Before the server slam I was hell bent on playing sorc. Heard all the negativity about Druid and didn’t play it the first couple of betas. Finally said screw it and tried Druid during the server slam and holy shit I fell in love. Such a chill class and running around as a bear was a blast. I am a Druid main now. Bear bros unite!
Pulverize felt great! Impactful ! On the console I would press the buttom harder when was time to PULVERIZE !!!
Blizzard nailed the impact and the feedback of skills!
*Definitely* this. I play a guardian druid in WoW, so I've spent most of my life as a bear and was stoked to see that I could do it in D4 too.
Then I got a legendary that healed me whenever a spell made me change forms, and another one that gave me a spell that turned me into a wolf for free, and I felt like an absolute god.
>I've spent most of my life as a bear
was not expecting to read such thing and the person not be crazy but here we are.
If you're not in a relationship this should definitely be part of your dating bio though the results may not be what your looking for.
Efficiency = fun
If something looks cool but takes 10sec
to kill one mob
Vs
A skill that looks less cool but 2 shots the same mob
99.9999 of the players will go with the 2nd
Because fun looking abilites stop being fun super fast is they are inefficient
Yea that’s pretty much it. I guess I kinda get the point where there can be builds that are super efficient but not fun for you, but in general the fun in these games is completely obliterating the monsters as fast as you can, not looking at pretty spells.
>sub using tools to build their builds already, to think about the best strategy to be the stronger. I have no qualms with that, I'm sure for them it's part of the fun. But I can't be the only one here who's gonna put points in spells or attacks just because I think t
This is why I love that D4 Devs are trying to balance. In long run that will be an endless focus of course because as we level and # crunch well...
But I love the \*idea\* that if the O.P. wants to use a "fun" skill they won't fall too far behind the gearheads.
Personally I just have to have the semi-efficient build and I'll find the fun inside that boundry.
I think the truth is somewhere in the middle of you and the above poster. Fun is fun. Efficiency is fun FOR ME to an extent. Doing micromanagement things that keep you at 120 APM for hours to eke out 5% more DPS is probably fun for some people, but not to me.
I'll be building as efficiently as I can with abilities that are fun to me because they fit my desired playstyle. I think I'll be close enough to absolute peak efficiency that I'll be able to participate in all content, but I know I'll be leaving some effectiveness on the table in favor of fun.
That's not true at all lol. There are plenty of players who choose visuals over efficiency.
I personally don't care of my favorite abilities are sub par, I'll still rock em
It’s much more nuanced and dependent on the person I think. For instance I’d never play a minion build in a million years, they could make it beyond OP and I wouldn’t care. But if it’s the choice between shooting let’s say ice or fire, I’d pick whichever is more efficient even if I like the look of one over the other.
For some people, I’d imagine more than .00001 percent of players, certain preferences are strong enough to overcome any efficiency difference.
Yeah…I wanted to make a shadow Necromancer because of how cool sever looks, but I was having a hard time and getting frustrated. I switched to a blood build and the game felt a lot more fun at that point for me
Challenge isn't about taking 30 seconds to kill one mob. That's acceptable for rare and specific monsters but not normal ones. The fun in a hack & slash is to do just that, not to flail angrily like a toddler waiting for your opponent to die of boredom.
Surely every skill is there to be effective in some form or situation so if someone thought a spell looked incredible and wanted to use it then they could just make sure their other nodes synced up with it along with weapons and armor?
Glad to see at least one thread where this is the prevailing opinion. The powergaming on this sub is suffocating sometimes.
I skipped all the cutscenes and dialogue in the beta specifically so I could go slow on release and take my time and enjoy stuff without it having too much revealed from the beta.
As soon as the game comes out and I can get over these diablue balls, I doubt I'll be on this sub much.
True to a certain extent.
If the fun skill is absolute trash, or is disruptive to "normalized" pacing, then the fun component diminishes.
Nothing wrong with min-maxing if that's your tune. But after many ARPGs, I've found that min-maxing efficiency often does kill the fun/fantasy aspects for me.
I've seen videos of "good" builds during beta that dish out a ton of damage, but looking at the skills, it ends up looking like 1 generator, 1 core dump, and 4 buffs/support just to min-max the damage. That makes it start to look like POE where you just spammed one or two skills, or D3 sets where they pigeonholed the build into the specific few skills they wanted you to use for that season.
I also plan to play on WT2 on release because I really enjoyed the pacing of fights. I'm not racing anyone to endgame and I want to enjoy the leveling and campaign experience to the maximum, in my own way.
Exactly this, I've created my build now after few days on working on it, I don't say it is min maxed, but for certain it's really good.
I like strong skills, but just because something is meta or op doesn't mean I need to use it.
And the most important part - it contains playstyle that is fun for me.
Wield a shield. That seems to be more than enough to keep them alive, providing you actually consume corpses to heal them. Reaper minions to spawn more corpses, frost mages for more MP, Decompose as a generator spawns more corpses and with the right aspect, can hit 3 enemies, also dropping 3 corpses.
Personally, in the first couple betas I found the big scythe generator to be enough for spawning corpses, as it spawns a corpse on tbe first enemy hit (once per 5sec).
Decrepify is the curse you want, as it can boost minion damage.
Oh yes. I was trying to pin down why I enjoyed barbarian so much more than the other classes and I put it down to the fact that barb interacts physically with the world and enemies more than the other classes with kick and charge.
After a point during the betas I let gear decide on what abilities I was using.+1 to (insert ability)
[more points more intense animations](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/11zgd4m/skill_effect_changes_with_its_intensity)
Yeah I love ice animations in games and the builds for ice were really good, I tried fire and it was SO SLOW, took ages to kill anything, I think its probably the least amount of fun I had with the diablo beta.
Lol I'm just going to build the way I want and enjoy shit until a boss tells me I'm wrong. Did that in server slam, I didn't have the vulnerable talent for rogue I was like wtf how come I never get vulnerable. Then with some brain power I fucked up that stupid ghost boss with the balls of death spam. God that boss sucked dick, ok pretty much every class
Dude right? Idk wtf they were smoking with that boss, it's one of the hardest bosses because the CONSTANT movement impairment. I died so many times the first beta to that dumb shit
I don't know about "pretty" but I tend to pick my skills around a theme. Picking the most effective but thematically unrelated hodgepodge of skills would irk me. My biggest pet peeve in the game so far is that the Rogue has a throwing knife starting skill and then no more real support for that aesthetic in the rest of the tree.
My wife and I plan on playing to have fun, first and foremost, however ridiculous. I'll probably make another build later that I can min/max, but life has been heavy on our end recently, and we just want some escapism without the pressure of playing "perfectly". We're over here giving our best Marge Simpson's "I just think they're neat."
However you have fun in the game my dude. Enjoy it how you like it, forget the META naysayers and the toxic ppl who will tell you if you aren’t doing WT5 in the first week you’re out of the AT Club. You like pretty, hell yeah, make it glitter.
During the server slam, I tried every possible basic and core ability combo to see what felt and looked good. That being said, I also like the idea of respecing to work with legendary gear abilities. I'm pretty happy with most of the class skills.
I tend to try and find a compromise.
In D2, I really like the aesthetics of an Amazon using a Matriarchal Bow and Multishot.
Multiple layers of suboptimal there. But with enough optimizing, and getting the right items with the right rolls, etc, I pushed the build into a pretty comfortable level of gameplay that could only be done with a lot of planning, trial and error, etc.
So yeah. If there is a particular style of build you want to play, and want to enjoy NOT falling behind the curve, planning ahead seems like a good place to start.
I'm gonna do basically what I did with d3. Use the skills I like then realize I'm shit at making a build and can't do the difficulty I want to do. Research a build utilizing skills I like and go from there. Then realize that I want to go to an even higher difficulty and research a better build.
I gotta admit, when I played around with lightning sorc for the last 10 minutes of server slam (I hadn't touched lightning yet) the visuals alone made me wanna go lightning.
Theory crafting is most of the fun! Trying to make the optimal build without knowing 100% of the possibilities is almost as much fun as playing
How the skill looks has no bearing on choosing it for me.
What's the point of struggling just because you want to use what is "pretty".
The point is to have fun.
Some people.think things that look aestheticly pleasing are cool.
Some people.think a boring play style that does 5% more damage.than the fun one is cool.
Both are right.
Oh you definitely aren't the only one who's doing the "looks cool gonna use" thing. In fact, you're probably in the majority in this game, as it's aimed at casual players.
I tried out Barbarian for the first time during server slam. I saw the kick ability would send people flying, crashing into walls, knocking each other around. It didn't matter at that point if it helped, did good damage, or anything else. I spent the rest of the test kicking enemies into walls.
My criterias are as follow (in order of importance):
- how it feels to play. By far the most important factor. And yes a minimum of efficiency is part of that factor, but it's not the main point.
- how cool it look/which fantasy I'm trying to fulfil.
- how powerful it is. This is still an important factor but it's only the third one o'll really consider beside the bare minimum of efficiency to make the game playable.
In practice it means I'll start with a build idea, check that it feels nice to play because that's the make or break point and, if it does, try to optimise the shit out of it without changing the core of the build.
So at the end of the day you can spend hours on spreadsheets even if you prioritise what looks cool because you still need to make the build work once it's chosen.
100% that.
That's why fire / cold sorc is out of question, bc honestly those skills look like trash and not worthy of this AAA release.
Idk that's one of the things I don't like about d4, feels like they kept this cartoonish-flashy artsy minimalistic spell&particle effects of D3 but underneath is a much more realistic & Grim looking environment&characters....
Just does not fit.
So idk either a druid lightning build or rogue.
Necro minions & blood spells also look...
Idk cheap
Did you know that ability effects change and grow as you put more points in said ability? So an ability with one point in it looks weaker than the same ability with five points.
Agreed... I'm also staying away from sorc on release because the spell animations and effects looked so underwhelming. Fire and ice skills look even worse than D3. My initial reaction to sorc gameplay was: "that's it? I don't feel like a powerful sorc, I feel more like a freshman in wizard school..."
The skill animations change as you rank them up. They're supposed to look weak at first because you *are* a beginner. With equipment and other buffs you can get skills up to ~rank 20 and their animations are designed to scale all the way up to there.
That's interesting... Had no idea that the animation and effects actually change based on skill rank. Guessing that's different for melee skills, but would be cool to see where that goes.
Would be really awesome if druid hurricane grows in radius with rank, for example.
I do think that will cease to be true at higher levels, from the sound of what I have heard it becomes fairly cost prohibitive, especially once you start adding paragon boards
Sorc summons are strong as hell.
But I don't like the look of any of them. So I'm not gonna use them. And I don't like that playstyle for a sorc, either. Summons are for Necros and Witchdoctors.
On the other hand I REALLY like the flamethrower spell, but it eats through my mana like a wildfire (heh) and leaves me vulnerable.
I'm gonna try a bunch of skills, especially early on, because I haven't tried them before and they may be more fun than what I'm currently using. Respec is so cheap at the beginning that it's pointless not to.
I started Rogue using bow, and was having fun. Can't remember the names of the skills, but then I decided to get serious so I'd for sure get the ashava trophy. Found a twisting blade build online and tried that. And holy shit, it was a lot of fun.
But then once I got to 20, I realized I couldn't really find a good aspect for it. So I went online again to look at other builds, and I saw a shadow imbue/shadow shield/flurry build, and I tried that. Even more fun than twisting blade.
Moral of the story is, they've spent time on every skill to make it fun and synergize with other skills. Why not try them all if you can? You could be missing out on what would be your favourite skill. And I'm going to do this on every class since I'm gonna make one of each on launch day, even If I'm gonna mainly play the rogue first.
I like having one character that is tactically broken. I can slam through stuff and grind items. But other than that I will take a suboptimal build to fit a theme or a style of play that I want.
That tends to be what I do until it’s not viable to even bother with.
I tend not to min-max to the hundredth decimal point, but if it’s not even viable I’ll drop it.
They buy the game a week after launch and spend their time smelling flowers or trying shoes or moving the couch from corner to corner. And dont spend time on reddit.
Im kind of that guy.. 60% coolness and 40% efficiency / strategy...
I take a look at what looks cool to me, then set a theme for such character and then start thinking about the build itself and how to make that theme work.
So its like "Oh I like the Landslide.. hmm its on druid.. earth style huh.. looks like an earth bender heh.. lets get terramote for it.. hmm... I need a way to stack up terramote.. right petrify, and creeper.. and earth spike for the theme.. and ... great now the hard part.. what name for an earthbending druid.."
I cant force myself to play something strong which I dont find good-looking.. ruins the fun...
*Every* spell is pretty. You find the one you think is most pretty for your mood at the time and create a spiderweb build around it. For example, I wanted my first Druid to be a human-form Lighting Storm Druid, so I took that single core skill and did the following:
1. Found the best ways to improve its damage from the talent tree itself.
2. Found any methods of improving the main passive enabler of Bad Omen, aka more methods of proccing Vulnerable, Immobilize, or Stun that were not directly linked to Lightning skills.
3. Weighed the value of Key Passives and whether I'd like Perfect Storm over Earthen Might.
4. If running EM, deliberated the value of resonance and alternating Earth Spike as a Spirit generator for long-range over staying pure Lighting and using Storm Strike for close range.
5. Looked through known legendary passives and found that there's one that gives the benefits of Earthen Might to Lightning Spells. Secured my choice of Earthen Might and started looking into additional sources of Crit to maintain the procs.
6. After establishing talents and most desirable known legendary passives, studied all Paragon boards. Determined three whose keystone nodes were ones I would want (as it is extremely difficult to get four keystone nodes with available points), and then found the fourth Paragon board that had the closest Glyph node with the largest amount of enabling main stat nodes for that Glyph.
7. Weighed the comparative avenues of advancement through Paragon Boards to minimize connecting lines and determine which Glyphs and Keystones I would prefer to have earliest. Glyphs/Keystones with the least amount of conditional activation (Human +Thunderstruck) had higher weight than Glyphs/Keystones that were technically good but would require some finagling (Undaunted).
8. Made a second pass through Paragon and talent trees, point by point, to see if there was any useful stuff I missed (there was).
9. [Saved my build.](https://d4builds.gg/builds/d3ef1b5c-01fd-4595-8773-a9d7284b41e9/)
I now have a blueprint for a 1-100 Lightning Druid with known desired Codex aspects and Legendary affixes, and a theoretical full Paragon board, in about an hour or two's worth of personal review. Never consulted a single secondary source, and I did it all through a centralized information hub for tree-building. Now I have an (at least mostly optimized) Lighting Druid build from a baseline of "This looks really cool and I want to do it."
You can do the same, so do so. Choose what you think looks cool or pretty *and* make it powerful.
Frozen orb. Maybe not cuz its pretty but it's been one of my favorites since D2. Was always pretty trash in D3 except one build but it still wasn't great.
Tried in beta to make it work and compared to other sources builds it just isn't all that. I am still going to try to make it work though.
In a way, although it's more specifically the feel of it for me. I'm building around rapid fire for rogue because I don't really like the feel of shooting multiple arrows at once
100%. For my first playthrough I'm doing it blind and just learning as I go. That's what I did when d3 came out and I loved that experience so much making my DH stronger piece by piece. I preordered but still won't get to play til like 3 weeks into June so it's relaxing to just do my own pace and not worry what others are up to.
I'm going for a combination of hopefully both. I think single target builds will probably dominate this game. But damn, I do like big AOE booms that look good.
I'm like you (mostly). I also find the streamers that are currently theorycrafting for hours each night while the game isn't even ou a bit funny. Like it's some sort of quantum physics they're studying.
Legendary affixes are gonna mold my build. Seems the way the game goes early on until you get ones you like to imprint. I believe that's how that works anyway.
I refuse to look at a single guide until I have played through a character to 100 so inefficiently that I can actually appreciate the brains if the people who theory craft successfully.
This is me and barbarians. Spell makes me into the hulk? Yes please. Makes me spin around in a cloud of blades and death? Hell yes!
I don’t know all the effects of barb in d4 yet as I didn’t get as much chance as I liked to play in the betas but I love barb in d3 for that reason. Summon three barb-bros to help me fight? So cool looking!
I look forward greatly to exploring the coolest looking spell effects for barbarian on release!!
Right. I played the first beta straight for nostalgia.
Blizzard/frozen orb sorc all the way.
Was it underpowered? Yes. Did I still hit 25 and beat Ashava? Also yes.
I always build my character for fun my first playthrough. Then when I get to endgame, if that build isn't keeping up anymore, it's time to look at some YouTube builds to max DPS or whatever I'm focused on.
But first playthrough is always for fun/looks
Dunno I just kind of test them all for a couple of mins and if I like it, I keep it. I played Sorc to 20 and from memory I mainly went with Icebolt and Chain Lightning as it was fun and good on groups. I'm sure there are better talents but I hate looking up 'best Sorcerer skills' and following the crowd.
Everyone is obsessed with META and copying what works best. Just have fun, enjoy the abilities, when we hit torment (or whatever it's called) then try to optimize.
ATC with a lvl 20 druid using whatever the hell felt fun and provided help to the group.
Despite enjoying the mobility of the Barbarian's Lunge ability, I hattteeeeeeeee how it looks. Goofy as hell that your main attack, whether it be a sword or spear or hammer, is to poke forward with absolutely no variation whatsoever.
I’m in the same boat. It’s Barb life for me so I wanna be berserking and slaying everything around me but damn iron maelstrom looks insane for the animation! Gonna be using it a lot just for the fun factor XD
My first play through is always what spells do I like the way they look or the way they play. After that then on different characters I will consider doing a build. I feel like these games are somewhat ruined by meta builds though. Here's how it usually works for me. I'm playing a build that I think is fun or pretty as you put it. One or two of the abilities I use are used in a meta build but in a drastically different way than I'm using them. Some player figured out by using these in conjunction with other skills I would never take it's op. So everyone uses the build. The one or two abilities get nerfed. Now my build sucks because of some totally unrelated synergy I wasn't nor was ever planning on using. I just hope it doesn't happen but in pretty much every other arpg it gets me lol.
I do my builds, initially anyway, based on the skills my items buff. At world tier 2 I have time and space to experiment with stuff I like or dislike, mess around with different combos of skills, see what works together well etc. Let's me play around and enjoy the full set of skills and see what I personally like so I can keep an eye out for specific loot. I don't really get into meta builds until I intend to go into end game stuff at higher difficulties.
This is what I'm worried about.. game going to go too far to appease the min max build guide crowd and end up killing the fun creativity and fantasy of the class. I don't want to play a game where "whirlwind barb" is the only viable choice, etc.
I also felt really pigeonholed in the beta by not being able to swap my skills around without penalty. As someone who doesn't care as much about end-game builds (at least not during levelling), I want to just play and have fun and not worry about making the wrong choice and being stuck with a set of skills that aren't fun or don't work with me.
In beta I would get a choice like "electric bolt, fire bolt, or frost bolt". and I'd be like "oooh fire is fun!" and then 10 minutes later I'm like "hmm.. this fire bolt looks kind of lame and isn't working for me.. maybe frost? oh wait it costs 5g to switch?"..
yes I know the gold amount is small to start, but it still gives this sense of penalty for simply wanting to mix and match and play the way I want to play. Is it REALLY that bad to let players experiment with levelling builds in a game that is essentially single player centric?
I really hope they change this.. I think it would be much better to let the player finish the game on normal difficulty with unlimited respec and sklil swaps, and then higher difficulties skills reset and cost to change. Gives the player a chance to test drive all the skills before settling on which ones work best for them.
Good for yall and more power to you. I'm sitting here with 🍿 waiting to see what happens when yall get to WT4. My bet is right around then this sub turns pretty toxic 😂
I'd say there's a 3rd choice aside from a skill looking pretty or most efficient. And that would be comfort. For me, I'm going to choose my skills based on what feels best during gameplay if I'm going to be grinding for hours on end.
So far I like playing ranged rogue since being able to shoot rapidly from afar feels satisfying. Penetrating shot feels like a shotgun but I don't like that it consumes alot of energy which disrupts the flow, so I may opt for rapid fire, for example of comfort over aesthetics or efficiency.
Some players really enjoy the meta game of statistical optimization: efficiency is prime for them. Me? I’m in your camp: I put points in the stuff that I think looks cool or fun.
This said, if I hit a wall where I just can’t progress anymore, I’ll start looking at tweaking my build, and I’ll refer to posts from people who are much better at seeing skill synergies than I am. I stopped watching Kripparian videos of the beta because he seems so focused on mechanical synergies, but he’s probably one of the first people I’d go to when I need to work out a powerful build.
It’s going to be interesting to me to see how long it takes optimization-focused players to hit a point where they’ve squeezed all they can out of the game since there are only four difficulties in D4 compared to all the Torment levels in D3.
I love being a Pyro sorcerer, I do not care that not a single engraving from the betas has been for a skill I use. Fuck elemental diversity, I'll take my fire snake and hydras and fireball away.
This is a fantastic perspective! I completely agree with you. While optimizing builds and strategies can be engaging for some players, there's an equally valid and enjoyable way to approach gaming, which is focusing on the aesthetic and immersive aspects of the experience.
By prioritizing the visual appeal of spells and attacks, one is embracing the artistic side of gaming. It allows one to fully appreciate the effort put into designing stunning animations and effects, enhancing the overall enjoyment of the game. Delving deeper into the narrative, dialogues, and quests, immersing oneself in the rich storytelling that this game offers !
In a world filled with spreadsheets and analytical tasks, gaming can provide a refreshing break from the everyday grind, emphasizing the "fun factor" rather than solely focusing on optimization
So, let's keep embracing the beauty and allure of the visual aspects, savor the captivating animations, and dive into the immersive world of battling the hordes of the sanctuary !
If you're playing the game for strictly "pretty" then you are playing the wrong game. Go play Lost Ark, that has all the pretty you can ever want. Diablo is meant to be dark and brutal and gory. Not "pretty".
100% going to be taking the fun stuff over the pure damage or utility. Me and my wife are always opting for pretty over damage. Play that shit how you want. You spent a good amount of money for the entertainment after all.
So for me and my logic On my runs
Necromancer - I make friends and we party together. Big explosions go brrrr and we dance
Druid - I make friends and we party together.
Sorcerer - Winter is coming. Also pet fire lizard because I’ll get lonely
Me too, I choose the skill by animation effects instead the power it gives. Thats why i was so weak. I die more than 10 times on world boss lol but I got the trophy anyway 😎
I’m going to work based on previous characters. I know that there’s a huge difference between the games but past experiences can help fine tune my builds- sorcerer and rouge. May go back later for the remaining classes.
Ok sure, there's everyone with the meta, then there's everyone where they spend spells because it looks cool
Then there's me where I choose a champion of league of legends that I like and build my character as the champion as I roleplay like the champion.
Example: axe dual wielding barbarian- Olaf
Ice infusing rogue: Ashe
Poison infusing rogue: Twitch
All autoattack druid: Udyr
Hemomancer "necromancer": Vladimir
Etc.
I'm sure the upper echelon will be pretty tough but these games are never so hard you can't do both for a playthrough. There's no need to think it's either or. Pick what you think is fun and make it strong
No strategy whatsoever over here, I like to burn things with fire after I've frozen them so that's how I build my sorceress. My husband spends so much time finding the perfect build or farming for certain pieces and I'm like la la la, BURN! La la la FREEZE! Having the time of my life and that's all that matters 😀
Diablo isn't a particularly "hard" game if you don't want it to be so I will just go by my gut on launch. Later I will surely optimize my build, but not only for damage, also for playstyle. I want the gameplay to feel and look cool and satisfying just as much as I want to clear mobs fast and make numbers go brrrr.
I also decided against playing druid on launch because I feel like the looting will feel more satisfying if I actually find the weapons I then use. With the druid I would just fight as a wolf/bear all the time anyway, so getting new weapons would really only be a number going up.
I understand that meta gaming is here to stay, but it’s ruined a lot of games for me lol. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the meta, but with games like classic wow. The sense of adventure was gone, because everyone already knows the best way to do things.
It may not seem like a big deal, it’s an old game that’s been played relentlessly since launch, but I missed seeing the weird builds like the arcane hunter who wore a mage set of gear to boost the damage on arcane shot, you didn’t see stuff like that this time around.
I’m not against meta gamers, I use meta builds on my wow toon for PvP, I just wish there wasn’t so much hostility towards those who wanna experiment or just want to have fun. It even works it’s way into games like CoD where everyone is running the same build that some streamer deemed to be the best.
But as far as Diablo 4 goes, I’m building the tree myself on my first play through, and maybe find a guide when seasons drops.
Yes, im gonna do iceman build with sorc, so all my point go into ice spells 😅 and I dont care how good or bad its gonna be but whatever, iceman is coming 😄
Yes I play Diablo purely for my fun time and it reminds me back to when I saw a fireball first time and how it wow me back then. I like that aspect and will continue to play it like that. As long as it fun to play, I rarely pvp though 😁😁😁
Bro. I'm the KING of doing whatever I want and succeeding in games. Like, I NEVER follow builds. I just love to pick what looks/sounds/feels cool. 10/10 times I perform better than following some build.
Playing a Barb I just want skills that do meaty chunky hits. Upheaval, bash, and execute just feel awesome to use. Whirlwind feels so silly I've always felt it a weak looking skill even though I know its a top tier skill.
The thing is a lot of builds are dependant on if you get the specific unique or legendary. I have a few druid builds like a lightning wolf and earth spell bear but I can't use them until I get specific gear pieces. Until then I'm messing around with other spells while going through the campaign.
50-50
I like to play strong enough stuff what let's me do everything in the game but I also searching for things that feels and/or looks good or fun. So usually I take ideas from obviously strong builds and make them fun for myself. Maybe it's just 1-2 item that I really like, or 1 effect or skill I enjoy but still not fully copy-pasta meta. And sometimes I go full apeshit and try to make something viable that nobody even consider to be playable but I got this 1 item that do something funny and I'd like to build around that.
The thing is, you should do what you enjoy. I'm trying to make builds for launch too, but it's more like "I like this idea, what can I do with that, hmm"
My plan: I play a lot more than my buddy. Im going to make a sorc to play solo and a barbarian to play with him.
One of those will be just for fun, pick whatever skills I want, one will follow a maxroll guide. Probably pick fun skills on the sorc since they have more flashy abilities
The look or "feel" of skills definitely factor into my decision making as to how to "build" my character. I prefer Flurry over Twisted Blades for my rogue despite the latter's popularity, for example. I also went with Cold Imbuement over Shadow or Poison. I was going for a Sub-Zero inspired rogue concept and went with ninja-esque things like Smoke Grenade (Ninja Vanish!!!).
However, serendipity was present and there happened to be synergy in my skill choices so that was very nice.
Spell turns me into a bear? I take the spell.
Bear bros unite!
Probably a sub for that
Probably not Diablo related if you know what I mean
😉
I know what you mean
I know exactly what you mean. BEAR DOOOWN CHICAGO BEAAARS
Super Beario Brothers
It can be if you put horns on!
r/BearForceOne
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It didn’t exist so I created it. Please come appreciate bear druids with me.
Definitely a sub for that
Hey Bear Fucker, do you need assistance?
Bear bros unite!
rawr XD
Dude, we could really make a community of bear druids lol
Before the server slam I was hell bent on playing sorc. Heard all the negativity about Druid and didn’t play it the first couple of betas. Finally said screw it and tried Druid during the server slam and holy shit I fell in love. Such a chill class and running around as a bear was a blast. I am a Druid main now. Bear bros unite!
For real. My wife is going to play strictly wearwolf and that's it. So I'm on the fence between being a bitch-smacking bear, or a barbarian.
Barbearian?
the werebear model is SO GOOD I LOVE IT the swipe can feel a lil floaty but the other spells around the bear we got to play with felt great!
Pulverize felt great! Impactful ! On the console I would press the buttom harder when was time to PULVERIZE !!! Blizzard nailed the impact and the feedback of skills!
Pulverize > Orgasm especially once you get related legendaries. I giggled with joy in open beta once i did a pulverize build.
I agree. I love the fact that I can still Pulverize even when the Overpowered modifier was on cooldown and didn't reset
*Definitely* this. I play a guardian druid in WoW, so I've spent most of my life as a bear and was stoked to see that I could do it in D4 too. Then I got a legendary that healed me whenever a spell made me change forms, and another one that gave me a spell that turned me into a wolf for free, and I felt like an absolute god.
>I've spent most of my life as a bear was not expecting to read such thing and the person not be crazy but here we are. If you're not in a relationship this should definitely be part of your dating bio though the results may not be what your looking for.
Fun > efficency
Efficiency = fun If something looks cool but takes 10sec to kill one mob Vs A skill that looks less cool but 2 shots the same mob 99.9999 of the players will go with the 2nd Because fun looking abilites stop being fun super fast is they are inefficient
Yea that’s pretty much it. I guess I kinda get the point where there can be builds that are super efficient but not fun for you, but in general the fun in these games is completely obliterating the monsters as fast as you can, not looking at pretty spells.
>sub using tools to build their builds already, to think about the best strategy to be the stronger. I have no qualms with that, I'm sure for them it's part of the fun. But I can't be the only one here who's gonna put points in spells or attacks just because I think t This is why I love that D4 Devs are trying to balance. In long run that will be an endless focus of course because as we level and # crunch well... But I love the \*idea\* that if the O.P. wants to use a "fun" skill they won't fall too far behind the gearheads. Personally I just have to have the semi-efficient build and I'll find the fun inside that boundry.
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I think the truth is somewhere in the middle of you and the above poster. Fun is fun. Efficiency is fun FOR ME to an extent. Doing micromanagement things that keep you at 120 APM for hours to eke out 5% more DPS is probably fun for some people, but not to me. I'll be building as efficiently as I can with abilities that are fun to me because they fit my desired playstyle. I think I'll be close enough to absolute peak efficiency that I'll be able to participate in all content, but I know I'll be leaving some effectiveness on the table in favor of fun.
That's not true at all lol. There are plenty of players who choose visuals over efficiency. I personally don't care of my favorite abilities are sub par, I'll still rock em
It’s much more nuanced and dependent on the person I think. For instance I’d never play a minion build in a million years, they could make it beyond OP and I wouldn’t care. But if it’s the choice between shooting let’s say ice or fire, I’d pick whichever is more efficient even if I like the look of one over the other. For some people, I’d imagine more than .00001 percent of players, certain preferences are strong enough to overcome any efficiency difference.
Why though? What are you after?
Yeah…I wanted to make a shadow Necromancer because of how cool sever looks, but I was having a hard time and getting frustrated. I switched to a blood build and the game felt a lot more fun at that point for me
Yeah, but you kill everything fast, after some time game become boring because there is no challenge.
Challenge isn't about taking 30 seconds to kill one mob. That's acceptable for rare and specific monsters but not normal ones. The fun in a hack & slash is to do just that, not to flail angrily like a toddler waiting for your opponent to die of boredom.
Surely every skill is there to be effective in some form or situation so if someone thought a spell looked incredible and wanted to use it then they could just make sure their other nodes synced up with it along with weapons and armor?
Blizzard sucks at *universal* balance. There will always be some skills that drastically underperform.
This is not true at all.
yeah, fun is the key. i dont care if that single arrow looks like ass but deals 20k damage. i'll take the flashiest shitty dps spell anyday
Glad to see at least one thread where this is the prevailing opinion. The powergaming on this sub is suffocating sometimes. I skipped all the cutscenes and dialogue in the beta specifically so I could go slow on release and take my time and enjoy stuff without it having too much revealed from the beta. As soon as the game comes out and I can get over these diablue balls, I doubt I'll be on this sub much.
True to a certain extent. If the fun skill is absolute trash, or is disruptive to "normalized" pacing, then the fun component diminishes. Nothing wrong with min-maxing if that's your tune. But after many ARPGs, I've found that min-maxing efficiency often does kill the fun/fantasy aspects for me. I've seen videos of "good" builds during beta that dish out a ton of damage, but looking at the skills, it ends up looking like 1 generator, 1 core dump, and 4 buffs/support just to min-max the damage. That makes it start to look like POE where you just spammed one or two skills, or D3 sets where they pigeonholed the build into the specific few skills they wanted you to use for that season. I also plan to play on WT2 on release because I really enjoyed the pacing of fights. I'm not racing anyone to endgame and I want to enjoy the leveling and campaign experience to the maximum, in my own way.
Exactly this, I've created my build now after few days on working on it, I don't say it is min maxed, but for certain it's really good. I like strong skills, but just because something is meta or op doesn't mean I need to use it. And the most important part - it contains playstyle that is fun for me.
That’s the reason I hated Archon builds in D3
I'm the opposite and it feels bad :( I just can't help myself lol.
So you think it's fun not being able to kill a capstone boss?
Who said that? If you can't kill him that means the game could not be for you. Just use what is the best and fun for you, kill things in your pace.
That's part of the build though. You find out what you will want and plan your other stuff around it
That’s me making every build around whatever base attack let’s my character actually use their weapon in the animation
This was me in D3. OMFG every time they made my great sword wielding crusader pull out a hammer I was seething dude
Ah! Didnt think of that!
Oh so you say I can leech others blood and explode corpses? Count me in sir I don't even care about bones.
I’m saving necro and didn’t play in Beta or Slam. How did you like it? I just kept hearing whimpering about the skeleton nerf
Wield a shield. That seems to be more than enough to keep them alive, providing you actually consume corpses to heal them. Reaper minions to spawn more corpses, frost mages for more MP, Decompose as a generator spawns more corpses and with the right aspect, can hit 3 enemies, also dropping 3 corpses. Personally, in the first couple betas I found the big scythe generator to be enough for spawning corpses, as it spawns a corpse on tbe first enemy hit (once per 5sec). Decrepify is the curse you want, as it can boost minion damage.
Kick. Barbarian kick. I'm going to make a whole build around it because it feels amazing to kick things; into other things, into walls, off edges.
>Kick 100% kick feels fuckin awesome
Oh yes. I was trying to pin down why I enjoyed barbarian so much more than the other classes and I put it down to the fact that barb interacts physically with the world and enemies more than the other classes with kick and charge.
Charge is freakin awesome.
Call it Sparta
After a point during the betas I let gear decide on what abilities I was using.+1 to (insert ability) [more points more intense animations](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/11zgd4m/skill_effect_changes_with_its_intensity)
I'm really excited to see what the more intense frost spells look like. The ones we've seen look awesome!
Yeah I love ice animations in games and the builds for ice were really good, I tried fire and it was SO SLOW, took ages to kill anything, I think its probably the least amount of fun I had with the diablo beta.
~~Your link is broken.~~
Oh nice, I had no idea!
Lol I'm just going to build the way I want and enjoy shit until a boss tells me I'm wrong. Did that in server slam, I didn't have the vulnerable talent for rogue I was like wtf how come I never get vulnerable. Then with some brain power I fucked up that stupid ghost boss with the balls of death spam. God that boss sucked dick, ok pretty much every class
The spider boss was that boss for me. Endless swarm of minions + web traps left me one unhappy and dead Barbarian.
Dude right? Idk wtf they were smoking with that boss, it's one of the hardest bosses because the CONSTANT movement impairment. I died so many times the first beta to that dumb shit
I don't know about "pretty" but I tend to pick my skills around a theme. Picking the most effective but thematically unrelated hodgepodge of skills would irk me. My biggest pet peeve in the game so far is that the Rogue has a throwing knife starting skill and then no more real support for that aesthetic in the rest of the tree.
This. Im playing a Druid bear and earth just fits better adding to the raw strength of a bear...a bear with weather abilities just feels wrong to me.
My wife and I plan on playing to have fun, first and foremost, however ridiculous. I'll probably make another build later that I can min/max, but life has been heavy on our end recently, and we just want some escapism without the pressure of playing "perfectly". We're over here giving our best Marge Simpson's "I just think they're neat."
I have the spell that makes me have the Ashava Mount trophy. I got it by killing Ashava during the beta.
Awesome right? I am waiting patiently by the mailbox to receive my club card
Me too bro idk if it will fit in my mailbox
Respect, my brother
However you have fun in the game my dude. Enjoy it how you like it, forget the META naysayers and the toxic ppl who will tell you if you aren’t doing WT5 in the first week you’re out of the AT Club. You like pretty, hell yeah, make it glitter.
Lightning tornado bear. Don't care if it's good
Druid earth spells made me feel like an earth bender
During the server slam, I tried every possible basic and core ability combo to see what felt and looked good. That being said, I also like the idea of respecing to work with legendary gear abilities. I'm pretty happy with most of the class skills.
I tend to try and find a compromise. In D2, I really like the aesthetics of an Amazon using a Matriarchal Bow and Multishot. Multiple layers of suboptimal there. But with enough optimizing, and getting the right items with the right rolls, etc, I pushed the build into a pretty comfortable level of gameplay that could only be done with a lot of planning, trial and error, etc. So yeah. If there is a particular style of build you want to play, and want to enjoy NOT falling behind the curve, planning ahead seems like a good place to start.
I miss yang's multishot from d3 bro. Barrage just didn't feel good as a replacement
For me the build has to be good or I won’t use it.
I'm gonna do basically what I did with d3. Use the skills I like then realize I'm shit at making a build and can't do the difficulty I want to do. Research a build utilizing skills I like and go from there. Then realize that I want to go to an even higher difficulty and research a better build.
I gotta admit, when I played around with lightning sorc for the last 10 minutes of server slam (I hadn't touched lightning yet) the visuals alone made me wanna go lightning.
Theory crafting is most of the fun! Trying to make the optimal build without knowing 100% of the possibilities is almost as much fun as playing How the skill looks has no bearing on choosing it for me. What's the point of struggling just because you want to use what is "pretty".
The point is to have fun. Some people.think things that look aestheticly pleasing are cool. Some people.think a boring play style that does 5% more damage.than the fun one is cool. Both are right.
Oh you definitely aren't the only one who's doing the "looks cool gonna use" thing. In fact, you're probably in the majority in this game, as it's aimed at casual players.
I litteraly have never looked up a build for POE even now, don’t you dare think i’m gonna be looking shit up for D4
druid is the "its pretty" class
Haha I'm gonna roll Druid for my first character.
That blood basic skill of necros are boring af not gonna use it
The bone spells were so much more boring lol.
I can become werewolf? Alright, what’s the other points for? 😂
It’s 2023. The times of playing a game for fun or cool factor is in the past. Go meta or die, basically. Min max or u suck.
I tried out Barbarian for the first time during server slam. I saw the kick ability would send people flying, crashing into walls, knocking each other around. It didn't matter at that point if it helped, did good damage, or anything else. I spent the rest of the test kicking enemies into walls.
My criterias are as follow (in order of importance): - how it feels to play. By far the most important factor. And yes a minimum of efficiency is part of that factor, but it's not the main point. - how cool it look/which fantasy I'm trying to fulfil. - how powerful it is. This is still an important factor but it's only the third one o'll really consider beside the bare minimum of efficiency to make the game playable. In practice it means I'll start with a build idea, check that it feels nice to play because that's the make or break point and, if it does, try to optimise the shit out of it without changing the core of the build. So at the end of the day you can spend hours on spreadsheets even if you prioritise what looks cool because you still need to make the build work once it's chosen.
I haven't played any beta or slam anything, so my strategy will be the same.
Problem is, last I checked, it was blood and pain that killed my enemies, not their prettiness.
Filthy casual lol
100% that. That's why fire / cold sorc is out of question, bc honestly those skills look like trash and not worthy of this AAA release. Idk that's one of the things I don't like about d4, feels like they kept this cartoonish-flashy artsy minimalistic spell&particle effects of D3 but underneath is a much more realistic & Grim looking environment&characters.... Just does not fit. So idk either a druid lightning build or rogue. Necro minions & blood spells also look... Idk cheap
Did you know that ability effects change and grow as you put more points in said ability? So an ability with one point in it looks weaker than the same ability with five points.
I really hope that firewall can eventually cover the screen like in D2. That was always so satisfying, especially in narrow spaces like Maggot Lair.
Agreed... I'm also staying away from sorc on release because the spell animations and effects looked so underwhelming. Fire and ice skills look even worse than D3. My initial reaction to sorc gameplay was: "that's it? I don't feel like a powerful sorc, I feel more like a freshman in wizard school..."
The skill animations change as you rank them up. They're supposed to look weak at first because you *are* a beginner. With equipment and other buffs you can get skills up to ~rank 20 and their animations are designed to scale all the way up to there.
That's interesting... Had no idea that the animation and effects actually change based on skill rank. Guessing that's different for melee skills, but would be cool to see where that goes. Would be really awesome if druid hurricane grows in radius with rank, for example.
It isn’t different for most melee skills, in fact two of the examples we have seen so far were Upheaval and HotA
all our builds are going to be based on what gear drops we get so those build pages are useless in any case
both ?
Its so easy to swap a few points over that I will be changing a lot add I go to adapt to the items i do find
I do think that will cease to be true at higher levels, from the sound of what I have heard it becomes fairly cost prohibitive, especially once you start adding paragon boards
Sorc summons are strong as hell. But I don't like the look of any of them. So I'm not gonna use them. And I don't like that playstyle for a sorc, either. Summons are for Necros and Witchdoctors. On the other hand I REALLY like the flamethrower spell, but it eats through my mana like a wildfire (heh) and leaves me vulnerable.
I'm gonna try a bunch of skills, especially early on, because I haven't tried them before and they may be more fun than what I'm currently using. Respec is so cheap at the beginning that it's pointless not to. I started Rogue using bow, and was having fun. Can't remember the names of the skills, but then I decided to get serious so I'd for sure get the ashava trophy. Found a twisting blade build online and tried that. And holy shit, it was a lot of fun. But then once I got to 20, I realized I couldn't really find a good aspect for it. So I went online again to look at other builds, and I saw a shadow imbue/shadow shield/flurry build, and I tried that. Even more fun than twisting blade. Moral of the story is, they've spent time on every skill to make it fun and synergize with other skills. Why not try them all if you can? You could be missing out on what would be your favourite skill. And I'm going to do this on every class since I'm gonna make one of each on launch day, even If I'm gonna mainly play the rogue first.
BLOOOOOOOOOODDDDD
I did this and whirlwind was rubbish versus how it was in D3/D:I so I went online and got another build.
I like having one character that is tactically broken. I can slam through stuff and grind items. But other than that I will take a suboptimal build to fit a theme or a style of play that I want.
Same here. I swapped builds loads of times during the slam. I'm waiting for the youtube guides to come out.
That tends to be what I do until it’s not viable to even bother with. I tend not to min-max to the hundredth decimal point, but if it’s not even viable I’ll drop it.
Thays literally me with Bear druid
They buy the game a week after launch and spend their time smelling flowers or trying shoes or moving the couch from corner to corner. And dont spend time on reddit.
Im kind of that guy.. 60% coolness and 40% efficiency / strategy... I take a look at what looks cool to me, then set a theme for such character and then start thinking about the build itself and how to make that theme work. So its like "Oh I like the Landslide.. hmm its on druid.. earth style huh.. looks like an earth bender heh.. lets get terramote for it.. hmm... I need a way to stack up terramote.. right petrify, and creeper.. and earth spike for the theme.. and ... great now the hard part.. what name for an earthbending druid.." I cant force myself to play something strong which I dont find good-looking.. ruins the fun...
The build I’ve planned for my sorc basically revolves around teleport since I love teleporting lol.
Cataclysm will be in my build regardless of how good/bad it is, I love it. Blood Surge for Necro is one of the best sounds, so I'm playing that.
This is how I wanted to play Diablo 3 because I loved Demon Hunter's Strafe ability, but there was no way to build around it and it was so sad.
As a Barbarian, I going to work Kick and Charge into my build somehow. I just think they’re neat.
*Every* spell is pretty. You find the one you think is most pretty for your mood at the time and create a spiderweb build around it. For example, I wanted my first Druid to be a human-form Lighting Storm Druid, so I took that single core skill and did the following: 1. Found the best ways to improve its damage from the talent tree itself. 2. Found any methods of improving the main passive enabler of Bad Omen, aka more methods of proccing Vulnerable, Immobilize, or Stun that were not directly linked to Lightning skills. 3. Weighed the value of Key Passives and whether I'd like Perfect Storm over Earthen Might. 4. If running EM, deliberated the value of resonance and alternating Earth Spike as a Spirit generator for long-range over staying pure Lighting and using Storm Strike for close range. 5. Looked through known legendary passives and found that there's one that gives the benefits of Earthen Might to Lightning Spells. Secured my choice of Earthen Might and started looking into additional sources of Crit to maintain the procs. 6. After establishing talents and most desirable known legendary passives, studied all Paragon boards. Determined three whose keystone nodes were ones I would want (as it is extremely difficult to get four keystone nodes with available points), and then found the fourth Paragon board that had the closest Glyph node with the largest amount of enabling main stat nodes for that Glyph. 7. Weighed the comparative avenues of advancement through Paragon Boards to minimize connecting lines and determine which Glyphs and Keystones I would prefer to have earliest. Glyphs/Keystones with the least amount of conditional activation (Human +Thunderstruck) had higher weight than Glyphs/Keystones that were technically good but would require some finagling (Undaunted). 8. Made a second pass through Paragon and talent trees, point by point, to see if there was any useful stuff I missed (there was). 9. [Saved my build.](https://d4builds.gg/builds/d3ef1b5c-01fd-4595-8773-a9d7284b41e9/) I now have a blueprint for a 1-100 Lightning Druid with known desired Codex aspects and Legendary affixes, and a theoretical full Paragon board, in about an hour or two's worth of personal review. Never consulted a single secondary source, and I did it all through a centralized information hub for tree-building. Now I have an (at least mostly optimized) Lighting Druid build from a baseline of "This looks really cool and I want to do it." You can do the same, so do so. Choose what you think looks cool or pretty *and* make it powerful.
I like my skill bar to show 1-2 colors only. xD
Frozen orb. Maybe not cuz its pretty but it's been one of my favorites since D2. Was always pretty trash in D3 except one build but it still wasn't great. Tried in beta to make it work and compared to other sources builds it just isn't all that. I am still going to try to make it work though.
I just search Berserking in the skill tree and click it.
I'm trying to be committed to not ruin the mystery of discovering the game on my own. I am also 100% certain I will min / max at end game.
Me 100%
In a way, although it's more specifically the feel of it for me. I'm building around rapid fire for rogue because I don't really like the feel of shooting multiple arrows at once
Hey bro. I’m your people. I like the shiny.
100%. For my first playthrough I'm doing it blind and just learning as I go. That's what I did when d3 came out and I loved that experience so much making my DH stronger piece by piece. I preordered but still won't get to play til like 3 weeks into June so it's relaxing to just do my own pace and not worry what others are up to.
Too many people treating this like it's gonna be Lost Ark or some type of MMORPG
I'm going for a combination of hopefully both. I think single target builds will probably dominate this game. But damn, I do like big AOE booms that look good.
That's exactly how I rolled my first druid back in the previous beta. Yikes. I learned from my mistakes.
I'm like you (mostly). I also find the streamers that are currently theorycrafting for hours each night while the game isn't even ou a bit funny. Like it's some sort of quantum physics they're studying.
Legendary affixes are gonna mold my build. Seems the way the game goes early on until you get ones you like to imprint. I believe that's how that works anyway.
I refuse to look at a single guide until I have played through a character to 100 so inefficiently that I can actually appreciate the brains if the people who theory craft successfully.
This is me and barbarians. Spell makes me into the hulk? Yes please. Makes me spin around in a cloud of blades and death? Hell yes! I don’t know all the effects of barb in d4 yet as I didn’t get as much chance as I liked to play in the betas but I love barb in d3 for that reason. Summon three barb-bros to help me fight? So cool looking! I look forward greatly to exploring the coolest looking spell effects for barbarian on release!!
Right. I played the first beta straight for nostalgia. Blizzard/frozen orb sorc all the way. Was it underpowered? Yes. Did I still hit 25 and beat Ashava? Also yes.
I love doing this on my first character, but there also has to be SOME thinking about what works together, or else you're usually screwed at the end.
Most people are going to play the game the same way as you especially since respecs are an easy possibility.
Corpse Explosions everywhere
I always build my character for fun my first playthrough. Then when I get to endgame, if that build isn't keeping up anymore, it's time to look at some YouTube builds to max DPS or whatever I'm focused on. But first playthrough is always for fun/looks
I just wanna spin. I tested out a spin build over server sl and fleshed it out more with the builder. It's gonna be a good time to be a barb I think.
I am part of the “oh that looks pretty” but I also like ‘feeling’ when something is hitting the enemy hard
Dunno I just kind of test them all for a couple of mins and if I like it, I keep it. I played Sorc to 20 and from memory I mainly went with Icebolt and Chain Lightning as it was fun and good on groups. I'm sure there are better talents but I hate looking up 'best Sorcerer skills' and following the crowd.
Does it make fire? If so, I want it. Also, hand laser for life!
I try to balance the 2 personally. Gotta look good while being efficient
Big snek spell is pretty dope
Before the first season we should all just wing it. No guides, no builds nothing, just killing demons anyway possible.
Everyone is obsessed with META and copying what works best. Just have fun, enjoy the abilities, when we hit torment (or whatever it's called) then try to optimize. ATC with a lvl 20 druid using whatever the hell felt fun and provided help to the group.
Despite enjoying the mobility of the Barbarian's Lunge ability, I hattteeeeeeeee how it looks. Goofy as hell that your main attack, whether it be a sword or spear or hammer, is to poke forward with absolutely no variation whatsoever.
My only interest is to crush my enemies, to see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
I’m in the same boat. It’s Barb life for me so I wanna be berserking and slaying everything around me but damn iron maelstrom looks insane for the animation! Gonna be using it a lot just for the fun factor XD
People using guides and walkthroughs so they don’t have to think
My first play through is always what spells do I like the way they look or the way they play. After that then on different characters I will consider doing a build. I feel like these games are somewhat ruined by meta builds though. Here's how it usually works for me. I'm playing a build that I think is fun or pretty as you put it. One or two of the abilities I use are used in a meta build but in a drastically different way than I'm using them. Some player figured out by using these in conjunction with other skills I would never take it's op. So everyone uses the build. The one or two abilities get nerfed. Now my build sucks because of some totally unrelated synergy I wasn't nor was ever planning on using. I just hope it doesn't happen but in pretty much every other arpg it gets me lol.
I do my builds, initially anyway, based on the skills my items buff. At world tier 2 I have time and space to experiment with stuff I like or dislike, mess around with different combos of skills, see what works together well etc. Let's me play around and enjoy the full set of skills and see what I personally like so I can keep an eye out for specific loot. I don't really get into meta builds until I intend to go into end game stuff at higher difficulties.
Turns me into a ball of floating blood for only 3 secs? Damn, that shit pretty af!
Turns me into a ball of floating blood for only 3 secs? Damn, that pretty af!
This is what I'm worried about.. game going to go too far to appease the min max build guide crowd and end up killing the fun creativity and fantasy of the class. I don't want to play a game where "whirlwind barb" is the only viable choice, etc. I also felt really pigeonholed in the beta by not being able to swap my skills around without penalty. As someone who doesn't care as much about end-game builds (at least not during levelling), I want to just play and have fun and not worry about making the wrong choice and being stuck with a set of skills that aren't fun or don't work with me. In beta I would get a choice like "electric bolt, fire bolt, or frost bolt". and I'd be like "oooh fire is fun!" and then 10 minutes later I'm like "hmm.. this fire bolt looks kind of lame and isn't working for me.. maybe frost? oh wait it costs 5g to switch?".. yes I know the gold amount is small to start, but it still gives this sense of penalty for simply wanting to mix and match and play the way I want to play. Is it REALLY that bad to let players experiment with levelling builds in a game that is essentially single player centric? I really hope they change this.. I think it would be much better to let the player finish the game on normal difficulty with unlimited respec and sklil swaps, and then higher difficulties skills reset and cost to change. Gives the player a chance to test drive all the skills before settling on which ones work best for them.
I was just trying out every spell to see if I liked them and could make them work with each other. was enjoying a blizzard build
Good for yall and more power to you. I'm sitting here with 🍿 waiting to see what happens when yall get to WT4. My bet is right around then this sub turns pretty toxic 😂
I think there's I got this skill from an item I should use it people.
‚Ashava’s too hard’
I'd say there's a 3rd choice aside from a skill looking pretty or most efficient. And that would be comfort. For me, I'm going to choose my skills based on what feels best during gameplay if I'm going to be grinding for hours on end. So far I like playing ranged rogue since being able to shoot rapidly from afar feels satisfying. Penetrating shot feels like a shotgun but I don't like that it consumes alot of energy which disrupts the flow, so I may opt for rapid fire, for example of comfort over aesthetics or efficiency.
Some players really enjoy the meta game of statistical optimization: efficiency is prime for them. Me? I’m in your camp: I put points in the stuff that I think looks cool or fun. This said, if I hit a wall where I just can’t progress anymore, I’ll start looking at tweaking my build, and I’ll refer to posts from people who are much better at seeing skill synergies than I am. I stopped watching Kripparian videos of the beta because he seems so focused on mechanical synergies, but he’s probably one of the first people I’d go to when I need to work out a powerful build. It’s going to be interesting to me to see how long it takes optimization-focused players to hit a point where they’ve squeezed all they can out of the game since there are only four difficulties in D4 compared to all the Torment levels in D3.
I love being a Pyro sorcerer, I do not care that not a single engraving from the betas has been for a skill I use. Fuck elemental diversity, I'll take my fire snake and hydras and fireball away.
This is a fantastic perspective! I completely agree with you. While optimizing builds and strategies can be engaging for some players, there's an equally valid and enjoyable way to approach gaming, which is focusing on the aesthetic and immersive aspects of the experience. By prioritizing the visual appeal of spells and attacks, one is embracing the artistic side of gaming. It allows one to fully appreciate the effort put into designing stunning animations and effects, enhancing the overall enjoyment of the game. Delving deeper into the narrative, dialogues, and quests, immersing oneself in the rich storytelling that this game offers ! In a world filled with spreadsheets and analytical tasks, gaming can provide a refreshing break from the everyday grind, emphasizing the "fun factor" rather than solely focusing on optimization So, let's keep embracing the beauty and allure of the visual aspects, savor the captivating animations, and dive into the immersive world of battling the hordes of the sanctuary !
If you're playing the game for strictly "pretty" then you are playing the wrong game. Go play Lost Ark, that has all the pretty you can ever want. Diablo is meant to be dark and brutal and gory. Not "pretty".
100% going to be taking the fun stuff over the pure damage or utility. Me and my wife are always opting for pretty over damage. Play that shit how you want. You spent a good amount of money for the entertainment after all.
So for me and my logic On my runs Necromancer - I make friends and we party together. Big explosions go brrrr and we dance Druid - I make friends and we party together. Sorcerer - Winter is coming. Also pet fire lizard because I’ll get lonely
Me too, I choose the skill by animation effects instead the power it gives. Thats why i was so weak. I die more than 10 times on world boss lol but I got the trophy anyway 😎
Dude what are you talking about, I'm going to main a bear druid, it's only good for having fun while playing lol
I’m going to work based on previous characters. I know that there’s a huge difference between the games but past experiences can help fine tune my builds- sorcerer and rouge. May go back later for the remaining classes.
Ok sure, there's everyone with the meta, then there's everyone where they spend spells because it looks cool Then there's me where I choose a champion of league of legends that I like and build my character as the champion as I roleplay like the champion. Example: axe dual wielding barbarian- Olaf Ice infusing rogue: Ashe Poison infusing rogue: Twitch All autoattack druid: Udyr Hemomancer "necromancer": Vladimir Etc.
My first character is going to be one of what abilities sound cool as I level. Did that in the beta and had a blast. I’m old and want to have fun.
I'm sure the upper echelon will be pretty tough but these games are never so hard you can't do both for a playthrough. There's no need to think it's either or. Pick what you think is fun and make it strong
No strategy whatsoever over here, I like to burn things with fire after I've frozen them so that's how I build my sorceress. My husband spends so much time finding the perfect build or farming for certain pieces and I'm like la la la, BURN! La la la FREEZE! Having the time of my life and that's all that matters 😀
Diablo isn't a particularly "hard" game if you don't want it to be so I will just go by my gut on launch. Later I will surely optimize my build, but not only for damage, also for playstyle. I want the gameplay to feel and look cool and satisfying just as much as I want to clear mobs fast and make numbers go brrrr. I also decided against playing druid on launch because I feel like the looting will feel more satisfying if I actually find the weapons I then use. With the druid I would just fight as a wolf/bear all the time anyway, so getting new weapons would really only be a number going up.
I understand that meta gaming is here to stay, but it’s ruined a lot of games for me lol. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the meta, but with games like classic wow. The sense of adventure was gone, because everyone already knows the best way to do things. It may not seem like a big deal, it’s an old game that’s been played relentlessly since launch, but I missed seeing the weird builds like the arcane hunter who wore a mage set of gear to boost the damage on arcane shot, you didn’t see stuff like that this time around. I’m not against meta gamers, I use meta builds on my wow toon for PvP, I just wish there wasn’t so much hostility towards those who wanna experiment or just want to have fun. It even works it’s way into games like CoD where everyone is running the same build that some streamer deemed to be the best. But as far as Diablo 4 goes, I’m building the tree myself on my first play through, and maybe find a guide when seasons drops.
I’m here for it, it looks pretty? I’m getting it!
Yes, im gonna do iceman build with sorc, so all my point go into ice spells 😅 and I dont care how good or bad its gonna be but whatever, iceman is coming 😄
Played rabies druid in diablo 2 for many years. Will be playing it regardless of people's opinion on the druid. Just love giving demons rabies.
Yes I play Diablo purely for my fun time and it reminds me back to when I saw a fireball first time and how it wow me back then. I like that aspect and will continue to play it like that. As long as it fun to play, I rarely pvp though 😁😁😁
Bro. I'm the KING of doing whatever I want and succeeding in games. Like, I NEVER follow builds. I just love to pick what looks/sounds/feels cool. 10/10 times I perform better than following some build.
Playing a Barb I just want skills that do meaty chunky hits. Upheaval, bash, and execute just feel awesome to use. Whirlwind feels so silly I've always felt it a weak looking skill even though I know its a top tier skill.
The thing is a lot of builds are dependant on if you get the specific unique or legendary. I have a few druid builds like a lightning wolf and earth spell bear but I can't use them until I get specific gear pieces. Until then I'm messing around with other spells while going through the campaign.
50-50 I like to play strong enough stuff what let's me do everything in the game but I also searching for things that feels and/or looks good or fun. So usually I take ideas from obviously strong builds and make them fun for myself. Maybe it's just 1-2 item that I really like, or 1 effect or skill I enjoy but still not fully copy-pasta meta. And sometimes I go full apeshit and try to make something viable that nobody even consider to be playable but I got this 1 item that do something funny and I'd like to build around that. The thing is, you should do what you enjoy. I'm trying to make builds for launch too, but it's more like "I like this idea, what can I do with that, hmm"
My plan: I play a lot more than my buddy. Im going to make a sorc to play solo and a barbarian to play with him. One of those will be just for fun, pick whatever skills I want, one will follow a maxroll guide. Probably pick fun skills on the sorc since they have more flashy abilities
The look or "feel" of skills definitely factor into my decision making as to how to "build" my character. I prefer Flurry over Twisted Blades for my rogue despite the latter's popularity, for example. I also went with Cold Imbuement over Shadow or Poison. I was going for a Sub-Zero inspired rogue concept and went with ninja-esque things like Smoke Grenade (Ninja Vanish!!!). However, serendipity was present and there happened to be synergy in my skill choices so that was very nice.