Diablo 4 players take the 'action' out of action RPG and create the ultimate AFK build that plays itself
In action RPGs, the most valuable currency is time. It's also the number one thing that pisses players off, leading them to argue about how long it takes to finish a dungeon, find powerful items, and, uh, move their character between NPC shopkeepers. Sometimes I wonder if action RPG players want to play a game or a spreadsheet and today is another one of those days because Chinese players have created a spiritborn build that plays itself so you can do something else I guess.
I'll admit that the build is certainly novel, but I can't imagine getting excited about turning Diablo 4 into a screensaver. The build effectively transforms your spiritborn into a cloud of poison that melts monsters who dare to spawn in the same room as you. It also happens to be one of the fastest builds in the game, capable of clearing one of the hardest dungeons in about a minute.
Like every spiritborn build in Diablo 4 right now, it relies on a handful of bugs that skyrocket the class' damage into the trillions. The most powerful one comes from a Paragon node that is supposed to increase your damage up to a set amount based on how much barrier, Diablo's temporary bonus health, you have. Despite what the tooltip says, the damage increase keeps going up the more health and barrier you have. It's so unbelievably strong and easy to activate that you can combine it with almost any of their skills.
This variant of the uber build uses Toxic Skin, a passive skill that infects enemies with poison, the Wound Drinker ring to boost Toxic Skin's potency, and good old thorns damage. Playing it is quite simple: You either stand in the middle of enemies and watch them disintegrate or you go through the trouble of using a mouse and keyboard to dash to the end of the dungeon leaving a trail of bodies.
Diablo 4 YouTuber Mattjestic Life explains everything in his video, including the gear you need to make it all work. He recommends using two extremely rare mythic unique items, but I think you could actually make this work with normal legendaries, although it will be clunkier. I made a non-mythic version of it if you're interested.
Keep in mind this build falls off pretty hard if you attempt harder tiers of the Pit than 100. It's possible to go even higher if you hit a certain threshold for some specific stats—which Mattjestic Life notes in his video. But to do that, you need incredible luck or weeks of free time to grind all the materials to perfect your gear.
Blizzard is preparing to drop a midseason patch soon, which it will go over in its stream next week. However, I don't expect it will fix these egregious bugs fueling the entire class until next season. So now's your chance to take the action out of action RPG and auto-farm as many monsters as you can.