Did I also read in all this, that they also "nerf so people dont get bored and try new things?"
A better way to get people to try new things is with buffs and new skills and new items to bring more builds up to the same level and have people try more things out.
lol... If you are some "Im going to go online to see what the best build is and just use that" kind of player and play only what is in a "meta", then its your problem you're being bored frankly.
I mean all this is still beyond me... Just beyond me! Nerfing strong builds in a PVE game? PLAYER VS ENVIRONMENT PEOPLE! What balance you on about?
You want the game to play harder? Well, here is a thought, how about you don't go online and look for a build that took someone hrs to theory craft, figure out, test, fine tune, test again fine tune some more craft some more test some more fine tune some more till they got that result.
How about you try one of the other hundred skills in the game and see how far you go with those?
When someone figures out a build they should be rewarded for having spent all those hrs to make it finally work, and the harder it was to get it working the stronger it should be. That is how it should be period.
Any such complainer sounds like a child that got angry at someone else who put the time and work in to figure out a better build. And then more salt for them sharing it and others running that build and that build alone. Yeah, I said it. A child. Cause only a child would get salty over "that other build that is better" and start saying things as mind boggling as "nerfs" in again a PvE game.
If something is broken in the sense that it is not working as intended, then fix it. If some wacky bug is being exploited (say you do some combo of items, skills, passives, and something as broken as a casting speed increase because the skill counter bugs out hence multiple casts happen or some other broken exploit) then also fix it. Other than that, its a pve game. Its fine to have stronger builds which, surprise surprise, like someone very well put, is a smaller portion of the player base.
As for those that use online ready builds and then complain the game is getting stale.... check your logic for a second.
Each to their own ofc, I like to make my own builds, then see what others done, learn from it, re-iterate, see what i do wrong, theory-craft some more, test it out, and fine tune it to the best of my ability. I play this game way more than a casual. Much less than a hardcore though. And still don't have atm a character that can do Uber Elder. So the "this build is op, nerf it" comments are beyond me, and its a chain reaction that ultimately also effects everyone else, including players like me which i would argue are in the middle somewhere. Not hardcore enough, definitely not casual either.
Again, each to their own. You want to use ready builds? Go for it. But to complain its getting boring? Or others crying there need to be nerfs? What did you expect in a game that has so many options? Ofc someone will come up with some nice combination that is strong. Stop crying about it and nerfing to the ground every endeavour people make to figure out and create builds. Its stupid.
I have 13 characters. Not 1 or 2 or 3. 13. And 11 of them are ascendants. And over half of those ascendants are well over the 50lvl mark. A handfull are in the 80+ lvls. And one that I spend a little more time on is lvl 92 (I think, I didnt even bother to grind more xp I was to busy enjoying the other characters).
And those are mostly all from the last couple months. All the old characters are mostly gone and I pretty much done most of these from scratch mostly when Blight dropped. And I still don't have a character that can do Uber Elder. Most I got is 2 champs that can do t14-16 maps, and sometimes not even the boss on t16, just the mobs. Two are minion builds btw. And no, I did not look online. I fiddled about with my own stuff as much as I could.
Point being. I dedicated enough time into these builds and believe they more than deserve being at the tier they are at. Others spent more time, and/or currency, and/or grind/time, and deserve even better results. Any nerf to the higher ups will directly effect me too. At which point, wtf am I playing this game for? So a bunch of whiners don't feel "bored" or for BALANCE in a game that is NOT PVP!!! What are we talking about here people???
End of the day, how can anyone complain about difficulty? You want the game to be harder? You want to not be bored? How about you play one of the other 20+ ways you can play this game and try putting together something of your own?
And if you do that, id really love to see how much you would be jumping around screaming "nerf the op builds" every second day.
Still, beyond me... These people don't even play with anyone else. It just bothers them that someone else out there is running said builds? lol. Gamers today. I'll never fully understand them and tbh, I dont want to.
Making better scaled content is ok. Adding some difficulty re-balance here and there is also ok. Straight up nerfing is the easy answer and the only one that hurts the game, as all it does is annoy the people that sat there to come up with a build slapping them in the face for their results instead of acknowledging something good they achieved in the game.
And by adding harder content which I am cool with, I dont just mean slap another boss harder than the Uber Elder in as well. Like I said, me for example, and I guess a large number of players that dont run meta builds, I can't even do the Elder. No, make the rest of the content balance out nicely. My experience in this game for a long time has been "everything is ok up to a point then one-shot out of the blue"...
Its been getting better I admit, and the difficulty scales much better than it did a while back were you got some crazy surprise slap to the face from some random encounter. But still more can be done. I think there should be more ways to balance out the difficulty than just larger packs of enemies and one shot bosses with a trillion health.
Like I said, its been getting better so I think they should continue down the same path and just increase difficulties in more clever ways at times. Pretty much just go the way they are going about it, without out of the blue straight up making things reach the point were only 1 or 2 builds can handle it.
I also have to say that this is one of the leagues I have enjoyed the difficulty most, and yet I hear people saying "the game is getting to easy"... why? Did most of you saying its easy come up with your own build and found that it was an easy endeavour? I doubt it. If you did, you would be singing a new tune. All you did was jump online to see what the best meta build was, then pranced around like it was your own achievement saying the game is easy. It ain't.
Idk, end of the day, Im ok with some minor re-balancing in the content itself, to slightly tweak it. And I say slightly because its at a good place and most builds do not do end game content. Slightly harder perhaps if its just enough to give even those that reach a certain level more of a challenge but allow it to be still possible. And no nerfs.
Hoping to see how Conquerors works out. GGG though sure does listen to the playerbase however, which is a good thing, the bad part is that a large loud bunch of that player base is meta-youtubing all day long then prancing about saying the game is easy and that it needs nerfs. Those are the people we dont need to hear any more.
Yes yes, I know, "an easy game gets boring".... For the 10th time, if you do more than just a meta build, it aint easy. And the only reason the rest over time become non-viable is because the content gets so hard that other builds are useless, hence a meta is created. Slight increase in game diff here and there, is ok. Nerfs? that is a sure way to piss many people off, and seeing the complaints its more common than people let on.
Im half starting to think they are just saying its easy just for the sake of making themselves feel/look better and downplay other peopels progress, with again, is based on other peoples achievements as opposed to their own. Yes, I am sure opening YouTube and seeing a video that guides you blindly to even every passive pick and item purchase is quite easy indeed.....
p.s, an idea for some added diff btw is to increase the reflected encounters again (damage, element damage). But rework it. If we are to be able to do later content at all, we will NEED larger damage outputs, and straight up damage reflect is broken. I would say to rework it in a way that a maximum percentage of reflection does not surpass something like 50% of our total hit points in the last 3 seconds of an encounter. A quick jolt to feel our blood rolling, added with the attacks of the encounter, and it should be a nice trade off for more difficulty, as opposed to outright just oneshotting ourselves, or going on the other extreme of making damage reflection almost non existent. Just a thought.
Another idea is to integrate certain hard caps to certain bosses, damages dealt/received, damage resistances, etc, in which way a maximum output can be controlled for both damage taken and damage done, this way extremes that may seem broken can never surpass these hard caps which will hopefully already be quite high. Allowing for builds to get strong, but not too strong so as to make the game "easy"... A better way to calculate damage done to a boss could be over time as well, since multiple hits can by pass the hard cap and stack up... etc. There are ways people to make it work, not everything has to be a nerf.
Lastly, the game is not easy. I spend a good so many hrs to get finally 2 builds (1 is a minion build) and a good amount of currency that I GRINDED FOR over the years mind you (for all those saying buying items is bad, yeah what do you think I buy those items with? Portal scrolls?? ffs) are now touching T16 maps, the rest are around the T10-12-14 maps...
There should ofc be a ceiling, way some of you make it sound is like it should be endless in difficulty and not a single build be viable to make it all the way. At which point your complaints are doing nothing but burning the player base out. Not everybody can play and stream the game for 12hrs a day for months on end. We have a life too you know, one which many times we put on hold to enjoy some free time with this game. Being slapped for it aint a nice tradeoff.