A new item from Season 4 makes some builds in Diablo 4 incredibly strong. The reason is not the item itself, but your minions, as the expert MacroBioBoi explains. More specifically: An elixir that actually only provides a small buff. But because minions work the way they do, they are as strong as bosses right now. Literally.
What is this item?
- The Elixir of Sacred Bolts is one of the changes from Season 4. When you drink it, you receive +6% experience for 15 minutes, and when you kill enemies, they fire these sacred bolts.
- You can only obtain the elixir in the seasonal realm; it is one of the few changes that do not apply to the whole game. If you cannot find it in Hell Tides, you can simply craft the elixir at the alchemist.
- The effect of the elixir is triggered both when you kill an enemy and when your minions do the killing. And this is where there is currently a strange interaction.
Why is the elixir so strong? MacroBioBoi explains that minions in Diablo 4 work in a pretty specific way: they are counted as “monsters” by the game (via YouTube). This means specifically that they match the level of the content you are currently tackling:
- If you are simply wandering around in the open world, minions are at your level.
- In Hell Tides, they would be 3 levels above you.
- If you are in Nightmare Dungeons or the Pit, the minions have the level of the enemies.
- Against tortured Uber bosses, minions scale exactly as Duriel, Andariel, and co. would.
Currently, minion necromancers are extremely popular and strong and rely on massive amounts of skeletons. When the companions trigger the Elixir of Sacred Bolts, not only do the multipliers for minions (and potentially your own) come into play, but also those for their monster level.
This means that your skeletons and co. fire bolts that can one-shot almost anything when they kill a monster – including the actually very tough Uber bosses themselves.
“I think this is garbage”
The elixir is thereby stronger for the corresponding builds than almost any legendary aspect and stronger than most Uber Uniques. This results in two problems:
- The effects only work under ideal circumstances, which are often not present.
- Since it is not you or your build dealing the damage, the results are enormously inconsistent.
According to MacroBioBoi, you can only one-shot certain bosses this way. Namely those that summon a sufficient number of additional weaker enemies (“adds”).
You should not touch these adds; your minions must kill them. Only then will these pumped-up bolts be fired with absurd multipliers. Uber Lilith, for example, the currently most challenging fight in the game, cannot be defeated this way.
The issue with the absurd minions has existed before, as MacroBioBoi explains. It was possible to drive thorn damage to unimaginable heights. However, he did not want to test that because it would be too boring. The expert states:
I am not calling for a nerf. Let’s just say the season mechanic is sacred bolts. And we then invest all our time to fish for bosses in the pit that have a certain number of adds. And then you can only play the builds that are broken and absurdly scale. All others have to accept that their build is garbage…
I don’t know if you can hear the sarcasm in this, but I would hate for that to happen. It would be better if the elixir were completely removed from the game.
All the good changes like crafting and the new itemization are being nullified by this small variable. Only sacred bolts matter anymore. The whole thing is a huge problem.
However, you should not feel ashamed to use the elixir. After all, it is part of the game. Just don’t be surprised if there is a fix and you suddenly find yourself dealing no damage, MacroBioBoi says.
As of now, there is no information on whether the Elixir of Sacred Bolts will change during the course of the season. According to MacroBioBoi, even the high levels in the pit are only possible right now if you use the elixir. And even that is not enough: “Is this possible without cheats?” – New endgame content is so tough that even experts can’t handle it
