A few ideas of how to save D3

[Jester]

Well, from what I've read, you can't customise stat points anymore, which prevents any sort of jerrymandering there (MongoJerrymandering, here?). I guess it depends how tightly you want to define "variant." Sirian ran Ember, who had a definite cap of Nightmare but was one of the most tightly restricted non-naked characters ever. Then MJ had Irene, and there was the Irene clone, which had a cap at Normal - but then there were others like Skeletorr, Astra, Grizabella, Gunter, et cetera, who were all clearly variants and generally FAR, FAR below the power curve of the builds B. Netters "approved" of, but who were all able to finish the game at the highest difficulty.

I'm just guessing there won't be any variants able to do Inferno, or at least at variants that aren't just 1-2 skills off the power builds, because it seems despite Blizzard's best (or worst) intentions, some skills are just plainly far more viable than others.

And so, what? The game is hard enough (on inferno) that variant scum will have to be satisfied with merely beating the game on hell? Or nightmare? Or even normal?

That sounds like par for the course for variants. You make you own challenge - if the game makes it impossible, you find out what is possible, and do that instead. Find some boundaries, and push them. Ember couldn't do Hell - and nobody cared. It was still awesome.

-Jester