Diablo 4's Latest Season Gets a Little Too Intense for the Servers
Diablo 4 gamers uncover potent combination unlocking devastation, even collapsing servers.
You'd figure that when Blizzard bragged about Diablo 4's latest season being all about "becoming the boss," they meant it metaphorically. Instead, it turns out they accidentally enabled a feature that gives players the power to... well, become the boss to the point where they're collapsing servers left and right!
This time, it doesn't seem to be a bug, but rather a clever (some might say, devious) interaction between new seasonal boss powers and some good old Legendary Aspect trickery. Diablo 4 YouTuber Macrobioboi spilled the beans in a recent video: appear to have discovered a method that allows players to hit rooms full of monsters hundreds of times per second with just the right combination of boss powers and a Legendary Aspect on gear.
The key component to this madness is the Vampiric Curse Legendary Aspect you can stick on your equipment, which makes enemies vulnerable - not unlike other ways of doing so, but unlike other methods, Vampiric Curse won't let that status fall off enemies until they die. That wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the Flesh Reaper's Disruption boss power that triggers every time you hit a vulnerable enemy. It's supposed to remove the vulnerable status and leave the enemies stunned in their tracks as a trade-off. Unfortunately, Vampiric Curse prevents that from happening, meaning enemies remain vulnerable for the entire bout and players can trigger the boss power over and over, or as fast as they can attack.
But it gets even crazier: another boss power, Varshan's Life Steal, rips through enemies huge chunks of health every time you activate your main boss power. When combined, these powers create such an absurd number of instances of damage that the servers struggle to keep up. In other words, if you're out in the world of Sanctuary, the whole community will feel the repercussions.
Just watch it in action in a video from Wudijo: the incredible number of hits causes enemies to freeze in place, jittering wildly. "There's a lot going on here, it's easy to understand that it's a laggy build," he says.
Remember when, after the expansion launched, spirit-born players could dance around and spam their dodge roll until the servers broke? Blizzard was quick to patch that, but this latest server-killer build hasn't received so much as a mention in the developer's notes.
I mean, sure, it's incredibly powerful - who wouldn't want to be the boss? But it's something else entirely when it actually crashes the servers. Blizzard has said time and time again that interactions like this will be fixed as soon as humanly possible, so I don't expect it'll take long before they get around to sorting things out.
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Tyler ColpWith 15 years of covering videogames and PC hardware under his belt, Tyler is an expert at dishing out news, reviews, and reports on epic titles like Diablo 4, Elektra Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty lies in action RPGs and MMOs, he's determined to cover all sorts of games - be they broken, beautiful, or absurd.
- In the latest video by Diablo 4 YouTuber Macrobioboi, a new game exploit was revealed that allows players to attack rooms filled with monsters hundreds of times per second, using clever interactions between seasonal boss powers and the Vampiric Curse Legendary Aspect on gadgets.
- This server-crashing build, powered by the Vampiric Curse and Flesh Reaper's Disruption boss powers, creates such an overwhelming number of attacks that it causes enemies to freeze mid-movement, making it difficult for technology to keep up.
- season, it seems that certain game builds have the power to bring even the strongest servers to their knees, an issue that application developers are working hard to address and fix as soon as possible.
