Diablo 3 season 21 starts July 3, adds new armor sets and cosmetics

On June 23, Blizzard launched the latest patch for Diablo 3, ahead of its new season. On July 3 at 8 p.m. EDT/5 p.m. PDT, players can jump into season 21, called Trials of Tempests. This new season offers new armor sets for some classes, and a new elemental power bonus.

Here’s a quick look at all the new content in patch 2.6.9, and the upcoming Trials of Tempests season. For a complete list of patch notes, scroll down.

A storm of elements

As with the past several seasons, season 21 offers a new seasonal effect, which constantly changes the player’s gameplay experience. For Trials of Tempests, players constantly channel an elemental power. Every 90 seconds, players will either rain meteors from the sky, breathe lightning, summon flame walls, unleash energy tornadoes, or crush enemies with snowballs.

These effects could change how and when players tackle large groups of enemies during season 21.

New gear sets

The past few seasons of Diablo 3 have introduced new gear Sets. This season introduces the Gears of Dreadlands for Demon Hunters and the Masquerade of the Burning Carnival for Necromancers.

The Gears of Dreadlands has a new Momentum mechanic. When you deal damage with a primary skill, you gain Momentum, which increases your primary skill damage — up to a max of 20 seconds. Using Strafe automatically fires your primary skill as well, gives damage reduction, and increased movement speed. When wearing the full set, all primary skills deal 10,000% more damage.

The Masquerade of the Burning Carnival set causes your Simulacrums to take no damage, gain all runes, and refreshes its cooldown on death. Having a Simulacrum out also decreases incoming damage drastically, and causes you to split damage dealt to you between yourself and the Simulacrum. With a full Set, Bone Spear deals 10,000% more damage, and triple that for Simulacrums.

Both classes saw major changes to some of their Legendary items as well, with the Necromancer also seeing a major shift in some skill mechanics.

New and returning cosmetics

The Stupendous Contraption is on the right

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

Each season, players can complete difficult tasks to earn themselves some cosmetic items. In season 21, Blizzard is bringing back some cosmetics from season 9, while also adding completely new items.

The returning items include some transmog gear, a portrait frame, and a pet. The new items for Trials of Tempests include the new Stupendous Contraption pet and the Industrial Portrait Frame.

The Stupendous Contraption is certainly the most interesting item on offer here, and appears to be a walking robot with some kind of lizard stuck in a tube. It fits a traditionally “steampunk” vibe, which isn’t exactly commonplace in the Diablo world. Players will need to complete the Season’s Journey to collect these new items.

Here is a complete list of Blizzard’s patch notes for season 21.

PATCH 2.6.9

Items

Demon Hunter

• New Demon Hunter Set: Gears of Dreadlands
• 2-Piece Bonus
• Gain 4 seconds of Momentum when attacking with a Primary skill, at a maximum of 20 seconds. Your Primary skills deal 10% increased damage per second of Momentum.​
• 4-Piece Bonus
• Casting Strafe against enemies will automatically shoot your last used primary skill, and also give 60% damage reduction while strafing and for 5 seconds after. While Strafing, you gain 8% increased movement speed for each second of Momentum.
• 6-Piece Bonus
• Your primary skills deal 10000% more damage
• Leonine Bow of Hashir
• Bolas have a 30% 100% chance on explosion to pull in all enemies within 24 yards, and also deal 100-150% increased damage.
• Emimei’s Duffel
• Bolas now explode instantly and deal 150-175% increased damage.
• The Ninth Cirri Satchel
• Hungering Arrow has 20-25% is guaranteed to pierce and also deals 450-600% increased damage.
• Odyssey’s End
• Enemies snared by your Entangling Shots take 20-25% 100-150% increased damage from all sources.
• Hunter’s Wrath
• Your primary skills attack 30% faster and deal 45-60% 150-200% increased damage.
• Holy Point Shot
• Impale throws 2 additional knives and deals 75-100% increased damage.

Necromancer

Developer’s Note: With the adjustments coming in for a few past Necromancer sets and abilities, we will continue to evaluate the performance of the new set this season and may make additional adjustments in future seasons if we believe they are necessary.

• New Necromancer Set: Masquerade of the Burning Carnival
• 2-Piece Bonus
• Your Simulacrums no longer take damage, gains all runes, and its cooldown is refreshed when you die.
• 4-Piece Bonus
• While you have a Simulacrum, damage is reduced by 50%. Damage you take is split with your Simulacrums as well.
• 6-Piece Bonus
• Your Bone Spear deals 10,000% increased damage. Simulacrums gain triple this bonus.
• Grasps of Essence
• When an exploded corpse damages at least one enemy, Your Corpse Explosion deals 75-100% 150-200% increased damage for 6 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.
• Haunted Visions
• Simulacrum now drains 5% 1% of your maximum life every second and lasts twice as long forever. They can now duplicate Grim Scythe instead of Skeletal Mage.
• Razeth’s Volition
• Skeletal Mage gains the effect of the Gift of Death and Singularity runes. You gain 35-50% damage reduction if your Essence is not full.
• Jesseth Arms
• 2-Piece Set Bonus: While your skeletons are commanded to attack a target, you deal 400% increased damage.
• Grace of Inarius
• 4-Piece Set Bonus: Bone Armor grants an additional 2% 3% damage reduction per enemy hit.
• Pestilence Master’s Shroud
• 6-Piece Set Bonus: Each corpse you consume grants you an Empowered Bone Spear charge that increases the damage of your next Bone Spear by 3300%. In addition, Corpse Lance and Corpse Explosion damage is increased by 1650% 3300%.

Crusader

• Shield of Fury
• This effect may stack up to 20 10 times.

General

• Stone of Jordan
• Added power: Each of your elemental’s damage bonus is equal to your highest static elemental bonus to skill.
• Reaper’s Wraps
• Added a 2-second internal cooldown to the Health globe effect.
• Mantle of Channeling
• Now works with the Necromancer’s Siphon Blood.
• Convention of Elements
• Added “non-static” to the wording of the legendary power’s description. The functionality is unchanged

Skill Changes

• Necromancer
• Simulacrum
• These will now warp to the Necromancer if they begin to move too far away from the player. This only works if the Necromancer is wearing the Masquerade of the Burning Carnival set or Haunted Visions.
• Simulacrums cannot use Grim Scythe (with Haunted Visions) or Skeletal Mage unless the Necromancer had either of those abilities while the Simulacrums were created.
• Final Service
• No longer consumes pets.
• Final Service now activates before Simulacrum’s Self Sacrifice.
• Bone Prison
• Simulacrums now benefit from this passive skill.
• Serration
• Simulacrums now benefit from this passive skill.
• Corpse Explosion
• Damage increased from 350% to 1050%.
• Witch Doctor
• Spirit Barrage
• The Spectres from the Phantasm rune no longer benefit from pet bonuses.

Bug Fixes

• Necromancer
• Fixed an issue where Skeletal Mages were not attacking certain creatures
• PTR Specific:
• Note: The following issues were only live on the PTR, but we’re including the fixes here for visibility to indicate intended functionality on live.
• Seasonal effects no longer deal area damage.
• Seasonal buff resets if player exits and reenters a rift.
• Seasonal theme should no longer work in Set Dungeons.
• Fixed Maltorius’ Petrified Spike dealing additive bonus damage instead of multiplicative.
• Fixed seasonal buff that sometimes may drop off whenever the player enters an invulnerable state.
• Changed seasonal buff to base its damage on the amount of kills. (not really a bug, more of a change)