This is a action rpg. Every char can handle himself. We dont need tanks, we dont need healers. The game is designed that way. Yes, you can run a suboptimal build and give every party member his own little buff and even stun a monster here and there that would otherwise have charged a party member... WOW
Guess what, you would be more helpful if you would just do damage like the other 3 in the party.
And yes, its true, sometimes a tank can carry some people and they can kill stuff one monster power higher than their gear would allow with only like 50000 times the time needed. Great whoop. Better farm the monster power your gear can actualy handle and dont get expected to be carried by others.
All in all, yes they are fun to think about, but nobody needs them. Not till team play is actually required to plow trough this game.
There's nothing wrong with party builds. I don't know what you're worrying about, there's no healers in this game. Yes there are tank builds and there's nothing wrong with using one and it is possible to have great dps while being incredibly tanky. I like party builds, wanna know why? because it's annoying as hell when you get people who charge ahead of everyone else as if they're playing by themselves, I'm looking at you whirlwind barbarians!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
Party builds and thinking about your group make sense. Why have 3 barbarians all giving a war cry when you could have threatening shout, war cry, and ground stomp?
In hardcore, party builds and thinking about getting a cohesive group can allow you to safely farm higher MP than you might otherwise be able to handle. So yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
I was a WW barb in group games and it wasn't fun for me and it wasn't fun for people I played alongside. Every time a WW joins my game I groan. Constantly running around like crazy ahead of the group and off the screen, never keeping together with everyone else, and typically the ones who play that way aren't even killing mobs themselves (not always, but a lot of the time this seems to be the case).
Really? Even after the assist buff? Atleast you don't run at the speed of light outside of the screen like the barbies
Worst party spec as in I really don't do anything for the team other than spray and pray. At least barbs have War Cry, monks have their Mantras/vacuum cleaner, WDs have BBV/hex, CM wizards have perma-freeze, and even DHs have Guardian Turret.
Small aside Cold Blooded isn't a party buff, but totally agree with your point. As CMWW there's an easy 2 skills you can change from solo play to group play to make things better for everyone and is well worth the 35% group buff (Bone Chill and Time Warp) for a small loss to personal dps.
The idea being if you're going to run with a 3 other people, what's wrong with wanting to make runs faster and more efficient using a more party oriented build?
Because it's a single player action RPG only means that it is possible to play the game alone but that doesn't change how effective group play can be if you do it right. If a party consists of 4 individuals all doing their own thing they will never reach the same effectiveness they would by playing alone.
Imagine a scenario where a monk, barb, wizard and wd are doing playing together.
The barb has WOTB with the 100% dmg increase rune and a aoe pull-in.
The monk has the party wide 48% dmg increase mantra and a aoe pull-in.
The wd has the party wide 30% dmg increase totem.
Wizard has the 20% dmg increase bubble and keeps enemies frozen.
All are good skills alone, but when synchronized it's a whole other story. The abilities only take one or two slots from each player which means that you can play basically any build you want. Naturally everyone won't be able to produce the same amount of damage but they are doing it for the greater good of the group and it is up to each and every member to understand that.
Grouping can be a great experience if you do it with people that can put their ego aside and are willing to work together. Expecting awesome results when random queuing with borderline retarded strangers is just dumb.
WAIT, wait, what about... stay with me here... what about making it to where every class can solo play, WHILE also making it beneficial instead of a burden to play with your friends?!?!
Because it's a single player action RPG only means that it is possible to play the game alone but that doesn't change how effective group play can be if you do it right. If a party consists of 4 individuals all doing their own thing they will never reach the same effectiveness they would by playing alone.
Imagine a scenario where a monk, barb, wizard and wd are playing together.
The barb has WOTB with the 100% dmg increase rune and a aoe pull-in.
The monk has the party wide 48% dmg increase mantra and a aoe pull-in.
The wd has the party wide 30% dmg increase totem.
The wizard has the 20% dmg increase bubble and keeps enemies frozen.
All are good skills alone, but when synchronized it's a whole other story. The abilities only take one or two slots from each player which means that you can play basically any build you want with a small personal penalty. Naturally everyone won't be able to produce the same amount of damage but they are doing it for the greater good of the group and it is up to each and every member to understand that.
Grouping can be a great experience if you do it with people that can put their ego aside and are willing to work together. Expecting awesome results when random queuing with borderline retarded strangers is just dumb.
Ive actualy had remarkable results in solo q pubbing. make an mp8 act 2 run, wait for 4, tell em my run, everyone smiles then we slay. Goes pretty well, id say 9/10 times. Also, it brings back the old school d2 days where u join pubs, have a good time, exchange some laughs, add some friends to ur list, and call it a night
This is a action rpg. Every char can handle himself. We dont need tanks, we dont need healers. The game is designed that way. Yes, you can run a suboptimal build and give every party member his own little buff and even stun a monster here and there that would otherwise have charged a party member... WOW
Guess what, you would be more helpful if you would just do damage like the other 3 in the party.
And yes, its true, sometimes a tank can carry some people and they can kill stuff one monster power higher than their gear would allow with only like 50000 times the time needed. Great whoop. Better farm the monster power your gear can actualy handle and dont get expected to be carried by others.
All in all, yes they are fun to think about, but nobody needs them. Not till team play is actually required to plow trough this game.
There are actually skills in the game that benefit group play more then solo play, assuming that player is using a gimped build is just way off
The nature of gameplay changes when there are more players in the group. Even as sad as it is true, at lower levels in groups of 4 there is almost always someone in town or AFK leaving the rest of the group to fend for themselves, but typically the group can handle it even if it might be slightly sub-optimally.
In cases where you do get a good group that sticks together, usually its a blast and you can fly through content, but irrespectively, the game actually becomes easier when in a group.
My demon hunter friend has to backpeddal a lot less when im on my barb or cmww wiz, for example. His ranged attacks help me with certain monster types that I occasionally struggle with. A basic example, yes, but I always have to play less defensively when in a group compared to solo and can usually be a bit more wreckless.
I cant see any reason why people wouldnt want to adjust builds or try a different playstyle if they get more freedom to do so in party groups
OK, I was reluctant to reply here for a few days because of the slightly wrong turn this thread took.
I am not in any way saying that I dont like coop play. You guys read way too much into my first post. I am also not saying that some sligth build variations can not be beneficial. I was mainly interested where the border is between party friendly and just ineffective.
For example, somebody mentioned CM wizard as a good party build. CM is a obvious choice because it provides huge crowd control and still does amazing damage. But I would not call CM a "party build" because it's one of the two main choices for wizard builds anyway and just has the nice side effect that everybody in your party will love you.
But then we have the other side, like barbs running around with shields and stunning and taunting and ancient-spear-puling monsters around and doing less than 50k dps in the same time. This guy is IMO not effective enugh as crowd control ( compared to CM ) and CERTAINLY does not do enugh damage. WIth such a guy in the party, I would rather have another pure boring damage dealer which would actually spead up the run.
Another point to this is that I still dont think that we realy NEED tanks. Leave aside the point that tanking in a MMO kinda sence is not possible in the game mechanics anyway. I still think that if all the people are geared rigth for the MP you wanna play, you dont need a tank at all. Tanks to hide behind are great for when you carry along undergeared players, but then you allready carry two people anyway, the tank and the undergeared player -.- So we dont even have to start about efficency.
So before the flaming starts again, the main point of interest for me here was to see how much of a dps sacrifice you think is ok, and how much utility does the player in question have to bring to compensate for the dps loss ? Oh, and also, why do you need utility ?
Maybe you could put in some more specific examples that you encountered - because it seems there were some incidents in the past that makes you say this.
When I started playing D3 with two of my friends (both DH) they had trouble getting through Inferno, and CMWW as group spec for my wizard was not feasible for our low budget (it wasn't even popular back then). So I decided to switch to barb and go full tank to help them make progress. Long story short - there is no real "tank barb" in D3. There is no aggro mechanism as in WoW, there is no real Taunt (the rune is way too limited due to the short duration and long cooldown), and in the end the mobs do whatever they want. After weeks of playing my tank barb I switched back to wizard and played Archon (in group) for quite a while because it somehow worked out and it was just the skill that was most fun for me. When ubers came out, CMWW was the only way for our group to get them killed (2 low budget DHs and 1 Archon wizard had absolutely zero chance of killing any mid-MP uber).
Before 1.08 many group compositions would simply not work (certain barb or wizard specs), or they still don't. Plus the efficiency was really bad, and this game has become all about efficiency. Thankfully some of that has been adjusted a bit and it feels a bit more rewarding to play with your friend. However, group play is just an option and I personally feel that it doesn't make anything harder or simpler, it's just a different experience.
What I don't get is your complaint about people who want to tank and are wearing shields while you want them to deal DPS. Are these your friends? Tell them to switch to DPS spec. Everyone is playing this game for DPS and killing monsters, there is no healing/tanking class like in WoW. Everyone should be happy to switch to DPS spec+gear. Or are these people in public games? Just politely ask them to switch to DPS, and if they don't or don't want to or just don't have other gear, leave the game. No one forces you to play with these people, and I doubt that the *majority* of people in public games will gimp their DPS for a bit of group support (hell, that would change my view on humanity significantly, D3 players being so overly generous!).
So, just to get a couple of your questions answered:
-Do we need tanks? In general, no. But in certain situations they help a lot (in particular uber fights - Ghom with CMWW wizard changes the fight completely and any DH will love you for stunlocking that farting Jabba-like creature).
-Why do we need utility? To save your fellow group members from dying, to give players a feeling of fighting monsters together, to get bigger numbers for the entire group, to speed up game play and make it more fun. (The last thing is subjective, but if group support specs take the fun out of game play, let your group members know - the quick respec is one of the beauties of D3 compared to D2.)
-How much DPS should be sacrificed for utility? That's simple - if you sacrifice 50% of DPS by putting on tanking equipment as a barb, it won't benefit the group in most situations because tanking doesn't really work in D3 as such and it doesn't speed up the game significantly (in general, there may be exceptions). When I play in group and switch my Familiar buff to Time Warp, I'll deal the same amount of damage, but the other group member's damage is increased by 15%, too.
I am mainly talking about random groups to be honest. When I play with friends, we take on gear appropriate MP levels and each one could hold his ground individually ( I am not yet at the "zerg mp10" stage ^^ ). We also communicate via voice chat and can adopt to situations quickly and it's a entirely different game anyway.
But in random multiplayer games I meet all sort of strange people I think my main complaint is people who insist on their specialty builds while joining games that they could never ever survive solo specced and geared like that.
I have an absolutely terrible Arcane blossom build that only works with another CM. I think having builds designed only for assitance with other players opens up a whole new avenue of acceptable and optimized builds. Last night I played CM with another CM friend and we had a WW barb play with us which is usually a nightmare. This guy was great tho, he ran ahead and pulled entire mobs to us, so we were able to clear an area extremely quickly. Fourth was a hotasmash barb that was smart enough to know that the CM is an AOE dmg build and focused only on high hp enemies. Those kind of synergies only exist if you think about the party structure.
Yeah, it kind of is, however I still get more irritated playing with your typical WW-nado barb -- the bad one's anyway. They tend to leave huge crowds of scattered half dead enemies in their wake and are never with the group, somewhat ruining the entire MP experience. (Seriously, it's not fun to chase someone around, cleaning up their mess.) Archon at least gets things dead while staying with the group, creating a stronger sense of group play, even though you're basically just leeching off them lol
To the OP: I think party builds aren't about trying to replicate the typical MMO experience, but finding a play style that works well within a group. For example, I used to run a Sleet Storm, but when you've got 3 other ranged attackers (not to mention Archon) you start to feel useless because you can't get to anything before it's already melted, so I've adjusted to something that allows me to get hits in (before Archon melts everything!!!) and yeah, I could run Archon, but preferences and all that.
I have an absolutely terrible Arcane blossom build that only works with another CM. I think having builds designed only for assitance with other players opens up a whole new avenue of acceptable and optimized builds. Last night I played CM with another CM friend and we had a WW barb play with us which is usually a nightmare. This guy was great tho, he ran ahead and pulled entire mobs to us, so we were able to clear an area extremely quickly. Fourth was a hotasmash barb that was smart enough to know that the CM is an AOE dmg build and focused only on high hp enemies. Those kind of synergies only exist if you think about the party structure.
Exactly not...
Lets look at the 4 people in your party :
1 : Hota barb. This is the cookie cutter build that everyone uses for max dps.
2 : WW barb. This is cookie cutter dps build nr 2.
3 : CM wiz. Again, cookie cutter build. Brings CC to the party, not because of considering the party play, but because it is automatically built into the build anyway.
4 : You and your build that you did not link and that I dont know. Which brings me back to the original question... Do you think ( or even have some math ? ) that the benefits from your spec ( link please ) outweigths the dps loss?
That you 4 people actually used your brains and played together as a group has nothing to do with the party utility of the builds, which is my point of interest.
I personally find myself playing in groups WAY more now that its feasible. I also tend to stay specced CM because its super helpful to the group and my dps still stays high.
This is a action rpg. Every char can handle himself. We dont need tanks, we dont need healers. The game is designed that way. Yes, you can run a suboptimal build and give every party member his own little buff and even stun a monster here and there that would otherwise have charged a party member... WOW
Guess what, you would be more helpful if you would just do damage like the other 3 in the party.
And yes, its true, sometimes a tank can carry some people and they can kill stuff one monster power higher than their gear would allow with only like 50000 times the time needed. Great whoop. Better farm the monster power your gear can actualy handle and dont get expected to be carried by others.
All in all, yes they are fun to think about, but nobody needs them. Not till team play is actually required to plow trough this game.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
In hardcore, party builds and thinking about getting a cohesive group can allow you to safely farm higher MP than you might otherwise be able to handle. So yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
I was a WW barb in group games and it wasn't fun for me and it wasn't fun for people I played alongside. Every time a WW joins my game I groan. Constantly running around like crazy ahead of the group and off the screen, never keeping together with everyone else, and typically the ones who play that way aren't even killing mobs themselves (not always, but a lot of the time this seems to be the case).
haha , so true
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Worst party spec as in I really don't do anything for the team other than spray and pray. At least barbs have War Cry, monks have their Mantras/vacuum cleaner, WDs have BBV/hex, CM wizards have perma-freeze, and even DHs have Guardian Turret.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Dont feel bad, when u have an "tank" class its always nice with an uber dps in the party
Small aside Cold Blooded isn't a party buff, but totally agree with your point. As CMWW there's an easy 2 skills you can change from solo play to group play to make things better for everyone and is well worth the 35% group buff (Bone Chill and Time Warp) for a small loss to personal dps.
The idea being if you're going to run with a 3 other people, what's wrong with wanting to make runs faster and more efficient using a more party oriented build?
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
how to like this comment ?
SOMEONE PASS THIS TO BLIZZ IMMEDIATELY
There are actually skills in the game that benefit group play more then solo play, assuming that player is using a gimped build is just way off
In cases where you do get a good group that sticks together, usually its a blast and you can fly through content, but irrespectively, the game actually becomes easier when in a group.
My demon hunter friend has to backpeddal a lot less when im on my barb or cmww wiz, for example. His ranged attacks help me with certain monster types that I occasionally struggle with. A basic example, yes, but I always have to play less defensively when in a group compared to solo and can usually be a bit more wreckless.
I cant see any reason why people wouldnt want to adjust builds or try a different playstyle if they get more freedom to do so in party groups
I am not in any way saying that I dont like coop play. You guys read way too much into my first post. I am also not saying that some sligth build variations can not be beneficial. I was mainly interested where the border is between party friendly and just ineffective.
For example, somebody mentioned CM wizard as a good party build. CM is a obvious choice because it provides huge crowd control and still does amazing damage. But I would not call CM a "party build" because it's one of the two main choices for wizard builds anyway and just has the nice side effect that everybody in your party will love you.
But then we have the other side, like barbs running around with shields and stunning and taunting and ancient-spear-puling monsters around and doing less than 50k dps in the same time. This guy is IMO not effective enugh as crowd control ( compared to CM ) and CERTAINLY does not do enugh damage. WIth such a guy in the party, I would rather have another pure boring damage dealer which would actually spead up the run.
Another point to this is that I still dont think that we realy NEED tanks. Leave aside the point that tanking in a MMO kinda sence is not possible in the game mechanics anyway. I still think that if all the people are geared rigth for the MP you wanna play, you dont need a tank at all. Tanks to hide behind are great for when you carry along undergeared players, but then you allready carry two people anyway, the tank and the undergeared player -.- So we dont even have to start about efficency.
So before the flaming starts again, the main point of interest for me here was to see how much of a dps sacrifice you think is ok, and how much utility does the player in question have to bring to compensate for the dps loss ? Oh, and also, why do you need utility ?
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
When I started playing D3 with two of my friends (both DH) they had trouble getting through Inferno, and CMWW as group spec for my wizard was not feasible for our low budget (it wasn't even popular back then). So I decided to switch to barb and go full tank to help them make progress. Long story short - there is no real "tank barb" in D3. There is no aggro mechanism as in WoW, there is no real Taunt (the rune is way too limited due to the short duration and long cooldown), and in the end the mobs do whatever they want. After weeks of playing my tank barb I switched back to wizard and played Archon (in group) for quite a while because it somehow worked out and it was just the skill that was most fun for me. When ubers came out, CMWW was the only way for our group to get them killed (2 low budget DHs and 1 Archon wizard had absolutely zero chance of killing any mid-MP uber).
Before 1.08 many group compositions would simply not work (certain barb or wizard specs), or they still don't. Plus the efficiency was really bad, and this game has become all about efficiency. Thankfully some of that has been adjusted a bit and it feels a bit more rewarding to play with your friend. However, group play is just an option and I personally feel that it doesn't make anything harder or simpler, it's just a different experience.
What I don't get is your complaint about people who want to tank and are wearing shields while you want them to deal DPS. Are these your friends? Tell them to switch to DPS spec. Everyone is playing this game for DPS and killing monsters, there is no healing/tanking class like in WoW. Everyone should be happy to switch to DPS spec+gear. Or are these people in public games? Just politely ask them to switch to DPS, and if they don't or don't want to or just don't have other gear, leave the game. No one forces you to play with these people, and I doubt that the *majority* of people in public games will gimp their DPS for a bit of group support (hell, that would change my view on humanity significantly, D3 players being so overly generous!).
So, just to get a couple of your questions answered:
-Do we need tanks? In general, no. But in certain situations they help a lot (in particular uber fights - Ghom with CMWW wizard changes the fight completely and any DH will love you for stunlocking that farting Jabba-like creature).
-Why do we need utility? To save your fellow group members from dying, to give players a feeling of fighting monsters together, to get bigger numbers for the entire group, to speed up game play and make it more fun. (The last thing is subjective, but if group support specs take the fun out of game play, let your group members know - the quick respec is one of the beauties of D3 compared to D2.)
-How much DPS should be sacrificed for utility? That's simple - if you sacrifice 50% of DPS by putting on tanking equipment as a barb, it won't benefit the group in most situations because tanking doesn't really work in D3 as such and it doesn't speed up the game significantly (in general, there may be exceptions). When I play in group and switch my Familiar buff to Time Warp, I'll deal the same amount of damage, but the other group member's damage is increased by 15%, too.
But in random multiplayer games I meet all sort of strange people I think my main complaint is people who insist on their specialty builds while joining games that they could never ever survive solo specced and geared like that.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
Yeah, it kind of is, however I still get more irritated playing with your typical WW-nado barb -- the bad one's anyway. They tend to leave huge crowds of scattered half dead enemies in their wake and are never with the group, somewhat ruining the entire MP experience. (Seriously, it's not fun to chase someone around, cleaning up their mess.) Archon at least gets things dead while staying with the group, creating a stronger sense of group play, even though you're basically just leeching off them lol
To the OP: I think party builds aren't about trying to replicate the typical MMO experience, but finding a play style that works well within a group. For example, I used to run a Sleet Storm, but when you've got 3 other ranged attackers (not to mention Archon) you start to feel useless because you can't get to anything before it's already melted, so I've adjusted to something that allows me to get hits in (before Archon melts everything!!!) and yeah, I could run Archon, but preferences and all that.
Exactly not...
Lets look at the 4 people in your party :
1 : Hota barb. This is the cookie cutter build that everyone uses for max dps.
2 : WW barb. This is cookie cutter dps build nr 2.
3 : CM wiz. Again, cookie cutter build. Brings CC to the party, not because of considering the party play, but because it is automatically built into the build anyway.
4 : You and your build that you did not link and that I dont know. Which brings me back to the original question... Do you think ( or even have some math ? ) that the benefits from your spec ( link please ) outweigths the dps loss?
That you 4 people actually used your brains and played together as a group has nothing to do with the party utility of the builds, which is my point of interest.
Not the point of my thread, no. I am trying to find some info or numbers on the efficency of such party builds.
Example of a good party build ( IMO ) : http://www.diablofans.com/topic/93954-build-guiding-man-for-party-build-only/page__pid__1171413#entry1171413
example of "better just use HOTA and do some damage..." ( again, IMO... ): http://www.diablofans.com/topic/92369-armored-barb/
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841