So the patch notes for next week are out and none of the S tier builds will be nerfed, not even the bugs will be fixed like Enlightenment (which would be a mere 2-4x nerf for LS on a more than 100x lead over A tier).
On the other hand things like pure WW will get a 2-2.5x buff which will hardly move it out of C tier.
If Blizzard isn’t willing or able to fix the balance, I suggest they introduce labels to builds/skills, so people actually know what to expect. I think its important to know when you are playing ‘super-easy’ or ‘ultra-grindy’ mode.
If people complain about missing endgame and challenges you could tell them “yeah man, you selected super-easy mode” and if people complain about how hard season 8 is, you can tell them to choose an A tier build or better.
I know we have build tier lists for this, but the casual that isn’t really engaged with the community might not know what difficulty he/she is about to choose.
Technically I’m open to suggestions of how one could implement these types of labels.
Asking Blizzard to balance is like asking a kid to clean their room. They don’t do it. Or they pick up 1 toy or peice of garbage and go back to playing minecraft.
If you’d actually read my post, you’d notice that I’m not asking for nerfs or buffs, but for a system that tells people if they are playing easy or hard mode.
dude, you’re literally listing the classes you think are overpowered, aka easy mode, if you think that’s different than saying they need a nerf, that’s on you. Because no dev is going to do what you’re claiming to want.
I mean obviously all those tier lists are just community made classifications and there is no clear definition of what would be S, S+, S++ etc. but if a build destroys the hardest content in the game (besides Pit pushing) with basically 0 effort then I’d call this an outlier that needs either a fix or the label ‘super-easy, suited for casuals with 5-10h playtime a week’. Otherwise I think many people are irritated when switching to build that does 10x less damage (or worse) or play with friends.
They spoke to this in the campfires leading up to s8. It was about a lack of progression partly.
Their vision is that wanderers can get to a state of being godly, through progression.
There is an issue here. Imo it’s the bringing up of lower outliers that they’re moving too slowly in. It appears to me there’s been quite a bit of incremental in focused areas often over several seasons.
I’ve argued there needs to be more resourcing put to this effort, to keep it brief.
I think it has a similar effect to bring S teir down (not mid season) as well - that’s just tackling the issue of bringing builds into a more reasonable pit range from the other end. This approach is complicated somewhat by the likeliness of backlash from some quarters which they may prefer to avoid. It’s further complicated by the history of adjustments having unexpected side effects and so we end up with builds that largely disappear from relevance.
They say they want to bring builds into a bit better of a pit range. That’s not clearly defined as yet, but it’s at least in the right direction.
Sorry to take this part out of sequence.
As I recall your other topic was about your friends experiences (apologies of I’ve got that mixed up wit another).
The community tier lists likely serve as this guide. S tier is pretty well recognised as the fastest progression, with increasing level of progression/challenge as you go down the list.
I’ve read some indications that B tier starts to experience potentially casual players meeting with t4 frustration inside the first couple of weeks. It could perhaps be said it’s a two month season - here we get into where do other players need to be? And is that part of the issue. Especially when we’re talking about a smallish number of hours being spent.
Imo the target for better pit range would have D tier builds presenting that friction point described above for B.
I really don’t have an issue with that, I’d even argue that this should be the basis for balancing builds (and maybe that is what they are trying). If you’ve invested a lot of time in your character, got all your GA ancestrals and uniques, 2-3 mythics even, tempered and masterworked close to optimally and reached paragon 250+, then every solid build should crush torment 4 and reach at least Pit 90 or maybe even 100 with some tricks.
But here is my point, meta builds are cutting this progression curve so dramatically short, that its not healthy for the game. Some people might like this, but currently I see mostly 2 types of comments. The one side says “its too easy, feels like a mobile game, done with the season after 2 days” and the other side says “its too hard, I can’t even kill any boss on torment 4”.
True, but I know a lot of D4 players that have never looked at any of those lists or websites like Maxroll etc. Next year we’ll supposedly get leader-boards and I really hope this will make it more transparent for players, indicating if they are actually playing in ‘easy’, ‘normal’ or ‘hard’ mode ^^.
From what I’ve seen and experienced so far, upper B-tier and lower A-tier builds are probably right where devs wanted them to be on the progression curve. We have builds like Blizzard in B-tier, which can literally one-shot Uber Belial on T4 and Fireball, which is still one of the best speed farming builds.
Spiritborn is generally considered the worst class of the season, often called “trash” and I see people complaining very emotionally about it. But why is that? Because the class is actually bad or because those players compare themselves to the broken S-tier meta?
Even before the accursed touch - flesh reaper bug was discovered, Quill Volley did Pit 100 and most B-tier SB builds are mechanically fun and can complete the full season journey.
People keep arguing “there is no competition in D4” and “just play what you like”, but in my experience this is not how most players work. They see the meta and they feel bad, if they don’t play it, unless they know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.
As long as the progression requirement is there then I think they’ve progressed the issue with s8. The issue before was you didn’t even need to do this progression with builds performing well beyond S tier.
We’ll see the outcomes to a degree through s8.
If it does turn out S tier is making progression irrelevant still then it may point us back to:
I mean you can try it for yourself. A Blood Spear Necro for example can face-tank T4 Varshan and kill him in a few seconds with non-GA gear, where half of it isn’t even tempered or masterworked ^^. The only thing you need is 2 aspects, 3 uniques (worst quality is ok), 2 boss powers and maybe paragon 120.
Oh they definitely did something to the battle pass. I dunno if balance is what you’d call it. More like took a completed puzzle and threw the pieces all over the place and called it abstract art.
Based on this and some similar comments and pit levels said to be being achieved, there may be a case for s9 adjustments to pull those undeveloped over performing builds back a touch and also wind back the pit scaling a touch to get builds peaking at the 100 area without having to be quite as fully pimped as the corresponding topic indicated.
Say mythics with optimal 1 ga, ancestral with optimal 1-2ga, at least 2 crit mw and over 260 paragon. (On the face of what’s been written)
They’ve still got issues bringing up the underperformers too slowly even with that.
