Talismans and Charms bring back Set Bonuses
Upon reaching the endgame, players will encounter a talisman to slot into their character, enabling the new system. It’s currently unclear how powerful a role this talisman will play, if it can be upgraded, or what kind of bonuses players can expect from it, but upon equipping it, Charms will begin to drop.
Charms function almost like their own gear slots, with affixes and powers on the item itself. These come in multiple rarities and provide generic bonuses such as skill levels, experience, and more. The real chase and endgame of the system, however, are new Set Charms, which enable powerful set bonuses, granting new buffs, empowering playstyles and builds in certain ways, and fleshing out the fantasy of your character.
In the announcement, Blizzard showed the example of a Marksman Basic Skill build, with the Set Charm granting a buff upon casting the skill, named “Vengeance”. This buff grants movement speed, multiplicative damage, and can stack up through combat. Additional set bonuses double down on this new Vengeance buff, granting additional effects such as automatic Dark Shroud shadows and extra damage reduction.
Impact of Set Charms in Diablo 4
From what little is known and seen about charms, the impact is massive. The showcased 2 set bonus grants a massive 60% multiplicative damage bonus, and presumably the set effects scale up to 5 charms. This has the potential to push new heights of build diversity, with Charms enabling builds that were previously impossible or allowing combinations of skills and extra bonuses that builds lacked access to before the Lord of Hatred expansion.
There is, however, a dark side to sets that Diablo 3 players might be all too familiar with. If set bonuses are too powerful, build diversity could be significantly reduced as players gravitate towards the strongest set, rather than the strongest build. It remains to be seen how strong Blizzard intends to make these bonuses, how they interact with the newly reworked skill tree, and whether this is ultimately a boon or a curse to theorycrafting.
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