Players hope that the Diablo 3 team will fix this theme before it goes live in this form.
With Season 21, two new sets are also coming into play. They are for Demon Hunters and Necromancers. This could help boost these classes up the rankings in the new season.
Season 21 of Diablo 3 is currently being scrutinized on the test servers. Patch 2.6.9 brings some changes, but the seasonal buff seems to be running out of control.
What is happening in Diablo 3? While Season 20 is currently active on the live server, players are already testing the new Season 21 on the test servers.
Among these testers is the German streamer Rob2628. He uses the seasonal theme in various situations and noticed that even builds that are not supposed to deal damage are becoming really strong with it.
The reason is a scaling with area damage that may not have been planned by Blizzard at all.
This is how “broken” the seasonal theme is
What was noticed: During tests, Rob2628 noticed that the seasonal theme of Season 21 scales with area damage. So if you collect the chance to deal area damage on your characters, you will become really strong in the new season. And “really strong” means that even the Z-Builds, which are not supposed to deal damage, can achieve great success.
In a YouTube video, the streamer demonstrates how he completes a Greater Rift of level 150 as a zBarb. Although he doesn’t finish within the given time, he shows how strong the season bonus is.
You can see the kill of the Rift boss here in the embedded Twitch clip. When the snowball of the seasonal buff spawns in combination with the boss’s rats, the boss suddenly has only a few moments left to live.
Here, the scaling of the season buff, luck with a Rift boss, and luck with the RNG proc of the season buff play a role.
The streamer writes about this: On the PTR, we are supposed to break things, and we have broken things! Overall, the theme is too weak for groups but too strong for solo players. And there is way too much RNG involved regarding which proc you get. The time between them is 2 full minutes.
Why is this broken? A player on reddit sums up the problem well. “This is really not a matter of subjective interpretation,” replies mostlybarb (via reddit). “The video clearly shows a P1700 Barbarian with only 200,000 pure damage clearing a 7/10 Rift with the right portal boss at level 150.
“The problem is that the seasonal effects are tied to Greater Rift level but their damage triggers area damage. This means that the damage of your character is irrelevant as long as they have a lot of area damage [on their equipment] and stay alive.”
During the boss fight, damage numbers of over 71 trillion appear in the stream. And that as a zBarb, who with his equipment is actually only supposed to support and not deal any damage.
In Season 19, there were similar problems with the seasonal theme. Players exploited this and were even banned for it.
What is the theme supposed to do? The developers explained the purpose and use of the seasonal theme for Season 21 as follows:
The elements have deemed you worthy. As champions of the elements, the burning hells will have to face the trials of the storms!
Your character will occasionally (every 2 minutes) channel an elemental power that will be unleashed upon your surroundings for a limited time:
– You can make meteors rain down around you
– You can spit lightning
– You can create a wall of fire that devours everything
– You can unleash tornadoes of pure energy
– You can crush your enemies with snowballs
Players hope that the Diablo 3 team will fix this theme before it goes live in this form.
With Season 21, two new sets are also coming into play. They are for Demon Hunters and Necromancers. This could help boost these classes up the rankings in the new season.
