Dear Diablo,

You almost had me this time. The new update brought Kanye's Cube or whatever the fuck it's called and along came the illusion of build diversity. And for the first few hours I was totally hooked. I wasn't even all that bothered by your ugly graphics or the fact that you can get away with using the world's shittest textures, just because you're being made by Blizzard. Because I was having so much fun.

You can count every pixel on that shield, but for some reason it's okay when Blizzard does this.

The cube lets you extract the powerful effects of legendary items, so you can apply them directly to your character. I ran around auto-bombarding monsters with twice the original amount of impacts, turned enemies into minions and had them last three times as long whilst attacking 50 percent faster, had bouncy magic shield builds that cost no resources whilst toasting legions of baddies with three times the regular amount of heaven's fury and everything was good. Until Blizzard's way of "balancing" things forced me into one of exactly two viable cookie-cutter builds just like before the update.

My class has a bunch of items, which double or even triple the damage and effect of certain abilities, which is great. My class also has armor sets, which raise certain abilities' damage by 500 to 750 percent, which isn't so great. If I can use one of those sets and crit for over a literal billion damage (which is now fairly low by Diablo 3's standards), then why the fuck would I bother with any of those legendaries, which only double or triple the damage of my other abilities, which then end up hitting for 50 million or less?

The whole thing is fucked. The only really useful thing the cube lets me do is enhance the two most obvious and hilariously overpowered builds for my class even further. Yes, it's now easier to add bonuses from smaller item sets, so I get to chose whether I'd like 10 percent faster cooldowns or 15 extra damage against elite baddies and WHO THE FUCK CARES!? If my primary ability suddenly hits for eight times its original damage I don't give a shit about hitting some monsters for an additional 30 percent on top!
If "build diversity" means getting control over such minute benefits, which don't really affect my playstyle in any significant way, then it's no real diversity in the first place. Wanna play greater rifts? You're gonna shield bash or you're gonna throw hammers. Enjoy the new diversity!

What about fucking phalanx? Bombardement? Condemn? Or any fucking skill that isn't shield bash or blessed hammer? When I look at the top 100 players and only see two or three builds per class, then there's no damn diversity.
I think the cube is a step in the right direction. Heck, should you actually decide to let people play the way they want again, instead of forcing everyone into one or two incredibly specific and restrictive sets and styles, I'll be happy to stay. Let me use my favourite abilities again! Give me a phalanx that can actually kill an enemy in a rank 40 rift. Or a bombardment that doesn't just tickle the bad guys. Having more freedom over a bunch of secondary stats with the same old cookie-cutter build is a good start, but it's not enough. Not remotely.

-Cat

UPDATE: Looks like this problem is being actively worked on right now. Let's see how that'll go.