Follow guide. Get the loot for it. Finish content. It’s hardcore if you think it’s unforgiving to people messing up their build or having difficulty getting the rarer drops for their build. Yes, that is hardcore.
But once you have those … it’s fine.
I will say it does a vastly better job than D3 at not making the content just braindead at that point. You still have to not stand in the crap, etc…
I really do wish they let me tinker more in it as I do think it is overall the better game between it and D3 for that reason.
Yeah, just looking at the The Americas Solo
Wizard for every Set as well as Non-Set … there are multiple at GR 150.
Witch Doctor though isn’t for Jade Harvester, but is for all other Sets as well as Non-Set.
Necromancer isn’t for Pestilence, but is for all other Sets as well as Non-Set.
Monk isn’t for Thousand Storms, but is for all other Sets as well as Non-Set.
Demon Hunter is for all sets, but only 147 for Non-Set.
Crusader isn’t for Roland’s and Seeker Sets, but is for all other Sets as well as Non-Set.
Barbarian is for all sets as well as Non-Set.
So I was wrong on all … but it’s much closer to that than only one per class.
Uh it is hardcore bro. Even following a guide for a boss killer you will find that you need like 20-30 div to actually kill when the guide says that it is some cheap 2-3 div build. The costs just aren’t accurate in the build guides. When you don’t have a META jump the gun quick at league start build grinding out 20-30 divs is pretty damn brutal.
A variation of this “ignorance is bliss” point was addressed quite earlier.
Quite simply: the entire playerbase will come to learn through Reddit, Maxroll character planners, YouTube videos and forum posts on how to min/max in certain situations and see how these builds differ in spec and performance.
I just did for the most part there. These builds have a lot of overlap in terms of their gear, even if not perfect. For example, you may want to switch out a trickshot weapon for another weapon that has another aspect, but in the scheme of things is quite a small change.
Sure. Depending on how much/little you are leveraging affixes that give +skill to the skill(s) you are swapping out as well as conditional affixes (ex: Dmg vs CC’d, Dmg vs Slowed, etc.) which may be affected by the presence/absence of skills being swapped.
Now, how is this different from swapping that gear between two different characters that makes that “fine”, but the respec is “not fine” ?
Within that capability, those characters are still bound by respecs that cost gold. Those characters are still bound to their different builds (but can respec with the gold cost in mind) as opposed to having a single character that is malleable to be changed to any number of specs and therefore aren’t capped in being able to spec into min/maxing different types of content.
Then there are the obvious inconveniences of having to exit to the main menu and loading a different character, which means losing the instance you’re playing in, location on the map and the sheer time it takes to go through the loading screens in that process, as well as the time it takes to walk to and from your personal stash.
And then the inconvenience of levelling a totally new character to level 90+ and the character slot that they use up in doing so.
The awareness will come from demonstrating the power disparity of the two specs, which if free respecs were in the picture, would just be a matter of weighing up whether it’s worth spending the extra 5-10 second doing the respec, or saving 5-10 minutes per hour.
This free respecing thing will also turn PvP into a rock-paper-scissors situation where players spec their build to adjust to individual players in the arena. It will not be fun.
Yep, it would be a lot of extra time wasted to have the extra character(s). If it became necessary to do that, I don’t think that’d be good for the game. We’re already willing to level up again per season, but I wouldn’t push it beyond that. Everyone has what they are/aren’t willing to do and I think you cross across more people’s thresholds with that.
As for the two specs, well 3 specs and 3 characters … though more wasted time obviously.
I think you are discounting the work required for a different spec. It does require the gear to support it.
If there’s not much overlap, that’s far from insubstantial.
If there’s much overlap, then why are we complaining that someone slightly tweaked their build?
We have plenty of games with active PvP scenes that have free respecs and don’t see this rock-paper scissors taking place in their Battlegrounds, Arenas, World vs World, etc.
We know that a subset of players already copy build guides on the internet for D3. In D4, the same thing will happen and will be even more common when players understamd that deviations/experimentation come with high respec costs.
Meta is a complete non-issue tbh. That will always exist regardless of anything.
What matters is what is in the meta (specialized, generalized etc. this is where respec costs and meta interacts) and how far ahead the meta is of average decent builds (as in, how good is the balancing, and how absurd is the number scaling).
The goal imo should be a scaling that keeps meta in check (and of course balancing too, it doesn’t happen automatically).
Some of the items in the game seem quite worrying for the scaling though.
That is mostly from D3, rather than past games in general, I would say.
Hopefully Nightmare Dungeons are nothing like D3s GRifts.
Now 1106 posts from the person who has claimed to have zero faith in Blizzard. Still continues to be odd to me.
We’ll see how it goes when we get our hands on it.
To achieve what you’re talking about with respect to meta vs decent … that is simply down to the quality of the Skill Tree, Paragon Boards, and Itemization of the game.
Specialized vs generalized, where you believe respec and meta meets … that is simply down to the players. As we’ve gone over countless times, many don’t want to bother with the additional hassles they’d need to in order to leverage respecs, so you’ll still see generalized builds. Whether or not they can be meta will boil down to how good/bad the randomization is for the end-game content.
How many viewers do you have? I have 2k concurrent and ~10k unique per month on a site that I created myself. I’d say a good portion will pay the game. Is your influence greater than mine?
Limitation in gameplay and player choice will always cause players to leave. Even if those who are stuck in the past say it won’t. We have live proof of it and its undeniable. WOW Shadowlands.
it just is what it is. respec restriction is just downright dumb.
Shadowlands was only bad for weak hearted hardcore players. There was tons of shi to do for casuals so they loved it. Hardcores that wanted to play 24/7 loved it. It was only the crap raid loggers that hated it. I say f the raid loggers let them burn and die. It is only a minority of the pop. Dragonlands sucks because there is nothing to do for the majority that liked things to do.
It was overhyped and the joy crashed down to everyone after the constant resistance to “pulling the ripcord” and just allowing players to enjoy the content.
it could of been a great game, but the control and restrictions was too much for anyone to enjoy the content fully.
D3 GRs and WoW M+ are anything even close to NM Dungeons in design from them afaik. And the only 2 games they’ve done anything on for the past 10 years. I’d bet they view NM dungeons as an ultimate challenge in the end. I’d be quite disappointed if you could do a NM dungeon level 100 after a week of a season.
