Moment of reckoning

At what point in the game (which boss / encounter / dungeon / level) do you decide whether your ‘experimental build’ is going to work or not? Or you plod on regardless determined to make it work?

Is it just to beat Ult Log or adding Nemesis and Bourbons

I was think a long a linear progression to Ultimate I guess. My point is that, regardless of your goal, there must be some point in the game where people think, “Nah this won’t work.”

I think if you can beat Elite Log you’ll be able to make the build work through Ultimate to the point of reaching Log. Beating Ultimate Log is another step up. If you can beat Ultimate Log then probably everything else can be made to work too.

Depends on how you define “works”. Remember that some builds may have high gear requirements, which means they won’t “work” for a while if you set the end all be all as your goal (Ultimate Log). This also favors overpowered builds, while some builds may be able to do it but with more careful planning/gearing/playing, but can’t necessarily farm him.

I would rather define how far a build goes and what its pros/cons are. One of my favorite builds in DII was Tesladin and that build was traditionally perceived as relatively weak due to lightning immunes and scaling issues later on, but by God was it fun to play.

It’s usually hard to tell before lvl 75 because some late game items make a huge difference.

If you can run BoC under 15 min at 75, then the build works. Enraged Shar’Zul is a great litmus test for new builds.

Elite Loghorrean.
You can make pretty much any build work with enough good items, constellations and skill point respecs, so I don’t see reaching max level as critical to making a good build work. Slap enough BiS items on it and you can salvage most builds.
Based on the fact that I don’t like to overlevel or overgear my characters, how well a build does against Elite Loghorrean pretty much tells me how well it will do in ultimate/end game content.