Diablo 4’s most recent hotfix has been rolled back by devs after it neutralized an auto-include Caged Heart. The massively powerful Heart of the Barber would not trigger following the update.
Diablo 4’s Season of the Malignant has been marred by bugs or glitches since its launch. Some cause players joy like the ability to hop between Realms, others have been a thorn in the side of Blizzard, skewing the game’s economy.
In Diablo 4’s latest hotfix, something went amiss and started interfering with the core seasonal mechanic, Malignant Hearts. These in-game items confer powerful buffs when slotted into jewelry and act similarly to Legendary Aspects.
Wrathful Hearts are the most powerful of these must-have items and one of the most sought-after is the Heart of the Barber. Once this newest update went live, players swarmed the game’s Subreddit to let Blizzard know that their Hearts of the Barber weren’t working as intended. The incident caused the developer to roll back the hotfix.
How the Diablo 4 Heart of the Barber stopped working
The Heart of the Barber has a very specific effect that makes it so valuable to players. The in-game description for the item reads: “Critical Strikes and all subsequent damage within 2.0 and 4.0 seconds are absorbed by your target. The absorbed damage then erupts onto surrounding enemies, and store damage is increased by 10% per second.”
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Diablo 4 players were understandably irate when the effect wouldn’t trigger following the game’s latest hotfix. Multiple posts to the game’s Subreddit confirmed that it was a widespread issue.
“Since today’s hotfix I noticed my Barber explosions not exploding anymore,” one user announced. The incident dramatically impacted players’ effectiveness with users in the thread reporting huge slowdowns in Nightmare Dungeon clear times.
A community manager on the Subreddit made the announcement that Blizzard was aware of the issue and had taken steps to rectify it. “The hotfix which was released today resulted in some issues with Heart of the Barber not functioning correctly,” they said. “To resolve this issue for players we are rolling back to the previous version.”
The Blizzard representative said they would notify the community “as further updates become available”. At the time of writing, no follow-up post has been made and Diablo 4 is still running on the previous version.
This issue arose shortly after Blizzard announced Diablo 4’s Season of Blood at Gamescom 2023. While some players have had their excitement dampened, others are excited for the changes coming in Diablo 4 Season 2.