I've been a Blizzard customer for quite some time.
I've been in WoW beta 15 years ago, I took part into a lot of PTR and betas but I have to admit that u/Nevalistis and Diablo team made an incredible step up in effort on both sharing your view and drawing all the community into the "Testing->Feedback->Evaluate" process.
So thanks u/Nevalistis and Team, this has been absolutely appreciated!
I'm happy to pass on the kudos. Thank you for taking the time to let us know. <3
Super cool, that's the explanation of the dev's thoughts I've been waiting for since day 1 of PTR. Nice to see the promise of more communication being realized!
Just one thing: you say "(barring anything game breaking we need to address post-patch or via a hotfix)" - I hope you stand up to those words and aren't afraid to nerf overpowered builds (also with regard to group play). There are 28 class sets and you have made great efforts to get them all closer. The usual approach - buffing 27 sets if one is too strong - is nice to maintain your "we don't nerf anything" attitude but I think for the sake of balance and diversity sometimes nerfs are necessary and the right (and only right) thing to do.
Looking forward to seeing how all this plays out on live!
In the event something is totally broken, I doubt we'll have that fear. Rest assured that, if such a step is necessary, we'll include as much detail as we can behind any changes or fixes we make.
Were any of the other major concerns by classes taken into consideration but not able to be implemented for this cycle (for example the Crusader concerns with the CDR requirements on gear for the Akkhan set, and some of the proposed solutions to the set bonus such as having it double the duration)? Something we might be able to look forward to in the next patch that might be more than just numbers tuning?
A lot of it comes down to prioritizing tasks. Some take a lot more time investment than others, and overall, we wanted to get more total changes in that we could for as many classes as possible rather than a handful of larger or more difficult-to-accomplish tasks.
I can't promise what we'll work on the future, but I can say we're listening and constantly evaluating what we can do.
Nevalistis
I'm happy to pass on the kudos. Thank you for taking the time to let us know. <3
Nevalistis
In the event something is totally broken, I doubt we'll have that fear. Rest assured that, if such a step is necessary, we'll include as much detail as we can behind any changes or fixes we make.
Nevalistis
A lot of it comes down to prioritizing tasks. Some take a lot more time investment than others, and overall, we wanted to get more total changes in that we could for as many classes as possible rather than a handful of larger or more difficult-to-accomplish tasks.
I can't promise what we'll work on the future, but I can say we're listening and constantly evaluating what we can do.