Diablo 3 is fundamentally broken

[Archon_Wing]

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.

And could anyone, anyone, regardless of how smart they were foreseen how the game actually turned out at release? Or even 4 years after release when the pros took the game to unbelievable levels (and manage to crush that too?) That is why too much tinkering can have bad effects. Just allow people more time to figure out stuff.

As for Mutalisks, they were overpowered pre-expansion due to mobility and terran marines couldn't catch up to them. Well, they could with stim but medics didn't exist. With medics entering the fray, Marine+Medic proved to be insanely deadly vs Zerg and the winners of the big tournaments were mostly Terran. JulyZerg didn't actually win by using muta stacking as we know it now, but he did control them well enough by using fast actions to quickly bunch them together and pick off marines so fast that medics couldn't heal them. And naturally Zerg saw a new resurgence where mutalisks became the scariest thing on the block. Later, they would discover the glitch that made muta stacking even easier, and mutalisk harass is now one of the deadliest things in the game. But the precision required it is so high that a single failure would cause all the mutas to melt. And then Terrans like Flash developed just as lethal reaction timing to counter it. And tons of now cheaper missile turrets.

With the introduction of later strategies like defilers ultralisks, and early Terran attacks happening at insane timings to Zerg building sunken colonies at the very last second to m&m scrambling in 5 different directions away from the Zerg swarms while picking the monsters in the front off, Terran vs Zerg in Brood War was a matchup that turned into a fine art-- the skill cap seemed limitless

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.

Another excellent dynamic was created here, and I'm glad they didn't remove it. It means that Thors are still very good vs mutas, but the Zerg player can mitigate the damage, but they can't just be negligent.

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.

It certainly is an issue, but we sure took a lot of testing for 1.10 D2 and that forever changed the game, for better or for worse.

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.

Well, there's certainly people who are more credible over the noise of the battle.net forums. I assume people who are popular from streaming and are actually proficient with the game and its mechanics are worth listening to. We don't have "pros" in Diablo, but every game has its high level players that should be fairly evident.