enchant/zeal sorcs, for example, are far, far worse in practical PvP than any of the builds I listed there. It will lose 90% of its serious matchups with no chance to win against normal builds. Contrast the pure aurasorc, who can win or stalemate 90% of her matchups with no chance to lose.
Some builds are unpopular because they are silly gimmicks that don't have a chance. A fireball barbarian or valk zons or bow pallies for example are just strictly bad and won't win any serious duel. Believe me, I've made a fireball barb and melee necro and holy frost midget griz pally, those are the silly gimmicks that aren't practical. Back in 1.09 I made a necro with 1 point fire golem, all stats into energy and max fcr who would amp people as they ran out to town and namelock fire golem on them and NK them with the exploding damage. Now
thats an impractical gimmick.
Some builds are unpopular, but are actually better than some mainstream builds. Tele-zons, shaman druids, aurasorcs, brawlers, frost nova sorcs, and yes, even trangs fastnecs, can win serious duels and outperform most of the builds listed here- although you actually listed my telezon guide there, which I'd say is probably the all round best pub zon build anyway. Plague javelin is what enables teleport through D/A/E and slow animations where getting stomped just shuts down other zon builds, tele or no
I could link you a bunch of gimmick builds like TG bladesin, but the ones I listed above instead are the very serious and practical ones. Is a frost nova sorc tier 1? No, but its better than a light nova sorc most of the time, and certainly better than any werewolf druid in FFA and I'd take it over poison necro in most matchups. The Brawler is simply a better BvC in many matchups or just the same as a BvC in others, to say its bad is to say BvC's are bad. The aurasorc is really the definitive cheese build, with a very obnoxious playstyle that only just barely qualifies under most GM rules, and I took one of the SvS tournaments with it before they banned it out- it either gets absorbed or it wins (or it faces a sin and loses). And even when its absorbed, its impossible to kill so the duels just an infinitely long stalemate. Does that make it a gimmick build, if it can win serious duels against the best chars? And theres plenty of people on SNG who can attest to the competency of shaman druids- they're 'just fire druids' in the same sense a V/T is just an FoHer.
trangs fastnecs on the other hand are some cloudcuckooland shit. You've either seen what they do or you haven't
This post was edited by Goomshill on Aug 11 2016 11:42pm