Diablo IV — the PTR closes with the Barbarian nerfs intact
The 3.2.0 Public Test Realm shut this morning, 10am Pacific on Tuesday, which is 3am Wednesday for readers on Australian eastern time. A full week of testing, and the headline is what did not happen: Blizzard did not walk back the Barbarian nerfs. They stood from the opening patch notes to the close.
For anyone who missed the scale of it, damage per 10 points of Strength drops from 1.1% to 0.8% — on a 2,000 Strength character that is 160% instead of 220%, before any skill, Aspect or Glyph multiplier. The Madawc variants of Rallying Cry and Call of the Ancients were both halved, from 200% to 100% and from 240% to 120% respectively, and several Paragon bonuses used by Bleeding and weapon builds were cut alongside. Ramaladni's Magnum Opus now drains 10% of maximum Fury per second rather than a flat amount, which targets sustained spinning specifically.
The other half is the buffs. Warlock received the most substantial upgrades in the patch, and the emerging consensus from the test week is that Warlock and Rogue lead the Season 15 meta while Barbarian, though still playable, loses its dominant edge. Druid, Necromancer, Paladin and Sorcerer all gained core stat scalar from 1.25 to 1.625. If that survives to live, it is the largest reshuffle at the top of a Diablo IV board in some time — and it lands on the two classes we have ranked B for six straight weeks.
We should be honest about one thing. Last week we said the thing worth watching was not which build topped a test realm but which Soul Splinter drawbacks survived contact with players. A week on, we do not have a reliable read on that. Blizzard has not published post-PTR tuning notes, and the community discussion has been dominated by class balance rather than the splinter tradeoffs. It was the right question and we cannot answer it yet — so we are leaving it open rather than filling the gap with a guess.
And the board still does not move. PTR numbers remain a proposal until 3.2.0 ships. Blizzard tunes on test feedback, so some of the figures above will change before Season 15 goes live, and none of them apply to the live realm today. Whirlwind Barbarian is still the strongest pick in Season 14 and will be until the patch lands. We will re-rank then, on live data. There is still no announced Season 15 date. The Season 14 board, unchanged →
Marathon — one week left, and your Vault Data dies with the event
Vault Breaker closes on 18 August. That is seven days from today, and the single most useful thing we can tell you this week is what happens at the deadline: unspent Vault Data and unclaimed Sponsored Kit progress do not survive it. There is no conversion to standard currency and no carry-over into Season 3. A full wallet at closing time is worth exactly the same as an empty one.
Gear bought from the Vault Breaker Armory does persist into standard Marathon, which makes the final week a different game to the first three. Kit upgrades only pay off if you have runs left to spend them on, so the maths flips as the clock runs down: stop investing in the kit, convert everything into Armory purchases, and aim to hit the close at zero. Note the weekly stock caps — Tier 1 items cap at three or five per week depending on the item, Tier 2 at one — so leaving it all to the final day does not work either.
Update 1.1.5.2 shipped alongside the extension and it matters beyond the event: the V22 Volt Thrower received a damage buff and the KKV-9SD was adjusted, and these changes apply to standard Marathon matches rather than only inside Vault Breaker. Our weapon board has been updated accordingly. The Runner Shell hierarchy is unchanged — Assassin still leads solo, Recon and Triage still own squad play, Sentinel remains the new territory-control pick. Season 3 arrives September 22. Current shell and weapon rankings →
Path of Exile 2 — a third week with nothing to report
No official 0.5.5 date. No GGG post. Nothing has moved in the live sandbox. That is three consecutive weeks in which the honest answer to "what happened in Path of Exile 2" is "nothing," and we would rather say so plainly than dress a recycled estimate as news for a third time.
The community estimate still points at early September, and it still comes from build sites and aggregators reasoning about the August race-tournament calendar rather than from any source. The December 11 figure circulating for 1.0 is arithmetic — a 28-week cycle counted forward from 0.5's May 29 launch — not something GGG has said.
What has not changed is the spend logic. A one-month event league with a balance and soft economy reset is coming before 1.0, which puts a shelf life on large stockpiles, and that shelf life shortens every week the announcement does not arrive. The ascendancy play-rate gap we have reported for a month — Martial Artist, Gemling Legionnaire and Spirit Walker dominant, Infernalist, Invoker and Amazon under 5% — remains acknowledged and unfixed, because the buffs meant to close it ride on the event that keeps slipping. ExileCon is November 7–8 and remains sold out. Price your build against the live economy with Mirrorcheck →
The week ahead — what we're watching
Diablo IV: post-PTR tuning notes, which is where we will finally learn whether the Soul Splinter drawbacks and the Barbarian cuts survive as written. A Season 15 date could land any week — Blizzard's pattern is a blog post three to four weeks out, so late August is the earliest realistic window. Marathon: spend your Vault Data before 18 August, then the close itself and whether the extra fortnight moved the concurrency floor at all. PoE2: an official 0.5.5 date. Every board updates within 24 hours of any of these breaking — and none of them update on PTR data.