Ok I admit to a bit of hyperbole there. The affected builds are probably not actually destroyed, but they are either significantly nerfed or changed to the point that I will basically have to start over in their itemization to make them viable again given the increased health and damage that was given to monsters.
My bladedancer rogue relied on crit multi and area scaling for shadow cascade, so that build feels like it just got hit by dozens of multiplicative nerfs from the changes to the rogue and bladedancer trees, the bug fixes that I didn’t realize were bugs, and the tuning of shadow cascade. It wasn’t particularly strong before so now I’m fairly sure it just won’t be viable anymore.
My marksman rogue feels like it is in the same boat, but maybe to a lesser degree as flurry and multshot weren’t adjusted as much. Though the changes to the marksman tree seem more heavy handed than the bladedancer ones so it is hard to tell.
My shaman primalist was using the scorpion… which it now has to spend 20 more passive points to unlock. Yeah that is not happening so that build is dead.
My void knight sentinel was a smite caster, but I’m fairly sure that build is completely dead now that the lightning can’t multi-hit a single target. That is like a ~85% multiplicative nerf to everything it did.
My paladin build relied pretty heavily on block, which from the changes sounds much harder to actually get to 100% chance now. Combined with the cooldown changes to sentinel movement skills I am not confident this build will still be viable either.
My lich acolyte was built around rip blood, which may have just improved or may have just died. After all the other changes listed I kind of just assumed the worst here.
I don’t think either of my mage builds were changed, but if I had to level them up again they would level quite differently due to when skills unlock now. Their itemization has, but I am fairly sure every build’s itemization has to some degree.
My druid and beastmaster primalists seem mostly unaffected, aside from items of course.
My forge guard sentinel is probably affected by the general changes to sentinel, though the degree of this is hard to determine. It should be less affected than my other sentinels, but I can’t tell how much less.
It sounds like my necromancer acolyte might actually have been buffed a bit due to the minion changes, but ironically this was my least favorite build. C’est la vie.
I’m sure the changes have also enabled other builds as well, and maybe the changes do represent an overall buff to player power after we adapt to them. But my initial reaction certainly doesn’t feel that way when judging from the impacts it seems to have on my characters. I was expecting some rogue nerfs and some significant itemization changes but the rest caught me by surprise. I’ll still try it out and see how it feels, I just need to give it time before I do so so my initial impression doesn’t color my judgement when actually playing around with it.
