Sturdy and indomitable, with a good mix of close- and mid-range attacks and defensive and healing auras, Diablo 4’s Paladin just feels great to play. It is less focused on positioning than some other classes and more on letting the hordes come to you. In Diablo 4, the class has been thoughtfully expanded with some interesting mix-and-match subclass styles: the tanky, physical Juggernaut, the dashing Zealot swordsman, the holy Judicator (wielder of the famous Blessed Hammer), and the Disciple, which has savage angelic transformations that take flight and crash down on the battlefield. I had fun exploring these but could not resist the siren call of the classic “Hammerdin”, albeit goosed with a hybrid build that grants some of that subclass’ crackling power.

Diablo 4's giant Azmodan boss surrounded by pools of fire

Season 11 itself is not a showstopper, but it’s a smartly organized and paced season that works well as a kind of best-of tour of the last 18 months of additions to Diablo 4. It has a fun hook, sending you out to repeatedly battle four classic Diablo bosses — the Lesser Evils Azmodan, Belial, Duriel, and Andariel — in new contexts. And it has a sensational new loot customization system called Sanctification that many players hope will be made permanent.

Sanctification allows you to add a second Legendary aspect — the build-altering effects at the heart of Diablo itemization — to any item. But the aspect is chosen completely at random, and once applied, it locks the item completely, allowing no further customization. Ever since Loot Reborn, Diablo 4’s item game has focused on deep customization: Players use Tempering, Masterworking, Enchanting, and Imprinting, as well as jewels and runes, to get every item exactly how they want it. It’s absorbing tinkering, but the deeper into the endgame you get, the more it devalues new loot. Sanctification reintroduces the thrill of the dice-roll, with the chance to radically increase the power of a favourite item — or to add nothing of use to it and render it inert.

Sanctification is balanced by changes to Tempering and Masterworking that make these crafting systems less random and more strategic. The community seems split on these changes; my personal feeling is that Diablo 4’s item game is overall more balanced and impactful, with meaningful drops thinning out less quickly as you penetrate deep into the endgame. Fundamentally, this remains a game about tailoring your loot to suit your build, rather than the other way around.

Diablo 4's Hadriel stands in the Heavenly Forge in Season 11, Season of Divine Intervention

Structurally, Diablo 4 is, like any mature live-service game, at risk of buckling under the weight of its many features and systems. But Season 11’s progression finds a clean path through the myriad options, which include Helltide open-world events, Whisper bounties, and multiple flavors of specialized endgame dungeon — the Pit, Infernal Hordes, the Undercity, lair bosses, and more. They are all rewarding and all more or less optional, although there are webs of item and key drops that connect them, if you dig down deep. Capstone dungeons are reintroduced, offering a welcome bit of structural definition, and acting as a handy gear-check (and skill-check) when unlocking higher difficulties.

It can get confusing and overwhelming; Diablo 4 is still a game that leans into its bewildering profusion of systems, mechanics, and possibilities for infinitesimal min-maxing. But, tuned as it is now, the punchiness of the action, the compelling customization, the gratifying fountains of loot, and the expertly paced breadcrumb trail of reward easily punch through the noise. Roll on Lord of Hatred.