Season of Hell’s Legacy goes live on September 15, and patch 3.2.1 lands with it. The balance pass is lopsided in a way seasons rarely are: one class picks up quality-of-life fixes it has wanted since launch, and another loses most of its damage to a single bug fix buried in the developer notes.
Quick answer: Warlock is the strongest class going into Season 15. Spiritborn is the weakest, after a bug fix to the Zic rune stripped roughly 600% damage from its top builds.
Season 15 class power ranking after patch 3.2.1
Here is how the eight classes stack up once the 3.2.1 changes are applied. The gap between first and last is wider than the gap between second and seventh.
| Rank | Class | Standing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Warlock | Black Soulstone scaling, cast while moving |
| 2 | Rogue | Untouched, widest build variety |
| 3 | Barbarian | Nerfed, still blasts every tier |
| 4 | Druid | Fleshrender and Old Mountain buffs |
| 5 | Necromancer | Soulrift and Corpse Explosion buffs |
| 6 | Sorcerer | Small targeted buffs only |
| 7 | Paladin | Few changes, set issues remain |
| 8 | Spiritborn | -600% damage from rune fix |
Every class still clears normal seasonal content. The ranking only starts to matter when you push deep Pit tiers, where multiplicative scaling decides whether a run takes two minutes or twelve.
Why Warlock sits at the top
Warlock received the longest set of patch notes of any class, and the most important entry is not a damage number. Ultimate skills can now be cast while moving, including Dark Prison, Bombardment and Spear of Chaos. The stop-and-go rhythm that made the class feel sluggish is gone.
Stack that fluidity on top of the Black Soulstone interaction and Warlock’s ceiling climbs past everything else. Blazing Scream and Apocalypse are the two builds carrying that ceiling, with Hellhound-style setups covering speed farming while you gear up. Hellhound’s Sabatons now let your Abaddon fiend fire equipped Hellfire skills on its own, which is about as close to a one-button farming loop as the class gets.
If you are rolling Warlock as a season starter, farm with a Hellhound setup first and swap into Blazing Scream or Apocalypse once you have the item interactions online. A partial Elegy setup will not produce the numbers you have seen in testing.
Spiritborn loses 600% damage to a rune bug fix
The Spiritborn developer notes list a bug fix for the Zic rune. That fix removes roughly 600% damage from builds that were leaning on it, which is most of the ones that have been dominating leaderboards. There is no compensating buff attached to it.
The class is not unplayable. The Swarm of Storms paragon board still hands 80% multiplicative damage to Pestilent Swarm and Spirit Storm skills, Spirit Storm damage was doubled, and Storm Feather picked up a 150% buff on that board. Poison Swarm and Storm Feather evade builds remain functional. They just no longer sit at the top of the Pit leaderboard the way they did in the previous two seasons.
Where the buffs landed
Rogue
Rogue is the safest pick in the game right now, largely because the developers left it alone. The combo point cycle was flipped from 3-to-1 into 1-to-3, which smooths out several builds without changing their power, and no core Rogue build took a meaningful cut. Penetrating Shot and Rain of Arrows poison variants are both clearing high Pit tiers on ordinary gear.
Druid
Druid is the surprise of the patch. The Fleshrender weapon and the Old Mountain set both received substantial buffs, which pulls Earth and Tornado builds back into real viability after a long stretch of being outclassed. If you skipped Druid because storm builds were being gutted, this is the patch that makes them worth revisiting.
Necromancer
Necromancer got buffs to Soulrift, Army of the Dead and Corpse Explosion. Those are real numbers, but they do not address the class’s long-standing problems with mobility and survivability, which is why it lands mid-table rather than higher. Blood Wave remains the steadiest option, with shadow damage-over-time as the more ambitious direction.
Barbarian nerfs to core stat scaling and bleeds
Barbarian took cuts to core stat scaling and to bleed bonuses. Strength now contributes 0.8% damage per 10 Strength instead of 1.1%, which is a noticeable loss at high Strength totals, and Ramaladni’s now drains a percentage of max Fury per second rather than a flat amount. That change effectively kills static shield-loop builds unless you rebuild around heavy resource generation.
None of it knocks the class out of contention. Ring of Red Furor pushing Core and Weapon Mastery skills toward guaranteed critical strikes reopens Hammer of the Ancients and other big-hit builds, and Melted Heart of Selig was buffed to 200%, which keeps tanky setups intact. Charge and Whirlwind remain the reliable picks.
Horadric Cube mythic crafting transfers stats 1-to-1
The biggest non-balance change is to the Horadric Cube. Mythic Uniques crafted through the Cube now carry their exact stats across 1-to-1 instead of rerolling at random. Upgrading a Dirge of Odium or a Melted Heart of Selig no longer means gambling away a good roll, which removes most of the reason people hoarded materials rather than using them.
The same interface lets you build a custom amulet affix by affix. This is the sequence for an All Skills amulet.
How to craft an All Skills amulet
Helltide experience orb nerf
One farming change is worth knowing before you plan a leveling route. Plague Maggots spawned by Hellmouths now drop experience orbs at a reduced rate. Helltide grinding still works, it just returns less experience per Hellmouth than it did previously.
If you want the highest ceiling in the season, Warlock is the answer and it is not especially close. If you want to avoid rerolling two weeks in, Rogue is the class least likely to be touched by a hotfix. And if you were planning a Spiritborn start on the strength of last season’s leaderboards, check the Zic rune line in the patch notes first, because the build you were copying no longer does what it did when it was recorded.
