Anyone in HC want to duel?

Brawling
1

I couldn’t believe that this feature was still live. Thought they scrapped brawling altogether.

For me it’s way too similar to WoW arenas, which I hate. But for the sake of trying, I would love to duel someone in this brawler setting. It seems quite vacant

I suppose I could create a SC char for this. Or non seasonal. Thoughts?

2

Seven forum topics in ten months is a good indication of exactly how unpopular Brawling is. I think since Brawling went live, years ago, I’ve done less than half a dozen matches, and that was only because my son wanted to try it out. Trying joining the public queue for a Brawling match and see how long it is until anyone joins, if at all.

The game just doesn’t suit it. For an example, take an Impale Demon Hunter. Their impale daggers do 75,000% times weapon damage per cast, and they throw 3 of these. Let’s say you’ve got a 3000 damage dagger, multiply that by 750, that’s 2,250,000 damage per dagger, and there’s three of them… that’s 6,750,000 incoming damage per cast, against a hero that’s got maybe 750,000 HP. Even with armour / elemental damage mitigation, you die in a couple of hits at most.

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Indeed. Sometimes it just takes the conversation to start, and the interest to grow.

Right now I’m feeling like your son, just want to see what it’s like.

In d2, all of the damage he you did was reduced to like 75% less against players . There are ways to start balancing and I’m sure they’ve looked into it.

There needs to be more interest but, if they patch a new feature in Brawling, that could also spark interest. And I doubt it would need to be much.

Remove the arena style, create a dedicated free for all setting. (That is what is popular in path of exile and has dedicated players and player boards.) Set items not allowed. And then allow the players to evolve it naturally.

This game is forever in the state of D2 classic, before runewords and everyone got the ability to teleport. (With the exception of rares and Magic’s being useful…) Those were legit pvp days as much as LoD and after.

Nothing to lose at this point. Unlock all the doors and throw the shudders open. Players should still look forward to killing each other in ARPGs. The pvp developed there (D2) was endless fun and created one of the great and everlasting communities in gaming. It should be something players can strive for.

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I spent countless hours with PVP analysis since 2012. I gave up a few years ago when damage increased by so much that it was impossible to tank anything anymore (I’ve tried 100B+ toughness builds). For more of my backstory, I used to be one of the most avid PVP players back in patches 1.0.7-1.0.8 (late 2012 - early 2014) and one of the most knowledgeable theory crafters for PVP builds.

Unfortunately, with the transition to the new forums in July 2019, the older forum data was taken offline (or lost?) late last year, so I cannot provide you ample information regarding this topic. Thus, I’ll give you a quick rundown here of why PVP doesn’t work in D3 anymore (after patch 2.0).

  • Player damage and toughness were increased at different rates throughout many patches to compensate for how GR levels scale monster damage and life differently. As such, players do millions/billions of times the damage they did in pre-RoS days but only have tens to hundreds of times the toughness. This disparity makes meaningful PVP impossible as virtually any attack versus any character build will 1-shot the other player.

  • The common argument that reducing all player damage by 99.99% or something will not fix the issue as it will introduce unkillable characters (life generation exceeds damage taken) making for a stale experience. The problem is the HUGE variance in player builds when it comes to how much damage or toughness a player can get by changing equipment. While a blanket damage reduction might work to balance the PVP setting between two specific builds, it would remain as a 1-shot fest or stalemate in other settings.

  • Banning set items will push players to go with Legacy of Dreams builds circumventing the core issue. Next, banning legendary items (yellow gear only) will kill build diversity and open up the meta for unkillable characters (stack all resist, life regen, etc.). Going all the way to allowing only white items will at least prevent unkillable characters and 1-shots for the most part but the duels will become very boring very quickly (and very one-sided for some matchups).

  • There are no ways to enforce rules aside from agreeing to using or not using certain things with your opponent, so brawling isn’t really suitable for meaningful PVP where both players want to win (one player can just claim a certain ability or item is “unfair” and have no way to be proven right or wrong with flexible rules).

  • There is no spectator mode, scorekeeping method, matchmaking ranking, item/paragon locking system, or otherwise any reasonable features that a PVP environment should have. Countless pleas have been made to the developers since 2012.

These are the main issues surrounding the brawling system in its current form. Since many of the original D3 developers are likely hard at work with D4, it is a waste of time to expect anything for D3 PVP. The best use of the Scorched Chapel nowadays is for mechanics testing in a closed environment (e.g. for PTR testing).

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