2.6 Feedback
Came back after a few seasons of absence, was quite excited after the recent Diablo 4 disappointment in endgame, a bit disappointed here as well.
Devs seem really fearful of "power-creep" on Median but theorycrafting / finding cool shit is what makes endgame fun most of the time and there simply isn't enough viable options still. Lab climbing essentially demands variations of wdm+leech/psn/avoid as mechanics to progress and so many builds simply being uncompetitive or redundant suck out the potential longevity of seasonal gameplay.
I did stampede to 140. I bought a relic earlier and the +1 projectiles ( does not raise the projectile count beyond the (max 3) count on Barb (surprise surprise). Am I the fool for assuming the relic would give me a 25% damage increase or take me slightly "over-the-top"? An item that I would probably not get if I farmed the whole season, due to sheer rarity and diversity of Relics as a whole. I get it, devs think the stampede relic is nice to play with 66% damage on a different class "for fun", and the 8% life leech should be enough to make it desirable for barbs. Not really.
I chose Barb over Necro when I saw some last minute additional changes on the patch notes, like on "Claw of the Spirit Wolf" SSU Ida. "Gain 50% of your wolf's base damage as flat phys." Imagine how sick it could be, then I find out with max (lvl 15 + skills to lvl 55) wolf, my companion is giving me 380 flat + the 50 from Ida, a whopping 430 dmg 1 hander. It's sad because I can literally craft or runeword a superior base for the same damage while not sacrificing a ton of stats from traditional weapons. The point I'm making is why constantly add chase/rare alternatives that are not competitive, who's going to build for this when it can't be min-maxed to a significantly notable upgrade?
Changes in the patch notes regarding Psi-Crown's energy scaling is another example. Upon release you needed like 7k+ Energy to have Psi crown break even, then it was brought down to 4.5k Energy. This kind of thing just displays so much attempt to hold control over everything, it's like you are being handed the meta - here, this season you will play melee sorc again because fusillade does 102301239 damage and sustains better than anything else along with Sorc's buffs from last season, of course there are other builds that can scale but everything just feels so cherrypicked and idk, feels like im getting pigeonholed all the time.
There are certainly a lot of nice changes since a few seasons ago - more endgame in general, Triune level changes, Scos constantly evolving, it's nice but all the challenge in this game (bosses/labs) eventually boil down to the same demanded formula for success and immediately rule out most builds (elemental / strike procs / etc) due to lack of survivability. Is life spark and life on striking parity just dead forever?
Also, I've said this before but this game is an item-hunt game and adding trade tools like this is PoE isn't going to cut it on the ancient diablo 2 client, it would be much better if you can expand on the auction system (multiple auction panels for different item types?) and find a way to reduce the dynamic listing fees - i know it's a tg sink for the economy but when 90% of the items u find are junk / not worth trading due to lack of value or too much hassle, it's a design issue. I think people like me wouldn't feel burned out from getting a bunch of low-mid value items if i didn't have to pay a 50-100% tax on the sale due to dynamic listing when the season is most active.
I don't know, some of the new stuff seems promising yet conceptually it's like going in circles or taking too long to get to the next big checkpoint. Goal for many ARPGs are chase items and levels, exponential growth. On Median, that comes mostly from charms. But as you progress, the viable builds start falling off in the quest to get said charms and eventually everyone is playing the exact same thing.
