What is the difference between a 6 piece set bonus with an outrageous benefit to damage (10000%) versus the mechanics of Diablo 4
And by that I mean, you got 100% damage from each part of your gear, you stack crit, vulnerability, overpower, pick 4 runes that always activate for crazy big 1+ billion crits that clear the screen
The result is the same, only S tier builds survive, and everyone needs a build guide, for my money, D3 more straight forward. And to double down, I think the builds were more fluid and fun. I don’t need to use all 7 spells to set up an attack (looking at you, bone spear necro)
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crazy how i finished the season just fine on a B tier build, without relying on guides.
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Why anyone needs a build guide after the Paragon nerf is beyond me, damage/defense nodes then fill in the rest with generic stat nodes for literally every build lol
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I mean, its fine to use guides. currently im creating a death trap rogue cause it kinda looks fun lol.
My minionnecro will stay my main of course, but since im clueless when it comes to rogues, im taking an easy route there. Its just important to understand that you -dont have to- follow a guide
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A build planner helps speed up that process.
The best builds in Diablo 3 this season aren’t even 6 piece sets.
I got to Tier 149 a few months ago using the Wave of Light Monk build.
That build is literally just stacking all the Wave of Light legendary items with all the Fire Damage % legendary and the Rune that turns Wave of Light into Fire damage… and it’s the best build of the season with ZERO set items (and one of the strongest builds in the games history)
On top of that the HotA Barb and the Meteor Wizard builds were also top 5 iirc despite not using a single set item.
So that’s three builds with zero set items (Monk No Set, Wizard No Set, and Barb No Set) in the top 5 builds compared to only two set builds (AoV Crusader and Raiment Monk)
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I don’t need all 6 pieces to get the usage out of it in D4 since each aspect that would contribute to something like that (like boosting a specific skill or whatever) is functional on its own.
I don’t need to wait until I have 2 or 4 or 6 pieces to equip something that on its own may not be better stat-wise than what I already have equipped (for instance, in D3 if the two piece bonus was good enough to use but the item I had would remove a good piece with a good legendary power, I’m not going to even use it.)
That’s cool if you like that. In theory the aspect system allows far more experimentation and customization.
Of course the reality isn’t exactly that in practice. 
And that’s my point. Tons of posts on these forums talking about how season 8 is hard, bosses are too hard, etc. The vast majority of the player base is hitting a wall.
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I wasnt wrong at all. D3 was a simple minded, cartoony arpg for people who hate arpgs. Sets are for thise players too lazy to learn how the game works. Leave that garbage in D3.
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You’re proving my point. Legacy of dream builds are as straightforward as you get. Not easier than a starter set. But anyone could figure it out
Same exact problem, blizzard controlling which builds are playable in endgame with reasonable effort. A bit more veiled in d4 to fool the first timers because there are no exact sets literally made for 5 builds per class, but just as railroading if one takes a closer look.
But to be fair, they have to know what builds will be played, if they are to balance the game accordingly. Unfortunately, any builds that is not S tier results in an unintended experience. And much forum fun.
Guy 1 takes his favorite build from a couple of league ago, after leaving the game for a bit, only to find out the hard way it has been reduced to c tier from s or a tier when he played it last. And then he meets boss A and has an “exciting” encounter. He bangs his head against the boss, then against the reduced drop rates, comes to the forum and rages. Guy 2 has been playing the current meta and has grow bored of one-shotting that very boss on day 2 of the season, comes to the forum, sees guy 1’s post, gets triggered, insults him condescendingly and request further player nerfs or bosses’ buffs. Guy 3 reads the fun, comes out of the woodwork and brags about his achievements in hardcore and give unsolicited (but often good) advice.
Rinse and repeat.
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It’s not that they’re controlling the builds. I’m sure they want balance.
The problem arises that no matter how intelligent the people who decide the build and skills are, there are always going to be people vastly smarter who figure out abuses. If you’ve ever played Fighting games, you understand that there will always be one character is who is vastly superior to everyone else. And I don’t think this problem is solvable.
In a perfect world, they’d try to bring up the more underperforming skills. But anytime you make changes, new exploits will appear that will allow people to become vastly stronger than they were meant to be.
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I disagree. I think they just never did the work to track and understand their own ecosystem of skills/aspects/uniques/paragon.
I think they just designed the base characters with skills and no consideration for how that would interact with other systems (known or unknown at the time).
Then they worked on aspects and just thought of ways to modify damage and/or skills, with no consideration for how they would interact with each other, much less other systems.
Wash/rinse/repeat for uniques and paragon.
What they need to do is map out each skill and its interactions with other skills/systems. They need to at least know the best build they can design for each skill that is expected to have a build… even if there’s still some unknowable better build that a streamer will frankenstein together.
If they don’t have an interaction map and understand the ecosystem, all they’re doing is blindly pulling levers and turning dials… thinking of new ways for aspects to change skills with no thought or knowledge for how it will impact the ecosystem. If anything lands in the realm of intended balance, it’s purely by accident and unlikely that anyone would even notice in the chaos of fully unmanaged interactions.
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I am not sure they want balance, its season 8 and so far, they have done the easier and cheaper thing - they have just balanced the game around the s tier builds. This however comes with the significant downside that one has to play 1 or 2 builds for their class first in the season to gather enough op gear to get what they actually want to play rolling. Remember how everyone in d2(r) even now starts the season with a sorc because of no cd teleport and caster dmg being separate from equipment to a significant degree? Similar issue.
“The problem arises that no matter how intelligent the people who decide the build and skills are, there are always going to be people vastly smarter who figure out abuses.”
This is indeed true and:
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A famous real world problem that the US is known for creating for nations poorer than them. Luckily, brain drain flows toward the employer willing to offer the most and Blizzard is nothing but filthy rich.
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There is PTR. Blizzard could easily hire the macrobiobois and makunas and robs and have them try and break the game. So issues could be found and fixed in time for the actual release. But behold, those people are actually happy and willing to do this work for free, But Blizzard is still unwilling to spend dev time to act on their reports.
So…no. Class and build parity is not some unachievable utopia, it is a manageable problem with a financial solution. Pay the devs and give them time. Blizzard chooses not to. But until there is class and build parity it is impossible to balance the difficulty and the drop rates.
Which lead us to where I started.
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The only thing crazy about it is that you did it while posting on the forums hundreds of times a week. 
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I think it’s a mixture of both.
There are always going to be builds that outperform other well-constructed builds simply because it’s a complex enough system that not everything can be equal. And, there will always be bugs and unintended interactions that aren’t caught ahead of time, for both the same reason (complexity) and that bugs happen.
But, I also think there’s plenty of evidence (how far into the game’s life we have such huge issues, primarily) to believe the team working on this is either not skilled enough to stabilize multiple build concepts at roughly the same power level, or is not given the directive or time to do so.
Perhaps both.
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Indeed. Just goes to show how absolutely easy it is.
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Balance is easy though when you’re not the person responsible for designing it. I can’t think of a single ARPG that has ever had even anything closely resembling balance.
Perhaps that would help some, but then you get into a situation where you’re going to have builds which favor the macrobiobois, makunas, and robs. I’m certain they’ve probably asked for input from well know streamers. Another issue arises that even hardcore Diablo streamers don’t know everything.
Why do you care what other people do with their own builds, whether they follow a guide or not?
Does it hurt your personal game play or something?
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