For 20 seasons I have played Hardcore. But in the past two seasons I stopped playing HC, primarily because my Diablo gaming has become more casual i.e. playing Diablo while watching Netflix. Now I play almost exclusively Softcore.
Anyway I was playing a Firebird Wizard in Soft Core grift 120. I found a shield pylon and herded the two elites, their minions, and other white mobs into a big dense mob. My enchantress was wearing a Flavor of Time and had the cheat death enabled.
I hit the shield pylon and stood in the middle of the gathered mob. The mob included molten, fatty poppers, and the nemesis spawned that elite that slams down his hammer. The molten monsters were going off and the fatties were popping. I am keeping my cool throughout all of this because I have a shield and I am playing SC where death has no significance.
Anyway at one point both a fatty popper and a molten went off at the same time and my health dropped to zero. My follower’s cheat death icon shows up on my bar.; even though I had an active shield pylon my Wizard. Because I am playing Software I think: “That’s odd” and keep playing.
But as I continue through the grift I think if I were still playing Hardcore, proccing a cheat death passive while having an active shield pylon buff would have have FREAKED ME OUT. I could have died. I took three screenshots that show both the timers of the shield pylon and the follower cheat death passive activation. I can’t link them here but I can tell you the timers:
- Shield Pylon 7 o’clock Cheat Death Proc 3 o’clock
- Shield Pylon 9 o’clock Cheat Death Proc 4 o’clock
- Shield Pylon 10 o’clock Cheat Death Proc 5 o’clock
So clearly the Shield Pylon was active before the Follower Cheat Death.
I think the value of this post is that I am not a HC player who is ranting about the death of his toon. We all admit that all deaths, legitimate and DC’s are a part of the game. Also playing HC is a MUCH more emotional experience than SC, so can you really be sure what happened actually occurred. But coming from a cool, detached SC perspective I can say there is definitely a bug in the Shield Pylon mechanic and the follower cheat death passive.
So my advice to HC players is not to relax into a Shield Pylon. Don’t stand in the middle of the mob, rather play along the edge of the mob. The proccing of the cheat death seems to occur when you take a massive amount of damage at once. So pace out the damage you take. And most importantly, don’t assume you are invincible.
