Build guides are lacking some love lately?

[Kaelos 74]

This site is always my first pick for D3 or Hots guides and I really enjoy being here but working out on my characters in current season I got a feeling quality of guides isn't that great as it used to be.

I went for wizard on season but I can't find any speedfarm versions of those nice new builds even if there's a tag saying it has one. So I started using that new maxroll site to fill up and they have a really nice approach for writing guides (promoting the website isn't my goal here pls believe :x). Necro rathma build seems outdated and it got weird recommendation to use melee generator now but it's impossible as build is very squishy even when played ranged I get one shot from stuff and I couldn't push it's speedfarm version any higher than T13 and it was too slow as well, definitely lacking damage here. Or when I tested Frenzy Barb speedfarm version I was dying all the time as well as there's no Goldwrap or any other survivability option. Just a few examples here.

As I see there is one person working on all those guides and Diablo 3 can be considered dead game so I totally understand it is a lot of work and can't keep up on everything or it's just not worth it. I'm grateful that such content still exists anyway and someone cares. But I just wanted to share my thoughts that maybe we need some fresh change in approach here like poe-vault did. Less guides but better quality or something like that.

[Valks 2,375]

Hi there Kaelos!

So, firstly, I'd like to apologise on behalf of all of us here at Icy Veins. Diablo 3, despite not being the newest game on the Blizzard portfolio, still deserves the proper treatment that our users have come to expect of us. We have tried to make sure that our guides are kept up-to-date for every season and, albeit not an excuse for any errors, mistakes do happen.

If I break down your comment piece by piece:

• Wizard DMO - there are definitely some inconcistencies here that need to be addressed, and they will be, I can promise you that. Looking at the guide myself, the introduction points the build towards GR progression, but is listed as being speedfarming-viable.
• Necro Rathma - there are multiple variants to this build and, honestly, some of them are extremely squishy and are only really played in groups with a zNec and zBarb to generate for you and protect you. I assume you are talking about the Jesseth/Rathma build - I'll let Deadset explain in regards to the melee generator as, honestly, I don't know enough about Necromancer to do so myself.
• On the Frenzy Barb, what was your gear like? As far as I know, the build is completely focused on essentially hunting elites, due to its single-target damage nature, so I'm not sure if you were trying to play it as a clearing build or not. Please do let me know on this, as builds like this can often seem "bad" when not played in the "ideal" manner. I'm not trying to blame you or your playstyle in the slightest, we'll double check the build regardless, but I just wanted to make sure you were aware that it was an elite-hunter.

Deadset will likely comment in the near future to add to this/discuss, but again, I just wanted to apologise and thank you for your feedback. We'll make sure we do better in the future.

[Deadset 108]

Hello and thank you for the feedback! Improving our current roster of guides is one of my main goals in the S22 post-launch period, and you can expect a thorough revisit of our current content with improvements in regards to clarity and multi-functionality of the presentation. Something that has been on my mind, for example, is better differentiation between "optimal" and "casual" styles of play, since the vast majority of our content is focused on a purely endgame perspective and doesn't offer much insight on adapting the build to sub-optimal gear, or when starting out with a specific playstyle. 

As far as guide-specific feedback goes:

• For DMO specifically, it's a case of a wrongful extra tag, although I will look into adding a speed farming variation in short order - it is adaptable for the purpose, even if the playstyle of the set is not ideal for the task.
• For Rathma, and Necromancers in general - the Necromancer sets, with the current exception of the Masquerade set, are rather lackluster and the class itself has always been very frail and glass cannon. The Rathma set in particular is a huge offender, as it is one of the most poorly constructed sets in the game (hence our low ranking). If you choose to progress in Greater Rifts in S22 with it however, I would say that despite its melee range, Grim ScytheCursed Scythe is something you have to consider due to your ability to include Trag'Oul's Corroded Fang as an additional damage multiplier in the 4th Cube slot. The silent implication here is that you will have to adjust your GR pushing to rifts that allow for its use (less threatening trash enemy compositions - large packs of slow moving monster clusters), as well as adjust your playstyle to accommodate the skill - playing it safe with proximity to less threatening monsters to generate Essence off of, while keeping distance from more threatening targets. All in all though, I'd advise you to avoid the Rathma set until its revision from the developers. It's simply not worth the trouble.
• The Frenzy Barb, at least from my perspective, is laden with survivability; it sports the usual damage reduction stacking mechanic via the 4-piece bonus, which is trivial to maintain, and has the doubled Dodge % benefits of War CryVeteran's Warning from the 2-piece bonus. If the gear rolls however are sub-optimal however, or you are just trying out / starting with the build, I can understand some frustration from its facetanking nature. This is where the further clarity I spoke of at the start of the post would come in, and I'll work towards its inclusion. Small adjustments from the presented hyper-optimized build, like dropping SoJ/Rechel's for a Band of Might , or swapping Chilanik's Chain for Goldwrap come naturally to a more experienced player, but will be valuable to newcomers to the build and will be added very soon.

[Kaelos 74]

Oh thanks for such detailed answers, I hope I wasn't offensive in my post. There's no need to apologise to me on anything ^^. Your work is great. Yeah I was probably doing something wrong with Frenzy barb. As for wizard I didn't want to specifically adress DMO build but overall lack of speedfarming variants of new builds while Frozen Orb and Hydra are pretty fun for this task.