Stop Calling for Nerfs to Fun: Let Strong Builds Exist

PC General Discussion
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I’ve been playing ARPGs since Diablo 1 in ’96, through D2, LoD, D3, D4, and now mods like Reign of the Warlock. One thing that hasn’t changed in all these years is how fast a small, loud group jumps straight to “NERF IT” the moment a build feels strong or fun for normal players.

Reign of the Warlock just launched and people are already calling for nerfs. Same thing with the D2R expansion. Same thing in D4 every season: Paladin, Crackling Energy Sorc, Pulverize Druid, Evade SB, Death Trap Rogue — anything that feels good to play gets targeted immediately.

And honestly… does any of this actually need nerfs?

For most players, strong builds aren’t a problem. They’re the reason we log in. They’re the power fantasy. They’re the payoff for time invested. They’re what make ARPGs fun. But the moment something is strong, the same vocal minority shows up saying it’s “bad for the game” or “unhealthy for balance.”

Let’s be real: These are usually people who play 8–12 hours a day, have perfect gear, and outscale everything. Of course the game feels easy to them. Of course they want nerfs. But they’re not speaking for the majority of players who just want a build that feels good without needing a spreadsheet and a second job.

Nerfs hit normal players the hardest. Streamers and no‑lifers pivot instantly. They make new guides, get more views, and move on. Meanwhile, everyone else loses the build they invested in and the fun they were having.

Instead of dragging strong builds down, why not bring other builds up? That’s how Grim Dawn, Last Epoch (mostly), and even Diablo 3 (post‑RoS) kept things fun. Buff the weak, keep the strong, expand the meta instead of shrinking it.

Strong builds aren’t the enemy. They’re the success stories. They’re what ARPGs are supposed to feel like.

If something is wildly broken, sure, fix the bug. But not every powerful build is a bug. Sometimes it’s just a good build. And instead of nerfing it into the ground, maybe the better answer is to make more builds that are just as fun and interesting.

Let players feel powerful. Let players enjoy the game. Let strong builds exist.

That’s all I’m saying.

19 Likes
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Their original goal was to bring builds up and not nerf nerf nerf but it turns out in reality that is a hard ask. ITs much easier to nerf an outlier than to buff and fix every other hero. What the class imbalance says to me is a different problem entirely. ITs a problem of multiplicative damage. Heroes and builds between heroes will never be balanced until they can get a handle on the numbers and that is too hard when numbers hit trillions or even more.

In the case of SB evade it had to be nerfed because it was laggin servers.

Also there are so many bugs in the game that every single build in the game is benefiting somewhere from them.

So to me the solution is get rid of multiplicative damage and balance will be much easier. This would require a complete redesign from the ground up though so its not gonna happen though the removal of all passives from the skill tree is a sort of move in that direction kinda since we get some back.

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Can’t have 1 thing universes above another or else why play the weaker one? It has no reason to exist. They should be ideally trying to bring everything in line. 1 shotting everything also dramatically shortens how much time you spend playing a season. A typical season is 3 months. You aren’t going to go around 1 shotting everything for 3 months you are not that much of a simpleton you will log off within days or weeks. Max pit level is the only thing being busted effects. Oh no! You can’t do pit 148 anymore! Only 122!!! or 108!!! The game is ruined!!!

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lol

Post on your main.

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strong builds do exist… You want obviously broken things which is different… This game is stupid easy to begin with without using obviously broken things

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I think biggest mistake they did was to act on the feedback from the loudest people and don’t do in season balancing. It’s actually fine with me that something is a bit stronger than intended. But we’ve seen stuff that goes to silly territory and they still won’t be touched. Paladin was so strong that even if they nerfed the Castle node to what it was on the PTR. They would’ve still been strongest class by quite a margin.

I’d personally prefer a after launch campfire to go over what worked and what didn’t. And tune some outliers to make the game.. you know more fun for everyone.

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i used to be an only buffer like you, but than I took a power creep to the knee

Sometimes a nerf is necessary.

The issue is not so much nerfing, but over nerfing.

No nerfing in diablo 3/diablo 4 is what leads us to such massive power creep ( on top of the power creep we already have )

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devs would have nothing to fill in their timesheets if they didn’t purposely add minus things here and there.

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I here you but there is money to be made so unfortunately our opinions don’t matter. We just have to find ways to enjoy the game when one steps out of the real world and step in to the game world after when it gets nerfed/balanced to decompress and to just have a little fun unfortunately.

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The underlying issue is being OP being someone’s only idea of what a “fun” build is. This builds not fun if it’s not busted.

That’s Blizzard’s fault for their minimal lazy good for nothing effort to balance the game. By all means let buffs rain from the sky on dozens of builds. There does need to be a degree of reasonable so that we aren’t done playing in a couple days because everything is too strong and OP and busted but quit being lazy to the point a build is only fun if it’s OP because other options are garbage level weak.

Quit being lazy Blizzard.

3 Likes
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Speak for yourself. Pushing a button to clear the screen instantly does not feel good and is not fun. Builds that don’t insta-gib the screen are excluded from group content, wich is unfun. The very neglected pvp in this game is made worse by people pretty much exclusively playing the flavor of the season build, again unfun. Think about it, this game has a dodge button, bosses with mechanics and skill synergy deep enough for “rotations”. You are supposed to be thinking while you play.

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There’s no need to eliminate multiplicative damage; without it, the game would be very boring. But smaller numbers are necessary. I don’t understand this obsession with trillions of damage. We start the game with x30% damage in aspects, and today we have x100%.

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I’ve decided, after reading many pieces of commentary on the logic of this phenomenon, that the people who call for nerfs the most are actually the worst, not the best, players. For a recent example, Castle, where people who are not mathematically inclined decided that a big number equates a big effect.

An example:

2 x 2 x 2 x 10.

4 x 4 x 4 x 4.

If you asked someone who looked at Castle specifically and thought that the number was the problem they’d tell you that the first one was unbalanced but the second one was fine (which is just the average of the first spread evenly). If you do the math however the first is equivalent to 80. 4^4 = 256. To make the two equivalent that would require that 10 at the end to be 32. Of course if you do that the average changes and moves up for the second equation but my point is that it’s 3.2x less effective.

Strong builds cannot exist in places where people who have very little mathematical ability persist. For them, and they are not quick to admit this, “balance” means “numbers I can handle” not “numbers that make sense”. This is a major issue that has not progressed well over time in development and gameplay in general and in theorycrafting it ruins the game. Players think that getting rid of one big multiplier will save the day failing to realize that the sneaky killer is the thing that has twelve extra multipliers, even if they are “low”, which does not appear on their radar.

So the game never meets their criteria for balance, ever, because in the literal sense they’re too inept to actually assess that very thing. It’s not something I besmirch people of, because by definition about half of us have to be less than average at math on a forced curve, but the speed by which people assume that the numbers will hurt their outcomes because someone who wasn’t good at math whipped up a spreadsheet that wasn’t true or a kneejerk reaction to a number that is higher than others, is astounding.

So effectively the weakest players of the game are usually the ones who actually think the game is unfair. The best players don’t really have a reason to do that. Are there sometimes genuine concerns for things being overpowered? Yes. Are they anywhere near as common people think they are? No. This doubles in iARPGs with any form of randomness since people have the double burden of not naturally being good at probabilities either.

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If you never nerf you wind up with Diablo 3 and set bonuses with percentages in the tens of thousands. You also wind up with a game that changes way more often as the developers keep chasing new highs. And then eventually, everything is too easy no matter what you do so they have to do a stat squish and that is asking for trouble.

Please for the love of the High Heavens, nerf.

Every time this comes up, the arguments for not nerfing are always the loudest, but – and I’m being a butt saying this – are fundamentally wrong. You do not balance a game by leaving the 1 broken thing and changing the 100 previously-correct things. That’s asking for more problems. You address the 1 and leave the 100. Not only will the game be more stable long-term – cuz you aren’t doing these wide, sweeping changes – but it takes less time. Don’t you want to save developer time?

As much as anyone would like to think it’s about “nerfing fun”, it’s actually about the long-term health of the game. All you get out of anything overpowered is temporary gratification. That gratification will go away for many reasons, one of which being you’re upsetting the power curve that was carefully designed to elicit fun and is now being completely bypassed. Eventually you’re going to complain the game is too easy because the overpowered thing has busted past the power curve. Then what?

Let the game be stable. Nerf over-powered outliers. (And buff under-powered outliers.)

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This game doesn’t really come down to player skill.

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Hmm, so what should the devs do? listen to the math people or to the non-math people?

I have nothing much to add to this. Just is just the conclusion I see so far. What would be the best approach to this problem for the game?

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Nerf the Warlock to be in line with the other classes. It should have released that way but for one reason or another, this is the third class to be released to a Diablo game (I haven’t played DI and so ignore it) that is heads and tails stronger than the others.

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Think you mean paladin unless you can play warlock on PTR?

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I think he must mean on Diablo 2.

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Warlock in D2.

But Spiritborn and Paladin were both pretty dang overpowered in Diablo 4. It’s definitely a trend now.