Defining a tier list to describe builds?

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
1

Hey! I was thinking it might be worthwhile to come up with a universal ranking system for builds. For a completely new person looking at guides, they may get the idea that all are equally good when that’s definitely not the case. We already informally use terminology like “tier 1 build”, so we can expand on that framework. Here is my attempt at a tier list…

Tier 4.5 - Horrible builds. Only MIGHT be possible to beat the game on Ultimate (Log) even considering unlimited lives. Incapable of beating Aspirant Crucible even once.

Tier 4 - Poor builds. Can beat the game on Ultimate after many tries but can’t beat any other end game bosses. Is capable of beating Aspirant Crucible at least once.

Tier 3.5 - Meh builds. Can beat at least half of Ultimate content (excluding Mog) dying frequently on each boss, but there may be one or two bosses that just can’t be beat. Is able to beat Aspirant Crucible around 50% of the time.

Tier 3 - Decent builds. Can beat all of Ultimate content (excluding Mog) even if it dies frequently doing so. Is able to farm Aspirant Crucible (over 90% success rate) and may be capable of beating Challenger once.

Tier 2.5 - Good builds. Can beat all of Ultimate content (excluding Mog) with few deaths; may consider going hardcore. Can beat Challenger Crucible about 50% of the time.

Tier 2 - Great builds. Can beat all of Ultimate content (excluding Mog) with 0 deaths comfortably; one would feel confident playing builds of this tier and above on hardcore. Can farm Challenger Crucible (over 90% success rate) and may be able to beat Gladiator once.

Tier 1.5 - Fantastic builds. Can beat all of Ultimate content with 0 deaths and pretty fast kill speeds (<25sec MQ, <60sec dummy, etc.), and/or can beat Gladiator Crucible around 50% of the time. With tweaking, may be able to kill Ultimate Mog in < 30 minutes.

Tier 1 - Best builds. Can beat all of Ultimate content with 0 deaths and the fastest kill speeds (<12 sec MQ, <28 sec dummy, etc.), and/or can farm Gladiator Crucible (over 90% success rate). One would feel confident attempting hardcore Gladiator with this build. With tweaking, can kill Ultimate Mog in < 15 minutes.

It gets a little tricky since there’s different ways a build can be good (kill speed vs. tanky), but I feel this would generally describe what defines different levels of builds. For the record, this does NOT take into account the skill level required to play a build. Squib’s Retaliation Warder may be Tier 2 or 1.5 with a very low skill level needed, and the old DW phys/pierce BMs would probably be tier 1 with a very high skill level needed.

What do you guys think? Worthwhile idea or not important? Should they be defined differently? I look forward to hearing your opinions =)

2

Such a thing would most likely label stuff for nerfs. Braggy titles are bad enough, I am not so sure about this

3

I see where you’re coming from, but…

  • Having a tier list may make discussions about nerfs easier. We could simply ask devs “hey, are tier 1 builds not supposed to exist in this game?” vs. trying to outline every single thing that may contribute to a nerfed item or build.

  • I’ve noticed some build posters tend to bring it on themselves already by saying stuff like 10 sec MQ, 22 sec dummy kill time, etc. in the title of the thread. IMO I don’t think a tier list being used would result in more builds being nerfed.

  • Again, especially for newer players it would be helpful to know which builds/guides are really good and which are just OK. I’m a bit biased because my first character followed a guide that I was led to believe was good, but ended up being what I would call tier 3.5. It was frustrating because I blamed myself for doing something wrong and put a lot of effort into fixing it (without a lot of experience), then ended up trying a different build and realized it was just that the build I followed was not very strong. Having some sort of code in the beginning to at least forewarn people that “yeah this build is cool/gimmicky/neat, but you should know that you’ll struggle with some end game content” would be very nice.

4

Do people even post builds for worse tiers than 2?

5

Crucible & Vanilla have different criterias for top tier, in general top Crucible performer have a slower clearspeed than Vanilla top one.
Imo 2 “ladder” ranking would be required to do a correct job.

It seems a tremendous work since there is so many builds and it will require some knowledge with each of them to compare & classify them properly.
Question is how you would proceed to classify builds ? (alone ? with a small jury ? with public poll tread ?)

Yes. :rolleyes:

6

I never understood the appeal of copy-pasting other people’s builds in the first place. Especially for new players.

Besides, top tier builds require a rather large amount of fixed items, so again no help for new players.

The gear-dependancy label in the build compendium should be what new players should watch out for, if they wish to go with someone else’s build right away.

7

yes, like some of them are in compendium too… no need to mention…

but of course special mention Drizzto’s builds… they are only slightly better than tier 2:rolleyes:

8

I agree with Drizzto, Vanilla and Crucible are whole different beasts, and using a single rating to measure performance on both simultaneously -when you need to make trade offs on the very same attributes that impact performance (e.g. damage <—> survivability)- would make the ranking misleading. It would probably favor “all rounders” rather than “specialists”.

I think than rather than providing a “simple” tier approach, an accurate description of how the build performs on different categories is what would be most helpful for new players. An example would be grading the builds on categories such as “Clear Speed”, “Nemesis farming suitability”, “Overall tankiness”, “Gear dependance”, “Crucible performance”. Basically, it would meant expanding/rethinking on the description that’s currently used on the compendium.

My two cents.

Good luck!!

9

Some of them work fine even with trash gear because of mechanics it provide, tho it is true that most of time you gonna see max gear in guide (or close to it).

10

Why not a simple rating system that considers what the build is for?

We had this in DDO and it worked quite well, we also had “template builds” for newbs which were more generic and specifically for first timers/first life builds.

11

I agree that at higher levels Crucible and Vanilla content are graded differently. That’s why in my tier list I specifically say “and/or” for tiers 1.5 and 1. A build shouldn’t need to be both Vanilla speed clearer + Gladiator farmer to be tier 1.

I also agree that the more info/criteria presented the better, but I think a line needs to be drawn somewhere where there shouldn’t be 5+ levels of criteria when grading a build. The main benefit of the simple tier list would be just that; a simple way to quickly gauge the general strength of a build.

Drizz, how I was visualizing it was that for future reference, when someone posts a guide they also state what tier it is. I certainly am not proposing we should go through each guide in the compendium and label them ourselves, good lord what a project that would be :eek:

12

I’d like to add a point that the current Build Compendium V has a “tag” list for something like this but not exactly this

13

This. I think that you gave to much space for ranking of builds that are, in my opinion, no offense to anyone, not even worth mentioning.
If properly geared build is not capable to finish ultimate and reliably kill all nemesis + MQ its not worth even mentioning, ofc some of them will do it faster some will be slower but still they have to be capable.
And I do agree with Drizzto, vanilla and crucible have two totally different meta and thus builds optimized for crucible are largely different than builds optimized for vanilla and vice versa, so talking about unified criteria for ranking vanilla and crucible is out of question imho.
And there is also one more criteria that is very important I would call it ˝nob friendliness˝ some builds require a lot of practice and knowledge of the game (game mechanic, monsters, etc) to be efficient or even to stay alive and while that is not problem for veteran players for not so experienced ones can lead to not so pleasant game experience and frustration.

14

In other words, you don’t want them to have to discover, experiment and learn the game. You want the game reward to be delivered within the first fingersnap like an hamburger in some fast-food place.

I have an idea then: a built-in ingame assistant that tells you where to click along the whole game.

15

This is just my opinion, but this kind of pointless. There’s next to no competitive aspect in this game, so a build tiering would make no sense.

Also, how strong a build is can be rather subjective. I have some builds that can trash Mad Queen and Nemeses in around 25 seconds, but other people might not think it’s that strong.

16

There’s definitely been 1 or 2 4.5 builds posted and a plethora of 4 and 3.5 builds posted.

17

The fact of the matter though is that there are, as Roger said, a plethora of builds below tier 2 that exist on these forums and continue to get posted here. Holding build posters accountable for the relative effectiveness of their builds is the core of what I’m advocating here.

Since you like to take things to their extremes, why are you even in this section of the forum? The whole point of the Classes/Skills/Builds section is discussion about the game and it’s mechanics outside of the game.

If you have a problem with this concept, I’d recommend going to the Ideas/Feedback forum or PMing the forum admins requesting to remove this section of the forum. I would also recommend contacting the curators of GrimTools, GrimCalc and Grim Wiki and asking them to remove their websites. Good luck.

18

Ok, I can agree on that, but how do you expect from them to be objective/reliable on the mater of giving specific tier to build when they clearly dont have enough understanding of the game to be capable of making a build that can reliably finish all vanilla game content?
Dont get me wrong your idea is nice, but imho someone who cant make vanilla viable build is not someone who can give objective evaluation of the build he or someone else made.

19

I have an idea: don’t be a dumbass

Those who want to do that on their own will do it. Others prefer their delicious hamburger.

20

Seems a little presumptuous of people then, don’t you think? It’s also even more dissuading to people (like me) from knowingly posting non-tier 1 builds.

I think, if one wanted to implement your grading scheme, it should be done as a strawpoll or something for each build so that the community, upon seeing it, can rate it accordingly themselves. (I’d have said the vanilla forum polls, but pretty sure they don’t allow that many options)

I’d post anything 2.5 to 1…assuming I posted builds anymore.