Oops: WoW's hotfix to sort out Delve scaling has random mooks dealing upwards of 12,582,896 damage, with some players 'smoked out of nowhere'
As reported on by my fellow PC Gamer writer Tyler Colp yesterday, Delves, which are World of Warcraft's new type of pseudo-dungeon content designed to be completed with one to three players, have been having a scaling problem recently.
I'll spare you the full list of details—since we'd be here a while—but the gist of it is, solo players are floundering, teams are flying, and "unavoidable, highly-tuned damage" is commonplace. Well, Blizzard's on the case—with a fresh hotfix to sort them out. What could possibly go wrong?
This image, shared by unlucky victim Wraithfighter on the game's subreddit, shows them getting hit for 12,582,896 damage via what appears to be a basic attack for some random bug. Considering the hotfix claims to have "reduced the damage scaling of many enemy abilities in Delves while grouped with other players," I somehow do not think this is intended. Just a hunch.
What's more, the hotfix appears to've simply been rolled out live, leading to some players claiming they were "absolutely smoked out of nowhere" in the middle of their Delves. "Just went into Waterworks T8 with a group of [item level 590s] and we didn’t even make it out of the first room. It’s definitely scuffed," writes one player. "If you thought Delve scaling was bad before, it's now utterly cracked," adds another.
The official forums are, as one might imagine, absolutely on fire right now, turning what should just be a straightforward 'hey, I think your tuning's bugged' into discourse: "You didn’t need to change ANYTHING, Blizzard. They were AWESOME as they were. Perhaps you could have NERFED them for soloers. Now they’re impossible," writes a particularly incensed delver.
Other players report similar instances in a separate thread: "Mirror Master Murkna Melee hit You 5,072,064 Physical. (16,918,730 Overkill). Tier 8. Solo." Ouch.
In all fairness, Blizzard has responded at a decent pace to issues like this before. However, scaling's already been a problem in the recently released expansion, with a post-launch tweak to the power of early 70s characters leading to cries of early access privilege. I don't envy the task of numbers-fiddling, and this whole debacle is clearly not intended, but WoW players in my experience can hold a grudge. Here's hoping Brann's wacky adventures return to normalcy soon.