Let me start off by saying that I went with a Frenzy build this season, really enjoying it. I sincerely expected the build to drop off before T4 and was pleasantly surprised to see that Frenzy is fully capable of having a comfortable T4 experience.
When it comes to bosses however it is immediately evident that the min maxing required to be able to take on that content would be next to impossible. I have good gear, I have really good aspect rolls. I am blasting T4 content everywhere else.
There is still room for improvement but I do not see it closing the gap.
I understand that the intention is for boss fights to feel impactful but for who?
I’d say Frenzy is in a really good spot balance wise, it plays great.
I teamed up with some Sorc players and just 1 can eradicate 4 player bosses in T4.
If we are stuck with these flavor of the season builds that erase T4 content I just think that bosses would be better off balanced around being a good experience for the Off META builds. I don’t want to get carried for bossing, outside of bossing Frenzy had incredible journey through the difficulty tiers.
It just currently feels like T4 bosses are balanced for the POORLY built META builds. The ones that are still going to destroy T4 content no matter but are not yet ready to push the Pits. I say if META are going to cake walk T4 content regardless, balance the bosses around the rest of us and leave META to Pit Pushing.
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I’ve said that since launch. You can face roll regular mobs, but get destroyed by anything resembling a boss.
It’s the same problem with Torment progression, you can face roll one torment level and get obliterated on the next. I’d rather have D3’s system with smaller steps between them. Maybe not 16, but 7-10.
My very first post discussing D4 was asking for Campaign Replay/ NG+
I missed that progression from the very first days of this game.
2 years later and the new loot system has me missing it more than ever.
We’re 3 days into a brand new season and I have multiple 2GA pieces of gear. These pieces of gear would likely not get replaced if I played for the entire 3 months. Not only do I miss having a smaller more balanced progression between difficulty tiers, I miss chasing after LOOT. (Cycles of Item Power)
3 days into a brand new season and my loot journey is essentially already over.
Boss fights is the place where the big damage numbers obviously ruin the game
If build A does 150x better than build B (for reference, but it can be and is sometimes worse) and they don’t have a problem outside of boss fights, fine, whatever
But then in the boss fights what build A will do in ONE SECOND will require for 2.5 minutes for build B to catch on
Nerfs, nerfs, nerfs, not enough, weren’t enough, outlier i.e. “Meta” builds have to be nerfed even further
But the “Blizzard is killing fun” rebellion always snaps when they opt-in to fix a thing or two around that issue 
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That’s really the problem with B-tier builds. Many here in the forum will tell you that they are perfectly viable. They are when it comes to reaching T4 and being somehow comfortable in the open world but they show their limits in activities where you need good single target damage: bosses or good AoE damage: Infernal Hordes, Undercity with the Legendary of Mythic Tributes.
I don’t believe you can complete the season with such builds. It doesn’t mean you have to go for meta but B-tier is not good enough anymore.
I levelled with Upheaval / Hota Barb and just unlocked T1. Will update the build to Bash or Lunging Strikes when I have the required gear but I know I will probably have to switch to another class to complete all seasonal objectives.
I sit here wondering, will they nerf these META builds?
Like I know the answer, we all know the answer.
They are going to let Sorc and Spiritborn 1 shot the season away.
Any other broken builds that get found will be left to 1 shot the season away.
I just want them to balance the game properly.
This is why I chose Barbarian, the class everyone said was gutted, the weakest.
To have a semblance of a video game, to have progression, to have challenge.
The progression has practically ended and the balance is on a different planet.
What bothers me is that they took our mid season updates away under the guise of acting quickly early in the season to act on balance changes, saying it was also giving themselves more time to polish the next season.
But they aren’t really going to nerf any of these things. They really aren’t going to balance any of these things.
They simply cut back on budget and we get the same experience we were always going to get.
I’d like to believe that they’re doing the attempts but not “snapping hard” on the nerfs… I mean I know that Barb got hit hard but I’d expect that what comprises a “Tier S” each patch and each season to gradually go down
i.e. last season LS Sorc doing 110+, this season Hydra doing ~[100-105], that’s what I meant, gradually slow the outliers down until they’re no higher than 85-90 and at that point I’d expect things to get better tbh
But again, people “snap out” too much when they see nerfs, will see how it goes, not sure tbh
It’s just taking way to long to get this game balanced, way to long.
For now the least that they could do is balance T4 around T4.
Don’t balance T4 bosses around a cranked out META build being partially put together. People playing META are erasing and expecting to erase content anyway that’s why they choose META builds to begin with. The rest of us are trying to have a decently balanced game. This is just a weird choice of balance.
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We’ll see what max Pit tier S9 meta will achieve. I have doubts that it will be less than in S8 which was I believe slightly above P120. Dev are still talking about meta builds during the Campfires and balancing the game around them. They just want that from one season to the next there are new meta builds for the players. For me that’s the main reason of the nerf to overpower.
We’ll see how the game evolves but I don’t see a buff to basic or core skills being enough to balance the game.
The devs will never properly balance classes & builds. It’s their D3 flavour of the season approach and that design philosophy will never change.