Blizzard is rolling out a new Diablo 4 patch on January 12, and it introduces the new Tower on top of fixing some bugs and making a few balance changes.
This update is heavily focused on The Tower, fixing some balance issues and frustrating mechanics, and adding a long list of quality-of-life improvements across the game. If you have been spending time in Season 11’s endgame, this patch should make things feel noticeably better.
The Tower Gets Major Adjustments
The Tower is clearly the main target of this update. It gets finally added to the game, and Blizzard has reworked it a little bit since PTR. They changed how progression works so that Tower tiers now unlock the same way The Pit does, making it easier to understand how far you can push.
Encounters inside the Tower have also been changed to be fairer for both melee and ranged classes, and bosses got several important fixes. Issues like bosses randomly healing themselves or turning invisible during a fight have been removed, and their health has been lowered to better match Pit bosses.
Some pylons were also adjusted. The Pylon of Power got a small damage nerf, and the Pylon of Speed now gives you an attack speed boost and lets you knock down enemies that pass through.
More changes in this patch are clearly also aimed at improving the overall feeling of Tower runs, especially in longer Tower sessions. Orbs now drop immediately when enemies die, instead of waiting for post-death effects to finish. They will also appear closer to the player when possible, reducing unnecessary backtracking. Dying in the Tower no longer respawns you on a previous floor, and exit portals now spawn closer to your character once a run ends. Small changes, but ones that should make a big difference over time.
Quality-of-Life Improvements Across the Game
Outside of the Tower, Blizzard added a handful of useful QoL updates. Locked Capstone Dungeons now appear on the map with tooltips explaining how to unlock them, and the game does a better job explaining why certain items cannot be sanctified instead of leaving players guessing.
Some dungeon hazards were removed, several navigation and teleport issues were fixed, and general stability and performance improvements were rolled out as well.
Class and Bug Fixes
The patch includes a long list of bug fixes, with Paladin and Spiritborn getting the most attention. These fixes address everything from skill behavior and Paragon nodes to enchantments, affixes, and UI issues. So far, Paladin has not been nerfed in any way, so you can keep enjoying it!
There are also fixes for:
- Bosses breaking or leaving their arenas
- Infinite enemy spawns in certain dungeons
- Out-of-bounds issues
- Controller-related problems
- Accessibility features not behaving correctly
One particularly nasty bug, where Soul Drinker elites could scale endlessly, becoming massive and nearly unkillable, has finally been addressed.
Overall, this patch feels like Blizzard is preparing for The Tower’s beta launch and fixing a lot of bugs across the game ahead of the next season. A lot of other issues have not been addressed yet, but they might just be bigger to fix and come with next season or the expansion, so keep an eye on our news for more information!
Here are the complete Patch Notes if you want to take a look:
2.5.2 Build #70156 (All Platforms)—January 12, 2026
Game Updates
Base Game
The Tower and Leaderboards
General
- Tower now unlocks Tiers the same way the Pit does.
Encounters
- Monster populations have been tuned to be fair to both ranged and melee builds.
- Bosses have been adjusted to remove unwanted behavior such as self healing and invisibility.
- Boss health has been lowered to have parity with Pit Bosses.
Pylons
- Removed the delay between when a Pylon Cage is destroyed and when a Pylon can be used.
- Pylon health has been reduced in an effort to make them less tanky.
- Tuned the pylons to be more balanced to avoid unfair rolls of pylon spawn order.
- Pylon of Power
- Damage from 4[x] to 3[x].
- Pylon of Speed
- Player gains a chunk of Temporary Attack Speed (+50% Attack Speed).
- Player can Knockdown enemies they pass through.
- Pylon of Channeling, Shrine of Channeling
- Resource gain per second to support builds that drain resource which don’t benefit from Cost Reduction.
Orbs
- Orbs drop immediately when the monster dies, and no longer wait for post-Death effects (Elite affixes like Fire enchanted, certain spiders, etc.)
- If the orb drops close enough to the player, orbs will appear closer to you to avoid backtracking. If you are too far, orbs will drop at the corpse of the enemy that dropped it.
Quality of Life
- Dying will never respawn players on the previous floor.
- Exit portals now spawn closer to the player at the end of a run.
Game Updates
- Spinning hazards in certain areas in the Vault of the Crucible dungeon have been removed.
- Locked Capstone Dungeons will now show on the map and display a tooltip which describes requirements to unlock.
- Various updates to The Tower.
Developer’s Note: With the release of the Tower in this patch, we’ve made a ton of change since we initially had players dive in for the Season 11 PTR. This includes various Quality of Life improvements and bug fixes. The Tower will be releasing as a Beta so please continue to provide feedback! For more details on the Tower, you can read our blog here.
- Meteors spawned by the Essence of Hellfire now only deal damage over time, and no longer deal immediate damage or Stun players hit.
Developer’s Note: This part of the power will be re-enabled with the release of this patch.
- When attempting to sanctify items that cannot be sanctified, you’ll now be better informed why it can’t be sanctified.
Bug Fixes
Expansion
Paladin
- Fixed an issue where Flails couldn’t be enchanted or drop with the following affixes:
- Critical Strike Damage
- Damage
- Bonus Damage over Time
- Damage to Vulnerable enemies
- Overpower Damage
- Lucky Hit to Gain Resource
- Fixed an issue where Paladins could become stuck while climbing.
- Fixed an issue where Shield Charge could fail to hit enemies who were close to the player.
- Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck in place if using Advance assigned to the right mouse button while March of the Stalwart was equipped.
- Fixed an issue where the Rite of Mercy upgrade for Holy Light made Paladins untargetable by Spiritborn’s Toxic Skin Passive when playing in PvP.
- Fixed an issue where Falling Star with the Freefall upgrade and Rally with the Words of Sacrifice upgrade didn’t generate resolve when the Aspect of Valiance was equipped.
- Fixed an issue where the Aspect of Valiance could not be imprinted on the expected equipment slots.
- Fixed an issue where the Strength node next to the Ironclad Rare node in the Castle Paragon Board was magic instead of normal.
- Fixed an issue where the Renewal passive was granting healing instead of Fortify.
- Fixed an issue where the player could go out of bounds and get stuck when casting Falling Star towards a Fog Wall.
- Fixed an issue where the Screen Reader did not read the Paladin Unique Icon on items.
Spiritborn
- Fixed an issue where Spiritborn players could not use the Armory until after unlocking Spirt Halls.
- Fixed an issue where the below balance changes to Spiritborn, introduced in Season of Infernal Chaos, were unintentionally reverted.
- Skills
- Rampant Crushing Hand
- Damage bonus increased from 3% to 5%, up to 40% from 24%.
- Rampant Crushing Hand
- The Devourer
- Line damage increased from 140% to 200%.
- Spit damage increased from 40% to 95%.
- Harmonious Devourer
- Poison damage bonus increased from 50% to 100%.
- Key Passive
- Vital Strikes
- Vulnerable damage bonus increased from 80% to 100%.
- Vital Strikes
- Paragon
- In-Fighter
- Damage bonus increased from 15% to 30%.
- Viscous Shield
- Stacking damage bonus increased from 1% to 2%.
- Bitter Medicine
- Poison damage bonus increased from 40% to 60%.
- Revealing
- Damage bonus increased from 15% to 30%, up to 60% from 30%.
- In-Fighter
- Skills
Base Game
Accessibility
- Fixed an issue where the Screen Reader did not properly read out buttons in the Season Rank menu.
Dungeons and The Pit
- Fixed an issue where the Hellfire Adherent boss in the Hellish Descent dungeon could leave the boss arena.
- Fixed an issue where quickly leaving boss arenas after entering minor boss arenas in Capstone Dungeons could allow players to circumvent the encounters.
- Fixed an issue where the Leave Dungeon ability could teleport the player back to the first floor of Vault of the Crucible instead of outside the Dungeon.
- Fixed an issue where enemies could endlessly spawn in the second floor of the Enclave of Darkness.
- Fixed an issue where teleporting via the world map to the Hellish Descent dungeon took the player to the wrong location.
- Fixed an issue where the Guardian’s Lair Portal in The Pit could spawn in an unreachable location.
- Fixed an issue where Belial could be damaged before he fully spawned in The Pit.
Gameplay
- Fixed an issue where Druid players could not use the Armory until they unlocked Spirt Boons.
- Fixed an issue where previously earned renown rewards for extra potion charges still applied for some players.
- Fixed an issue where Elite Monsters with the Soul Drinker Affix could scale indefinitely, becoming extremely large and eventually unkillable. Who knew drinking souls could be so good for bulking?
- Fixed an issue where sometimes mounts would fail to break through barriers when using Spur.
User Interface and User Experience
- Fixed an issue where Greater Affixes would lose their unique colored text after being upgraded through Masterworking.
- Fixed an issue where the Boss Health Bar would be duplicated after it revived when fighting the Entwined Souls in Enclave of Darkness.
- Fixed an issue where Toughness did not display properly when comparing items.
- Fixed an issue where the visual effect for the Poison Enchanted affix could persist after the damaging effect was complete.
Miscellaneous
- Fixed an issue where players on controller could accidentally re-summon Azmodan when trying to collect loot after defeating him.
- Various stability, performance, UI, and visual improvements.
