Ladder reset rules for Season 15
The reset follows the established pattern, confirmed again in the official post. Season 14 ends Monday, August 17 at 11:00 AM PDT (August 18, 2:00 AM Taiwan time), Patch 3.3 rolls out that Tuesday, and the Season 15 ladder opens Saturday, August 22 — see our Season 15 start date page for the full regional timetable.
- Ladder characters convert to non-ladder with their gear intact — nothing is deleted.
- Ladder shared stash becomes withdraw-only, moving into "past items" tabs.
- Season 13's past-item tabs are deleted when the season turns over — withdraw anything you want to keep before August 18.
- You have all of Season 15 to empty the Season 14 tabs before they are overwritten in the next rotation.
Ladder runeword rotation
As of the new season, previous ladder-only items become available in non-ladder — the standard end-of-season unlock. The exception is a set of eight Reign of the Warlock runewords that received balance adjustments this patch and therefore remain ladder-exclusive: Mania, Hysteria, Metamorphosis, Ground, Temper, Hearth, Cure and Bulwark. The restriction applies to Reign of the Warlock content only; Diablo II Classic and Lord of Destruction modes are unaffected.
For fresh-ladder runeword priorities, see runewords by level, and for the expansion's runeword list, the Infernal Edition runewords page.
Item changes: nine uniques and one set buffed
The patch's biggest item pass targets underused low- and mid-level uniques. Changed items are available on the ladder only:
- Bloodletter — now grants +20% faster run/walk.
- The Battlebranch — base item level lowered from 34 to 30; required level from 25 to 17.
- Rogue's Bow — now grants +1-3 to Cold Arrow or Fire Arrow (Amazon only).
- Pluckeye — now grants +25% increased attack speed.
- Bane Ash — loses +20% attack speed and +50-60% enhanced damage, gains +20% faster cast rate.
- Gravenspine — now grants +10% faster cast rate.
- Blinkbat's Form — faster run/walk raised from +10% to +30%, plus +1 mana after each kill.
- The Ward — now comes with 1 socket.
- Manald Heal — now grants +10% faster run/walk.
- Angelic Raiment (set) — Angelic Sickle gains +6 damage at 3 pieces, Angelic Mantle gains +100% damage to undead at 3 pieces, and the full set now grants +1 to all skills.
None of these are endgame shake-ups — they are early-ladder quality-of-life buffs. The Angelic set's +1 all skills is the most ladder-relevant line: a full-set leveling character gets a real power bump in Normal and Nightmare.
Terror Zone and Herald tuning
Season 15 retunes the reward side of terrorized content:
- Heralds of Terror at tier 3 and above have a higher chance to drop rare-or-better items.
- The minimum drop level for Latent sunder charms rises from 69 to 75.
- Latent sunder charms found via magic find now drop at a reduced rate, and only in Hell difficulty — Herald drop rates are unaffected. This closes the Season 14 loophole where Latent charms could turn up in Nightmare.
- Worldstone Shards now drop with one additional item alongside them, but drop less often.
- Ancient Statues drop less often.
The direction is clear: Blizzard is pushing sunder-charm acquisition toward Herald encounters and away from passive magic-find farming. Our sunder charms guide and Terror Zone tracker & schedule page go deeper on farming the new rules.
Bug fixes worth knowing about
Thirteen fixes ship with the patch. The ones that affect gameplay:
- Bind Demon's bonus damage was higher than intended and has been corrected.
- Sigil: Death now correctly benefits from +fire skill bonuses and no longer consumes mana on a failed cast.
- Miasma Chain's ranged attack no longer collides with neutral and friendly units.
- Council Members acting as Heralds now drop loot as intended.
- Characters no longer get stuck in the Leap landing animation, and some bosses that lost AI behaviors are fixed.
- Quality-of-life and display fixes: buying keys in bulk from Hratli on controller, item names flashing while moving off-screen, and several Chronicle registration and display issues.
The Sigil: Death and Miasma Chain fixes matter if you play the fire side of the Warlock's Arts of Chaos tree — both skills now behave the way their tooltips always claimed. Our Warlock skill tree page covers where they sit.
What is not in Patch 3.3
There are no class balance changes, no new runewords and no new content systems in this patch — Blizzard bundled everything into the season announcement rather than a separate notes article, and the official forums have plenty of players calling the patch thin. Set your expectations accordingly: Season 15's draw is the fresh ladder economy, not a new meta. Your Season 14 builds carry over unchanged, so the prep advice in our start date guide stands.