Diablo 4 Season 11 is now live with Paladins (and lots of Lesser Evils for them to fight)

Diablo 4 Season 11, Season of Divine Intervention, has started… and it’s a surprising one. The season went live on December 11 at 8:30 pm PST (11:30pm EST), a particularly odd hour that lined up with a certain gaming event: The Game Awards, which was when Blizzard announced Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred, the next expansion to the game. And the expansion comes with a twist: a brand new class that you can play right now, during Season 11.

That’s right, the long-awaited Paladin class is now live in Diablo 4… as long as you pre-order Lord of Hatred (which starts at $40). A new seasonal quest chain, Call of the Paladin, introduces players to the Wardens of the Light that Paladin players are a part of — it’s available to every class as an introduction to the story, and it definitely would have been a bit of a spoiler if it went live on Tuesday when the season was originally scheduled to launch. (Whether these changes are a long-term shift to the schedule — the D4 team has previously acknowledged community requests to adjust the date — is up in the air.)

Other than the addition of a new class, the season hasn’t changed. Season 11’s theme is centered around the original conflict — the High Heavens versus the Burning Hells — except this time it’s one angel (Hadriel, working through the denizens of Sanctuary) versus the four reunited Lesser Evils. Yes, Azmodan has returned to join the cast of World Bosses as a permanent inclusion to the title, while all four take over different game modes: World Bosses (Azmodan), Helltide (Duriel), Kurast Undercity (Andariel), and the Pit (Belial).

The Lesser Evils themselves are also the source of the seasonal power system. Each one drops a Corrupted Essence that you bring to Hadriel to purify. The purified slots themselves are not unlocked until you achieve specific levels in the season’s rep track; however, you can still equip the power’s “corrupted” version, granting its rewards at the cost of making something in that Lesser Evil’s new domain harder. Think a corrupted Duriel power making Helltide more complicated.

Hadriel is also the source of the season’s armor power-up option — Sanctification. Sanctification is basically the “ultimate” form of your armor. After upgrading a piece fully with the newly reworked tempering and masterworking, Sanctifying makes it unmodifiable and grants one of five potential improvements.

But beyond the seasonal theme, there are some big shakeups to the core game in patch 2.5.0, which launched this week with Season 11, with changes to defense mechanics, updates to tempering and masterworking, and more challenging monster encounters across the board. We have a rundown of the major patch 2.5.0 changes for you, but there are also some smaller quality of life changes that we really appreciate. Seasonal characters will also find Renown and the Season’s Journey systems are gone, replaced by the new Season Rank system. It’s a very similar advancement system, just wrapped in new packaging.

Season 11 is live, so you can log in and check out all of the new systems — and the new Paladin class — right now.

Initially published December 1, 2025. Updated December 12, 2025.