Diablo 4 Season 4 has largely been a triumph, with the comprehensive ‘Loot Reborn’ overhaul and improved endgame giving players plenty of reasons to return to the mammoth Blizzard RPG. The release of a new set of Diablo 4 patch notes, however, sparked concern from many with the news of a nerf to one of the best Barbarian builds in Season 4. Fortunately, it appears the change in question was actually a mix-up, as community manager Adam Fletcher explains and apologizes for any confusion caused.
The Bash Barbarian is both very fun and among the best Barbarian builds in the current season of the RPG. It’s a satisfying heavy hitter capable of chunking down the biggest, baddest bosses in Diablo 4 – even Uber Lilith. It combines the basic Bash skill with the overpower potential of Hammer of the Ancients to deliver colossal damage in quick bursts. It also doesn’t require any Uber Uniques to succeed, making it accessible to anyone who wants to pursue it.
Blizzard reiterated in the run-up to Season 4 that it wants to try and avoid any build nerfs during the season unless something is completely broken due to a bug. So many were surprised when, in the Diablo 4 patch notes for Friday May 24, one bullet point read, “Fixed an issue where Barbarian’s Bash was dealing multiplicative damage instead of additive damage when combined with the tempering affix that causes Bash to cleave.” That would be quite a big nerf – additive damage is a much less potent boost than multiplicative.
This caused an outcry from many Barbarian fans, who pointed out that they have been working on perfecting their build since the start of Diablo 4 Season 4 only to have it seemingly taken away. “Really don’t understand the reasoning,” Top player and YouTuber Rob ‘Rob2628’ remarks. “We played this cool new Barb build on the PTR for days; now people are having a blast with it in the live game and suddenly it is a bug? Players spend a ton of their hard-earned materials on rerolling all their gear for bash just to find it gets changed completely.”
Fortunately, Blizzard community manager Adam Fletcher was quick to respond. “Hey Barbarian friends – pull up a chair. It’s story time,” he writes in a post via X (Twitter). “Bash is still multiplicative and the notes are being updated. Nothing was changed for this and [it] was actually an attempt from the team to fix a tooltip issue. Fixing this tooltip issue caused a multiplicative scaling issue, which we experienced internally but no-one else actually saw. We fixed that issue, but it accidentally landed in public notes.”
So there you have it. The patch note we saw was actually for a separate problem caused during development that never made it to live in the first place. Barbarians, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Hopefully you didn’t panic reroll your character in the short time between the initial patch notes and clarification, and you can go back to bashing demons to your heart’s content.
Just getting started, or rolling a new character? Make sure you’re rocking one of the best Diablo 4 builds to succeed in Season 4. Alternatively, here are more of the best games like Diablo to play in 2024.
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