I did the same exact test, 433k crit outside with vulnerable, and 2.3m crit inside a level 91 nm dungeon with vulnerable.
in all fairness, it sounds like the (sane) callouts of this ability as a bug revolve around the amount of damage done and not the DR stacking.
A defensive ability becoming one of if not the most powerful offensive tool in the classes kit without losing anything seems “unintended” to any ARPG vet.
Now, if you want to say that all the individual mechanics are working as intended and Blizzard simply didn’t test a very obvious synergy, sure. That said, the damage scaling certainly is questionable.
5 Likes
According to you, champ.
Resetting the cool down is by design and not an exploit. It’s part of an overall build concept which increases build diversity.
The damage from bulwark shrapnel in a very specific scenario is the only issue here. That’s all that requires fixing.
1 Like
The exploit is that bulwark is buged with nature fury proc and will deal damage x20 or x30 in some situation when you refresh it when already up. Resulting to some absurb damage.
With my trampleslide build, with no passive/gem to boost bulwark. Bulwark explosion crit at 10 millions sometimes when landslide crit at 1 million max. And i have more damage bonus related to core skill.
1 Like
Trampleslide doesn’t use Nature’s Fury so sounds like there’s a basic mechanic that’s off in the Bulwark shrapnel node damage calculation.
EDIT: Trampleslide totally uses Nature’s Fury – my bad 
It definitely does.
Sorry, my head was not in the right build – you are absolutely correct
1 Like
Trampleslide is an Earth Skill with the right aspect.
I have recorded proof of the same test, but I can’t share imgur gifs. Crit only, no vuln
80k outside
142k in a T49 dungeon
1.3M in a T96 dungeon
I’ve tried to re-create a suspected cause of Bulwark amplification by using Nature’s Fury and spamming defensive spells to create more than one Bulwark. It would cause strange visual bugs, but the damage of the explosion is the same from a single Bulwark
It must be related to the interaction with Trampleslide builds when it comes to Bulwark doing even more damage than even the original magical scaling damage
I heard the shrapnel damage is scaling off of mob level, and not player level. Don’t know if it’s accurate, I’m not high enough level to perform any kind of meaningful test.
However, your data correlates with that hypothesis.
Yeah, that was my damage with a shred build, I’m not even a trampleslide or nature’s fury build of any kind, it’s just the shrapnel explosion that is scaling off enemy level for some reason that is bugged.
1 thi g i learned in this game never go by what a person says cause most dont know sh!t. They just talk all day sh!t
While not an exploit, we should all know these interactions and results werent intended.
Be very wary of taking time to put this build together. I am just guessing here, but i suspect the DR while injured will be nerfed to make bubbles remove injured status. The damage scaling on bulwark will also be greatly neefed soon.
This build wont last a week. Be wary setting up for it if you arent prepared for that final outcome.
You have to gimp all of your self healing to pull this off which would never match any design philosophy. Bulwark damage is a bug, permanent 85% dr when injured was unintended broken interaction. Both will be fixed quickly now.
3 Likes
What are you saying it is an Exploit cause that joke of a sight Maxroll says it is?
Tell me you have a Tempest Roar without telling me you have a Tempest Roar.
It’s totally not a bugged interaction. My Earthen Bullwark has a cooldown of 9.63s with a duration of 9s. I can achieve nearly 100% uptime using just cooldown reduction (which is 39.8% on my character sheet). I don’t even need Symbiotic Aspect, Nature’s Fury, or any of that. Just simple CDR affixes on my gear.
Also note that the duration of the skill doesn’t matter as much as you might think because the Unstoppable effect only lasts as long as the bubble is up. You take a big hit and it’s all gone (bubble, unstoppable, everything).
So chill with this “immortal druid” nonsense. This topic isn’t even about the bubble, or being immortal – it’s about the use-case where Innate Earthen Bulwark generates too much damage. This use case seems limited to high nightmare dungeon tiers, combined with some other mechanics that are not fully understood (+barrier generation, +damage reduction, ???, nobody has identified the precise set of mechanics which makes it happen).
Ok thanks for listing problem number 1. Lets bring this in line with other Classes like Barb shouts. Lets increase the CD by 100%. The CD should be 18-20 secs with CD reduction.
Problem number 2. This shouldn’t exist. There shouldn’t be instant resetting of CDs bypassing mechanics or intended game design.
The bubble is always up because you have spammable Bulwark and a complete Dev oversight.
You don’t take big hits cause you don’t take damage.
How about NOOOOOO. How about we fix the broken cheese that is the Immortal Druid. Right now everyone is rerolling to garbage like this. Class balance is atrocious.
Hope everyone rerolls to this and they gut it into the gutter.
3 Likes
It’s not exploiting a bug. That is the mechanic. The problem is the mechanic is silly.
It shouldn’t apply to barrier.
Low health shouldn’t be better than having more health. Low health with DR while injured should be better than no DR while injured, but shouldn’t be better than having more health.
Even without the barrier issue, the whole DR while injured is problematic.
If you have high DR while injured, it’s better to have 30% health than 36% health. That ain’t right.
If infinite Bulwark is considered and exploit then what about infinite grizzly rage?
If your build is pushing T100 dungeons then you are using one of the two methods above. There is even a way with grizzly rage to make it so your core skills cost zero spirit.
Except both skills aren’t actually quite infinite because bulwark can be lost early by taking too much damage and grizzly rage can drop off if the enemy density also drops off.
Honestly just leave the builds be
For those that want to play them, damage hits aren’t hitting into the billions with it and it’s not getting 10 second Uber Lilith clears either. And even those builds killing Lilith got it wrong many times before they got it right.
It all comes down to numbers management. Instead of going after crazy OP build’s and demanding nerfs we should be on the devs about why there aren’t enough build option to push endgame in the first place.