dude I wish one could give 10 hearts to one comment, I would
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Iâve given up on counting how many builds Iâve made over the years. It passed triple digits sometime between AoM and FG, and that wasâŚa long time ago.
Iâve definitely had some âkilledâ by patches, but I wouldnât say any were killed by nerfs. Bugfixes and the like have definitely resulted in a small handful of builds being slain over the years. The most memorable one to me was a Cold Cadence (ceno mentions cadence) Blademaster using 2x Mythical Dreadweavers. If you check the itemâs history on GT, youâll see its RR to War Cry was changed to ADCtH in Patch v1.1.0.0. This was done because the RR did not stack with itself when wielding two Dreadweavers, which was unintuitive. Where one may have expected to receive 40 RR on War Cry, one only had 20. Rather than rework the engine to adjust for this, Crate did the simple thing of making the item behave more predictably.
This was not a case of an item or build being too strong, just unintuitive. I have no great grudge for this change, but I do remember it - especially as I was the one to submit the bug report that got it changed. 
As I said, Iâve never had a build killed by intentional nerfs in all my time playing GD.
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Itâs not about the person. Itâs about the pattern. The pattern is exactly the same within the ARPG genre regardless of game; you can train an AI to post exactly the same thing as the OP and nobody would be able to tell the difference. Eventually, it leads to people sending personal attacks and other forms of harassment to the developers.
Claim #1: There needs to be a noticeable and large difference between the âaverageâ build and the âstrongâ build.
Rebuttal: Ultimately, the dev team has the final say on what the power level of these builds should be, especially when the game is not content-complete yet (there are plans to add more content such as dungeons and more equipment). What is the difference between an âaverageâ build and a âstrong build?â The very purpose of a metagame is to figure out what stands out among the rest. Nobody determines what is âstrongâ unless you place observable, definable metrics to test it out.
People can reasonably disagree with the builders who post the âtop 20 buildsâ meta. If you feel like your build is strong without the âapprovalâ of the top 20 meta, demonstrate your build. At the end of the day, people want to see results, which means beating the hardest content there is.
Claim #2: The OP (and other meta-chasers) are the main audience that the devs should cater to.
Rebuttal: Not only is this claim demonstrably false and has already proven to be false, but is the epitome of the negative effects that meta-chasing brings to the metagame. If you think meta discussions are bad when there are 500 viable builds? Imagine the discussion when there is 1-2 viable builds (because going back to claim #1, they and only they have the rights to determine what is or is not viable).
Claim #3: The devs make changes willy-nilly that serve nothing but to troll the main audience of the game.
Rebuttal: We have public testing. We have a forum with feedback and discussion. We already have threads on game-warping mechanics like the new potion system and the ascension altar system. Use the official channels we already have.
Calling Zantai a piece of dog excrement on Discord or on your stream doesnât count as engagement, but people confuse emojis and pre-packaged lines for substance and then pretend they accomplished something.
You donât need a magic 8-ball to determine that someone is not acting in good faith. All you need is some pattern recognition and an eye for buzzwords.
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GD is unique in the way Crate is listening to the audience. Its ok to disagree with people creating the âtop 20â list in terms of balancing, but if you see how many hours these guys are playing and testing, Iâm putting my money on them
I disagree there is any objectifiable metric to these things. But thatâs a bigger argument. More to the point, I disagree when this list is then used as a metric to influence the development of the game, by gamers who spend too much time overthinking the endgame at the expense of everything else. Everytime an OP/UP argument comes up and someone mentions âtop 20â I feel a need to take a shower.
And you can hardly find anyone that agrees with him. Here or anywhere else. Moreover, you can be certain no game designer would ever agree to this. So⌠no biggie!
Mate, you should really not take seriously anything that is said on the public toilet seats of the internet like Discord or reddit.
I care nothing for faith. Only what is being said. And because people in bad faith say stupid things, it always works out.
Focus on the thread or the topic? Seriously the topic/thread/perceived issues didnât evolve on its own like some mushroom from the soil. It was brought about by people.
To me thatâs like hitting a parked car while driving, and blaming it on my car.
Not directed at you. I quoted this section to argue the rebuttal (the fact that I have to put this speaks volumes IMO).
So here is -my issue- with this. No matter how much of a counter argument someone throws at me, I have seen changes that were asked for that had literally zero need to occur. I will admit that Iâm wrong, going forward, if changes are not associated with the past behaviors.
Any energy sustain changes (past or future) donât need to happen, build to deal with it. Not everything requires you to build into harp/tree, etc. to deal with sustain issues.
Reflect dmg, as above. Iâve lost lots of characters to it. I didnât come to the forums to have it dealt with. I dealt with it as I should have, by using components and such. Crate even gave us augments for it. My post history shows I called this out early and there was a group that was like ânon issue.â Guess which group that was.
But you really think people are going to lose optimal stats to build into this defense? That showcases the problem and there is no counter argument to that. I have no idea why Crate changed this. Even to deal with the power creepâŚyou just use more of the stat, like any other. Need more OA, well sacrifice something for it.
Host of others that dealt with Armor of the Three set, Belgo SetâŚthey were already doing the highest balanced content so why?
Additionally how do you expect to have any reasonable conversation when the below occurs?
The person didnât even attack the argument they went straight into personal attacks and that whatever I build doesnât matter. No, a mod didnât step in.
This is the reason I havenât bothered to post in most of the threads here that are asking for buffs. Inquisitor skills, soldier skills, etc are all under scrutiny yet they totally can finish highest balanced content just fine. This quietly bullies away a section of the community.
I could place well thought out arguments on why IS fine but if the conversation is going to be like how it was above, why bother?
Again, it smacks of âjust bullyâ our view into the spotlight. Thus ending in what Gnome called defeatism.
I play A LOT. You wanna play like I do? Doubt it nor would I force anyone else to do so. If this was the case there would be no argument against the changes put out by those who are playing this much.
Remember that notion of people saying they wanted the game âmore challenging?â Yeah, what happened to that? So if something is struggling then there is a challenge. Make it work with the tools available. If it canât but still clears the highest balanced content, live with that. No ARPG is made for every build to be able to survive at the tip of the sword in a subjective fashion.
The issues start appearing when you can finish the same highest content even better by not bothering to use the skill. Thatâs what we, in professional circles, call âoutdated piece of garbageâ.
I understand the point of view. But if, like I said, I was to post my argument to it, it would be laughed at and not taken seriously. Right or wrong, doesnât matter. It wouldnât even be given any serious thought. Thatâs the issue.
So if I can finish the same content without or bothering to use say BoD or CoF, could I call those skills garbage?
Thread derailment go.
If, theoretically, you would play a build obviously benefitting from CoF? Letâs go with chaos warlock for example. Youâd play it with CoF, then youâd play it without CoF and realise that without CoF the build is better. Itâs now smoother and faster without losing any damage, or maybe even gaining it from point reallocation.
That would mean that CoF doesnât do its job and isnât worth spending points on. That would indeed mean that CoF is garbage.
While CoF example is theoretical (coul you imagine, lol), thatâs how Inquisitor plays with seal as of FOA and how stormbox was since forever.
The position of âthere shouldnât be useless skills in the gameâ is not an unreasonable one. And thatâs how stuff gets improved. Remember what a joke retal builds were before FG?
Full heartedly agree with this.
On the contrary it belongs here IMO.
To clarify, because I failed to but I have mentioned this is another post
I am all for non power creep facelifts. If thatâs what youâre trying to achieve then +1.
è_Ê
Iâm an average 2k hours player of playing exclusively trozan druid and let me tell you its a total bliss 
(probably because I wont ever know what playing another build feels like but still, Iâm having the time of my life with it with exclusively trozan druid variations x) )
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Mostly feels like not getting rolled by every charging pack while having zero ways to restore health and memorizing split seconds of mirror cd. 
Druid is by far my most tortured class. 0 sustain, all glass. Swapped her from Trozan to Ludrigan eventually that survived purely by relying on pertification from Korvaak. Died to the very first FOA boss. Finally remade her into PRM Invoker build that, with modern pots, at least can take a hit. A single one.
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Trozan relies way too heavily on RNG. Iâve been playing Allagast MH for a long time, but with the two new items and the way Iskandra amy can be abused, I finally feel like a fish in water.
If I can share an opinion of someone who got pushed away from the game 3-4 years back due to constant yo-yo of power through patches based on - optically - speed runners/gdstasher buildiers posts/videos.
I love GD and want to enjoy it to its fullest however I want to ask one question to All Builders - who I really appreciate since the games existence. For people like me with very limited play time - they are lifesavers and I just pick any build which fits in my play style like visuals/skills used etc and start working towards it, farming countless hours which become weeks to get not the Perfect ones like used in all those cool videos you show, but whatever can come close by.
Now the question to all of you - when sharing your OP opinion of x/y build etc (which in a vacuum is rightfully so) do you consider the actual âCost of play timeâ for a normal player which doesnt cheat his way to a fully min/maxed character in 5 min?
Do you not consider if you spend 20-30-50-100 hours farming for items (you know the point of ARPGs) you should get that OP form of the build you are playing - that is the point of the genre.
I have had a good share of hundreds of hours literally deleted in terms of effort due to someone screaming âOPâ and Crate following suit completely demolishing certain builds.
That turned A LOT of GD fans and new comers - off, me included.
So my ask to GD builders is when posting a build/video - please do note in some way or form - how realistic is to get to that build and in how many hours.
If your build involves 8 out of 12 perfect rolled double rare MIs and 1 on a 100 perfect rolled Ascendant affixes for all your slot (which would take like 500-900 Souls and I get 5 souls per hour) - then please do call it out since that is night unachievable for non-cheating players.
That on its own really twists the perception of everyone how build power is measured - since the only actual measurement should be how many hours of grind you needed to get to that point and nothing else.
Thanks for reading.
note: Also with my ~38 years of gaming experience through all mediums I can also share that not all builds should be equal! There should always be top 10-20 etc builds, bottom builds etc.
Variety and options are king and should stay as such. Cost of power should be only time and luck if you get by rng that key affix/suffix/drop.
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If you want to make the argument that numbers should not be used as a metric in a genre thatâs about getting the biggest numbers, go right ahead and make the case. However, the best time to have made that argument was around 2 years ago when development was just starting on FoA. How do people expect game developers to suddenly change their focus and direction when nobody says anything? Some kind of Vulcan mind-meld technique?
As if anyone needs more confirmation that new developments place unrealistic expectations nobody asked for, we have the quote below:
Weâve gone from âcan beat Celestial with our current setupâ to âcan beat Celestial while also having a permanent X% increased damage taken and permanent health drain debuffs on our characterâ and anything that doesnât meet this new requirement is now garbage.
Thankfully, this person doesnât go around to our build threads that donât use these potions and calling these builds garbage, but this is exactly the mentality that chasing metas creates.
And when these TDM modifiers are removed or altered because of how much they warp playersâ expectations, they will march right here and say their builds are âdemolishedâ because their Ravager kill times went from 7 seconds to 45 seconds.
And this cycle - with exactly the pattern I demonstrated in an above post - will repeat again, with more people thinking itâs appropriate to make it their mission to personally harass the devs.
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Yes, that precisely the argument Iâm making. There is a big difference between having a large amount of data and gaining the ability to interpret it on complex systems with lots of ways for individual data points to interact with one another. It even has a name: Itâs called Combinatorial Explosion.
Not only that, but there are plenty of considerations outside the system that further skew the analysis; like builds requiring more or less piloting skills, or the fact testing is often constrained to arena formats like SR or Crucible, or to a specific boss. And even the testing methodologies being all over the place: like measuring the fastest kill time after an arbitrary number of runs and calling it a day, no concern for averages or medians, a general lack of reproducible tests by people of different skill levels, et cetera.
A top 20 tier list of build on GD isnât necessarily a bad thing. Regardless of the challenges a game like this presents to anyone trying to build such a list (iâm fully aware of that!) some small value can be taken out of it (also fully aware of that). But it in no way(!) it should be seen to such a high standard of the game state at any given time as it often is.
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The people who make the top 20 lists DO do these things.
The people who claim that their builds are destroyed simply by reading patch notes and donât bother playing / adjusting their builds post-patch DONâT do these things.
Also a reminder that computer specs matter just as much - if not more - than player skill, which is why getting objective metrics for buff / nerf targets is practically impossible outside of a small group of people who have the same specs and can actually compare two buildâs performances by having both player skill and computer performance as constants.
There was a running joke around the AoM - FG era about how one of the best builders was playing Grim Dawn on a toaster, and then Crucible times improved by several minutes for no reason other than that he bought a new computer.
Asking people to actually name a build they had that was ruined / destroyed by certain patch changes, or giving reasons why a particular weapon / item (like the Lucky Ring example that was given earlier) shouldnât have been nerfed is not an unreasonable request.
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like what?
no and no, because of two things
one being itâs again Devs that decide this, not the players, itâs the devs that set the guidelines and the devs that decide whether something is unreasonable; thatâs also why 13x perfect triple rare builds was rarely the basis of Zâs nerf decisions prior, - and possibly why Z so far has said stacked ascendant affixes might not be (for now)
You spending 100 hours obtaining 1 legend/mi combo doesnât exclude another from getting it in 10, thatâs just rng/ânot all strong combos are equally time exhaustingâ(something top20 also even began try to factor in/bonus points for ease of acquisition). And all GDS does is highlight these untested combo potentials, âsoonerâ, that was not considered by the devs prior.
*also not every build ever posted was made by GDS ofc
All builds does is showcase XY interaction, thatâs it, the interaction itself is the part deemed unfitting, and in most cases by the devs. And players that also voice that/âasks for nerfsâ does so not out of spite, but because itâs requested by devs to help maintain a balanced game.
Z has said it several times they prefer it when people share builds and feedback instead of trying to hide it away, like some lil hidden exploited gem mine. And it also causes a smoother process because of it, instead of stuff getting suddenly hammered down out of nowhere or over nerfed because less info to go on.
Iâm not arguing for those people, in case you didnât notice in my already numerous posts on this thread.
And no. The people building GD top 20 lists donât do those things⌠But Iâm tired of arguing with you.
It has been way too many years, I barely recall all the detail - but for certain a Belgo BM and Morgoneth Infiltrator were ones of those which were deflated immensely due to the above process.
I have had a couple of others in development (read: trying to get the items for them) but they were kind of nerfed hard before I came to the end hence i deleted them out of spite (i think one was some OP Necro based melee build but not sure which exactly).
Look my point is - all you said is dandy and makes sense to keep the game in some form of eliminating the extremes - but major power changes in the negative have direct impact to Players time spend farming for whatever they needed to make that build!
It is not season based live service crap which is why most GD players are here - they expect to not have their precious time investment be heavily diminished just because of skewed perception.
Yes it is not possible to expect devs or even heavy testers to start from scratch a new char every time they want to test a new build - doesnt make any sense.
But it also doesnt make sense to shout ânerf and OPâ just because a one of a 1000 chance someone endures and farms and gets by RNG all that perfect combination of affixes to unlock that power - this should be a given.
Then there are easy to get really broken outliners like the Nerfbringer mystyc which kills Celestials in 5 seconds? Why is this not on the list of OP things? This is the most broken build ever by a thousand miles. Now this is broken. But Zakull SB how that is broken - its squishy as hell, you need to farm your ass off for week (at least i did) and its really fun.
Now it seems Zakull will be butchered same like Morgo was.
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