It seems they chose the safe way when it comes to build diversity…
Everything is the same, with different visuals.
Sorc just uses shields, every build I believe?
Rogue - imbuements,
Barb - shouts,
Necro - both corpse skills (tentacles and explosion, can’t remember exact name)
Well Druid might be different, still haven’t played that much to know.
Talking about viable / strong / meta builds.
Why, almost a year after release - we still do not have viable pet / mines / hydra / etc. builds?
Is it that hard to code new legendary items? Legit question, I’m clueless, maybe it is… or are they just keeping it safe introducing so few items every season?
Give us hundreds new items! Lesser evil if some of them end up overpowered, than people get bored out of their minds with the same builds for a year!
3 Likes
What difference would it make? You would still go look up guides and use the same 3 builds your youtuber told you to use.
More won’t make it better, better balancing will.
5 Likes
There will always be over-performing builds. Always. This isnt new to arpgs.
1 Like
Ye in doing like 1/3 more damage, if unlucky twice as much damage, but not 50 times the damage.
But keep defending… 
3 Likes
Jokes on you, Irres.
I’m the youtuber.
1 Like
Im not sure you know what defending means. All arpgs have this issue. There are always over-performing builds. Always. This isnt new nor unique to D4.
2 Likes
Speak for yourself I don´t blindly follow guides. Balance won´t help if you don´t have things to balacne. Game really need much more skill/build altering items.
Or you can cook your own build by combining multiple basic attacks and maxing them out.
They are quite OP
They have things to balance, and they fail at it. What difference will more things make? Maybe let them prove they can do step 1 first.
I have no issue with more variety…but if the balancing stays like it is you will just have MORE non-viable builds.
1 Like
“Builds” are just core skills plus the best defensive/damage augment skills to support said core skill. Only exceptions that I know of are ball lightning sorc and stormclaw druid, but the general build basically remains the same.
That’s the way arpgs roll though, you only need to hyper focus on one attack and have the rest as support and there’s very little deviation from this in the whole genre. Last Epoch I just spam flame wraiths on my necro. Grim Dawn I just spam sky shards on my druid. D2 I just spam lightning on my sorc. The general premise is the same between every game.
These games are not MMOs, nor would I want them to have the complexity of them. You can try to deviate from the normal builds, but you probably won’t have a good time because you’re not going to have the same damage as the hyper focused build and end games are typically designed around those.
Not really imo, its not suprise the metas feel that way, as they are putting the numbers to work in the simplist excecution and that is fine, and maybe no other combinations come close, idk because i dont care about it.
Since Meta “viable” is fast and power, and then ranked right, so whats the issue more S tier builds, i mean ranking the builds is a player thing the game doesnt care. Like was mentioned. some are busted and way out in front. but there will never be true balance.
Man even in GuildWars 2 with Stacks of builds and Elite sub specs, yes there are the same few builds and specs that are considered meta. and strongest for most content. and groups and all anyone ever talks about ZZZZ meta zzz joking but i do personally find it boring, i am a pve build explorer looking for fun and class fantasy as well as personal rewards for not dying and killing stuff based on what i built. So that is how i play my way. But metas will always edge out in front and share a goal per class or spec to make it function.
They tried to make it fair for gauntlet, but in reality you use some form of meta if you want to actually compete or prepare to die trying i guess, which is me since idc lol
I love challenge but meta bores me so i find my happy place and stay there, as for me its just a game to enjoy and get immersed in. Sometimes pushing Endgame stuff.
Meta - most effective tactic available.
This applies to all games in all genres. You aren’t forced to play the meta in order to pass the content except possibly in a few extreme circumstances. The meta also varies widely depending on the type of content being progressed. Best examples in this game would be the builds required for AoZ last season and the gauntlet this season. Basically polar opposites of one another. Builds specific to killing Lilith would also apply here.
That said you can absolutely crush this game particular with classes and builds that don’t strictly follow the meta, but if you stayed away from every single meta skill and tried to throw together a mishmash of skills and gear without any actual synergy you will likely have a difficult time. Particular skills are required to enable passive damage multipliers because they are the only skill available that applies the required conditions for said multipliers. In the end every meta and non meta build ends up with a few overlapping specific skills because of how the game was designed making a large majority of this skills lack any real punch rendering them mostly non-viable except for a niche use for a particular piece of content.
The game needs more sources to access specific buffs. That can be accomplished through adding more skills or adjusting the ones we currently have.
Why are you so upset I just proved you wrong? It happens in all arpgs. There is no reason to resort to childish name-calling. It just shows you know you are wrong. Do better.
1 Like
Game is just horribly balanced.
They could do so much to fix this though.
- Monster resistances to encourage use of multiple different dmg types.
- Real performance difference between single target and AoE skills, to encourage having both types of attacks in a build
- Resource management systems that actually matters, encouraging multiple different attacks (generators, low cost, cooldown attacks etc.)
Etc.
And of course; get rid of skill specific item affixes, so you can boost those multiple different attacks with the same affixes, if you want to.
The skill specific choices belong in the skill trees (with some massively expanded skill trees).
3 Likes
The meta, no matter which game you play, is always going to boil down to on average 2-4 builds that are classified as “viable”. Even if there are plenty of other builds that are just as fun (if not more fun) but are ignored because they’re not the “best”
They do “code” new legendary items every season, both aspects and uniques, but see above comment.
1 Like
I don´t mind if not every build is S tier. Yeah they suck at balancing hard.
But I would much rather have 200 builds from S-C than 20 S.
1 Like
I agree there will always be meta.
But in a game like this where the Environment difficulty need to address all players it becomes impossible to balance…if the disparity is orders of magnitude between meta and viable but non-meta builds.
The problem, I have said this before: is uncapped # of multipliers, and classes that have more spots for them than any other. Then add in all the extra affixes also.
And all those OTHER cool aspects they thought up, become less valuable when you realize the opportunity cost of losing those multipliers.
They can tweak numbers to try and mitigate this…but the reality is it is much easier to manage on a global level if they cap the # of multipliers that can be active at once, from both gear and paragon. This brings value back to the OTHER stuff they created which has little other than “looks cool” currently. There are some exceptions…as CC still has intrinsic value…but you get what I mean.
Edit: I will add, the change to the damage formula made it a lot better than at launch as there are more viable builds now. So they are addressing it. But there is still a very obvious issue that needs more work.
.