Tech Desk 
May 24, 2025
Diablo 4 will launch its ninth season with a big update. The public test realm, PTR, will go live for a limited time from May 27 to June 3 for PC players with the release entitled "Sins of the Horadrim", which kicks off the live season in July and will run until sometime in September.
The PTR will allow players to explore a variety of class changes and buffed skills and get a better taste of items in what's coming next.
Diablo 4 Season 9 PTR
One of the highlights for the Diablo 4 Season 9 PTR is the many changes to the playable classes in-game.
From the leaks provided by dataminers, nearly every playable class will have some sort of balance patch.
However, sorcerers are getting the largest amount of patch points to their applicable skills.
Collectively, 14 skills will be adjusted, which makes Sorcerer the most patch-adjusted class of any in this patch.
Many of the Sorcerer skills, such as Spark Damage, Arc Lash Damage, Fire Bolt Damage and Firewall, are getting damage increases to the base skills, as many of these skills will become significantly more powerful than the previous live patch with additional tweaks that will increase performance.
These tweaks aim to give Barbarian players more impact during combat.
The Diablo 4 PTR update will also adjust class Aspects, including a nerf to the Necromancer’s Blighted Aspect to balance gameplay.
Fans are hopeful that these updates will fix some long-standing issues, especially after recent complaints about the game’s lack of content and heavy monetisation.
Similarly, we see a lower number of adjustments to Barbarian, but its adjustments are significant. Barbarian has buffs to six of its core skills.
For example, Bash and Lunging Strike will adjust the damage from 33% to 90%. Flay's Bleeding effect is increasing the effect to 115%, and Leap has been changed to slow the target instead of knocking them back.
