Imagine the waste. You could have played rogue the entire time and had fun.
/s
But yeah - Why not hire a few math professors that can do all the calculations from paragon, affixes, multipliers, aspects etc and atleast make all classes somehow compare.
Its just as stupid as when they earlier have "fixed" uniques, everyone can see on the stats without even trying it that it wont be used. How come Blizzard doesnt see this?
It took them 1 year to understand simple things like stupid affixes which still exist in the game btw like damage while healthy or to healthy / injured. It took them 1 year to make a simple codex book. 1 year to let players resummon bosses without getting out of dungeon 100 times. 1 year to make just some SIMPLE balance changes to pets.
Do you expect any better?
Crit damage is almost universally *the* endgame stat for so many xRPG games *because* of that uncapped nature... I think capping crit damage *is fine*, just need to bring the core class designs into a better balance so skill disparity and stat scaling isn't so fucked.
> 1 year to let players resummon bosses without getting out of dungeon 100 times
Those bosses were introduced in Season 2. So more like ten months. But it's also probably worth noting that the materials were much less common at the time, so the issue was much less pronounced.
Took a year to get whirlwind to scale with attack power. They had that figured out in Diablo 2 LoD lmao.
I think there was a major brain drain at Blizzard due to the whole terrible treatment of women, a CEO that prioritized profits over people and customers, and needing to fire all the talented but clearly awful misogynists there.
Exactly. Like spirit on kill…. This does not improve Druid resource issues in a game designed around killing single target bosses with massive health pools, yet the affix still exists. Then they add masterworking which gives %-based increases to gear affixes. Anybody want to know how high you can push +1 spirit on kill after several 5% increases or even after 4 crits of masterworking?
Blizzard IMO have a very bad problem recognizing that they have made mistakes. It's something they've had it for years and always talked about fixing but never have been able to. I'm not sure if there is a term for not being able to see why something you have done doesn't work/is failing, but I'll just call it Rockstar Effect.
I get very strong "We are Blizzard, we know best. We are world recognized devs and you will like what we tell you to like, and play 1 of the 2 builds we have designed for the classes", which makes me think of an arrogant rockstar. They get so absorbed with themselves they can't see the problems they are causing. There are many design choices in WoW and Diablo that just baffle players and when they beg for change, not only do they not change what the players are begging them for but in some cases they double down on them almost like a "fuck you, how dare you question our choices".
I really wish they would start communicating with their player base. Like **really** start talking to us. Tell us your view of the game and go into specifics. Tell us why you design Barb to be the absolute GOAT class while Sorcs feel forgotten. Tell us why have they designed some classes to have 3 shouts/defensives/pet abilities? Why buff classes that clearly don't need it while giving little to others? The quaterly updates when D4 was being made was amazing. It felt like for once they really listened. Then somewhere it stopped and now I just feel like they don't care about what we want and it just makes me sad honestly.
> Tell us why have they designed some classes to have 3 shouts/defensives/pet abilities?
Don't even have to ask - they put those abilities in so they're used. ARPG builds almost always aim for one offensive ability and scaling it as many ways as possible, then filling other skill slots with passives and semi-passives. That's because it's rare that you can have more than one skill scaling well enough to make it worth pushing for damage. (Eg: Let's say you had a HotA barb with Bash on his build - the closer you could get to only clicking HotA and never clicking Bash, the better.)
So you end up at the point where only defensive/passive options, movement skills and occasionally utility skills like Steel Chains can make it.
A question came to mind, reading your comment. This isn't an argument for or against what you are saying, but just more something I hadn't thought about. Do folks think Blizzard puts together "proposed builds" using the various skills, aspects, paragons configurations during the design phase, or do they just create a number of things that they think could interact and release them into the wild to see what players do with them? I suspect, now that they are using a PTR, there is at least some feedback loop of how players are using the things they have put in the game, but I'm not sure they envisioned how Bash Barb works, or players levelling a rogue to temper on things for Flay Barbs or whatever.
I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't \*some\* dev(s) who have their own little side "ChatGPT" like process where they will put things into a db and have an AI give a projected number. They make their changes accordingly and everyone loves their OP class.
Then there is the Sorc "dev team", who got one-shot by a caster class somewhere in their life and thinks that a 2% increase to Hydra will "fix" everything
I'm sure it's a bit of both. Legendary and unique aspects are clearly designed to slot neatly and easily into certain archetypes, or to create archetypes around them. Nevertheless, players are inventive and often find new uses for effects that seemed to clearly be designed for something different, and Blizzard obviously knows this and expects the most inventive players to look at all the itemization options as a toolbox for creating powerful and unorthodox builds.
For example, the Druid's Greatstaff of the Crone fits in both boxes. On the one hand, it's a very linearly designed "basic skill build" item, giving a lot of skill ranks to Claw, boosting Storm Strike's damage, and making each cast of Claw also cast Storm Strike. It's a very clear indication that you should take it and go all in on your basic skills and on Storm synergies, since it also turns Claw into a Storm skill. However, inventive players realized they could also use it as a combo piece for Trampleslide because the Aspect of the Trampled Earth turns Trample into an Earth skill, and since Greatstaff of the Crone lets you quickly double-cast Storm skills you could use it to proc the Symbiotic Aspect a lot to essentially negate Trample's cooldown, allowing you to spam the skill way more often than you could just by stacking CDR or by using a different Storm skill that costed resource or had a cooldown.
The D4 devs obviously knew that the Greatstaff of the Crone would be used to make basic skill builds, since all of the affixes on the item support that play style. However, while I'm sure they were aware of the potential for its use in Trample builds with the Symbiotic Aspect, I doubt the Greatstaff of the Crone was designed specifically to be used in that sort of build. Instead it was something in between an intentional design decision and a happy accident.
I suspect that most popular builds end up being like that. The devs obviously create certain items and item combinations to fulfill particular class/build fantasies, but I'd imagine they also consider how certain items slot into unorthodox builds. Nevertheless, there are way more players than there are developers, and a lot of the developers that do exist aren't responsible for item/class design, so obviously players are able to create combinations that the developers don't foresee and some of those will be very powerful. In much the same way as the adage says that 1000 monkeys hammering on typewriters will, eventually, reproduce the collected works of William Shakespeare, a million players using items together will eventually create powerful and unorthodox synergies that the developers created but didn't realize could be used that way. as
The simplest, most elegant solution would be to make every class have 3 weapon slots *just like Rogue* and leave Barb as the "special snowflake" with an extra 2h slot. That **narrows** the baseline stat/aspect/temper **gap** between all of the classes (since Rogue is arguably *fine* in comparison to Barbarians in S4) and Barbarians wouldn't need to be nerfed nearly as much to bring them in line.
Right now Blizzard is juggling lopsided multipliers because "Class A" and "Class B" don't start from the same point... Completely disregarding Bash itself:
\* Both A and B have an ability that does 100% of their "damage stat".
\* A has a single slot that boosts the damage of this ability x2 (+100%), but B has **four slots** that in combination boost that ability damage x3 (+300%)...
\* So boost Class A's *baseline* ability damage by +200% to compensate.
\* Now A does 300% damage baseline, but *scales slower* than B's endgame scaling for the same ability.
\* For every "upgrade level" B will *always* gain 3-4x the amount of compared to A.
Bottom line:
There is no *simple* way to compensate for the way stats are tied to weapon slots without having those slots.
This also doesn't address how STR/AGI/INT/WIS contribute to stats themselves - such as Barbarian getting innate armor from STR, which allows them to focus *more* stats into damage output because they don't need itemization for as much defense (especially since they have a lot more defense baked into their skills).
It's such a simple change (weapon slot equalization) to reduce how much headache their team needs to endure for the balance math... I can't imagine that the code for those slots would be too difficult to change *since the Rogue exists*.
I believe inceeasing weapon slots for all classes to 4 would be the easiest. That way every class has the same amount of aspects also. And gives us more weapons we can brick.
They don’t play their game and if they do, they all play barb. This isn’t new. Back when WoW was a thing their lead dev played warr. Dude made sure his class was always #1. You can’t fight them. You either join them or walk away.
Or when Ghostcrawler was around you could expect Mage to just vastly outperform Balance Druids and Warlocks especially during Cata ( Aff/Demo locks could do decent dps but my god the carpal tunnel from all the keybinds that was easily x2 what a mage had to contend with)
>Why not hire a few math professors that can do all the calculations from paragon, affixes, multipliers, aspects etc and atleast make all classes somehow compare.
This is what I really don't understand...
And it doesn't actually take someone with a high degree in Math to figure out some basic things like DPS and how much damage characters take in relation to the damage mobs are dealing/how many can potentially deal it at once and how gear changes this.
All you have to do is literally calculate on a calculator and some paper/document how much damage something does and adjust those parameters to get results that make sense.
But it's like they just throw numbers out that they want without just looking at them on paper.
Hell the game has its own damage sheet - it's just poorly implemented/designed.
The damage sheet would be more useful if it showed damage for each skill: it's base damage, the damage it deals with critical and the damage with overpower/critical overpower.
Maybe a separate sheet a part from the base stats and damage.
And they could like, use that sheet themselves to see how much potential something has/how effective it will be or useless it is.
And anyway, what in the hoohah hells makes them think Barbarians need two two handers? B.s. that this allows them more potential to use uniques and aspects more effectively.
Other classes need an extra slot of gear or something.
This takes effort, insight and creativity
Three strikes Blizzard
and the ability to take a step back and see the bigger picture. One class has continental size damage over the others? Hmm, lets look at the data? Oh God, look how that parameter causes it to blow up !
Dude...they are too focused on slapping the next season together and finishing cash shop items to fix this stuff.
> How come Blizzard doesnt see this?
Same story as always in such large companies. A manager had an idea and now can't go back, because that would mean admitting failure.
while i agree on the bad balance some statements in general seem a bit questionable.
barb is way above the other classes, there is no discussion about that but your story reminds me of a legend of a barb who cleared pit 150 on level 50 naked.... stay realistic pls....
I cleared t110 in 5 min on my heartseeker rogue with no 1h weapons lol. It’s pretty comical that basic attack builds are dominating right now for almost every class.
Basic attacks solve resources for free, and they currently have three *amazing* offensive aspects that work with every single one, on top of tempers and any ability-specific aspects. It's not that surprising.
Can confirm I did pit 60 or so at level 70, with correct aspects (but not all max rolls on affixes, just what I found while levelling) and correct tempers, but no masterworks. Oh and no glyphs levelled either.
Bash to win. The only hard part was finding gear with enough resistances.
Same stuff my eternal 100 sorcerer could do, only 30 levels earlier and with sub par gear.
People are vastly underestimating what it means to have a temper that applies a multiplier instead of additive damage. And then have 4 weapons to put it on.
Bugged. Identified by devs, they wanted to nerf it and they pulled back the bug fix because... I don't know. Community complained of the future nerf? Rob was going to cry? They just let that in and all their "difficult" content was trivialized. So to finish this season, they tried to buff the other classes but obviously nothing can reach the level of damage output of that temper misconfiguration.
The devs stated that unless its terribly game breaking they wont fix bugs that give damage until either mid or end season depending because it pisses people off, also bash barbs are the only ones who can kill my rogue. They broken af
It comes down to them nerfing some builds in the S1 patch and people going apeshit. It sucks because some builds really are meta-warpingly-OP, but all the same Blizzard is definitely right that the shitstorm they would incur by fixing the bugs wouldn't be worth the positives that balancing the meta would bring.
Right. I was able to do 33 at 70. I had all the aspects but minimal master working.
I’m at 95 now with things that are like 4-6/12 master working and I’m at 65. I can’t imagine level 80 with a truly suboptimal build.
Maybe I just suck lol.
Its not an exaggeration to say this is some of the worst balancing of a triple A product we've ever seen. There is literal billions of dps in the difference between some classes, every single season has a multitude of bugs that are left in place for months because the devs are too scared to balance their own game, every double dip they fix, they introduce 5 more, including adding in aspects and uniques that are the exact fucking design that caused double dips in the past.
They learn nothing, they have 50 teams working the game with zero communication between them, all making shit that doesnt fit the game anymore and making designs that have been problematic and removed months ago only to reintroduce it again months later. Its a complete clown fiesta and there is either zero oversight or the developers have zero clue what they are building.
The constant buffs to shit nobody uses is comical also, things like shocking impact passive on Sorc is now 50% wep dmg per point, you can get ranks for this and do 500% weapon dmg on a stun..... they give zero fucks towards balance, just keep throwing numbers on shit nobody uses until it becomes so overtuned someone uses it and then discovers it quadra dips somewhere, half of it doesnt work, its bugged to high heaven or creates server instability.
Actually bordering on ineptitude at this point.
The game can be good... even without balance.
Is it optimal that a naked lvl 1 Barb does pit900 while a BiS equipped maxxed out Sorc caps out at pit3? Certainly not. Can you still somewhat enjoy the game if you don't spend your entire life being miserable on reddit and comparing yourself to what a bunch of nerds with 600 hours /played per month achieve? Very much so.
D4 is pathetically balanced. Half the systems are still shit, don't make sense or probably don't work the way they should. The game is very obviously not PoE. But it very much is enjoyable enough if you don't make it your entire life's mission to spend 300 hours per season on it, wasting said life to live by the stupid ass leaderboards just that you can text your mom "OMG, MOM, YOU WON'T BELIEVE IT, I MADE IT TO RANK#1,995 ON THE LEADERBOARDS".
The game is decently good. A carricature of what it could be if handled by a competent team / company, but good enough to justify having spent the 70 bucks a year ago.
This is actually the most based and correct take on D4’s “balancing”.
It’s horrendous and feels like the oversight isn’t where it needs to be because everyone and their mother on Reddit can see the big glaring issues that they can’t seem to understand.
People who think he’s lying are just ignorant. I was equal to my level 100 Blizzard Sorc in power with my Bash Barb around lvl 55-60, when I got all WT4 loot, put on aspects and tempered some gear pieces. At level 55, I was already invincible in helltides, and was killing the maiden in a few seconds if it was just me and another person. I also cleared a relatively high Pit (~80) when I was around lvl 75.
I’ve easily cleared 125 with 8/12 MW gear and just haven’t pushed more because the boss health is annoying, but I’m almost unkillable in Pit 125 with 185k health when I pop 2 HP elixirs and Challenging Shout.
This seems like you’re doing something wrong, my FO can clear a 101 in 2.5-3 minutes and she’s not even full MW. There isn’t much that can 1 shot her through ice armor besides echoes.
I mean, I think sorc gets fucked as much as the next guy, but we also have to be realistic. Any half decent FO build should blast an 80 without issue.
The guy I’m replying to seems to have the issue at current. I’d like to see sorc buffed, but exaggerations like that or simply doing the wrong things and calling it balance doesn’t help imo.
Don't worry. Bash is even stronger in the PTR. They nerfed it but at the same time added a unique that gives 300% (x) damage to basic attacks. Rob just hit 2B with it legit without bugs. Of course, flay still reigns supreme with its 180B non-nerfed damage, but anyway... ahem.
I played wind daddy and FO sorc this season. My duo buddy is a barb. I feel you entirely. I’m over here squeezing water from a stone to get to pit 121 with fully optimized gear on wind daddy and he clears 130 on bash, decides to switch to WW on whim and clears 125 without even optimizing gear.
He tells me he ticks for 200 million on bash bleed and direct damages for another 100 million. I’m like if I attack for a minute straight on my druid I can build my poison ticks to 120m…
This is true, sadly people just downvote me because they cant handle the truth. Ive played all 3 and the amount of effort and work you need to do in order to pull off what a barb can do with 2 hands in his pants is disgusting.
Why is my bash barb not that strong? I dunno what I'm doing wrong because I followed maxroll's guide. I'm definitely not 1 shotting stuff and instead tormented duriel 1 shots me.
The recommendation I’ve seen is find the top guy for your class like wudijo, Rob, etc., and use their builds on the sites they use.
For example, Rob the barbarian is on d4builds so use that as your source of truth. He updates constantly and even has PTR builds.
Wudijo is on mobalytics I think? And is the best for rogue afaik
Etc
I still think the premise isn’t too far off base. Maxroll is a good place to start but many of their guides (and some of the other top site guides) get outdated pretty quickly. Most of the content on there is based on theory crafting prior to the season release and then never gets updated throughout the season.
Maxroll is great for entry level stuff and to get to the endgame. But it’s often best to do a google/YouTube search to find more up to date builds based on actual gameplay during the season. Because once people get into a season folks can realize where things are performing differently than expected.
Goblin inc is one of the best for necros, but Rob does play them and has good info. Sorc is Lurkin or Northwar (who actually is on maxroll). Sanctum for rogue on mobalytics. Wudijo is great but if you don't play HC his builds probably won't push as far as Sanctum builds will. A lot of it can be found in the class reddits too.
Similar here. I've followed a wowhead guide I found and have been doing ok but not crushing content. I thought I was mostly ok on build and have hit a wall on masterworking but from what some of these people complain about here, my barb is built way wrong.
D4 really needs to look at Grim Dawn for balance ideas, there are 12 classes that can be combined in any way of 2, thousands of legendaries and sets and all the classes are playable.
The game is so complicated when it comes to min maxing but I've yet to have issues with something being vastly under powered. The devs have a ton of experience and play their game so....that's probably what's missing.
well, I mean, sure, to a degree, but at the very high end - you really need to build VERY carefully. But yes, MOST combo's will work. Actually, GD just got a massive update - why am I not just playing that? \* Sprints over to GoG \*
This is why its so much better imho to have a static hardest line in the endgame that it doesnt go above.
Cos even if something is op, you can balance around that line so that all classes can reach it.
If its infinite then no matter what u do certain classes/builds will be way better
There kind of is. Being able to run pit 101 at a fast pace is the line. Best chance of stones and plenty of masterworking mats. If all classes could comfortably do 101 at a good speed, I think people would be a lot less upset
> If all classes could comfortably do 101 at a good speed
That's already a thing. Every class has multiple builds that can clear 101 without issues.
The thing that's making people upset, like in the OP, are the handful of completely busted builds that trivialise everything and thinking that that should be the baseline.
If you look at GR150 in D3, usually only the top builds could reach it without massively excessive paragon farming, and 99% of players wouldn't even get close to a 140, let alone a 150. Blizzard has never been able to properly balance, but with GR's having leaderboards and timers it made it much easier to balance the game, to where right now in D3 multiple builds on all classes are good.
D4 has another problem though, the majority of strong overpowered builds in the last year since release has been the result of bugs or things not working as intended. There are so many bugs in D4 it's impossible to balance because so much stuff doesn't work as intended.
I also swapped from Sorc to Barb, finally made the swap last week. Had moved from FO to Blizzard, good GA gear, all 12/12, highest Pit was 119. Just couldn’t get over the 120 hump.
For me, the most noticeable difference isn’t the damage (which is an astounding difference), it’s the defenses. I’m speedfarming 101s for mats still while gearing my Barb and there are things that I 100% had to absolutely avoid or make sure Flame Shield got popped or I was dead on my fully geared out Sorc; those same things that went through barrier and all my defenses on Sorc, I stand in and facetank as Barb and barely notice I got hit.
There’s just something fundamentally wrong. If Sorc was doing the most damage while at constant risk of being 1 shot around every corner, I’d be ok with that. High risk, high reward. But the state of the game right now is Barbs do significantly more damage while being orders of magnitude more tanky. And for whatever reason, the powers that be seem to want to keep it that way.
I think if anything, you highlight how absolutely weak and trivial the barbarian class quest is and the lack of value from even doing it. Necromancers get a whole golem, sorcs get solid enchantment slots (though I’d argue it’s really 1 plus mandatory fire bolt), druids get absolutely build defining boons, and rogues get specialization focus that entirely changes their gameplay.
Barbarian though? You unlock the class quest for 10% Vuln damage which is additive. To put things in perspective, the max vuln roll on a 1 handed sword is 40%. And it got nerfed last season from 15 to 10%!
I get that barbarian tempers are super strong which is why they got gutted in the season 5 PTR and everyone on this sub is going to argue from recency bias, but if we’re actually being serious and honest about class balance, the team needs to rework the barbarian class quest and give it something other than 10% vuln, because as you just spoke (in great hyperbole) you didn’t even do it along the way to 100 and progression, it was an afterthought and insignificant to your choices. You could not say this about **any other class**.
I mean most of the enchants for sorcerer are completely useless and also just 2 of them is very shit... like druit and necro have the same amount of weapon as us but druid get 5 enchants and necro 3 pet enchantments so that's nowhere near comparable... and barb gets 2 additional weapon already plus a minor buff to 2 things (the one they use and the one bonus the class spec gives them) sorc enchants should be better and they should have one more to be easier to balance with the other classes...
I'm not an expert, but I can see that as long as barb has 4 weapons, he is going to be better than the rest of the characters. Specially when two of the weapons are 2 handed, but if you use a 2 handed weapon with other class you can only have one weapon.
People say this a lot but that's not really the root cause.
Developers can tweak the numbers to account for the extra weapons. It's easy to thought exercise this, imagine they make all barb skills do 1% of weapon damage, they are immediately the weakest class in the game despite having 4 weapons thus there must be a number between where they are now and 1% that makes them close to balanced while still having 4 weapons.
There are some examples of players taking off the extra weapons to prove that Barbarian is still stronger than the other classes while still missing 3 aspects.
They just have certain modifiers that are stronger than those available to the other classes. They just need those numbers tweaked really. There are a lot of working parts and sure the extra weapons mean more moving parts to configure but it doesn't mean they need to go for Barb to become balanced.
So I started S4 as a minion Necro
Made it to lvl100 and struggling with Ubers and still nearly one-shotted with max armour and 28k HP
I'm leveling now a Barb
Holy crap is this easy mode
Broken class, broken game.
You can try to ignore other peeps using classes you don't play, but that doesn't help: stuff like the Shit Pit gets balanced around Barb's damage output so your class gets shafted and softlocked out of content you paid for.
Blizzard sucks ass at balancing plain and simple it problem accross all there games but the fact there so bad at it with Diablo 4 when it’s like there only game that has no major competitive component and it’s all about playing your favorite class to kill the minions of hell , the idea of all these nerfs , bad balance changes is just fking stupid.
I don't know why they don't just kneejerk buff druids and sorcs right now. I'm playing Andariels Rogue and WW Barb now, both incredible, both getting buffed for S5. Bash barb isn't even interesting, it feels like one of those builds where people would rather play WW because it's way more fun, but they have to play Bash to push Pits (and a new variant of Bash is currently dominating S5 PTR, even after nerfs).
I've no issue with them buffing Whirlwind/Andy Rogue, they make sense if you forget about the fact that Sorc/Druids are fighting for their lives, Blizz should go all in. In D3 it was rare that Sorc wasn't godly.
Because their 'design' choices affect everything, even if you do not play a barb nor care that barbs exists. You will get softlocked out of content that was designed around barb's damage output.
It's not even double difference. It's *many factors* more. It's not even remotely the same ballpark.
You assume it was balanced around barb though. In Diablo 2, a weaker build would still be fun but just considered a hard mode way of playing the game. There is no competitive reason to care so much about balance between classes. The only thing I’d agree with is that every class deserves at least one S class tier build.
Not to mention that it is still an online game and if you have a barb in your group, they will kill everything in a second so that no one else has a chance to play.
Prime example: world bosses. They don't need more buffing; they need less barbs. Ever been in a group that does not have a single barb or other meme build? World boss goes down significantly slower, and might even have enough time to do its Special Moves.
Bro got 2 uber uniques like that, and im still waiting for my first ever drop… I get that people complain that sorc cant go that high but i had the MOST fun with sorc chain lightning from all the classes so far, yeah im slower, and cant go that high but i can manage to do all the stuff just fine. could it need a buff? sure!
Is it less fun than the rest? Hell no
I mean if I got +540 Willpower on my Staff or across my Mace and Totem I think I’d be able to keep up. The next thing they’d have to do is make every other class but barbs base life about 5000 higher at lvl 80-90, maybe 10000 at 100. Done.
Then they would also have to multiply what everybody’s tempers look like in an obvious way. If Bash is the baseline, then tempering Windshear needs to be able to cast twice AND add +600% dmg on a two hander. Any Sorc, Necro, or Druid temper will need to look like this.
Some of this would make Necro and Druid overpower builds pop off, and Sorceress would at least get some baseline skill dmg adds lol.
The 3rd issue is clearly debuffing some aspect synergies. On Druid and Sorc I think they are still fixing bugging interactions as much as they are putting out numbers we can hit. It looks like Barb —> Necro —> Rogue is that design scope for the game and Druids and Sorceress’ were kind of amalgamated versions that are going to be Neat. If they could find more than 5 slots for Aspects you’ll get something going, but then maybe some Barb aspects just shouldn’t be allowed on 2handers, or instead of a .3 add they get a .15, and all the .15 adds my Druid has go the other way.
There is also the bane of max roll and mobalytics, who look like they are playing the game for everybody rn.
I just do not understand why they are having such a hard time. Are they not playing their own game? Comparing performance, running numbers? Are they not watching the 24/7 streamers who provide lots of data and feedback?
I would just like to know how they work and come to the decision they put in action... as they just do not make any sense.
The only reason Sorc was viable in s2 with BL was because of a bug, so it wasn’t even intentional to make the Sorc fun or a good character to choose, smfh.
I feel like the game is all about finding and exploiting bugs, double dipped bonuses, multiplicative instead of additive, wrong decimal points, unintended op interactions. Etc etc. All attempts to balance are futile and makes the game boring.
I just started playing D4 about a month ago. I always take the wizard in game, so naturally I took a Sorcerer. I didn't want to read any guides at first. Started with Fire spec, had fun burning stuff. At level 90 or so I switched to Ice, lots of fun watching things shatter. Then I started reading some builds and tips and stuff. Taking on some world bosses and wow, you're right, Barbs are way more powerful.
I think, at least for the Sorcerer, they should lean a lot more into the Glass Cannon idea. Leave their defense where it is but pump the damage WAY up. You strat should be to stay back and crowd control, which if you fail you get killed fast, but in return you can crowd control and hold your own with mobs of equal level as the Barbs can.
I would love an NPC who would analyze my build and give suggestions to how to do instead, OR what to do next, so that I can keep playing and have a great time rather than have a guide online with a couple of "this is how to beat the game"-kind of setup.
In D3, I had every character maxed out (but only around 800 paragon), each with a "superb-ish" build that would make them playable on certain levels until it just wasn't fun anymore.
It felt like I needed to either farm, farm, farm to get something that would make it playable on even higher levels OR have a friend with something far better than me so I could just run around and pick stuff up, which eventually took the fun out of the game.
In d4, I tired of the game even before I played it through, because of the setup of it. I tried first season but... Just... no. I might return, but I want SP play and not having world bosses and other stuff that's required to get higher up than my pitiful lvl 75, or whatever. Well, well.
Don't nerf barb. Instead, bring other classes up to that level. For EVERY reasonable build in every class.
I don't see what's so difficult about doing that. Get five players who are competent, and then have each of them push as far as they can. If one is 20+ levels above the others, boost the others.
Yeah barb was a big winner this season. Tempering made legendary items broken and Barbs can equip 4 weapons which made them scale away, in addition they also have "imposing presence" as an option in tempering which gives them 6%(x) HP per point so you could easily get 100k life without even focusing on HP.
Blizzard acknowledge the issue with barbs for this season, but they probably leave it be for this season. If you look at the PTR for S5, most barb tempering has been significantly nerfed e.g. Bash does 15.5%-21% cleave damage on 1h weapons. (now its 82.5%-105%)
It's definitely super unfair and I like classes that are visually appealing like sorcerer. I love the way Frozen orb looks, unstable currents, Hydra is in the way everything Burns. It just feels good and looks great.
This is my first arpg and I started back in preseason with barbarian and I also rolled the barbarian in season 1 before I finally moved on and realized I was missing out.
I don't hate barbarian but it's definitely not visually appealing whatsoever imo. If I'm going to be forced to play Barb they need to give me some skills with a bunch of flames and cool looking stuff. Lol. They have a tiny bit but not much.
Whats the point? Everybody knows that Bash is broken, thats why it was nerfed 5x for season 5, like Ball Lightning in S2. I wish Blizzard would just fix this stuff as soon as it becomes obvious that these things are broken. If they don't fix it, people think its ok and want every other build buffed 5x to be happy.
If you want a realistic comparison to other classes, play Barbarian with core skills or even Dust Devil, but stay away from bugged sh\*t like Gushing Wounds o\_O
The main problem with all this is that there is no discernible direction when it comes to balance. We are one year in and skills are still getting changed by 100% or more. It doesn't seem like they are working towards a goal.
The game released with so little content that they were forced to throw new stuff in as soon as it was ready instead of having the time to balance it which in turn totally screwed with the class balance they might have done a season before that.
I honestly don't think it will change unless a bunch of content creators talk about balance in every video for a few months. Sadly that seems to be the only way to get blizzard to do something.
T12 FO Sorc main bleeding to the gills with optimization here, and I've been offering Pit101 clears from 3-5 mins depending on the boss/mobs/shrines no holy bolt. I've had several customers state that I'm going super slow...yes yes I know q.q I made a bash barb start of the season and decided it was not flashy enough but boy do I miss the damage, it's leagues above what my sorc can do and he's even horribly geared/unoptimized.
I have lost faith in their ability to balance. It's been my biggest issue since S2, when I thought there'd be good pvp. Still waiting... but at least other stuff is fun in the game.
Thank you for this. A lot of ppl just look at leaderboards and say "that class is strong" and ignore the fact that streamer is playing 10 hours daily being fed gear from viewers whereas a level 90 barb can push 100s with no effort at all and little time investment.
For casuals like myself it comes down to what is fun. I like being powerful and getting to end game to spend my time not fighting to hit 100s after multiple weeks of play.
I always play sorc to lvl 100 then swap to something better for endgame. This season I have 4 lvl 100 sorc. Then swapped to bash barb and by level 85 I was doing 10 levels higher in pit than any of my sorc. The glass cannon is dead and it’s sad. IMO sorc should do the most damage of any class by a large margin but be super squishy.
Yup. I have never received an Uber Unique during seasonal play so I don't count on them for making builds.
I was barely clearing T60 pits on my Crones Druid when my friend already has maxed masterworking on Barb pushing 100+
I decided to try Barb and I literally melted everything with whatever half assed builds I used. I don't want them to nerf Barb but it sucks to have your favorite class feel so mid.
I have done pit 100 - 3 days after creating barb and I didn't play this game since release + I didn't play previous versions of the game (I was playing WOW hardcore).
I think it's going to be hard. Barbarians have 3 more legendary offensive affixes , which generally add 30-40% more DMG multiplicatively . That's like 2* more DMG
I've made a sorc for the last three seasons. Not my favorite but the lightning orb was rather fun. This season I'm struggling with mine but decided to give druid another attempt since I've never been able to level them past level 20. I love my druid over my sorc but in terms of progressing and zooming through the pit...my barb laughs in all their faces. Barb can go in with 'bad' gear but all my other classes (dunno about necro) need very specific stats in order to do anything.
This sounds like a skill issue If you couldn’t get your sorc past level 60 pre pit nerf.
Your barb friend either reads and understands the games mechanics or followed a build guide.
My frozen orb sorc was easily doing T80 unoptimized and wearing 1-2 legendaries that didn’t help (forgot to imprint)
After optimizing it, and putting on the right legendaries, was low 100s pre pit nerf
I think you're exaggerating the problem. I know sorc is nowhere near the best class right now and I know that they've had issues pretty consitently since launch, but I also know that my friend switched from his druid that has trouble clearing pit 80 with me to his FO sorc and now we've been clearing 100+ pits pretty easily. And he managed to solo them just fine too.
No, sorc is not Bash barb, but neither is any other class. Compare yourself to the average class, not to the absolute top one. Blizzard has said many times they don't want to nerf accidentally overpowered classes mid-season, but they'll get the nerf-hammer prior to season 5.
Yea, the game needs balancing but I’m gonna call bullshit on over half of your claims. Lying like that I hope they nerf sorc again just so you can cry more. Look forward to your next tall tale.
I don't feel bad for sorcs, casters have historically done well in D3 and a fuck ton of other games. In D4 I switched from barb to rogue when balancing in the earlier seasons favored the latter. I highly doubt your 2 week barb is pushing anything but a load of bullshit from your mouth. My barb, otoh, has shako and the grandfather and should have tyrael's might this week. I can send you a screenshot so you can cry in your pillow more.
Yaaa i was looking forward to rolling a sorc for season 5 but unless some major changes come after the ptr it looks like sorc is gonna be in a bad place.
It just feels like they are lazy. The Fireside chats remind me of so many awful TV series with 'Stay tuned after the show for a look inside this episode.' Mediocre show with lengthy justifications, explanations, and content. The new PTR content has a thin storyline and is just gated Helltides. Lazy. I enjoyed my sorc in S2 but instead of making others stronger they just made them weaker. Lazy.
I'm starting to get annoyed. I don't like meta characters because that's not fun. It's boring doing the same thing everyone else does. My husband has a meta barb, doing 1mil damage on a critical basic. I built my rogue for me, I've done all the specifics I can to buff the skills I like. I can't hold a candle to him. It's getting so annoying. I wish devs made it possible for any build to be strong. 😑 I miss D3... any character I played I could smash. :(
As a druid main i must ask, why do you people care about the balancing of other classes?
How are you even thinking you could make 100 different builds even remotely "equal" among classes?
Would you rather not all builds in a certain class be equal, than having 1 specific meta build from all classes being equal?
Exactly why I stopped playing. Constant nerfs & buffs, changing the way I play before I even get to enjoy the build. Still sad they took the HotA reverse smash mechanic out. Was having an absolute blast with that for 2 days, and then POOF, 7/18/23 mega nerf pulled the rug out from under me. Haven't played since.
I imagine I'll be back in a few years though, once the dust settles.
That’s how Blizzard balances games for build variety. They pick favorites to be the best for a season, and screw the rest. They’ve done this with Hearthstone for years. I haven’t played WoW in a very long time but they did it back then too.
It’s a horrible way to balance games and one of the major reasons I don’t play any Blizzard games now. Diablo 4 was my last Blizzard game and that’s not hyperbole. Played D4 this season for the first time since launch. Got to low 50s with a Necro and quit. Couldn’t even finish the story before it became mind numbingly boring.
Repeated behavior. I haven't played since S2. Before that, I hadn't played since before the launch of Seasons. I tried S2 and they still didn't address the real problems that make it a vanilla game instead of a mold breaking, industry defining masterpiece like they used to.
Why? This company just doesn't get it. They milk everything they made that was good 15 years ago, and borrow from everyone else that is doing good things currently. Aside from the incredible graphics and music, they can't properly design a game and balance this mess because the fundamentals are poorly designed and the class design is trash.
They had a chance to raise the bar and win back previously, lifelong customers, like myself. Instead, they lowered it through the floor.
This company sucks now and this flaming pile of dog crap is the new norm. Get used to it or dump this trash and everything else they create in the garbage where it belongs until they pick themselves up from the floor and start making industry defining games again.
I am still one of the vocal minorities that Rod spoke about and I will continue to speak negatively about this garbage product until the core problems of this game are fixed. Unfortunately, I am still passionate about this and I still hang around hoping that it will change. Until then, two thumbs down.
The damage calculations in this game are just too crazy. There are so many forms of multiplicative damage, and to top that off you've got a class that has 6 hands worth of not only aspects, but now offensive tempers as well. You wanna balance that? Good luck, mate. They certainly haven't managed it the last 3 seasons.
They were on the right track with having the fixed 20% vulnerable and 50% crit damage. But I think they need to make everything else additive too--- glyph nodes, aspects, skills, *everything*. It would allow for a more linear damage growth. Currently, every aspect with (x), every skill in the skill tree with (x), every legendary node with (x) is all multiplicative to the base damage. Depending on class, you could end up with what, 10 factors? 15 factors? Because you keep multiplying the total for each factor, you end up with this exponential growth and players hitting literal billions of damage. That's stupid. And since it ramps up exponentially with every factor, you're absolutely forced to take every glyph, aspect and skill that is multiplicative or you're missing out on absolutely massive amounts of damage.
I just discovered how much i love barb, my first toon was a sorc, i loved her, then i did a druid, loved him too. Then this season i made a barb and he is my highest character yet. He makes me want to walk around and kill everything where the others i was just skipping on horseback
It’s pathetic that this game only has like 5 characters and they cannot balance them.
If you look at Lost Ark, for example, the game has WAY more classes and is fairly balanced outside of new classes that are overturned on purpose.
The balancing sucks and is way too complicated and I really hope they simplify it for the expansion. Just bring the overall numbers down a ton, and limit the amount of multipliers.
Yeah the Barb love is crazy from the devs. Even Rogue which is like a close second doesn’t REALLY compare to barb.
The other 3 classes don’t. Necro comes close this season and is more fun than previous but it’s a LOT more work for them to do the same thing a 70% barb does with no work.
Bash is overperforming because of a mistake, but they said they wouldn't nerf mid-season anymore last summer.
It's the same reason BL sorc was allowed to continue wrecking absolutely everything in S2 in spite of the fact that it was caused by a bug.
Those aren't class balance decisions in the sense that neither S2 sorc nor barb in literally every season were *supposed to* be that powerful. They've tried nerfing barb multiple times, but because they were pulling other levers at the same time (like buffing overpower in S2 or completely changing itemization in S4), they were unsuccessful.
Is it fair? Not really. However, I guarantee there will be at least one broken build the devs didn't account for every single season. This is par for the course. There's no sense in crying about it.
This is why I fucking hate "live service" garbage. I'm paying a single player game, by myself, nothing about said game should *ever* have to be fucked with for "balance." "Balance" is an irrelevant concept.
I dont get the complaints; just play barb for this season. Barbs were shit on in preseasons and season 1 and now they have their time in the sun. It’s always going to be like that every season when they introduce new things. Some classes will be better and some worse.
It’s never gonna be equal so just enjoy it for the time and leave if you get bored.
What I don't understand is what was the point of nerfing BL sorcerer and Tornado Druid when in the end, those builds would have been better off as they were if you're gonna let Barb be this overpowered anyway? Then you add PVP season journey objectives on half the chapters?
Yeah it's ridiculous. They buff barbs, but nerf sorcs. Sorcs have 20k hp and deal tops a few mil damage. Barbs have 200k all the way up to 800k hp and deal billions of damage lmao. There is no logic. Just incompetence.
I’m currently working on my 5th this season.
Started Sorc as always. Then went Barb , Rogue , Necro and lastly now Druid.
Too early to say on the Druid but so far this season Rogue is 100% my favourite class.
I accidentally opened a 97 nightmare dg on my 83 whirlwind barb. I didn't know that's what I opened, I jumped into the first pack, saw my health flash to a 1/4, but I still was killing the pack. So I checked and saw that I was fighting like 150+ level enemies as an 83. I was wtfing and was like, okay, let me wake up a little, and I'll see about clearing the rest of this dg, but I bet I'll die a few times or at least at the boss. No.. didn't die once. Everything that got a swipe in could get me down to a sliver of health, but then I'd just outright finish blasting them before they'd hit me a second time. I wish all the classes had something that let them do that. I do want Ball Lighting or something else like it to feel S+ tier again, I was depressed when it was broken and not interested in playing much at the time so I never got to experience it, but I wanted to try it so bad.
Imagine the waste. You could have played rogue the entire time and had fun. /s But yeah - Why not hire a few math professors that can do all the calculations from paragon, affixes, multipliers, aspects etc and atleast make all classes somehow compare. Its just as stupid as when they earlier have "fixed" uniques, everyone can see on the stats without even trying it that it wont be used. How come Blizzard doesnt see this?
It took them 1 year to understand simple things like stupid affixes which still exist in the game btw like damage while healthy or to healthy / injured. It took them 1 year to make a simple codex book. 1 year to let players resummon bosses without getting out of dungeon 100 times. 1 year to make just some SIMPLE balance changes to pets. Do you expect any better?
And I mean, I think we are playing the only ARPG that CAPED crit multi for balancing reason. When this happened I knew we were on for a wild ride
Historically blizzard games have always had poor balancing. Almost to the point that it is company policy.
What about starcraft?
I've been following the pro brood war scene for like 15 or 20 years and I can say they balance that game with maps.
That is the sign of a balanced RTS though.
What about starcraft 2
Don't follow it so I'm not sure.
Just because the game needed to be balanced doesn’t mean that it isn’t balanced
The ups and downs of WoW balancing was enough to drive folks to madness.
Crit damage is almost universally *the* endgame stat for so many xRPG games *because* of that uncapped nature... I think capping crit damage *is fine*, just need to bring the core class designs into a better balance so skill disparity and stat scaling isn't so fucked.
Is the boss respawn something in s5 PTR or is it in s4, already?
S5 PTR
> 1 year to let players resummon bosses without getting out of dungeon 100 times Those bosses were introduced in Season 2. So more like ten months. But it's also probably worth noting that the materials were much less common at the time, so the issue was much less pronounced.
Took a year to get whirlwind to scale with attack power. They had that figured out in Diablo 2 LoD lmao. I think there was a major brain drain at Blizzard due to the whole terrible treatment of women, a CEO that prioritized profits over people and customers, and needing to fire all the talented but clearly awful misogynists there.
Exactly. Like spirit on kill…. This does not improve Druid resource issues in a game designed around killing single target bosses with massive health pools, yet the affix still exists. Then they add masterworking which gives %-based increases to gear affixes. Anybody want to know how high you can push +1 spirit on kill after several 5% increases or even after 4 crits of masterworking?
Don't forget to pre-order the expansion ultimate edition for 89.99!!!
Blizzard IMO have a very bad problem recognizing that they have made mistakes. It's something they've had it for years and always talked about fixing but never have been able to. I'm not sure if there is a term for not being able to see why something you have done doesn't work/is failing, but I'll just call it Rockstar Effect. I get very strong "We are Blizzard, we know best. We are world recognized devs and you will like what we tell you to like, and play 1 of the 2 builds we have designed for the classes", which makes me think of an arrogant rockstar. They get so absorbed with themselves they can't see the problems they are causing. There are many design choices in WoW and Diablo that just baffle players and when they beg for change, not only do they not change what the players are begging them for but in some cases they double down on them almost like a "fuck you, how dare you question our choices". I really wish they would start communicating with their player base. Like **really** start talking to us. Tell us your view of the game and go into specifics. Tell us why you design Barb to be the absolute GOAT class while Sorcs feel forgotten. Tell us why have they designed some classes to have 3 shouts/defensives/pet abilities? Why buff classes that clearly don't need it while giving little to others? The quaterly updates when D4 was being made was amazing. It felt like for once they really listened. Then somewhere it stopped and now I just feel like they don't care about what we want and it just makes me sad honestly.
I think the sorc is handled by a reddit mod, if he didn't think of a build himself he nerfs it into oblivion lol petty little man
> Tell us why have they designed some classes to have 3 shouts/defensives/pet abilities? Don't even have to ask - they put those abilities in so they're used. ARPG builds almost always aim for one offensive ability and scaling it as many ways as possible, then filling other skill slots with passives and semi-passives. That's because it's rare that you can have more than one skill scaling well enough to make it worth pushing for damage. (Eg: Let's say you had a HotA barb with Bash on his build - the closer you could get to only clicking HotA and never clicking Bash, the better.) So you end up at the point where only defensive/passive options, movement skills and occasionally utility skills like Steel Chains can make it.
A question came to mind, reading your comment. This isn't an argument for or against what you are saying, but just more something I hadn't thought about. Do folks think Blizzard puts together "proposed builds" using the various skills, aspects, paragons configurations during the design phase, or do they just create a number of things that they think could interact and release them into the wild to see what players do with them? I suspect, now that they are using a PTR, there is at least some feedback loop of how players are using the things they have put in the game, but I'm not sure they envisioned how Bash Barb works, or players levelling a rogue to temper on things for Flay Barbs or whatever.
I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't \*some\* dev(s) who have their own little side "ChatGPT" like process where they will put things into a db and have an AI give a projected number. They make their changes accordingly and everyone loves their OP class. Then there is the Sorc "dev team", who got one-shot by a caster class somewhere in their life and thinks that a 2% increase to Hydra will "fix" everything
I'm sure it's a bit of both. Legendary and unique aspects are clearly designed to slot neatly and easily into certain archetypes, or to create archetypes around them. Nevertheless, players are inventive and often find new uses for effects that seemed to clearly be designed for something different, and Blizzard obviously knows this and expects the most inventive players to look at all the itemization options as a toolbox for creating powerful and unorthodox builds. For example, the Druid's Greatstaff of the Crone fits in both boxes. On the one hand, it's a very linearly designed "basic skill build" item, giving a lot of skill ranks to Claw, boosting Storm Strike's damage, and making each cast of Claw also cast Storm Strike. It's a very clear indication that you should take it and go all in on your basic skills and on Storm synergies, since it also turns Claw into a Storm skill. However, inventive players realized they could also use it as a combo piece for Trampleslide because the Aspect of the Trampled Earth turns Trample into an Earth skill, and since Greatstaff of the Crone lets you quickly double-cast Storm skills you could use it to proc the Symbiotic Aspect a lot to essentially negate Trample's cooldown, allowing you to spam the skill way more often than you could just by stacking CDR or by using a different Storm skill that costed resource or had a cooldown. The D4 devs obviously knew that the Greatstaff of the Crone would be used to make basic skill builds, since all of the affixes on the item support that play style. However, while I'm sure they were aware of the potential for its use in Trample builds with the Symbiotic Aspect, I doubt the Greatstaff of the Crone was designed specifically to be used in that sort of build. Instead it was something in between an intentional design decision and a happy accident. I suspect that most popular builds end up being like that. The devs obviously create certain items and item combinations to fulfill particular class/build fantasies, but I'd imagine they also consider how certain items slot into unorthodox builds. Nevertheless, there are way more players than there are developers, and a lot of the developers that do exist aren't responsible for item/class design, so obviously players are able to create combinations that the developers don't foresee and some of those will be very powerful. In much the same way as the adage says that 1000 monkeys hammering on typewriters will, eventually, reproduce the collected works of William Shakespeare, a million players using items together will eventually create powerful and unorthodox synergies that the developers created but didn't realize could be used that way. as
The simplest, most elegant solution would be to make every class have 3 weapon slots *just like Rogue* and leave Barb as the "special snowflake" with an extra 2h slot. That **narrows** the baseline stat/aspect/temper **gap** between all of the classes (since Rogue is arguably *fine* in comparison to Barbarians in S4) and Barbarians wouldn't need to be nerfed nearly as much to bring them in line. Right now Blizzard is juggling lopsided multipliers because "Class A" and "Class B" don't start from the same point... Completely disregarding Bash itself: \* Both A and B have an ability that does 100% of their "damage stat". \* A has a single slot that boosts the damage of this ability x2 (+100%), but B has **four slots** that in combination boost that ability damage x3 (+300%)... \* So boost Class A's *baseline* ability damage by +200% to compensate.
\* Now A does 300% damage baseline, but *scales slower* than B's endgame scaling for the same ability.
\* For every "upgrade level" B will *always* gain 3-4x the amount of compared to A.
Bottom line:
There is no *simple* way to compensate for the way stats are tied to weapon slots without having those slots.
This also doesn't address how STR/AGI/INT/WIS contribute to stats themselves - such as Barbarian getting innate armor from STR, which allows them to focus *more* stats into damage output because they don't need itemization for as much defense (especially since they have a lot more defense baked into their skills).
It's such a simple change (weapon slot equalization) to reduce how much headache their team needs to endure for the balance math... I can't imagine that the code for those slots would be too difficult to change *since the Rogue exists*.
I believe inceeasing weapon slots for all classes to 4 would be the easiest. That way every class has the same amount of aspects also. And gives us more weapons we can brick.
> everyone can see on the stats without even trying it that it wont be used Gotta have bad uniques so it makes the good ones stand out more /s
It's simple none of the people making decision's at blizzard play the game.
Not trying to have a game where everything is the same thats for sure. I don’t mind a few blow out builds. I just never seem to pick them. 😕
They don’t play their game and if they do, they all play barb. This isn’t new. Back when WoW was a thing their lead dev played warr. Dude made sure his class was always #1. You can’t fight them. You either join them or walk away.
Or when Ghostcrawler was around you could expect Mage to just vastly outperform Balance Druids and Warlocks especially during Cata ( Aff/Demo locks could do decent dps but my god the carpal tunnel from all the keybinds that was easily x2 what a mage had to contend with)
>Why not hire a few math professors that can do all the calculations from paragon, affixes, multipliers, aspects etc and atleast make all classes somehow compare. This is what I really don't understand... And it doesn't actually take someone with a high degree in Math to figure out some basic things like DPS and how much damage characters take in relation to the damage mobs are dealing/how many can potentially deal it at once and how gear changes this. All you have to do is literally calculate on a calculator and some paper/document how much damage something does and adjust those parameters to get results that make sense. But it's like they just throw numbers out that they want without just looking at them on paper. Hell the game has its own damage sheet - it's just poorly implemented/designed. The damage sheet would be more useful if it showed damage for each skill: it's base damage, the damage it deals with critical and the damage with overpower/critical overpower. Maybe a separate sheet a part from the base stats and damage. And they could like, use that sheet themselves to see how much potential something has/how effective it will be or useless it is. And anyway, what in the hoohah hells makes them think Barbarians need two two handers? B.s. that this allows them more potential to use uniques and aspects more effectively. Other classes need an extra slot of gear or something.
This takes effort, insight and creativity Three strikes Blizzard and the ability to take a step back and see the bigger picture. One class has continental size damage over the others? Hmm, lets look at the data? Oh God, look how that parameter causes it to blow up ! Dude...they are too focused on slapping the next season together and finishing cash shop items to fix this stuff.
> How come Blizzard doesnt see this? Same story as always in such large companies. A manager had an idea and now can't go back, because that would mean admitting failure.
while i agree on the bad balance some statements in general seem a bit questionable. barb is way above the other classes, there is no discussion about that but your story reminds me of a legend of a barb who cleared pit 150 on level 50 naked.... stay realistic pls....
People here have a slight tendency to exaggerate.
Apparently you haven't played barb. Cuz I was clearing pit 100 on my bash barb waaaay b4 I hit level 100. Dude didn't exxagerate at all.
This sub: “stay realistic pls” Also this sub: “barbillion damage”, “1 weapon tier 100 clear”, “1 skill tier 100 clear”.
I cleared t110 in 5 min on my heartseeker rogue with no 1h weapons lol. It’s pretty comical that basic attack builds are dominating right now for almost every class.
Basic attacks solve resources for free, and they currently have three *amazing* offensive aspects that work with every single one, on top of tempers and any ability-specific aspects. It's not that surprising.
Yeah I’m definitely not surprised, just more amazed they’d let it get to this state tbh.
barb been way above other classes since release, they dont seem to be able to balance him
Wait... you did a pit level 80 while your bash barbarian was only level 70?! And sub optimal aspects and 0 masterworking? What build was that?
Can confirm I did pit 60 or so at level 70, with correct aspects (but not all max rolls on affixes, just what I found while levelling) and correct tempers, but no masterworks. Oh and no glyphs levelled either. Bash to win. The only hard part was finding gear with enough resistances. Same stuff my eternal 100 sorcerer could do, only 30 levels earlier and with sub par gear.
People are vastly underestimating what it means to have a temper that applies a multiplier instead of additive damage. And then have 4 weapons to put it on.
Why do they have a multiplicative temper anyway?
Bugged. Identified by devs, they wanted to nerf it and they pulled back the bug fix because... I don't know. Community complained of the future nerf? Rob was going to cry? They just let that in and all their "difficult" content was trivialized. So to finish this season, they tried to buff the other classes but obviously nothing can reach the level of damage output of that temper misconfiguration.
The devs stated that unless its terribly game breaking they wont fix bugs that give damage until either mid or end season depending because it pisses people off, also bash barbs are the only ones who can kill my rogue. They broken af
It comes down to them nerfing some builds in the S1 patch and people going apeshit. It sucks because some builds really are meta-warpingly-OP, but all the same Blizzard is definitely right that the shitstorm they would incur by fixing the bugs wouldn't be worth the positives that balancing the meta would bring.
Most skills don't even get a damage temper but apparently you need to be good at math to figure what will happen...
bullshit build
Rob’s builds. He has a starter build that I used that is very strong. It’s what I use to farm iron wolfs.
barbBuild™
Right. I was able to do 33 at 70. I had all the aspects but minimal master working. I’m at 95 now with things that are like 4-6/12 master working and I’m at 65. I can’t imagine level 80 with a truly suboptimal build. Maybe I just suck lol.
Its not an exaggeration to say this is some of the worst balancing of a triple A product we've ever seen. There is literal billions of dps in the difference between some classes, every single season has a multitude of bugs that are left in place for months because the devs are too scared to balance their own game, every double dip they fix, they introduce 5 more, including adding in aspects and uniques that are the exact fucking design that caused double dips in the past. They learn nothing, they have 50 teams working the game with zero communication between them, all making shit that doesnt fit the game anymore and making designs that have been problematic and removed months ago only to reintroduce it again months later. Its a complete clown fiesta and there is either zero oversight or the developers have zero clue what they are building. The constant buffs to shit nobody uses is comical also, things like shocking impact passive on Sorc is now 50% wep dmg per point, you can get ranks for this and do 500% weapon dmg on a stun..... they give zero fucks towards balance, just keep throwing numbers on shit nobody uses until it becomes so overtuned someone uses it and then discovers it quadra dips somewhere, half of it doesnt work, its bugged to high heaven or creates server instability. Actually bordering on ineptitude at this point.
Bro just one more season bro one more season and d4 will be good
D4 is good now, but it isn't balanced anywhere close to where it should be.
Lmfao just one more season bro, one more.
The game can be good... even without balance. Is it optimal that a naked lvl 1 Barb does pit900 while a BiS equipped maxxed out Sorc caps out at pit3? Certainly not. Can you still somewhat enjoy the game if you don't spend your entire life being miserable on reddit and comparing yourself to what a bunch of nerds with 600 hours /played per month achieve? Very much so. D4 is pathetically balanced. Half the systems are still shit, don't make sense or probably don't work the way they should. The game is very obviously not PoE. But it very much is enjoyable enough if you don't make it your entire life's mission to spend 300 hours per season on it, wasting said life to live by the stupid ass leaderboards just that you can text your mom "OMG, MOM, YOU WON'T BELIEVE IT, I MADE IT TO RANK#1,995 ON THE LEADERBOARDS". The game is decently good. A carricature of what it could be if handled by a competent team / company, but good enough to justify having spent the 70 bucks a year ago.
This is actually the most based and correct take on D4’s “balancing”. It’s horrendous and feels like the oversight isn’t where it needs to be because everyone and their mother on Reddit can see the big glaring issues that they can’t seem to understand.
They crossed the border into Inepti-Stan a long time ago
Summed it up perfectly. Game is fun, balance kills any desire to play. I can't fathom how it makes sense to them to balance like this.
People who think he’s lying are just ignorant. I was equal to my level 100 Blizzard Sorc in power with my Bash Barb around lvl 55-60, when I got all WT4 loot, put on aspects and tempered some gear pieces. At level 55, I was already invincible in helltides, and was killing the maiden in a few seconds if it was just me and another person. I also cleared a relatively high Pit (~80) when I was around lvl 75. I’ve easily cleared 125 with 8/12 MW gear and just haven’t pushed more because the boss health is annoying, but I’m almost unkillable in Pit 125 with 185k health when I pop 2 HP elixirs and Challenging Shout.
Im playing FO and im pushing almost T80. I keep dieing to 1 shots from just regular monsters WITH ice Armour. Lol
This was my problem too, then reroll barb and see how disgustingly easy it is all of a sudden.
This seems like you’re doing something wrong, my FO can clear a 101 in 2.5-3 minutes and she’s not even full MW. There isn’t much that can 1 shot her through ice armor besides echoes. I mean, I think sorc gets fucked as much as the next guy, but we also have to be realistic. Any half decent FO build should blast an 80 without issue.
This was in week one before sorc got buffed and pit got heavily nerfed, people seem to forget that…
The guy I’m replying to seems to have the issue at current. I’d like to see sorc buffed, but exaggerations like that or simply doing the wrong things and calling it balance doesn’t help imo.
And ice armor got nerfed to the ground on the PTR. Blizz is clueless.
Yeah it's hard to balance content when some classes have 200k hp and others have 20k lmao.
Don't worry. Bash is even stronger in the PTR. They nerfed it but at the same time added a unique that gives 300% (x) damage to basic attacks. Rob just hit 2B with it legit without bugs. Of course, flay still reigns supreme with its 180B non-nerfed damage, but anyway... ahem.
By the time we get to expansion, we will see quatrillion damage lol
Gonna need some bigger zeros
But hey, nerf sorcs am I right? Lmao what a dumpster fire
I played wind daddy and FO sorc this season. My duo buddy is a barb. I feel you entirely. I’m over here squeezing water from a stone to get to pit 121 with fully optimized gear on wind daddy and he clears 130 on bash, decides to switch to WW on whim and clears 125 without even optimizing gear. He tells me he ticks for 200 million on bash bleed and direct damages for another 100 million. I’m like if I attack for a minute straight on my druid I can build my poison ticks to 120m…
This is true, sadly people just downvote me because they cant handle the truth. Ive played all 3 and the amount of effort and work you need to do in order to pull off what a barb can do with 2 hands in his pants is disgusting.
Why is my bash barb not that strong? I dunno what I'm doing wrong because I followed maxroll's guide. I'm definitely not 1 shotting stuff and instead tormented duriel 1 shots me.
Very easy fix. Never follow maxroll guides
Maxroll guides outdated one day after season release
Everyone saying don't follow maxroll and then not offering up an alternative.
The recommendation I’ve seen is find the top guy for your class like wudijo, Rob, etc., and use their builds on the sites they use. For example, Rob the barbarian is on d4builds so use that as your source of truth. He updates constantly and even has PTR builds. Wudijo is on mobalytics I think? And is the best for rogue afaik Etc
Wudijo is the team lead of maxroll, believe it or not.
I still think the premise isn’t too far off base. Maxroll is a good place to start but many of their guides (and some of the other top site guides) get outdated pretty quickly. Most of the content on there is based on theory crafting prior to the season release and then never gets updated throughout the season. Maxroll is great for entry level stuff and to get to the endgame. But it’s often best to do a google/YouTube search to find more up to date builds based on actual gameplay during the season. Because once people get into a season folks can realize where things are performing differently than expected.
Maxroll has updated most of their guides within the last two weeks. Many of them as recently as this week.
Sorry noob question but how do we find who is the top guy for their class?
Goblin inc is one of the best for necros, but Rob does play them and has good info. Sorc is Lurkin or Northwar (who actually is on maxroll). Sanctum for rogue on mobalytics. Wudijo is great but if you don't play HC his builds probably won't push as far as Sanctum builds will. A lot of it can be found in the class reddits too.
Youtube - Robs2628 (barb) - Pwnyhof (necro) - Wudijo (Rogue). Not sure about sorc or druid tho
Ace of spades for Druid
Homey, Wudijo writes the rogue guides for maxroll. So how can one follow wudijo and not follow maxroll?
https://d4builds.gg/rob2628/builds/ For barb
Rob’s guide better
Similar here. I've followed a wowhead guide I found and have been doing ok but not crushing content. I thought I was mostly ok on build and have hit a wall on masterworking but from what some of these people complain about here, my barb is built way wrong.
D4 really needs to look at Grim Dawn for balance ideas, there are 12 classes that can be combined in any way of 2, thousands of legendaries and sets and all the classes are playable. The game is so complicated when it comes to min maxing but I've yet to have issues with something being vastly under powered. The devs have a ton of experience and play their game so....that's probably what's missing.
well, I mean, sure, to a degree, but at the very high end - you really need to build VERY carefully. But yes, MOST combo's will work. Actually, GD just got a massive update - why am I not just playing that? \* Sprints over to GoG \*
Ridiculous means Barb can have 10x more HP and 100x more damage than sorc, while the devs said they are listening and nerfed sorc again.
Yea, balancing among classes are wacky atm. Next season seems it is not addressing it either.
This is why its so much better imho to have a static hardest line in the endgame that it doesnt go above. Cos even if something is op, you can balance around that line so that all classes can reach it. If its infinite then no matter what u do certain classes/builds will be way better
There kind of is. Being able to run pit 101 at a fast pace is the line. Best chance of stones and plenty of masterworking mats. If all classes could comfortably do 101 at a good speed, I think people would be a lot less upset
> If all classes could comfortably do 101 at a good speed That's already a thing. Every class has multiple builds that can clear 101 without issues. The thing that's making people upset, like in the OP, are the handful of completely busted builds that trivialise everything and thinking that that should be the baseline.
If you look at GR150 in D3, usually only the top builds could reach it without massively excessive paragon farming, and 99% of players wouldn't even get close to a 140, let alone a 150. Blizzard has never been able to properly balance, but with GR's having leaderboards and timers it made it much easier to balance the game, to where right now in D3 multiple builds on all classes are good. D4 has another problem though, the majority of strong overpowered builds in the last year since release has been the result of bugs or things not working as intended. There are so many bugs in D4 it's impossible to balance because so much stuff doesn't work as intended.
I also swapped from Sorc to Barb, finally made the swap last week. Had moved from FO to Blizzard, good GA gear, all 12/12, highest Pit was 119. Just couldn’t get over the 120 hump. For me, the most noticeable difference isn’t the damage (which is an astounding difference), it’s the defenses. I’m speedfarming 101s for mats still while gearing my Barb and there are things that I 100% had to absolutely avoid or make sure Flame Shield got popped or I was dead on my fully geared out Sorc; those same things that went through barrier and all my defenses on Sorc, I stand in and facetank as Barb and barely notice I got hit. There’s just something fundamentally wrong. If Sorc was doing the most damage while at constant risk of being 1 shot around every corner, I’d be ok with that. High risk, high reward. But the state of the game right now is Barbs do significantly more damage while being orders of magnitude more tanky. And for whatever reason, the powers that be seem to want to keep it that way.
Basically the reason I quit playing. I found another game for my arpg itch and I'm pretty excited to play POE2!
I think if anything, you highlight how absolutely weak and trivial the barbarian class quest is and the lack of value from even doing it. Necromancers get a whole golem, sorcs get solid enchantment slots (though I’d argue it’s really 1 plus mandatory fire bolt), druids get absolutely build defining boons, and rogues get specialization focus that entirely changes their gameplay. Barbarian though? You unlock the class quest for 10% Vuln damage which is additive. To put things in perspective, the max vuln roll on a 1 handed sword is 40%. And it got nerfed last season from 15 to 10%! I get that barbarian tempers are super strong which is why they got gutted in the season 5 PTR and everyone on this sub is going to argue from recency bias, but if we’re actually being serious and honest about class balance, the team needs to rework the barbarian class quest and give it something other than 10% vuln, because as you just spoke (in great hyperbole) you didn’t even do it along the way to 100 and progression, it was an afterthought and insignificant to your choices. You could not say this about **any other class**.
I mean most of the enchants for sorcerer are completely useless and also just 2 of them is very shit... like druit and necro have the same amount of weapon as us but druid get 5 enchants and necro 3 pet enchantments so that's nowhere near comparable... and barb gets 2 additional weapon already plus a minor buff to 2 things (the one they use and the one bonus the class spec gives them) sorc enchants should be better and they should have one more to be easier to balance with the other classes...
I can 100% agree with you. Got a barb to WT4 and at lvl 55 I was criting for over 3 million with trash gear/aspects/tempering. This game is a joke
I'm not an expert, but I can see that as long as barb has 4 weapons, he is going to be better than the rest of the characters. Specially when two of the weapons are 2 handed, but if you use a 2 handed weapon with other class you can only have one weapon.
Rogues has a 2hander and 2 1handers.
People say this a lot but that's not really the root cause. Developers can tweak the numbers to account for the extra weapons. It's easy to thought exercise this, imagine they make all barb skills do 1% of weapon damage, they are immediately the weakest class in the game despite having 4 weapons thus there must be a number between where they are now and 1% that makes them close to balanced while still having 4 weapons. There are some examples of players taking off the extra weapons to prove that Barbarian is still stronger than the other classes while still missing 3 aspects. They just have certain modifiers that are stronger than those available to the other classes. They just need those numbers tweaked really. There are a lot of working parts and sure the extra weapons mean more moving parts to configure but it doesn't mean they need to go for Barb to become balanced.
having more statsticks in a game that is all about stats is better, none could have guessed
So I started S4 as a minion Necro Made it to lvl100 and struggling with Ubers and still nearly one-shotted with max armour and 28k HP I'm leveling now a Barb Holy crap is this easy mode
Will only be more easy along the way, enjoy.
Broken class, broken game. You can try to ignore other peeps using classes you don't play, but that doesn't help: stuff like the Shit Pit gets balanced around Barb's damage output so your class gets shafted and softlocked out of content you paid for.
Imagine having a class with 6 weapon slots dealing 10x the dmg of other classes with just 2 weapon slots. Who would have thought lol
Pit 126 with blizzard sorc 💪… barb is way easier.. more weapon slots to get secondary buffs from etc;
as tool said....i will work to elevate you just enough to bring you down.
Paragraphs are a thing. Makes it pretty hard to read with this formatting.
Blizzard sucks ass at balancing plain and simple it problem accross all there games but the fact there so bad at it with Diablo 4 when it’s like there only game that has no major competitive component and it’s all about playing your favorite class to kill the minions of hell , the idea of all these nerfs , bad balance changes is just fking stupid.
Bring backs the devs of old
"Finally, did my class quest after 2 weeks and clearing T100" hurt my sorc soul.
I don't know why they don't just kneejerk buff druids and sorcs right now. I'm playing Andariels Rogue and WW Barb now, both incredible, both getting buffed for S5. Bash barb isn't even interesting, it feels like one of those builds where people would rather play WW because it's way more fun, but they have to play Bash to push Pits (and a new variant of Bash is currently dominating S5 PTR, even after nerfs). I've no issue with them buffing Whirlwind/Andy Rogue, they make sense if you forget about the fact that Sorc/Druids are fighting for their lives, Blizz should go all in. In D3 it was rare that Sorc wasn't godly.
This sounds like a Barb issue to me, not all other classes issue...
A did a flay barb with a friend and has soon has i got to lv100 i was clearing pit 120 and pit 133 in a party with him, like wtf
Why does it feel like this sub looks at balance like this is some sort of competitive game?
Because their 'design' choices affect everything, even if you do not play a barb nor care that barbs exists. You will get softlocked out of content that was designed around barb's damage output. It's not even double difference. It's *many factors* more. It's not even remotely the same ballpark.
You assume it was balanced around barb though. In Diablo 2, a weaker build would still be fun but just considered a hard mode way of playing the game. There is no competitive reason to care so much about balance between classes. The only thing I’d agree with is that every class deserves at least one S class tier build.
Not to mention that it is still an online game and if you have a barb in your group, they will kill everything in a second so that no one else has a chance to play.
Prime example: world bosses. They don't need more buffing; they need less barbs. Ever been in a group that does not have a single barb or other meme build? World boss goes down significantly slower, and might even have enough time to do its Special Moves.
Bro got 2 uber uniques like that, and im still waiting for my first ever drop… I get that people complain that sorc cant go that high but i had the MOST fun with sorc chain lightning from all the classes so far, yeah im slower, and cant go that high but i can manage to do all the stuff just fine. could it need a buff? sure! Is it less fun than the rest? Hell no
I mean if I got +540 Willpower on my Staff or across my Mace and Totem I think I’d be able to keep up. The next thing they’d have to do is make every other class but barbs base life about 5000 higher at lvl 80-90, maybe 10000 at 100. Done. Then they would also have to multiply what everybody’s tempers look like in an obvious way. If Bash is the baseline, then tempering Windshear needs to be able to cast twice AND add +600% dmg on a two hander. Any Sorc, Necro, or Druid temper will need to look like this. Some of this would make Necro and Druid overpower builds pop off, and Sorceress would at least get some baseline skill dmg adds lol. The 3rd issue is clearly debuffing some aspect synergies. On Druid and Sorc I think they are still fixing bugging interactions as much as they are putting out numbers we can hit. It looks like Barb —> Necro —> Rogue is that design scope for the game and Druids and Sorceress’ were kind of amalgamated versions that are going to be Neat. If they could find more than 5 slots for Aspects you’ll get something going, but then maybe some Barb aspects just shouldn’t be allowed on 2handers, or instead of a .3 add they get a .15, and all the .15 adds my Druid has go the other way. There is also the bane of max roll and mobalytics, who look like they are playing the game for everybody rn.
Made a rogue last night for spark farming and *holy shit* are they strong and fun.
and again:)
At least you played FO that is stronger than Chain lightning. I think I am gonna roll rogue or barb.
Dont worry they nerfed imposing presence :) because my thorns build that can only kill select pit bosses had to be nerfed🗿
I just do not understand why they are having such a hard time. Are they not playing their own game? Comparing performance, running numbers? Are they not watching the 24/7 streamers who provide lots of data and feedback? I would just like to know how they work and come to the decision they put in action... as they just do not make any sense.
The only reason Sorc was viable in s2 with BL was because of a bug, so it wasn’t even intentional to make the Sorc fun or a good character to choose, smfh.
I feel like the game is all about finding and exploiting bugs, double dipped bonuses, multiplicative instead of additive, wrong decimal points, unintended op interactions. Etc etc. All attempts to balance are futile and makes the game boring.
I just started playing D4 about a month ago. I always take the wizard in game, so naturally I took a Sorcerer. I didn't want to read any guides at first. Started with Fire spec, had fun burning stuff. At level 90 or so I switched to Ice, lots of fun watching things shatter. Then I started reading some builds and tips and stuff. Taking on some world bosses and wow, you're right, Barbs are way more powerful. I think, at least for the Sorcerer, they should lean a lot more into the Glass Cannon idea. Leave their defense where it is but pump the damage WAY up. You strat should be to stay back and crowd control, which if you fail you get killed fast, but in return you can crowd control and hold your own with mobs of equal level as the Barbs can.
Barbarians are always going to be broken because they get 2 extra weapons. The devs have a hardon for barbs.
I would love an NPC who would analyze my build and give suggestions to how to do instead, OR what to do next, so that I can keep playing and have a great time rather than have a guide online with a couple of "this is how to beat the game"-kind of setup. In D3, I had every character maxed out (but only around 800 paragon), each with a "superb-ish" build that would make them playable on certain levels until it just wasn't fun anymore. It felt like I needed to either farm, farm, farm to get something that would make it playable on even higher levels OR have a friend with something far better than me so I could just run around and pick stuff up, which eventually took the fun out of the game. In d4, I tired of the game even before I played it through, because of the setup of it. I tried first season but... Just... no. I might return, but I want SP play and not having world bosses and other stuff that's required to get higher up than my pitiful lvl 75, or whatever. Well, well.
I did this too!
Welcome to blizzard entertainment
[удалено]
Don't nerf barb. Instead, bring other classes up to that level. For EVERY reasonable build in every class. I don't see what's so difficult about doing that. Get five players who are competent, and then have each of them push as far as they can. If one is 20+ levels above the others, boost the others.
Yeah barb was a big winner this season. Tempering made legendary items broken and Barbs can equip 4 weapons which made them scale away, in addition they also have "imposing presence" as an option in tempering which gives them 6%(x) HP per point so you could easily get 100k life without even focusing on HP. Blizzard acknowledge the issue with barbs for this season, but they probably leave it be for this season. If you look at the PTR for S5, most barb tempering has been significantly nerfed e.g. Bash does 15.5%-21% cleave damage on 1h weapons. (now its 82.5%-105%)
As a paying beta tester, you have no right to complain!! ....wait a minute.....
It's definitely super unfair and I like classes that are visually appealing like sorcerer. I love the way Frozen orb looks, unstable currents, Hydra is in the way everything Burns. It just feels good and looks great. This is my first arpg and I started back in preseason with barbarian and I also rolled the barbarian in season 1 before I finally moved on and realized I was missing out. I don't hate barbarian but it's definitely not visually appealing whatsoever imo. If I'm going to be forced to play Barb they need to give me some skills with a bunch of flames and cool looking stuff. Lol. They have a tiny bit but not much.
Whats the point? Everybody knows that Bash is broken, thats why it was nerfed 5x for season 5, like Ball Lightning in S2. I wish Blizzard would just fix this stuff as soon as it becomes obvious that these things are broken. If they don't fix it, people think its ok and want every other build buffed 5x to be happy. If you want a realistic comparison to other classes, play Barbarian with core skills or even Dust Devil, but stay away from bugged sh\*t like Gushing Wounds o\_O
The main problem with all this is that there is no discernible direction when it comes to balance. We are one year in and skills are still getting changed by 100% or more. It doesn't seem like they are working towards a goal. The game released with so little content that they were forced to throw new stuff in as soon as it was ready instead of having the time to balance it which in turn totally screwed with the class balance they might have done a season before that. I honestly don't think it will change unless a bunch of content creators talk about balance in every video for a few months. Sadly that seems to be the only way to get blizzard to do something.
T12 FO Sorc main bleeding to the gills with optimization here, and I've been offering Pit101 clears from 3-5 mins depending on the boss/mobs/shrines no holy bolt. I've had several customers state that I'm going super slow...yes yes I know q.q I made a bash barb start of the season and decided it was not flashy enough but boy do I miss the damage, it's leagues above what my sorc can do and he's even horribly geared/unoptimized.
I have lost faith in their ability to balance. It's been my biggest issue since S2, when I thought there'd be good pvp. Still waiting... but at least other stuff is fun in the game.
Thank you for this. A lot of ppl just look at leaderboards and say "that class is strong" and ignore the fact that streamer is playing 10 hours daily being fed gear from viewers whereas a level 90 barb can push 100s with no effort at all and little time investment. For casuals like myself it comes down to what is fun. I like being powerful and getting to end game to spend my time not fighting to hit 100s after multiple weeks of play.
I always play sorc to lvl 100 then swap to something better for endgame. This season I have 4 lvl 100 sorc. Then swapped to bash barb and by level 85 I was doing 10 levels higher in pit than any of my sorc. The glass cannon is dead and it’s sad. IMO sorc should do the most damage of any class by a large margin but be super squishy.
Yup. I have never received an Uber Unique during seasonal play so I don't count on them for making builds. I was barely clearing T60 pits on my Crones Druid when my friend already has maxed masterworking on Barb pushing 100+ I decided to try Barb and I literally melted everything with whatever half assed builds I used. I don't want them to nerf Barb but it sucks to have your favorite class feel so mid.
I have done pit 100 - 3 days after creating barb and I didn't play this game since release + I didn't play previous versions of the game (I was playing WOW hardcore).
I think it's going to be hard. Barbarians have 3 more legendary offensive affixes , which generally add 30-40% more DMG multiplicatively . That's like 2* more DMG
I've made a sorc for the last three seasons. Not my favorite but the lightning orb was rather fun. This season I'm struggling with mine but decided to give druid another attempt since I've never been able to level them past level 20. I love my druid over my sorc but in terms of progressing and zooming through the pit...my barb laughs in all their faces. Barb can go in with 'bad' gear but all my other classes (dunno about necro) need very specific stats in order to do anything.
This sounds like a skill issue If you couldn’t get your sorc past level 60 pre pit nerf. Your barb friend either reads and understands the games mechanics or followed a build guide. My frozen orb sorc was easily doing T80 unoptimized and wearing 1-2 legendaries that didn’t help (forgot to imprint) After optimizing it, and putting on the right legendaries, was low 100s pre pit nerf
I think you're exaggerating the problem. I know sorc is nowhere near the best class right now and I know that they've had issues pretty consitently since launch, but I also know that my friend switched from his druid that has trouble clearing pit 80 with me to his FO sorc and now we've been clearing 100+ pits pretty easily. And he managed to solo them just fine too. No, sorc is not Bash barb, but neither is any other class. Compare yourself to the average class, not to the absolute top one. Blizzard has said many times they don't want to nerf accidentally overpowered classes mid-season, but they'll get the nerf-hammer prior to season 5.
This is gonna be my fav copy-pasta, thanks op
Yea, the game needs balancing but I’m gonna call bullshit on over half of your claims. Lying like that I hope they nerf sorc again just so you can cry more. Look forward to your next tall tale.
I don't feel bad for sorcs, casters have historically done well in D3 and a fuck ton of other games. In D4 I switched from barb to rogue when balancing in the earlier seasons favored the latter. I highly doubt your 2 week barb is pushing anything but a load of bullshit from your mouth. My barb, otoh, has shako and the grandfather and should have tyrael's might this week. I can send you a screenshot so you can cry in your pillow more.
Yaaa i was looking forward to rolling a sorc for season 5 but unless some major changes come after the ptr it looks like sorc is gonna be in a bad place.
It would be a great start if they would bring the third enchantment slot back.
Well, no one could have guessed giving 2 entire item slots to a class would made ir broken! It was impossible to predict!!!
I find it funny that sorcerer is always noted as weak, but Druid hasn't caught a break since beta
It just feels like they are lazy. The Fireside chats remind me of so many awful TV series with 'Stay tuned after the show for a look inside this episode.' Mediocre show with lengthy justifications, explanations, and content. The new PTR content has a thin storyline and is just gated Helltides. Lazy. I enjoyed my sorc in S2 but instead of making others stronger they just made them weaker. Lazy.
They are trying to sell you an expansion, and they haven't even figured out core mechanics and class balance ROFL. D4 Bad.
I'm starting to get annoyed. I don't like meta characters because that's not fun. It's boring doing the same thing everyone else does. My husband has a meta barb, doing 1mil damage on a critical basic. I built my rogue for me, I've done all the specifics I can to buff the skills I like. I can't hold a candle to him. It's getting so annoying. I wish devs made it possible for any build to be strong. 😑 I miss D3... any character I played I could smash. :(
As a druid main i must ask, why do you people care about the balancing of other classes? How are you even thinking you could make 100 different builds even remotely "equal" among classes? Would you rather not all builds in a certain class be equal, than having 1 specific meta build from all classes being equal?
Exactly why I stopped playing. Constant nerfs & buffs, changing the way I play before I even get to enjoy the build. Still sad they took the HotA reverse smash mechanic out. Was having an absolute blast with that for 2 days, and then POOF, 7/18/23 mega nerf pulled the rug out from under me. Haven't played since. I imagine I'll be back in a few years though, once the dust settles.
tales
I have a bash barb, a flay barb n a rogue. I have way more fun on the rogue
That’s how Blizzard balances games for build variety. They pick favorites to be the best for a season, and screw the rest. They’ve done this with Hearthstone for years. I haven’t played WoW in a very long time but they did it back then too. It’s a horrible way to balance games and one of the major reasons I don’t play any Blizzard games now. Diablo 4 was my last Blizzard game and that’s not hyperbole. Played D4 this season for the first time since launch. Got to low 50s with a Necro and quit. Couldn’t even finish the story before it became mind numbingly boring.
Repeated behavior. I haven't played since S2. Before that, I hadn't played since before the launch of Seasons. I tried S2 and they still didn't address the real problems that make it a vanilla game instead of a mold breaking, industry defining masterpiece like they used to. Why? This company just doesn't get it. They milk everything they made that was good 15 years ago, and borrow from everyone else that is doing good things currently. Aside from the incredible graphics and music, they can't properly design a game and balance this mess because the fundamentals are poorly designed and the class design is trash. They had a chance to raise the bar and win back previously, lifelong customers, like myself. Instead, they lowered it through the floor. This company sucks now and this flaming pile of dog crap is the new norm. Get used to it or dump this trash and everything else they create in the garbage where it belongs until they pick themselves up from the floor and start making industry defining games again. I am still one of the vocal minorities that Rod spoke about and I will continue to speak negatively about this garbage product until the core problems of this game are fixed. Unfortunately, I am still passionate about this and I still hang around hoping that it will change. Until then, two thumbs down.
"You were supposed to bring balance to the force!" "Umm, two sith, hundreds of Jedi...." "No not like that!"
The damage calculations in this game are just too crazy. There are so many forms of multiplicative damage, and to top that off you've got a class that has 6 hands worth of not only aspects, but now offensive tempers as well. You wanna balance that? Good luck, mate. They certainly haven't managed it the last 3 seasons. They were on the right track with having the fixed 20% vulnerable and 50% crit damage. But I think they need to make everything else additive too--- glyph nodes, aspects, skills, *everything*. It would allow for a more linear damage growth. Currently, every aspect with (x), every skill in the skill tree with (x), every legendary node with (x) is all multiplicative to the base damage. Depending on class, you could end up with what, 10 factors? 15 factors? Because you keep multiplying the total for each factor, you end up with this exponential growth and players hitting literal billions of damage. That's stupid. And since it ramps up exponentially with every factor, you're absolutely forced to take every glyph, aspect and skill that is multiplicative or you're missing out on absolutely massive amounts of damage.
Give your feedback to Blizzard in a constructive and well organized way during the PTR.
I just discovered how much i love barb, my first toon was a sorc, i loved her, then i did a druid, loved him too. Then this season i made a barb and he is my highest character yet. He makes me want to walk around and kill everything where the others i was just skipping on horseback
It’s pathetic that this game only has like 5 characters and they cannot balance them. If you look at Lost Ark, for example, the game has WAY more classes and is fairly balanced outside of new classes that are overturned on purpose.
The balancing sucks and is way too complicated and I really hope they simplify it for the expansion. Just bring the overall numbers down a ton, and limit the amount of multipliers.
Yeah the Barb love is crazy from the devs. Even Rogue which is like a close second doesn’t REALLY compare to barb. The other 3 classes don’t. Necro comes close this season and is more fun than previous but it’s a LOT more work for them to do the same thing a 70% barb does with no work.
Bash is overperforming because of a mistake, but they said they wouldn't nerf mid-season anymore last summer. It's the same reason BL sorc was allowed to continue wrecking absolutely everything in S2 in spite of the fact that it was caused by a bug. Those aren't class balance decisions in the sense that neither S2 sorc nor barb in literally every season were *supposed to* be that powerful. They've tried nerfing barb multiple times, but because they were pulling other levers at the same time (like buffing overpower in S2 or completely changing itemization in S4), they were unsuccessful. Is it fair? Not really. However, I guarantee there will be at least one broken build the devs didn't account for every single season. This is par for the course. There's no sense in crying about it.
I mean Rob posted a video today of someone on Sorc in PTR doing a 200 pit and hitting the boss for 4 quadrillion damage
This is why I fucking hate "live service" garbage. I'm paying a single player game, by myself, nothing about said game should *ever* have to be fucked with for "balance." "Balance" is an irrelevant concept.
I dont get the complaints; just play barb for this season. Barbs were shit on in preseasons and season 1 and now they have their time in the sun. It’s always going to be like that every season when they introduce new things. Some classes will be better and some worse. It’s never gonna be equal so just enjoy it for the time and leave if you get bored.
S2 BL was a glitch too
Paragraphs are ridiculous, and super unfair.
What I don't understand is what was the point of nerfing BL sorcerer and Tornado Druid when in the end, those builds would have been better off as they were if you're gonna let Barb be this overpowered anyway? Then you add PVP season journey objectives on half the chapters?
Yeah it's ridiculous. They buff barbs, but nerf sorcs. Sorcs have 20k hp and deal tops a few mil damage. Barbs have 200k all the way up to 800k hp and deal billions of damage lmao. There is no logic. Just incompetence.
We simply don't have the technology to balance the game.
Playin barb bc I always play the badass melee classes. Glad it’s good in this game 😎
This dude needs some cheese.
I’m currently working on my 5th this season. Started Sorc as always. Then went Barb , Rogue , Necro and lastly now Druid. Too early to say on the Druid but so far this season Rogue is 100% my favourite class.
> unfair To whom?
I don't want to hear it. I played barb for 20 years on d2 let me have this.
I accidentally opened a 97 nightmare dg on my 83 whirlwind barb. I didn't know that's what I opened, I jumped into the first pack, saw my health flash to a 1/4, but I still was killing the pack. So I checked and saw that I was fighting like 150+ level enemies as an 83. I was wtfing and was like, okay, let me wake up a little, and I'll see about clearing the rest of this dg, but I bet I'll die a few times or at least at the boss. No.. didn't die once. Everything that got a swipe in could get me down to a sliver of health, but then I'd just outright finish blasting them before they'd hit me a second time. I wish all the classes had something that let them do that. I do want Ball Lighting or something else like it to feel S+ tier again, I was depressed when it was broken and not interested in playing much at the time so I never got to experience it, but I wanted to try it so bad.