A chaotic new sorcerer build in Diablo 4's latest season was so strong it was killing more than demons. The servers, it seems, couldn't handle players filling their screens with lightning bolts and frozen orbs, so Blizzard had to step in yesterday and fix it.
Thanks to a new legendary power in season 5, sorcerers can now zap monsters for loads of damage with their lightning spear skill, but you need the unique Fractured Winterglass amulet to summon a bunch of them at once. Every time you cast a frozen orb with the amulet on, it can spawn a magical pet, or conjuration, that casts its own frozen orbs which reduce lightning spear's normally long cooldown. With the right gear, an army of these little guys throwing snowballs at enemies lets you spam tons of lightning spears in seconds.
But the amount of spells flying around caused servers to lag and crash in some cases, especially for high-end players like Mekuna, who achieved the world record for finishing the hardest dungeon in the game less than 24 hours before Blizzard nerfed the build.
"In rare instances, [the aspect of Splintering Energy] alongside Fractured Winterglass could cause detrimental server performance issues," a Blizzard community manager wrote on the Diablo 4 forums. "To solve for this, we’re reducing the frequency of it arcing to additional enemies, and increasing its damage to compensate. Additionally, the amount of Frozen Orbs that can be launched from Conjurations while using Fractured Winterglass has been adjusted in these rare instances."
Although Blizzard increased the amount of damage each lightning spear can do, they don't hit as many enemies anymore, which is a problem in high tiers of the Pit, where you only have 10 minutes to carve through the toughest enemies in the game.
Diablo 4 season 5 lightning spear sorceress"
"I lost like 50% damage lol," Mekuna told PC Gamer. Despite noticing some of the lag going away, he isn't a fan of the trade-off. "I used to clear the trash [enemies] in two to three minutes, now it takes me seven minutes," he wrote on X. "But the nerf shouldn't be noticeable if you aren't pushing the Pit."
And he's right, most players are having trouble even trying the build because of its extremely specific gear requirements. I'm using it this season and haven't noticed a huge difference, but I'm also not beating my head against anything as difficult as Mekuna.
Blizzard has previously pledged to not nerf overperforming builds in the middle of season unless they're causing technical issues, and fair enough, I think this qualifies. As someone who loves how ridiculous the build feels to play, I also think its solution is a smart way to fix a serious issue without gutting the build for most people. In fact, it's a buff that closes the gap between the build's devastating AOE damage and mediocre boss damage, saving you from having to watch a health bar slowly trickle down at the end of every dungeon.