It would appear that we’re all right where we need to be then, bickering away on a forum about a niche, outdated game genre (Diablo’s) and the niche, outdated mechanics that make it tick.
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So you’re agreeing but my phrasing was too confusing?
Chunks 1-3 : relatively a lazy river inflatable tube ride
Chunk 4: potentially but not guaranteed elevated threat that requires drastic measures vs 1-3
Yes. How is that really any different than a grindfest to farm the best possible item?
You are literally comparing numerical values, and then testing them in-game, in real time.
The only real difference between endless farming and theorycrafting is that your “farming” is done via grimtools.
You look at all the possible items available to you, and you try to realize the best “model” of the concept that you have in mind.
Once you’ve laid it out, you can go and farm these items in-game - be it MI’s, double rares, or whatever.
But to follow someone’s guide, and then to complain that it’s too easy to find BiS items for the spec seems a little unreasonable to me.
Even with GDstash…do you know how long it took me to polish my warborn warlord?
Months.
This involved testing so many different items, devotion pathings, etc. etc.
Polishing never really ends. It just yields less and less returns.
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Lol, indeed. But the fact we are all here, talking in this forum, means that all is working well and game can satisfy players for thousands of hours. Not a big number of games, that can offer you such replayable experience and also very passionate and loyal fan base.
At same time, mad respect to Dammitt for creating his wonderful tool, which is providing us with so much valuable information and help us share our ideas! 
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Hell to the yeah on this. as i’ve graduated from campaign leveler to actually sticking my toes into the miasma of theory crafting that tool is the gold standard of awe and amazement. Followed very closely by some of the great tutorial write-ups by some of the Old Guard here.
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My 2 cents:
Endgame needs balancing only in the case of UNDERGEARED builds completing CR or SR on par with the best builds.
If fully optimized build clears CR in 5 mins, whats possibly wrong??? It is FULLY OPTIMIZED!!! There is nothing to add, any tweak will make things worse, there is nothing to find for it, nowhere to progress and nothing to conquer for this character already. I mean literally what is the reason to farm CR except for demonstration? Even if does CR in 4 mins, or 3 mins or 2 mins its irrelevant. Its just the end of the road anyway. THAT IS IT! You won the game. There is no ladder (D3), no trading (PoE), the long road of grim dawn (leveling, gearing, augementing, optimizing) has been passed and the weary traveller can enjoy the final view.
The balancing is needed when it is easy to make a build that rolls the endgame with crap gears, that is true, but all 5-5:30 CR builds of forum are fully optimized and well-piloted. The result of them nerfing will bring no “solution” to endgame, but it will make builds-in-progress (99% of GD content) feel way worse, overall more like lose-lose scenario.
Not gonna lie, I sometimes found myself spending more time theorycrafting than playing the build itself.
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4-3-2 mins is literally path of exile level of gameplay, contrary to GD’s deliberate style of combat.
Also, undergeared builds completing CR? Bring me my sword, can’t have the filthy casul peasants get the ten-times-better loot than the mud-soaked campaign!
For a guy, who posted literally hundreds of builds it’s totally normal. That’s why was joking that playing your toons in game and not just theorycraft them it’s outdated concept. I also very often am creating characters with GD stash, tweak them and just leave them at my character window. If I have the desire, will take them out for a spin.
If you see my profile, I have so many builds posted, but number of not posted it’s undoubtedly much higher.
So Grim tools and GD stash are basically game inside the game!
I put 4-3-2 just for the sake of joke, but also to show that it is irrelevant once you “won” the game. In PoE there are builds worth several mirrors worth in gear and I have no complaints for them deleting ubers - the gear grind of this size is worth it. On the other hand, also I agree that PoE’s speed-clear meta solidified so hard that badly geared builds can now roll maps all the day and its way too much to the point of unenjoyment and irrelevance of build-making.
Exactly my point. They should not! But fully-geared opt builds should not have issues with it IMO and they should not be a reference for balancing.
What’s wrong is that THIS is where Zantai draws the line. He has clear ideas on what’s an acceptable time frame for a build to clear the content and anything that is blowing this time out of the water indicates to him that something is brokenly OP and needs to be tuned down to something more acceptable.
I understand this and I think its where he should change his approach. Hope he gets my ideas.
He won’t. I’m pretty much 100% sure of that. You won’t change his mind on his approach and certainly not without a better argument than you’ve come with.
You miss the point, hilariously, that Crucible is the be-all-end-all of loot modes. Completely optimized campaign farming (Roguelikes) has jack shit on (even challenger, or even aspirant) crucible loot and costs way more (keys), without netting back it’s cost.
SR is only marginally better, in that it’s part of the MC/Expansion, and it actually pays back it’s eldritch snot cost. surprise surprise.
Undergeared characters are already facing a stiff barrier when entering endgame, no need to make it worse.
Are you me from an alternate universe 
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A popular, but fundamentally flawed, view on balancing a game.
Even now, with the current game balance, we have some people upset when a build is 30 seconds behind whatever standard they’ve set for themselves because a few builds are overperforming. When “lesser” builds are posted, they are lambasted for being trash.
This mentality stifles players sharing their builds.
And we can’t just buff underperformers to meet whatever the best build is at the time. That results in massive power creep. There will never be a point where every build performs exactly the same. There’s too many variables and moving parts at play. Nor should every build perform the same in every scenario. To that end, we work towards a reasonable happy middle.
Have you actually played endgame Crucible or do you just like bitching about its drop rates?
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Boromonokli, what is the POINT of getting loot, when you have all the loot your build needed?
p.s.
Well, except for that you love playing GD so much that you always need gears for moar builds)))
Absolutely this. I have 3.4k posts in slightly over half a year and 50 builds. Too many similarities. 
Thanks a lot for detailing your position!
So you are not balancing “the game” but the “meta-discussion” around it. Its totally different approach because I as solo-player think only about game-balancing not really being concerned with meta. But now I can see that as a developer and a shot-caller you have a totally different perspective and here your methods are indeed more fitting. I should think more about this…
From what I’ve seen, posts are critique if, and only if, the author claims that that the build is capable of achieving things it cannot possibly achieve without the use of “dirty tricks”
All other criticism is aimed at optimizing the build, which imo, is the norm here.
When you share your thoughts/ideas on a forum, it’s normal to expect pushback.
A good example - recently, a person shared his concept of a DW autoattacking harra spellbreaker.
Is it suboptimal? Yes. Definitely.
Was it lambasted/mocked? No.
I like to think that we as a community are rather encouraging on this front.
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