The leaderboards have been available in Diablo 4 for about a week now, and players are already employing unfair strategies to collect as many points as possible in the Gauntlet.
Since Patch 1.3.3, the leaderboards have been available in Diablo 4, along with the “Gauntlets” (in the German version known as “Herausforderung” or “Prüfung”). In dungeons that change weekly, you can compete against other players.
The most important factor here is your strategy and your speed. To navigate through the dungeon efficiently and collect many points, it’s helpful to plan a route and approach, and to build upon that in subsequent runs.
Players have apparently discovered a strategy to gain an unfair advantage. We won’t elaborate on how the strategy works. Keep in mind that Blizzard is not known for its leniency when it comes to exploiting bugs. A streamer has looked into the strategy.
“And that’s why they urgently need a PTR”
What is the exploit? In a stream, Diablo expert Rob2628, who is known for his OP builds, tests the strategy described to him in the chat. He uses an exploit in the dungeon that makes all enemies target him directly, granting him a big buff.
What does the streamer say about it? Rob appears visibly surprised by the strategy and sarcastically remarks: “Good system. Oh, damn it.” Later, he repeatedly exclaims, “What the hell,” and concludes, “This is messed up.” He laughs while facepalming. He recorded the situation as a clip on Twitch.
When he tries to leave the dungeon and clicks “End Challenge,” the timer is stopped, but he remains in the dungeon. The “Leave Dungeon” button via the emote wheel also doesn’t work. His conclusion: “I’m looking forward to the PTR, man.” (Public Test Realm, in German: öffentlicher Test-Server).
What’s the problem with that? With this strategy, players could gain an unfair advantage in the Gauntlets and expedite point farming. If there were a test server, such problems and bugs would have been identified beforehand, before the features hit the “real” servers.
The developers stated in their last Campfire Chat livestream that a public test server is planned for Season 4 in Diablo 4.
What does the community say about it? In Rob2628’s chat, his moderator writes: “It’s only the first week, and it’s not even over yet.” The clip was brought up on Reddit on March 10 in a post. The top comment comes from “cinderson”. He writes: “Good thing [the leaderboard] was postponed to fix the bugs.”
A user addresses the need for a test server, as Rob already mentioned:
And that’s why they urgently need a PTR, not just for major changes but also for the smallest adjustments to any mechanics.
They lack experienced players; they might be experienced developers, but they don’t know how players think, how some search for a glitch, bug, exploit to their advantage…
Just like big companies sometimes hire hackers to develop security systems, the developers need to let some players who actually understand how the game works try out their stuff.
ConstructionFrosty77 on Reddit
The first week in the Gauntlets is almost over, and players have fought for places on the leaderboards. There are separate rankings for solo players and their classes, as well as rankings for different group sizes. The lists are additionally divided into softcore and hardcore.
We have summarized which classes and builds dominate in the first week, including descriptions of the builds: Diablo 4: The leaderboards are here – This is the currently best build for each class
