Diablo 4's best Barbarian build has been killed by a bug fix
Bad news, Barbarians: The big Diablo 4 patch that went live today has brought an untimely end to one of your most powerful endgame builds by fixing a bug that was causing Hammer of the Ancients to do way more damage than it was supposed to.
Like other builds we've seen, this particular Barbarian relies on a very specific mix of abilities and equipment, but it ultimately hinges on the Hammer of the Ancients skill, which uses two-handed blunt weapons to do large amounts of damage in a small area directly in front of the player. What really catalyzes its power is the Legendary Aspect of Ancestral Force, which causes a percentage of that damage to radiate outwards.
It's complicated, as is generally the way with overpowered Diablo 4 builds, but Maxroll.gg has a breakdown of how it all comes together—except it doesn't all come together that way anymore, thanks to today's pre-season patch. Several aspects of the Barbarian were dialled back in the patch—they can no longer stack Ripping, Skullbreaker, and Anemia aspects to deal «extreme amounts of damage,» for instance—but the change that's particularly relevant to this build is a fix to «an issue where the outer edge of the quakes granted to Hammer of the Ancients via The Aspect of Ancestral Echoes was dealing far more damage than intended.»
A lot more damage, as it turns out: Enough so that, according to redditor Soysauceonrice, Barbarian players on PC were intentionally missing enemies with their hammer swings so they'd be hit by the bugged area-of-effect damage instead. (The bug was present on all platforms, but was most easily exploited on PC, according to the post.)
Blizzard acknowledged the scale of the change in a brief developer's note: «We recognize this adjustment is
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