I think maul is the identity of the set. It really matches well visually with the rest of it, and the whole “immortal king” gives me the vibe of swinging one giant heavy weapon.
Ogre mauls just need some love, as the ogre maul is awful due to it’s 1 range and only 50% damage to the undead and around 25% extra damage from strength bonus to compensate for that, which is not a lot in the scope of all the skill-ED% that barb has
In light of the whirlwind change, i’d love IK set to have an ability to have more whirlwind speed with just 20 more IAS (e.g. 1 shael in the maul, or highlords or cat’s eye or 2 jewels), and not 60 like now…
Thing is not every Barbarian is a Frenzy Barbarian(which necessitates dual wielding). Sometimes players just want to go 2-H and bash some Demon’s skull and the IK Set opted to go the 2-H Ogre Maul route as opposed to 2-H Sword(which can be dual-wield). The ironic thing is that Blizzard may have ultimately killed the WW Barbarian in their attempt to “fix” Whirlwind since 2-H can never reach the old APS(AFAIK…)
Immortal King Set, as a consequence, got majorly screwed by that nerf as the Ogre Maul can only hit 5 Frames but requires additional IAS to do so(whereas you could hit 4 FPA with just 30-40 IAS in the Maul). As such I made additional tweaks that include a skill change on IK Armor and I think you’d agree with me on that one since an IK Barbarian with a 2-H Ogre Maul cannot utilize Frenzy to generate Skill IAS.
Not sure that would work honestly given that w/e spawns on one IK weapon would spawn on the 2nd. A perfect example is Angelic Ring. Equip one with the Amulet/Armor/Sword and you get a nice fat boost to Attack Rating. Equip a 2nd one and you effectively double the bonus. Ditto Natalya’s Claw if it rolled with any partial set bonuses(which it presently doesn’t).
I think the old players were using it for an FoH build and adding lightning facets to all of the sockets, however that was before 2.4 and FoH was only decent in PVP which made it still viable and pretty funny to see.
IMO, class sets are fine. They were never meant to be powerful end game sets but just something to ease you into hell farming.
the only exception is Aldur which is crap, it’s not even good for nightmare due to 2 reasons:
it’s a melee set but the weapon has no ED which is gonna result in crap damage no matter what, even if you upgrade it to elite level (btw, all other classes have elite weapons in their sets, except aldur)
you would get better results by just equipping the IK set (without the helm) on a shapeshifter
solution: just change the “+350% Enhanced Damage” set bonus to something like “-35% enemy fire resist”.
This would make the set somewhat viable for a Fire Claw + Armageddon build and you could use it together with a fire sunder charm to farm act 1 and 2 in hell for better gear.
In light of the WW changes I think IK is a bit farther off the mark than it was before.
Now that being frozen/decrep effects WW speed, I like the idea of offering additional sockets or ways to get more IAS. I also think adding CBF to one of the set pieces might be reasonable as well. Frees up a ring slot (I suspect few would burn a Cham on the helm haha) and lets the set have “built in” protection for at least one WW FPA sapping situation.
Prior to WW changes I took an IK barb through the entire game and he even kills DClone quite well with all that CB on the maul, so it’s definitely Hell viable in P1, so if you think the sets should let you finish game and get into farming, then I’d agree it’s (or was) in a pretty good place.
TBH, i think adding CBF to IK would be a bit too much considering how good the set already is compared to the other, even with the changes to WW.
But hey, that’s just my subjective opinion
Then what would be the point of IK set and its bonuses. BK set its just plain bad and the knockback makes the set unbareable.
The point is to make IK set great again just like Tals… colossus sword instead of that bullcrap maul for me.
WW, conc or zerk builds? It’s already a well rounded set that gives good defense and resistances with elemental damage, physical damage and a respectible amount of CB. It could use a bit more damage to keep it viable in harder content and higher player games. But 2H weapon does push it towards the non-dw side of the tree.
The IK maul is pretty iconic at this point. If the set needs better damage then buff it while retaining the maul, IMO. Plus a numbers tweak to set bonuses seems more likely to happen than designing all new art assets to change the maul for CS.
I agree BK set could use a buff and part of that would be removing knock back, but again, in this hypothetical scenario of the devs doing a balance pass of class sets, the preferred way IMO would be to fix BK, not abandon it and make another barb set focus on swords. Especially since Grief PB is nearly always bis, having the IK set be decent with a maul would be really cool I think.
Give it more sockets, speed or base damage and consider increasing range (although some prefer low range for more WW control).
Tbh I think they should do a balancing pass for all melee weapons to get melee characters closer to casters and make 2H builds more competitive as part of that, either by increasing base damage, adding str bonus, or other effects, then see where the various set and uniques end up and adjust accordingly. Might be that some of the general fixes are all that something like IK needs, whereas Aldurs likely will still need more help.
I get the gist of what your saying but IK needed alot of love to begin with… it dont stand out nowhere as appealing as Tals set.
IK maul could have easily been replaced with a clossul sword instead they gave it this horrible maul.
Sure in needs damage but making it a maul only gives you accsess to a few skills. Where as Tals take your pick light, fire or cold.
A set should cater for all skills not just a few IMHO
i disagree with the “cater to all skills” statement.
if you look at the other sets (besides IK and Tal) you can see that they were created with a specific build in mind.
Trang is poison nova, M’avina is for frost maiden, Griswold is for a zealer, Nathalia is Martial arts, Aldur is for LOLs…
also, i don’t even know how you would balance a set to cater to all builds possible, it would be pure nightmare for a developer. you would have to put so much crap on the items that’s not even funny.
IK sets easy you remove the maul and add the colosul sword. Now you can dual wield but damage is always a factor just depends how much.
Mavina just needs phyiscal out put and enemy minus and element damage enemy resistance.
Aldurs again needs minus and add elemental resitance but it needs to get rid of that mace and add some kind of 1h axe or hammer at elite level again some physical damage needs to upped
Pretty much you can add elemenatal damage and minus resistance for elemenatal play style and add physical damage for melee its really not that hard.
You can even aim for the skill tabs to give specifc skills tree.
Leave all sockets avaliable for jewels, runes and facetts.
There was a mod made awhile back with very good set items so if we the fans can make it devs have a better shot and better resources.
Yeah I get where you’re coming from too. For above lower player levels the damage definitely needs some love. I think the reason Tals stands out so well also has to do with how sorc vs. barb are balanced, regardless of items. IK set can rock out P1 Hell content pretty well, including Dclone, but melee just needs GG RW to do much in higher player count games.
I get what you’re saying about Tals flexibility with elements, but IK still would let you go WW, Conc, or Zerk, and BK does exist so could be further improved to be better positioned for the dual wield options.
I get that Col Swrd would have been a cool option if they had gone that route from the beginning, but at this point after 20+ years and having IK Set continue with the Maul in D3 (Not saying I love D3, but it’s problems are much deeper than IK Set Weapon…and it’s part of the Diablo Lore now) I just think at this point they should work with the assets that are already designed rather than shaking things up too much.
Plus what does that do to existing IK barbs? Do they have to re-find the Col. Swrd and then respec their mastery over to use it, on a character that might already be “finished”? Do all the old Mauls stay in game so you could at least play until you find the sword and respec? It’s one thing to have improved versions to try to find and extend the item hunt, while staying at the same power (if they chose to do it that way), but to have your character now have a mastery that no longer helps the build the next time you log in would feel pretty bad. Just seems to get messy at this point in the game.
when you propose 10 things to change in a set you should ask yourself:
1.do the devs have enough time/interest to do it?
2.what if these changes break the set completely? how do you find out what change broke it?
you always want to approach change with a conservative mindset, changing things radically in a game is a sure way to fail.
Also, it’s not always about raw stats.
If i were to change something small but with a radical impact in the IK set it would not be the weapon type. It would be to remove the Freeze effect that shatters corpses and messes up your Find Item. Small change but Huge impact.
Regarding IK and dual wield. Why not just fix the Bul-Khato set ? It could be done soooo easily by just removing the knockback from the weapon.
Same with Aldur’s. Change the +350% damage from set bonus to -35% monster fire rez. Small change, but opens up the possibility to use as Fire ele druid or fire claw.
Been a long time since I’ve updated this thread but seeing as I’d like to see the Class Sets get a makeover, I figured I’d seek feedback on what I have in the OP. 2.43 killed IK WW Barbs so it’s easily my most radical of the seven.
The changes they made both to 2H WW and Werebear IAS really bummed me out. I love the changes you’ve got for the IK set. Sockets really can help so many things with all of the sets letting you customize to how you see fit. I really miss being able to use 2H WW, even if it was niche.
Another thing I think could really be effective is -res modifiers. Reversing the %cold damage on the Mavina gloves to -%enemy cold res would be really nice by itself. That’s also one of my favorite partial set mods to the Tal set to be honest.
The absorb on Griswold’s set is really nice.
I would love to see an overhaul to sets one day, even if it’s just a pipe dream. Meaningful updates that don’t bring too much power, but enough to bring in impact and additional options regarding builds.
Have updated the topic as of January of 2025. Overhauled several sets, including Immortal King and would like feedback on it. All changes were made with the intent of doing roughly 7 changes per set(give or take a few), hitting +6 Skills overall(+7 for Natalya if you dual-equip her Claw, yielding +9 to Martial Arts) and roughly +100 All Resistance(including the 50 from Complete Set bonus). In response to above, Werebear has been relegated to irrelevancy for a long time now. Werewolf has always kind of had the advantage and with Reapers Toll and other 2-H setups, it likely will for the foreseeable future. As for -Enemy Resistance on M’avina, I contemplated changing it from %Cold Resistance to -Enemy Cold Resistance on the Gloves but I wanted to limit changes as much as possible. I am open to changing it though given how impactful -Enemy Resistance is.
