Diablo 4 expansion adds 12 torment tiers to make damage numbers matter

Loot-based action RPGs lose their pull when monsters die in a single hit and only damage numbers rise. Lord of Hatred, launching next month, aims to change that by expanding Diablo 4's torment tiers from four to twelve — a change associate game director Zaven Haroutunian discussed in a recent interview.

The goal is to make gear upgrades feel useful again instead of merely inflating numbers. Haroutunian warned that players often reach a point where "I'm just getting numbers higher and they're not actually meaningfully changing how I play or what I do," and noted dungeons like the Pit and the Tower already scale well beyond the rest of the game for build testing and leaderboards.

Design director Colin Finer described the new tiers as a more granular progression, calling difficulty something players opt into as a risk/reward and saying torment should act as a steadily increasing floor.

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