I think the general consensus is that the most informative way to compare build power is to look at non-seasons, as classes benefit differentially from seasonal buffs.
Without the non-season leaderboard reset, it will be difficult to know the precise current power of AoV crusaders and MR witch doctors; however, the timestamps of top leaderboard clears for these 2 classes indicate that all were pre-patch 2.6.9 and the nerfs to these classes.
Due to the cap, it artificially lowers differences. Specifically, how do compare a class with one worldwide clear of GR 148 (barbarians) to DHs where there are 17 GR 150 clears including from a player below 10K paragon or by another player in under 12 minutes. Therefore, the difference in power between barbs and DH are currently 2 GRs, but in reality that power difference is greater in that DHs could clear beyond GR 150 if not for the cap.
This earlier post in this thread is a few days out of date but shows the non-season data:
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Why do you fight for balance, when you are super casual. I think that people with double your paragon AT LEAST, who are devoted to this game, should be forcing nerfs into our throats.
Im glad that we have people like for example Free and Dieoxide, who take care about us, players. We dont want nerfs, we want more power to enjoy every new patch. We want to see bigger numbers and OPness.
I think that you would not like when newcomer at your workplace started revolution in company, where you feel good and safe.
For patch 2.6.9, I have actively advocated for DH (and necromancer) buffs as well as buffs to monks and barbarians pre-patch 2.6.7. As a recent example, you can see the thread here that I made. There is a difference between wanting a class buffed appropriately and wanting a class to be OP.
I feel that it is the right thing to do. Should I advocate to have a poorly balanced game instead?
That would also work. Since Blizzard changed the numbers already on HPS in the PTR, I figured they could just change HPS to something more generous. If you read the thread, I am ok with changing the set bonus.
Fighting for balance is to increase the options of what I would want to play, if balance wasn’t an issue, then why did barbarians fight for the buffs to the class for so long?
That’s called fighting for balance.
Gaining power can be fun, and I get that many wouldn’t want to give that up when they had it for a while, but it’s all a perpetual cycle of buffing where someone is always gonna get shafted.
Now, after several years of not nerfing much, they do it every patch, this is blizzard change in policy to finally getting those outliners down to a reasonable level.
And this is coming from a crusader main which had two outliners (condemn and heaven’s fury) over the years, I know how overpowered they were, and how it completly made all other builds irrelevant at the time. Heaven’s fury had several nerfs to this date and now it’s finally looking like it’s in a decent spot.
And also, let’s not kid ourselves, the GoD dh will most likely be nerfed, it is stronger than it should, and given the way they have acted on other builds being at that level, this one will not be any different. What we can hope for is that this “overpower” is from weird interactions with certain items and skills/affixes, and that is fixed while still retaining the the current power. But eventually, something will happen, whether we like it or not.
On this we definitely agree. How we approach community advocacy matters, though, and this is why I recommend always advocating for buffs, not nerfs, even if something is OP. This puts fun and player engagement front and center, and communicates more clearly that we want to feel powerful with our favorite builds regardless of class or build preference.
Ideally, I’d like to see better parity among class builds, because we’re remarkably close to excellent cross-class parity.
We have gotten closer to the point of cross-class balance, because Blizzard opted to nerf and buff. If it weren’t for nerfs, all classes would be way behind crusaders with their infinite shield of fury stacking.
P.S. Wizard and monks now are the two weakest classes that desperately need buffs.
I agree.
I and others advocate for both buffs to weak classes and nerfs to OP builds. You and I differ on this personal opinion.
If one only buffs, then we get into a situation where group play becomes increasingly trivialized. To illustrate this, the 4 player leaderboard in EU, one would need to complete a GR 150 in less than 10 minutes and 8 seconds. I am pleased that you now have stated that we are “remarkably close to excellent cross-class balance” due to Blizzard using both nerfs and buffs like I have advocated.
But then, you have to agree to nerfs if that is gonna happen, there are no ifs or buts.
Calling out on people when they mention that something is overpowered is the same as calling out someone saying something is underpowered. The end result is balance. Whether or not that nerf or buff is warrented is up to Blizzard to decide.
Also since we are the “fun police” let me explain what I find fun. I find it fun when I sit by the comp and choose the build I want, do some rifts, and feel that the build is at an fairly equal level to the next build. The approach can ofcourse be to increase all the builds power, or you can have a more practical view and buff and nerf to find that sweet spot.
It’s never an act to destroy builds, but rather to not have that cycle of powercreep, that cycle is the reason why so many builds has been out of the loop since they constantly need to fix the top end.
What we can hope for is a couple of major balance patches to smooth things out, but that would not have happened with the mindset of never nerfing.
At what point does this end? Getting overpowered like this will eventually make it to where you login to a season and complete a GRift 150 in the first week. Then you just logoff because you don’t have anything else to strive for. What you want is essential cheat codes enabled. That ruins the fun.
This is an ARPG. I want to actually feel progress over time. Not just complete a set and clear GRift 150 instantly. If things are over buffed they need to be reduced. We no longer have crawling through difficulties. You get your set and supporting legendaries and boom! You just cleared a T16 rift.
This game/genre needs a lot less difficulties where you have to find gear in current difficulties to progress to the next one.
Even though we have like 20 base difficulties there are really only 4 or 5 different parts. Everything else is useless.
For you, maybe. But I suspect a lot of folks only play Season to get the stuff, hit a PR, and peace out until the next go-around. Personally, I never play Seasons because I find the whole grind, however truncated it is these days, repulsively boring. Which is generally how I find D3 these days: boring.
And it’s not power creep that made it boring. It’s the fact that it’s 8 years old and we’ve been doing the same things in more or less the same manner for most of that time. I’ve checked my list: Rank 1 in groups? Check. Personal bests with low-Paragon runs? Check. Solo Self-Found? Check.
Mind you, I’m not advocating for every build to plow GR 150 with ease. That’s always been a mischaracterization used by the Fun Police to suggest that I and others who share my views don’t consider balance to be meaningful. I–we–do, but we’re not defining balance the way you define it, and much of that has to do with the fact that I don’t think balance is nearly as important as fun.
If a build is OP for a season or two? Who cares? Go have fun. It’s not the end of the world. Blizzard will eventually bring it line–or they won’t. Either way, if the builds I enjoy feel powerful, capable, and competitive–if I can engage similar content with similar efficiency and a sense of power–I’m having fun. Zodiac Rend is, to me, the epitome of a well-balanced, incredibly fun build: it’s fast, versatile, and one of the best solo builds out there. It may not be good in multiplayer, but what it lacks there it more than makes up for in solo play; it requires some skill, but it’s still accessible if you don’t want to fully optimize the build or manually input Rends. It’s powerful, but you aren’t going to plow the max GR with 1k Paragon.
Frankly, I’d love to see all builds balanced against Zodiac Rend, but if they decide that a Sader build, a WD build, or a DH build is the better high water mark, so be it. I just don’t want to see the builds I love–the builds that everyone else loves–get nerfed into the ground because some folks think some numerical approximation of balance is more important.
Then you’re playing the wrong game. This is not a grind-heavy ARPG like D2 or POE is. This is clearly a casual ARPG-lite, one that seeks to offer you a lot of power upfront, and one in which the only meaningful test of that power is a timed challenge that weighs RNG-dependent game environments against your willingness to quit and remake to find the perfect soft rift.
See what I’m saying?
That game you want D3 to be is not what D3 is. I feel like you’d be happier playing POE for the same reasons I’m happier playing Doom Eternal.
This is wrong. I actually hate PoE for a few reasons. D3 used to be the game that I wanted and it’s still the closest to what I like as well as it’s an awesome game in general. It’s just changed in the past couple of years because people like you keep going “Buff, buff, buff! - No nerf, just buff!” It’s like all you want is similar to “Tehehe, boss go boom!”
I, and others like me, want actual true balance between all classes and all sets where anyone can pick the build they want to compete while still having room for improvement. Your philosophy conflicts with itself
Everyone else that’s not that build. You can’t have balance with OP builds.
That last part, competitive, can’t exist between classes when there is an outlier.
Well, you seem to portray yourself as an advocate for only buffs, and you seem to take an aggressive stance every time someone barely mentions the word nerf, so I find it hard to believe that you actually want any balance at all. Tbh if whirlrend wasn’t the strongest barb build, and another overpowered barb build exists that hits 150, would you be claiming the same? Even if whirlrend is strong, few will play it because it’s still weaker than the very best.
But they aren’t nerfed to the ground unless they had some bad mechanics like necro for instance. They are aiming for a power similar to that of the whirlrend, and that is still what people asking for when concerning GoD, or atleast stamp out some weird interactions with different items.
To be fair, you seem to be quite passionate about this, far more than what you should be if the game isn’t your interest at this point.
That’s cool. I don’t care for POE either. Feels too complicated to me, too many mats, too many elements and resistances and . . . just thinking about it gives me a headache. So, yeah, I feel ya there.
Hate to break this to you but I don’t direct the course of this game. I’m not a developer. My influence stems from the work I’ve done in the community, which is my primary focus when it comes to all things D3-related. And if you go back and re-read our original Barb Buff Proposal, you might be shocked to learn that all we ever asked for was:
Stronger builds across the board
Updated supporting legendaries
Fixes to broken sets
Better intra-class balance
Better cross-class balance
And that was it. At the time, we didn’t even ask for Barbs to be as powerful as Wizards (then the most powerful class by a mile). We just wanted to be in the same ballpark and for our builds to be rewarding and powerful. And that’s still my MO, and why I say a lot of folks don’t really understand what “Buffs, not nerfs!” actually means.
It means a sustained community effort to advocate for the following:
Buffs to favorite builds/classes via sets/supporting legendaries
Better intra-class parity
Better cross-class parity
More diverse options for group play
So, why do I advocate against nerfs? Simple. Asking for Blizzard to nerf a build or class someone else enjoys doesn’t make my experience better, and it doesn’t necessarily promote better intra- or cross-class parity; if the bar for balance was X, and now it’s Y, it’s useless to ask that we return to Y. When we asked for buffs, we had a broken Wastes set (Rend was useless), outdated supporting legendaries, and our two top builds relied on gimmicky wall-charging with the Raekor set (especially R6 HOTA, which was stronger than our default HOTA build by a mile!). Our class was an absolute mess. It got better after our buffs, but there’s still work to be done in getting other builds, particularly Fire EQ, Pro Slam, H90, and IK HOTA closer to Rend in terms of power.
That’s what “Buffs, not nerfs!” means: Ask for improvements for yourself, not nerfs that may make the experience of others–particularly those with less time to play, less Paragon, or disabilities–more frustrating, more time-consuming, and less fun.
Outside of vanilla (and, arguably, early RoS), D3 was not and is not a grind-heavy, inch-by-inch, upgrade-by-upgrade crawl like the ARPGS of yore. You’re never, ever going to return to a time where Paragon 5k struggles to clear GR 120 (or GR130 for that matter). That time is gone, and that was inevitable due to the design of the game: damage is modified via multipliers, and the only way to deal more damage other than increasing item multipliers is Paragon.
D3 is a very linear game. It always was. We just didn’t have the multipliers to see it so clearly.
But asking for nerfs isn’t going to change that, and what’s more, it ignores the reality of the game.
The reality is this: GR 150 is doable for several classes solo, but this is not the norm for any class or any large body of players. Very, very few players have the gear, gem levels, skill, and time to accomplish this. If they do, groovy. They earned it (provided they didn’t bot, etc.). Most of this falls squarely in the realm of non-Season and requires between 6-10K Paragon, another attribute that is beyond the time and patience of most players to acquire.
The more realistic range for most players is still GR 110-130. This is absolutely achievable in Seasons and non-Season, and this is where the new sets are tuned. It’s also where the older buffed sets are tuned.
So what does a realistic buff request look like? Well, Blizzard already outlined that, and whether that has changed since then, who knows. Maybe? Maybe not? Here’s what they said:
When balancing, we need a point of reference to work around. The “ideal” class set performance for Diablo III is approximatelyGreater Rift 130, solo, andassumes the character has 5000 Paragon levels.
They also added this to it:
While this is our goal, we also recognize we aren’t always going to hit it perfectly. Like many games, Diablo III has a lot of mechanical details. A single change can ripple through many other parts of the game, so it’s important we’re mindful of what each change can affect. We also realize that, even with special care, it may take us a few tries to achieve our intended result. To account for this, we have a scale for error, based on how a class is performing above or below our guideline:
+/- 1-2 Greater Rift Levels: Very close. Probably fine, when accounting for random elements (the perfect “fish”) or high player skill cap (excellent play and timing).
+/- 3-4 Greater Rift Levels: The warning zone. We need to watch for buffs/nerfs in this area, but action may not yet be necessary. Time to keep an eye on it!
+/- 5 or more Greater Rift Levels: Warrants significant change. At this range, it’s clear that something is over (or under) performing and needs to be addressed.
Note my emphasis in bold underline. Balance in D3 is not a concrete node on a spectrum. It’s flexible, constantly changing, and it takes time to look at the overall bigger picture. The devs have already stated they plan to address balance issues in future patches, so for now, if something is OP, who cares? Again, it doesn’t ruin your game in any way. You can still play whatever class and build you prefer, and if you think yours is weak, advocate for buffs!
Of course, because in the end, it doesn’t matter what build does what GR provided the one you enjoy feels strong and rewarding–fun–to play. But I want to point out this faulty notion that people will only play X build because it’s strong. It doesn’t matter whether that’s true or not because that shouldn’t be a reason to nerf a build when other builds could be buffed to that same level.
My passion for D3 lies in the community, particularly in the Barb community. Always has, always will. Regardless of how much I play D3, I still come here to help new players, maintain guides, and advocate on behalf of the community.
The thing is, you never wanted to be in the same ball park. You wanted to be OP, the strongest, top of the line and etc. You felt like that was deserved to barbarians because they haven’t been the strongest in a long time. This is a major problem with your philosophy.
My thing, and others like me, is that we don’t want anyone to feel like they are left behind. We want everyone to be about to clear at a similar level. We don’t want anyone to feel how you felt about the Barbarian situation before the WW/Rend buff patch. If your philosophy of circle buffing continues then this cycle will continue forever. Many other builds will be left out, and eventually we will arrive at a situation where a 1k paragon player with the basic set and legendaries can clear a 150 GRift solo speeds. This is the main problem. You might say, “So what? Everyone’s equal and can play what they want together.” The problem will be that there isn’t anyone to play with because of how easy the game is then.
I want to be able to continue chasing the carrot with my friends that want to play their build. Too many times I hear “I want to play (insert class/build) but I can’t keep up.” This will always exist if you don’t break the OP/FOTM cycle
silly and sad.
lol. So much fun over here. Just jump the ship show already.