D4 is built on stackable conditional multipliers. And this is the reason why bossing is always gonna be a “joke”.
Stand still for x seconds to get x% multiplier, stack x and stack y to get x% multiplier, spend x resources for guaranteed overpower, and so on and so on. Just line this up for 1-2 shotting bosses.
The power-gain for doing theese things are too astronomical compared to your “normal” dps that bosses either have to be tuned with this in mind or they will always be 1 or 2 shotted.
The only way to solve this properly is to get rid of all the conditional multipliers or lessen them substantially. And rework all of theese things.
Honestly they should cap how many multipliers you can apply.
That would be the best thing for build diversity.
Right now there are aspects you want to use…but because you can just keep stacking multipliers the same ones will generally be in most aspect spots.
A cap would keep the numbers from getting out of hand…and you would see more variety in builds.
I have played many builds to 100, but at 100 no matter how fun my build was to play, I tweak for power which means replacing aspects for ones with multipliers.
Blizzard simply (well, apparently not simple for Blizzard) need to reign in those multipliers, and numbers in general. So that even when you do stack them, you dont suddenly deal oneshot dmg.
After that, start redesigning combat to incentivizing multiple different attacks in the same builds, that will also help with stacking everything in a single attack.
Stuff like AoE skills not being good for single target, and vice versa. As well as monster resistances, incentivizing having multiple dmg types in a build.
Not to mention that getting rid of conditional multipliers also just lead to a more boring game. We kinda need more conditional effects, not less.
Just with more sensible scaling.
Also, how about starting to add more cons to some of these multipliers, so you cant realistically stack them together.
Like “deal 10% more dmg, but cost 20% resource”, or “consumes 20% of your max HP” or whatever, stuff where, if you keep stacking them, you might outright be unable to cast skills, or kill yourself.
Also kinda like the buff system in PoE and other games, where a % of your mana is locked if you use a buff. Limits how much you can stack them (and yes, PoEs system definitely got its problems too).
You should get rid of any multiplier that is above 10%. Besides there are plenty of good aspects/uniques that doesnt have inherent multipliers at all. Just at the top of my head, Pen Shot 2 additional arrows splitting off is a good one as an example.
More things that can open up new ways to scale for example, For every 500 armor you get 1% attack speed. Or you get 1% crit chance for every 5% of lightning resistance over your cap.
More skill altering, build opener, playstyle altering aspects/uniques and less multiplicative bonuses that doesnt offer anything interesting besides you do 40% more damage.
Bossing also cannot be a thing because it’s the only way to get Uniques. You’d have to play D4 24/7 for something like 20 years in order to have a reasonable shot at dropping 1 Uber Unique if you don’t do Duriel, and you just do the other bosses to target farm regular Uniques.
True bossing would require content as difficult or harder than Uber Lilith, in that only some builds are capable of tackling the content. That is a nonstarter in a game that hard-requires bossing. PoE gets away with it due to myriad endgame systems and for nothing to be “soulbound,” which means you farm 1-2 specific things and use those to trade for what you don’t farm, such as boss Uniques.
You can’t just spam say, Helltides, for Forgotten Souls, then trade a ton of those for a Shako to a guy who spams Duriel all day. You yourself have to kill Duriel, which means he can’t be so hard that only optimized boss killing builds can do him. That’s a fundamental reason in addition to what you highlighted about how builds scale.
That can prevent the oneshots, but it does not prevent the imbalance that caused it. Quite the opposite, it exacerbates the imbalance, since now you literally needs to stack all those multipliers to kill something.
Only addressing the scaling issues will ever solve anything in this regard.
Tbh, also why Blizzard shouldnt add a World tier 5 and such. Nor add AoZ. It doesnt fix anything, it likely just makes it worse.
Same goes for everything in this game imo.
Fix the fundamental issues first, then start to add new stuff on top later. You cant fix something by adding “more” to it.
This is what i love about PoE, you farm what you enjoy and you buy things from others who do what they enjoy. I like to do high end mapping so i farm that and eventually i can buy bossing items from people who does that and they buy boss entrances from me as an example.
Precisely. While D4 has added a lot to its basically nonexistent endgame since S0, it still suffers from the fundamental issue of it having no diversity due to all the systems being intertwined.
You’re forced to spam Helltides for crafting materials and Living Steel.
You’re forced to use Living Steel to farm half of Duriel.
You’re forced to do Tree of Whispers stuff for Varshan.
You’re forced to do Varshan to farm the other half of Duriel.
You’re forced to do Duriel for BIS gear.
The “third wheel” is Zir, since Legions suck and World Bosses are only kind of worth it due to satisfying Whispers objectives and dropping Scattered Prisms. You organically get Beast in Ice mats by spamming NMD/NMV, which are the meat and potatoes of the endgame. I suppose you can just buy Duriel mats by farming raw gold, but that’s the only real “way out” of the endgame loop.
The only real fix for this is to make Duriel rewards drop elsewhere, and for that other task to be horizontal to the current loop we have. On top of that, focus one around bossing, and the other around different builds that have mutual exclusivity.
The other fix is to fundamentally change the game, which includes making everything tradable.
Sorry, I should’ve clarified that I would assume they would resolve the issues of Barbs being absurd in the game. The rest of the classes seem to be on more of an equal footing. Obviously some are stronger than others but not in the billions of damage variance.
Like Beastfall Boots for Rogue. It’s a unique made this season. It’s ONLY purpose is to stack with other stuff for 1 tapping bosses. What are they thinking… im just smh.
When you have to do like 7 steps of preparation to line up everything before the boss spawn then 1 shot. It’s awful gameplay, and honestly bad design.