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.
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.