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endgame · October 7, 2026

S15 Meta: Why Warlock Rules & Paladin Lags

Warlock dominates the Season 15 Tower while Paladin can't clear 150. Here's the gear and build gap — and how to scan your items to catch up.

Season 15 — Season of Hell's Legacy — has been live for a few weeks now, and the Tower leaderboards have started to tell a familiar story: one class is parked at the very top, and one is grinding its wheels. If you're playing Warlock, you're probably already deep into the Tower. If you're playing Paladin, you've likely slammed into a wall and wondered what you're doing wrong. The short answer: mostly nothing. The longer answer is a gear-and-scaling gap worth understanding, because closing it on the Paladin side is almost entirely a question of squeezing your affixes.

The Tower Gap: Warlock's Ceiling vs. Paladin's Wall

The pattern on the current Tower leaderboards is clean. Warlock keeps finding another floor to climb — its ceiling is high and it keeps rising. Paladin, meanwhile, keeps stalling before the top, unable to push its clears into the same territory no matter how clean the play looks.

Before you blame your rotation, it's worth separating what's a build problem from what's a tuning problem. Some of this is baked into the patch — the current balance numbers favor one class's scaling over the other. But a meaningful chunk of the Paladin wall is gear that isn't pulling its weight, and that part is yours to fix.

What's Driving Warlock's Scaling

Warlock spends Wrath and Dominance as its resources, and several of its key Uniques and Aspects got real pushes in the Season 15 balance pass that still stands under the current patch. Ae'grom's Schism jumped from 30-50% to 120-150% — a major buff — and Moloch's Beating Flame climbed from 8-11% to 20-30%. On the other side of the ledger, Bridle of Tor'baalos went from 120-160% to 160-200%. These aren't marginal tweaks; they're the kind of multiplier jumps that compound hard as you push deeper into the Tower.

That scaling is only as good as the stats feeding it. A Warlock chasing the top of the leaderboard wants core-stat affixes, multiplicative damage lines, and the resistance to actually survive the pushes where mobs hit like trucks. Speaking of resistance — Season 15 revalued it entirely: a Single Resistance affix is now worth roughly seven times an All Resistance affix on equipment, Charms and Tempering. All Resistance is no longer strictly better than one element. If your Warlock gear is still loaded with All Resistance lines you picked up out of habit, you're leaving a lot of defensive value on the table.

Soul Splinters: The New Jewelry Layer

Season 15 added Soul Splinters — eight new socketables that go in jewelry sockets, with up to three equipped at once across your Amulet and two Rings. The eight are Splinter of Anguish, Splinter of Sin, Splinter of Lies, Splinter of the Black Soulstone, Splinter of Pain, Splinter of the Mother, Splinter of Hellfire, and Splinter of Damnation. You upgrade them through Amalgamation in the Horadric Cube, combining two of the same type and rarity into the next rarity up.

Here's the catch you can't ignore: every Soul Splinter carries a boon AND a liability. Being demonic in origin, each one hands you a powerful bonus while also saddling you with a drawback. There's no free socket here. Whatever Splinter you slot, read the liability line on the tooltip carefully and make sure the boon is worth it for your build — a liability that fights your defensive setup or your damage profile can quietly undo the gain. This matters for Warlock and Paladin equally; it's a universal part of how every build is put together this season.

What Paladin Players Need From Their Gear

Now the good news for the Paladin camp. The current patch actually moved Paladin's core-stat scalar up 30% — Strength scaling went from 1.25 to 1.625 Damage per 10 points. That's the same jump Druid, Necromancer and Sorcerer received, and it makes every point of Strength on your gear worth noticeably more than it was last season. So the first thing to chase is Strength (your core stat) rolled as high as you can get it, ideally as Greater Affixes.

There's one trap you absolutely must know about: Paladins can no longer use Damage Over Time affixes. They no longer appear on items for Paladins, and if you're still carrying an older piece with a DoT line on it, that affix is dead weight — and its presence tells you the item predates the current tuning. Replace it. There are also a couple of items that changed hands: Banished Lord's Talisman is no longer usable by Paladin (or Spiritborn or Warlock), and X'Fal's Corroded Signet can no longer be equipped by Paladins. If either is in your loadout, it's doing nothing.

Beyond that, the recipe is familiar but worth stating plainly: stack your boosted Strength, get Single Resistance lines over All Resistance for survivability, keep your multiplicative damage multipliers clean, and cut every wasted or dead affix. The margin between a Paladin that walls out and one that pushes further is often three or four mediocre affixes that should have been rerolled.

That last point is where the Horadric Cube becomes your friend. Affix Value Reroll rerolls an item's base affixes while protecting your Greater Affixes, Enchanted affixes and Tempers. So a chest piece with two monster Greater Affixes and a garbage base roll isn't dead — it's recoverable. Since the Season 15 patch, that reroll power even extends to Unique items and Unique Charms, which can now have their powers rerolled too. Before you salvage a piece with strong Greater Affixes just because the rest of it rolled poorly, that's exactly the item worth saving.

Knowing which of your items is a C that should be replaced versus a B worth rerolling is the whole game when you're trying to catch up to the meta. An item with the right bones and one bad base roll deserves Cube materials; an item with the wrong stats entirely deserves the salvage bin.

Will a Balance Pass Save Paladin?

Here's where I have to be straight with you: I can't promise one. The live patch is bug-fixes only — it changes no item value and no class balance number. The balance changes that currently define Season 15 landed at season launch and still stand. There's no announced balance pass on the record that would close the Warlock-Paladin gap before the season ends.

So the honest advice is: don't wait for a buff that may not come. Paladin already got a real core-stat buff this season, and the path to pushing higher runs through your gear, not through a future patch note. Optimize what you have now. If a balance pass does land later, you'll be better positioned to take advantage of it with a tuned loadout than with a half-finished one.

The Bottom Line

Warlock rules the Season 15 Tower on the back of big Unique buffs that scale beautifully as you climb, while Paladin stalls out short of the top — partly tuning, partly gear that hasn't kept up. Paladin's own 30% core-stat scalar buff means your Strength matters more than ever, but you have to clear the DoT-affix trap, respect the resistance revaluation, weigh every Soul Splinter's liability, and use Affix Value Reroll to rescue the pieces worth rescuing. Chasing the meta is about squeezing every stat — so grade your gear, cut the dead weight, and push.