I am concerned on Wudijo comment that nobody can finish this as he was able to play it already at Blizcon. It is that difficult. This is concerning to me. If this is being balanced around broken overpowered Ball lightning sorcs and HoTA barbs, then what hope do all the Tier B and C builds have to get very far in it?
This is a dangerous precedent. This end game activity should not be balanced around the very top meta builds that are overperforming. What will happen is all the top meta builds will take over even more so they can compete in this activity because other builds are hopeless. We already have some 10-20% of all the players in entire game being ball lightning sorcs right now. We dont want this to jump even higher because that is one of your few options to be successful in AoZ. I hope Blizzard rethinks how to handle this situation as they still have some time.
Solution: Fix hero balance / bugs. You cant have Ball Lightning left broken for an entire season just like rogues with 90 combo points and HoTA barbs destroying world bosses in 1 to 2 hits because you released a super busted ring for certain builds while WW barbs and other builds got nothing. Leaving these heroes untouched means you have to balance endgame stuff around broken builds and dont tell me Ball Sorc isnt broken. Everyone knows it is and build websites say it is too.
The other thing they need to do is help out obviously bad builds like incinerate sorc with new aspects or balance updates.
Thoughts forum peoples? Am I on right track or way off??
You’re on track IF this is the trend.
Otherwise I just think they’re testing something and adding content that’s been tuned vs the current “OP” meta/builds.
It could easily have been introduced tuned differently in a perfectly balanced D4(as if that’d ever be a thing).
We won’t know until Season 3 when the next patch hits and there’s balance and nerfs/buffs etc.
It really depends on how AoZ works. I know there are like 21 different levels. So assuming most everyone can beat level 1, get the glyph, and level it at a somewhat reasonable pace it’s not the end of the world broken. Certainly the OP builds will have an advantage like everywhere else as I suspect the amount of glyph xp will go up with level.
However, if you need an OP build just to get past level 1 then this is horribly designed.
What kind of really bothers me more than the new content is that for current content, the choices are between very easy and very easy. If you are the kind of gamer that likes more?
They literally also used to let you have fun doing more challenge if you want to in the older games. At this point, there are literally zero difficulty levels throughout the main game that feel different whatsoever.
Now with Diablo IV, that’s going to be behind the end of the battle pass after completely perfecting your build and basically the only thing left to rank will be the new, super imaginative damage multiplying glyph because you’re pretty much supposed to be perfect by the time you get there otherwise?
So first off, before getting a game I’d actually maybe like to play, it’s a 100-150 hour grind wall? This isn’t an MMO I will play my character for 10 years for, they’re gone in 3 months.
We’re moving into some pretty crappy precedents with this game overall. It feels like the psychologists and retention experts are in too much control…
Older Diablo games mostly just let you wander around doing whatever you wanted and stuff would drop. There were (some) targeted farms like Ubers but the game was about just playing and getting stuff. Now every unique in the game is intended to be farmed via tokens, timers and hamster wheel activities. Sure, you might get a random staff of the crone from a Blood Harvest, but if you’re interested in actually collecting a good one?..
The game design has a lot of timers, “no fun until you do your chores”, design elements kind of feeling a little bit like it’s designed with the idea of how they can put pressure on to stay playing instead of giving a desire to stay playing…
When I look at Zir right now, the message I get is that virtually any gameplay that might be interesting is designed to be achievable only if I’m interested in wasting my time for a long time prior to arrival. Is this game made for streamers, or gamers?
They’ve proven they aren’t capable of doing it themselves, especially without upsetting people. And they don’t want ptr’s for some reason. So Abattoir of Zir is their testing grounds so they have a better idea of what needs adjusting for next season.
Honestly I see it as an experiment to test the waters for this type of content. They’re making it extremely difficult, get a feel for how the community reacts, then adjust accordingly. However I feel they won’t make a lot of changes to it after it’s released, only to the various iterations we’ll get for future seasons.
Now that being said, personally speaking, I don’t mind having content that pushes the limits of builds. Yes there needs to be better balancing amongst builds, so hopefully in the future a good majority of builds can attempt this type of content. But I have no problem with content that isn’t beatable.
Now hopefully at least the first tier will be beatable by the majority of builds so people can get the new glyph, but beyond that I feel anything goes in terms of difficulty. Now they didn’t really mention gear rewards, so I’m betting that anyone who actually beats it will just get a title of some sort.
We’ll see though. I’ve learned not to speculate and make assumptions too much for future content of any game, let alone D4. Give it a try first, if you don’t like it leave feedback, all we can do at this point.
Pushing the limits is ok.
And as long as you and your build can do a NMD 101, you can level up the glyph and get higher.
Even bad builds could do a 110 in D3, when gems were leveled up.
But imagine someone in D3 without a single gem leveled up be able to jump right into Grift 125.
Sure it was easier to tell ppl to go and have fun than to fix bugs.
I really was looking forward to AoZ. And in no way it has to be an even field.
But cookie cutter has become a no brainer on top and that is too much.
All builds based on a skill like most are should be able to complete this content. IF I like incinerate as my skill or charged bolts or whatever then those skills need to be brought up to speed. How can they have absurdly broken builds and even they cant do it accordng to Wudijo? What is the point? Its asking an amazing question. Who is this content balanced and build for??? Why cant we get builds on par with each other? Are we so far behind we cant even balance 5 heroes? Did they just give up on balance? You realize how much this is going to push meta builds in the game now? This is a red alert moment for me having Wudijo saying completing this is impossible while still have obviously broken and buggy builds in the game. PPL should really be worried about this unless you want to see half the server BL sorcs (if we arent already at that point).
I dont disagree here. Your build should have to be good and polished to do all content. My point is that all skills should be able to be meta and capable of doing this. They have the control to fix all the skills that suck like incinerate. Its all numbers and they control them.
If they dont do this and make this the goal for balance, then you are just going to see 99% ball sorcs, Hota Barbs, ect on this. Is this acceptable? I dont think it is. WE have to do better.
Agreed but I don’t think they’ll do it, if they even can. Personally I think any build doing millions in damage is not really working as intended. I know none of my characters has ever even approached those numbers, yet if I compare mine it’s not that different from a meta build at least on paper.
The whole point is to see how far you can push. It is not meant to be beat. Its to test your build and your skills. It is no different than GRs from D3. Spoiler alert no one could beat 150s when they were first introduced either.
There is zero chance they will ever get the game balanced with the way they are going about it. With the current strategy of balancing once at the start of the season it’s just not going to happen. It would take years doing that way if nothing else changed season to season. But with new affixes, seasonal powers, unique items, etc. it’s never going to be balanced.
B and C tier are rated below S and A for a reason, and i don`t think the entire game should be playable with every skill.
Where`s the fun in that? No skill or practice, just anything kills everything. If button mashing is your thing i suppose…
I agree with the broken builds part, but theres a bit more too it.
In any game, bad loot has to exist. Bad skills and gear as well. Without it nothing would seem special…
If all the skills had generally the same performance, id see this game dying fast.
When new seasons etc. come out there is always new items that redefine the current meta. Its changed a lot over time.
There will come a time for everything as new gear is introduced, but without spotlighting things, they will go undervalued.
Imagine if the new unique items were all overpowered. What would be the point in trying to discover what is good if everything you grabbed was automatic s+ end game quality.
This is a form of balancing the game and keeping content relevant. Theres only so many characters you can have and the top tier players want to try them all!
He didn’t really explain himself well. It is designed to be a rogue-like style that scales infinitely. As long as the last Tier does not have rewards that the previous Tiers do not have, it does not really matter. If you ever played Grim Dawn, this is similar to the Shard system. You reach a point where doing higher Shards does not provide you any reward past a certain point except for bragging rights and to gauge how powerful a build really is. Builds are rated by what level of Shards they can clear, how fast they can clear, and what Superbosses they can down.
Diablo 4 is still very immature but this is how builds will be judged unlike the stupid “S-Tier” ranking system. Besides, Wudijo only played for a bit. You can see that the new Glyphs found in AoZ will add considerably to your survivability. You will need to push Armor up more than the current Soft Cap for max level enemies and shift some things around for survivability.
What is kind of lame is the only way to really do this effectively is getting a Shako. Defensive Aspects are fairly lackluster and being limited to the few slots you have is a problem, especially with all of the new Uniques being added. Most Unique Armor adds Offensive power, which is needed because of the massive health pools.
Blizzard is going to have to figure this out as Aspects seem to be a huge bottleneck when they compete with Unique items. It was one thing when you might just use 1 Unique item, but when players are using 3-5, it starts to really matter. I foresee either the stupid Aspect system changing, or allowing them to be doubly added to Unique items and just go the easiest route.
