Build viability, balance and unique items - a discussion

PC General Discussion
1

I keep seeing people say things like “plenty of builds are viable, they’re just not meta or best”.

This is false. So lets clear this up.

Every class has truly 2 or 3 “viable” builds and 1 “best” build. Lest we get hung up on the language, I’m going to define this.

A “viable” build means that with the appropriate gear, level and paragon you can complete certain content. For the sake of ease lets just say, with appropriate gear/paragon you can clear Tier 100 content since atm that is the true endgame.

An incinerate sorcerer is not VIABLE for this (truly no sorcerer really is but that’s besides the point. Or rather, let’s talk Druid. You can do tier 100 NM in werewolf or werebear. Both are VIABLE. However, werewolf may be “faster” which would therefore meet most peoples definition of “best” when it comes to d4 content.

So to summarize “viable” means that with the appropriate setup you can complete the content. Best just means that of the viable builds, one does it faster/safer/both than the others.

So ultimately, when people say - there are plenty of viable builds. The truth is, no, there aren’t. There are plenty of crap builds that you can level with. But there are only a handful of builds which can be used to do endgame content AT ALL. (Or in the case of sorcerer, basically no builds that can truly do endgame content).

Now with regards to unique items. I’m going to add a suggestion to help deal with crap unique items, aspects and the general suckiness of a pure RNG based game.

Simple solution to fix unique items.

One of the most annoying things is you get a unique and look at it and realize you got atrocious rolls. And the worst part is you cant enchant. But I think I have a good middle ground solution.

For example. I currently have 4 frostburn gloves. All four of them have crap rolls across the board because blizzard hates me for pointing out that on the whole they’re a crap company.

BUT… WHAT IF… I could take my 4 crappy frostburns to the occultist… and COMBINE them to make a SUPER FROSTBURN that actually had good rolls across each stat. Basically like a Diablo 4 Unique Item power ranger. Apart they’re meh (except for kimberly, she was hot af). But combine them and you have a super awesome unique. This allows uniques to remain… unique… yeah that’s sounds dumb. without changing the fact you can’t reroll an affix (though I personally think this is dumb af)

Similarly, I think this recommendation should also apply to aspects. It’s so annoying to farm items and get like 7 or 9 bad aspects in a row. I get it, the game is RNG but on a certain level you can incentivize playing without making it 100% RNG. If i play for 100 hours and get 20 crap aspects that makes me want to uninstall. But if i play for 100 hours and get 20 crap aspects but i know i can combine similar ones to basically guarantee upgrade the roll well then i’m less likely to quit.

Not sure how a dev didn’t think of this earlier but it’s a core problem with the game.

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2

“Just for the sake of ease” or do you really think that a “viable build” is that with which you can clear NM100?

3

-Your idea to combine uniques to come up with a better one: fine. I think most of the uniques are lacking anyway. Most of the time, they are dragging builds down so I wish they were at least buffed enough to be worth the sacrifice.
-I don’t consider nightmare tier 100 to be end game. Ideally, you do nightmares 3 levels above your character to get the extra 25% experience. So even at level 100 that means tier 49ish. All the tiers above that are for people who just really want to challenge themselves or want specific achievements. Obviously, this is just my feelin’s. A lot of builds are viable for a tier 49 nightmare dungeons that are not for tier 100. I agree with you there.

4

I won’t argue with this. I needed to define an endpoint for viable. If we go with your point of tier 49 then certainly more builds are viable though I would argue not too many more. And still only 1, maybe two builds could be tied for “best”.

5

The number one thing preventing builds from being viable is the vulnerability debuff. The builds that are viable are ones that can constantly have this up. Why is that? Because it’s a major multiplier in damage. Imaging a fireball sorc being able to do their full dmg all the time because they had 100% vulnerability uptime, that would easily make them do 2-4x the dmg, thus making them viable.

The worst part about it is you cannot overcome the vulnerability dmg increase by stacking a ton of crit and +dmg. You could have 1100% crit dmg and 1000% additive dmg. You’ll do far less dmg than having say 1000% crit dmg and 900% additive and 100% vuln dmg. Vulnerability is dumb and needs to go away because it makes too many builds terrible compared to builds that have vuln on targets a majority of the time.

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6

Yeah, it is true. Without vulnerability it is no way to compete with any other build that can use it. The same case is it with the crit chance though, which leads to conclusion that any endgame build has to be centered on the same specs. Another example is unstoppable, because there is no other way to survive CC effects.

7

I needed to define it somehow. If we take the other posters recommendation of using NM 49 then sure, a few more builds, maybe 1 or 2 per class become viable. And the best ones are still the best so nothing really changes. The core issue is simple. There are easily dozens of builds you can pick per class. Maybe a third of them are actually good enough to level with. And maybe 2 to 4 are actually builds that are “viable” near or at the end game. That is the problem. Why have all these abilities if most of them are useless?

8

Sorry that that earlier sentence you wrote, which I quoted, reminds me of someone replying to me on the Necro subforum that if a build can’t clear T100 + Uber Lilith with some effort then it’s not a viable build, which is kind of absurd since the devs haven’t really scaled high tier T70+ NM dungeons and Uber Lilith properly.

My personal categories are as follows:

  • Can clear at least NM50: a working build
  • at least NM70/80: good build
  • NM100: great build
  • Uber Lilith: great build or could be a niche build
  • NM100 + Uber Lilith: one of the best builds
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9

Then by definition sorc has 0 viable builds. Sure sorc can clear a t70 to 80 fast but t100? Do not think so. Just not enough defense available, Maybe with a shako. Even my t70+ just annoying getting caught and 1 shot by certain things because over half our defense is on such short durations 2 second barrier 3 second dr. All of which were great till nerfed in beta.
That is the real issue though. Resistances being broke AND misdesigned. First off the soft cap too hard and too fast. 2nd off physical resist should be one of the elemental resists. Is why ALL melee classes are dominating PVP right now really not because their builds are OP.
But the real problem is the nerfs themselves. Every single fix has been a nerf never a buff to what is bad. Class not the only thing this hurts. They done it with dungeons too. Took what few good dungeons we had and nerfed them till all are bad. Still have 2 or 3 better than other but even those are not great.

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10

yes this is 100% accurate. There are a ton of problems with this game masked by the fact that it’s fun to blowup enemies. The pvp is atrocious and should be removed imo till they figure some stuff out. And like you said, the way elemental resists and physical resists work is so different I would not even be remotely shocked if they were implemented by different teams.

11

Even if you got perfect rolls on your unique items they would still be vendor trash, excluding the 4 or 5 half decent ones across all classes. Of course this doesn’t include the Uber-Uniques. You may as well not even acknowledge their existence because you will never get one. You have higher odds of being struck by lightning 3 times on your way to cash in the winning Powerball ticket that you found stuck to your shoe after walking your dog across the whole country barefoot