I hopped onto the Season 12 PTR expecting a light tune-up, and nope—this thing bites. The new killstreak loop basically tells you to keep moving, keep tagging enemies, and don't let the pace die. If you're trying to plan your leveling route, it's worth thinking about where you'll be fighting nonstop and where you'll get forced pauses, and I've been comparing gear goals as I go through diablo4items to figure out what's actually worth chasing early.

Killstreak Changes How You Move

The meter isn't just "kill fast." It's "stay in contact." You can keep it alive by landing hits, so builds with quick poke damage suddenly feel great, even if your real burst is on cooldown. Mounting smart matters too—cut corners, avoid dead zones, and don't waste time clearing stragglers that pull you away from the next pack. The annoying part is the stuff you can't control: portals, loading screens, boss doors. In places like The Pit, it can feel like the game's swatting your streak for doing the content the game asked you to do.

Bloodied Gear Is the New Obsession

Bloodied items are where the power spikes live, and you'll see why the moment you start stacking tier bonuses. Crit chance per tier is the headline, and on PTR it's been easy to watch people creep toward "why am I not critting?" levels of consistency. Attack speed jumps are right there too, and that combo makes a lot of older gearing choices look outdated. The problem is the usual one: you'll get plenty of "pretty good" Bloodied drops while leveling, but the perfect roll on a Bloodied Unique with affixes that actually fit Torment play is going to take time, and a lot of it.

Boss Farming Finally Feels Like Playing

The Bloodied Nightmare Sigils change the whole boss loop in a good way. Being able to jump straight into a high-tier boss fight without doing the summoning-material chore first is a real win. You get the big health pool, the real mechanics, and the loot chase—minus the busywork. It speeds up that awkward early Torment phase where you just want a couple key drops to make your build "click," but the game keeps asking you to run errands.

Infernal Hordes Punish Greed

Infernal Hordes are the real wall, and they don't care how clean your damage spreadsheet looks. Multiple Butchers showing up at once turns every mistake into a panic sprint, and pure glass-cannon setups get deleted unless you've got layers of defense. The Judgment Paladin crowd is feeling it too, since the Castle passive scaling nerf basically pulled the rug out from under the build's damage. If you don't have time to grind every perfect piece, grabbing currency or a missing upgrade from eznpc can help you stabilize your setup faster so you can focus on surviving the mess instead of stalling out.