Diablo 4 is all about builds: How your class, stats, abilities, and gear come collectively to allow you to kick essentially the most demon ass within the least period of time. Some builds are very highly effective, others not a lot, however one—the “Lightning Shred Druid 2.0,” as streamer Moxsy calls it—is doing a lot harm, it’d as nicely be damaged.
As famous by IGN, Moxsy has been sharing his odyssey of destruction on Twitter over the previous a number of days. He got here simply shy of 1 billion harm on July 7:
I do not know if that was really the best harm ever hit in Diablo 4 as much as that time, nevertheless it’s undeniably spectacular.
Only a day later, although, he principally doubled that whopper with a 1.8 billion harm punch within the chops to an unfortunate minion of Hell.
Ouch, that is gotta sting:
So how can this type of mega-deletion harm be doable? It isn’t a bug or an exploit, however a fastidiously crafted construct that takes benefit of legendary merchandise facets and “double-dipping” to stack more and more large quantities of harm within the Shred assault.
There’s loads of complexity concerned in pulling all of it collectively, which Moxsy breaks down intimately in a construct at DPS Test, however our in-house Diablo 4 professional Tyler Colp laid it out for me like this:
- Waxing Gibbous axe to ensure Shred crit strikes
- Dire Wolf’s side makes Grizzly Rage (Druid final talent) cut back Shred Spirit value so you’ll be able to spam it
- Facet of the Rampaging Werebeast stacks vital strike harm for each vital strike you get whereas in Grizzly Rage (which is on a regular basis with Waxing Gibbous)
- Stormclaw Facet makes Shred vital strikes deal an enormous share of the harm as Lightning harm to enemies round you, and when it triggers (on a regular basis with Waxing Gibbous) it double dips on harm multipliers—which you stack with all of your different gear, talent factors, and Paragon factors
The tl;dr, as he put it, is that the construct offers “fixed huge vital strike hits that double dip on harm modifiers and continuously set off area-of-effect lightning harm.”
“With this construct, we’re stacking nicely over 1,000% crit harm to enemies,” Moxsy says in his video explainer. “And the extra crits that we hit in Grizzly Rage, the extra this additive crit harm multiplier goes to stack up … and we’re critting on a regular basis.”
There is a sure factor of randomness to the entire thing, as some Diablo 4 dungeons are apparently extra conducive to large harm stacking than others. Additionally essential is that you must be killing every part, in every single place, suddenly: Moxsy stated his harm spikes did not get critical till he began “snowballing” by one-shotting elites and enormous packs of enemies.
In fact, that turns into an issue in fights towards highly effective bosses like Uber Lilith, the place there aren’t massive packs of fodder to feast on with the intention to construct up your harm stack. However as streamer echohack demonstrated, it is nonetheless achievable—in actual fact, they landed a 2.1 billion harm shot on Uber Lilith at one level, and had been capable of completely smoke the sport’s hardest enemy in simply 90 seconds.
In contrast to the Lightning Shred Druid, which makes use of relentless high-speed homicide to construct up harm, Echohack’s “Shred Poison Druid” depends on stacking large poison harm and proccing an enormous vital hit. So it suffers from the other drawback: It is nice for one-on-one throwdowns with huge heavies, however is way much less efficient in normal dungeon runs.
“Whenever you’re bouncing between enemies, [the poison aspect] by no means prompts,” Moxsy stated in his evaluation of echohack’s construct. “The one option to get that side to really activate is to poison an enemy after which stroll considerably additional away from them, after which sprint in.
“Poison harm, for essentially the most half, for advert clearing is not actually nice since you’re not capable of stack it up. However for a tanky boss, you’ll be able to stack it up actually onerous.”
As completely bonkers as these numbers are, they could in actual fact be only the start: Moxsy stated he believes that underneath the appropriate circumstances, gamers ought to have the ability to do single strikes of 100 billion harm or extra.
“I feel that is actually on the low finish,” he stated. “I have never discovered a Deadly Shrine [which adds critical damage bonus to lightning strikes] and [had] all the celebs aligning on the identical time, however I do suppose we might legit break the integer cap.”
I haven’t got the persistence to play videogames this manner, however I can not be too vital of those that do: In spite of everything, I constructed my Elden Ring character particularly so I might insta-fry enemies moderately than give them a good battle. However in some unspecified time in the future you do have to wonder if Diablo 4 is somewhat damaged, or at the very least that some bits of it are in critical want of a nerf. Will Blizzard clamp down on these sorts of uber-builds by tweaking legendary facets, or perhaps placing a tough cap on harm outputs? It is undoubtedly doable—I’ve reached out to ask and can replace if I obtain a reply.
