Diablo 3 is fundamentally broken

[ErickTheRed]

Take Brood War. If you select 11 mutalisks in conjuction with an overlord, there is a strange game mechanic bug that causes the mutalisks to stack together, temporarily creating a potential death ball of damage. There's no way in hell that was intended design, and in today's climate such a thing would be quickly removed. But it wasn't and we enjoyed watching Koreans perform entire strategies and feats around this odd quirk.

This specific mutalisk stacking mechanic was unintended, but the look at that from the bigger picture. Before Brood War mutalisks were problematic for the same general reason. They were mobile flying units with good anti ground damage, so it was always a threat to concentrate firepower and overwhelm defenses. Brood War gave the two other races rather specialized units specifically to counter this strategy, and this was considered a good thing. I may have the details wrong, but as I remember Zergs were considered a bit underpowered until JulyZerg found this, and it lead to a resurgence as everyone had to adapt but didn't unbalance the game.

Something very similar did happen in SC2. Thors were pretty obviously intended to be a hard counter for clusters of mutalisks. Someone discovered Magic Boxing which lets them kill Thors without the swarm all taking splash damage. This strategy wasn't taken away, because it turned out to not unbalance the game.

Game designers know that having lots of options to explore and finding new strategies is fun. It's some huge blind spot that they have would be fixed if they only listened to the players. The problem is that the reverse: strategies that look like they were intended to be viable but actually don't work are very frustrating. (Oops, my necromancer skeleton army wasn't viable past a certain point. Oops, I put too many points in Zeal and now my character is ruined. Oops, turns out stacking armor rating is pretty worthless unless you combine it with a skill that massively amplifies your defense.) The difficulty is that most issues aren't clear cut one way or the other.

Which players do you listen to anyway? Some people seem to really hate the way hit boxes and kiting now works. I happen to love the way movement works in melee combat now - it feels much more tactical now. You either stand still and trade damage or you move for tactical benefit, and there are many reasons to do this (health globes, avoiding monster effects on the ground, moving to a terrain where you can't be surrounded. etc.) There are a few monsters with melee attacks that you can dodge, and I like that variety, but I'm rather happy that all monsters don't have that mechanic, especially with the lag of online play.