As we know, once you reach a certain level and acquire a certain quality of equipment, every class and pretty much every spec can beat every encounter in the game on the highest difficulty without many issues.
Yes, there are Ubers, there is DClone - but in the end you are doing these encounter quite rarely - and they aren´t that hard either.
So endgame in D2 is basically farming Chaos Sanctuary, World Stone Keep and Nihlathak for leveling to 99 or certain specific high level areas for equipment/runes.
While you might think that this “lack” of endgame hurts the game - I think it´s the opposite. Having a quite easy endgame makes so much more specs viable. In modern ARPGS, even in the ones which are generally considered as balances, you will always have only a few certain specs able to clear the hardest content available.
Thats not the case in D2. While there are obviously a few quite efficent and more popular builds, there are so many more out there - and they are all viable!
While you might be a little slower with those, in the end it doesnt matter, you can still farm all the content you want and still have a chance on getting every amazing piece of gear the game offers.
The way the endgame is today - it is actually the reason why we have such an huge variety of creative and exotic builds.
tldr - adding a harder endgame, would lead to have many builds excluded from endgame, which would lead to crying about balancing, which would in the end lead to washed up balancing patches and builds which all feel and play the same
Exactly, that’s the reason why there are much more viable builds in diablo 2 than in diablo 3. Would you add tornement levels and grifts in diablo 2 like there are in diablo 3, then you would have to play one of the few the meta builds if you want to be able to increase your grift or tornement, this reduces the builds variability by a lot in endgame. I have never been a huge fan of this system.
To be honest, I havent played much D3 in the last years, but I remember it in that only a very few specs where viable for really high greater rifts.
I´m quite sure in the first season of D3 RoS there was a time where even certain classes would barely be invited to groups who would push for a ladder spot in greater rifts (looking at wizards there)
I was forced to play a certain marodeur spec with my demon hunter and was more or less forced to respec a few weeks into the ladder because the meta changed - otherwise I would just not be competitve anymore and wouldn´t get any invites.
In D2 it´s very rare that someone doesnt want to group up with you for farming Baal because you dont play a certain metaspec.
Viable isn’t the same as 4p meta pushing. Yes d3 has had problems with ratruns and wizdps/ zdpsmonks, but it’s leveled out relatively. Solo Gr farming each class has about 6-12 viable builds, with higher gr pushes each has about 2-5 top tier builds.
Mostly it comes down to the scaling system of d3, which I hate, but I dunno, I still play a couple times a month when I get bored.
Well its definitely something many people would consider endgame!
Wasn´t aware about that though - although, are those really different specs, using different sets etc, or just slight variations of an imba spec you are talking about?
Just downloaded it a few days ago, and while I have so much to criticize, I still love how fluent all the different chars play - thats something in which D3 is still #1 on the ARPG market imo.
They’re all different specs, they play pretty different, though obviously not as different as, say, a hammerdin vs a wolfdruid.
Wastes barb vs Savage, are WW and Frenzy, respectively, and they play very different.
Every class is like that, firebird for wiz is quite different than LoD frozen orb, etc.
But all of those specs are within a few GRs for power level. D3 is all around much more balanced than D2…but that’s part of why I like D2 so much. Sometimes the “flaws” end up being a terrific addition to a game.
Just because they are tied to items, doesn’t make the fact of more viable builds go away. D3 also has Kanai’s cube, which was basically the easy way to make legendaries a viable input into builds as well. I would argue D2 has just as many “Build enabler” items as Diablo 3, in the form of OSkill uniques and runewords. Diablo 3 is a helluva lot more balanced than D2. D2 is more fun however, not due to it’s “imperfections” as Geezer said, but because of it’s general gameplay mechanics (leveling skills, non scaling difficulties, items not tied to just “higher dps numbers” <at least for spellcasters…physical dmg character still needs high weapon dmg output and multipliers to cut down damage spongey monsters since 1.10> etc).
Can you do viable whirlwind build in d3 without Wrath of the Wastes? No. In d2 i can do with only rare items and uniques, also with runewords and also with IK set. So yes. D3 only has build enabler items what are based around 1 skill.
Also, any class is viable without needing specific gear to find any items and kill any monster, where in D2, builds and equipment vastly change where and how you can farm. Sure, the higher you want to rift, begins to limit which items and builds are efficiently viable, but it is still a greater number than D2. Also, D3s build diversity has a lot more complimentation to multiplayer play than current D2s setup, as D3 doesn’t create build paths using synergies.
Well d2 dosent have things like lon or lod so i can compare it with what it has. You see now things like this are rly subjective. I still prefer d2 itemization where a whole set is not around 1 skill… Mostly.
I completely agree. Although I think the more appropriate term would be “progression endgame” where you reach the end of the game, and then there’s a subset of progression that you then embark on. A relatively newer concept in games, And like you said, I think it destroys variety and creativity in games. It forces any kind of exploration in class building into a mold.
For many players who won’t do the serious grind, it’s not an issue. For players who play allot but want more to do, there’s plenty of things to do. just not that progression mold, as D2 isn’t that kind of game.
I dont deny this. But there are brutal difference between them. There are 30-40-50 gr difference between items. Ok we cant rly compare this to d2 but for me is much bigger issue that d2 itemisation
Ironically, what you call a whirlwind build in D3 that relies on the waste set, the majority of the damage actually comes from rend (either auto-applied by whirlwind or hardcasts). A less proficient whirlwind build can be made that does use whirlwind as the damage dealer but it is much weaker than ww rend.
