It’s funny because people are wielding complaints about leveling, power, and progression parroted from people who thrive by making concern troll videos as resources.
But nobody really seems to be mentioning a few undocumented changes that substantially buff the game and directly offset the nerfing. The nerfing which was done, by the way, to offset the borrowed power gains coming from malignant gems.
I have leveled a character from 70-100 and beaten uber lilith and nightmare 100 post-nerf.
The leveling speed was offset by the undocumented buffs.
Yes, nightmare 100 was harder and slower (literally 2x slower and required some tweaks to paragon + aspect choices)
Yes, uber lilith was harder and slower (around 1.75x slower, and I died to things I didn’t have to worry about before).
But leveling is not slower, the progression both to level 100 and to nm100 was much faster, and all the changes accomplished was making you unable to slop through bits of the content.
Some of the popular theorycrafters/streamers/“content” creators have been making wild claims that are easier to just take at face value rather than experience it for yourself. From false gearing strategies (that if you believe, yes ThIs Is ThE WoRsT PaTcH) to lamenting “playstyles” being gutted that were really just abusing bugs/exploits.
It’s only remarkable on my end because it is this strange paradox that clogging the forums with white noise is somehow the universal “voice of the community” that “is being ignored.” Nah.
This is because a lot of these monolithic social-centric media channels profit on both sides. They get views/clicks/whatever when they profess the doom and gloom and then they get it when they release the “one weird trick that is so OP” or whatever.
The problem with this feedback for 2 whole days before the season is in place is that they don’t have the time to walk back their opinions for double dipping on Interactions on their platform of choice (what do you guys think? let me know in the comments!) so they run negative until they can then figure out to monetize it on the other side post-season.
It’s a bit tedious, when they are flat out pandering to an audience who doesn’t bother to confirm or test (or play, for that matter) for themselves. Just look at pre-nerf all of the nonsense that made its way to the internet, and how much of it was easily disproven with video proof? From what classes “are viable” (they all are) to what builds AbSoLuTeLy DoN’T wOrK (but then people make them work easily) to what items are useless, what aspects to use, how to progress… blee blah.
The patch is a non-entity, but people are using personality replacement fandom to think for them. People “denouncing the game” who didn’t even beat NM100 or kill uber lilith (without exploits) and who can’t now are not worthy of your attention, but someone who doesn’t like the game finds comfort in having a peer that agrees with them.
I just think a lot of people are being fooled by professional video game players who have alterior motives for having a position, by definition, instead of just playing the game themselves and making decisions on it.
Again, until one of these people talk about the undocumented buffs, it’s very obvious they’re rage farming.
