Are there a multitude of builds that can be explored in Diablo 3?

[Inkognito]

What has given me so much replay value in Diablo 2 is the VAST amount of builds that can be explored and still be powerful and viable enough to go thru all acts of the game on all difficulties.
Alot of them revolve around one or two items. Then half the fun is finding the other items to compliment your build and leveling to progress your skills and bolster your synergies.

I've been researching this game before I try it out and I have yet to really see any definitive evidence that I will have this same experience. And for $60, I'd really like to nail this issue down before I pull the trigger. Otherwise, I can stand playing Diablo 2 for another 10 years.

[pulli]

no........

[kestegs]

Yes......

Actually it's quite similar to D2, the only big difference is that you can respec at any point so there is no commitment to a specific build.

Just like in D2 there are a few builds that will be "ideal" or "most efficient" for any class but there are tons of other builds you can play and are still viable.

I will warn you though, the game has a different feel than D2, so if you're expecting D2.5 you're likely going to be disappointed.

[Karth]

Yes......

Actually it's quite similar to D2, the only big difference is that you can respec at any point so there is no commitment to a specific build.

Just like in D2 there are a few builds that will be "ideal" or "most efficient" for any class but there are tons of other builds you can play and are still viable.

I will warn you though, the game has a different feel than D2, so if you're expecting D2.5 you're likely going to be disappointed.

I agree with this. I just posted in the Barbarian section about my barbarian... for whom I have 3 distinctly different builds (and there are more out there) and four different sets of equipment for different purposes. My wizard has two different gear sets, my monk has two gear sets, and my WD and DH could have two or more sets if I wanted to do more than just one thing with them (low mp paragon/item farming). A lot of these builds play radically different from the others and have very different uses.

[Causa]

Yet I find myself liking the new skill system. I understand when people want to make their char "unique" from beginning and devote this one char for one role and one skill setup. How ever this was also pain in D2 where you ended up having 100-200 unused stat points and some amount of skill points because your gear might change and you didn't want to make a new char after leveling current one to 90.

Now it's easy to experiment with different skills on the go and find your own style. You might take a popular build setup but end up changing one or two skills to make it feel more of your own.
For example with barbarian in D3 you need to have certain level of gear to make decent ww/sprint build and to get that gear you might need to use different build (to be efficient).

Sure, it's totally different game than D2. Also D2 was totally different from d2x. So I also expect to see that D3 is much different comparing the game from start to the game when we have expansion and more tuned game.

-Causa

[SnickerSnack]

Another vote for "yes." There's a fair argument to be made that monks are pretty limited in skill choice (because there are a handful that are so useful and effective), but even then, I know of three radically different builds for monks, and I don't even play my monk much.