Druid has decent variety, but it depends on what sort of comparisons you are making. For pushing the very highest of NM-dungeons there is going to be less variety, in all classes.
Yeah but for a lot of us that isn't the most important. But something to keep in mind for sure.
Yeah but I think that's where the difference is. What is build diversity? Even if there are a "best build for X" (pvp, NM dungeons, open world content) - likely those will be different builds, and thus you have achieved build diversity.
So its about what perspective we take when we talk about build diversity. Is it to have several builds that can do X content at the highest level from one class? is it for builds to do several avenues of content at a high competetive level?
Definitely. From what I can tell it's about being able to play more than one spec the main activities of choice. Which for 9/10 people is PvE.
Druid has the most viable builds.
“Shout builds” aren’t a thing, since all shouts are support skills. There isn’t anything like the Singer/War Cry Barbarian from D2.
You’re right that the skill system in D4 tends to homogenize builds due to powerful cooldown skills though. Sorc has the same exact issue, where you keep the same 4 cooldown defensive skills in every build.
The class with the most skill diversity overall is Rogue I think, although there are still several skills with next to no use at the moment. Rogue at least has lots of options for Core skill/spender, and a variety of play styles (melee, ranged, traps).
I am current playing HotA-barb with no shouts at all. Is it optimal? I don’t know, most likely not. Works for me though.
I actively avoid following guides etc, because it’s to easy to optimize the fun out of the game. Most likely there will always be the „best“ build, even if only mathematically. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This is my hesitation with barb too. HotA is solid, leapquake is fun, and Fatal Blow is satisfying, but upheaval looks dumb and I don't like ww or bleeds.
Compared to the sheet build variety of druid, that's not a lot of variety, though to be fair a lot of the high performing builds rely on 2+ uniques (tempest, crone, waxing gibbous, vasily's) to really function.
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