A post was made on the Blizzard forums last night containing a pretty interesting bug report. Essentially, the player “Doso” had found out about an exploit that allowed anyone playing the wizard class to become completely invulnerable to incoming damage just by quick-casting a couple spells. At the time that this article is being written, the approximate age of the original post is 17 hours old, while the first response from Blizzard (AKA “Blue Post”) is only 10 minutes old from Vasadan, a quality assurance moderator. According to Doso, the exploit was surprisingly simple, as it consisted of only five steps.
Step 1: Select Teleport – Fracture. Bind it to a key
Step 2: Select Archon, tested with Improved Archon
Step 3: Hover your mouse over or near your charcter
Step 4: Press Teleport
Step 5: QUICKLY(!) Press Archon
The consequences of an exploit like this in Diablo 3 should be pretty obvious. Making your character invincible on any difficulty will cause issues in the economy, especially where the Real Money Auction House (RMAH) is concerned, because it gives every wizard the ability to farm the type of mobs that they likely never had a chance at before. This, in turn, allows them to turn around and sell all of the loot they found on the RMAH. Now, granted, they still have to be lucky enough to get items that are worth selling, but farming Diablo on Inferno difficulty while this exploit is in place makes that “Luck” factor significantly less of a matter.
On top of the economy, this exploit allows wizards to effectively render hardcore mode worthless, as being able to never die in a progression difficulty that punishes death as fiercely as hardcore mode is game breaking. If this isn’t fixed soon, there will end up being a massive influx of wizards reaching level 60 in hardcore mode, which is no easy feat without the use of an exploit such as this.
Update 1: A video was actually posted to YouTube on June 22 showcasing this bug, which implies that it has been public issue for over a month. Speculation on the official forums suggests this bug is a major contributor to overpricing of gear and gold within the Auction House. The video can be located here. How do you feel about it? Leave a comment and tell us what you think! More information on this will be provided as official statements are released.
(Please Note: It is not recommended that anyone attempt to use this exploit. Blizzard has made no official statements about how they will be handling benefactors of this particular exploit, only that they are working on resolving the issue.)
Sources: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6146816331?page=1 (Diablo 3 Forum Post)