Season 15 may be different.
PTR players are reporting Pit 150 clears in roughly three minutes, enormous Hellfire interactions and Warlock builds producing damage numbers that have stopped looking like mathematics and started resembling telephone numbers. One popular forum discussion has already declared Season 15 “the season of Warlock,” while other testers are asking whether Blizzard should bring the remaining classes up to the same level rather than simply cutting Warlock back down.
PTR numbers are not launch numbers. Blizzard still has time to change everything.
But if the current balance survives, Warlock may enter Season 15 in a league of its own.
Players Are Reporting Three-Minute Pit 150 Clears
The most striking example comes from a Season 15 PTR discussion where a player reports clearing Pit 150 in around three minutes with Warlock.
That immediately brings back memories of Spiritborn at the launch of Vessel of Hatred, when the new class briefly operated according to a different interpretation of Diablo IV's damage system than everyone else.
Other testers in the thread describe Warlock builds dealing hundreds of trillions — and in some cases even higher — through combinations involving Hellfire, Metamorphosis and rapidly triggered abilities. One player describes a one-button setup where the entire screen effectively detonates while automated casts continue feeding the damage loop.
These are player-tested PTR results, not official Blizzard benchmarks. But they match what we already saw in our broader Season 15 PTR evaluation, where Warlock interactions stood out as one of the clearest examples of the enormous gap that can emerge between ordinary builds and whatever the current spreadsheet has discovered.
Blizzard Gave Warlock a Lot of Direct Buffs
This performance did not appear from nowhere.
Blizzard's official 3.2.0 PTR notes contain an unusually long list of Warlock buffs. The Destruction Demon version of Metamorphosis now applies Burning whenever any type of skill is cast, while its Hellfire bonus rises from 4% to 6%. Dark Prison's Calamity variant jumps from 30% damage to 200%. Doomfire Ritual increases from 175% to 250%. Infernal Breath and several of its variants receive substantial increases, while Ravenous Jaws pushes Eviscerate damage from 125% to 500%.
The class mechanic receives similar attention. Command Abodian's bite goes from 155% to 245% base damage, and several Vanguard demon attacks are multiplied dramatically. Lesser Demon Eviscerate damage rises from 200% to 1,000% of their damage.
Then come the Uniques.
Hellhound's Sabatons can grant Abodian 200–280% increased damage while automatically triggering non-Archfiend Hellfire Skills. Gauntlets of Sheol can stack up to 600–750% additional Fiend of Abaddon damage. Scepter of the Three allows all base Ultimate Skills to be equipped simultaneously and adds up to 170–250% Ultimate Skill damage.
There is buffing a class.
And then there is giving several demons access to industrial machinery.
This Is a Very Different Warlock From Season 13
The contrast is especially interesting because Warlock did not dominate immediately after Lord of Hatred launched.
Back in May, we looked at how the new Warlock class was failing to completely dominate the early Season 13 meta. Rogue, Barbarian and Sorcerer were still competing comfortably at the top, and the result felt surprisingly healthy for a brand-new expansion class.
Warlock was good.
It just was not mandatory.
Season 15 appears to be Blizzard's answer to players who felt the new class never received the traditional honeymoon period where everything it touched briefly became illegal.
That may be fun.
It may also create another balance problem.
Sorcerer Shows the Other Side of the Season 15 Problem
The issue becomes clearer when Warlock is compared with classes receiving more conventional improvements.
Blizzard has given Sorcerer a major global Intelligence-scaling increase for Season 15, something we covered when Sorcerer players argued that bigger numbers still do not fix weak skill design. The class is stronger on paper, several abilities have been improved and Blizzard is clearly trying to increase its overall performance.
But a percentage increase to baseline damage feels very different from a Warlock ecosystem where multiple skill variants, demon attacks, Uniques and automated interactions can multiply one another into extreme Pit performance.
That is the danger.
The balance question is not simply whether Sorcerer receives 20% more damage.
It is whether that matters when another class has found an interaction that produces 200 times as much.
Should Blizzard Nerf Warlock or Buff Everyone Else?
The community response is already split along the most predictable line imaginable.
Some players assume there is no chance this version of Warlock reaches live servers unchanged. If one class can comfortably destroy Pit 150 while others struggle much lower, the obvious solution is to reduce the offending multipliers.
Others want Blizzard to do the opposite.
The original forum discussion argues that Season 15 should simply let every class reach a similar level of ridiculousness. Warlock feels powerful and fun, therefore Blizzard should raise Barbarian, Sorcerer, Necromancer, Rogue, Druid and the rest rather than removing that power.
That debate connects directly to the question we asked yesterday: is Diablo IV slowly turning back into Diablo III?
Diablo III eventually embraced seasonal absurdity. Builds exploded entire screens. Difficulty existed mainly to provide another number large enough to survive the explosions. Strong seasonal metas rotated regularly, and being outrageously powerful was often the point rather than a balance failure.
Season 15 Warlock looks very comfortable in that philosophy.
The PTR Exists Specifically So Blizzard Can Change This
There is one enormous reason not to start deleting every non-Warlock character yet.
This was the PTR.
Blizzard explicitly describes the test realm as a place to gather feedback, adjust balance and eliminate problems before the season launches. Season 15 also contains content deliberately withheld from public testing because Blizzard wants to reveal more at BlizzCon.
Warlock therefore has plenty of opportunities to change before the final patch arrives.
A broken interaction may be fixed.
A Unique multiplier may be reduced.
Other classes may receive buffs.
Or Blizzard may decide that Season 15 is allowed to be the season where Warlock finally gets to be stupidly powerful.
After several seasons of being merely good, some Warlock players would probably consider that overdue.
Season 15 May Finally Give Warlock Its Main-Character Season
The most interesting takeaway from the PTR is not that one build cleared Pit 150 in exactly three minutes.
PTRs are laboratories. People deliberately search for disgusting interactions because finding them before launch is the entire point.
What matters is how many different parts of Warlock's Season 15 kit are being pushed upward simultaneously.
Hellfire is stronger.
Demon attacks are stronger.
Several weak skill variants are dramatically stronger.
Old Uniques are being rewritten around much larger multipliers.
And players are already turning those pieces into builds capable of trivializing content that is supposed to sit at the extreme end of Diablo IV.
If Blizzard leaves most of that intact, Season 15 may finally give Warlock the launch season it never really had.
The only question is whether everyone else will still be playing the same difficulty curve.
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