A special item from Season 1 of Diablo 4 causes exaggerated damage numbers for the user. At the same time, however, teammates draw the short straw because they feed the item and deal little damage themselves. MeinMMO collects details about the “Barber”.
What is this item? It is one of the 32 malevolent hearts of Season 1. These hearts come in different colors, which are socketed into specific jewelry sockets.
As a reward, each heart provides a special effect in Season 1. For example, necromancers automatically raise corpses or barbarians sometimes heal instead of taking damage. The most powerful heart is the “Barber”. This is one of the black, wrath-filled hearts.
The item stores all the damage dealt after a critical hit for a few seconds, adds at least 10% damage per second on top, and releases the accumulated damage with a powerful backhand strike as area damage.
However, this leads to abnormal damage numbers, which is not well received by every teammate and causes some builds to not function properly.
Currently, Season 1 is running in Diablo 4. You can watch the trailer here:
Why is “Barber” so strong? The item comes with no downsides for its user, increases dealt damage by at least 10% per second, and can last for up to 4 seconds.
For a single player, it’s a boon because it rains high damage numbers and you don’t have to rely on random effects nor take on any disadvantages.
On the discussion platform Reddit, there are some images with huge numbers. The “Season of the Barber” has already been declared:
What makes “Barber” annoying? Where to begin? First: Teammates of a Barber player see less of their own damage numbers and the “impact” of attacks feels weak. The feeling of power is somewhat lost, an important aspect in the action-RPG Diablo.
However, the interactions with some skills and aspects are really strange. You have to engage with the item because otherwise, you wouldn’t know which skills actually work correctly when a player with “Barber” is present.
Because when you hit enemies affected by the Barber effect, those enemies are “immune” – certain effects do not work.
Often, you can trust the descriptions of the skills, like with the “Trap Setter Aspect” of the hunter: “Lucky Hit: When you deal direct damage to enemies suffering under your trap skills, there is a chance of up to 30 – 50%, to make them vulnerable for 3 seconds.”
This effect does not work; you do not deal “direct damage” to the enemy anymore.
However, the description “when you deal damage to an enemy” looks different. The popular and strong Paragon glyph “Bountiful” does not work correctly and does not make enemies “vulnerable” anymore.
With the skill “Improved Blade Glide” of the hunter, the description states: “When you deal damage to an enemy with Blade Glide, you gain 5% movement speed while Blade Glide is active, up to a maximum of 20%.” – this effect works again.
While there are regularities, for some effects it is unclear beforehand whether they work with “Barber” as usual.
Tips for the Barber effect: Here are a few things that YouTuber “Xarrio” discovered while testing with “Barber” (via youtube.com):
- Critical hit effects do not work.
- Effects with “direct damage” do not work.
- “Dealing damage” or “hits” are inconsistent; you need to test them.
- Lucky hits work normally, unless they use the descriptions mentioned here.
- If an enemy absorbs damage equal to their health points, they explode immediately.
- 2-second Barber reduces the impact of missing effects.
The Barber effect is undoubtedly the strongest effect of Season 1 and can increase dealt damage by more than 50% without preventing too much damage. However, you should discuss its use with your co-op partners if you don’t want to annoy them.
Which builds hit the hardest in Season 1, you can find out here: Diablo 4: Tier List – Best classes and builds overview
