I see SR75 in the OP, do you not? Or do you argue that SR76 is dramatically harder, which it isn’t.
If the OP said that they all cleared SR90, I wouldn’t have said anything about their strength. I will admit, that, watching the videos in depth, they’re stronger than I initially believed. But I still think SR75 is a poor test of “top builds”.
For the point about specific builds, it’s less that I’m saying “This build needs to be here,” more that I’m saying "you’re acting so authoritative, and you don’t even have the guts to say “it was a while ago, I don’t remember.”
This is a more interesting opinion I’d rather listen to. I’d frankly love to see a debate on this.
Gnomish’s rebuttal:
mad_lee’s rebuttal:
As you can see here, the problem is that selecting SR 75-76 to be the best criteria was just their opinion (which sadly isn’t reflected well with the thread title’s typo, “An Onion”, as pointed out by eardianm). It was never presented as “gospel” like you claimed.
Feel free to do your own tests that use SR 90 as criteria for “strength”. I would genuinely love to see something like that. As for the majority, I think they’re more practical so they’d rather test on 75-76.
Anyway, I downloaded and tested the CT Druid. It exceeded my expectations, if not my Spellbinder. I got blown up by Ravager, but I (almost) never bother to use consumables, so it might have something to do with that. I still don’t think it’s as strong as many builds I’ve played that aren’t on this list.
I assume somewhere above the level of effort to produce this was months came up again (and cowards like me dropped out partially through), but no one is preventing anyone else from putting in all the legwork, finding like minded individuals to agree on criteria, and then come up with their own rankings. If you’re asking for detailed discussion on why each piece of gear was chosen across 40+ builds, you’re not going to find it. It’s impractical and not good for anyone’s mental health to dump the 3-4 months worth of discord text into here, and I asked an AI and it told me it’d rather stare into the sun than summarize it. However, you can always count on lee to make build threads with that kind of detailed info so that he can glaze his own builds appropriately.
I cant kill Calla with half of The stated builds (at least without kiting). Also if i would create build like acid dervish with grimtools i would never believe in its greatness to start leveling it. Much of the presented builds require great skill and awareness to reach even half of their effectiveness. And also this list is very outdated, authors by their own created way more potent and interesting ones. Thats my onion.
The OP presents the top of the top based on ratings given objectively by others in the given circumstances (challenges) and doesnt have anything to do with the idea that these would be the only viable builds.
Powerful but sadly not top20 powerful, you can test them toe to toe and see for yourself.
Wat
Because its pointless to farm a place that gives you the same rewards while facing harder enemies.
Its your choice to play the game on a controller, but be aware that playing with a controller means gimping both your piloting skills and your build’s capability. The idea of the top20 is to showcase top powerful all arounder builds with razor sharp piloting skills. Sure any of these builds could push deeper SR, but it will come with the sacrifice of damage output which isnt the point of the presented builds.
So basically you are comparing your friendly controller builds with builds that are designed to showcase maximum performance under the circumstance of impecable piloting with non delayed reactions.
Well, given the (questionably named) convenience category, it doesn’t seem like you’re correct on that. And if convenience is a criteria, as they indicated, then any build that I can make work should get max scores for convenience.
And if not, then imagine how high my builds would go with perfect piloting… hint: better than I can pull off. Either way, I have a point.
As I said, I believe it’s a more reasonable test of “top” builds than SR75. You wouldn’t put performance against campaign enemies as a test of top builds, even though it’s something that people do have to do, and do use the builds for. For “top” builds, I think SR75 is also an underwhelming test, although obviously not to the same extent as campaign enemies.
Dude, I’ve argued with mad_lee. You’re absolutely fine. (Not perfect, but fine.)
The ratings in that category are based on what the OP already mentioned but at the same time, the ratings were granted by comparison to the other contenders. Last but not least, sure its a category with ratings, but at the same time it doesnt carry the most weight.
Some of your builds would probably get a big score, not necessarily max, for convenience, but they wont get high enough scores in the offense and defense categories to make it to the top by comparison to others.
Again the idea is to showcase the performance of the builds by further showcasing how they act in certain challenges that dont pose diminishing returns. For example:
for SR the ceiling where rewards are at its best is SR 30-31, so youd wanna make a build that can farm these shards fast and safe. At the same time its an ultimate test for groups tankyness with totally random encounters.
crucible is a pin point farming location that usually tests how effective your build is durring CC storms and also group tankyness, AoE and single target potential, reflected by how fast you get to run it. I should mention it reflects both build capability and player piloting skill.
celestials are the ultimate single target dps and single target sustain test. If your build has enough of those or a good ratio between the two, it will manage with close to no kitting.
Regarding SR, anything above SR 30-31 is mostly everyone’s preference and an opportunity to show off and nothing more. You wont get better rewards from those shards instead you will have higher risk of losing better rewards and wasting more time. Last but not least, anything about SR36 already means you’ll sacrifice damage for survivability and you’ll play a lot more defensive thus being even less farm efficient with the purpose of…you name it.
I can guarantee that any of the shown builds in their current version, can run SR 36 without big issues, but it is pointless, however, if future patches will bring us a reward system that makes pushing shards worth the effort I can guarantee you will see some changes in the rating system.
While the builds are mostly tuned for quick farming in farmable content we still wanted to build tanky enough where higher SR is doable. Builds are meant to be allround and good in any content; quick farming in SR or crucible, celestials and higher SR. For this they require to score both good single target & aoe damage while maintaining tankiness. I would say that most of the time we always try to build in a way where the builds are capable of clearing SR90, but maybe not while chilling out gaming with a controller Evoker SR 36 Korba SR 36 Ludrigan SR 36 Vanquisher SR 36 Diviner SR 36 Blind Assassin SR 36
and @romanN1
That all sounds very good, although I still disagree about some stuff. Having seen your points, I don’t really want to argue about strength and testing; I don’t disagree with you that much anymore, at least not in a way that would be productive. And I’m giving myself a pat on the back for not entirely trying to get in the last word for once.
I do still think that: 1, you should, in the OP, clarify the state of greens in terms of your testing: to what degree they’re perfected, and how many greens are required for a build to be qualified. Just say something like “all builds have at least 3 greens, which we farmed the **** out of before testing.”
2, You should have a link to link to the build guides in the OP, since you say that every build has a full guide written by one of you.
Because all the chosen builds have 2+ greens, even when there may be slightly more powerful options available. Not that I disagree with greens - they’re great - but it does look like they’re effectively a requirement.
I’ve played GD since Early Access, so I understand where the superstition around “green items” comes from.
I don’t even agree that some of the affix combos up there are easy to acquire or sometimes even “realistic”.
But saying “2+ greens” in general is a difficult “requirement” to meet, then you need to get out of GT and farm more.
I know you’ve been away for a while, things have changed a lot since then.
To the point where the game is actually quite different and a lot of pre-1.2 build knowledge is meaningless.
Sometimes they are. I am currenty farming the **** out of this game to make the Acid Rta Sentinel work (updated by mad_lee on his YT). I farmed for many hours (probably even days at this point) and I am stll missing both green rings & belt with proper affixes. For this build they ARE essential to reach high enough OA and cast speed aswell as getting the skill modifiers
I had just clicked on that and that one in particular seems rough. Especially with cast speed and OA being tied to specific affixes, essentially. And that claw, damn.
into: 
