Why such hate against class Sets?

[AeneasBK]

Yeah I think we're just not talking the same, you seem to be making the argument that if you want to play a build that has a corresponding set you have to use the set; and I'm saying "No you don't just play on Torment 3 if thats as far as you can get with it" because the game DOESN'T CHANGE between torment 1 and graeter rift 100. Its just numbers tweaked. And your gear tweaks to correspond. My evidence for that is just that pushing GRfit 25 in season 1 is pretty much the same as pushing grift 50 in season 4 or 75 last season (or w/e the high end of Grifting was for each season). On that note I'd say the biggest issue with D3 is that: Grifts are fuckign retarded in terms of pushing your highest one, because of the RNG involved (who the fuck thought pylons were a good idea?) its basically spam them until you get the right map/tileset combo because that will make a bigger difference to your speed at clearing than 20 levels on each legendary gem will. But that's a different topic.

You say you can't play traps. I'm not going to say you're wrong because I've not tried it on my DH in recent memory, but I doubt it is impossible. You seem to agree with the argument that difficulty is just a slider, yet also say "It's so far behind its not worth trying". I think those statements are at odds.

And again, this might just be the perspective of someone who already has a toon who can farm high enough-that-it-barelty-matters Grifts for legendaries or bloodshards etc. TBH I think it should work out quicker to farm bounties and reroll those legendaries I already have into ancients than to just farm and hope one drops; right? I've got a "copy" of every item I wanted for my build; it's jsut some of them are wank (weapon) so I'm using an ancient "The Barber" at the moment which is very... uninteresting

Thanks for taking the time to reply btw sorry if I'm being completely wool-headed.

[Coldkil]

No actually it's a completely reasonable viewpoint. We agree on a thing though:

On that note I'd say the biggest issue with D3 is that: Grifts are fuckign retarded in terms of pushing your highest one, because of the RNG involved (who the fuck thought pylons were a good idea?) its basically spam them until you get the right map/tileset combo because that will make a bigger difference to your speed at clearing than 20 levels on each legendary gem will. But that's a different topic.

The fact is that's not a different topic at all. All the focus on GRs brought the current situation

Torment 1 is more like easy 1. Torment 10 is a reasonable point. And T10 viable builds are a very selected few. The entire difficultiy slider is tuned onto a good amount of easy levels reaching T7+ where the game is slightly more difficult until you bruteforce everything in it. Anyway still you can see this as a personal view and not an objective reason.

The game doesn't change mechanically. But it changes in how you can play it, which is way more important than GRs.

Literally, Traps DH is unplayable. Both because of ridiculous damage and clunky mechanics. Can i clear T1 with that? Sure, but i could clear easy with only autoattacks.

The fact that there is a difficulty level for any scenario doesn't fix the fact that if you want to play at the highest ones you have to choose from one of the premade builds as you'll never be able to do so without them. You'll just die or stuff will take so much time to do that you'll just drop down the slider again.

I think the most important part is why different players log into D3.

For me, is to make my character stronger. Atm, only way to do so is to choose one set and farm GRs for those Paragons/Gems. Deliberately choosing another route that i know won't bring me as far looks like just missed opportunity and not fun at all.

It's not the challenge. It's getting attached to my character and see him grow over time, like i did for years in D2. In D3, characters are expendable toons which are periodically reset just to get those pets/cosmetics and then forgotten, because you reach pretty fast a plateu (independently from the route of choice) and there's no reason to do anything in game but ladders.

A journey to the pet takes around 5 hours to clear. I clocked out last season journey with a LeapQuake barb at around 30 hours, but only because i manyally farmed additional 3x 50 augments when i could have just taken out the gems from my gear and sacrificed them in an istant.

EDIT: sets and how they're implemented are the starting point of everything. You don't need the item hunt anymore because they throw them in your face immediately. If you don't need any other gear but a few offset pieces (also farmable in a very short time) and it's already way more powerful than anything else in game, you won't play something you already know won't let you do the same things.

[Shaiandra]

re AeneasBK: I can understand your argument and I agree that basically all difficulties are the same just with different HP and damage numbers; however, I feel your argument only makes sense in the case of playing alone. If you want to group with friends playing T13 or pushing upper GRifts, then trying out an original build that lags behind and doesn't contribute would be considered unviable or detrimental.

Even at early 70 this issue of strong multipliers from gear sucks. Say you all leveled together from 1-70 on Hard, and then one person gets a 2-set before the rest of you do. They're now doing like 5 times your damage and the rest of you are now baggage while they carry you through T3.

While this is a multiplayer-only argument, it highlights yet more cons to this itemization philosophy.

[Thimagryn]

I get the whole idea of why Sets need to be stronger, but the design has been shifted and numbers tweaked per season to the point where they make every other possible build incomparable.

I started a Seasons Barb just last week. In the first few days into 70, I got lucky with an ancient Stalgards. I decided to pursue a Frenzy build for low level, see how far I can get up through the ranks with it. I even looked into potential builds, even if I knew it wasn't going to be Gr100 worthy; maybe I could take it into 70's at most.

3rd day in, I got lucky with IK/Raekor drops and decided to try it out. It made me insanely OP for the content I was doing, one-shotting bosses because of the incredible power creep. There was a substantial bonus given when you have the IK 6pc active, that 400% bonus damage makes it that if you don't have it, you aren't dealing any competant damage but when it is you can crush the content. I can't make a Frenzy build that would compare to IK/Raekor's efficiency, and the gearing to even try requires LoN and a crap ton of ancients!

With how powerful sets are, there's really no point in trying to progress with non-sets, knowing it will go no where. I think all we really need is to have numbers crunched down and tone down the gap between set bonuses and regular legendaries. Have the ideal builds still be effective, but not to the extent of an immediate 4x more damage than everything else. Make it so the set bonus starts low and grows with obtaining Ancient pieces or something.

[Deleted]

The sets ruined the game. "Oh this looks fun, a kazillion % increase in damage to this ability. Use this ability." It's like those ability guides in WoW. Telling people how to play the game, !"#!"/¤!"" !"%&&&!"# game design. The only set bonuses that are okay are the crafted ones and legacy of nightmares.

[AeneasBK]

re AeneasBK: I can understand your argument and I agree that basically all difficulties are the same just with different HP and damage numbers; however, I feel your argument only makes sense in the case of playing alone. If you want to group with friends playing T13 or pushing upper GRifts, then trying out an original build that lags behind and doesn't contribute would be considered unviable or detrimental.

Even at early 70 this issue of strong multipliers from gear sucks. Say you all leveled together from 1-70 on Hard, and then one person gets a 2-set before the rest of you do. They're now doing like 5 times your damage and the rest of you are now baggage while they carry you through T3.

While this is a multiplayer-only argument, it highlights yet more cons to this itemization philosophy.

In my experiences of D3 it is very likely (say 80% of random 4-groups) that this is the case anyway but that doesn't detract from your point. Certainly whenever I was playing with friends there was one of us who was leagues ahead normally (was rank 1 DH by 4 GRift levels at one point of one of the seasons) myself bimbling along and surviving, killing packs in 20 seconds or so; and then a couple of others who would "basically" be playing catch up and enjoy spending bloodshards. That didn't matter at all; for the company, as Im sure is a shared experience

But you are correct this is entirely a single player PoV. It wouldbe potentially interesting to see how well non set builds are balanced against each other in a multiplayer game; but yeah

[Kazgrel]

Glanced over the thread, but the class sets in this game pigeonhole one into certain skill/passive setups in order to push higher up the Torment/GR difficulty. Yeah, sure, those difficulty changes are nothing more than numbers tweaks (which in itself is another issue with D3), but people are going to want to push for the highest difficulty they can, and the set bonuses pretty much railroad people into specific builds.

That's the one thing I actually enjoy about low level D3 play; you basically pick the skills you prefer the most and go out and kill stuff. Then you hit max level and it's "oh shit I need to get this freebie set they hand out so I can actually function".

[Arborus]

Far too much of your top end, potential power is tied to sets. The difference between a set and no set at max level isn't just 2x, it's 10000x. Personally, there should be a big cut back on scaling. Going from 100,000 damage to 1,000,000,000,000 damage just seems excessive. Each item doesn't need to be a 500x multiplier. Even a 1.20x multiplier can be substantial given well done scaling.

Though, I'd say another issue is item availability, and the style of endgame D3 has.

If you look at a game like PoE, there are obviously "the best" builds- the meta, basically. Things that are extremely powerful and can trivialize content when built and played correctly. There are also builds that are great with very little investment, but fall behind on scaling. There also whacky, crazy, fun builds. The key to it though, is that the items for the most popular and most powerful builds tend to be expensive, through a combination of demand and rarity. This means not everyone can play the best build. So people come up with alternatives. Things that don't require expensive items. This creates an insane amount of build diversity where there's a build for every playstyle at nearly every level of investment.

In D3, however, it's exceptionally easy to get your best-in-slot items for any build. The expectation that you'll get and have the best items at all times, for every level of player really cuts down on the need to improvise and find alternative solutions that work until you're able to farm towards a build with tighter item restrictions. The idea that you may never find a particular item yourself simply doesn't exist. The idea that you can work towards being able to afford to buy said item from another player doesn't exist. They may have killed RMT with the removal of the AH, but they also removed build diversity and real, long term character progression.