There was that one Lit Summoner build that got Nerfed a few patches back, too.
Yes, all builds need a certain level of survivabilty, that includes maxing resistances or getting at least close to that. Not sure how that is somehow an advantage for meleers though.
That ranged / caster cannot avoid all damage by kiting does not mean that they cannot avoid most / a significant amount of damage that way while still dealing damage. Not that they always choose to…
Exception are boss fights like Log or others with smallish areas and the boss spawning mobs.
Would I mind my casters and ranged builds being a bit more tanky without sacrificing damage for it ? No, but the same is true for my meleers 
I don’t actually think that ranged < caster, to me it is the opposite
Well 3.4% is ~30K people going by steamspy. That’s not bad imo for the time required to get there.
On balance, I think it’s eternally difficult because of people. You could make really good single target, glass cannon builds viable, but then people complain it takes too long to squish trash. Make a ranged build and people don’t want to manage multiple CC and defensive mechanics actively to ensure being alive.
I.e. People want variety and challenge, but at the end of the day they really want to crush everything asap to get max loot drops.
So the compromise is most stuff works OK, really good but hard to use stuff is ignored or complained about and those that do master the mechanics complain it’s too easy.
Basically, please give us ‘Veteran’ mode for all difficulties so we can have ‘fun’ builds and ‘challenge’ builds and make both sides (a little) happier 
If you give us Veteran versions… A) Why not just make it harder? and B) People will start judging by THOSE, not the base game. We’ve already got that with Crucible. Even noobs are asking if a build is Gladiator capable, and that’s a DLC. Veteran Ultimate would be even worse. And don’t even get me started on how awful things like Mad Queen and Mog would be in a Veteran Ultimate.
I strongly disagree with you on this, there’s enough Damage Absorb skills between all the masteries that, ANY build can get some serious tankiness, hell the first build i cleared ult with was a dual pistols pyro who had 15% absorb from possession and 10k hp, his resists weren’t even capped, and this was before i figured out just how stupid blast shield was.
Arcanist gets Maiven’s Sphere of Protection, which at max rank (and I mean 26/16) gets 25% absorb at no penalty other than the energy cost. Occultist gets Possession, which is about 15-16%, plus skill disruption and chaos resist, not even including Armor of the Guardian. Shaman gets Primal Bond, which is about the same as Possession, Soldier gets Menhir’s Bulwark, which on top of Damage Absorb mitigates enemy hp reduction effects on you. The only mastery that doesn’t get any aura based Damage Absorb is the Nightblade, but even they can get 20% melee and ranged avoidance from shadow dance on top of the 85 or so DA it gives.
Believe me if you do a build right theres VERY little difference in how tanky a build is.
Agreed… Within reason. Shields make a very large difference if one of your classes is Soldier. Outside that, however, you’re getting the same AMOUNT of defenses, just in different ways. Generally people find however tanky they are comfortable being, and build for that. Sometimes that means more defenses in the classes, or the devotions, sometimes it means you instead go offensive. It’s just a matter of deciding how tanky you want to be, getting that from whatever source, and then squeezing out all the damage you can from what’s left.
Perhaps OP is being misled into thinking that “survivability” trumps “offensive” ability. It doesn’t. At least not for Ultimate. My Elementalist Grenadier wrecks through Ultimate but only had roughly 1800 DA. I have Blast Shield at level 9 (From +skills) and Flasbang+Searing Light at level 6. No damage Absorption (I took Stormcaller’s Pact) and only 9K HP. OA is 2700.
Long story short. If you stack survivability you’ll naturally have lower OA and lower damage output. It is possible to have both quite high but this requires some tinkering (min-maxing) etc. Usually you just need 1 or 2 good greens.
Yea ultimate is like veteran to my soldier piercing crossbow/ occulist pet build even Herald of the stars looks like paper cause I have pets to tank his minions. Also to my 2 hand rifle Demolitionist fire regen/ soldier physic health regen build it looks every monster looks like I was playing veteran with exception of herald of the stars and Guloth the rampaging still can’t kill Guloth lvl 84
Not counting my very first toon waaay back in the alpha, every other that followed, about 15 of them, reached and beaten ultimate Never followed a guide as well.
Don’t rush, plan carefully, farm elite if needed and you will be fine
Devotions: They vary a lot from build to build. Only two of my builds have the same Devotion route and only few rely on the same Tier 3. Would be nice, if you’d offer some examples.
Gear: You can clear Ultimate wearing full green or blue items. But yes, many builds require a certain set or certain items to perform up to their full potential (e.g. farming Nemesis/Crucible). But that’s the case with every ARPG out there.
Ranged: DW guns aren’t very popular and need a serious buff, imo. The Xpac will solve this with the Inquisitor class, I guess. 2H Rifles can do pretty well. But you really have to have the right items to make them work end game wise, I agree. But if they work, they can clear all game content, np. Trash mobs should be dead before reaching you and everything else can be CCed, face tanked or kited. The main problem is, as mentioned, that those builds are very hard to gear up for (which is again true for many end game builds).
Ranking: I don’t agree with you here. If you want to rank builds, you have to define their goals first. For example, tanky S&B builds can reliably clear Gladiator, but they won’t do the trick at farming Nemesis or MI items in Vanilla (too slow). Casters are, imo, the most versatile classes atm. They can tank a lot of damage if you skill/gear them a bit more defensively but still dish out a lot of damage. For Vanilla farming alone, I still prefer DW melee classes though (personal taste), but only few of them can beat Gladiator. Ranged classes (2H Rifle) can also beat Gladiator, but I’d rank them with DW melee in that matter, cause they are rather squishy.
I didn’t say the current difficulty was the ‘easy’ one
Really though, I think Veteran would be a slight increase on the current level and ‘normal’ an adjustment down, so that fun* builds can get through ok.
- I.e. builds that generally would be underpowered due to their ‘unique construction,’ or alternatively ‘noobness.’
Not really with my 2hand rifle build ulzin set + other items make it even not firing your weapon in ultimate kills trash mobs aka venomspines its a face leach healt regen tank commando. Gonna showcase it on build once i kill final boss and reaches lvl 85
Go for it!
Why “not really”? I said, there are 2H Rifle builds, that can clear the whole game + Gladiator. Your build idea pretty much describes, what I stated about 2H Rifle builds. Have you already killed some Nemesis with it?
That’s an absolutely stunning thing for one of the Praetorians to say.
Wouldn’t it be better for these ‘fun’ builds to just stick to elite? Most boss uniques drop on both difficulties anyways. Don’t really see the need for more difficulty differentiation.
Oh yeah? Well neither have I yet
It all works itself out. Some of us can better give them feedback on early to mid-game much better as a result of our infatuation with re-rolling constantly, and thus help improve some leveling aspects of the game for new players and give a more “sober” view of new content when played with a toon not over-tuned to the hilt. Plenty of the others are more focused on late-game Ultimate characters.
I believe even our moderator, eisprenzessin, has only just fairly recently took the dive and went into Ultimate.
It seems like there’d be an issue with a lack of perspective if you’ve never used ultimate. I get not staying there, but… At least once, so you know what it looks like, would probably be a good idea.
Praetorians are playtesters, whether that is ‘does the quest work’, ‘do doors open’ or ‘do items fall through the floor’. All of this can be tested in any difficulty.
Balance is not a single person’s view, it is an aggregate. As powbam said, some play a lot of ‘early’ game, others fine-tune endgame builds, based on what they prefer.
You need both to balance the game and one could argue that the ones doing the former are actually a lot more important, just look at the percentage of people reaching / completing Ultimate…
I agree. But if you only see 1/3 of the game, it’s hard to have a view of the whole game.
Let’s see… Ah. When I was younger, my parents insisted I watch all the Godfather movies. Not so much because they enjoyed them, or thought I would… But just so that when people referenced it, I’d get it. So I did watch them, and I do get the references now. Time well spent, but I certainly wouldn’t want to watch them all again.
Seems like there’d be value in doing Ultimate once, so that you know what people are talking about when they reference the Ultimate-level content, and you can at least understand, if not contribute.
I intend on it. One day. When I choose.
As for understanding… I’ve played more than enough of the game (somewhere over 7k hours now) and read more than enough (as well as played enough of Elite) that I’m not particularly worried about running into issues if and when I get around to it.