Though the arrival of Diablo 4’s Season of the Malignant was arguably overshadowed by a controversial patch, plenty of players have still delved into it and set about trying to find items that can take their characters to the next level.
Some of these hardcore Hellspawn have even managed to stumble across a Malignant Heart that offers a permanent buff. Unfortunately, others have been less lucky, encountering some frustrating bugs.
With patch 1.1.1 having been deployed on August 8, players have been eagerly checking out how its array of changes have affected the experience the game offers. One streamer has been busy testing out its controversial health buffs to bosses, and the conclusion they’ve reached is pretty interesting.
Have you been finding Diablo 4’s high level bosses tougher to defeat since patch 1.1.1 arrived?
Following the release of the patch’s notes on August 2, streamer Wudijo was so convinced that these planned boosts to the health of bosses over level 60 would have a substantial effect on the game’s overall experience that they spent significant time looking into the viability of boss-free runs.
Since concluding that this strategy would be a decent option for groups, but not very effective for solo players, the streamer has been testing out how some Nightmare Dungeon bosses stack up combat-wise post-patch, in comparison to their pre-patch iterations.
Surprisingly, after putting together a spreadsheet contrasting health point estimates for a number of dungeon bosses pre and post 1.1.1’s deployment, Wudijo has concluded that the patch “didn’t actually do anything with those bosses after all”.
“[This is] kind of an interesting turn of events, I gotta say, but on the other hand, I think it’s probably a good move from Blizzard to not include [these changes],” said the streamer in the video above about their findings.
They also speculated that Diablo 4’s developers might have intentionally chosen not to include the planned buffs in the patch in response to some of the negative reaction to them from players, following the publication of the notes.
As of writing, Blizzard doesn’t look to have acknowledged or responded to Wudijo’s claims about the planned buffs seemingly having no tangible effect, so we’ll update this article ASAP if it does so.
Meanwhile, Diablo Global Community Development Director Adam ‘PezRadar’ Fletcher has confirmed that players will soon be getting some information on the changes planned for Patch 1.1.2, which is currently timetabled to arrive at some point next week.
Regardless of whether you’re enjoying what all of these recent patches and hotfixes have done to switch up the Diablo 4 experience, make sure to follow us for an array of guides to the Season of the Malignant’s items and quests.