You cherry-picked what I wrote, because the part you quoted is only a part of a much larger whole that includes (but isn’t limited to) building a website, networking with other sites and communities, and maintaining a presence. The post you quoted from, and the posts after it, lend some more context to what I mean.
Barbs had to do this kind of stuff for years. I get that this community has also been at it for years, and y’all may need to continue doing it–and expanding efforts–until you get results.
I don’t think I’m “doing it again.” I think I’m saying that you’ll need to take it to a whole new level to achieve results. Whether or not you feel it’s worth your time, well, that’s up to you.
Edit: I want to be transparent and say that the work Rage and I did to get Blizzard to pay attention and buff Barbs was incredibly time-consuming. It took us months to collate community feedback, separate the wheat from the chaff, and write the proposal, and it took weeks to connect with other fansites and discourse communities and generate a lot of publicity. We did eventually get what we wanted, but it took a lot of work, and anyone who says they’d rather not go through with that, I completely understand.
I also want to add that there are some things I’m not at liberty to discuss–mostly having to do with how Blizzard reacted to our work. What I can say is that Rage and I planned to do several other projects of similar depth and complexity, but they have yet to materialize (mostly my fault–I’m finishing a PhD).
My hope is that Blizzard learned to pay closer attention to its communities after our proposal. I think they did, actually, but it remains to be seen.
Fair. Though take a step back and read what you wrote. That is extreme. Kudos to you for putting forth that kind of time and effort, almost basically doing the job of the devs… for free.
The thing is, blizzard stated how we’re suppose to submit feedback. They gave everyone step by step instructions on how to do it. There has been “representatives” in each class over the years that have done just that, and of course to no avail (yet). It should not fall on the players to come up with extremes when communities have followed blizzard guidelines.
I understand your point and your reasoning (I think), and I appreciate you taking time to give your thoughts. The fact that you’re suggesting that communities should is at fault of the company for not abiding by said guidelines, not the players and their communities.
It is. And it was exhausting. To be honest, I don’t think I could do it again.
Rage and I will likely suggest other buffs and update our website, but a campaign of those proportions is out of the picture.
Agreed. But focusing on “should” is only so effective.
A small note: I think by “guidelines” you’re referring to PTR Feedback Forums and the like, but a great deal of feedback can be submitted through other channels and methods. I’ve always taken those guidelines (if we’re talking about the same ones) to be relegated to the PTR Forums as a way to condense and collate feedback submitted there (but not necessarily elsewhere or at other times).
I agree. And look, I’m just trying to help. I want to see DH concerns addressed, and I want y’all to get some juicy buffs in the very near future.
To me, the idea that someone (or 2) acting as spokesman/gatekeeper of good versus bad ideas for a video game class community is simply awful. Within a community that is not aligned about a single partisan issue, there is heterogeneity of thought. The idea that someone is moderating to represent “a unified, cohesive community” is the antithesis of individual freedoms and virtues as we are not monoliths of ideas and beliefs. Often “gatekeepers” are horribly mistaken, propagate misinformation as truth , and silence very good alternative ideas.
One of the things that I feel draw people to playing UE is the fact that it is a build that is very simple to learn, but difficult to master. It seems that a whole lot of people run a UE for one reason or another. Whether it be speed T16’s, low GR gem ups, or even pushing, a UE seems to be in most every tool box. Although it is a very popular build, very few people have ran a GR 120 with UE. Hitting GR120 with UE takes skills, and there are a lot of threads covering these skills and how they are used by the various various UE builds.
Removing the ‘skill’ factor from sets like UE will remove a lot of the fun for quite a few players. The best part of adding Squirts and Capt. Crimson’s wasn’t the power boost, but in all the theory crafting that came with the new and improved gear.
My first post on the old forum was a question about how to reach GR80 with my UE. I never once got a “Get Gud Noob” response in the DH Forum, and it is rare that that kind of crud reaches this far down the forum list. When it does I thing we do a pretty good job of putting a quick stop to it.
He’s talking about an era long before 6pc Sets were a thing, specifically the period between the end of vanilla (Loot 2.0) and early RoS.
SP:Gloom facetank was the “meta” for a very long time for vanilla DH’s. Flight and I made a video, showcasing an efficient but micro heavy glass cannon range style in an attempt to play and understand the class the way the devs designed it. We did fairly well at it, enough to where players who thought they had no choice but to face tank, came out of the woodworks in droves to learn and adapt our play-style. This eventually turned into clan GCB, which eventually was re-branded TPA once Flight left with just a focus on DH play, rather than just glass cannon builds which lives on to this day.
The transition period for DH’s from Vanilla to RoS was very rough for a lot of people. Many people relied on the 60% damage reduction SP:Gloom provided because that was meta, and when that was nerfed to then 25% (35% now) along with the change in life steal, many DH players were having issues surviving. What was apparent was blizzard did not want DH’s relying on SP:Gloom as a clutch for face-tanking, but rather tactics provided for the class. Those that played a ranged style, did not run into these issues and had a very smooth transition from vanilla to RoS (though we had a different issue, unavoidable damage).
I always stood by the philosophy that it’s difficult to complain and/or say the class is terrible if you refuse to use the tools given to you that others are using to be successful with the class (slows, stuns, positional vaulting, timed smoke screens, stutter stepping, etc). This did make the class difficult to play, specifically if you were not use to having to be more careful. I’ve even made videos and efficient build guides in hopes to help players during this transition period. Since ranged play was still somewhat the minority and most were part of TPA already, this was not a popular viewpoint as you can imagine.
Tensions rose as ranged players that were looking to help their fellow facetank brethren out simply were not having it and felt it was blizzards job to give them enough defense to go back to the style they loved in Vanilla. Exchanges were not often times polite or constructive given the frustrations. Range players felt like people weren’t trying to give “RoS DH” a chance, while face-tankers felt blizz robbed them and felt like ranged players were being condescending.
I’ll stop here before this story becomes too long, but this obviously does not exist today and very few people who still post here would remember what I’m talking about as this phased out years ago. I’d be surprised to see anyone still bitter or holding on to a grudge from that era.
Well, considering that the “amazing table” blizzard posted about balance was clear about DH being in a bad spot and then they proceed to ignore it and don’t give anything makes sense that people is angry or wants to give some feedback.
I think the idea of creating the topic was good, the problem is GD is a troll nest and well … things tend get bad pretty fast.
DH community in forums is by far the best community, is just matter of check how calm are things here and the dissaster that are some of the other classes forums, filled with dramas and ego wars, all that clownfiesta of “DHs can’t create a successful proposal idea” is just a lie, sadly our community manager seems to listen the barbarian trolls way too much, so they think they are important and their ago is in the skies, but whatever, this patch is a sad one for DHs, but we have to deal with it and stay calm for the next patch… (ya… i don’t like this situation neither but )
I hope DH community stay united and strong in bad times like this one, because unlike the trolls we do the things in the right way, not incitating riots forums, and sadly the leader of trolls has direct influence on community manager
Free get your drama out of DH forums, people here don’t like dramas or ego wars.
Just throwing this out there since she was brought but Nevalistis did like the opening post pretty much on that first night. I think she was in the first five. She hasn’t commented yet and I’m not sure if she will but she did recognize it pretty early.
So I give her credit for that. Whether any of the feedback in it will make its way to the devs is another issue but having the opening post recognized as soon as it was created is a good sign that she might be at least monitoring if I can keep the nonsense to a minimum. Especially when the way I opened it could be seen as me asking for several other threads to be made and it, if read the wrong way, could be seen as an attack on another class community.
I know we’ve had our disagreements in the past, but I have been trying to keep all that in the past, but the amount of self righteous irony in this part of your post alone, will probably be completely lost on you.
Idolis, I know you are trying to stop threads from spinning into mud slinging matches, but this kind of hypocritical attitude is what Barbs have been banging their heads against for months.
From what I can see most of us have at least attempted to put the rubbish aside, and be constructive to the topic.
You said it best.
Here’s to hoping DH’s get the buffs that are needed, and deserved, sooner rather than later.
Blizzard already stated that the Demon Hunters (and Necros for that matter) need some major work and they did not have enough time to make adjustments for 2.6.8.
Some things just take more time and effort than others.
Barbarians had to wait for years and years till they got heard and answers to their pleas.
Demon hunters are also waiting for years, maybe their time will come next patch. As a player of all classes, I very much hope so.
Anyway, expressions like “clownfiesta” or “barbarian trolls” certainly will not help your cause.
Idolis here tries hard to keep the thread here and in GD civil. Do not invalidate his efforts.
I’d say it went beyond that, but as noted, the game has changed so much since then that certain stances can’t even apply. Personally, I was never a fan of Gloom tanking with RF back then, and a good bit of my philosophy was rooted more in simply being able to survive 3 or so hits before biting the dust. That’s not something I’d correlate to face tanking and just more generally wanted us to more comfortably graduate past T4 at the time without perfect gear heavily focused on DPS. Otherwise taking a few minutes to tickle a pack to death was just never my idea of fun.
My caution of gatekeeping, however, goes beyond D3 or any specific people here. Pretty much any online game I’ve played has a subset of the community that believes they’re among the best and should be pandered to in priority, when it’s often their numbers amount to 10% or fewer of a given population. Whatever happens to that remaining 90% or more doesn’t matter. If you dig deeper, there’s a good chance these same people are using third-party tools that offer an unnatural edge, and this is something that has also existed in D3 through TurboHUD. Or for another throwback, people like Nyan macroing complete gear swaps to cheese the hell out of Strafe.
More generally…
“Don’t forget the little guy…” may be an incredibly vague message without context, but it’s still something that needs to be said. Sometimes they may not know how to vocalize their concerns or even fear getting dogpiled if there’s dissent. I also know there are people out there who are acting in bad faith, and you can see a lot of that when it comes to D4 discussions frequently linked to the desire to avoid anything and everything D3 did. The veil of fandom plays its part in empowering d-baggery, too.
I also worry that Blizzard considering p5000 a baseline to be an incredibly atrocious metric, and even something over p1000 in seasons comes off as iffy to me since it’s not unheard of for people to finish the journey at p600 or less these days. Growth past that very much comes down to how much they multiplayer to get the most out of their time or, unfortunately, bot. Old as the game is and how little legitimately new content there’s been, it’s also not hard to see why people nope out if all they were after was the stash tab. May as well grouch about my disdain of seasonal themes instead of introducing new, permanent content since I’m at it.
There’s a lot that can, should, and should have happened for the class/game. Unlike Free, I’m not really content in classifying certain things into a category of “Never gonna happen, so don’t even try!” because that just gives Blizz an out. Unlikely? Sure. Impossible? Not so much. Being put on the Classic team shouldn’t be considered a death sentence, and if there’s no amount of feedback that can convince Blizzard to go beyond the bare minimum, they need to stop playing coy with all this “we’re listening!” PR BS to salvage 2018’s Blizzcon and hoping to keep us engaged until D4. Then toss us an offline mode patch and let us have fun with modding.
Also, I think we need to think more globally about recent events. I think most would agree that monks and barbarians were weak classes in terms of solo GR clears prior to patch 2.6.7.
The monk community took a strategy that is more similar to DH, while barb buffs were promoted in a far different manner. According to Blizzard’s numbers, barbarians and monks are “equivalent” (I doubt Blizzard’s calculation using early December’s numbers , but whatever). The most important change for barbs in patch 2.6.7 was actively rejected by the gatekeepers but was thankfully adopted by Blizzard.
If we include crusaders, they asked reasonably politely for buffs in patch 2.6.7 and in this patch were by far the strongest class. Even now, they are rather accepting that a AoV nerf was in order (not everyone, but pretty quiet overall).
With this in mind, I think that the best strategy that proved successful is taking a more inclusive and reserved approach like monks (and crusaders for that matter). During the patch 2.6.7 PTR, monks (and crusaders) asked for buffs that they ultimately received.
Barbarians had to wait for years and years till they got heard and answers to their pleas.
Barbarians never waited for anything, they have been part of meta as ZDPS since like season 3 lmao. unlike DHs that were pushed out of meta since like season 2 and they destroyed our Zdps build nerfing calamity and nerfing wolf companion (during season 4 ? i don’t remember exactly). Having a Zdps since season 3 means juicy paragon exp farming since season 3… (barbarian just waited for a DPS build, but they always had a meta spot and probably this will never change).
DH atm is in a terrible spot, because has no real value as ZDPS and neither as DPS (impale has some niche, but other RGKs are stronger and sadly people just don’t want to group with DHs because impale is not strong as HF, so less paragon for DH players (something similar happens with WD i guess) )
@Phoenix
Barbarian forums are on the other sidewalk just cross the street.
Free, with all due respect, why should we, the players, do Blizzard’s job for them? It kind of shows that Blizzard has dropped the ball imho. I get why you did it [for Barbs], and I get why we need to do it for DHs, but in reality, we shouldn’t have to be doing this.
It appears to me that players know the game and the mechanics far better than Blizzard’s very own devs…and that’s worrying!!!
Monks were weak solo? WOL monk was One of the strongest builds…clearing near 10 GRs higher than impale s6 pre 2.6 patch…5 GRs post patch. And, it got buffed with the 2.6 patch, go figure…
Pre 2.6 patch, players were screaming for Blizzard to buff DR, but did Blizzard listen? Nope. They buffed DPS, and not DR. For group players, this isn’t so bad, since they get mega paragon and can somewhat negate the DR effects at higher GRs, but for solo players…we lost out big time.
I guess you don’t feel our pain, cos you don’t run DH - you’re on the outside looking in. I get that you had similar experiences with the barb, but we are in a far worse place than barb ever was. Far worse. As others have said, barb had inclusion in group meta since s2, allowing NS paragon farming. DHs on the other hand, have had to choose to not run DH in group meta (no serious group would touch us anyway, let’s be realistic) and run an alternative character class/build.
This has been plainly obvious for many, many seasons. DHs have screamed for many, many seasons. Hell, we don’t even get blue replies…or replies from Nev. Barbs got that…how could Blizzard not see how bad a spot DHs were in? They’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb. I have the very strong impression that the modern devs at Blizzard hate the DH class and wish it never existed. That’s how I personally feel as a DH player. Neglected.
Barbs and monks were weak in era 11 (patch 2.6.6). See:
Also, I completely agree that the 4 man meta has been to stagnant for too long where 2 classes (barbs and monks are obligatory zDPS. See here:
Do we really need to do this? Crusaders were buffed (overbuffed in fact) and monks were buffed too without all the shenanigans. We should just make solid suggestions.
Yes, I wasn’t suggesting that we don’t make suggestions. I was pointing out that we shouldn’t have to - the game devs should be on top of this with little to no input from us, the players, imho.
I guess I see it differently, since PS4 clears are different to PC clears. WOL monk has been well clear of impale for a long, long time (since it’s inclusion as a build to be honest). At least, on PS4.
Your s16 stats do not match what I saw on PS4 either - DH did better than WD and barb, but the other character classes cleared higher. I can’t give you stats and absolute proof, because Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, removes prior season LBs when a new season starts on consoles…hell, we can’t even see player paragon on the LBs (it’s hidden), as well as follower items…
My stats were PC where this data is accessible. Frankly, I think the developers have gotten some pretty good feedback already from the DH community. The question is: “What will Blizzard do?”
I may be under the unpopular opinion that simply getting into a group meta doesn’t really fix problems and continues to fuel what’s bad about it in the first place.
Sure, barbs have always been in the meta, probably the most important element in group play, but it doesn’t mean the class was happy with Zbarbing for hours on end. Think about it, what Hack n’ Slash ARPG have you ever bought and played, thinking “Boy oh boy, i can’t WAIT to level up my character and do absolutely no damage and cause zero chaos upon my enemies! Sounds exciting!” I bet no one.
I’m aware that blizzard has no plans on messing with group play which is unfortunate, but it’s a very serious problem when a specific meta comp props up, subbing one or two variants around the same concept, and is 15+ GR’s stronger than any other possible combinations, effectively making everything else obsolete.
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