Because the monsters don’t mean anything in D3 due to the design against respeccing being free. Ultimately it just comes down to straight up DPS. And the build that pumps that out is the universally good one, which as I said, shouldn’t exist.
They might as well, when you’re experimenting, you’re likely playing sub-optimally. Many players will skip over that and go straight to the highest DPS build cause that is the universal meta.
Huh, no. I didnt claim that specialized builds become useless with respec costs. A 100/0 build might still be useful vs. a 50/50 build in that case.
Point is, with free respeccing, a 50/50 will never be useful vs. a 100/0 build.
No, they really are not.
Yeah, good examples. This showcases different builds for GR pushing and bounty/rift/GR speeds.
Got any data to support such a claim?
Tbh I think you are massively underestimating how popular it is for the average player to copy builds from guides, streamers etc.
Yep.
Nonetheless, the above clearly represents two different builds.
And actually is a good example of why, imo, a partial respec and a full respec should cost the same in endgame. Otherwise something like TalRasha Meteor would become even stronger, due to having “cheap respecs” between activities, arbitrarily based on the design of the skills, or in D4 on the position of skill nodes in the skill tree or paragon. That meta-design should not determine the value of a build imo. The builds themselves should do that.
I didnt mean it got attention because it was good or interesting, just that it got attention due to how stupidly broken it was. Youtube tried to spam me with “Meteor speed farm” videos at the time at least.
Hopefully yeah.
Getting a free respec once in a while would be reasonable. Like, there is the current gold cost to pay for respecs whenever, but you also get a free respec with each patch, as well as a free respec each month or something.
So someone who just want to change builds very infrequently, or after a nerf etc. would encounter no gold cost at all.
Yeah, definitely. Free respecs after a patch should be one of the most fundamental parts of a respec cost system imo.
People should not need to incur the cost (which should be high in normal sitations) due to Blizzard changing things.
Yep.
Gold cost is a terrible cost, since gold is basically always a terrible currency in this kind of game (or really just all games ever).
A respec token with low cap on how many you can hold, to prevent them to be saved up, would work much better (though Last Epochs method would work best imo).
Indeed.
This kind of flawed argument could be used for absolutely anything you could add to the game.
“Just allow people to choose how much dmg the legendary affixes do. 20% more fireball dmg, or 200000000000%? Your choice! It wont affect anyone!”.
Resistance and immunity is not the same thing.
And yes, a fire sorc fighting a fire resistant boss would be fine. Since other bosses would be resistant to other dmg types of other builds. With limited respecs, that should balance out just fine.
As well as incentivize people to use multiple dmg types in their builds, which imo would be a positive thing.
The game should have a way to upgrade gear to max lvl imo.
So any items you found while lvling could be BiS even in endgame. Of course, the resource cost should be significant enough that you need to be well inton endgame to do upgrade those items, so upgrading gear is not better than finding endgame gear.
If anything, looking at Maxroll and what not, it does show that people respec for everything. At least someone spends a bunch of time making different builds for everything.
The ‘current metabuilds’ are very much designed around respeccing.
I think people need to remember that in D3 choice is almost non existent. Yes LOD exist but for the most part a build is just which set your playing. Even if someone is switching things around in the build to make it better or faster at a certain piece of content on average they are still playing the same build, the same set.
In D4 that is not the case. Even playing the beta there is a clear difference between a boss killing build and trash killing build. The gear and skills would look vastly different for each. Any comments made about how builds would or wouldn’t work with regards to respec in D4 needs to keep this in mind.
Not necessarily. Often it is simply switching a few items.
Irrespective, D3 with its free respecs demonstrates that players are not repeccing all the time as claimed.
Moreover, the idea to level up alts is incompatoble with the current character slot limit. I realize that you personally want more character slots, but in my opinion, limitations on respecs is horse hockey until Blizzard significantly increases character slots (and even then it still remain a bad idea).
Very often people also switch at least some passives, and sometimes a skill too, that allows them to move faster etc.
I cant really think of any characters I have played over the years in D3, where that did not happen.
Tbh, D3 very much supports that claim. And so does D:I. In the D3 forum we have a habitual D:I player talking about how he respecs from activity to activity.
I still see this argument failing though. When I leave town, I have a single spec. So whatever strengths and weaknesses that spec has, I will have to work with those as I fight monsters. So they can still design “non-flat” monsters to interact in meaningful ways with the various strengths and weaknesses possible for the different classes and their possible specs.
And I don’t walk into a dungeon and it’s just one type of monster. There are all types of monsters in each of the dungeons. So each time I can be dealing with various match-ups of my spec’s strengths/weaknesses and the random varieties of monsters I encounter. Now, if there was ever only one type, that would be a dungeon issue, not a respec issue.
I don’t think D3 showcased an issue with respecs. I think it showcased an issue with power creep getting wildly out of control. If I’m able to run even moderate level GRs, I’m well above the minimum power needed to trivialize any non-GR content. There was actually a recent video about this comparing endgame difficulty tiers and monster scaling of D4 with the same in D3 and the numbers in D3 are just nuts.
I think they did not have a grasp on the numbers in their game as they made their decisions.
So says you, but as myself and many others have pointed out, there are plenty of people running sub-optimal builds in D3 and other games. Many people don’t want to bother with farming for multiple specs and dealing with respec-ing. So you do see the other builds.
And what is your definition of “useful” ? It seems “useful” to those people using it.
Yep, it showcases for those that want to bother with swapping how you can squeeze a bit more out of it.
But many people don’t bother with it because they are then bothering with the gear for the changes as well. They are perfectly happy using the same build for all content. The GR Push build is more than adequate for farming and thus you see plenty of it despite it being “less optimal” than the tweaked versions that change a few of the less essential skills.
No, I honestly don’t. I’m not sure if the data on who runs what outside of Greater Rifts is available anywhere outside of maybe Blizzard internals.
But if you’re aware of a place with that data exposed, I’d be happy to go look at it.
Some people don’t feel like respec-ing all the time between activities. Some people don’t feel like bothering with getting and managing the gear for those respecs and thus they too are not respec-ing all the time (and can’t respec much if at all since no gear to support it). Some people are just more comfortable with a single build. For these and other reasons, you will see these “sub-optimal” builds still played even with the availability of respecs.
This is why you see more than just the “optimal” being played in games like D3, Final Fantasy, Guild Wars 2, Warframe, etc…
I do not disagree. I think it is a more challenging problem for game developers to solve and we have not really seen someone bother with it or be successful selling their idea to business.
I do wish someone would as I think it could also solve other things like the issue of “dead zones” in many games as well.
I do not see that happening in Diablo 4 at this point though … maybe another game in the future.
The closest Diablo 4 has gotten to it is I can get a good roll on the Legendary and extract it to later apply to some max level gear.
I’m tired of going in circles, so I’ll say if people don’t respec that much, as you say. Then the respec costs won’t really matter until it’s proven that they’re truly overbearing in practice anyways.
You also don’t seem like someone dumb enough to wipe the board on every little change when experimenting. So I really doubt it’s going to be an issue for you. You’ll probably dabble in the depths of each branch until you have an understanding of them before you actually do the expensive full wipe anyways. Correct me if I’m wrong.
…and then you’ll probably switch to the meta build – like you would in D3 
So you’re going to not go in circles and instead
“fruitful” … you used to actually talk to the points 
Did you just not have an answer to points I made about how we have random monsters providing variety in dungeons so they can be non-flat to the strengths weaknesses of whatever build someone is running?
Or that D3’s issue isn’t respecs but lack of content and them losing grip on the insane power creep they allowed?
Someone running with bad builds hardly makes them into not bad builds.
Viable, competitive builds, comparable to other high end builds in the game.
Define your version of “a bit more” (or “adequate” for that matter). The efficiency differences between these builds tend to be quite massive. Often measured in 100%s of faster or more powerful builds.
Especially for a build like TalRasha Meteor which is fairly slow moving in its push version.
Other games have certainly done the upgrading system in the past. As far as I recall all the RPG-type games of Assassins Creed (Origin, Odyssey and whatever the latest one is called) allows you to keep increasing the lvl of the items you have found previously.
D2 also had upgrading items from one tier to another (normal, exceptional, elite) which is somewhat the same concept.
You can always just go back to town and switch to a more favorable spec to minimize your disadvantages. They’ll still consider that and code to that lowest common denominator.
I said that you don’t seem like you’re dumb enough to wipe the board. Therefore the cost won’t likely be an issue. Please don’t take a compliment as an insult.
I’m actually not assuming how you’ll spec. I have data.
You’re running a cookie cutter Trag-ouls and a cookie cutter Savages
Define “bad builds”. These are builds that are running high level GRs and then the people running them don’t feel like bothering with respec-ing for bounty/key farming.
So builds that are able to do high level GRs and aren’t that much “less optimal” when doing bounty/key farming would fit this description, correct?
If not, why?
The TalRasha is not that much slower in its push variant. The main piece for speeding it up is the gear swap to use In-Geom to reduce the cooldown on blink … quite common across classes for speeding up when doing content your build easily decimates .
Ah, I was thinking along the lines of needing drops from enemies from different areas to craft gear, upgrade gear, and maintain gear … keep continuous demand for killing those enemies and the items they drop regardless of your level.
So every time I run into a pack of enemies, I’m going to teleport out and respec to what would be optimal?
And wouldn’t this porting out once you’ve seen the enemies in a dungeon simply be solved by resetting the dungeon if I respec?
Yep, I cleared out my Necromancer’s other gear from stash because I’m done using it except for getting int gear. So I stuck with the set for the strongest build for it.
I’m playing the Barbarian with a build that isn’t top-tier. It’s my build for when I’m brain-dead tired.
I’m currently playing the Wizard who you can see I’m just playing around with a mix of Delsere’s and Tal Rasha with the Crown of Primus as I see what drops I can get for it.
I also haven’t bothered to play as much in this league so don’t have a bunch of Ancient gear to free me up to play non-set specs.
So cherry pick two characters and ignore the itemization in D3.
There’s also how much exactly for a person to experiment with this many years later in D3? It’s nowhere close to the Skill Trees and especially not the Paragon Boards in D4.
Yeah, they would. If your push build is 5% less efficint than a speed build at speed activities, then sure, the difference is irrelevant.
But the example with Tal Rasha, and all kinds of other builds, are way less efficient than their speed counterparts.
Can you please answer the other pieces or are we just ignoring those?
As far as what %, it’s apparently not enough for plenty of players to not care to just stay in it and use it for activities outside of GR Pushing because they don’t want to deal with respec-ing or the item management that is required to do it … or whatever other reason(s) they have.
If a build takes 100% more time to finish bounties, or a Rift, it is not competitive.
Faster and larger AoE. Passives that increases movement speed etc. also all add up for speed builds. Sometimes resource generation also matters for speed vs. push variants, if the build relies on enemies to hit for their resource generation.
It might not be what you would do, but it would be what the devs would have to scale the highest difficulty under the assumption of. And that design assumption would lead to undermining having “non-flat” monster design leading to D3 problems.
I’m all for locked down builds in dungeons, but that’s simply not enforcable on the overworld.
So if a person can do it in 1 minute … someone who can do it in 3 minutes or 5 minutes is considered “not competitive” ? Correct?
And aside from those competing for the leaderboard, why should players care if they are content with just playing their one build and managing only the gear for it?
And simply resetting the dungeon if the player respecs … thus ruining the proposed action loop of [see monster type] → [portal] → [respec] → [return with build optimized for that monster type] …
Yes?
I’m all for this. But it’s not enforceable in the public area for events and world bosses. And regardless of respec costs I think it should exist.
It would basically have to be treated as a greater rift for all restrictions. Not only can you not respec, your party members can’t either until the dungeon is closed out. I guess that would mean your party members can’t join you mid-dungeon either.
Events don’t last long. If you portal out, you risk missing it.
For world boss, yeah, there isn’t anything stopping you.
But, there will be people that are build A that have always been that build and people that respec to build A … just as there will be people that are build B per respec and others that were always it. They will all show up.
btw, I love that we are looking at each other’s D3 profiles. Your wizard currently is running some sort of hybrid between GR push and Farming 
… despite the free respecs available
It’s especially amusing to me because you did change the gear (swapped in an in-geom), but you kept the gr push pieces like Black Hole and Magic Weapon instead of swapping them out for Explosive Blast and Diamond skin per the maxroll.gg build that you linked.
So, to re-emphasize
I like this.