I believe Path Of Exile offers less build diversity than it advertises.

It offers less OP build diversity than it advertises, has hundreds of doable builds, and countless meh to gimped build choices.

Even if we ignore everything but the 12 or so favored OP builds per league its still more than most ARPG games, and you could always tweak those builds in countless ways sacrificing their min/max nature for some interesting trade offs.


So yeah its an illusion that theres countless builds, reality is there are still many builds, all of which have a level of tweakability that keeps them powerful but trades off power tier for "different" and that alone makes POE its own special thing

Hell even with tried and true builds like necro-minion ive made a build this leauge that has been completely different than all my past minion builds, simply by tweaking things and trading its min/maxed set up per build and going my own way...and im having no issues around t10-11 maps (other than finding t10-11 maps)

You can do this with just about all but the very specific builds out there.

I'm still a newblet. Only gotten a reave gladiator to 89 last few weeks of Delve. Then this league I have a 95 sab trapper, 78 CA raider, and working on an MS Jugg (only 51).

This game does have a lot of build diversity, but it needs to be written as "Play PoE, where there is more build diversity than other similar games!*"

* If you are willing to put in a ton more time for gearing and learning mechanics, than you would with the 10-15 more reliable builds. Also a lot of the builds require very specific and rare items to actually work.

In D2 the content available wasn't that difficult, I beat everything with some silly meme-worthy builds. The endgame was just grinding certain bosses over and over for the drops. Were my meme builds efficient at it? No, but they could do it and they didn't die.

In D3, there are like 40 some odd builds that can easily do GR70+ content (that's the hardest base game difficulty). How high you keep going in greater rifts is certainly variable between builds, but it doesn't lock you out of encounters and items. All the higher difficulty content does is give more drops. GR150 content is the exact same as GR70, just monsters have more health/damage, and as such you get more drops. But everything that can drop in a GR150 can drop in a GR70, it will just be harder to get.

In Marvel Heroes there were definitely tier rankings. Some characters were complete poo, some were a steamroller. But, you could still do all the content on all the characters, just better characters were more efficient. But once those weaker characters got great gear they would be on par with baseline "steamroller" heroes.


Basically, in all the other ARPG games I have played, weaker builds/characters didn't lock you out of content. You were just less efficient at it until you got good gear making you more efficient.

In PoE, weaker builds can definitely lock you out of content. Some great builds can still lock you out of combat if you don't have good gear. And you most certainly won't be efficient at it if you make it to that point, even with good gear.

My sab trapper? Clears everything no problem, didn't require a ton of work. My Caustic Arrow raider, meanwhile, can't beat incursion stuff (either on time and/or opening another door) if it's about the same level because of monsters having chaos resist, plus it not doing as much damage as my traps.

Just the fact that this game has "league starters" is crazy, when compared to other games. Let me play this character that isn't really the one I want to play, so that I can get gear/currency/resources for me to play the actual character I want to play. I mean, that's crazy, right?

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lurker14ownz escribió:

Have seen Mathil builds? Takes literally any skill and turns it into uber elder killer..

the guy literally plays poe for a living...his dayjob is playing poe so dont compare him to everyone else,i'm sure he could kill uber elder on a 3 link with any skill simply because he lives and breathes this game.

Given that build diversity has always been a major goal for me as I create a roster of characters (who I still return to and tweak), my frustration hasn’t been so much that diversity is fake but that build balance is wayyyy off.

A ton of builds are viable for simply mapping comfortably, but the speed difference for the top few builds is massive. Endgame bossing is a different story entirely; it’s very easy for the top 1x skills or so, doable but risky for others who can’t stack 7-figure dps.

Imbalance is inevitable in any game, but in PoE right now it’s just too much IMO.

Going back to the topic of diversity, I do think there are certain items, skill tree paths, and mechanics that are just so ubiquitous that it’s starting to feel boring to use them. Others mentioned RT vs pure phys vs EO vs Crit - it’s frustrating to have to build around one of those merely 4 options, just as it is frustrating to always have to choose a set few methods of recovering health.

It’s not so much that we CAN’T go our own way (I do all the time), it’s that we’re punished for it. Incursions and Syndicate being good league-specific examples of that.

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demon9675 escribió:

It’s not so much that we CAN’T go our own way (I do all the time), it’s that we’re punished for it. Incursions and Syndicate being good league-specific examples of that.

See this is another GREAT example of what I'm bringing up here on this thread. Many people argue that the game doesn't punish you or the one that irritates me the most is the "the game doesn't force you to play a certain way" but you're forced to play a certain way. Like you said, you can do whatever you want or can make things work but many times it just feels like you're being punished or what I like to say beating your head against a brick wall.

The thing that bugs me is things that should promote build diversity are buried by intentional manipulation and very exact wording.

Got an awesome jewel that could give you awesome things if in radius? LOL they intentionally have no valuable nodes around jewel sockets.

Half the stuff in game is x% increase instead of x% more killing all sorts of viability

It's Diablo 3 syndrome creeping in hard. 90% of the stuff that sounds cool is of no use. Legendary/Uniques are mostly vendor food. A good chunk of the ones that aren't are wanted for their raw stats and not the abilities they give.

What the most powerful thing is... is choice. They need to force us to make a difficult choice, not forcing us into making none.

Every year it's the same stuff wanted by all, except with one or two less valuable items.... because demands they keep pushing to be able to complete content make less builds viable.

The game is becoming more unhealthy by the day

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DopeyFishX escribió:

The game is becoming more unhealthy by the day

You're absolutely wrong. This game is the best it's ever been and it's much more diverse than most people think. The reason why people think there isn't viable options is because there are SO MANY viable options that there isn't enough will behind any partcular one of those options for a representative size crowd to start hyping it up - and therefore, a lot of those options go unheralded. They remain hidden. And not many people will recognize them just because they are 10-20% slower at clearing maps, for example.

There are so many good items and options in this game that nobody is ever talking about. And if you try to talk about it nobody will even pay attention to it because they are sheep and they can't recognize anything on hteir own without the force of public opinion behind it. That's not GGG's fault.

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BearCares escribió:

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DopeyFishX escribió:

The game is becoming more unhealthy by the day

There are so many good items and options in this game that nobody is ever talking about. And if you try to talk about it nobody will even pay attention to it because they are sheep and they can't recognize anything on hteir own without the force of public opinion behind it. That's not GGG's fault.

It... it kind of is though. If you are rewarded by being as efficient as possible, and there are the same culprit builds that are just more efficient at clear speed and upfront cost to even get going (traps/brands/BV/etc), then players will gravitate towards that.

For instance: I really want to try uber-atziri. I'm still missing one of the fragments (top right one). So first I need to find vaal side areas to get normal sacrifice fragments, then when I have enough of those I can farm normal atziri to try and get the uber-version fragments.

Is someone going to do that all on an underperforming spec? Heck-no. They are going to hop on their cheap as chips efficient character and grind all that out.

Why do league starter builds even exist? Because this game is all about efficiency to get currency/items to even be able to gear the character you might actually want to play, but it's spec isn't as good by default (or the spec is really good, but requires stupid gear).

Note, this is for people who prefer doing end-game stuff, at the least doing red maps. Not to those who only do the story, low-level maps, then re-roll.

The content of the game is what creates the whole need for "efficiency" and "league-starters" which does, in fact, stifle build diversity, because it doesn't quite become "worth it" to do all the various builds that you could potentially do.

Edit:
Some examples:
In WoW (last time I played anyway, like three months ago), tank representation in Mythic +'s was completely screwed. Something like 80% of tanks at mythic 10 and higher were Blood Death Knights and Brewmaster Monks. Prot warriors/paladins, Demon Hunters, and Bear druids are certainly capable of doing the content (at least 10-13, paladins and DH's can do 15+), as demonstrated by thousands of people doing them. So why is 80% DK's and monks? Because they are just better. Easier to play, better aggro/damage. Is it the players fault for not playing the other classes even though those classes can do the content, just not as well?

In marvel heroes I had a very well geared colossus. He would never die. Could face-tank the world. I rarely played him. Why? Because his kill speed was super slow. It was very rare to see any player using colossus at the "end-game" content. Is it the players fault for not using Colossus even though he was completely inefficient compared to other heroes?

Conversely, you had Mr. Fantastic. I cosmic prestiged one. People called me crazy, he was one of the most hated heroes. He actually had amazing damage, good survivability. He was actually a super solid hero. But he was clunky. Ever skill had a long cooldown, you had to use them in a specific order otherwise your rotation was messed up and you had to sit around DOING NOTHING waiting for skills to come off cooldown. Is it the player's fault for not liking the character because he was super clunky to play?

In summary you are spot on but its a hard balance between what we have now and every build being the exact same result with different shiny effects. There has to be some variance of skillset/power or everything just becomes the same build but right now things are so skewed in the opposite direction I do not even know if it can be resolved.

When certain spells can kill Uber using a tabula while others require 50+ EX investment for the same result it kinda feels like crap either way you cut the pie. :/

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rhoadesd20 escribió:

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BearCares escribió:

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DopeyFishX escribió:

The game is becoming more unhealthy by the day

There are so many good items and options in this game that nobody is ever talking about. And if you try to talk about it nobody will even pay attention to it because they are sheep and they can't recognize anything on hteir own without the force of public opinion behind it. That's not GGG's fault.

It... it kind of is though. If you are rewarded by being as efficient as possible, and there are the same culprit builds that are just more efficient at clear speed and upfront cost to even get going (traps/brands/BV/etc), then players will gravitate towards that.

For instance: I really want to try uber-atziri. I'm still missing one of the fragments (top right one). So first I need to find vaal side areas to get normal sacrifice fragments, then when I have enough of those I can farm normal atziri to try and get the uber-version fragments.

Is someone going to do that all on an underperforming spec? Heck-no. They are going to hop on their cheap as chips efficient character and grind all that out.

Why do league starter builds even exist? Because this game is all about efficiency to get currency/items to even be able to gear the character you might actually want to play, but it's spec isn't as good by default (or the spec is really good, but requires stupid gear).

Note, this is for people who prefer doing end-game stuff, at the least doing red maps. Not to those who only do the story, low-level maps, then re-roll.

The content of the game is what creates the whole need for "efficiency" and "league-starters" which does, in fact, stifle build diversity, because it doesn't quite become "worth it" to do all the various builds that you could potentially do.

Hey thanks for replying! I really think you touched on something that many people are confusing with what I posted. People are confusing diversity with player skill. Just because someone can make something work still doesn't make something diverse/viable. As you said some things are just generally easier to play than other things. While you can play something else and make it work, it doesn't mean someone else can simply pick up and play it too. Speaking of, I have a friend who loves to follow Mathil's builds but man he struggles to play them he told me. There's a ceiling people confuse with diversity.