A newly-discovered bug in Diablo 4 is causing some players to deal so much damage that the numbers don’t even matter anymore.
Although the specifics of how the bug works are still unclear, it’s skyrocketing the power of classes that weren’t even close to clearing the game’s hardest dungeon type just a day ago. One player has claimed the top spot on the unofficial leaderboards with a two-minute clear on the Spiritborn, a class that wasn’t anywhere near the top of the meta. The Spiritborn player in second place — who did it without the bug — has a nine-minute clear of the same dungeon except it’s 30 difficulty levels lower.
The top players are trying to figure out what’s going on with the bug, which seems to stem from one of the witchcraft powers you can earn in the latest season. It’s supposed to add a bonus attack based on the damage of the skills you use, but the math breaks and climbs into the trillions. And for some classes, like the Spiritborn, it goes so high that their tooltips spit out negative numbers — almost like they’ve meddled with something too arcane for the game to comprehend.
While you can’t simply equip the power and instantly become an infinite damage god, it doesn’t take much to build your character around it. Anyone who has been playing the season can make the swap pretty easily on some classes, which is why its getting so much attention.
A Blizzard spokesperson told viraltrendingcontent that the bug is a “high priority” and that the development team is working on it.
Because the fun of Diablo is to make your character stronger and stronger, the developers’ approach to fixing bugs has varied based on how devastating it would be to rip that power away from players. Game-breaking bugs that cause servers to crash or items to not work often get fixed immediately, but ridiculous damage numbers are a different story. Last season, bugs with the Spiritborn let them deal damage in the quadrillions and it wasn’t fixed until the start of this latest season.
Mekuna, a Twitch streamer and one of the best Diablo 4 players in the world, told viraltrendingcontent he would like to see it fixed as soon as possible, but isn’t sure that will happen: “Any build that trivializes the hardest content in the game should be nerfed in my opinion, but since other classes like Necromancer can already do it [without the bug], it feels unfair to nerf it now.”
Update (Jan. 30): This story has been updated with a comment from Blizzard.
