In Season 19 of Diablo 3, a new tactic came to light that allowed players to quickly sneak to the goal in Solo Greater Rifts at level 150. It was unclear whether this was allowed. Blizzard now clearly states: This is cheating. It’s better to avoid this.
Update from December 12: Blizzard has since released a new patch for Diablo 3 that blocks the exploit. In the patch notes, you can see how Blizzard is now stopping cheaters from taking advantage of the exploit.
What kind of tactic is this? A few weeks after the start of Season 19 in Diablo 3, a tactic emerged where players from a group could help the player in his Greater Nephalem Portal, for which he is registered alone.
The teammates declined the invitation to the Greater Rift and gathered many monsters outside of the rift. The solo player in the Greater Rift then teleports to the teammates after starting the Greater Rift and applies a damage-over-time ability to their mass of monsters. Then he goes back into the rift, the monsters from outside die, and the player receives many stacks of the Pandemonium buff. This makes progress in the Greater Rift incredibly easy.
We explain this new tactic in more detail here and also show a video of the action in Diablo 3.
The special thing about this is that you don’t even have to use the best builds from the Season 19 tier list in Diablo 3, but can simply sneak up with a defensive build. Players discussed this with varying opinions. For some, it was clever; for others, it was exploiting.
Blizzard’s statement: This is cheating
What does Blizzard say about it? Only a few hours after the topic gained traction in the Diablo community, Blizzard officially commented on the “tactic”. Community manager Brandy “Nevalistis” Camel wrote a detailed post in the Blizzard forums. She warned that people who use the exploit may be banned.
It recently came to light that there is a method where players unfairly and unexpectedly exploit the Season buff “Pandemonium” to achieve progress as a solo player. We want to inform you about our stance on this and the steps we are taking to address it.
First: It is not intended to use a group buff to advance in Greater Nephalem Portals for solo players. This is considered cheating. Players who utilize these mechanics must expect a ban or closure of their accounts. This depends on the severity of the exploitation and the account’s history. These account-related actions are taken between Blizzard and the affected players. Therefore, please note that we will not publicly comment on the status of accounts. This has always been our standard practice.
Second: We will remove all and any clear runs from the leaderboards where we are certain the exploit was utilized.
Third: We will correct [fix] this exploit. We ask you not to use this exploit in the meantime while we are working on the release of the patch. Our team is already working on a solution, and as soon as it is implemented, we will update this thread. We will not go into detail about how the exploit works, but it takes planning, knowledge, and research to use it. This is not the kind of exploit that one can accidentally use.
Source: Nevalistis in the Blizzard forums
In addition, the community manager reminds everyone that third-party programs with overlays, map hacks, and other addons that modify the game client are prohibited.
They want to resolve the current issue as quickly as possible, thanks to the community that brought this tactic to light.
Do you think Blizzard is handling this well? This method of jumping from level 1 to level 70 in one second is absolutely legal:
