Tangent 1: how many “top” builds don’t use lv 94 items anyway? If “most” players don’t even reach level 100, do they even ever get to farm their way to a top build in the first place just to find it nerfed?
Tangent 2: what even is an unrealistic GDStashed build nowadays? Even a full set of specific ascended affix probably takes less time than what farming a single double rare with specific affix used to take. Doesn’t feel like there’s truly any build that’s unreasonable to achieve.
Could you tell me which ones?, since up to this day this is still a mystery to me
Sentinel, Logh and… i always forget the third 
These are the big 3.
But iirc, there are other enemies with mind control .
I love you people.
“The builds constantly get nerfed”.
No, they aren’t, they keep getting buffed if anything.
“Well, I had a number of builds I played getting nerfed”.
Show us GT then.
“Well it was so long ago I don’t have GT links”.
Too bad, describe the builds at least.
“I’m not going to describe any builds”.
Amazing, high quality discussion we’re having here.
Magi rings.
Don’t think there’s any grand conspiracy here. If you provide reasonable feedback and it happens to be within the realm of what Z thinks is reasonable then it may happen. This is the result of just learning how to provide feedback over the years and having 99% of it “ignored”. If you’re asking for something that completely goes against any design decisions or visions for what the game should be according to Z, then it’ll get read and that’s that. If enough people ask for something it may get implemented anyway, apparently.
What about my long description of farming for hours for Chthonic Seals over the years only to have their drop rate buffed did you not understand? Wasn’t talking about builds at all. Was talking about devs listening to certain people and taking action based on that. Are you going to deny that Chthonic Seals drop rate got buffed? Are you going to deny that Oleron’s Blood now costs way less Chthonic Seals?
It is way more than a coincidence that the buff occurred right after I read a forum thread of essentially someone whining about Chthonic Seals and Oleron’s Blood in particular. Too bad someone can’t wave a magic wand and give me those hours back.
Unless something has changed I would say Alkamos rings too.
Anything requiring kilrian’s shattered soul 
are you going to pretend that post you saw was the cause and singular request asking for it, or ever?
→
seal drop rate has got to have been one of the most bitched about through the years, besides for eyes, likewise cost of XY…
it did not get changed because 1 “in” person/the correct inner circle person finally posted …
Damn people are getting permanent dev responses? Best I’ve managed is a temporary one!
I went ahead and looked at RektbyProtoss’ streams to see if I could find the heated discussion that the OP was referring to. Throughout the 3 streams related to Pierce Runekeeper, there was a bunch of “look at these Grimtools” and “what is the best build,” but they seemed to be mostly focused on “can X build beat all the content without being super sweaty and almost dying all the time,” which is a far different tune from “if it takes longer than 1 minute to kill Ravager, then the build is garbage.”
If that was the intent, and I misinterpreted the posts, then I’m sorry. Zantai had shared recently an incident where people were harassing him through emails and Steam, and the carry-over from that has made things testy. The thing I’m trying to warn about is the new, unspoken expectations where just because 1-2 builds reach a new benchmark, that becomes the new baseline where people now judge builds.
If we use the old standards of, say, beating Ravager in 1-2 minutes, there are tons of builds that can do that, even the ones that were “destroyed” by nerfs. But assuming that any build worth its salt can beat Ravager in 7 seconds is really setting people up for disappointment.
I don’t have an f’ing clue!!! I only know what I observed. For all I know the poster is the brother in law of the main dev. Or for the single public posting there were thousands of private messages. I would assume that you no more know than me.
All I can do is observe what happened. If my conclusion of the cause and effect of the events is wrong so be it. But I still have a right to my opinion.
Correlation is not causation. I wonder when this is going to be universally understood.
On the other hand, it is entirely reasonable and even desirable to expect that developers reason through player feedback and some (some!) decisions are made based on it. It’s what whining players like to call “listening to the community”. You can (usually) tell a whining player when they use those words…
There are too many levels of dissonance in this whole narrative of submissive devs. Devs must listen to the community but – imagine that! – they must not act on it. If they act and that action isn’t what they expected, it’s because of a nebulous secret society of other players somewhere pulling strings. Not only is this asinine thought pattern present in pretty much every game ever developed that requires continued maintenance and forms a community around it, but people pushing it don’t realize how contradictory and self-serving they actually show themselves to be. A good decision by the devs is only a decision that serves them or otherwise doesn’t affect them. Everything else is a conspiracy.
it’s a cumulative effort…
like i also told you how eyes drop got increased too, twice? (actually thrice if we count troves i suppose).
It’s not an inner circle/privilege thing, it’s a “someone bothers to post enough about and or provides adequate data/reasoning to tip the scales”
Which is also exactly why you see the same request that gets one banned get implemented by “another”, or something that gets the wall of Z chipped at over years, like XY material or item drop rate (alkamos rings used to be 0.5%, and magi ring got doubled from 5->10% remember?). Zantai might reject something the first 399 times, but relent the 400th time because things have changed by then/“the game is in a different state now”…
Half the nerfs that’s happened since FoA release didn’t even happen from the “inner circle” on the forum, they happened because of people on Steam complaining FoA was too hard… - because Zantai also listens to posts on Steam too…
When class affixes got changed Z sure as sht didn’t give anyone special privilege, and nuked them regardless, and if anything took the “lurker’s”/less frequent poster’s side when deciding to keep certain magick affixes; largely for levelling benefit/concerns(despite others wanting them removed)
4 if you count blowing legendaries. I haven’t been involved with this game as long as you have but wasn’t there a mechanic in the early days where components came in parts like TQ? Were Eyes like that too? I couldn’t even imagine that…
Components yes (like the aforementioned furtive Kilrian’s Soul), but Manticore Eyes, Ancient Hearts, etc. were always one piece. (Though the amount of them required to make things has no doubt fluctuated)
eyes are a rare mat, those never came in partials afaik? atleast (2017)
Blowing up legends also didn’t change i think, or rather i don’t recall their rates increasing atleast, just that it was fixed it couldn’t drop AoM comps.
Troves was a big change, since it went from non 100% chance of 1, to 100% chance of 2 mats now
But Eyes was also increased, because dozen requests in recent years i guess, so i’ve legit not felt the need to farm them unless i fuck up, since just running pine barrens/immolation through levelling has a decent ratio from champions too
(pretty sure Eyes now have the 2nd highest rare mat drop ration from regular mobs, next only to Seals)
I think some Chinese players posted pet builds that can beat Ravager or similar in less than 20 seconds. As a result I read a post from Z about pets being ‘too durable’ and that the situation would be addressed in September release. If I am misrepresenting something here I sincerely apologize because I am going from memory. At my age ----- dangerous.
This disappoints me because I have never ever ever ever defeated Ravager in less than 3 minutes! Exclusively pet builds and HC mode. I am always thrilled at defeating him or Calla and consider that to be the milestone for my character being ‘finished’. Just because someone has a GD Stash giga build with giga potions, giga affexes, giga reflexes, and giga piano skills shouldn’t mean that ALL pets get a big fat nerf (and to be fair maybe they won’t). But I am aware of the fact that I have zero (or less than zero) chance of affecting this in any way, shape, or form.