Hi. Lately i feel very disapointed about d3 after having played season 10 with my WD for a quite time.
my wd is 560 paragon levels, and beaten GR 71 as of now. i was really enjoying the game, feeling of progression and experimenting stuff.. but it stopped.
my problem at this point is.. not about lack of endgame content or atmosphere(.now of course those are issues, but they are already spoken a lot and i see no reason to discuss endgame or atmosphere of d3.) it is.. the lack of diversity, illusion of diversity in this game.
grasp of the dead... sacrifice... zombie bears.. all those skills... primary skills... lots of passive skills... there are tons of useless skills that drives me angry when i try to make builds for them, because simply, they DONT WORK!
and even worse, there are lots of cool looking items ---which are acctually not cool enough--- make one believe that you can do something if you use them... WRONG! apparently thats just an illusion. when you really put them on, and try to slay some demons, you see you just suck! you deal no damage or die instantly or both!
this game is very unbalanced and this really disturbs me. more then half a content for wd is just in the game to create an illusion of choice... i suspect same thing goes on with other heroes too. after all these years of developement AND even moving on to design another hero(necro) one expects core game to be in a good position allready... but im not seeing that at all!
i think devs should inspect closer and test every single item, tweak numbers here and there, and if necessary, even add some new items to make some combinations possible to work as they should. i ve only seen such change for spirit barrage, only 1 skill in whole wd skillset. its not useless anymore thankfully but.. saying again, its only 1 skill among all those useless pile of skills/items.
and theres also another issue, some usefull skills have wierd problems to be solved... for example soul harvest skill.. its very problematic when you enter boss fight, especcialy againts boss who are far, far away from white mobs... like the way to cydea. how am i supposed to use and stack this skill in cydea fight? frustrating...
to cut it short, i think there is a big unthouched sad pile of useless stuff in d3 still which are still not adressed/fixed.
whats your thoughts on this ?
btw, im sorry if my english is too bad and if makes it difficult to understand.
Same thing happens to me. I mostly play DH which actually has the biggest diversity in useful builds. Still there are some things like elemental arrow, chakram, cold grandes, LoN spike traps that simply don't work because bad in-game mechanics. It is very easy to balance this things to the 40,000% impale damage just by fixing the way they interact with legendary gems and other legendary items.
Cold skills are terrible since mobs eventually become inmune to freeze. Rimeheart/frostburn combo which could make a lot of interesting cold builds interesting is fully useless instead.
Can't imagine how bad that feels on a WD with only one build for grs.
I love the DH but every season I pretty much end up with the same build because it's the only thing that works. I have my fingers crossed that there is a little balancing act put together with the Necro add on.
Well, I get what you're saying. But you'll have to ask yourself, why are you playing that one build? because it's stronger, so you play it, to progress faster, to gain more paragon levels, but for what? do you want to push leaderboards?
if not, why not just try to find fun builds ("play it your way") and see how far you can push them. sure, maybe you can't push 80+ with most of those builds, but you can challenge yourself, beat your best GR with that build.
I for myself am almost always playing meta builds, because i want to reach certain goals in every season. next season, i just play another class. by the time I come back to the class, a lot has changed (at least in the recent past). new items, buffs and whatnot.
so, if you're not enjoying the WD anymore, and you don't want to try out those lame skills and items, because you can't even farm t11+ anymore, why not switching to another class? and if that's not working for you, you might even think about switching to another game, sad as this sounds. main reason to play games should be to have fun (or earn money with it by streaming). if you're not having fun anymore, just scrap it
Don't push ladders and there are many builds that can do a 70 grift. Unfortunately this game is all about grift pushing and para points so... eventually your only going to have 1-2 builds that are the "best". That is the issue since you have a never ending scaling of difficulty most builds will fall short. If you had a cap on difficulties then more builds would be viable. I've always suggested make ladders based on a main ability then you would at least see people trying to push different builds, but nobody seemed to care for it.
As for rose tinted glasses approach... If this game was like D2 and you only had hell mode, I guarantee all builds would be viable.
Take it or leave this game will not change drastically anymore its in maintenance mode. If you wanna try other similar games with more builds play PoE or Grim Dawn.
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
Well, I get what you're saying. But you'll have to ask yourself, why are you playing that one build? because it's stronger, so you play it, to progress faster, to gain more paragon levels, but for what? do you want to push leaderboards?
if not, why not just try to find fun builds ("play it your way") and see how far you can push them. sure, maybe you can't push 80+ with most of those builds, but you can challenge yourself, beat your best GR with that build.
I for myself am almost always playing meta builds, because i want to reach certain goals in every season. next season, i just play another class. by the time I come back to the class, a lot has changed (at least in the recent past). new items, buffs and whatnot.
so, if you're not enjoying the WD anymore, and you don't want to try out those lame skills and items, because you can't even farm t11+ anymore, why not switching to another class? and if that's not working for you, you might even think about switching to another game, sad as this sounds. main reason to play games should be to have fun (or earn money with it by streaming). if you're not having fun anymore, just scrap it
just my 2 cents
All of that goes completely out the window if you want to play with friends / spouse. If you aren't even able to complete torment 8 nobody is going to have fun playing with people who can clear 10+ in 2 minutes flat.
I get what OP is saying:
The useless skills needs to be tuned so they work
We need more generalized sets like LoN (except that isn't LoN) that allows us to pick any skill. Maybe it's time to rework Blackthorne to be competitive with class sets?
We need to get rid of mandatory skills/buffs, I'm sick of playing with 4 passive skillslots/buffs and 1-2 attack skills.
Time to get rid of sets with wording like "Makes <specific skill> hit 30000000% harder".
Bring primary skills up to be something other than 50% dmg buffs through F&R.
Have spenders feel like they're worth using before getting legendaries and have the legendaries buff them by a bit, not a metric fuckton.
Actually.. Just bring back resources as something build/spent.
Unrelated to OP: For gods sake, can we do something about the need to stare at the UI for FnR/CoE/similar short buffs/cooldowns. I want to play the game, not stare at icons.
In short, if the difference between a skill being worthless and extremely powerful is a legendary, it's poor design.
all you actually do is complaining. The solution seems obvious still just making suggestions like you guys do just wont cut it and it would be even worse than it is now. It's like that over and over again...
on topic:
you can actually make any build work, the problem is indeed t hat you oftentimes are pigeonholed into using certain skills when using sets. LON is not really the solution but at least gives an option.
main problem is that you compare your builds to the meta build or to the superior build you've used before.
Actually don't give up on an idea so fast is all that I can say from my experience... you can make alot of things work that you wouldnt excpet even with the currently available items.
If you just compare a random skill setup with a meta build then yeah it's obvious.
"why are you playing that one build? because it's stronger, so you play it, to progress faster, to gain more paragon levels, but for what? do you want to push leaderboards?"
i dont really aim anything,
1-i just love the progression feel, the feel of getting stronger,
and 2- i love trying new ways to play.
ofcourse enojoyment will not last forever, but i dont really set my demands high.
enjoyment should at least last until current season end a new season starts. isnt it a realistic and reasonable wish?
"if not, why not just try to find fun builds ("play it your way") and see how far you can push them. sure, maybe you can't push 80+ with most of those builds, but you can challenge yourself, beat your best GR with that build."
i already tried nearly every possible skill & item combination which seems reasonable. grabbing +120% damage bonus for grasp of the dead with 2 ancient items that gives those, combined with helltooth and LoN, none of them does any considerable damage. obivously devs wanted me to use this combination to have best use of grasp of the dead, because no other item gives such focused bonuses to GoTD. best outcome was GR 30.
comparing to my zuni pet, its reaaly way too low. that 30 should have been at least 50 to be considered acceptable. noone can achieve perfectness in balance but current balance between those two are incredibly bad.
"eventually your only going to have 1-2 builds that are the "best". "
this perfectly sums up the current situation imho, but is that number is really the limit? after so many hours of theorycrafting, i am very sure that number can be at least 6 for each class if a proper balance is applied. sure there will always be a meta, there will be always one "strongest" build but this isnt a big problem. having 6 builds to be able to clear at least GR 70 will do enough. and with all that diversity im sure there will be exciting multiplayer sessions in every season where creativity of interesting comboes will shine. there wont be some few obvious meta that people know before even a new season. seeing meta shapes slowly in every season, creates an excitement factor.. at least player slike me would be way more excited thats what im sure.
"all you actually do is complaining. The solution seems obvious still just making suggestions like you guys do just wont cut it and it would be even worse than it is now. It's like that over and over again..."
umm well not really?? why? because they can acctually do it and im not making blind guesses or wishes. look at how things changed for spirit barrage. it were long forgotten and useless but with some tunings and a couple of new affixes/items it became something interesting now. people can work with it now... and even, theres a real deal good meta LoN build for it.
so why not making such tunings for other skills/items aswell? its completely possible if blizz & fans really want it.
"Unrelated to OP: For gods sake, can we do something about the need to stare at the UI for FnR/CoE/similar short buffs/cooldowns. I want to play the game, not stare at icons."
this perfectly sums up the current situation imho, but is that number is really the limit? after so many hours of theorycrafting, i am very sure that number can be at least 6 for each class if a proper balance is applied. sure there will always be a meta, there will be always one "strongest" build but this isnt a big problem. having 6 builds to be able to clear at least GR 70 will do enough. and with all that diversity im sure there will be exciting multiplayer sessions in every season where creativity of interesting comboes will shine. there wont be some few obvious meta that people know before even a new season. seeing meta shapes slowly in every season, creates an excitement factor.. at least player slike me would be way more excited thats what im sure.
If this was 3 years ago it would be more of a thing. As I stated this game is maintenance mode now, don't expect anything. It took them a long time just to balance LoN and each class sets to somewhat be comparable to each-other... trying to make everything great without causing another ability to over-shine sounds like a big undertaking that a game in its early life cycle would attempt to achieve.
how many games have you played at a higher level? There is ALWAYS abilities, gear etc that are simply weak. It's like that for most games and finding what works best is what separates a good player from a bad player. that can be applied to almost every single online game. in lol would you build iE on ziggs? no. In WoW if you get your bis legendary ring would you equip your worse legendary piece? No.
most people group those abilities as noob traps or things that aren't viable. Not every item or piece of gear has to be good for end game content. There might be another use though outside of end game content. But if they made everything good that would make for a very boring game. And for people who play at a high level it's pretty boring right now so.
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"This forum has become far too toxic for any meaningful discussion of
the game. I hope they can sort this out and get back to making a game
we can all enjoy without cheaters ruining it for everyone. Best wishes
all."-Hammer's view on diablo 3 forums 2014
i've played many games throughout many years, most of them are/were RPG's and Strategy games. while i understand what you mean, and i agree to a degree, i think this isnt the issue here.
main issue is "supposedly meta builds" are not "meta builds". they were inteded to be such, they were designed to be a part of the existing beta.
in other words, designers goals are not met, therefore, what we encounter is a bad, unintended result of a bad design.
i know im making bold statements here, but i invite you to look at a couple of things together... lets go;
+Increases Grasp of the Dead Damage by 45–60% (Witch Doctor Only)
this affix is to grant damage. you use this item, you expect to see good damage. pretty self explanatory.
+Grasp of the Dead gains the effect of the Rain of Corpses rune.
what this rune does, it adds a second damage source. with Rain of Corpses, corpses also rains down to the sky and falls on enemies. so, even more and more damage is provided.
also another thing to be noted, it gives you furthermore control over enemies, because corpses can fall anywere on screen, not only targeted area of grasp of the dead.
moving on, we even see more items for grasp of the dead.
first affix you see, is just like Deadly Rebirth, is a bonus damage specifically granted for Grasp of the Dead. designer clearly wants you to deal damage.
+Increases Grasp of the Dead Damage by 45–60% (Witch Doctor Only)
also, again, just like Deadly Rebirth, a second affix is there for grasp of the dead.
and STILL ITS NOT ENOUGH. even if you have all those items, grasp of the dead will not do any noticible damage to a monster from GR 30 or higher. it cant kill anything at all.
see, thats why i say graps of the dead were aimed to be part of the existing meta but it isnt. this is clearly result of a terrible design.
this is just one single but i can go on and on. for example, look at the skill corpse spiders, and items designed for it. same things happens there too. special affixes and bonus damages and even a set that includes that skill in it(arachyr set). result? just like grasp of the dead, intended as a part of meta but fails so bad to become one. some terrible design which even devs do not want to see.
there are many terrible designed things existing for WD. and from what i heard, WD isnt the only one suffers from those. all classes have many terrible designed things for them.
and STILL ITS NOT ENOUGH. even if you have all those items, grasp of the dead will not do any noticible damage to a monster from GR 30 or higher. it cant kill anything at all.
see, thats why i say graps of the dead were aimed to be part of the existing meta but it isnt. this is clearly result of a terrible design.
You really wonder if there just isn't a QA department, or if they are completely incompetent, and also if designers are unable to use a spreadsheet to model this stuff. They spend so much time adding new items with new features, and some of those items have no prayer of making any real impact to gameplay because the damage is sometimes order of magnitudes lower than meta damages. They are just wasting their time coming up with some of those items in the first place.
I suspect balancing would be a lot easier if all of these items and skills didn't "add 10000% damage to the <xyz condition>"
Did D2 have this level of power creep?
Massive Damage in D2 was maybe 50K. I have no idea why you need Trillions of damage in a game. You might wear something you got at level 20 for 50 levels if you played Solo Self found.
There have been rare occasions where I've had a near-perfect amulet drop sub-70 and I've worn it until I couldn't ignore a set bonus any more. But, as stated, that situation is very rare. Beyond that, yeah. WTF are people doing?
I don't get why you set so random targets for viability.
I mean who is to say you need to steamroll T13 for a spec to be fun?
If you enjoy the play-style you could use it for T1 or T6?
You mention reaching GR 30, so you did progress :).
You then mention 50 would be acceptable? What's the reasoning? Why not 40? Why not 60?
All the different difficulty and GR levels are relative. Even the "meta" builds have points where you can no longer progress and progress comes in steps (listing the GR levels as a very loose guideline):
- get full set (including supporting legionaries) (GR 60-70)
- get better rolls for each item (GR 70-80)
- get ancient version of items (GR 80-90)
- get more paragon levels after 800+ (GR 90+) - augments also help jumping a few GR levels as well
So if you divide the GR levels by 2, let's say, you could work on your own build. I mean with Paragon 1,400+, I am sure your build would clear more than GR 30, etc.
Yes Blizzard did pick some skills and decided to build sets around them, and then tuned the numbers so that clearly they are more powerful than "random" builds, but nobody is telling you the difficulty and progression pace you should pick.
If you want to rush, complete the Season Journey in a week or so, go ahead, use the "meta" builds, but if you want to take it easy, see how far you can go with your home-brewed setup, then by all means go ahead.
you can steamroll in normal difficulty too, will it be as fun as it was?
changing skills, items, making new builds and things like that should not come at a cost of reverse progress. while i was able to do GR 70 with the first set i had on my hand(zunimassa, the one who i got free with headrigs gifts) somehow i am expected to be happy with gr 30 after i gather all those loots? do you see whats wrong with your suggestion? more time and more loot investment just for some terrible performing items/builds/synergy. thats exactly what i call "unrewarding", and steals every bits of excitement left for me to play game for more time. if i am not able to continue my progress, i am not gonna be able to make alternate builds to change the way i play the game every once in a while, then whats the point of playing it anymore? the build i started at the beginning of season is still by far the strongest one... so why would i even care unrelated item drops? wheres the exciting item grinding, adaptation, challenge in that?
and by the why, one must mention the long forgotten issue; we all are using the exact same skills/items so our characters are exactly, identically same as other. if skills/items are the only way that can offer any uniquness to my hero, than please let me be able to do so. offer some interesting alternate paths so i can make a different WD.
by the way, im not targeting some random builds, there are special legendaries for certain use. i just posted 2 of them, please look at them and say they are "random" if you can. they are not. they are constructed for a grasp of the dead oriented build.. tell me, is there any grasp of the dead in use now? did you ever even see anyone using grasp of the dead, let alone a unique build made for it? answer is no. no one uses that.
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Hi. Lately i feel very disapointed about d3 after having played season 10 with my WD for a quite time.
my wd is 560 paragon levels, and beaten GR 71 as of now. i was really enjoying the game, feeling of progression and experimenting stuff.. but it stopped.
my problem at this point is.. not about lack of endgame content or atmosphere(.now of course those are issues, but they are already spoken a lot and i see no reason to discuss endgame or atmosphere of d3.) it is.. the lack of diversity, illusion of diversity in this game.
grasp of the dead... sacrifice... zombie bears.. all those skills... primary skills... lots of passive skills... there are tons of useless skills that drives me angry when i try to make builds for them, because simply, they DONT WORK!
and even worse, there are lots of cool looking items ---which are acctually not cool enough--- make one believe that you can do something if you use them... WRONG! apparently thats just an illusion. when you really put them on, and try to slay some demons, you see you just suck! you deal no damage or die instantly or both!
this game is very unbalanced and this really disturbs me. more then half a content for wd is just in the game to create an illusion of choice... i suspect same thing goes on with other heroes too. after all these years of developement AND even moving on to design another hero(necro) one expects core game to be in a good position allready... but im not seeing that at all!
i think devs should inspect closer and test every single item, tweak numbers here and there, and if necessary, even add some new items to make some combinations possible to work as they should. i ve only seen such change for spirit barrage, only 1 skill in whole wd skillset. its not useless anymore thankfully but.. saying again, its only 1 skill among all those useless pile of skills/items.
and theres also another issue, some usefull skills have wierd problems to be solved... for example soul harvest skill.. its very problematic when you enter boss fight, especcialy againts boss who are far, far away from white mobs... like the way to cydea. how am i supposed to use and stack this skill in cydea fight? frustrating...
to cut it short, i think there is a big unthouched sad pile of useless stuff in d3 still which are still not adressed/fixed.
whats your thoughts on this ?
btw, im sorry if my english is too bad and if makes it difficult to understand.
Same thing happens to me. I mostly play DH which actually has the biggest diversity in useful builds. Still there are some things like elemental arrow, chakram, cold grandes, LoN spike traps that simply don't work because bad in-game mechanics. It is very easy to balance this things to the 40,000% impale damage just by fixing the way they interact with legendary gems and other legendary items.
Cold skills are terrible since mobs eventually become inmune to freeze. Rimeheart/frostburn combo which could make a lot of interesting cold builds interesting is fully useless instead.
Can't imagine how bad that feels on a WD with only one build for grs.
Yeah I am right there with you guys!
I love the DH but every season I pretty much end up with the same build because it's the only thing that works. I have my fingers crossed that there is a little balancing act put together with the Necro add on.
Well, I get what you're saying. But you'll have to ask yourself, why are you playing that one build? because it's stronger, so you play it, to progress faster, to gain more paragon levels, but for what? do you want to push leaderboards?
if not, why not just try to find fun builds ("play it your way") and see how far you can push them. sure, maybe you can't push 80+ with most of those builds, but you can challenge yourself, beat your best GR with that build.
I for myself am almost always playing meta builds, because i want to reach certain goals in every season. next season, i just play another class. by the time I come back to the class, a lot has changed (at least in the recent past). new items, buffs and whatnot.
so, if you're not enjoying the WD anymore, and you don't want to try out those lame skills and items, because you can't even farm t11+ anymore, why not switching to another class? and if that's not working for you, you might even think about switching to another game, sad as this sounds. main reason to play games should be to have fun (or earn money with it by streaming). if you're not having fun anymore, just scrap it
just my 2 cents
the fact that you have to use haunt + LS in almost every WD build becouse of the 300% increased dmg is what made me sad ;/
Don't push ladders and there are many builds that can do a 70 grift. Unfortunately this game is all about grift pushing and para points so... eventually your only going to have 1-2 builds that are the "best". That is the issue since you have a never ending scaling of difficulty most builds will fall short. If you had a cap on difficulties then more builds would be viable. I've always suggested make ladders based on a main ability then you would at least see people trying to push different builds, but nobody seemed to care for it.
As for rose tinted glasses approach... If this game was like D2 and you only had hell mode, I guarantee all builds would be viable.
Take it or leave this game will not change drastically anymore its in maintenance mode. If you wanna try other similar games with more builds play PoE or Grim Dawn.
All of that goes completely out the window if you want to play with friends / spouse. If you aren't even able to complete torment 8 nobody is going to have fun playing with people who can clear 10+ in 2 minutes flat.
I get what OP is saying:
Unrelated to OP: For gods sake, can we do something about the need to stare at the UI for FnR/CoE/similar short buffs/cooldowns. I want to play the game, not stare at icons.
In short, if the difference between a skill being worthless and extremely powerful is a legendary, it's poor design.
all you actually do is complaining. The solution seems obvious still just making suggestions like you guys do just wont cut it and it would be even worse than it is now. It's like that over and over again...
on topic:
you can actually make any build work, the problem is indeed t hat you oftentimes are pigeonholed into using certain skills when using sets. LON is not really the solution but at least gives an option.
main problem is that you compare your builds to the meta build or to the superior build you've used before.
Actually don't give up on an idea so fast is all that I can say from my experience... you can make alot of things work that you wouldnt excpet even with the currently available items.
If you just compare a random skill setup with a meta build then yeah it's obvious.
"why are you playing that one build? because it's stronger, so you play it, to progress faster, to gain more paragon levels, but for what? do you want to push leaderboards?"
i dont really aim anything,
1-i just love the progression feel, the feel of getting stronger,
and 2- i love trying new ways to play.
ofcourse enojoyment will not last forever, but i dont really set my demands high.
enjoyment should at least last until current season end a new season starts. isnt it a realistic and reasonable wish?
"if not, why not just try to find fun builds ("play it your way") and see how far you can push them. sure, maybe you can't push 80+ with most of those builds, but you can challenge yourself, beat your best GR with that build."
i already tried nearly every possible skill & item combination which seems reasonable. grabbing +120% damage bonus for grasp of the dead with 2 ancient items that gives those, combined with helltooth and LoN, none of them does any considerable damage. obivously devs wanted me to use this combination to have best use of grasp of the dead, because no other item gives such focused bonuses to GoTD. best outcome was GR 30.
comparing to my zuni pet, its reaaly way too low. that 30 should have been at least 50 to be considered acceptable. noone can achieve perfectness in balance but current balance between those two are incredibly bad.
"eventually your only going to have 1-2 builds that are the "best". "
this perfectly sums up the current situation imho, but is that number is really the limit? after so many hours of theorycrafting, i am very sure that number can be at least 6 for each class if a proper balance is applied. sure there will always be a meta, there will be always one "strongest" build but this isnt a big problem. having 6 builds to be able to clear at least GR 70 will do enough. and with all that diversity im sure there will be exciting multiplayer sessions in every season where creativity of interesting comboes will shine. there wont be some few obvious meta that people know before even a new season. seeing meta shapes slowly in every season, creates an excitement factor.. at least player slike me would be way more excited thats what im sure.
"all you actually do is complaining. The solution seems obvious still just making suggestions like you guys do just wont cut it and it would be even worse than it is now. It's like that over and over again..."
umm well not really?? why? because they can acctually do it and im not making blind guesses or wishes. look at how things changed for spirit barrage. it were long forgotten and useless but with some tunings and a couple of new affixes/items it became something interesting now. people can work with it now... and even, theres a real deal good meta LoN build for it.
so why not making such tunings for other skills/items aswell? its completely possible if blizz & fans really want it.
"Unrelated to OP: For gods sake, can we do something about the need to stare at the UI for FnR/CoE/similar short buffs/cooldowns. I want to play the game, not stare at icons."
thats a brilliant idea!
If this was 3 years ago it would be more of a thing. As I stated this game is maintenance mode now, don't expect anything. It took them a long time just to balance LoN and each class sets to somewhat be comparable to each-other... trying to make everything great without causing another ability to over-shine sounds like a big undertaking that a game in its early life cycle would attempt to achieve.
how many games have you played at a higher level? There is ALWAYS abilities, gear etc that are simply weak. It's like that for most games and finding what works best is what separates a good player from a bad player. that can be applied to almost every single online game. in lol would you build iE on ziggs? no. In WoW if you get your bis legendary ring would you equip your worse legendary piece? No.
most people group those abilities as noob traps or things that aren't viable. Not every item or piece of gear has to be good for end game content. There might be another use though outside of end game content. But if they made everything good that would make for a very boring game. And for people who play at a high level it's pretty boring right now so.
"This forum has become far too toxic for any meaningful discussion of
the game. I hope they can sort this out and get back to making a game
we can all enjoy without cheaters ruining it for everyone. Best wishes
all."-Hammer's view on diablo 3 forums 2014
i've played many games throughout many years, most of them are/were RPG's and Strategy games. while i understand what you mean, and i agree to a degree, i think this isnt the issue here.
main issue is "supposedly meta builds" are not "meta builds". they were inteded to be such, they were designed to be a part of the existing beta.
in other words, designers goals are not met, therefore, what we encounter is a bad, unintended result of a bad design.
i know im making bold statements here, but i invite you to look at a couple of things together... lets go;
Deadly Rebirth, a legendary ceremonial weapon, is specifically designed for you to use Grasp of the dead:
https://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/deadly-rebirth
+Increases Grasp of the Dead Damage by 45–60% (Witch Doctor Only)
this affix is to grant damage. you use this item, you expect to see good damage. pretty self explanatory.
+Grasp of the Dead gains the effect of the Rain of Corpses rune.
what this rune does, it adds a second damage source. with Rain of Corpses, corpses also rains down to the sky and falls on enemies. so, even more and more damage is provided.
also another thing to be noted, it gives you furthermore control over enemies, because corpses can fall anywere on screen, not only targeted area of grasp of the dead.
moving on, we even see more items for grasp of the dead.
wilken's reach, a legendary off hand, a mojo:
https://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/wilkens-reach
first affix you see, is just like Deadly Rebirth, is a bonus damage specifically granted for Grasp of the Dead. designer clearly wants you to deal damage.
+Increases Grasp of the Dead Damage by 45–60% (Witch Doctor Only)
also, again, just like Deadly Rebirth, a second affix is there for grasp of the dead.
+Grasp of the Dead no longer has a cooldown.
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if those 2 items are not enough and you are looking for more, you can combine them in a set, hellthooth set.
https://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/helltooth-tunic
more damage multipliers for grasp of the dead.
an alternate path also exists, LoN.
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and STILL ITS NOT ENOUGH. even if you have all those items, grasp of the dead will not do any noticible damage to a monster from GR 30 or higher. it cant kill anything at all.
see, thats why i say graps of the dead were aimed to be part of the existing meta but it isnt. this is clearly result of a terrible design.
this is just one single but i can go on and on. for example, look at the skill corpse spiders, and items designed for it. same things happens there too. special affixes and bonus damages and even a set that includes that skill in it(arachyr set). result? just like grasp of the dead, intended as a part of meta but fails so bad to become one. some terrible design which even devs do not want to see.
there are many terrible designed things existing for WD. and from what i heard, WD isnt the only one suffers from those. all classes have many terrible designed things for them.
meta cant become meta!
You really wonder if there just isn't a QA department, or if they are completely incompetent, and also if designers are unable to use a spreadsheet to model this stuff. They spend so much time adding new items with new features, and some of those items have no prayer of making any real impact to gameplay because the damage is sometimes order of magnitudes lower than meta damages. They are just wasting their time coming up with some of those items in the first place.
I suspect balancing would be a lot easier if all of these items and skills didn't "add 10000% damage to the <xyz condition>"
Did D2 have this level of power creep?
Massive Damage in D2 was maybe 50K. I have no idea why you need Trillions of damage in a game. You might wear something you got at level 20 for 50 levels if you played Solo Self found.
There have been rare occasions where I've had a near-perfect amulet drop sub-70 and I've worn it until I couldn't ignore a set bonus any more. But, as stated, that situation is very rare. Beyond that, yeah. WTF are people doing?
Yet you could get a perfectly rolled Ancient at Paragon 1, GR 1, so, I don't get your point at all.
I don't get why you set so random targets for viability.
I mean who is to say you need to steamroll T13 for a spec to be fun?
If you enjoy the play-style you could use it for T1 or T6?
You mention reaching GR 30, so you did progress :).
You then mention 50 would be acceptable? What's the reasoning? Why not 40? Why not 60?
All the different difficulty and GR levels are relative. Even the "meta" builds have points where you can no longer progress and progress comes in steps (listing the GR levels as a very loose guideline):
- get full set (including supporting legionaries) (GR 60-70)
- get better rolls for each item (GR 70-80)
- get ancient version of items (GR 80-90)
- get more paragon levels after 800+ (GR 90+) - augments also help jumping a few GR levels as well
So if you divide the GR levels by 2, let's say, you could work on your own build. I mean with Paragon 1,400+, I am sure your build would clear more than GR 30, etc.
Yes Blizzard did pick some skills and decided to build sets around them, and then tuned the numbers so that clearly they are more powerful than "random" builds, but nobody is telling you the difficulty and progression pace you should pick.
If you want to rush, complete the Season Journey in a week or so, go ahead, use the "meta" builds, but if you want to take it easy, see how far you can go with your home-brewed setup, then by all means go ahead.
@Atheistus
interesting suggestion, i may try that with my friends (:
so whats your saying is, come with your own rules instead of waiting for blizzard.. smart way of thinking dude.
changing skills, items, making new builds and things like that should not come at a cost of reverse progress. while i was able to do GR 70 with the first set i had on my hand(zunimassa, the one who i got free with headrigs gifts) somehow i am expected to be happy with gr 30 after i gather all those loots? do you see whats wrong with your suggestion? more time and more loot investment just for some terrible performing items/builds/synergy. thats exactly what i call "unrewarding", and steals every bits of excitement left for me to play game for more time. if i am not able to continue my progress, i am not gonna be able to make alternate builds to change the way i play the game every once in a while, then whats the point of playing it anymore? the build i started at the beginning of season is still by far the strongest one... so why would i even care unrelated item drops? wheres the exciting item grinding, adaptation, challenge in that?
and by the why, one must mention the long forgotten issue; we all are using the exact same skills/items so our characters are exactly, identically same as other. if skills/items are the only way that can offer any uniquness to my hero, than please let me be able to do so. offer some interesting alternate paths so i can make a different WD.
by the way, im not targeting some random builds, there are special legendaries for certain use. i just posted 2 of them, please look at them and say they are "random" if you can. they are not. they are constructed for a grasp of the dead oriented build.. tell me, is there any grasp of the dead in use now? did you ever even see anyone using grasp of the dead, let alone a unique build made for it? answer is no. no one uses that.