9 March 2026

Lord of Hatred Officially Confirms a Major Gameplay Change, and Fans Aren’t Happy

By newsgame

Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred is set to expand the Torment levels for four to 12. This will completely change the difficulty curve for Diablo 4, and bring the system more in line with what can be found in Diablo 3. However, fans have not received the news positively.

Torment is how Diablo 4 handles endgame difficulty. The game has four standard difficulties: Normal, Hard, Expert, and Penitent. However, upon reaching Level 60 and beating Tier 20 of The Pit with a character, players unlock the ability to enter Torment 1 in Diablo 4. This massively increases the difficulty of the game, reducing players’ Armor and resistance to attacks. As a result, players earn more XP and gold from killing monsters, increasing with each level of Torment. At the moment, there are four Torment difficulties in Diablo 4, each one representing a significant step up from the last. Reaching a new Torment level is a huge step for a character’s progression, which is why the current system is so popular.

A Warlock shoots a fire spell at an enemy in Diablo 4.

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Diablo 4 Confirms Torment 12 is Coming in Lord of Hatred

Speaking in a recent YouTube interview with content creator wudijo, Diablo 4 Associate Game Director Zaven Haroutunian revealed that the upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion will introduce 12 Torment levels in total, a big increase from the current four. Haroutunian was speaking about how certain content such as The Pit scales much better than a lot of the other content in the game, which Blizzard wants to address. “We have all this other rest of the game, all these other activities that don’t scale past a certain point. So with Lord of Hatred, we’re actually adding Torment tiers up to 12. That 12 is not gonna exceed The Pit. We’re not actually inflating the numbers past the current ceiling. What we’re actually doing is saying, ‘Hey, all these activities, all this content, can be competitive,’ so you’re not just stuck in one place at the very end of the game.”

Essentially, Blizzard wants to make more content viable for Diablo 4‘s endgame gameplay. Right now, players are often stuck in a loop, grinding out the same activities for the quickest possible XP. By introducing more Torment tiers in Lord of Hatred, the aim is to introduce more variety than exists at the moment.

While the approach makes sense when explained in this way, many fans were left extremely unhappy in a thread posted on Reddit. Some compared it unfavorably to Diablo 3, which features 16 levels of Torment, and has long been criticized for how it reduces the feeling that difficulty actually matters. The top comment in the thread claims, “They just keep flipping between design directions,” while it was also pointed out this change will split the player base further. Users can only play with others on the same Torment level, so the player base previously present between Torment 1-4 will now be split between Torment 1-12. As one user says, “T1-3 are ghost towns within a week,” a problem that could become even worse when there are eight more Torment levels splitting players apart.

This is the first official confirmation that Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred is increasing the number of Torment levels in the game. Blizzard actually teased more Torment tiers a few weeks ago, during the Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight. A brief moment of footage showed off some gameplay from Torment 5, which confirmed that at least one more tier was on the way. It still wasn’t certain how many would be added in total, and the jump to 12 is a considerable increase.

Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred is set to release on April 28, 2026, adding the new Warlock class to the game among other features. Before that, Blizzard is also launching Diablo 4 Season 12, the Season of Slaughter, which allows players to transform into The Butcher for the first time ever. Because of the close proximity to Lord of Hatred, Season 12 will be slightly shorter than other seasons, but regardless, fans are in for an exciting few months.