Diablo 4’s Vessel of Hatred gets endgame depth, but rerolling costs are still too high

Diablo 4’s DLC Vessel of Hatred has triggered a focused complaint around its new War Plans system: it makes endgame progression more coherent, but it also amplifies repeat grinding.

According to reports, War Plans in Vessel of Hatred links multiple endgame activities into a single long-term progression track, with extra challenges and rewards tied to separate upgrade trees for each activity. The issue is that the system is currently character-specific rather than account-wide. In practical terms, starting a new character means grinding through the entire War Plans progression again.

As a design concept, the system itself is not bad. War Plans currently covers seven endgame activities: Helltide, The Pit, Infernal Hordes, Nightmare Dungeons, Kurast Undercity, Lair Bosses, and the Tree of Whispers. Compared with simply stacking dungeon clears, tying different activities into one shared progression framework at least gives the endgame clearer goals, and it makes swapping between modes feel like each run still contributes to something.

The real problem is who gets to keep that progress. For players focused on one character, War Plans feels like an extra layer of progression. For seasonal players who like leveling multiple classes, it feels more like a checklist they have to complete over and over. That pressure has become sharper since Vessel of Hatred added Torment difficulty up to 12 tiers, making endgame noticeably harder. The power War Plans provides now feels close to mandatory for pushing higher tiers, which makes its character-locked structure much harder to justify.

Community feedback has been direct. A related Reddit thread has already picked up more than 1400 upvotes, and players have mainly suggested two solutions: give the whole account an experience bonus after the first full clear, or make early progression easier and increase requirements later. The most popular proposal, though, is to make War Plans account-wide and let players choose whether to reset progress when creating a new character. That is the cleanest fit for a live-service ARPG, where difficulty, builds, and loot can stay character-specific, while foundational endgame access works better at the account level.

Viewed more broadly, the biggest problem for loot-driven games is not grind by itself, but repetition that feels pointless. Players willing to roll new characters are usually among the most active seasonal users, and forcing them to rebuild the same baseline progression every time is a fast way to burn that enthusiasm out. Blizzard’s goal with War Plans is easy to understand: keep all seven endgame activities relevant. The problem is that the current version feels less like variety-driven progression and more like repeated upkeep.

So far, Blizzard has not said whether it plans to adjust the system. The general expectation among players is that even if a change does happen, it may not arrive until after Season 14. My view is that this is not a minor quality-of-life tweak, but a structural issue with Diablo 4’s endgame experience. For players sticking to one character, it is merely irritating. For players who rotate between multiple characters, it can directly affect seasonal retention.

If you are still working through Diablo 4’s endgame right now, the short-term recommendation is straightforward: concentrate your resources on one main character and avoid spreading them too early. Under the current system, building a second or third character does not feel like expanding your options so much as paying the same progression cost all over again.