For what it’s worth, I started as a pally too, and yeah, they do seem a bit gimped, but it was still fun! I rolled another Wraithlord after that, and yes, it’s much more powerful… but a lot less fun, with not much challenge or tactics. I stopped playing that and rolled more gimped alts instead, just to see what fun off-meta things I might find.
The “broken” builds only matter if you’re chasing the meta, but that’s a very different kind of gameplay anyway (continuously optimizing every minor stat, spending hours reading guides and analyzing affixes and DPS/defense formulas, spending forever in the bazaar, playing thousands of monos on repeat…). And even for those classes, there is usually only a specific build – some combination of mastery, passives, skills, uniques, affixes – that enables such a build, not just that one base class is better than another.
That’s the sort of thing that can easily change every season. One unique and some unpredicted interaction later and a new broken build is made… there’s only so much they can catch in pre-release testing vs the hordes of real players, streamers, gold farmers, etc. trying every possible new combo.
Anyway, correct me if I’m wrong here, but that doesn’t sound like the kind of experience you’re after anyway…? That’s more like high-speed spreadsheeting, which is fine for some people, but if you just want to be able to enjoy the game as it was intended, I’m sure your pally would do fine. Even 700 corruption is a lot more than most people would probably get to in any reasonable playtime.
If you’re playing with friends, it’s a cool opportunity to develop multi-player synergies that might not otherwise exist! (Like an actual support pally, focused on tanking or buffing/healing the other player)
If you’re playing with randos, well, there’s not really bonuses to partying anyway, just additional enemy health, so in that sense every party member is already a “burden”. And by this point in the Cycle, many people are already well into the hundreds of Corruption, so likely one of them will just be carrying the others anyway.
I miss the old days of cooperative MMO grouping where every member actually mattered Now it just seems like you group mostly just to get powerleveled or with help with some boss or something.
If you actually have a friend group to play on a more casual pace with, lucky you! I wish I did Just enjoy the ride and don’t worry about the endgame, there isn’t much there anyway… after a few hundred monos, they all just blur together lol, and the leaderboard will be completely forgotten in a month or two.