Bricking off meta builds feels terrible

I don't ever post, but I have to give my feedback as to how incredibly bad it feels when figuring out an off-meta playstyle and having it bricked. Maybe with endgame gear it gets crazy, but most of the one-shot boss builds are still around everywhere without being nerfed.

My build was as a mercenary/xbow to shoot out a glacial bolt, then armour explode them with armour piercing rounds for most of my clear damage. I wasn't doing crazy damage (not even a fraction of some of the other meta builds out there), but it felt very rewarding to find something that was becoming effective that was clearly not in the "intended path". It was even a "use multiple skills in conjunction" build, so felt very appropriate given the stated design goals from GGG.

I really wanted to put together a build that isn't just grenades or some kind of lightning build since that is what is popular with mercenary/xbow, but this patch instantly bricked it with not allowing armour explosion on inanimate objects. Character is still fine and I can adjust (will probably have to resort to some generic grenade/explosive shot build since I'm now spec'd into fire), but the skill combo being bricked is just such a total buzzkill that it seems GGG really want you playing your skills exactly how they intended it, not finding unique interactions and playstyles by exploration and out of the box thinking.

The one plus side is that I will probably have faster clear speed and more damage with grenades.

Welcome to GGG whack-a-mole balancing

It's not about enabling diverse powerful combinations around similar power levels and consistently buffing underused options to create more diversity.

Instead, it's about allowing a small subset of powerful combinations at a time, while occasionally bringing out the nerf bat when something is too easy and strong.

How often do we get updates like "0.1% of players use this skill since it feels underwhelming and low on damage, so we hotpatched it to make it usable".

"balancing" is just "nerfing to maintain the vision" for GGG, as usual. The buffs and quality of life are few and far between.