I know. 
My point about mods and/or backpatching is highly relevant too. If you dislike balance in the latest patch you simply don’t have to play it. Demanding to reinstate unreasonably OP builds into the game does not make sense at all when you can still play them in their OP state if you so desire.
My main beef is mob powercreep two latest patches.
OP builds should be nerfed, no doubt, but monster strength increased amazingly recently. Should be toned down, really.
1 Like
Can you give me some examples please?
I searched for Fabius in Campaign, didn´t see much difference, but he is a bad example because of my build. Valdaran is indeed no pushover anymore (SR) and Zantarin I didn´t see any difference.
Father Kymon can oneshot you with his jump.
Queen triggering her aura every 1-2 seconds.
Grava and his enormous Fumble.
Fabius and his 600 DA shred. Combine with Kymon for leisure.
Maiden and her 500 Armor shred. With recent nerfs combine her with Fabius and/or Kymon too.
2 Likes
I thought, only “old” enemies were buffed? 
Well my main gripe about such topic like this is where the actual statistics are drawn from? I know and understand that for the sake of an Argument, people enjoy to generalize based on themself and their surroundings and infact, i do it myself as well. Sometimes it “can” be an good indicator for an different perspective in terms of an discussion, sure, but it’s not neccessary representative as a whole. That’s why i’m surprised to read some folks with their “Arguments” about “majority people love stuff being op… so don’t nerf otherwise you drive the people away”, and than geniunly believe that this represents the actual majority of the (core) playerbase, while they don’t have any actually “real” statistics but moreover make an assumption based on their own experience.
If we go Factual about this whole Topic, if you looked Reddit, Discord, Steam-Forum and other Social Networks, than I’d say from what i’ve seen so far and gathered, that this whole #deadbuilds and “nerf criticism” might be vocal, but from a minority. So atleast from that aspect / viewpoint / standpoint, there are People which complain loud about it, but compared with the population of said social networks it’s pretty minority which are geniunly bothered about this whole balancing situations. Most of them either don’t care, or are happy with it. Than again(and it’s pointed out many times again) the population from said Social Networks are compared to how many sold copies rather a minority already, so it’s hard to generalize that argument either. So the only thing which is left for us “User” is to argue with our own opinions and viewpoint, and maybe base about some stuff with our experience of our surroundings.
For actual real statistics, i’d say the only party which might know more than we do… is (yes you guessed it) the developers…
So from my perspective this whole “But i’ve 30-40 of people in our secret discord” doesn’t do any justice, because 30-40 people compared to the sheer amount of people who own the game is like absolute nothing. And i’d argue in such things like closed / private Discords majority (and yeah it’s pretty bold to try to draw an factual statement here… but i’d say atleast this is one of the arguments which might be more true if you look at history) of people look out for communitys which share an similiar mentality. So it doesn’t surprise me if there is a group of players which have together an discord where they are unhappy about nerfing and stuff.
/Edit:
About this whole argument of “op games without balancing are successfull for offer being op” is like to draw a strawman here, because again… there isn’t an factual statistics about what many of people loved about these games, and what they might not like. The majority of people who love BG, love it for what it was overall, but in all honesty hate the OP stuff, or didn’t even encounter it, etc. We wan’t know for sure, because there will never be an poll with all votes of everyone who ever played BG… so to draw statistics is pretty impossible.
Than again from my viewpoint out, as someone which prefer most games to be “balanced” as possible, i’d argue that an cRPG is an different stance than a ARPG anyway… because i’d argue the core appeal of an cRPG is it’s narrative and campaign. For an ARPG balancing around classes, builds and such is more vital due in ARPGs you will spent most of your time building different kinds of builds, while you might go few playthrough(if even) for it’s narrative / dialoges etc etc.
4 Likes
I think the damage was adjusted across the board. Nevertheless, it’s pretty noticable, how much harder SR and Crucible became…
So nerfing OP builds is fine, buf if you also start buffing mobs like that, no wonder the game becomes a bit… twisted.
2 Likes
Since you mentioned whining…
Sorry for the stupid old ass meme, I couldn’t resist 
Well I’m a bit torn on the matter.
On the one hand I don’t care much about nerfs. In 3 years of playing GD I had one (1) dead build (due to massive changes when AoM dropped).
I usually stay away from forum builds, especially the ones with crazy numbers and letters in the headline. Making my own pretty decent builds and seeing them buffed later on is a much more enjoyable experience for me 
On the other hand, I can understand the hardcore fans who feel emotional when their favorite thing is getting attacked (not saying a nerf is an attack, but it seems like some people feel that way). But those passionate people are also the lifeforce behind a game like GD. Imagine if no one would post and discuss all those crazy builds, the game would be dead already.
All I can say to those people is please don’t take it too seriously. Even if it’s your favorite game ever, it’s still just a game.
1 Like
Careful, only my experience. 
I haven´t seen much difference in playing SR 70/71. I had no MQ so far, otherwise it was pretty “normal”, just a bit more difficult due to nerfs to Bleeding.
Well, when Grimtools is up again, perhaps damage could be compared. There is the offline-Version (1.1.3.1 iirc) and then 1.1.4.1 online.
While I have seen a difficulty spike in the Crucible, SR was more or less the same for me. The only real “problem” I had was from Fabius who atleast for me, felt a bit overtuned.
But then again, I haven’t went up against him on 1.1.4.1 and with the spellscorched platings giving Pierce res now, and my builds having a healthy amount of pierce overcap as a result, I don’t think Fabius would be a problem atm. (They were capped at 80% before, so that could have been why I was having trouble)
Making builds and posting them and being min maxed is actually very different. The thing I love the most is creating new builds. Not that much really playing them, but just trying to go in the uncharted territories.
So do I enjoy playing really strong builds? Yes I do. But not playing overpowered builds. When Warlord was ridiculously overpowered was not playing them and was one of the players wanting to nerf them. After that I posted two Warlord builds.
So if something deserves Nerf, nerf it. If something is weak, buff it. But if I felt change was undeserved, I will say my opinion. Is this gonna be whining? I hope not and certainly if someone tells me that, I can say he is overreacting.
8 Likes
Giving feedback is always good. Complaining about Crucible times, menacing to quit or implying the community is deadening because of nerfs doesn’t help much imo.
4 Likes
Oh wow would you please share (in private of course) those secret OP builds that i’m sure no one ever even thought about ever anywhere ever so i could play me some really OP builds that the evil devs can’t nerf cuz they don’t know them pretty please?!!4
PM ME!!4
1 Like
How do you know about a build if it is secret? 
Furthermore if you talk about secret build, it’s no longer secret 
I don’t see point in that. You can always play builds and just don’t post them, you’re not obligated in any way. If you post them though, isn’t your goal to show them to the highest possible number of people? It’s pointless to hide your overpowered build in some hope it won’t be nerfed. The results of posted builds in this community reflects on patch changes, but isn’t the only factor.
Zantai have access to the builds via Steam user data, but that is secret I sworn not to reveal to anyone
This is worth mentioning. Not the discord part but the part about power craving required on the forums. Compared to vanilla GD or early Ashes of Malmouth, many old build creators no long post builds any more and not out of fear that their build will get nerfed, no, they don’t post any because it is an expectation on the forums now that your build be able to clear mid/high SR, high end crucible or superbosses.
Because the bar has shifted over time due to the change in Crucible/introduction of Shattered Realm and some members of the community, it has unknowingly had the adverse effect of coercing out what would otherwise be creative or interesting builds. Heck, back in my day you could post a build literally just to showcase a concept or idea and you’d either get feedback on how to improve it or someone else would take the same idea and refine it whilst putting their own spin on it.
4 Likes
I’m gonna do the best I can here since this thread got crazy long. It helps that there are some people in here that are simply not worth spending time responding to anymore. I’ve got better things to do than chat with narcissistic drama queens.
This is not how it works. This is not how any of this works.
Congratulations. Nobody cares. And when we get around to your “secret builds”, don’t blame me that you stayed silent.
In reality, it does, because those same players will herald across the internet how build diversity is bad because only X Y and Z are valid 4 min clear time builds and everything else sucks (read: everything else clears a few seconds slower). There are people in this very forum that called a variant of a build “mediocre” because it cleared in 5:30 instead of 5:00.
Hate to break it to you, but you are playing the game exactly as we intend the moment you start it up. Every item, number and skill was put there by us and the synergies were created by us. And we will continue to cultivate that garden of possibilities we’ve created and pull out the issues so that everything can thrive.
What builds do they have to respec?
You sure seem to know a lot about what those people think. Can we get their number? We’d like to speak to them too.
Game’s higher reviewed than ever. Must be the paid shills…
Superfluff hasn’t left. He’s mostly just fed up with how elitist some people on this forum are. Which is a sentiment shared among “many” (see? I can do that too!) people actually, but yeah, the pro builders are the poor souls being mistreated by the evil devs and their nerfs that are clearly made to target you specifically, because we follow every little thing you do out of the hundreds of thousands of GD players.
Superfluff still helps out with new patches though, which nobody appreciates anymore since some of you are too busy shitting on Praetorians cause you think Praetorians decide game balance.
Literally lol.
It’s been 7 years, dude, we’re not senile yet.
Brilliant balance proposal. Bet you thought that through a lot in your armchair.
Lol, which is shockingly why players aren’t in charge of making games.
Apart from Fabius, which we partially reverted, none of what you said is recent and has been that way for months/years.
I would be sympathetic to this debate if it wasn’t for the fact that every balance patch, every…single…patch, includes more buffs than nerfs. New possibilities are created, old ones are brought up to new standards, and yes, overperformers are brought back to the middle where they belong so that the overall game can thrive.
Some people are upset that set items get changed because “you’re not playing the game the way we want”. The irony there is that your desires stifle creativity because we made certain set items too versatile. The blame ultimately falls to us since we made the items, but being shocked that we later address such an issue when the game is still alive and kicking just seems silly.
Set items are intended to fulfill a particular playstyle. When they become too effective in general, then why even have non-set items. A fine example of this was the Invoker set which could be turned into a top-tier build without even using the skill it was made for (PRM). Its stat distribution was too good for generic use.
You guys are sick of nerfs? Well I’m sick of people joining us at year 10 of the game’s development and presuming to tell us how to do our jobs. But here we all are and nobody’s banned yet. So let’s all be one big misfit family and stop arguing around the thanksgiving table for just one moment to enjoy each other’s company.
I feel like a broken record, but I suppose that became my lot in life when I chose to engage with the community. You can either work with us to achieve a better balance in the game, or you can cry about it when we make changes without your input. Regardless of which path you choose, the game will still be here, it will still be well received and it will still continue to get updates as we see fit for the best game experience we can cultivate.
46 Likes