The Illusion of Choice

The more I keep playing, the more I keep realizing this game doesn't have many choices. It's exactly like Diablo 2 in regards to stats. Get enough dex/str/int to use your gear/skills, then stack HP.

Every build should revolve around getting as much max HP % nodes as possible.
Every build should link blood magic to their skills and use their mana for auras.
Want to play a summoner, roll witch.
Want to play melee, roll marauder.
Want to play a caster, roll templar.

The only exception to these is a shadow, and that's only good for EK.

As for armor/evasion, they are 100% not useful.
If you want to evade attacks, get a flame totem/GMP/blind. Or use spell totem/skeles/blind.
If you want to tank, get 7 endurance charges, enfeeble, granite flask. You now have 90% damage reduction without a single point of armor.


As for gear, you want: sockets, links, hp, resists, IR, IQ.
As for weapon, everything is tied to either spell damage or physical damage % increase.

All the damage talent nodes aren't useful compared to HP/Resists nodes, as the amount of points needed to invest in order to reduce TTK hits by at least 2 is more than you should want to spend.

If you don't follow these guidelines, the moment you hit end-game you will be struggling. If you did, then you'll be face rolling.

For a game that was hailed for its uniqueness and choices, there really aren't that many.

The way this game works is that 90% of possible builds are not viable. However, there is enough variety that the 10% is still a very large number of builds. Your job as a player is to figure out which builds are in the viable 10%.

I think you are also giving yourself a lot of preconceived notions of what is possible and what is not. Instead of just limiting yourself, perhaps you could try testing the limits of what you think is possible.

tldr

If they made lets say armor more valuable than Hp, you would see the same crying stuff about how everyone is using armor instead of hp, it is alwats like that, peopel will always use stuff that is easiest to use and be most efficient with least effort.

"

VoxelSquid wrote:

The way this game works is that 90% of possible builds are not viable. However, there is enough variety that the 10% is still a very large number of builds. Your job as a player is to figure out which builds are in the viable 10%.

I think you are also giving yourself a lot of preconceived notions of what is possible and what is not. Instead of just limiting yourself, perhaps you could try testing the limits of what you think is possible.

I just told you what's possible and what's not. These are not preconceived notions. These are facts.

"

VoxelSquid wrote:

Your job as a player is to figure out which builds are in the viable 10%.

I really hope it doesn't boil down to this.

He pretty much hit the nail on the head without being bitter or whiny about it. As you progress into merciless you end up seeing how useless damage and defensive armor/eva nodes are.

The only customization is what are the most efficient paths to health nodes that give you the stats that you need. I mean when you stop and look at the passive tree it's effing huge, yet 70-80% of it is practically useless.

You are actually patently false on many of your assessments.

I play a build that is level 71 with only 2700 HP. Very few HP nodes. And I do just fine.

I took the blood magic keystone rather than using blood magic gems so only use a few auras with set costs.

Templar makes a fine summoner.

Melee has some issues as a whole right now, but templar or shadow can melee just fine too, not to mention duelist.

Witch or shadow make great casters as well as templar.

Armor and evasion are NOT useless. I play a ranger with about 7000 armor and the damage reduction is GREATLY appreciated. I haven't played evasion to comment there.

I do just fine tanking with my only 2700 HP and 7000 armor due to my great life on hit AOE ability. I don't even use granite flask even though I have one.

My gear isn't the greatest but does great with only 1 piece being 5L and the rest as 4L. I run with maxed resist on cold, but only about 60% on fire and lightning and -48% on chaos and have no problems. For maps I can swap things out to adjust this as needed.

So... troll harder next time please.

when it comes to perfect max/min end game, no game has balance. ever. if you think the 'best' way to play is the only way to play, you loose out on half the adventure of an RPG.


also : BETA














also : B E T A .

It wasn't like this in the past.
It won't be like this in the future.