Oops! WoW's hotfix for Delve scaling is causing random mooks to deal up to 12,582,896 damages, with some players being'smoked from nowhere'

As my colleague Tyler Colp reported yesterday, Delves - World of Warcraft's pseudo-dungeons designed to be completed by one to three players - have recently been experiencing a scaling issue.

I won't bore you with the details, since it would take a long time to go through them, but the main point is that solo players are struggling, while teams are soaring, and "unavoidable damage" is a common occurrence. Blizzard is on the case, and has a new hotfix to fix them. What could possibly go awry?

This image was shared by Wraithfighter, a victim of a random bug, and shows them being hit for 12,582,896 damages via what appears to merely be a basic attack. The hotfix claims that it "reduced damage scaling for many enemy abilities while grouped with players." I somehow don't think this was intended. Just a hunch.

The hotfix also appears to have been rolled out in real time, leading some players to claim that they were "absolutely smoked from nowhere" during their Delves. "We didn't make it past the first room of Waterworks T8 when we went in with a group [of item level 590s]. One player writes, "It's definitely scuffed." "If you thought Delve scale was bad before, now it's utterly broken," adds another.

As one might imagine, the official forums are on fire at the moment. What should be a simple 'hey, your tuning is bugged' has become a discussion: "You didn’t need to change anything, Blizzard. They were AMAZING as they were. You could have NERFED the soloers. "Now they're impossible," writes an especially infuriated delver.

Other players have reported similar incidents in a separate topic: "Mirror master Murkna melee hit you 5,072,064 physical. (16,918,730 Overkill). Tier 8. Solo." Ouch.

Blizzard responded to similar issues in the past at a reasonable pace. Scaling has been a problem with the recent expansion. A post-launch tweak of the power of characters from the early 70s led to complaints of early access privilege. I don't like the idea of fiddling with numbers, and it is clear that this whole mess was not intended. However, WoW players can be very resentful. We hope Brann's wacky antics return to normal soon.