Well, that is technically a correct answer. But that is kind of like saying the point of every business is to make money.
I am not asking for convenience or to be lazy. What I am asking for is for them to make as many builds as possible, balanced and viable.
Would you call that an unreasonable request?
No. Has birbs been nerfed to the point of oblivion?
^This isn’t meant as a rhetoric btw. It’s a genuine question
But that is kind of like saying the point of every business is to make money.
That is not correct. Non-profit companies exist. 
Would you call that an unreasonable request?
Yes. When it comes to Super Bosses/Deep Shards.
It shouldn´t be possible for only a very few builds but it is (for me) perfectly reasonable if not every build can make it.
No, they still roflstomp everything.
No idea, because GoG.
But since the Idea was to make them easy to kill and I was relying on them being hard to kill, 2 of my builds did get hit somewhat. But that is not my concern at this point nor do I think the nerf will make Familiars weak enough to push them into forgotten status.
Well, I never said Companies, I said Businesses. inb4 someone says non-profit businesses 
And then we disagree. And I am not talking about some weird build that even struggles in Normal of Main Campaign. But if it can farm the Crucible and get to say 75 of SR, then I see no reason why it should get absolutely destroyed against just 1 enemy.
Thank you, I think this question is much more interesting! First I need to give the annoying answer that the vision is not a static thing, and also that while I’ve talked with them I might have some things wrong, an incomplete picture, and cannot actually speak for them and don’t mean to. I also don’t know how polite it is to try and speak about what someone else said in private conversation so I can only give more general answers… I know this seems like a diplomatic political answer but it’s the only comfortable way I can approach this question which is about someone else’s vision. I think it would be best if Zantai himself answered this if he had the time or interest to.
I think I can say that the game was initially intended to be a lot harder and slower and require a more methodological approach at the beginning. Back in the days where some zombies could one-shot squishier builds haha.
But the vision has evolved over time. I think any game designer, in this case Crate as well, struggle with what they themselves want to create and enact in the game, and balancing that with what the community demands of them. And over time I think we’ve all witness them coming around to the latter more, but not fully.
Not trying to dodge your question so about end-game specifically: The end-game of GD has always been to reroll a new character. That’s why the campaign is so developed and why there are so many ways to tackle it.
(Side note: In my personal opinion this has always been the true end-game of ARPG’s, finish your char ‘enough’ and make a new one)
I believe Z has on record said that it is intended that you can reasonably “finish” a character in GD.
It’s intended that the builds that excel in Crucible to be differently than the ones that go super far in SR, with there being some obvious overlap between the two.
It is not intended to make all class combo end-game options equally good.
Anything past shard 60+ is sort of the “anything goes” zone in terms of “don’t ask for buffs if you’re past here.” It’s not intended for there to be as many builds to be able to do this as there are builds that can do crucible gladiator. This is because 60+ is where it gets harder than Crucible.
It’s also intended that the extremely bad outliers and extremely best outliers are tuned more toward the middle so that the gap between the top builds and the very top builds isn’t super dramatic.
And yes, at some point balance support for GD may stop and we’ll have a final meta.
As for super bosses, they are not intended to be beatable by all top builds. As in, a build that can do Gladiator 150-170 isn’t supposed to just be able to do a super boss. Some of them can be refitted to accomplish it, but it’s fine if not all of them can.
I apologize in advance if I misrepresented anything.
It’s entirely reasonable. I am just letting you know that that’s not what the celestials were designed for. They don’t consider “can’t do celestials as unbalanced or unviable.” Celestials are catered more to the population of players that want something that not all their builds can beat, that they have to figure out how to gear and whatnot to kill. If you can convince them to change this then power to you I guess?
Please don’t take this as my stance either. Viability is more around ability to feel good through main campaign as that’s what the vast majority of players experience.
Thanks for your reply.
Let me turn this “do not ask for buffs if you can do +60 SR” then what is the reason behind nerfs? It indicates to me that there at least some vision in terms of build diversity. If there is one build singled out to make +80 SR that is something that speaks against both build diversity so nerfs are good in that sense.
I mean, the only thing I can tell you about that is it is a bad designing philosophy if that is the case. Also, I think this is the only game I know of that does it on purpose, if true.
I haven’t played TQ though and don’t think Blizzard devs ever mentioned that they designed stuff specifically like that on purpose (talking about diablo)
I think I addressed that earlier. In the range of potential build performance (damage, tankiness, clearspeed, etc.) the outliers are not supposed to be too far from what other builds are lower down on the hierarchy. This is not an exact science and is somewhat intuitive but very much based on the gaps between certain builds at the top as well.
For example you might have two builds that do shard 88. But maybe one does so with many deaths on the way and the other can do it feeling completely safe the whole way. This is frowned upon when this high up is already an outlier. But that doesn’t even mean the safe build needs to be made unable to do it or something. A trade off like speed getting there for that safety can make sense, like Octavius.
The problem here is that it is SO multi-factored man. I think this is why a good way to look at buffs/nerfs is trade-offs. But even that isn’t enough to consider. You have to consider, are the two classes naturally synergetic? If so then they should get a bit more range toward the top to perform well, to reward players for seeing synergy and capitalizing on it. (Good builds should be intuitively so, while it’s also fun and encouraged that some other weird zany genius build designs that are un-intuitive maybe can make it to the top.)
Is the gear near impossible to get (lives and dies on proper MI rolls, high rolls)? Then it’s probably allowed more room to lean toward “OP.”
But back to trade-offs (aka the soldier problem LUL). Generally you have ability to survive, ease in that ability to survive, ability to clear quickly, ease in piloting to clear quickly, ability to do high single target dps, ability to clear crucible, ability to clear SR, speed in clearing campaign (shadow strike spellbreaker and vanquisher vire’s might builds might not be top tier in challenge content but they can farm specific campaign bosses faster than anyone due to mobility), ease of acquiring items, etc.
Being strong in some areas is meant to come at a cost in others. More synergetic builds will get leeway to be good in more areas but it shouldn’t be a king of everything. Ideally squishier stuff would deal more dmg or have more crazy AoE. Tankier stuff would clear more slowly. But again these are generalizations and other factors are weighed in.
As you said, if we ended up in a scenario where pretty much every build was hitting SR75ish and hitting a wall, but all of a sudden a build comes out that is hitting 90. That would certainly be considered a nerf. But even then you’d have to look at how it does it. Does it crawl on the way there? Taking multiple times longer to do it than every other build? Maybe it’s not as egregious then.
So reasons for nerfs aren’t just for SR though. Crucible DOES matter to the devs. I mean they did make it lol. I think the vision is to bring things closer to 7 minute clear times as top tier. (and if SR drops absolutely shit on crucible’s too much then it’ll get tuned or Crucible’s brought up I’d imagine).
Finally there are some nerfs that players don’t tend to like:
Thematic nerfs/nerfs of things that are simply not performing as intended.
Take starpact which was basically picked by every single aether build in existence despite not being the aether exclusive. Some players might find it cool but this is not ideal from a dev standpoint I think. Some might say “Just buff reckless power!” But the Devs might feel reckless power is actually strong enough, it’s just that the other skill is stronger and also offering something that cuts into the territory of reckless power for aether builds (CDR) so a penalty was added (conversion to cold) to make it function for its intended build types. Oh and by the way, that did open some cool and funky aether to cold builds.
So while I broadly stated above stuff that goes into nerfs, there’s also just cases where changes are made so something works the way it is themed to.
Finally, they’re only human and they do care a lot about the community. More than I think they get credit for. If the community is absolutely united in something by a large majority, then even if the devs may personally think otherwise or like otherwise or whatever, it goes under extremely strong consideration and from what I’ve seen they tend to be giving in these circumstances.
And also about being only human, sometimes they try things in balance changes that just didn’t go the way they intended it to, or went too far… it happens.
Thanks again for detailed reply. Very much appreciated
I mean, the only thing I can tell you about that is it is a bad designing philosophy if that is the case. Also, I think this is the only game I know of that does it on purpose, if true.
You never played WoW, did you?
1st Naxxramas, Sunwell Plateau, Lich King Hardmode…content only a very few people could succeed in (till it was relaunched or heavily nerfed).
Do you know Wizardry VII?
I avoid games with subscription model like the plague.
Also, never heard of Wizadry until now, but googling it, not my kind of game.
Hence the “I know of” in my post that you quoted
All I want to say (and possibly Adoomgod, too) is that it isn´t automatically “bad design” if such things are implented.
I (and to a lesser degree you) am a curiosity of GD players. I only play Bleeding builds and till FG I only had exactly 1 toon I played (with over 1.500 hours). Most of the people here enjoy playing Grim Dawn with testing a lot of builds. When one is “finished”, build another one. One build can´t succed in anything? No problem, I build another one who will be better suited.
and adoomgod has 110 or so legit level 100 chars. I have 14 :rolleyes:
But you did mention that Blizzard changed the stuff from WoW though. Unless I misread that. That is kind of what I want here too.
I (and to a lesser degree you) am a curiosity of GD players. I only play Bleeding builds and till FG I only had exactly 1 toon I played (with over 1.500 hours). Most of the people here enjoy playing Grim Dawn with testing a lot of builds. When one is “finished”, build another one. One build can´t succed in anything? No problem, I build another one who will be better suited.
Sure, both are fine. But considering that the over performing builds get nerfed, nothing wrong with buffing the under performing ones too. I do realize that it is easier said than done given the sheer number of variables, but my point was that if a certain build, mastery or anything clearly under performs in a particular area, it deserves to be looked into.
It’s like 120 now I think.
About half are legit. It used to be more but I GDStashed a lot more in FG testing. I played a lot of multiplayer, and I did trade a lot online with strangers in the past so I’m sure some of my legit chars are compromised. But as far as I’m concerned if I didn’t stash it it’s legit.
Crucible farming as well gives so much damn gear, and farming SR I have more gear to finish characters with than I can keep up with frankly.
If I get the time I plan on doing a youtube series to determine how long it really takes to gear a character, starting from a beginner build.
I feel like people assume my # of characters is a badge of honor or something. I’m just proud of my collection and it’s more a testament to the amount of different kinds of characters I’ve played than any actual skill. I’m a horrible build crafter.
Yeah I wanna do that too. I did with the RoH Vindicator before Xmas. It was pretty fun actually.
But you did mention that Blizzard changed the stuff from WoW though. Unless I misread that. That is kind of what I want here too.
Till I quit after Wrath of the Lich King they didn´t exactly change it.
Naxxramas was taken from game, so even after you have leveled up and wanted to play it with stronger (too strong for the content) characters it wasn´t there anymore. They recycled the content in another expansion.
Both others were nerfed to death at the end of an expansion/after a new expansion came out. Then everybody could beat this content…everybody who knew the basics of the game like “Don´t stand in the fire!”.
Do you really want the Super Bosses taken down by every build (and yes, I mean every) in about 6 minutes?
But considering that the over performing builds get nerfed, nothing wrong with buffing the under performing ones too. I do realize that it is easier said than done given the sheer number of variables, but my point was that if a certain build, mastery or anything clearly under performs in a particular area, it deserves to be looked into.
I think Crate is doing exactly that. But if it comes to Super Bosses they don´t have to. Because there are builds who can beat it. There are mods which let you create the toon you need in 30 minutes if you e. g. want to have the Achievement.
Well Maya, here we agree! If a mastery is under-performing almost across the board that could definitely use a look over to see if it’s just not as supported by other classes in itemization or if its internal kit is lacking in itself (though all classes are not made equal due to earlier vision of the game having to evolve).
The quality of life love Demo’s have gotten is definitely a nice step forward!
But I think one can’t say all under performing builds need buff because some builds are just… bad. Not that that is what you meant. Classes that don’t synergize well (battlemage) shouldn’t be as strong as ones that do imo. But I’m not saying they couldn’t use a buff in places either (poor spellscourge, still not there yet!)
I guess where we differ is I’m okay with some masteries being more complimentary in nature and others being more of a power-house in of themselves. Even if it means some masteries will be a bit worse in-of-themselves it gives them their own unique flavor to play. (Occultist?)
But yes there are still definitely some extreme outliers on the bad side of player performance that requires more love, but we gotta keep writing about it and providing evidence to get it some attention. Iskandra and Clairvoyant set changes have hurt them indeed. I’m not sure Iskandra had to lose the cdr on the amulet but it does feel like the set needs… something serious. Maybe it could be a glassier dmg set.
Clairvoyant is heading in an intriguing warlock direction but is still lacking. So yeah for sure while some of the top end is being nerfed we still have some bottom end stuff that could use support. Now that melee has lost some life-steal and dmg it’s probably not done being shored up defensively. Two handers are still… a bit all over the place in terms of good/bad.
I… well, I can’t find anything to argue here 
Can the said build Complete the Crucible atleast once within a round of Blessings? then yes, I do.
But not in 6 minutes. More like within an hour or so. I don’t mind if they have to chug potions like crazy or use every single consumable available to do so, but I am against simply locking it out.
Just realized Callagadra can be kited all the way to town to get killed by the guards if you are patient enough. Don’t know if they will fix the leash range or already have, but that was unexpected…