4 Man Meta Historical Perspective and Request for Changes

General Discussion
1

Hi all,

I checked the history of the 4 man leaderboards. I wanted to summarize and give highlights of the available information. As we know, greater rift clears of 4 man groups are significantly higher than solo players. As such, inclusion in the 4 man meta greatly increases that classes ability to get higher level legendary gems as well as XP/paragon levels.

Please find below the classes and seasons which they are part of the dominant 4 man meta.

Barbarian
4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,19*

Crusader
1,2,3,4

Demon Hunter
1,1,2,2

Monk
4,4,5,6,7,7,8,8,9,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19*

Necromancer (Introduced Season 11)
11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18

Witch Doctor
1,2,3,5,6,7,8,9,10,11

Wizard
3,3,10,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19*

Since season 4, two classes (barbarians and monks) are always part of the 4 man meta.

No crusader or demon hunter has been part of the four man meta after season 4.*

The four man meta in terms of class composition has not changed since season 12 where it is Barbarian, Monk, Necromancer and Wizard.

I think these observation suggest that there needs to be a significant overhaul to encourage greater class diversity in the 4 man meta.

*In season 19, the pandemonium buff led to a different top 4 man meta (Wiz, B, B, M) in comparison to non-seasons (Wiz, C, B, M).

26 Likes
2

The problem isn’t so much the meta, but it is the distance between the meta and the next best combination. If there was say a 10-30% difference in damage output from the meta and next best combination, you would see different groups populating the top 100 on the 4 man boards. A small difference as this can be over come by skill/gear/paragon, but when the difference is significantly more than the next group it becomes the way it is, no real choices.

4 Likes
3

They’re never going to replace Wizard, because unlike all other trash killer builds, it doesn’t lag the servers.

2 Likes
4

its not a monk which is part of meta, its a healer. when.it was monk (gen) it got nerfed. its really boring to play healer, no fun, so it would be a good step to bring all classes dmg wise closer to wizz/nec and nerf defensive group buffs of barb and healer

6 Likes
5

Agreed. For class diversity in 4 man push groups, the need for support is limiting class diversity. Over the past 6 seasons, the 4 man meta has been set to 2 zDPS (monk and barb), wizard, and necromancer. Needless to say, for those who main the other classes (Crusaders, demon hunters and witch doctors), it is more difficult to level legendary gems.

How would you nerf “healer monks” so that it would have little effect on solo play but limit their utility as zDPS? For barbs, it would be a nerf to “mob Rule”.

As a corollary to this, we need more DPS options. I saw this in another psot and it is relevant.

5 Likes
6

I think the meta needs to change in two ways:

First, the meta needs to shift from support x2 + trash killer + boss killer towards maybe 1 support and 3 damage characters. It used to be a lot worse with 3 support and 1 damage in early seasons.

Next, the I think classes need to be able to fit into several of the roles. For example, while Monk and Barb have been in the meta for many seasons, they are always in the support role.

The issue is that Wizard’s trash killer build (a.k.a. bazooka) and Necro’s boss killer build are VERY VERY strong. I’m not advocating nerfing those builds as they have been around a long time and it would be unfair to those who play those builds. Instead, trash killer and boss killer builds for other classes should be buffed.

It is very hard to balance the meta in a way for all the classes to be viable in multiple roles (e.g. support and boss killer), as well as in solo with multiple sets (e.g. Unhallowed Essence, Shadow, Natalya’s, Marauder, and LoN).

Perhaps there can be adjustments for group play that can change the meta without warping the solo play balance. Although some solo builds do need to be balanced to the level of the new Vyr-todo.

4 Likes
7

To be fair, up to GR 140 there is an alternate meta with the DH Impale replacing the Necro as BK (we used it this season in my clan). But to go higher you definitely need the Necro…

2 Likes
8

Lol. I don’t think things will change much… seasons 1 and 2 I enjoyed the most with permacc, items were hard to get so less people pushing, and you couldn’t craft any item or reforge which made finding gg items alot more rewarding… some classes will get a little boost to solo play with crimson’s etc. But with minute long conduits 150s are going to get even more rediculous. Assuming the ptr changes go through…I don’t think some will as it’s kinda rediculous…lol

9

The thing i really don’t get about stagnant Meta’s in D3 Seasons is that they are in a position to change it every season. Just buff the crap out of one set for each class per season. Make it season only so to not mess with NS people. But then every season we could have new classes/specs to play around with. I’d love it if one season Helltooth/shadow/Raekors etc was top. Then Next season it’s Jade/Wastes/UE etc. Every season would be a fresh build to push.

10

Kinda hard to balance things now.
2 reasons…

  1. Small team, so changes are hard to implement
  2. Grifts and group disparities.
    They could nerf z-dps builds, and bring solo closer to group play.
    But Blizzard wants to keep pushing group play, and as far leader boards
    are concerned/grifts, they were a bad idea, which magnifies the differences
    at top levels.
    D2 was much better built that way, and if there was Greater rifts, you would
    of seen big differences too.
    The devs who made D2 gave it a more satisfying leveling game, and
    weren’t interested in the top end.
    They also had PvP, where people could compete.
    While changes would be ok, I don’t think they can, or even want to
    make anything drastic enough, because it would take a big overhaul,
    to make things interesting again.
11

Tell that to the Barbs ZOMG NO BUFFS IN 2.6.6!!!

1 Like
12

Believe me that Blizzard is not good at such balancing. Just see what happened to Overwatch…

To be more serious, I think they should not put too much effort on balancing 4P meta. I’d like to see more playstyles and have fun, instead of pushing GR levels.

4 Likes
13

Actually this isn’t very fair. That is 10 Gr levels difference. The amount of damage needed doubles every 5 Gr levels. This means the meta is doing 4 times the damage just switching out the 1 of the meta members to the next best option. No amount of player skill/gear/paragon is going to make up that gap.

1 Like
14

I agree.

I believe that every class should have a build that can fill a position in a 4 player group for high greater rifts.

1 Like
15

i’d start with e.g. inner sanctuary, doubled size but half reduction (solo noone uses it so no problem). reduce the amount of heal. the barbs cry could be half bonus for group members. i mean the thing with barb and monk is that they have so many group buffs as skills, all the others do not. disadvantage is that monks dmg output is almost always linear, sorcs do have extreme buffs when they just survive and in a clumped grp they really over power any other grp. also there are too many group buffs dmg wise - it should be equivalent to have a supp and he buffs group to equal out his non existing dmg or just have all dd
i did 4 man matchup as wol monk with a crus, a dh and another wol. we did 120, which is pretty impressive but if we’d play meta we probably could go 130+. noone of us likes any of meta char/skills. fun thing: when i switched to vyr sorc we simply got to 123 and when there was one healer inside a 125 was no problem. but i like my monk :slight_smile:

1 Like
16

Nicely done. Some interesting and eye-opening information.

1 Like
17

The thing i really don’t get about stagnant Meta’s in D3 Seasons is that they are in a position to change it every season.

Except they arent.

There are fundamental mechanical differences between classes that translate into different roles they fulfill, and that will not change unless someone spends alot of resources on redesigning class skills and introducing few dozens of new ones.

Outside of that the only thing they can really do is to substantially nerf group skills, but this way they will achieve some balance between classes, but only because the avg clear will be 30 levels lower (since you’re not getting into higher GRs without proper DR and group healing, and you’re not clearing it in time without barb pulling entire screens of monsters towards you).

Im surprised that after literall years of discussions about the meta people still dont understand why it is what it is.

3 Likes
18

As other say, they Will never remove Wizard from 4-meta GR, during season 1-10 people try everything with different builds, and there was always a problem, Lag by calculating numbers in Big pools

Anyway if for any reason the fix that, Bazooka Wizard is like 10x step away from all.

1 Like
19

They could safely buff DH BK for 4-5 GR lvls and meta would not change. People would still fish for Blighter with Necro for the best times.

20

I updated the OP to reflect season 18.