While this season has been fun so far, it gets old playing the one class that slaps everything. This season just switched from Barb to Sorc. Druid and rogue have builds that are up there too. But that’s not enough. 5 classes with a ton of different possible builds and only 3 or4 are viable for all of the endgame content. What happend to bringing other classes up? Bash was insane, needed to come down a bit. But nerfing key passives, rendered EVERY other barb build useless. Overpower Druid builds like pulverize, dead. And please don’t nerf Sorc to fix the issue. Bring other classes and builds up. The “nerf/Buff” to sorc, which was supposed to address server lag, didn’t fix the lag. But maybe there wouldn’t be a billion lightning spears flying around if 97% of players weren’t all playing the same build.
The builds are as diverse as you want to make them, whether you pursue it or not is your choice. Limiting yourself to so-called meta builds and only seeing those builds as worthwhile is your perception.
Playing an off-meta build when you could be clearing entire screens of mobs with LS sorc is pointless. It’s up to the devs to make sure that there’s several powerful builds available for each class.
Again a perception people choose to pin themselves to.
It’s not perception. LS is objectively better than any other sorc build.
They’re narrowing the gap, but the gap is still massive. Like maybe the best vs. worst build in S4 was 100x better. Now it’s 50x better. You would be insane to play a low ranked build.
I think with multiplicative damage it’s just too hard for them to balance. Capping the paragon board is just lame and kills build diversity - pretty much the strat for all classes now is to get to the cap of anything that provides multiplicative damage and/or damage reduction- and also find a way to proc that effect. But for most classes they only have a few ways they’re going to proc each effect, so every build is looking awfully similar.
The uncapped nodes let us try to go all in on something. Eg sorc Burning Instinct, you could have instead try to scale that to the moon and not focus on making enemies vulnerable with the frigid fate board or whatever. But now there really is no option.
My first toon to lvl 100 this season was a HOTA barb. Far from meta. I took that as far as it would take me. I had to switch to a “meta” build to fully enjoy the endgame. People do enjoy certain play styles over others.
The difficulty is also artificial, harder content has increased damage and increased HP. It’s literally the exact same content. This means you can play off meta a couple of tiers lower and still complete the same things and have as much fun without the stress of perfect min maxing to push another tier of hordes or 10 more tiers of the pit.
there are powerful builds for each class. im enjoying bone spirit on my necro now. can take down the t8 horde bosses in like 1 shot each
They’re not balancing, they’re doing rotations while doing some bits of balance… There’s a difference
Frankly don’t care anymore 
What I can agree on here is that Blizzard has moved the “is the build good enough” from Pit Tier 101 to Infernal Hordes 7.
From my experience on Druid. Is Stormslide better than Companion Druid for IH? Yes; however, Companion Druid is still viable as it can do IH7 at what I’d consider an “okay speed.”
So the key thing to build towards is just getting more builds to the “okay level.” There are quite a few there but I just don’t have this expectation of all builds to clear all content with the same efficiency. Equaling out rewards on different content is also a key thing that the team needs to focus on so multiple different routes can achieve near equal payoff
This is true oh wise one, But it does not mean that those diverse builds can kill squat when it comes to bosses.
Diversity
I have a MALE necromancer called ALICE Cooper does that count? 
you are going crazy, this is the season with more S-level and A-level buildings. Rogue has rapid fire and heartseekers, below Andariel. Necromancer has several buildings.
You win. This made my day.
I’m soloing pit 100+, tormented bosses, and horde 7 on TB/Momentum/Prep rogue. It’s a good season for build variety.
That cracked lightning spear build is still miles ahead of anything else in terms of damage. There’s something about these “convert x damage to %percent damage” effects leading to very bad math with huge numbers.
Multiplicative bonuses have always, always been a problem because as you note, it means everyone tries to dump everything into those pools and trigger the conditions as frequently as possible.
Too hard to balance.
Basically what I did for my Firewall Sorc. Pushed it hard until it hits a wall in PvE (PvP it’s still king)
Then I created three more meta characters:
- LS/FO Sorc
- Andy Rogue
- Landslide Storm Druid
Didn’t do a rogue yet. Just finished my Stormslide druid after getting all the Mythic uniques with my Sorc. I went back to my Barb and did WW but it falls off even with the Mythics and great gear. I don’t enjoy necro or Rogue as much as other classes. Might try out Bash barb with the Mythics.
As far as I’m concerned:
D- tier shows incapability of having a long-term strategy that will suffice a good/decent gameplay without having to babysit the game 24/7
A+ tier just shows incapability of balancing across the board
Every build should be between B and C tier, but even then won’t work… That stupid reward-first mentality and approach has turned the entire game into a one big/long/exhausting repetitive chore