The impossible has been achieved in Diablo 4: no more numbers. One barbarian player has discovered a bug that allows barbarians to deal so much damage that the game just stops calculating it. And, ironically, it was done in the update meant to squish all the damage numbers down to be more legible.
"We did it, no more numbers!" Diablo 4 influencer Rob2628 declared the moment the game gave up on calculating how much damage he was dealing and started showing infinity symbols instead. The build he's playing is bugged and only possible on Blizzard's playtest server of Diablo 4's next update, but I don't think anyone knew it was possible to break the game so hard it gives up on doing math.
The culprit of this numbers crime is unknown. A Chinese player discovered it before Rob2628 by wearing armor with over 30 bonus ranks to a barbarian skill for thorns damage, or damage that is reflected back when enemies hit you. This isn't an easy feat, either; you have to be extremely lucky with Diablo 4's randomized item upgrade system to raise the skill that high. It wouldn't be feasible without access to unlimited crafting materials in the test server.
Once you reach over 30 ranks to the skill, however, the thorns damage you deal will keep climbing until the numbers don't matter anymore. The whole thing is fueled by the barbarian's whirlwind skill, which triggers another skill each time it hits to stack up even more thorns damage. The only thing that can stop you is, well, anything that can literally stop you from moving.
The build takes quite a bit of time to ramp up in a dungeon where enemies aren't standing around waiting for you to hit them, but as long as you keep spinning, you'll win. At full power, you're not a barbarian anymore, you're an eraser tool. Watching Rob2628 mow through the hardest dungeon and pop its boss like a balloon made me regret every minute I spent carefully dodging their attacks on builds that can only deal damage in a range that is conceivable by human beings. What is an action RPG when the numbers can't go higher? I was half-expecting the credits to roll.
There's no way Blizzard will let this one go live when the update drops next month with the expansion, but it would be really funny (and really bad) if it did. You have one more day to try it out on the Diablo 4 2.0 PTR or you can hope it'll still be relatively powerful when Vessel of Hatred launches on October 8.
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