Two weeks ago, Diablo 4 Season 15 launched with one fairly obvious question hanging over it.
Did Blizzard actually fix the Warlock?
During the PTR, the class was producing numbers that looked less like damage and more like somebody had accidentally pasted a bank account into the combat log. We covered Warlock builds reportedly hitting 80,000 trillion damage, and by early September we were already asking whether Warlock might completely dominate Season 15.
At the time, there was an important disclaimer: it was the PTR. Numbers could change. Bugs could be fixed. Blizzard still had time to adjust the class before millions of players were allowed near it.
Well, we have live data now.
The Warlock is still ridiculous.
1,000 Warlocks Have Already Cleared Tower 150
The current Tower leaderboard paints a fairly brutal picture. All 1,000 players displayed on the Warlock leaderboard have cleared Tower Tier 150. That means clearing the highest listed Tower tier is no longer enough to make you unusual among serious Warlock players. It is effectively the entry requirement for appearing on the leaderboard at all.
Blazing Scream is the main culprit. The build that looked terrifying during testing has survived into the live season as the defining Warlock setup, combining enormous damage with enough consistency to make Tower 150 look considerably less frightening than Blizzard probably intended.
This is not completely surprising. Our Season 15 PTR review already highlighted the enormous gap between competitive builds, and Warlock was the clearest example. What is surprising is how much of that gap survived the journey from test server to live game.
Paladin Is Still Looking Up at Tier 150
Then there is Paladin.
At the time of the latest leaderboard review, Paladin remained the only class without a Tower 150 clear. The top three Paladins had reached Tier 148, and every single top-20 clear was using Shield of Retribution.
That last part may actually be the more worrying statistic.
We already looked at Blizzard's attempts to improve the class when Judgement received double single-target damage for Season 15. Paladin also received broader scaling improvements, yet the live leaderboard suggests those changes have not produced the same range of competitive endgame options enjoyed by some other classes.
Season 15 even removed some possibilities before launch, including Paladin's ability to use X'Fal's Corroded Signet, which becomes particularly interesting now that Damage over Time has become one of the season's defining mechanics.
Season 15 Is Becoming the Season of Damage Over Time
Warlock is not the only class telling us something interesting about the current meta.
Sorcerer has dozens of Tower 150 clears, with Firewall and Burning effects playing a major role. Druid's strongest pushes revolve heavily around Rabies. Rogue's Penetrating Shot builds are using Poison Imbuement. Spiritborn's leading Stinger setups are also built around Poison.
The common language is Damage over Time.
Season 15 introduced new ways for DoT effects to scale, including Deadly Strike mechanics and powerful interactions with seasonal systems. The result is a leaderboard where poison, burning and other lingering damage effects keep appearing wherever players are pushing the absolute limit.
Warlock simply appears to have received the largest flamethrower.
The PTR Warning Was Correct
This is the interesting part.
Back in August, it would have been easy to dismiss Warlock's absurd PTR numbers as exactly what a test realm is supposed to uncover. Players find broken interactions, Blizzard collects the data, numbers are adjusted and everyone starts again on launch day.
Except the basic prediction survived.
Warlock entered Season 15 enormously powerful. Blazing Scream became the dominant build. Tower 150 clears multiplied until the entire visible Warlock leaderboard was filled with them, while Paladin still had not crossed the same finish line.
Blizzard did not necessarily need every class to perform identically. Diablo has never worked that way, and perfect balance would probably be considerably less entertaining than players imagine.
But there is a difference between having a strongest class and having 1,000 Warlocks sitting at Tower 150 while another class is still trying to reach it once.
We asked before launch whether Season 15 would become the season of Warlock.
Two weeks later, the Tower has supplied its answer.
