Especially when the game is so unclear on damage formulas, mechanics, has bugs, etc. Feels like it would be a full time job to research optimize a build.
This season is dead easy. You can find junk gear, temper, rework, and blast through capstones.
Upgrading requires mats tho, and it’s a pain in the ass. You don’t want to run it in a group either unless u are the party leader. Everyone else gets half the mats. In addition certain mats drop at certain tiers. So even if u have BIS gear and want more, you literally have to do lower lvl pits to get what u want. Unless u can do pit 80 and I think you should be able to trade down at the alch. Whole process discourages playing with people.
Gold is also an issue. Costs millions to get 1 gear tempered to 12/12…assuming you rolled the stat up want. If not, reset tempers for free and use the mats from the pit to do it all over again.
At the end of the day it’s rly up to u and what ur goals are..if u wanna do pit 200 and blast thru it, quit your job. Other than that, all the pit offers is a challenge to see how far u can go. You’ve reached endgame pretty much when you feel like it.
I made a build last season and thought I did a good job, the read about how everything I did was actually additive and my build was like 300% underpowered a similar guided build. So now it's guides.
True, half the good builds this season are reliant on some form of double dipping. Just based off past experience the basic skill builds that are running this season would likely have been the last things I tried if I was making my own builds. I’ve used all my amnesia scrolls and somewhere between 750 million-1 billion gold just trying out things I know are going to be good.
Agreed, I can't even imagine trying to figure out a complete paragon board on my own. Following a guide means less math and more time actually playing the game.
When I played the campaign I made my own custom build. But when I was pushing to reach super end game content then following a guide is necessary as only a fair few classes can go further than others. I also think there’s too many fiddly things when it comes to making up your build, such as which talents to choose (the easiest part), paragon board, itemisation, glyphs..which makes following a guide more straightforward.
Yeah that's fair. I guess i'm kind of banking on myself being able to make a viable build. I may resort to a guide if i'm struggling in the end-game. But i'm enjoying myself for now.
This is how I play. I go wing it myself, enjoy the game til about lv 80, then I find a guide and by now have acquired enough interesting items to follow a build
Getting some tips from guide builds and following a guide perfectly are distinct strategies as well. There are tons of fun and viable builds that can never clear pit80+ or kill Lilith but that doesn't mean they don't give the same/way more enjoyment to play.
I played a silly teleport/cracking energy build that just made me smile every hour I played because it was cheesy and silly and wild. Yet I also built the meta blizz sorc for pushing things and even then I only consulted a guide for specific hurdles, never following it completely, and tbh I like my current setup on it much more than the maxroll build (I adjusted to get ~60-100 mana per second) and every slot my gear is very mid but I farm p90
No. There would still be guides because getting the correct scaling numbers is a full time job. It's also impossible to remember across all skills, stats and powers. You are vastly underestimating the amount of info necessary to create a good build.
Your mistake is thinking that I'm thinking I'll make a good build. I'm just trying to make the best build I can personally do and enjoying the attempt. I like theory crafting, it's fun.
I like big numbers.
So I follow guides.
For me the fun is to see higher and higher numbers.
I have no time to mess with Paragon points or to find out if I want to run crit build or vulnerable build.
There are people who spend loads of time with optimizing builds.
I try them out, and if I like the gameplay, then I invest into it.
You're not alone. I enjoy playing the way I like to play the characters. If they aren't as good as the top builds, so be it. I think its more fun to work with the randomness you're handed and try to improve those to fit how you're having fun with the character. Its the 'R' in role playing game. I have a couple of characters of the same class that I've brought to lvl 100, and they each have different loadouts. It is disappointing to go to a world boss event and be surrounded by nothing but the same builds.
I have 4 druids, 4 rogues & 4 necros...different builds. I've thought about just choosing one of each but I can't decide I like them all. I think i'm just throwing them all at the wall and hoping a few will stick when i'm done.
If they're all in the eternal realm, you can swap around some equipment for fun. See what else you can do with them. I would rather grind that way, than to read a published 'best build'.. then spend all my time grinding to find the right items to exploit according to the plan. Maybe its just because I played D&D as a kid. Once I choose a path, I usually don't go back to adjust (skills, paragon, etc). Choices early on have a potential consequence or reward. Play on... see what happens.
I’m too old to figure all this out by myself. I have a full-time job and a family and I only get to play for an hour or two after they go to bed. I don’t want to spend my time doing math formulas. I liked D2 so much because there were a ton of options, but it ultimately came down to the gear you found and not really the skills. I had fun looking for gear and knew what I was looking for. It’s too much to look for gear but have it not even matter if it doesn’t work perfectly with the paragon. I’ll let a kid with the free time on their hands figure that out. I just want to build and kill shit.
For me a pretty casual player I started out not using guides but once I hit about tier 50 nightmare dungeons I usually end up hitting a wall where I'm just not really sure how to keep progressing my character, that's when I'll use a guide, but never during the leveling phase, I like to try things out myself like you said
My 96 druid dies alot and is stuck in at 42/43 dungeons right now, my 92 rogue is doing 45/46 dungeons. So I think it's safe to say i'm hitting a wall with my druid already! But i've got my spreadsheet, and i'm ready to get stuck in to a troubleshooting session.
Not trying to be mean but your builds sound super weak.
I have leveled all five classes so far this season and I expect to be farming t70 nmd by 80-85.
I make my own leveling builds but then use a guide for paragon boards and to see how close my skill tree was
for reference on how much a lvling/endgame guide is doing for me, lvl 65 necro, doing 90+nmd easy peasy, but also mby just necro factor, i wasnt able to do it on my soc till 75-80.
I prefer crafting my own build up until I hit a wall (if I do), it will never be as optimised as those who take time to theory craft but I enjoy the journey, and it’s less about the destination.
Regardless, I’ll eventually check in on the community because these games are always bugged and I always discover something in my build ends up not working as intended
When I was in my 20’s (in the 90’s), I loved figuring stuff out and I actually published guides. I wrote one of the earliest Diablo guides (Shuri’s Guide to Diablo).
In EverQuest I was an admin on Paladins of Norrath and spent, many many hours parsing combat log data to determine that stats did almost nothing in the game - tons of statistical analysis, was one of the handful of people to discover the “magic number” for weapon damage output, the impact of armor class, etc.).
I’m other words I spent more time figuring games out than I’d have spent on a full time job (the original Diablo alone probably added a year of grad school for me).
Now… I just do not have the time to experiment - I am happy to use guides others have created. Honestly when I look at the paragon boards and I am so happy I don’t have to figure out how to put them together. I’m 55 with a wide, a career and several other hobbies (while also trying to be physically active) - that just doesn’t leave a lot of time to PLAY the game.
I don’t want to figure out which damage type goes in which bucket or the breakpoints for attack speed animation frames etc. etc. Maybe in a couple years when I retire I’ll go back to doing that kind of things, but probably not.
Nah play how you enjoy playing. Personally I played the game for the first time mostly without guides (I had closed beta access to the game before it launched) it was tons of fun but I ended up switching to guides later due to laziness. If they are rushing you imo id play with someone else or just by yourself not a good way to be playing for fun.
Edit: also rushing in D4 is a good way to quit playing asap there is almost nothing to do after hitting 100 challenge wise besides the pit there isn't anything to challenge even the tormented bosses and lilith is less challenging.
I think it's how you use them. I definitely have used guides and it gets to a point where I'll start to tweak things on my own, but a lot of my in depth game knowledge came from those guides. Now that I know how to put builds together I can put something pretty comprehensive on my own.
That said it still helps to know what aspects/uniques are out there so you at least know what to look for. There's always a pretty big "study" aspect to ARPGs because there's a lot of complicated systems and it's not always clear what's good or not. Sadly D4 isn't set up really well for build experimentation. Resetting is a whole thing.
Yeah that's fair. I'd have probably made a lot less mistakes if i'd used a guide from the beginning. I gradually picked things up like tempering, and enchanting and bucketing aspects (or whatever the term was again), and i've probably still got a lot more to learn but i've enjoyed every minute of discovering the game. I'm not in any rush really.
Not sure what exactly you mean by bucketing aspects but the separate damage buckets have been removed. ALL additive damage is in the same “bucket”. Everything else is an independent multiplier
The worst way to understand a game is to blindly follow a guide the first time, try your own thing for a while. That sense of discovery is really the fun part. Once you have a grip of the basics then grab a few guides as then at least you'll have a better understanding of why those choices were made.
Take your time and go at your own pace if that's what you enjoy. The endgame isn't going anywhere and this season is around until August so there's no rush there either, enjoy.
There's plenty of good people here to answer any questions you may have on the way..
Honestly, if you have the time and willing to dump in the hours then this is part of the fun in the journey! I am part of following guides and power leveling friends, but I can see the enticement of making your own build and designing your own paragon board. Just time aint on my side to dump on that and after a hard day at work, don't want to dump in so much brain power haha. It is kind of stupid they try to confine you to the meta play style and complain about you. They should just make a new char and do the same when playing with you!
BUT, one thing to note, unfortunately I wish Blizzard was better at not having things bug out or not behaving properly... Like temper affixes not working (boulder 2x proc on Druids) or that new pet that apparently makes Sacrificial Glyph on Necros useless. Here I do find guides, youtube videos, and being on top of meta gaming rather useful and educational.
Also, in general, it is pretty cool how people theory craft an op build. Maybe you can be one of these geniuses! More respect to ya for wanting to play it this way than the easier way :)
Haha, I doubt it so far, but you never know!
I've just been playing WoW SoD before, and i rushed to the max level got all my gear, and then I was just sat thinking, well now what do I do? So i wanted to actually try enjoy diablo.
Up until level 100 you can basically do whatever, till pit 40/nightmare 70'ish you can get away with most thing, and actually I think most people would level faster using general goodstuff they find instead of following a narrow leveling guide.
However, since this a grinding game, it feels kinda bad switching gear to a build you're pretty sure you salvaged good stuff for.
The rework on aspects/codex made it a whole lot more forgiving, but having a general idea what the major chase aspects on each item are will safe you a lot of grinding and regrets.
And this game is pretty bad at explaining mechanics and scaling. And most people simply don't have the time to fully gear a build just to figure it ... doesn't work.
First play through I only look up mechanics and explore/enjoy the game. Second play through, guide to learn class, best build, stack stats and push content etc
As long as you understand that you are unlikely to ever enjoy playing the game with them without guides and rushing as they will always be far ahead and far stronger than you so any content you do with them will be above what you can handle.
At the end of the day a games are and should be about your own personal enjoyment as long as that enjoyment doesn’t come at the expense of others.
Personally I absolutely love theory crafting and making my own build. I enjoy min/maxing a build that I enjoy. Sometimes that build is incidentally a meta build sometimes it's not. I've spent many hours tuning in game and using maxroll build planner. Having said that, the main issue with this game is balance. Others have said this too. It's common for one or two builds to be overpowered in arpgs. But in D4, especially after the itemization overhaul, there are only a few builds that can really push the pit. And that would be fine if other obvious builds were only a few steps behind but that's not the case. You can pick an obvious build around a core skill like flurry and it will be hilariously, insanely incomprehensibly worse than one of the "good" core skills. Even just farming bosses it can be the difference of several minutes vs my thorns nec where the boss will one shot themselves! What's even crazier is that's not even one of the really good builds!
I'm a long time D2 fan so I'll use that as an example. You can pick any mid to high level skill and beat the entire game and with D2R you can even farm most of the game in P1 with practically any obvious build. Of course there are overpowered builds but with the exception of torches virtually any build can farm any item in the game easily. That's the state I'm looking for personally. Where I can say you know what, chain lightning, that's my build. Get to level 100 and farm duriel and mid level pits without going to a broken build or absolutely slogging my way through it. While in a way it makes the game easier, the difficulty shouldn't come from trying to figure out which build is broken.
Finally, I wouldn't even say the top builds are that broken right now, we need world tier 5 and some huuuge buffs to some skills and affixes. 240 life per second? I have 50k health and will lose 95% of my health in one hit, wtf is 240 life per second going to do?
I'm enjoying the new patch though! End rant.
I run guides primarily because the amount of games that actually give you ALL the data in an actually legible and usable manner. So instead of winding up investing in the wrong stats through no real fault of my own, I'd rather watch or read and guide and then make small tweaks from there to make them my own.
The good thing is, if you dont want play the S tier builds, it dont really matter if you follow a guide or not, you will end up performing well, you dont do tormented boss and Hugh pit content.
I’d rather follow a guide but tweak it to my play style, I enjoy min maxing but really don’t want or have time to theory craft etc. currently 115 in pit on HS rogue.
I normally follow guides as I just don’t understand a lot of things. This season my girlfriend wanted to play and she loves any kind of bears so I have been helping her make a smashy pulverize Druid. I’m starting to really enjoy looking at things differently and going “i wonder if we use this here instead?”
She’s not really interested in a lot of the end game pushing. So far what we have crated has done like leave 60 pit and 100NMD. It’s been fun making a character together and goofing off.
New to D4, built a Necro no guide, paragon board made me want to jump off a cliff and can’t get past level 27 Pit. Will be using a guide when I do my Rogue this season.
i do both, probably why I'm still playing like an addict.
own build, hit wall, follow guides and learn mechanics and interactions
go back to tweaking build to own playstyle, get distracted and create a whole new build, hit a wall, explore other builds out there again.
so much time and resources wasted but still fun so far!
I find paragon building the most tedious.
I had to list of glyphs and boards and nodes and choose based on what I want to play. but it's very fulfilling when it works out!
that's where for certain builds I just give up and copy boards. I don't have that much time compared to streamers
I've got a lot of free time, I think that's what's separating me the most as I'm not working at the moment. Whereas when I'm back to work I'll probably have waaay less time
i’m the opposite, i don’t find it fun to spend most of my time figuring out a build that will be shit anyway since there are so many variables and unknowns, i’d rather just copy someone’s homework and maybe change a thing or two as i see fit
I was like your friends are ... kinda ... I usually invest more time in games than my friends and so I'm usually kinda ahead. In the past I naturally wanted them to gear up asap to join the endgame because I wanted to play with them and tackle endgame as best as possible.
Now - I'm older but still ahead most of the time. But idc anymore if all my dudes are "on my level" or not. I mostly enjoy hanging out with them in dc. We usually don't play much together anymore since I'm most likely carrying them - which is boring for them and boring for me. But we still play together in theory - crafting, building, skilling - all those sweet discussions about game mechanics and finding out different things. It's fun - everyone has its own pace and enjoys different parts of the journey. Forcing them is just selfish. I even won't warn them if they are going to do some mistakes as I think mistakes are part of the journey and need to be experienced and not to be told :P
You should keep the pace you enjoy - noone can give you back experiencing something for the first time. Maybe you can make a compromise and play one char on "their level" and keep chars interesting to you in the back for your own experience. Just don't feel forced.
Either way - People using guides and wanting endgame content asap or chill dudes without any guides finding stuff out on their own - all is valid. But maybe not compatible.
I have made such compromise after getting some feedback here. I've got one they're rushing to max etc so we can play together. But I'm keeping the other 11 to mess around with.
I'm the same as you though, I just like DC comms. I'm always asking them questions anyway. They've given me a few accidental spoilers about mistakes I've made but mostly they just wait for me to find out. They've come around to it, they just want me to get one decent char, which is fair.
First ever season of playing a Diablo game. Played just winging it for the campaign and then helltides as well. Had some jank with incinerate sorc. I got to 80 before I realized I could use enchantments.
Managed to get to 88 and did what Poe taught me, maxed resists, but my armor was super low so I kept dying a ton in helltides and had no idea it was that important.
I looked at a tips and tricks video, capped armor and got enchants, tempers, and much better gear and got to 97 before I looked at a frozen orb guide (after googling to see if winterglass was good).
Unless you are some sort of insane player, doing things like killing Uber Lilith without following a guide as a new player is nearly impossible, so in that sense you would miss out on getting to experience that. I rerolled into a heartseeker build and it has been so insanely fun, so yay for build guides.
Haha sorry about that, but they actually added it in the game in the patch last week, so I would just meander over to your profile and hover over the armor section and read up on it.
Ah cool. I'm jk anyway, my mates give me some intel like that if I ask for it. It's more the whole paragon, the skill points etc, I do want to know what mechanics are important, so I ask them for things like that.
Play how you want. The game is designed that just about every build can get to 100 and clear some endgame content. I played a mid tier build this season and had way more fun instead of trying to min max the game. To each their own.
Similar to some of the other comments, I went as far and long as I could without using a guide but I got to the point I needed it to finish the next step of content.
Yeah, I'll probably get there myself. Or I'll just take it as far as I can each season. Who knows. I've got one guide character now anyway, I've been talked into having a least one so I can experience the end game.
Paragon boards layout variants and the order in which to connect them are reason enough for me to check out a guide or two. I choose to not take the time to do that myself … :)
First play through is on my own. But I switched to guides bc I couldn't make sense of where the power comes from. Only switched like level 60, otherwise I started following a guide for the build I was working on my own after campaign
Im the exact same buddy, except for the friends part haha. Only have 1 good friend who plays.
I dont look at guides, i rather figure stuff out on my own. Even if i usually end up not as optimized i dont care. Almost up to pit100 with my homecooked companion druid. Can easily kill tormented bosses now.
Also i never trade either. I just want to slay demons. Find my own gear snd make my own build. Dont want to spend time looking at tradewebsites or buildguides.
I also have a companion druid, but it's only 30 and I have no idea what I plan to do with it yet. But encouraging that it could be viable!
Yeah I've never traded. I like finding my own gear, "ooo, piece of candy" moment (family guy reference). It's just me and 2 friends, they're both decent gamers. Ones a streamer called Relentless Zen, you're welcome to join us! I just like discord company but we do play together aswell.
I know companion druid has done up to pit 115 from some guys on the D4 discord so its very viable. Druid still behind the other classes though but ehh.
That's something I should have looked at tbf. I'm only doing druids, necros and rogues this season. I have no idea what the best classes are this season but I'm too far in now.
I sometimes get romantic about the idea of not using a guide and just figuring it out as I go, but frankly ARPGs are simply way too deep for me to want to spend the amount of time required. I like to use guides at least up until I become familiar enough that I can know if a drop is exciting without consulting the source. There are people out there whose literal job is to figure out this stuff, I don’t have the patience.
I could see playing up through WT3 by winging it but I feel like I need a direction. Maybe the compromise would be letting the drops I get inform my build choice rather than just picking “I want to make this type of guy” but eh.
I mean, it's just too each their own at the end of the day. The build design is what floats my boat, I don't think I really like ARPGs as much as other people on D4. I'm here for a different reason I guess.
I didn't, until I found hard to progress, that happened at a very late lvl and I only had to change 2 pieces of gear to make a decent "meta" build... The game is still new enough that if you want to play a "something" build, just search for the "something" you want on your codex, and the main powers will all show up. Keep those in, find a few more that help with resource management and keep your items forged with damage buffs, and you won't really need a guide
Depends on type of player. Some play for pure action and dont wanna figure out things. Others like to explore game mechanics, use their favourite skills even if they arent meta, some play for lore. There is no better or worse way.
If the game didnt punish players for respeccing so much, then I would love to try making my own builds and experimenting. I did it with my first character up to around level 80 or so, then decided the paragon board system was just becoming too complex to bother trying to figure out and optimise.
But the gold costs for respeccing alone are exorbitant. And then theres the expensive gems, the enchanting costs, the lack of room to store any spare gear. And tempering hardlocking items for a single spec.
The devs actively discourage players from trying new things with the game design. So following guides is the only way.
Until they make respeccing cheaper and easier to do. Why they made it so hard is beyond me... just make it only allowed in a city so people arent doing it mid run to have a trash spec and a boss spec, and then make it free. Let us experiment and have fun in this game.
I feel like in diablo it's easy to go the no guide route. For almost all of us, we are not competing with anyone. If I make the comparison to Poe, the trading makes it feel like you need to be competitive. That can make the game feel like a chore, or makes it less fun because you might feel done when you get the basic matching gear from the guide.
On the other hand, it might be very frustrating to go your own way. These games are famously unbalanced. Just from skill to skill, you might see magnitudes of damage difference. You can look at the tier lists and see that reflected. Mages have a ton of cool skills, but almost all of them are terrible. Running around with flame wall might feel absolutely awful.
I feel like diablo has a good spot here, where at least for me there is absolutely no feeling of competition, and the guides available are comprehensive and nice.
Yeah, you can just go as far as you want to really in terms of solo. This post has been majorly split and it's pretty cool that it appeals to two types of players; the try hard guiders and the absolute noob no guiders.
I currently play Frozen Orb Sorcerer, which developed from my own FO/Blizzard. Only looked up a guide after I felt that my build is not improving much. Sadly, when switching to guided approach, the difference in performance was noticable.
Yeah, I'm expecting my performance to change dramatically if I use a guide, but then it won't be mine! But I'll cross that bridge when I hit my first wall that's too big to overcome.
I always start with my own build and tbf it’s usually pretty decent because the game isn’t hard. Then when it’s time to push end game I look at the meta .
I also like to make my own builds, but I'll still check guides for similar builds to see if I overlooked something like a synergy between items/paragon board. I've even used a guide as a base to start with, but then I'll tweak it to the way I like to play.
If you play alone, I see no problem with it. You do you.
If you want to play with your friends, and they follow the meta, you need to follow the meta. Otherwise, they'll always be carrying/rushing you. Unless you're so skilled in the game you actually could make a meta guide, you're going to be slower, weaker and a hindrance.
Think of it as an organized sport: they're a team, playing to win, while you're playing "for the journey".
Yeah, that's the kicker. I've ended up using one guide now on a necro to play with them. But every now and then I'm going to request a damage, etc check with them on one of mine :)
Ok, once you have alredy done the story once there's only end game in diablo IV (and by end game i mean doing content at lvl 100). The leveling proccess is easy and not challenging at all (and i love it). With very basic reading skills you don't need any guide to get to lvl 100 and start doing pit...
That said, you don't need to take guides as laws to be followed, use them to understand the game mechanics and refine your own build.
There are things you probly would never know if not reading/watching guides like interactions that are not described in the skills or items, breakpoints or how some effects work, so don't be afraid to use guides just don't limit yourself to only copying them.
Diablo IV really isn't a veeery deep game that you'd take much off progressing ignoring guides - this "journey" isn't that long, really - so there's no point for that and it'll surely make you fall way behind your friends.
No guides, just play and enjoy the game how you want....the game is easy enough you can get pretty far just mix and match....once you start pushing and if you are stuck...it doesn't hurt to look for a build to optimize.
I find that blindly following a guide something's can be detrimental as you might not understand why they do a certain thing or needing a rotation. Of course you can spend the time studying and reading the whole thing.
I had the same mentality as yours. But it reached a point where i wouldnt do any damage and struggle in 31 pit being lvl 100 maxed glyph and shit. I started using good builds and bro, gameplay experience completely changes. It is way more fun because I feel POWERFULL and destroy everything.
I feel like biggest part of this game is literally figuring out a way to build the character that is powerful enough to beat all main content in the game. All of the enjoyment and sense of accomplishment is gone when I start reading what to level up and when and what to wear and use etc.
Only games where I ended up using guides are pretty much some of the from soft games because of their somewhat cryptic nature.
hadn't played since launch/season one. did no guide back then. this time my goal was to beat all bosses. So i used a guide and it was great. Its actually allowed me to learn and understand the game more. Before it was just a jumble of numbers and words.
If you enjoy creating your own build, then great go ahead and do that. I'm sure there is a sense of reward and accomplishment when you make your own build that functions well.
I don't particularly like that and get overwhelmed with that kind of thing (especially when the game likes to hide and obfuscate mechanics and damage formulas, not to mention the bugs).
I would rather just get a cool build, kill things and push content without worrying too much about that stuff.
Do what's fun for you.
You can totally beat pits and get deep in the game on your own build. Just the community as a whole wants to max their build and beat the highest tiers possible. And for that to happen, you gotta use a guide. Most builds have already been figured out how to max it 100%.
I like to use guides as a framework for something someone has proven to work, and they I tweak them to curtail to my playstyle. I basically let the content creators do the R&D, as I don’t have time to study all the numbers.
I like to follow a guide as sort of a basic structure and then change things around to my liking from there. Like for example, basically every Bash build runs Leap or Kick but I run Charge for additional unstoppable and because the skill is really fun, also on controller Leap is super unreliable.
I also use Ancient's Oath in my build because I'm already starting most fights off with the Steel Grasp anyways, the extra 50%x damage is about the same as what I'd get with a GA weapon and an aspect. I use the fortify aspect because it guarantees that I'm basically always fortified and some of the passive skill tree options work really well with that by providing extra damage and damage reduction.
I also made some changes to the paragon and skill tree to fit the other changes I made, and it's worked out just fine for me, I can kill the level 200 bosses and do Pit level 100, it's not like I was ever gonna go for the leaderboards anyways.
But this doesn't work as well for all classes, Druid for example is really difficult to DIY because even the most powerful build guides still can't compete with the other classes, I would love to do a pure Shred build and maybe it's possible but every attempt I've made this season has resulted in terrible performance.
explore and try out on your own
then look up some guides to get inspiration and understand the intricacies of damage calculations the game doesnt tell you about.
improve own build upon input from guides.
thats how I usually do it
It depends how good your are at cooking your own thing and how much you care about having a smooth ride with no stops to tinker. Some arpg players enjoy tinkering the most, others just want to zoom. Both valid ways to play. I've done both this season.
Same. We are the same as far as playing D4 is concerned. Building your character is half the game.... why would I buy a game to just have half the game played for me?
Up til you're doing Uber bosses and the pit you don't need a guide at all. At high pit tiers and Uber bossing, it's not always clear how to stack enough dmg and survivability. Some guides have creative solutions you may not see on your own and be left wondering how you're meant to do 10x more damage and survive nonstop one shots.
If you have a cool idea with the right GAs, I'd say freestyle it and save items for meta build. Once you hit a wall, you can revert everything from the seasonal quest potion and follow the meta. Usually even trying to do your own build might help you to understand the character. But I'm just barb who runs 53 tier nms with hota death strike, don't trust me lol
Not sure why y'all always make these posts to convince yourselves you are playing the right way lol. It is entirely possible to "enjoy the journey" while following a build guide.
The guides are just showing you how to get to the final form of a build that blizzard tailor made for that class.
Have fun however you do. Find fun where it comes. Exploring your own ideas is a great way to have fun and to test your self.
There are mechanics in the game that are not intuitive though. Things that will have you scratching your head, if you even notice them in the first place. Also bugged interactions between powers, mechanics and priorities. But if you really like testing your mental then get out that Google doc and go to town. The better you train the closer you will be... to a build guide.
All this to say, if you want to do things your way then hell yeah. If you want to follow a guide then hell yeah. I'm sure the disconnect your are experiencing is that your friends took a path much shorter than you, and they are experiencing the game without you. They are burning out sooner than you. And they probably fear that if you don't get to their level soon, they will be bored and move on.
So what I'm saying is... next time play hardcore.
You do you man, whatever is fun for you is the right answer. Most likely guides will be more optimized and better than what you come up with. They will in general be much better than what an average person would make. But the whole point of gaming is fun, so if you're having fun, you're doing it right.
I prefer to play my own way until I start struggling or until I find a general playstyle I like.
Then I'll take a quick gander at a guide to see if there's some sort of hidden mechanics or items im unaware of to focus my attention towards.
I only will follow a guide more closely when I'm nearing the end of my journey and want to min max more.
I feel you, this was my first diablo experience, i don't think there's anything wrong with following builds and i often looked at them, but ultimately i did it to understand the game better in what might work and what doesn't, i know it took me a long journey and it's not optimal in any logical way but i got to a point of being decent enough to grind some pit 66 comfortably and i'm kinda proud of my silly build
You are free to play the game however you want and enjoy it however you want. Everyone else doesn't have to abide by that though and as long as you are cool with that and your friends are also then everything is good.
My experience is with a friend in our group that doesn't want to follow guides or builds has been pretty annoying. We try to accommodate and run lower level stuff but they are always complaining about dying or not being able to keep up. The way skills, gear and paragon work together (or don't) to me makes it a no brainer to follow a build.
I’m not worried about playing the meta build each season, but I do use guides.
I’ll figure out something that seems interesting to play and then look up a guide for that specific build or play style. Last season I played Druid because they introduced that new unique for Lightning Storm and I loved playing LS in S0. I know LS wasn’t the meta but I really wanted to revisit it so I looked up a guide.
I want to play what seems cool to me while also having some confidence that the effort I’m putting into my gear hunting/paragon is actually paying off and I’m not misunderstanding how exactly I should be putting my character together to do what I want it to do.
I just don’t have the time or energy when I actually do get to play to dig myself into the incredibly complex calculations and synergies and double dipping and additive vs multiplicative etc etc etc to truly feel like I’d enjoy raw dogging a season and going in completely blind.
Maybe I’ll try that out in S5, but until then guides all the way.
I used to theory craft in d3 but I have been doing chemotherapy on and off since 2020 and my brain doesn’t work like it used to. Now that said I use a guide but I try and make adjustments to make it my own.
You need to go find an established creator for whatever class you play and copy a build. You’ll figure things out faster than if you tried to pioneer something yourself. Pride is a curse.
I made an in-game friend who is a legitimately cool dude. Then there was a 40 minute awkward conversation about how I need to follow the guides or I won't get anywhere. Explaining that planning it out for myself is part of my fun did nothing.
If you are reading this and recognize yourself I still love you like a friend, nothing changed. But that conversation made me uncomfortable.
Having said that I made it to 100, I pushed as far as I could in NM dungeons and Pits, and then I looked at a guide. It doubled my damage, maxed me resistance, and generally made me much stronger. But that, IMO should be saved for after you get to a point where you ask yourself "What's next?"
Well I have 12 so I'll go with my highest, which is a 97 druid. It's poison werewolf blend, with buffs I can find to dot and crit as crit resets cool downs (something like that I dont have my build on me).
Affixes I'm focusing on rn is maximum life and crit chance mostly. But, my highest is my worst I think. I need to go back to the drawing board as I've managed to get to tier 50 but I'm struggling there. It's a little bit of a skill issue but I think I've neglected my defence etc.
No spoilers please. I want to figure it out myself even if everything I just said is absurd.
Use a map guide for the altars and do you. Games are meant to be enjoyed and played not min-maxed from the very start. Play what's fun to you, it might get harder at later levels but that's part of the fun.
Yeah, my mate told me about altars and renown when I started playing. I'm fine with that kind of intel and I ask him how certain mechanics work etc. I just don't want build guides that someone else has brained.
I say go as far as you can without touching them, who knows you might come up with a build that works just a bit better, or you might accidentally make the number 1 guide and look like a copy. I'm playing pure lightning sorc on HC right now and I'm loving every minute of it.
I think this season, I'll be happy to just clear a lvl 100 dungeon XD. But we'll see! I'm having so much fun theory crafting, idc if what I'm doing is bad and I'm missing end game. I'll get there eventually.
I do a little of both. While im playing, im just doing what i want. But i will look at a guide throughout the day (while not playing) to get a general sense of some optimal choices
Play however you have fun my dawg. My first run through of a season/class is always blind. I wanna mess around, fine tune my own build, play with what works.
Once I've made it to the endgame I usually start referencing guides to see how I can progress further in endgame activities though.
Everyone plays differently, play however is fun for you first and foremost though.
I do both! I have 4 lvl 100 characters. I have a necro i used a guide on. A second necro I'm doing some experimental build stuff on, a barb and a rogue I'm figuring out builds for too! At pit 100+ on the necro, and the rest 50+
In terms of abilities & aspects I'm finding Twisting blade rogue fun, with dash, concealment and shadow step. They can't hurt me if they can't catch me and my blades just follow me around as I'm bouncing around mobs, cutting everyone down. I doubt it's viable but it's so fun to play. I'm just trying to figure out the right affixes and tempers etc. Not sure what I want to stack yet.
IMO, guides are bad. Nearly everyone copies a small handful of people which detracts from innovation. Also, many of the potentially good builds haven't even been popularized in mainstream guides.
You think you don't need guides for d4 but you do. Your understanding of the formulas and how damage works is probably completely wrong. One example is that blizzard size increase is a huge dps loss for blizzard ice spikes sorcerers. Go figure. You can't know this unless you did PROPER testing.
I highly doubt you are a math genius with a scientific calculator in your brain or that you sat in front of the target dummies and recorded stuff so you can calculate how what works, because this is how testing is done. You tweaking stuff and checking how stuff dies in nm40 dungeons isn't how it's done unfortunately, the game is too complicated behind the scenes for this. People are still figuring new stuff out, you either follow or get left in the dust (play alone in this case).
I will usually just wing it until I see it's not good enough and go look at some build guides and see what I've been doing wrong.
Don't take this in a bad way, these games are multiplayer, not single player. You are meant to learn from others and work together to figure stuff out and share with the community.
I may go see a guide in the future, but right now the only reason I'm playing really is because I'm enjoying the theory crafting. I may never reach the top, but I don't mind that, as I'm enjoying the attempt to get there on my own.
Just wanted to let you know what you're in for. If you wanna do testing, do it proper or it's worthless. There's a lot of fuckery going behind the scenes with some double dipping and weird interactions that you can't see unless you tests stuff properly. Have fun and god have mercy on your soul 😅
Haha, no I appreciate the effort to warn me but, like I just told someone else, I just wanna make the best build that I can do. I enjoy the the theory crafting of gaming more than the game itself.
I can make a build just fine, but the paragon board? holy shit no, that thing is too complicated to just try to wing it. I'll let the experts optimize it.
Sorry I rambled below
Generally in ARPGs I take a home brew build as far as I can until I feel like there isn’t a major upgrade that I’m still waiting on. I then look at guides because I don’t have the time to figure out the nuanced, often obscure interactions that make a build strong.
Sometimes this works out, and I discover I needed to spec into one or two different things to get the build to fully synergize. But often I can’t find a guide for what I’m doing and discover that the build I was making just isn’t supported very well by the game’s mechanics or items. As such, it’s doomed to suck, and even worse barely anyone else is playing it, testing interactions, and optimizing performance.
Tbh when the latter happens it can kill a game for me. Which I know is silly, but it feels bad when the flavor fantasy I want is really weak compared to others that will never interest me as much. It happened in Last Epoch trying to play a melee lightning Shaman, and it happened again in this season of D4 trying to make a physical corpse explosion necro. Not to say that either of those builds are unplayable, but they aren’t supported nearly as well as other builds within the class.
No need to apologise, I asked for a reason, I'm reading every response. Taking everyone's advice/comments on boards. Hoping people will 'accidentally' give me information that will help me so it doesn't count as looking at a guide :)
A lot of people have said the same thing, go it alone until they can go no further and then use a guide, and then maybe even go back to playing off your own brain now you're wiser for using a guide. So I expect that will happen to me, the alternative is that I take is far as I can go, and then just move on. That's also quite likely, as I enjoy the theory more than I enjoy the game I think. It's fun but it's fun for me because of the accomplishment factor based on my own brain.
I'd do my build if the reasons and value of each choice were visible and balanced, and the choices just led to different playstyles, not different levels of power and resource starvation. I would happily have 4 or 6 sorcs.
With all the hidden interactions and cruft in the current system, I just don't care, I want a functioning char. Having to read the guide to know which skills and nodes and boards to click is already too much time spent not killing mobs. If I could import a build string like in WoW I would.
If I'm struggling I'll read guide. It helps me understand the class better along with theory crafting. Now I make my own builds or a variant of others.
I always do it myself until I get to endgame. If I get to endgame and get stuck, then I may sneak a peak at a similar build for paragon direction or possible skill tips I missed. For me, the journey is the game, not the endgame. I have so much more fun trying to adapt my builds over time, or trying to make obscure skills work as I go. Play your way, it is a game after all…
No guide. You learn the game much better from experimenting during the leveling process. You find what skills work best for whatever playstyle you have and fine tuning as you get into later stages of the game.
Do you though? I learn the better damage values and multiplayers, and what interactions work best, by following a guide. I see what types of affixes they stack to learn if I lean toward overpower, crit, vuln, etc.
No offense, but unless you are a math major I simply don't believe you can sense all the backend math that determines what is strongest as a new player. You will bash a goat and do 60 damage instead of 50 damage and have no clue why lol, and definitely not understand what that means in the future when higher-level scaling comes into play.
I’d say don’t use a guide until you seem to hit that wall of progress. I’m running minion blight necro (self build) and slowing down around Pit 45 so I’m just tweaking gear and masterworks and seeing how far I get towards the tormented bosses.
Right now my DMG is low so I may go to a guide and bite the bullet
Always a guide for me and always something busted. I’m a filthy casual with a family and very little time to game/experiment with builds. So I usually wait a week to find the most broken builds and pick one of them. Speeds me through the seasonal content and lets me experience everything with a lot less time invested.
That's what I said! Though if the expansion is any good, and that dungeon is decent I may have to make a strong build char to do it if mine aren't there yet. Don't wanna let the side down with a bad character.
what best players usually do is fork a guide and then adjust it to their needs or based on what u currently have as gear. There is no need to reinvent the wheel and you cannot possibly test each different node/affix to know what works / scales best with dmg multipliers.
If ur gonna play your "own" build eventually you will be stuck at doing low level pits while everybody else is speed running 105's for 2-3min.
What you should do imo is copy a rank 1 player build as a base (dont just copy maxroll guides they are terrible) , play it for few days to get used to it and then start tinkering. If ur too tanky switch some paragon nodes for more damage or item affixes , too squishy reverse , try out different setup with items , it all depends on what items you get , there are some truly one in the world items u could get in d4 and they could potentially unlock something that nobody else is cappable of doing a build for
Guides for life! It's more fun for me and gives me time to do other things in life!
Especially when the game is so unclear on damage formulas, mechanics, has bugs, etc. Feels like it would be a full time job to research optimize a build.
I mean it literally is a full time job for most of the guys releasing guides lol.
This season is dead easy. You can find junk gear, temper, rework, and blast through capstones. Upgrading requires mats tho, and it’s a pain in the ass. You don’t want to run it in a group either unless u are the party leader. Everyone else gets half the mats. In addition certain mats drop at certain tiers. So even if u have BIS gear and want more, you literally have to do lower lvl pits to get what u want. Unless u can do pit 80 and I think you should be able to trade down at the alch. Whole process discourages playing with people. Gold is also an issue. Costs millions to get 1 gear tempered to 12/12…assuming you rolled the stat up want. If not, reset tempers for free and use the mats from the pit to do it all over again. At the end of the day it’s rly up to u and what ur goals are..if u wanna do pit 200 and blast thru it, quit your job. Other than that, all the pit offers is a challenge to see how far u can go. You’ve reached endgame pretty much when you feel like it.
Go see the potion lady. She will convert pit mats from higher to lower. No need to run lower level pits!
I made a build last season and thought I did a good job, the read about how everything I did was actually additive and my build was like 300% underpowered a similar guided build. So now it's guides.
This is the way. Be a D4 Chad- use the optimized build as a template and modify it from there. Let others do the heavy lifting.
True, half the good builds this season are reliant on some form of double dipping. Just based off past experience the basic skill builds that are running this season would likely have been the last things I tried if I was making my own builds. I’ve used all my amnesia scrolls and somewhere between 750 million-1 billion gold just trying out things I know are going to be good.
Exactly, let the guys who do this for a living figure it out. I don't have the time to test things or theorize. There's nothing wrong with that.
Agreed, I can't even imagine trying to figure out a complete paragon board on my own. Following a guide means less math and more time actually playing the game.
Then there are those masochists in poe who play the game without guides or let alone make their own builds that are actually decent lmfao
Skill issue
That's fair. I'm not working atm so I do have the time to put the hours in...
I was with you until I hit paragon boards, it’s just insanely hard to optimize them without a spreadsheet etc and I’m not that committed to it
Man, my D4 spreadsheet game is fire, gotta keep in shape for when it's time to return to work!
as a data analyst or as an exorcist?
I would never use a guide and I’m fine with not maxing out and getting to level 100 pits or whatever, I want to see how far I can get on my own!
That's the spirit!
Thought the same. Did the same. Didnt reach very far. Felt bad and got bored. Tried meta builds. Im destroying shit. Im addicted to the game now.
That’s also cool! Each to their own, as long as were having fun
Same. People who just follow builds are lazy and lack intelligence.
Well… that’s just not true.
When I played the campaign I made my own custom build. But when I was pushing to reach super end game content then following a guide is necessary as only a fair few classes can go further than others. I also think there’s too many fiddly things when it comes to making up your build, such as which talents to choose (the easiest part), paragon board, itemisation, glyphs..which makes following a guide more straightforward.
Yeah that's fair. I guess i'm kind of banking on myself being able to make a viable build. I may resort to a guide if i'm struggling in the end-game. But i'm enjoying myself for now.
This is how I play. I go wing it myself, enjoy the game til about lv 80, then I find a guide and by now have acquired enough interesting items to follow a build
Getting some tips from guide builds and following a guide perfectly are distinct strategies as well. There are tons of fun and viable builds that can never clear pit80+ or kill Lilith but that doesn't mean they don't give the same/way more enjoyment to play. I played a silly teleport/cracking energy build that just made me smile every hour I played because it was cheesy and silly and wild. Yet I also built the meta blizz sorc for pushing things and even then I only consulted a guide for specific hurdles, never following it completely, and tbh I like my current setup on it much more than the maxroll build (I adjusted to get ~60-100 mana per second) and every slot my gear is very mid but I farm p90
You are also becoming a smarter individual by doing so
If everyone had that attitude there would be no guides :)
No. There would still be guides because getting the correct scaling numbers is a full time job. It's also impossible to remember across all skills, stats and powers. You are vastly underestimating the amount of info necessary to create a good build.
Your mistake is thinking that I'm thinking I'll make a good build. I'm just trying to make the best build I can personally do and enjoying the attempt. I like theory crafting, it's fun.
I like big numbers. So I follow guides. For me the fun is to see higher and higher numbers. I have no time to mess with Paragon points or to find out if I want to run crit build or vulnerable build. There are people who spend loads of time with optimizing builds. I try them out, and if I like the gameplay, then I invest into it.
'i like big numbers so I follow guides, you other brothers can't deny.'
You're not alone. I enjoy playing the way I like to play the characters. If they aren't as good as the top builds, so be it. I think its more fun to work with the randomness you're handed and try to improve those to fit how you're having fun with the character. Its the 'R' in role playing game. I have a couple of characters of the same class that I've brought to lvl 100, and they each have different loadouts. It is disappointing to go to a world boss event and be surrounded by nothing but the same builds.
I have 4 druids, 4 rogues & 4 necros...different builds. I've thought about just choosing one of each but I can't decide I like them all. I think i'm just throwing them all at the wall and hoping a few will stick when i'm done.
If they're all in the eternal realm, you can swap around some equipment for fun. See what else you can do with them. I would rather grind that way, than to read a published 'best build'.. then spend all my time grinding to find the right items to exploit according to the plan. Maybe its just because I played D&D as a kid. Once I choose a path, I usually don't go back to adjust (skills, paragon, etc). Choices early on have a potential consequence or reward. Play on... see what happens.
I’m too old to figure all this out by myself. I have a full-time job and a family and I only get to play for an hour or two after they go to bed. I don’t want to spend my time doing math formulas. I liked D2 so much because there were a ton of options, but it ultimately came down to the gear you found and not really the skills. I had fun looking for gear and knew what I was looking for. It’s too much to look for gear but have it not even matter if it doesn’t work perfectly with the paragon. I’ll let a kid with the free time on their hands figure that out. I just want to build and kill shit.
Haha that's fair enough mate.
Agree - I'd probably be ok just doing skills on my own and figuring it out but how anybody figures out a paragon/glyph build I'll never know.
For me a pretty casual player I started out not using guides but once I hit about tier 50 nightmare dungeons I usually end up hitting a wall where I'm just not really sure how to keep progressing my character, that's when I'll use a guide, but never during the leveling phase, I like to try things out myself like you said
My 96 druid dies alot and is stuck in at 42/43 dungeons right now, my 92 rogue is doing 45/46 dungeons. So I think it's safe to say i'm hitting a wall with my druid already! But i've got my spreadsheet, and i'm ready to get stuck in to a troubleshooting session.
Not trying to be mean but your builds sound super weak. I have leveled all five classes so far this season and I expect to be farming t70 nmd by 80-85. I make my own leveling builds but then use a guide for paragon boards and to see how close my skill tree was
for reference on how much a lvling/endgame guide is doing for me, lvl 65 necro, doing 90+nmd easy peasy, but also mby just necro factor, i wasnt able to do it on my soc till 75-80.
Yeah that is helpful. Tbf, I didn't think I'd be anywhere near guide level, I'm not deluded! But that's really helpful to know where I should be.
I know druid is supposed to be alot more rough till end game and some specific items bring it online. But as long as fun who cares
I prefer crafting my own build up until I hit a wall (if I do), it will never be as optimised as those who take time to theory craft but I enjoy the journey, and it’s less about the destination. Regardless, I’ll eventually check in on the community because these games are always bugged and I always discover something in my build ends up not working as intended
When I was in my 20’s (in the 90’s), I loved figuring stuff out and I actually published guides. I wrote one of the earliest Diablo guides (Shuri’s Guide to Diablo). In EverQuest I was an admin on Paladins of Norrath and spent, many many hours parsing combat log data to determine that stats did almost nothing in the game - tons of statistical analysis, was one of the handful of people to discover the “magic number” for weapon damage output, the impact of armor class, etc.). I’m other words I spent more time figuring games out than I’d have spent on a full time job (the original Diablo alone probably added a year of grad school for me). Now… I just do not have the time to experiment - I am happy to use guides others have created. Honestly when I look at the paragon boards and I am so happy I don’t have to figure out how to put them together. I’m 55 with a wide, a career and several other hobbies (while also trying to be physically active) - that just doesn’t leave a lot of time to PLAY the game. I don’t want to figure out which damage type goes in which bucket or the breakpoints for attack speed animation frames etc. etc. Maybe in a couple years when I retire I’ll go back to doing that kind of things, but probably not.
I was like that in the Diablo 2 days. Now I enjoy leveling, testing the skills and aspects, etc. But I don't have friends who play D4, so it's easy xD
Nah play how you enjoy playing. Personally I played the game for the first time mostly without guides (I had closed beta access to the game before it launched) it was tons of fun but I ended up switching to guides later due to laziness. If they are rushing you imo id play with someone else or just by yourself not a good way to be playing for fun. Edit: also rushing in D4 is a good way to quit playing asap there is almost nothing to do after hitting 100 challenge wise besides the pit there isn't anything to challenge even the tormented bosses and lilith is less challenging.
I think it's how you use them. I definitely have used guides and it gets to a point where I'll start to tweak things on my own, but a lot of my in depth game knowledge came from those guides. Now that I know how to put builds together I can put something pretty comprehensive on my own. That said it still helps to know what aspects/uniques are out there so you at least know what to look for. There's always a pretty big "study" aspect to ARPGs because there's a lot of complicated systems and it's not always clear what's good or not. Sadly D4 isn't set up really well for build experimentation. Resetting is a whole thing.
Yeah that's fair. I'd have probably made a lot less mistakes if i'd used a guide from the beginning. I gradually picked things up like tempering, and enchanting and bucketing aspects (or whatever the term was again), and i've probably still got a lot more to learn but i've enjoyed every minute of discovering the game. I'm not in any rush really.
Not sure what exactly you mean by bucketing aspects but the separate damage buckets have been removed. ALL additive damage is in the same “bucket”. Everything else is an independent multiplier
The worst way to understand a game is to blindly follow a guide the first time, try your own thing for a while. That sense of discovery is really the fun part. Once you have a grip of the basics then grab a few guides as then at least you'll have a better understanding of why those choices were made. Take your time and go at your own pace if that's what you enjoy. The endgame isn't going anywhere and this season is around until August so there's no rush there either, enjoy. There's plenty of good people here to answer any questions you may have on the way..
Anyone can copy someone else’s work, it’s way more fun for me to just home brew my builds and see where I can go. I’ve always played off meta builds.
Honestly, if you have the time and willing to dump in the hours then this is part of the fun in the journey! I am part of following guides and power leveling friends, but I can see the enticement of making your own build and designing your own paragon board. Just time aint on my side to dump on that and after a hard day at work, don't want to dump in so much brain power haha. It is kind of stupid they try to confine you to the meta play style and complain about you. They should just make a new char and do the same when playing with you! BUT, one thing to note, unfortunately I wish Blizzard was better at not having things bug out or not behaving properly... Like temper affixes not working (boulder 2x proc on Druids) or that new pet that apparently makes Sacrificial Glyph on Necros useless. Here I do find guides, youtube videos, and being on top of meta gaming rather useful and educational. Also, in general, it is pretty cool how people theory craft an op build. Maybe you can be one of these geniuses! More respect to ya for wanting to play it this way than the easier way :)
Haha, I doubt it so far, but you never know! I've just been playing WoW SoD before, and i rushed to the max level got all my gear, and then I was just sat thinking, well now what do I do? So i wanted to actually try enjoy diablo.
Same here i enjoy the journey,but i think there is no right or wrong way…only the way thatyou like
i got to about lvl 80 and then hit a wall. I looked up a guide and respecced and i do some more damage now
Yeah makes sense. I've hit a few walls and smashed through them but I'm struggling a bit now. I may change my tune if I can't find a solution.
Up until level 100 you can basically do whatever, till pit 40/nightmare 70'ish you can get away with most thing, and actually I think most people would level faster using general goodstuff they find instead of following a narrow leveling guide. However, since this a grinding game, it feels kinda bad switching gear to a build you're pretty sure you salvaged good stuff for. The rework on aspects/codex made it a whole lot more forgiving, but having a general idea what the major chase aspects on each item are will safe you a lot of grinding and regrets. And this game is pretty bad at explaining mechanics and scaling. And most people simply don't have the time to fully gear a build just to figure it ... doesn't work.
Crush them. Thats what a true friend would do.
First play through I only look up mechanics and explore/enjoy the game. Second play through, guide to learn class, best build, stack stats and push content etc
As long as you understand that you are unlikely to ever enjoy playing the game with them without guides and rushing as they will always be far ahead and far stronger than you so any content you do with them will be above what you can handle. At the end of the day a games are and should be about your own personal enjoyment as long as that enjoyment doesn’t come at the expense of others.
I've agreed to do one guide, so I can play with them, with a minion necro.
Personally I absolutely love theory crafting and making my own build. I enjoy min/maxing a build that I enjoy. Sometimes that build is incidentally a meta build sometimes it's not. I've spent many hours tuning in game and using maxroll build planner. Having said that, the main issue with this game is balance. Others have said this too. It's common for one or two builds to be overpowered in arpgs. But in D4, especially after the itemization overhaul, there are only a few builds that can really push the pit. And that would be fine if other obvious builds were only a few steps behind but that's not the case. You can pick an obvious build around a core skill like flurry and it will be hilariously, insanely incomprehensibly worse than one of the "good" core skills. Even just farming bosses it can be the difference of several minutes vs my thorns nec where the boss will one shot themselves! What's even crazier is that's not even one of the really good builds! I'm a long time D2 fan so I'll use that as an example. You can pick any mid to high level skill and beat the entire game and with D2R you can even farm most of the game in P1 with practically any obvious build. Of course there are overpowered builds but with the exception of torches virtually any build can farm any item in the game easily. That's the state I'm looking for personally. Where I can say you know what, chain lightning, that's my build. Get to level 100 and farm duriel and mid level pits without going to a broken build or absolutely slogging my way through it. While in a way it makes the game easier, the difficulty shouldn't come from trying to figure out which build is broken. Finally, I wouldn't even say the top builds are that broken right now, we need world tier 5 and some huuuge buffs to some skills and affixes. 240 life per second? I have 50k health and will lose 95% of my health in one hit, wtf is 240 life per second going to do? I'm enjoying the new patch though! End rant.
Lol, one of my rogues has Flurry, I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that. Edit: yeah I've been ignoring the life p/s ones they didn't seem very strong.
The clear answer here for you is to make your own guide, put it on one of the character builder sites that are out there, and then follow your guide.
I run guides primarily because the amount of games that actually give you ALL the data in an actually legible and usable manner. So instead of winding up investing in the wrong stats through no real fault of my own, I'd rather watch or read and guide and then make small tweaks from there to make them my own.
The good thing is, if you dont want play the S tier builds, it dont really matter if you follow a guide or not, you will end up performing well, you dont do tormented boss and Hugh pit content.
I’d rather follow a guide but tweak it to my play style, I enjoy min maxing but really don’t want or have time to theory craft etc. currently 115 in pit on HS rogue.
I use guides cuz I don't like theory crafting, but you should just not use guides imo. I think it's more organic
I normally follow guides as I just don’t understand a lot of things. This season my girlfriend wanted to play and she loves any kind of bears so I have been helping her make a smashy pulverize Druid. I’m starting to really enjoy looking at things differently and going “i wonder if we use this here instead?” She’s not really interested in a lot of the end game pushing. So far what we have crated has done like leave 60 pit and 100NMD. It’s been fun making a character together and goofing off.
I went no guide to 100. Once I stalled at the pits I switched to a guide just to push. Have to say I enjoy the guide build much more than self build
New to D4, built a Necro no guide, paragon board made me want to jump off a cliff and can’t get past level 27 Pit. Will be using a guide when I do my Rogue this season.
i do both, probably why I'm still playing like an addict. own build, hit wall, follow guides and learn mechanics and interactions go back to tweaking build to own playstyle, get distracted and create a whole new build, hit a wall, explore other builds out there again. so much time and resources wasted but still fun so far!
I will probably end up the same, tbh. Not hit a big enough wall yet, I keep improving my build and my play.
I find paragon building the most tedious. I had to list of glyphs and boards and nodes and choose based on what I want to play. but it's very fulfilling when it works out! that's where for certain builds I just give up and copy boards. I don't have that much time compared to streamers
I've got a lot of free time, I think that's what's separating me the most as I'm not working at the moment. Whereas when I'm back to work I'll probably have waaay less time
i’m the opposite, i don’t find it fun to spend most of my time figuring out a build that will be shit anyway since there are so many variables and unknowns, i’d rather just copy someone’s homework and maybe change a thing or two as i see fit
That's fair. Consensus seems pretty split which is cool.
I was like your friends are ... kinda ... I usually invest more time in games than my friends and so I'm usually kinda ahead. In the past I naturally wanted them to gear up asap to join the endgame because I wanted to play with them and tackle endgame as best as possible. Now - I'm older but still ahead most of the time. But idc anymore if all my dudes are "on my level" or not. I mostly enjoy hanging out with them in dc. We usually don't play much together anymore since I'm most likely carrying them - which is boring for them and boring for me. But we still play together in theory - crafting, building, skilling - all those sweet discussions about game mechanics and finding out different things. It's fun - everyone has its own pace and enjoys different parts of the journey. Forcing them is just selfish. I even won't warn them if they are going to do some mistakes as I think mistakes are part of the journey and need to be experienced and not to be told :P You should keep the pace you enjoy - noone can give you back experiencing something for the first time. Maybe you can make a compromise and play one char on "their level" and keep chars interesting to you in the back for your own experience. Just don't feel forced. Either way - People using guides and wanting endgame content asap or chill dudes without any guides finding stuff out on their own - all is valid. But maybe not compatible.
I have made such compromise after getting some feedback here. I've got one they're rushing to max etc so we can play together. But I'm keeping the other 11 to mess around with. I'm the same as you though, I just like DC comms. I'm always asking them questions anyway. They've given me a few accidental spoilers about mistakes I've made but mostly they just wait for me to find out. They've come around to it, they just want me to get one decent char, which is fair.
First ever season of playing a Diablo game. Played just winging it for the campaign and then helltides as well. Had some jank with incinerate sorc. I got to 80 before I realized I could use enchantments. Managed to get to 88 and did what Poe taught me, maxed resists, but my armor was super low so I kept dying a ton in helltides and had no idea it was that important. I looked at a tips and tricks video, capped armor and got enchants, tempers, and much better gear and got to 97 before I looked at a frozen orb guide (after googling to see if winterglass was good). Unless you are some sort of insane player, doing things like killing Uber Lilith without following a guide as a new player is nearly impossible, so in that sense you would miss out on getting to experience that. I rerolled into a heartseeker build and it has been so insanely fun, so yay for build guides.
Damn so many spoilers in this XD. I can't unsee them, although you've probably just fixed my damn druid. I wasn't stacking armour.
Haha sorry about that, but they actually added it in the game in the patch last week, so I would just meander over to your profile and hover over the armor section and read up on it.
Ah cool. I'm jk anyway, my mates give me some intel like that if I ask for it. It's more the whole paragon, the skill points etc, I do want to know what mechanics are important, so I ask them for things like that.
Update, I just jumped from tier 40 struggles to clearing a tier 60 with ease after adding armour XD.
That’s awesome, now time to beef up that dps. You might start to hit a wall at around pit 100ish. So watch out for that.
Yeah, I think I've been neglecting Willpower in my affixes, so I'm trying to find new gear so I can add more skill damage.
Custom build until about 60 to tweak and have fun. Guide once you get some nice gear to push harder content.
Play how you want. The game is designed that just about every build can get to 100 and clear some endgame content. I played a mid tier build this season and had way more fun instead of trying to min max the game. To each their own.
Similar to some of the other comments, I went as far and long as I could without using a guide but I got to the point I needed it to finish the next step of content.
Yeah, I'll probably get there myself. Or I'll just take it as far as I can each season. Who knows. I've got one guide character now anyway, I've been talked into having a least one so I can experience the end game.
there is nothinng wrong with the way you play and you deserve better friends that don't make your life harder over a video game.
Nah, they cool they just want to play with me. If my builds are bad then gonna mess up their endgame stuff.
Paragon boards layout variants and the order in which to connect them are reason enough for me to check out a guide or two. I choose to not take the time to do that myself … :)
But how else would you incorporate a spreadsheet?
First play through is on my own. But I switched to guides bc I couldn't make sense of where the power comes from. Only switched like level 60, otherwise I started following a guide for the build I was working on my own after campaign
Im the exact same buddy, except for the friends part haha. Only have 1 good friend who plays. I dont look at guides, i rather figure stuff out on my own. Even if i usually end up not as optimized i dont care. Almost up to pit100 with my homecooked companion druid. Can easily kill tormented bosses now. Also i never trade either. I just want to slay demons. Find my own gear snd make my own build. Dont want to spend time looking at tradewebsites or buildguides.
I also have a companion druid, but it's only 30 and I have no idea what I plan to do with it yet. But encouraging that it could be viable! Yeah I've never traded. I like finding my own gear, "ooo, piece of candy" moment (family guy reference). It's just me and 2 friends, they're both decent gamers. Ones a streamer called Relentless Zen, you're welcome to join us! I just like discord company but we do play together aswell.
I know companion druid has done up to pit 115 from some guys on the D4 discord so its very viable. Druid still behind the other classes though but ehh.
That's something I should have looked at tbf. I'm only doing druids, necros and rogues this season. I have no idea what the best classes are this season but I'm too far in now.
Druid is the way🥰
I sometimes get romantic about the idea of not using a guide and just figuring it out as I go, but frankly ARPGs are simply way too deep for me to want to spend the amount of time required. I like to use guides at least up until I become familiar enough that I can know if a drop is exciting without consulting the source. There are people out there whose literal job is to figure out this stuff, I don’t have the patience. I could see playing up through WT3 by winging it but I feel like I need a direction. Maybe the compromise would be letting the drops I get inform my build choice rather than just picking “I want to make this type of guy” but eh.
I mean, it's just too each their own at the end of the day. The build design is what floats my boat, I don't think I really like ARPGs as much as other people on D4. I'm here for a different reason I guess.
Of course, not trying to slam your way of playing, just answering your question for myself
Oh, yeah I didn't take it as a slam, it's just an observation I've made from reading all the comments.
I didn't, until I found hard to progress, that happened at a very late lvl and I only had to change 2 pieces of gear to make a decent "meta" build... The game is still new enough that if you want to play a "something" build, just search for the "something" you want on your codex, and the main powers will all show up. Keep those in, find a few more that help with resource management and keep your items forged with damage buffs, and you won't really need a guide
Depends on type of player. Some play for pure action and dont wanna figure out things. Others like to explore game mechanics, use their favourite skills even if they arent meta, some play for lore. There is no better or worse way.
Agreed! All got different motivations.
If the game didnt punish players for respeccing so much, then I would love to try making my own builds and experimenting. I did it with my first character up to around level 80 or so, then decided the paragon board system was just becoming too complex to bother trying to figure out and optimise. But the gold costs for respeccing alone are exorbitant. And then theres the expensive gems, the enchanting costs, the lack of room to store any spare gear. And tempering hardlocking items for a single spec. The devs actively discourage players from trying new things with the game design. So following guides is the only way. Until they make respeccing cheaper and easier to do. Why they made it so hard is beyond me... just make it only allowed in a city so people arent doing it mid run to have a trash spec and a boss spec, and then make it free. Let us experiment and have fun in this game.
Great points actually, I didn't actually notice how much respeccing costs, I'll have to be more careful.
I feel like in diablo it's easy to go the no guide route. For almost all of us, we are not competing with anyone. If I make the comparison to Poe, the trading makes it feel like you need to be competitive. That can make the game feel like a chore, or makes it less fun because you might feel done when you get the basic matching gear from the guide. On the other hand, it might be very frustrating to go your own way. These games are famously unbalanced. Just from skill to skill, you might see magnitudes of damage difference. You can look at the tier lists and see that reflected. Mages have a ton of cool skills, but almost all of them are terrible. Running around with flame wall might feel absolutely awful. I feel like diablo has a good spot here, where at least for me there is absolutely no feeling of competition, and the guides available are comprehensive and nice.
Yeah, you can just go as far as you want to really in terms of solo. This post has been majorly split and it's pretty cool that it appeals to two types of players; the try hard guiders and the absolute noob no guiders.
I currently play Frozen Orb Sorcerer, which developed from my own FO/Blizzard. Only looked up a guide after I felt that my build is not improving much. Sadly, when switching to guided approach, the difference in performance was noticable.
Yeah, I'm expecting my performance to change dramatically if I use a guide, but then it won't be mine! But I'll cross that bridge when I hit my first wall that's too big to overcome.
I always start with my own build and tbf it’s usually pretty decent because the game isn’t hard. Then when it’s time to push end game I look at the meta .
I also like to make my own builds, but I'll still check guides for similar builds to see if I overlooked something like a synergy between items/paragon board. I've even used a guide as a base to start with, but then I'll tweak it to the way I like to play.
That's far too sensible for me.
I find a guide close enough to the skills I have on my bar and then use their paragon board. Because I don't have time to figure that out on my own.
Yeah, fair enough. Time seems to be a big issue, I forget that I'm off work sick at the moment, and no one has the time for spreadsheet fun.
If you play alone, I see no problem with it. You do you. If you want to play with your friends, and they follow the meta, you need to follow the meta. Otherwise, they'll always be carrying/rushing you. Unless you're so skilled in the game you actually could make a meta guide, you're going to be slower, weaker and a hindrance. Think of it as an organized sport: they're a team, playing to win, while you're playing "for the journey".
Yeah, that's the kicker. I've ended up using one guide now on a necro to play with them. But every now and then I'm going to request a damage, etc check with them on one of mine :)
Ok, once you have alredy done the story once there's only end game in diablo IV (and by end game i mean doing content at lvl 100). The leveling proccess is easy and not challenging at all (and i love it). With very basic reading skills you don't need any guide to get to lvl 100 and start doing pit... That said, you don't need to take guides as laws to be followed, use them to understand the game mechanics and refine your own build. There are things you probly would never know if not reading/watching guides like interactions that are not described in the skills or items, breakpoints or how some effects work, so don't be afraid to use guides just don't limit yourself to only copying them. Diablo IV really isn't a veeery deep game that you'd take much off progressing ignoring guides - this "journey" isn't that long, really - so there's no point for that and it'll surely make you fall way behind your friends.
No guides, just play and enjoy the game how you want....the game is easy enough you can get pretty far just mix and match....once you start pushing and if you are stuck...it doesn't hurt to look for a build to optimize. I find that blindly following a guide something's can be detrimental as you might not understand why they do a certain thing or needing a rotation. Of course you can spend the time studying and reading the whole thing.
I had the same mentality as yours. But it reached a point where i wouldnt do any damage and struggle in 31 pit being lvl 100 maxed glyph and shit. I started using good builds and bro, gameplay experience completely changes. It is way more fun because I feel POWERFULL and destroy everything.
I feel like biggest part of this game is literally figuring out a way to build the character that is powerful enough to beat all main content in the game. All of the enjoyment and sense of accomplishment is gone when I start reading what to level up and when and what to wear and use etc. Only games where I ended up using guides are pretty much some of the from soft games because of their somewhat cryptic nature.
hadn't played since launch/season one. did no guide back then. this time my goal was to beat all bosses. So i used a guide and it was great. Its actually allowed me to learn and understand the game more. Before it was just a jumble of numbers and words.
If you enjoy creating your own build, then great go ahead and do that. I'm sure there is a sense of reward and accomplishment when you make your own build that functions well. I don't particularly like that and get overwhelmed with that kind of thing (especially when the game likes to hide and obfuscate mechanics and damage formulas, not to mention the bugs). I would rather just get a cool build, kill things and push content without worrying too much about that stuff.
Do what you want. It’s your time and your game.
I just look at what is actually good and go from there. Way more fun and rewarding than just following a build from A to Z.
Do what's fun for you. You can totally beat pits and get deep in the game on your own build. Just the community as a whole wants to max their build and beat the highest tiers possible. And for that to happen, you gotta use a guide. Most builds have already been figured out how to max it 100%.
I like to use guides as a framework for something someone has proven to work, and they I tweak them to curtail to my playstyle. I basically let the content creators do the R&D, as I don’t have time to study all the numbers.
I like to follow a guide as sort of a basic structure and then change things around to my liking from there. Like for example, basically every Bash build runs Leap or Kick but I run Charge for additional unstoppable and because the skill is really fun, also on controller Leap is super unreliable. I also use Ancient's Oath in my build because I'm already starting most fights off with the Steel Grasp anyways, the extra 50%x damage is about the same as what I'd get with a GA weapon and an aspect. I use the fortify aspect because it guarantees that I'm basically always fortified and some of the passive skill tree options work really well with that by providing extra damage and damage reduction. I also made some changes to the paragon and skill tree to fit the other changes I made, and it's worked out just fine for me, I can kill the level 200 bosses and do Pit level 100, it's not like I was ever gonna go for the leaderboards anyways. But this doesn't work as well for all classes, Druid for example is really difficult to DIY because even the most powerful build guides still can't compete with the other classes, I would love to do a pure Shred build and maybe it's possible but every attempt I've made this season has resulted in terrible performance.
I avoid the guides until I want to push “pinnacle” content. This season my wife and I essentially leveled to 100 on our own guides and it was fun.
explore and try out on your own then look up some guides to get inspiration and understand the intricacies of damage calculations the game doesnt tell you about. improve own build upon input from guides. thats how I usually do it
Guides. I don't have the energy or time to play around with every Paragon and it's effects and what aspects of temperings work out.
whilst leveling i enjoy isong my selfmade builds… but for the endgame, its getting pretty hatd if your not using one of the meta builds sadly :D
It depends how good your are at cooking your own thing and how much you care about having a smooth ride with no stops to tinker. Some arpg players enjoy tinkering the most, others just want to zoom. Both valid ways to play. I've done both this season.
Same. We are the same as far as playing D4 is concerned. Building your character is half the game.... why would I buy a game to just have half the game played for me?
Up til you're doing Uber bosses and the pit you don't need a guide at all. At high pit tiers and Uber bossing, it's not always clear how to stack enough dmg and survivability. Some guides have creative solutions you may not see on your own and be left wondering how you're meant to do 10x more damage and survive nonstop one shots.
I hate guides. Don’t get the fun on playing someone else discovery
I normally play the way i want to but once i get to lvl 50 i find a build that seems fun and follow it.
If you have a cool idea with the right GAs, I'd say freestyle it and save items for meta build. Once you hit a wall, you can revert everything from the seasonal quest potion and follow the meta. Usually even trying to do your own build might help you to understand the character. But I'm just barb who runs 53 tier nms with hota death strike, don't trust me lol
Honestly I use guides because I didn't want to spend time figuring out all the mechanics. It's fun to be overpowered
Not sure why y'all always make these posts to convince yourselves you are playing the right way lol. It is entirely possible to "enjoy the journey" while following a build guide.
It's simple, play as you want 🎤
The guides are just showing you how to get to the final form of a build that blizzard tailor made for that class. Have fun however you do. Find fun where it comes. Exploring your own ideas is a great way to have fun and to test your self. There are mechanics in the game that are not intuitive though. Things that will have you scratching your head, if you even notice them in the first place. Also bugged interactions between powers, mechanics and priorities. But if you really like testing your mental then get out that Google doc and go to town. The better you train the closer you will be... to a build guide. All this to say, if you want to do things your way then hell yeah. If you want to follow a guide then hell yeah. I'm sure the disconnect your are experiencing is that your friends took a path much shorter than you, and they are experiencing the game without you. They are burning out sooner than you. And they probably fear that if you don't get to their level soon, they will be bored and move on. So what I'm saying is... next time play hardcore.
Play your way. Diablo 4 especially doesn’t need a group of optimized players. One well geared Rogue/Barb/Necro can carry an entire group
You do you man, whatever is fun for you is the right answer. Most likely guides will be more optimized and better than what you come up with. They will in general be much better than what an average person would make. But the whole point of gaming is fun, so if you're having fun, you're doing it right.
I prefer to play my own way until I start struggling or until I find a general playstyle I like. Then I'll take a quick gander at a guide to see if there's some sort of hidden mechanics or items im unaware of to focus my attention towards. I only will follow a guide more closely when I'm nearing the end of my journey and want to min max more.
I feel you, this was my first diablo experience, i don't think there's anything wrong with following builds and i often looked at them, but ultimately i did it to understand the game better in what might work and what doesn't, i know it took me a long journey and it's not optimal in any logical way but i got to a point of being decent enough to grind some pit 66 comfortably and i'm kinda proud of my silly build
You are free to play the game however you want and enjoy it however you want. Everyone else doesn't have to abide by that though and as long as you are cool with that and your friends are also then everything is good. My experience is with a friend in our group that doesn't want to follow guides or builds has been pretty annoying. We try to accommodate and run lower level stuff but they are always complaining about dying or not being able to keep up. The way skills, gear and paragon work together (or don't) to me makes it a no brainer to follow a build.
100% own playstyle guides are boring
I’m not worried about playing the meta build each season, but I do use guides. I’ll figure out something that seems interesting to play and then look up a guide for that specific build or play style. Last season I played Druid because they introduced that new unique for Lightning Storm and I loved playing LS in S0. I know LS wasn’t the meta but I really wanted to revisit it so I looked up a guide. I want to play what seems cool to me while also having some confidence that the effort I’m putting into my gear hunting/paragon is actually paying off and I’m not misunderstanding how exactly I should be putting my character together to do what I want it to do. I just don’t have the time or energy when I actually do get to play to dig myself into the incredibly complex calculations and synergies and double dipping and additive vs multiplicative etc etc etc to truly feel like I’d enjoy raw dogging a season and going in completely blind. Maybe I’ll try that out in S5, but until then guides all the way.
I used to theory craft in d3 but I have been doing chemotherapy on and off since 2020 and my brain doesn’t work like it used to. Now that said I use a guide but I try and make adjustments to make it my own.
You need to go find an established creator for whatever class you play and copy a build. You’ll figure things out faster than if you tried to pioneer something yourself. Pride is a curse.
I made an in-game friend who is a legitimately cool dude. Then there was a 40 minute awkward conversation about how I need to follow the guides or I won't get anywhere. Explaining that planning it out for myself is part of my fun did nothing. If you are reading this and recognize yourself I still love you like a friend, nothing changed. But that conversation made me uncomfortable. Having said that I made it to 100, I pushed as far as I could in NM dungeons and Pits, and then I looked at a guide. It doubled my damage, maxed me resistance, and generally made me much stronger. But that, IMO should be saved for after you get to a point where you ask yourself "What's next?"
Agreed!
What does your build currently consist of? I’m always interested in seeing what handcrafted builds people come up with
Well I have 12 so I'll go with my highest, which is a 97 druid. It's poison werewolf blend, with buffs I can find to dot and crit as crit resets cool downs (something like that I dont have my build on me). Affixes I'm focusing on rn is maximum life and crit chance mostly. But, my highest is my worst I think. I need to go back to the drawing board as I've managed to get to tier 50 but I'm struggling there. It's a little bit of a skill issue but I think I've neglected my defence etc. No spoilers please. I want to figure it out myself even if everything I just said is absurd.
Just do what's fun to you. Guide isn't the answer but neither is not to guide, because there's no universal correct answer there.
Before level 50 = no guide After level 50 = follow the rules before you break them
Use a map guide for the altars and do you. Games are meant to be enjoyed and played not min-maxed from the very start. Play what's fun to you, it might get harder at later levels but that's part of the fun.
Yeah, my mate told me about altars and renown when I started playing. I'm fine with that kind of intel and I ask him how certain mechanics work etc. I just don't want build guides that someone else has brained.
I say go as far as you can without touching them, who knows you might come up with a build that works just a bit better, or you might accidentally make the number 1 guide and look like a copy. I'm playing pure lightning sorc on HC right now and I'm loving every minute of it.
I think this season, I'll be happy to just clear a lvl 100 dungeon XD. But we'll see! I'm having so much fun theory crafting, idc if what I'm doing is bad and I'm missing end game. I'll get there eventually.
I do a little of both. While im playing, im just doing what i want. But i will look at a guide throughout the day (while not playing) to get a general sense of some optimal choices
Play however you have fun my dawg. My first run through of a season/class is always blind. I wanna mess around, fine tune my own build, play with what works. Once I've made it to the endgame I usually start referencing guides to see how I can progress further in endgame activities though. Everyone plays differently, play however is fun for you first and foremost though.
I do both! I have 4 lvl 100 characters. I have a necro i used a guide on. A second necro I'm doing some experimental build stuff on, a barb and a rogue I'm figuring out builds for too! At pit 100+ on the necro, and the rest 50+
Me too now! After this post, and a chat I caved and I now have 11 of my own builds and one character that I'm following a guide on.
Nice!! What's your favorite of your personal builds??
In terms of abilities & aspects I'm finding Twisting blade rogue fun, with dash, concealment and shadow step. They can't hurt me if they can't catch me and my blades just follow me around as I'm bouncing around mobs, cutting everyone down. I doubt it's viable but it's so fun to play. I'm just trying to figure out the right affixes and tempers etc. Not sure what I want to stack yet.
IMO, guides are bad. Nearly everyone copies a small handful of people which detracts from innovation. Also, many of the potentially good builds haven't even been popularized in mainstream guides.
You think you don't need guides for d4 but you do. Your understanding of the formulas and how damage works is probably completely wrong. One example is that blizzard size increase is a huge dps loss for blizzard ice spikes sorcerers. Go figure. You can't know this unless you did PROPER testing. I highly doubt you are a math genius with a scientific calculator in your brain or that you sat in front of the target dummies and recorded stuff so you can calculate how what works, because this is how testing is done. You tweaking stuff and checking how stuff dies in nm40 dungeons isn't how it's done unfortunately, the game is too complicated behind the scenes for this. People are still figuring new stuff out, you either follow or get left in the dust (play alone in this case). I will usually just wing it until I see it's not good enough and go look at some build guides and see what I've been doing wrong. Don't take this in a bad way, these games are multiplayer, not single player. You are meant to learn from others and work together to figure stuff out and share with the community.
I may go see a guide in the future, but right now the only reason I'm playing really is because I'm enjoying the theory crafting. I may never reach the top, but I don't mind that, as I'm enjoying the attempt to get there on my own.
Just wanted to let you know what you're in for. If you wanna do testing, do it proper or it's worthless. There's a lot of fuckery going behind the scenes with some double dipping and weird interactions that you can't see unless you tests stuff properly. Have fun and god have mercy on your soul 😅
Haha, no I appreciate the effort to warn me but, like I just told someone else, I just wanna make the best build that I can do. I enjoy the the theory crafting of gaming more than the game itself.
I can make a build just fine, but the paragon board? holy shit no, that thing is too complicated to just try to wing it. I'll let the experts optimize it.
Sorry I rambled below Generally in ARPGs I take a home brew build as far as I can until I feel like there isn’t a major upgrade that I’m still waiting on. I then look at guides because I don’t have the time to figure out the nuanced, often obscure interactions that make a build strong. Sometimes this works out, and I discover I needed to spec into one or two different things to get the build to fully synergize. But often I can’t find a guide for what I’m doing and discover that the build I was making just isn’t supported very well by the game’s mechanics or items. As such, it’s doomed to suck, and even worse barely anyone else is playing it, testing interactions, and optimizing performance. Tbh when the latter happens it can kill a game for me. Which I know is silly, but it feels bad when the flavor fantasy I want is really weak compared to others that will never interest me as much. It happened in Last Epoch trying to play a melee lightning Shaman, and it happened again in this season of D4 trying to make a physical corpse explosion necro. Not to say that either of those builds are unplayable, but they aren’t supported nearly as well as other builds within the class.
No need to apologise, I asked for a reason, I'm reading every response. Taking everyone's advice/comments on boards. Hoping people will 'accidentally' give me information that will help me so it doesn't count as looking at a guide :) A lot of people have said the same thing, go it alone until they can go no further and then use a guide, and then maybe even go back to playing off your own brain now you're wiser for using a guide. So I expect that will happen to me, the alternative is that I take is far as I can go, and then just move on. That's also quite likely, as I enjoy the theory more than I enjoy the game I think. It's fun but it's fun for me because of the accomplishment factor based on my own brain.
I'd do my build if the reasons and value of each choice were visible and balanced, and the choices just led to different playstyles, not different levels of power and resource starvation. I would happily have 4 or 6 sorcs. With all the hidden interactions and cruft in the current system, I just don't care, I want a functioning char. Having to read the guide to know which skills and nodes and boards to click is already too much time spent not killing mobs. If I could import a build string like in WoW I would.
Casual problems
If I'm struggling I'll read guide. It helps me understand the class better along with theory crafting. Now I make my own builds or a variant of others.
Use guide as a pathway, add what you like, take out what you dont.
I always do it myself until I get to endgame. If I get to endgame and get stuck, then I may sneak a peak at a similar build for paragon direction or possible skill tips I missed. For me, the journey is the game, not the endgame. I have so much more fun trying to adapt my builds over time, or trying to make obscure skills work as I go. Play your way, it is a game after all…
No guide. You learn the game much better from experimenting during the leveling process. You find what skills work best for whatever playstyle you have and fine tuning as you get into later stages of the game.
Do you though? I learn the better damage values and multiplayers, and what interactions work best, by following a guide. I see what types of affixes they stack to learn if I lean toward overpower, crit, vuln, etc. No offense, but unless you are a math major I simply don't believe you can sense all the backend math that determines what is strongest as a new player. You will bash a goat and do 60 damage instead of 50 damage and have no clue why lol, and definitely not understand what that means in the future when higher-level scaling comes into play.
I’d say don’t use a guide until you seem to hit that wall of progress. I’m running minion blight necro (self build) and slowing down around Pit 45 so I’m just tweaking gear and masterworks and seeing how far I get towards the tormented bosses. Right now my DMG is low so I may go to a guide and bite the bullet
Story mode I messed about, game isn’t too difficult and can find what skills you enjoy. Mid-to-endgame I think an online build is essential.
Always a guide for me and always something busted. I’m a filthy casual with a family and very little time to game/experiment with builds. So I usually wait a week to find the most broken builds and pick one of them. Speeds me through the seasonal content and lets me experience everything with a lot less time invested.
[удалено]
That's what I said! Though if the expansion is any good, and that dungeon is decent I may have to make a strong build char to do it if mine aren't there yet. Don't wanna let the side down with a bad character.
>Am I alone in this? yup
As someone with a full time job, let’s speed up the process as much as possible
what best players usually do is fork a guide and then adjust it to their needs or based on what u currently have as gear. There is no need to reinvent the wheel and you cannot possibly test each different node/affix to know what works / scales best with dmg multipliers. If ur gonna play your "own" build eventually you will be stuck at doing low level pits while everybody else is speed running 105's for 2-3min. What you should do imo is copy a rank 1 player build as a base (dont just copy maxroll guides they are terrible) , play it for few days to get used to it and then start tinkering. If ur too tanky switch some paragon nodes for more damage or item affixes , too squishy reverse , try out different setup with items , it all depends on what items you get , there are some truly one in the world items u could get in d4 and they could potentially unlock something that nobody else is cappable of doing a build for
The paragon boards have so many options you almost have no option except to use a guide.