So I was checking all the great builds posted by the community trying to make a collection of builds with as varied gameplays as possible, and I was really surprised and amazed by the sheer quantity of powerful builds. No, there is the neverending question of what is a powerful build, but for the sake of the discussion, I’ll refer to the commonly used tags, [c], meaning (if I’m not mistaken) finishing Crucible 150-170 (with buffs), and [sr], meaning consistant SR 65-65 farming.
For every single classe combination, there was a lot of different playstyles possible, and while yes, some combinations struggle for some gameplay types, there are generally at least some diversity, be it as small as DW melee versus 2H melee.
Well, some classes are not this lucky, and Saboteur especially seems to stand out. The immense majority of builds are…DW melee. Mostly Cold, sometimes Chaos, mostly Fire Strike, sometime piano.
I’ve searched quite a while, and I have find 2 non-DW melee Saboteur build guide, which are very special since it’s a Rimetongue build and a Retal build :
Now, I won’t pretend that I know every single Saboteur build. In fact, if anyone can point me toward another non-DW melee Saboteur build, I’d be very happy.
Even some reknowned “weak” classes have multiple playstyles available at that power-level.
Battlemage has DW Melee, 2H Melee, AAR, even Spellscourge Blade Arc.
Deciever has DW Melee, DW Ranged and Caster.
I’ve check every single class combination, and Saboteur really seems to be the most pigeon-holed. Another outliner is Warder. Despite the class being deemed powerful, it’s mostly flavours of 2H Melee, with some Retal Shield and Retal Caster too. Now the difference is that there are Blade Arc, Cadence, Savagery, Primal Strike, Forcewave builds, and more. So the gameplay difference is there, if small, due to the base skills behaving differently.
Again, it’s just my personal observation, and maybe it’s just that the builders have not discovered some hidden gems among all the possibilities, have not published a guide, or that my observation is biased due to being mainly based on the Build Compendium X. If you happen to know some builds that offer different gamplays for Saboteur in particular, I’d be happy to learn about them.
But yeah, despite Fire Strike being reknowned as being the most powerful auto-attack replacer for ranged, no Ranged Fire Strike builds. Also, conversion seems to strongly favor Fire to Cold, and not Cold to Fire. And despite Nightblade and Demolitionist sharing Pierce damage, I see no piercing builds. 
What do you say? Is my observation incomplete? Or is Saboteur really in a bad place when in comes to build diversity at high power-level?
