Diablo 4's big bad enemies are currently being ravaged by a single elixir capable of unleashing monstrous amounts of damage, and many players are already sick of it.
Diablo 4's fourth season, Loot Reborn, kicked off earlier this month, bringing with it the Elixir of Holy Bolts. Its intended effect is relatively simple: for 15 minutes, after you kill an enemy, Holy Bolts will fire out from its corpse, allowing you to rack up damage on the rest of the field as more and more foes are felled. However, for some builds, this is far more effective than it is on others.
Namely, Necromancers, who are capable of summoning minions to help them fight, are also able to share the elixir's effects with their battle companions. However, a minion's damage output is calculated a bit differently from that of a regular player's. As explained by Diablo 4 content creator MacroBioBoi, minions "get the scaling of the monsters in the content type that you are." This is demonstrated in a fight against the level 200 Tormented Duriel which you can watch below – the minions can be seen killing off the maggots dropping from above, triggering the Holy Bolts, and melting through the boss health bar like it's nothing.
"Just like that Tormented level 200 Duriel got popped real quickly, it's because when each one of our minions killed the maggots around us with this elixir on, the Holy Bolts that shot out of [them] had level 200 Tormented Duriel scaling on [them]," MacroBioBoi reveals.
Take this and combine it with other damage multipliers and, well, the numbers start to add up fast. The exact math isn't clear, but however you want to look at it, there's no doubt that Necromancer builds with minions are capable of dealing ridiculous damage right now, to the point where many think it's straight-up bugged. While not everyone believes that this is the case, one thing is for sure, not all classes are affected equally.
"The elixir is not EQUALLY bugged for all builds, it is massively bugged for minion builds more than all else. Hence the problem," one Reddit user writes.
Last week, global community development director Adam Fletcher said that the team has "been having some talks about the elixir," which is some acknowledgement of the Holy Bolt shenanigans, at least. That's not confirmation that things are set to change, mind you, but if anything does need fixing, it sounds like a patch could be on the way in the future.
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Catherine Lewis
News Writer
I'm one of GamesRadar+'s news writers, who works alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.
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