"Viable Builds" And You

I hear so often "Only a few builds are endgame viable"

I'm not trying to be douchy but honestly, I think I see why people say that now.

I watched a guy join my Piety party today who completely kicked ass with a Spectral Throw + Cast EK on Crit build. It was awesome, things flying everywhere. He also died so many times.

Me? I'm a 2H Cleaver and I was up in Piety's face every second I could be without getting murdered, and I never died. I knew how to play my character, and what his strengths and weaknesses were.

The lesson is this: Some builds require more technical skills than others. Just because a build requires a lot of technical skills to survive doesn't mean it's "not viable" it just means you need to know how to play it. I think many builds are perfectly fine and "build diversity" is alive and well, but some are obviously easier than others and that's how it should be.

Again, I'm not attacking anything specifically, I'm just saying that before you say "there's only X viable builds", try to understand how other people play different builds, and the different methods they use to make their characters work. Some are just harder than others, and that's where the "skill" is required...you can play an easy build (like mine right now) or a really hard one and feel accomplished when you master it.

But coc is "one of the few"...

Also, viable can mean anything from 'I can just survive' to 'one of the most efficient builds'

However a hardcore game like PoE will attract lots minmaxing powergamers that see viable as 'the most efficient builds'
Its all that matterz

everything is viable with right gear.

Maybe his gear was shit?

Endgame viable generally means you can contribute and survive in difficult level 75-78 maps and be able to advance at a steady pace towards level 100.
A high dps glass cannon build or one that can not deal with reflect via skill or mechanics is not end game by definition.

If your definition is not so strict, pretty much any build short of BM+CI can be considered viable.

There are honestly only a handful of builds I would consider truly end game viable and even less i would consider end game optimal.

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Nephalim wrote:

Endgame viable generally means you can contribute and survive in difficult level 75-78 maps and be able to advance at a steady pace towards level 100.
A high dps glass cannon build or one that can not deal with reflect via skill or mechanics is not end game by definition.

If your definition is not so strict, pretty much any build short of BM+CI can be considered viable.

There are honestly only a handful of builds I would consider truly end game viable and even less i would consider end game optimal.

This. It's hard to DPS enough in 75-78 maps to truly contribute in a group, while having the ability to survive in high damage maps. But just short of that (70-74 maps) is much less restrictive, and if you're talking just Piety farming it's pretty flexible even without substantial gear investment.

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sodium777 wrote:

However a hardcore game like PoE will attract lots minmaxing powergamers that see viable as 'the most efficient builds'
Its all that matterz

Eh... I feel like it doesn't have much to do with how 'hardcore' the game is.

I would say D3 is way less 'hardcore' - if for no other reason, in D3 the vast majority of people played in softcore. Builds were based around softcore play for the most part in the community discussion.

But even then, basically every class had a 'best' build for a while before they did a huge rebalance - for Barbs it was the Run Like the Wind Whirlwind build, and for Monks it was the Cyclone / Thunderclap build.

So I think it's just the nature of any game with a large following that people will minmax everything. For some people it's just in their nature to try and find excellent combinations.

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kaross579 wrote:

Eh... I feel like it doesn't have much to do with how 'hardcore' the game is.

I would say D3 is way less 'hardcore' - if for no other reason, in D3 the vast majority of people played in softcore. Builds were based around softcore play for the most part in the community discussion.

But even then, basically every class had a 'best' build for a while before they did a huge rebalance - for Barbs it was the Run Like the Wind Whirlwind build, and for Monks it was the Cyclone / Thunderclap build.

So I think it's just the nature of any game with a large following that people will minmax everything. For some people it's just in their nature to try and find excellent combinations.

It would be best if we could drop jargon like "hardcore," to be honest -- since it's relatively meaningless.

sodium777's post alone has 3 words in it that are almost entirely meaningless (in bold), out of two sentences.

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sodium777 wrote:

However a hardcore game like PoE will attract lots minmaxing powergamers that see viable as 'the most efficient builds'
Its all that matterz

Remove these from the discussion vocabulary and things will be better off.

(I understand that sodium's post was quite possibly entirely in jest; and if so, possibly making the same point that I just made :)).

I can list over two dozen endgame viable builds off the top of my head. I really don't understand how anyone could think there is only a handful.