It should be possible to make a build that totally breaks the usual limits of resources/cooldowns like that, but it should cost you enough to do that that it's not obviously the best performing build. Otherwise that's just the only way to play like in D3. I think they should design the core gameplay loop of a "normal" build to be fun and deep enough that you don't have to break it to enjoy the endgame.
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
I hope D4 legendaries (and sets if they still use them) have unique modifiers that focus more on changing skill behavior and interactions rather than just slapping +10000% increases to damage
I hope that D4 will balance legendary powers, and single vs aoe damage, such that you can effectively use multiple attacks.
1 Mobility + 4 cooldown/support + 1 Damage, all eggs in one basket style, is so shallow.
Conversely, it is important to have some builds that don't require complex juggling of which buttons when.
To steal an example from MMOs,ff14 has very fixed builds, and relatively fixed rotations/priority systems for characters. So instead the complexity is found in the boss fights, which at their best resemble very intricate dances
To clarify, I'm not saying there shouldn't be single attack builds. I'm saying, I'd like it if it wasn't almost exclusively single attack builds.
Aegis of Valor is a clear example of what I mean. They released what appeared to be the "Fist of the Heavens" set, including a darklight buff of well over 15x damage, and everyone prefers to ignore that weapon entirely and push all focus into Heaven's Fury because it's objectively better.
I hope that D4 will balance legendary powers, and single vs aoe damage, such that you can effectively use multiple attacks.
1 Mobility + 4 cooldown/support + 1 Damage, all eggs in one basket style, is so shallow.
Conversely, it is important to have some builds that don't require complex juggling of which buttons when.
To steal an example from MMOs,ff14 has very fixed builds, and relatively fixed rotations/priority systems for characters. So instead the complexity is found in the boss fights, which at their best resemble very intricate dances
To clarify, I'm not saying there shouldn't be single attack builds. I'm saying, I'd like it if it wasn't almost exclusively single attack builds.
Aegis of Valor is a clear example of what I mean. They released what appeared to be the "Fist of the Heavens" set, including a darklight buff of well over 15x damage, and everyone prefers to ignore that weapon entirely and push all focus into Heaven's Fury because it's objectively better.
That's a very fair point, and it is something that has bothered me - a lot of D3 builds seem to basically go "Okay, how can we avoid using our primaries/resource generators as much as possible". Part of that is definitely a culprit of the laser focus on single spenders/abilities. Part of it is also as you mentioned up thread, 6 skill slots is very limited - and while i appreciate the restraint of it, i think they could have stood to hve a couple more. It probably also would be healthier for the build eco system to have more ebb and flow builds.
I'm curious - AoV play seems to involve laying down FoH and then opening up with Heaven's Fury, which seems at least semi-involving, how is that differing from what you're envisioning? I think i'm misunderstanding
I was envisioning doing actual damage with fist of the heavens. Not necessarily 50/50 with heaven’s fury, but at least comparable.
FoH gets up to x59.4 damage from the belt (x2.7) and Darklight (x2x11). Heavens fury has 2pc (x8), flail (x6), bracer (x5), and Shield (x7), for up to x1680 damage, not even counting the triple blast!
It’s just like you said, avoid/minimize generator usage, because the damage just isn’t there.
IIRC in vanilla, people started to realize that spenders weren't that great and often didn't even justify their skill slot compared to stacking another damage passive or defense skill and just spamming your generator. At some point they buffed up a bunch of spenders to bring them back to their intended use. But then spenders started to be where most of your damage came from, and anything that allows you to spam it was hugely more powerful than the generate/spend rotation. It's a really delicate problem to solve if you want to make those builds possible without making the "standard" gameplay loop obsolete.
There can be no build diversity when your legendaries have synergistic damage multipliers that stack with each other, or entire sets are designed around specific skills. D3's itemization is designed to actively reduce diversity in favor of hand-designed builds. I think getting away from skill damage multipliers as legendary bonuses is the very first change they should make.
This is exactly wrong. It's the skill system in D3 that prevents build diversity, because hand designed builds have so much flexibility that there's very little reason to not use whatever the best skills are every time.
Sets are the only thing making each class have more than a couple of viable builds.
I'm not saying they should do this again in Diablo 4, but that they need to fix the skill system so your skill selections are more interrelated. There needs to be more of a trade-off to using a particular skill than the opportunity cost of the slot itself.
I hope that D4 will balance legendary powers, and single vs aoe damage, such that you can effectively use multiple attacks.
1 Mobility + 4 cooldown/support + 1 Damage, all eggs in one basket style, is so shallow.
Conversely, it is important to have some builds that don't require complex juggling of which buttons when.
To steal an example from MMOs,ff14 has very fixed builds, and relatively fixed rotations/priority systems for characters. So instead the complexity is found in the boss fights, which at their best resemble very intricate dances
To clarify, I'm not saying there shouldn't be single attack builds. I'm saying, I'd like it if it wasn't almost exclusively single attack builds.
Aegis of Valor is a clear example of what I mean. They released what appeared to be the "Fist of the Heavens" set, including a darklight buff of well over 15x damage, and everyone prefers to ignore that weapon entirely and push all focus into Heaven's Fury because it's objectively better.
But this isn't true at all, and I think you've picked a bad example to make your point, because it does the opposite.
Heaven's Fury doesn't work without Fist, and the two are dependent on eachother. No, Fist doesn't provide the damage at high levels, it is completely necessary to keep up your wrath to use Heaven's Fury, and provide a buff for it to do workable damage.
And even with those two working together, they don't work without other abilities to keep you alive, keep you moving, and keep enemies under control. You need Iron Skin for survivability, and at higher levels without Shield Glare you are both limiting your damage and putting yourself at risk by not keeping enemies blinded. Champion you need to make bosses doable and for extra protection from the numerous things that can just instakill you.
You can only fit Steed in there at lower levels.
So, basically you've got 5-6 abilities all working together to keep you alive and keep you moving. And on top of that none of them really work right without the gear to back it up, and even then, aside from the set itself, you've got a few choices for the leftover slots to either do more damage, keep you up longer, or other functions like making rifts faster, i.e. speed.
Sorry, but this is all the absolute opposite of "shallow". Every single thing you can bring to the table, in this build, is needed to work. All your abilities, all your gear, and you can't just push a button and the game is played for you (WW would have been a far better example there). The only problem I can think of with the Valor Heaven's Fury build is that you can numlock your law and iron skin so you only have to focus on 3 abilities (4 if you're pushing and are using Glare)
What exactly, that isn't a straight up MMO or a far more complex RPG that is distinctly not an ARPG, would you suggest to "solve" this problem? And what exactly is the problem, because it is demonstrably not shallow. And this is only one build, there are a lot more! And they also have options, for both skills/runes and gear, to tweak to your needs. Can you name an ARPG that is so profoundly balanced that every ability can provide both equal damage to every other ability, and equal utility to every single other ability making every possible combination of skills/gear perfectly as viable and balanced as any other?
I'm fairly sure that game doesn't exist.
Diablo 2 certainly doesn't offer more variety. All it really offers is more punishment for mistakes. There are only a handful of builds that are viable for hell farming, and certain classes are all but useless there. You only put enough points in any ability to get the bare minimum of what you need that it offers, usually to a diminishing return breakpoint, and then your points go elsewhere, and you frequently end up using one, maybe two attacks for your gameplay. There's no diversity in stat allocation, if you want to be able to farm hell, which is the only reason you'd level a high level character to begin with, and many of the builds are incredibly unfun to play until you reach the point you're allowed to dump the points you've been holding onto into your primary skill. The vast majority of skills are only worth any points because they're either required for the skills you want, or Blizzard had to go in and add synergies so people used them at all. And if the way you like to play doesn't fit into the handful of functional builds (hi skele necro), gtfo and don't even bother. You can't outgear balance and you can't put enough points into useless skills (or skills that become useless at higher level, hope you didn't dump your points, hope you didn't like that build!) to overcome hell immunities, or pets who die to a stiff breeze.
D3 necro, for instance, vs D2 necro is night and day. I miss the huge army of skeletons you could have in D2, however, how fast they become useless, the D3 versions are far more versatile. And on top of that, for Necro at least, there are all the set based builds, but there are builds that don't require the sets, though they hinge on a gem being leveled. Sure, there may only be a handful of builds that are viable for the highest level content, but for every class there's more builds in D3 than there ever was in D2, that can push the hardest stuff.
There are no lack of balance problems with the way legendaries and sets interplay with builds, and how it ends up where some multipliers become necessary for the highest level stuff, but again, that's balance. GR100 doesn't need 2.5m character sheet damage, but Blizz let power creep get out of control, but if you can find a solution to that problem, there's an entire genre of games that companies who make them would pay you an absurd amount of money to come and fix. This keeps happening in this type of game because it is an inherent problem with providing an always increasing need to provide players progression. As before, name a game that has solved power creep, because I'm fairly sure it doesn't exist.
For me, the problem isn't the way D3 does anything specifically, it's that there always ends up a point where someone is going to run into a situation where the specific thing they want doesn't work the specific way they want it to. And while things can change with patches and balancing, there is always a tradeoff. And moreso, that tradeoff is always just a moving goalpost.
Because no matter what way things are balanced, whether or not Fist of the Heavens or Heaven's Fury are your damage source, the one that is even marginally better than the other is the one the playerbase is going to migrate to, because that's what players do. There's an endless amount of examples that show that no matter what type of game, any slight imbalance is going to be honed in on by the players immediately.
As far as spenders/earners go, the problem as I see it is more in the designation than some inherent problem. In the Valor build, for example, Fist may not be an earner, but it ultimately functions as one via a combination of gear and skills. If it were replaced with an earner that served the same function, would that be sufficient? And spenders, of course they're going to be the primary damage sources, that's the entire point. How is it surprising or somehow and example of poor design if they are what players flock to? They need to do damage, and the things that do damage are what you're going to use. Maybe they could design a system where any ability could be either an earner or spender, but that would also reduce the identity of any given ability. And, ultimately, it's still going to end up where one is more functional in a specific use than the others, and people are going to end up there again.
Diablo 4 moving away from the set bonuses that direct people into builds isn't a better or worse thing, it's just different; in theory. However, the ultimate outcome will depend entirely on skill design, because it could very easily move right back to Diablo 2 where most skills become worthless unless they are attached to a synergy, and still are only as useful as the bare minimum you can use it for. Diablo 2 is absolutely not an example anyone should suggest for a good skill system or a system that offered a lot of diversity. Yes, you could throw points anywhere, but you'll almost never end up with something functional for long, unless you do it "right"; and that is absolutely not something we need to return to. Personally I think skill points are dumb to begin with. It isn't compelling to level up and get another 2% power in a specific thing, nor is it compelling to level up and sit on your skill points till you have access to the "right" skill. Skill trees can be fine, if done right, but points to "level up" those skills? No.
Just don't mistake a desire for something different or what you might think would be better, for bad or wrong. Diablo 3 is not shallow. Every class has a lot of options that are viable, and each class itself is viable, all with a slew of gear that is in itself viable and can bring different things to the table depending on what you want or need. Some things fall behind as you progress, but that's fine. Not everything has to be viable forever, and it would be absurd to demand that. No company could possibly maintain that balance, even though sometimes you see companies try fruitlessly.
Woo, finished the whole entire "journey" this season.
I kind of don't want to use the goblin pet because I suspect it makes the goblin sounds and seems counterproductive to finding goblins! The goblin from the puzzle ring certainly did.
Every "one attack" build is able to fill out a bar with support skills. That's hardly the point. You use nearly all the skills in a rote sequence to buff your main attack. There's barely any making decisions about what kind of attack to use in what situation. However fine that is for an ARPG, it could certainly stand to be quite a bit deeper, especially when like half of your skills are just different kinds of attacks.
Look at D4 emphasizing their arsenal system with the barbarian, and the seemless shapeshifting with the druid. Those systems become almost worthless in a world where you don't need more than one attack on your bar. Sadly if the current Barb skills are anything to go by, we will be in exactly that place, as there are buff type skills you can load up on with elective mode.
While it's rather "un-diablo" I would look into deleting elective mode, and carefully arranging the categories based on mechanics. You get one buff, one movement skill, one defense, etc. Even if we ended up with less viable builds, I'd consider it worthwhile if the builds we got were less one-dimensional to play.
Woo, finished the whole entire "journey" this season.
I kind of don't want to use the goblin pet because I suspect it makes the goblin sounds and seems counterproductive to finding goblins! The goblin from the puzzle ring certainly did.
Neat frame though.
The pet does not makes any noise, so you're safe to use it.
The act of using those skills is not the shallow part, it’s that most skills and items are predetermined with little to no variation. Just about every crusader build uses the skills you mentioned, keeping alive the exact same way and spamming 1 spender. Sometimes you can drop generators entirely, and others, you are casting it purely for generation and effects as they hit like a wet noodle ( Fist in AoV, Evasive in Unhallowed )
Yes, most ARPGs seem to end up like this, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve not played it, but my understanding is that Lost Ark characters use a variety of attacks. In the D4 demo, the premade builds used a variety of attacks.
Imagine a build where you could say, hey, I’m surrounded, I can use (cleave/rend/overpower/whirlwind), oh but now there’s a rare boss let me break out (bash/frenzy/HotA), oops it’s running away (ancient spear/leap), oh nice everything clumped up (slam/earthquake/avalanche), AHH I overextended (ignore pain/ground stomp).
Yes, as a result of designing the game around huge multipliers and effects (d3), or limited skill points and restrictive synergies (d2), which can make additional attacks weak and pointless.
But why should that design be a sacred cow?
I’m not saying those builds should be abolished, not at all. I also don’t ever expect perfect balance. But with better balance between skills and smaller individual powers it should be possible.
We’ve seen one legendary already that splits fireball into 3 that deal ~50% dmg each. That can be an interesting choice as part of a build but doesn’t necessarily have to invalidate a second or third attack.
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
I think it ends up that way because its more fun?
Picking a skill/item/archetype that you like and figuring out what you need to do in order to make it work is what usually drives people who make builds
Like, eliminating elective mode sounds like an awful idea! If they want me to use those skills they should design them in a way that makes them appealing, not make me waste slots on my bar with buttons I don't want to press
I think D3 has low build diversity because the itemization is bad for a lot of reasons and D2 has low build diversity because most of the skills suck and some options are clearly superior and I don't think it means that the problem is being able to use any combination of skills you want
I don’t want elective mode gone either. I want more options and choice.
Have an option for “blinded enemies take more damage”, another for “burning enemies take more damage”, another for “after teleporting shock everything in sight”... or debuff wise, “chilled enemies also deal less damage”, “bleeding enemies attack slower”...
Let me decide how I get my buffs and debuffs, and how my skills achieve that.
I like that they're putting in a tree again, and hope that they expand it, and make the passives more impactful than they were in D3. Passive buffs that are mutually exclusive with other passive buffs are a great way to differentiate builds, particularly when they want the active skills to be limited to 6 at a time.
As for skill design that makes multiple distinct attacks optimal over one general attack with buffs and/or utility skills, that's a tall order. You almost need to use much more challenging content that really rewards different sorts of attacks to make being able to attack two ways better than attacking one way a little harder, or attacking sometimes and moving fast/taking less damage/controlling monsters at other times.
And if you design content that way, it's hard to not also just make particular skills mandatory.
I like that they're putting in a tree again, and hope that they expand it, and make the passives more impactful than they were in D3. Passive buffs that are mutually exclusive with other passive buffs are a great way to differentiate builds, particularly when they want the active skills to be limited to 6 at a time.
As for skill design that makes multiple distinct attacks optimal over one general attack with buffs and/or utility skills, that's a tall order. You almost need to use much more challenging content that really rewards different sorts of attacks to make being able to attack two ways better than attacking one way a little harder, or attacking sometimes and moving fast/taking less damage/controlling monsters at other times.
And if you design content that way, it's hard to not also just make particular skills mandatory.
Something that would help would be not having the insane extremes of damage that D3 has. As much as i'm enjoying it, it's pretty crazy i've managed to get a channelled aoe doing TRILLIONS of damage... and some enemies have quintillions of hp. Like that's uh, wacky! And dosent really help having reasons to use multiple attacks as you end up needing to stack multipliers like crazy to get anywhere (Consider that swepeing wind gets a 15k multi and it's still useless in PoJTR - that's a problem with scaling more than anything else!)
There are ways to design around this. Complexity creep is another issue to consider though - Where do you draw the line on # of actions/second a player needs to care about? ARPGs are already going to push a player to a high amount (Simply by dint of movement and the hoard of enemies appraoch). Consideration of what skill when is good design space, but it can go sour fast in a frenetic environment. Like i like PoJ because it lets me shift my focus to managing my movement and buff upkeep, and not timing my attacks perfectly 0 this is engaging for me, but it's not necessarily going to be engaging for others.
How do people here want the content to scale in the endgame? Should there be a hard limit to how difficult the content gets, or should there be at least one mode that scales infinitely?
Because I can see the hypothetical upside to having an infinite goal like Greater Rifts so you never really run out of things to do... but that's not how most of us, myself included, experienced the game. We set our individual goals for the season and then move on.
And if the infinite scaling content becomes the meta that builds are measured against, that starts to exert a limiting force on build variety; any build that can't keep up at the bleeding edge is considered lesser, even for players who never approach that bleeding edge.
It also limits the design, to make the difficulty scale based on things that can infinitely increase, like monster health and damage. Hard to allow much tactical play if the endgame content one-shots your character, and you need to absolutely maximize damage to kill things.
It seems difficult to balance itemization with game play goals. Itemization wants a long treadmill of improvement, punctuated with awesome upgrades that make you a lot stronger. Game play wants the monsters to be a somewhat consistent threat to your character.
Personally I want some sort of infinite content treadmill Ala rifts, coupled with discrete these are the end game bosses things are balanced around. (And ideally balanced as such that you couldn't down them till late in a season when you were geared to the nines or such)
Perhaps a better way to put it is that I want a distinct roof/plateu of power
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
edited December 2019
I think want it to be like PoE where there is a difficulty ceiling that can be slowly and deliberately raised over the course of the games lifetime rather than the theoretically infinite scaling difficulty that grifts have
I like grifts (and maps in poe) because they make the loot treadmill less boring visually and keep gameplay feeling less stagnant than running the same act boss over and over like D2
I want it so that at any one time there is an enemy you can point at as the hardest guy, like monsters get this hard and no harder, once you can farm him your character has won
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited December 2019
The problem I've found with unlimited scaling is why even bother?
Okay, PoE has a mode called Delve that's theoretically an unlimited dungeon. But I find very little incentive to dip past depth 300 or so, because your chances of getting Aul (the Delve endboss) aren't any better the further you go down.
But put a big ol baddie at the end of the maps like the Shaper and suddenly there's a goal to grind towards, and it becomes a lot more tolerable (not to mention it's easier for devs to come up with a lot more builds, and for players to use a lot more builds!).
Unlimited scaling gets boring when you find it's just a circle of get bigger numbers -> do higher dungeons -> get better gear/legendary gem levels -> get bigger numbers.
The way to incorporate multiple damage dealing attacks into more builds is to make them more situational. Single target and AoE shouldn't be done equally well by the same skill. Elemental damage should also be more meaningful. Either for their ability to apply effects like chill/burning/etc, or because of enemy resistances. Creating a build that can handle all types of content should generally mean incorporating multiple attacks, not just stacking support/defense skills on top of the one damage dealer.
Question about legendary gems. I've heard a couple mention of running low level rifts once you reach the max of what you can solo (if you're soloing) in order to keep leveling gems and just using the bare minimum upgrade chance (1%?) to continue getting them up.
Is that possible? Is that even worth it?
It's also crazy to see some of the streamers talking about builds and they're showing their gear and it's just a wall of primals. It boggles my mind thinking about not only how they're getting so many primals (looking at their paragon level, it's clear they're playing an absolutely insane amount. I'm at like 690, which I thought was insane, particularly considering my base paragon outside of seasons wasn't even 100 before starting to play again recently) but also getting primals of the gear they actually want, instead of just rando stuff.
I'm assuming that's from rerolling legendaries? So they're doing tons of bounties off camera or something?
Anyway, yeah, the gems. 80 is the highest I can do, and it wasn't particularly fun. 75 is a lot more reasonable, but 70 is kind of the sweet spot on any of my characters I have put any time into (necro, crusader, barb), but it seems like at least some of the gem properties are a pretty massive buff since they're multiplicative on top of your current damage, so outside of getting better rolls of my gear loadouts, gems would be the only real way forward that I can see, but since I'm soloing I'm not going to be hitting higher levels much. And, to be honest, watching how they do grifts above 100 or so doesn't look at all enjoyable to me!
Question about legendary gems. I've heard a couple mention of running low level rifts once you reach the max of what you can solo (if you're soloing) in order to keep leveling gems and just using the bare minimum upgrade chance (1%?) to continue getting them up.
Is that possible? Is that even worth it?
I've never tried it but I'm sure it's possible, but it is not worth it since it doesn't sound like you're interested in pushing the bleeding edge of grifts. If you did want to get a few levels you'd just have to hop in a group that can easily do a GR 90 or 100 and get 3-5 free levels on it rather than 100 solo for a 1% chance. That's just one of the grinds that people who run endless bounties to reroll weapons are willing to do and shouldn't even be contemplated by someone who wants to play the game for fun.
The only real reason I was considering it much is because I want to play more of the characters and unless I wanted to level gems for each character independently, as I started a new character they'd only be able to handle lower rifts where I couldn't really otherwise upgrade the gems I was actively using.
I guess I could level other gems though to augment stuff, but looking at the stats I got from the one I did for the seasonal journey, if you're not augmenting with high level gems you're just getting a relatively small amount of a primary stat.
Which, granted, I suppose is fine as just another route for advancement if you're pushing the bleeding edge and fishing for specific drops, so you still feel like you're making some progress, it's not a bad "extra" system.
Just, as you say, since I'm clearly not aiming for leaderboards, is probably just something not really terribly important for me.
Since I completed the whole seasonal journey, I think I'll just spend my time playing with all the classes and see what they feel like more. Maybe just aim the rest of the season for completing all the set dungeons, with a secondary goal of getting over 800 paragon to max out the paragon points (other than primary/vitality obviously). And/or work on achievements with rewards.
Question about legendary gems. I've heard a couple mention of running low level rifts once you reach the max of what you can solo (if you're soloing) in order to keep leveling gems and just using the bare minimum upgrade chance (1%?) to continue getting them up.
Is that possible? Is that even worth it?
It's also crazy to see some of the streamers talking about builds and they're showing their gear and it's just a wall of primals. It boggles my mind thinking about not only how they're getting so many primals (looking at their paragon level, it's clear they're playing an absolutely insane amount. I'm at like 690, which I thought was insane, particularly considering my base paragon outside of seasons wasn't even 100 before starting to play again recently) but also getting primals of the gear they actually want, instead of just rando stuff.
I'm assuming that's from rerolling legendaries? So they're doing tons of bounties off camera or something?
Anyway, yeah, the gems. 80 is the highest I can do, and it wasn't particularly fun. 75 is a lot more reasonable, but 70 is kind of the sweet spot on any of my characters I have put any time into (necro, crusader, barb), but it seems like at least some of the gem properties are a pretty massive buff since they're multiplicative on top of your current damage, so outside of getting better rolls of my gear loadouts, gems would be the only real way forward that I can see, but since I'm soloing I'm not going to be hitting higher levels much. And, to be honest, watching how they do grifts above 100 or so doesn't look at all enjoyable to me!
I would say depends on what you want to do. If you are trying to push higher GRs then yeah you'll have to make minor improvements on your gear rolls and leveling those gems. If 1% is the best you can do for the rolls then I say just take it. Sadly though, if you want higher (and you do want higher for levelling gems) you'll have to go outside your comfort zone.
But again that's only if you want to go higher. You probably will be able to go higher with better rolled gear though.
Well, now I feel like a slacker with my whole 33 paragon levels, lol. And still haven't gotten a piece of my season set yet. Still have a couple of things to do on chapter 2. Maybe later today.
My favorite build in this game was the old 4 element Tal Rasha. It has been a while since I played Wizard so I don't know if that build is still effective or if people have changed it to be more streamlined. But back in the first dozen or so seasons, the multi-element meteor build was super fun, because you had to rotate your skills to generate all 4 meteor types. That means you were constantly casting a fire, ice, lightning, and arcane skill. It was a way more active playstyle than your standard 2 button combo+maintain buffs kind of build they seem to be gravitating towards these days.
I haven't played it in a while, but Tal Rasha meteor build is my favorite build in the game. Or was.
And as a follow-up: I also have not played the Delsere's Magnum Opus time bubble build recently either. But that build was also a super fun build because at least when it first came out, you were free to use a lot of different generators and spenders. I tried so many things in those early days of that build. Using Frozen Orb. Using Energy Twisters. Using the laser beam. I'm sure just like with everything, people have probably figured out the most optimal set of skills, but back when Delsere first came out for that first season or two, there wasn't really a single "right way" to play. You had options. And dropping murder zones was a lot of fun.
My favorite build in this game was the old 4 element Tal Rasha. It has been a while since I played Wizard so I don't know if that build is still effective or if people have changed it to be more streamlined. But back in the first dozen or so seasons, the multi-element meteor build was super fun, because you had to rotate your skills to generate all 4 meteor types. That means you were constantly casting a fire, ice, lightning, and arcane skill. It was a way more active playstyle than your standard 2 button combo+maintain buffs kind of build they seem to be gravitating towards these days.
I haven't played it in a while, but Tal Rasha meteor build is my favorite build in the game. Or was.
I think the Tal Tasha meteor build is still there. It is easy to get up and running too, and honestly ends up being a 2 button build after you get the other elements started. Or at least the way I played it. You only have to occasionally press a button to cast something.
I really wish there was some 250~500 bloodshards for a bag of bounty materials. Like enough to get a single reroll of an item or something. Bounties are the worst
I really wish there was some 250~500 bloodshards for a bag of bounty materials. Like enough to get a single reroll of an item or something. Bounties are the worst
Yes please.
It is silly the only source for those materials are bounties and a once a week challenge.
An alternative would be to reduce the cost of reforging a legendary.
I don't really know the history of the implementation of the rift/adventure/bounty system as they were all added after I stopped really playing (I saw them for a minute when I bought the necromancer, but I didn't make it very far on even that when it released), so I don't know if it was intentional that they didn't overlap at all in rewards. But it is a stark difference between the bounty system and pretty much every other reward system in the game that the bounty specific materials are earned at the cost of doing basically anything else that would provide progression. The amount of other rewards while doing the bounties (drops/xp/gold) don't even compare to just doing a nephilim rift, and just feel like a chore, particularly if you get the "kill all on level 2" ones, which you can't even avoid, because restarting a game restarts your progress on the chapter and it's virtually impossible to not get at least one per chapter.
And doing 25 bounties for just 4 rerolls? :rotate: That's even assuming you're doing TXVI, otherwise it's substantially more.
It's definitely a really obvious standout that is weirdly at odds with the rest of the reward structure in the game, and I'm surprised it hasn't been addressed at this point, as it seems that everyone hates bounties.
Tal Rasha still works fine and has the benefit of letting you vary your skill selection a bit; my fav variant was the old hydra/lightning fan one, though it’s not the best anymore
The best build is usually just whatever set has been buffed most recently, but at this point all of them can do stuff
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I hope that D4 will balance legendary powers, and single vs aoe damage, such that you can effectively use multiple attacks.
1 Mobility + 4 cooldown/support + 1 Damage, all eggs in one basket style, is so shallow.
Conversely, it is important to have some builds that don't require complex juggling of which buttons when.
To steal an example from MMOs,ff14 has very fixed builds, and relatively fixed rotations/priority systems for characters. So instead the complexity is found in the boss fights, which at their best resemble very intricate dances
To clarify, I'm not saying there shouldn't be single attack builds. I'm saying, I'd like it if it wasn't almost exclusively single attack builds.
Aegis of Valor is a clear example of what I mean. They released what appeared to be the "Fist of the Heavens" set, including a darklight buff of well over 15x damage, and everyone prefers to ignore that weapon entirely and push all focus into Heaven's Fury because it's objectively better.
But this isn't true at all, and I think you've picked a bad example to make your point, because it does the opposite.
Heaven's Fury doesn't work without Fist, and the two are dependent on eachother. No, Fist doesn't provide the damage at high levels, it is completely necessary to keep up your wrath to use Heaven's Fury, and provide a buff for it to do workable damage.
And even with those two working together, they don't work without other abilities to keep you alive, keep you moving, and keep enemies under control. You need Iron Skin for survivability, and at higher levels without Shield Glare you are both limiting your damage and putting yourself at risk by not keeping enemies blinded. Champion you need to make bosses doable and for extra protection from the numerous things that can just instakill you.
You can only fit Steed in there at lower levels.
So, basically you've got 5-6 abilities all working together to keep you alive and keep you moving. And on top of that none of them really work right without the gear to back it up, and even then, aside from the set itself, you've got a few choices for the leftover slots to either do more damage, keep you up longer, or other functions like making rifts faster, i.e. speed.
Sorry, but this is all the absolute opposite of "shallow". Every single thing you can bring to the table, in this build, is needed to work. All your abilities, all your gear, and you can't just push a button and the game is played for you (WW would have been a far better example there). The only problem I can think of with the Valor Heaven's Fury build is that you can numlock your law and iron skin so you only have to focus on 3 abilities (4 if you're pushing and are using Glare)
What exactly, that isn't a straight up MMO or a far more complex RPG that is distinctly not an ARPG, would you suggest to "solve" this problem? And what exactly is the problem, because it is demonstrably not shallow. And this is only one build, there are a lot more! And they also have options, for both skills/runes and gear, to tweak to your needs. Can you name an ARPG that is so profoundly balanced that every ability can provide both equal damage to every other ability, and equal utility to every single other ability making every possible combination of skills/gear perfectly as viable and balanced as any other?
I'm fairly sure that game doesn't exist.
Diablo 2 certainly doesn't offer more variety. All it really offers is more punishment for mistakes. There are only a handful of builds that are viable for hell farming, and certain classes are all but useless there. You only put enough points in any ability to get the bare minimum of what you need that it offers, usually to a diminishing return breakpoint, and then your points go elsewhere, and you frequently end up using one, maybe two attacks for your gameplay. There's no diversity in stat allocation, if you want to be able to farm hell, which is the only reason you'd level a high level character to begin with, and many of the builds are incredibly unfun to play until you reach the point you're allowed to dump the points you've been holding onto into your primary skill. The vast majority of skills are only worth any points because they're either required for the skills you want, or Blizzard had to go in and add synergies so people used them at all. And if the way you like to play doesn't fit into the handful of functional builds (hi skele necro), gtfo and don't even bother. You can't outgear balance and you can't put enough points into useless skills (or skills that become useless at higher level, hope you didn't dump your points, hope you didn't like that build!) to overcome hell immunities, or pets who die to a stiff breeze.
D3 necro, for instance, vs D2 necro is night and day. I miss the huge army of skeletons you could have in D2, however, how fast they become useless, the D3 versions are far more versatile. And on top of that, for Necro at least, there are all the set based builds, but there are builds that don't require the sets, though they hinge on a gem being leveled. Sure, there may only be a handful of builds that are viable for the highest level content, but for every class there's more builds in D3 than there ever was in D2, that can push the hardest stuff.
There are no lack of balance problems with the way legendaries and sets interplay with builds, and how it ends up where some multipliers become necessary for the highest level stuff, but again, that's balance. GR100 doesn't need 2.5m character sheet damage, but Blizz let power creep get out of control, but if you can find a solution to that problem, there's an entire genre of games that companies who make them would pay you an absurd amount of money to come and fix. This keeps happening in this type of game because it is an inherent problem with providing an always increasing need to provide players progression. As before, name a game that has solved power creep, because I'm fairly sure it doesn't exist.
For me, the problem isn't the way D3 does anything specifically, it's that there always ends up a point where someone is going to run into a situation where the specific thing they want doesn't work the specific way they want it to. And while things can change with patches and balancing, there is always a tradeoff. And moreso, that tradeoff is always just a moving goalpost.
Because no matter what way things are balanced, whether or not Fist of the Heavens or Heaven's Fury are your damage source, the one that is even marginally better than the other is the one the playerbase is going to migrate to, because that's what players do. There's an endless amount of examples that show that no matter what type of game, any slight imbalance is going to be honed in on by the players immediately.
As far as spenders/earners go, the problem as I see it is more in the designation than some inherent problem. In the Valor build, for example, Fist may not be an earner, but it ultimately functions as one via a combination of gear and skills. If it were replaced with an earner that served the same function, would that be sufficient? And spenders, of course they're going to be the primary damage sources, that's the entire point. How is it surprising or somehow and example of poor design if they are what players flock to? They need to do damage, and the things that do damage are what you're going to use. Maybe they could design a system where any ability could be either an earner or spender, but that would also reduce the identity of any given ability. And, ultimately, it's still going to end up where one is more functional in a specific use than the others, and people are going to end up there again.
Diablo 4 moving away from the set bonuses that direct people into builds isn't a better or worse thing, it's just different; in theory. However, the ultimate outcome will depend entirely on skill design, because it could very easily move right back to Diablo 2 where most skills become worthless unless they are attached to a synergy, and still are only as useful as the bare minimum you can use it for. Diablo 2 is absolutely not an example anyone should suggest for a good skill system or a system that offered a lot of diversity. Yes, you could throw points anywhere, but you'll almost never end up with something functional for long, unless you do it "right"; and that is absolutely not something we need to return to. Personally I think skill points are dumb to begin with. It isn't compelling to level up and get another 2% power in a specific thing, nor is it compelling to level up and sit on your skill points till you have access to the "right" skill. Skill trees can be fine, if done right, but points to "level up" those skills? No.
Just don't mistake a desire for something different or what you might think would be better, for bad or wrong. Diablo 3 is not shallow. Every class has a lot of options that are viable, and each class itself is viable, all with a slew of gear that is in itself viable and can bring different things to the table depending on what you want or need. Some things fall behind as you progress, but that's fine. Not everything has to be viable forever, and it would be absurd to demand that. No company could possibly maintain that balance, even though sometimes you see companies try fruitlessly.
My skelemancer build was viable in hell difficulty! With the big asterisk of having a lot of trouble getting through normal difficulty duriel and all difficulties diablo, and maybe ancients, I don't remember if ancients were actually a problem no I think ancients were fine actually. Diablo specifically is really good at area effect massive damage that just poops on minions so I usually ended up having to make several trips to resupply with skeletons from earlier acts and revives if there's any good act 4 monsters left unmolested for me to harvest. The trick was getting a staff with teleport charges from the staff vendor in normal act 3 (or later when you're rich/you know rich people getting enigma runeword armor) and teleporting on top of bosses so it stacks all your minions on them on one square so they can all hit it at once, and then keeping the boss decrepified and clay golem slowed so they have a lot of trouble actually attacking at all, at some point it seems like this breaks their AI or they get interrupted before they can get a cast off or something, Baal in particular seems like he just can't do anything when he's got 20 skeletons and revives on his face and he's decrepified and golem slowed and chilled from skele mages. Revives of monsters with crushing blow help a lot on bosses also.
Just talking about my old build made me want to play D2, here we go again!
It's also crazy to see some of the streamers talking about builds and they're showing their gear and it's just a wall of primals. It boggles my mind thinking about not only how they're getting so many primals (looking at their paragon level, it's clear they're playing an absolutely insane amount. I'm at like 690, which I thought was insane, particularly considering my base paragon outside of seasons wasn't even 100 before starting to play again recently) but also getting primals of the gear they actually want, instead of just rando stuff.
I'm assuming that's from rerolling legendaries? So they're doing tons of bounties off camera or something?
From what i've gathered at least some streamers have a whole team of players who are just grinding bounties while they do rifts and feeding the bounty materials to them, or similar horrifyingly unhealthy gameplaying lunacy.
I really wish there was some 250~500 bloodshards for a bag of bounty materials. Like enough to get a single reroll of an item or something. Bounties are the worst
Yes please.
It is silly the only source for those materials are bounties and a once a week challenge.
An alternative would be to reduce the cost of reforging a legendary.
I don't really know the history of the implementation of the rift/adventure/bounty system as they were all added after I stopped really playing (I saw them for a minute when I bought the necromancer, but I didn't make it very far on even that when it released), so I don't know if it was intentional that they didn't overlap at all in rewards. But it is a stark difference between the bounty system and pretty much every other reward system in the game that the bounty specific materials are earned at the cost of doing basically anything else that would provide progression. The amount of other rewards while doing the bounties (drops/xp/gold) don't even compare to just doing a nephilim rift, and just feel like a chore, particularly if you get the "kill all on level 2" ones, which you can't even avoid, because restarting a game restarts your progress on the chapter and it's virtually impossible to not get at least one per chapter.
And doing 25 bounties for just 4 rerolls? :rotate: That's even assuming you're doing TXVI, otherwise it's substantially more.
It's definitely a really obvious standout that is weirdly at odds with the rest of the reward structure in the game, and I'm surprised it hasn't been addressed at this point, as it seems that everyone hates bounties.
If you do split bounty games (which virtually every single public bounty game will be) you end up doing far less than 25 bounties yourself. It takes about ten minutes per game, which is a pretty quick return for 4 rerolls. I agree bounties do suck but if you respec yourself for run speed and do split games it isn't so bad.
I don't like bounties either. But I get why they exist. If bounties didn't exist, nobody would ever leave town. Ever.
The entirety of Adventure Mode could be played out of Act 1 town if bounties didn't exist. That's their way of getting people out into the game world and exploring the environments they created, doing the quests and events that they put the time and effort to make. Without bounties, nobody would ever see that stuff.
Honestly, the better solution is to keep bounties, but scale the world better based on difficulty.
The world is balanced according to the story. Mob density, everything about the game world design is scaled according to a person leveling from 1-70 while playing the campaign. But people don't play the campaign on anything harder than like +1 or +2 difficulty tiers at most. Certainly not at Torment levels. What Blizzard should do is increase density in the open world zones as the difficulty increases. They should also increase rare and elite spawns in the world as difficulty increases. They could do other things in the open world too, to encourage people to play there more. Like make quest rewards more lucrative. Like making some legendary items drop at a higher % chance in certain zones. There's all sorts of stuff they could do to make playing out in the open game world more fun and more rewarding.
The bounties suffer from being a system that tried to bolt replayability onto a world that was designed for a linear campaign. D4 seems to be taking the smarter approach of just designing the entire game to be Adventure Mode at its core.
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To clarify, I'm not saying there shouldn't be single attack builds. I'm saying, I'd like it if it wasn't almost exclusively single attack builds.
Aegis of Valor is a clear example of what I mean. They released what appeared to be the "Fist of the Heavens" set, including a darklight buff of well over 15x damage, and everyone prefers to ignore that weapon entirely and push all focus into Heaven's Fury because it's objectively better.
That's a very fair point, and it is something that has bothered me - a lot of D3 builds seem to basically go "Okay, how can we avoid using our primaries/resource generators as much as possible". Part of that is definitely a culprit of the laser focus on single spenders/abilities. Part of it is also as you mentioned up thread, 6 skill slots is very limited - and while i appreciate the restraint of it, i think they could have stood to hve a couple more. It probably also would be healthier for the build eco system to have more ebb and flow builds.
I'm curious - AoV play seems to involve laying down FoH and then opening up with Heaven's Fury, which seems at least semi-involving, how is that differing from what you're envisioning? I think i'm misunderstanding
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FoH gets up to x59.4 damage from the belt (x2.7) and Darklight (x2x11). Heavens fury has 2pc (x8), flail (x6), bracer (x5), and Shield (x7), for up to x1680 damage, not even counting the triple blast!
It’s just like you said, avoid/minimize generator usage, because the damage just isn’t there.
This is exactly wrong. It's the skill system in D3 that prevents build diversity, because hand designed builds have so much flexibility that there's very little reason to not use whatever the best skills are every time.
Sets are the only thing making each class have more than a couple of viable builds.
I'm not saying they should do this again in Diablo 4, but that they need to fix the skill system so your skill selections are more interrelated. There needs to be more of a trade-off to using a particular skill than the opportunity cost of the slot itself.
But this isn't true at all, and I think you've picked a bad example to make your point, because it does the opposite.
Heaven's Fury doesn't work without Fist, and the two are dependent on eachother. No, Fist doesn't provide the damage at high levels, it is completely necessary to keep up your wrath to use Heaven's Fury, and provide a buff for it to do workable damage.
And even with those two working together, they don't work without other abilities to keep you alive, keep you moving, and keep enemies under control. You need Iron Skin for survivability, and at higher levels without Shield Glare you are both limiting your damage and putting yourself at risk by not keeping enemies blinded. Champion you need to make bosses doable and for extra protection from the numerous things that can just instakill you.
You can only fit Steed in there at lower levels.
So, basically you've got 5-6 abilities all working together to keep you alive and keep you moving. And on top of that none of them really work right without the gear to back it up, and even then, aside from the set itself, you've got a few choices for the leftover slots to either do more damage, keep you up longer, or other functions like making rifts faster, i.e. speed.
Sorry, but this is all the absolute opposite of "shallow". Every single thing you can bring to the table, in this build, is needed to work. All your abilities, all your gear, and you can't just push a button and the game is played for you (WW would have been a far better example there). The only problem I can think of with the Valor Heaven's Fury build is that you can numlock your law and iron skin so you only have to focus on 3 abilities (4 if you're pushing and are using Glare)
What exactly, that isn't a straight up MMO or a far more complex RPG that is distinctly not an ARPG, would you suggest to "solve" this problem? And what exactly is the problem, because it is demonstrably not shallow. And this is only one build, there are a lot more! And they also have options, for both skills/runes and gear, to tweak to your needs. Can you name an ARPG that is so profoundly balanced that every ability can provide both equal damage to every other ability, and equal utility to every single other ability making every possible combination of skills/gear perfectly as viable and balanced as any other?
I'm fairly sure that game doesn't exist.
Diablo 2 certainly doesn't offer more variety. All it really offers is more punishment for mistakes. There are only a handful of builds that are viable for hell farming, and certain classes are all but useless there. You only put enough points in any ability to get the bare minimum of what you need that it offers, usually to a diminishing return breakpoint, and then your points go elsewhere, and you frequently end up using one, maybe two attacks for your gameplay. There's no diversity in stat allocation, if you want to be able to farm hell, which is the only reason you'd level a high level character to begin with, and many of the builds are incredibly unfun to play until you reach the point you're allowed to dump the points you've been holding onto into your primary skill. The vast majority of skills are only worth any points because they're either required for the skills you want, or Blizzard had to go in and add synergies so people used them at all. And if the way you like to play doesn't fit into the handful of functional builds (hi skele necro), gtfo and don't even bother. You can't outgear balance and you can't put enough points into useless skills (or skills that become useless at higher level, hope you didn't dump your points, hope you didn't like that build!) to overcome hell immunities, or pets who die to a stiff breeze.
D3 necro, for instance, vs D2 necro is night and day. I miss the huge army of skeletons you could have in D2, however, how fast they become useless, the D3 versions are far more versatile. And on top of that, for Necro at least, there are all the set based builds, but there are builds that don't require the sets, though they hinge on a gem being leveled. Sure, there may only be a handful of builds that are viable for the highest level content, but for every class there's more builds in D3 than there ever was in D2, that can push the hardest stuff.
There are no lack of balance problems with the way legendaries and sets interplay with builds, and how it ends up where some multipliers become necessary for the highest level stuff, but again, that's balance. GR100 doesn't need 2.5m character sheet damage, but Blizz let power creep get out of control, but if you can find a solution to that problem, there's an entire genre of games that companies who make them would pay you an absurd amount of money to come and fix. This keeps happening in this type of game because it is an inherent problem with providing an always increasing need to provide players progression. As before, name a game that has solved power creep, because I'm fairly sure it doesn't exist.
For me, the problem isn't the way D3 does anything specifically, it's that there always ends up a point where someone is going to run into a situation where the specific thing they want doesn't work the specific way they want it to. And while things can change with patches and balancing, there is always a tradeoff. And moreso, that tradeoff is always just a moving goalpost.
Because no matter what way things are balanced, whether or not Fist of the Heavens or Heaven's Fury are your damage source, the one that is even marginally better than the other is the one the playerbase is going to migrate to, because that's what players do. There's an endless amount of examples that show that no matter what type of game, any slight imbalance is going to be honed in on by the players immediately.
As far as spenders/earners go, the problem as I see it is more in the designation than some inherent problem. In the Valor build, for example, Fist may not be an earner, but it ultimately functions as one via a combination of gear and skills. If it were replaced with an earner that served the same function, would that be sufficient? And spenders, of course they're going to be the primary damage sources, that's the entire point. How is it surprising or somehow and example of poor design if they are what players flock to? They need to do damage, and the things that do damage are what you're going to use. Maybe they could design a system where any ability could be either an earner or spender, but that would also reduce the identity of any given ability. And, ultimately, it's still going to end up where one is more functional in a specific use than the others, and people are going to end up there again.
Diablo 4 moving away from the set bonuses that direct people into builds isn't a better or worse thing, it's just different; in theory. However, the ultimate outcome will depend entirely on skill design, because it could very easily move right back to Diablo 2 where most skills become worthless unless they are attached to a synergy, and still are only as useful as the bare minimum you can use it for. Diablo 2 is absolutely not an example anyone should suggest for a good skill system or a system that offered a lot of diversity. Yes, you could throw points anywhere, but you'll almost never end up with something functional for long, unless you do it "right"; and that is absolutely not something we need to return to. Personally I think skill points are dumb to begin with. It isn't compelling to level up and get another 2% power in a specific thing, nor is it compelling to level up and sit on your skill points till you have access to the "right" skill. Skill trees can be fine, if done right, but points to "level up" those skills? No.
Just don't mistake a desire for something different or what you might think would be better, for bad or wrong. Diablo 3 is not shallow. Every class has a lot of options that are viable, and each class itself is viable, all with a slew of gear that is in itself viable and can bring different things to the table depending on what you want or need. Some things fall behind as you progress, but that's fine. Not everything has to be viable forever, and it would be absurd to demand that. No company could possibly maintain that balance, even though sometimes you see companies try fruitlessly.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I kind of don't want to use the goblin pet because I suspect it makes the goblin sounds and seems counterproductive to finding goblins! The goblin from the puzzle ring certainly did.
Neat frame though.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Look at D4 emphasizing their arsenal system with the barbarian, and the seemless shapeshifting with the druid. Those systems become almost worthless in a world where you don't need more than one attack on your bar. Sadly if the current Barb skills are anything to go by, we will be in exactly that place, as there are buff type skills you can load up on with elective mode.
While it's rather "un-diablo" I would look into deleting elective mode, and carefully arranging the categories based on mechanics. You get one buff, one movement skill, one defense, etc. Even if we ended up with less viable builds, I'd consider it worthwhile if the builds we got were less one-dimensional to play.
The pet does not makes any noise, so you're safe to use it.
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Yes, most ARPGs seem to end up like this, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve not played it, but my understanding is that Lost Ark characters use a variety of attacks. In the D4 demo, the premade builds used a variety of attacks.
Imagine a build where you could say, hey, I’m surrounded, I can use (cleave/rend/overpower/whirlwind), oh but now there’s a rare boss let me break out (bash/frenzy/HotA), oops it’s running away (ancient spear/leap), oh nice everything clumped up (slam/earthquake/avalanche), AHH I overextended (ignore pain/ground stomp).
Nothing like that exists outside leveling.
You can't kill shit if you're focus is spread out to too many things
But why should that design be a sacred cow?
I’m not saying those builds should be abolished, not at all. I also don’t ever expect perfect balance. But with better balance between skills and smaller individual powers it should be possible.
We’ve seen one legendary already that splits fireball into 3 that deal ~50% dmg each. That can be an interesting choice as part of a build but doesn’t necessarily have to invalidate a second or third attack.
Picking a skill/item/archetype that you like and figuring out what you need to do in order to make it work is what usually drives people who make builds
Like, eliminating elective mode sounds like an awful idea! If they want me to use those skills they should design them in a way that makes them appealing, not make me waste slots on my bar with buttons I don't want to press
I think D3 has low build diversity because the itemization is bad for a lot of reasons and D2 has low build diversity because most of the skills suck and some options are clearly superior and I don't think it means that the problem is being able to use any combination of skills you want
Have an option for “blinded enemies take more damage”, another for “burning enemies take more damage”, another for “after teleporting shock everything in sight”... or debuff wise, “chilled enemies also deal less damage”, “bleeding enemies attack slower”...
Let me decide how I get my buffs and debuffs, and how my skills achieve that.
As for skill design that makes multiple distinct attacks optimal over one general attack with buffs and/or utility skills, that's a tall order. You almost need to use much more challenging content that really rewards different sorts of attacks to make being able to attack two ways better than attacking one way a little harder, or attacking sometimes and moving fast/taking less damage/controlling monsters at other times.
And if you design content that way, it's hard to not also just make particular skills mandatory.
Something that would help would be not having the insane extremes of damage that D3 has. As much as i'm enjoying it, it's pretty crazy i've managed to get a channelled aoe doing TRILLIONS of damage... and some enemies have quintillions of hp. Like that's uh, wacky! And dosent really help having reasons to use multiple attacks as you end up needing to stack multipliers like crazy to get anywhere (Consider that swepeing wind gets a 15k multi and it's still useless in PoJTR - that's a problem with scaling more than anything else!)
There are ways to design around this. Complexity creep is another issue to consider though - Where do you draw the line on # of actions/second a player needs to care about? ARPGs are already going to push a player to a high amount (Simply by dint of movement and the hoard of enemies appraoch). Consideration of what skill when is good design space, but it can go sour fast in a frenetic environment. Like i like PoJ because it lets me shift my focus to managing my movement and buff upkeep, and not timing my attacks perfectly 0 this is engaging for me, but it's not necessarily going to be engaging for others.
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Because I can see the hypothetical upside to having an infinite goal like Greater Rifts so you never really run out of things to do... but that's not how most of us, myself included, experienced the game. We set our individual goals for the season and then move on.
And if the infinite scaling content becomes the meta that builds are measured against, that starts to exert a limiting force on build variety; any build that can't keep up at the bleeding edge is considered lesser, even for players who never approach that bleeding edge.
It also limits the design, to make the difficulty scale based on things that can infinitely increase, like monster health and damage. Hard to allow much tactical play if the endgame content one-shots your character, and you need to absolutely maximize damage to kill things.
It seems difficult to balance itemization with game play goals. Itemization wants a long treadmill of improvement, punctuated with awesome upgrades that make you a lot stronger. Game play wants the monsters to be a somewhat consistent threat to your character.
Perhaps a better way to put it is that I want a distinct roof/plateu of power
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I like grifts (and maps in poe) because they make the loot treadmill less boring visually and keep gameplay feeling less stagnant than running the same act boss over and over like D2
I want it so that at any one time there is an enemy you can point at as the hardest guy, like monsters get this hard and no harder, once you can farm him your character has won
Okay, PoE has a mode called Delve that's theoretically an unlimited dungeon. But I find very little incentive to dip past depth 300 or so, because your chances of getting Aul (the Delve endboss) aren't any better the further you go down.
But put a big ol baddie at the end of the maps like the Shaper and suddenly there's a goal to grind towards, and it becomes a lot more tolerable (not to mention it's easier for devs to come up with a lot more builds, and for players to use a lot more builds!).
Unlimited scaling gets boring when you find it's just a circle of get bigger numbers -> do higher dungeons -> get better gear/legendary gem levels -> get bigger numbers.
Is that possible? Is that even worth it?
It's also crazy to see some of the streamers talking about builds and they're showing their gear and it's just a wall of primals. It boggles my mind thinking about not only how they're getting so many primals (looking at their paragon level, it's clear they're playing an absolutely insane amount. I'm at like 690, which I thought was insane, particularly considering my base paragon outside of seasons wasn't even 100 before starting to play again recently) but also getting primals of the gear they actually want, instead of just rando stuff.
I'm assuming that's from rerolling legendaries? So they're doing tons of bounties off camera or something?
Anyway, yeah, the gems. 80 is the highest I can do, and it wasn't particularly fun. 75 is a lot more reasonable, but 70 is kind of the sweet spot on any of my characters I have put any time into (necro, crusader, barb), but it seems like at least some of the gem properties are a pretty massive buff since they're multiplicative on top of your current damage, so outside of getting better rolls of my gear loadouts, gems would be the only real way forward that I can see, but since I'm soloing I'm not going to be hitting higher levels much. And, to be honest, watching how they do grifts above 100 or so doesn't look at all enjoyable to me!
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I've never tried it but I'm sure it's possible, but it is not worth it since it doesn't sound like you're interested in pushing the bleeding edge of grifts. If you did want to get a few levels you'd just have to hop in a group that can easily do a GR 90 or 100 and get 3-5 free levels on it rather than 100 solo for a 1% chance. That's just one of the grinds that people who run endless bounties to reroll weapons are willing to do and shouldn't even be contemplated by someone who wants to play the game for fun.
The only real reason I was considering it much is because I want to play more of the characters and unless I wanted to level gems for each character independently, as I started a new character they'd only be able to handle lower rifts where I couldn't really otherwise upgrade the gems I was actively using.
I guess I could level other gems though to augment stuff, but looking at the stats I got from the one I did for the seasonal journey, if you're not augmenting with high level gems you're just getting a relatively small amount of a primary stat.
Which, granted, I suppose is fine as just another route for advancement if you're pushing the bleeding edge and fishing for specific drops, so you still feel like you're making some progress, it's not a bad "extra" system.
Just, as you say, since I'm clearly not aiming for leaderboards, is probably just something not really terribly important for me.
Since I completed the whole seasonal journey, I think I'll just spend my time playing with all the classes and see what they feel like more. Maybe just aim the rest of the season for completing all the set dungeons, with a secondary goal of getting over 800 paragon to max out the paragon points (other than primary/vitality obviously). And/or work on achievements with rewards.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I would say depends on what you want to do. If you are trying to push higher GRs then yeah you'll have to make minor improvements on your gear rolls and leveling those gems. If 1% is the best you can do for the rolls then I say just take it. Sadly though, if you want higher (and you do want higher for levelling gems) you'll have to go outside your comfort zone.
But again that's only if you want to go higher. You probably will be able to go higher with better rolled gear though.
Steam: betsuni7
That is, you’d still have 60% to get a level 70 gem at GR69.
I haven't played it in a while, but Tal Rasha meteor build is my favorite build in the game. Or was.
I think the Tal Tasha meteor build is still there. It is easy to get up and running too, and honestly ends up being a 2 button build after you get the other elements started. Or at least the way I played it. You only have to occasionally press a button to cast something.
Steam: betsuni7
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Yes please.
It is silly the only source for those materials are bounties and a once a week challenge.
An alternative would be to reduce the cost of reforging a legendary.
I don't really know the history of the implementation of the rift/adventure/bounty system as they were all added after I stopped really playing (I saw them for a minute when I bought the necromancer, but I didn't make it very far on even that when it released), so I don't know if it was intentional that they didn't overlap at all in rewards. But it is a stark difference between the bounty system and pretty much every other reward system in the game that the bounty specific materials are earned at the cost of doing basically anything else that would provide progression. The amount of other rewards while doing the bounties (drops/xp/gold) don't even compare to just doing a nephilim rift, and just feel like a chore, particularly if you get the "kill all on level 2" ones, which you can't even avoid, because restarting a game restarts your progress on the chapter and it's virtually impossible to not get at least one per chapter.
And doing 25 bounties for just 4 rerolls? :rotate: That's even assuming you're doing TXVI, otherwise it's substantially more.
It's definitely a really obvious standout that is weirdly at odds with the rest of the reward structure in the game, and I'm surprised it hasn't been addressed at this point, as it seems that everyone hates bounties.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
The best build is usually just whatever set has been buffed most recently, but at this point all of them can do stuff
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
My skelemancer build was viable in hell difficulty! With the big asterisk of having a lot of trouble getting through normal difficulty duriel and all difficulties diablo, and maybe ancients, I don't remember if ancients were actually a problem no I think ancients were fine actually. Diablo specifically is really good at area effect massive damage that just poops on minions so I usually ended up having to make several trips to resupply with skeletons from earlier acts and revives if there's any good act 4 monsters left unmolested for me to harvest. The trick was getting a staff with teleport charges from the staff vendor in normal act 3 (or later when you're rich/you know rich people getting enigma runeword armor) and teleporting on top of bosses so it stacks all your minions on them on one square so they can all hit it at once, and then keeping the boss decrepified and clay golem slowed so they have a lot of trouble actually attacking at all, at some point it seems like this breaks their AI or they get interrupted before they can get a cast off or something, Baal in particular seems like he just can't do anything when he's got 20 skeletons and revives on his face and he's decrepified and golem slowed and chilled from skele mages. Revives of monsters with crushing blow help a lot on bosses also.
Just talking about my old build made me want to play D2, here we go again!
From what i've gathered at least some streamers have a whole team of players who are just grinding bounties while they do rifts and feeding the bounty materials to them, or similar horrifyingly unhealthy gameplaying lunacy.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
If you do split bounty games (which virtually every single public bounty game will be) you end up doing far less than 25 bounties yourself. It takes about ten minutes per game, which is a pretty quick return for 4 rerolls. I agree bounties do suck but if you respec yourself for run speed and do split games it isn't so bad.
The entirety of Adventure Mode could be played out of Act 1 town if bounties didn't exist. That's their way of getting people out into the game world and exploring the environments they created, doing the quests and events that they put the time and effort to make. Without bounties, nobody would ever see that stuff.
Honestly, the better solution is to keep bounties, but scale the world better based on difficulty.
The world is balanced according to the story. Mob density, everything about the game world design is scaled according to a person leveling from 1-70 while playing the campaign. But people don't play the campaign on anything harder than like +1 or +2 difficulty tiers at most. Certainly not at Torment levels. What Blizzard should do is increase density in the open world zones as the difficulty increases. They should also increase rare and elite spawns in the world as difficulty increases. They could do other things in the open world too, to encourage people to play there more. Like make quest rewards more lucrative. Like making some legendary items drop at a higher % chance in certain zones. There's all sorts of stuff they could do to make playing out in the open game world more fun and more rewarding.