Anyone else think barb is becoming dumpster tier?

Barbarian
1

Leap nerfed, WW nerfed ages ago, Hey at least we get daggers (oof…) other classes, massive changes with damage and buffs to skills that have meaningful impact.

Barb - Daggers
Barb - high impact leap attack (oh wait)
Grim ward - (oof again, chase down them melee monsters)

Dumpster tier engaged for barb. Just BO someone already then get out of the way.

Edited twice - Forgot about the Throw barb (good luck with your never ending search for godly rare weapons to actually do damage)

EDIT: NEW WW CHANGES MAKE DUMPSTER FIRE RADIOACTIVE.

5 Likes
2

I agree with you. We also got some AR and base damage buff on the weapons masteries, which will be at least a small increase.

They’ve apparently stated that they can’t fix the WW not doing free hot check frame bug for 2.4, so I wonder if they want to fix that first to see where WW truly is before starting the process to buff it.

No excuse for frenzy/conc side though!

Perhaps if they really are rescaling weapons base damage to help all melee, they don’t want to do too much to specific melee skills until that’s done? But they reworked the pally offensive auras so not sure that holds water either.

Either way I agree Barb should get some love, hopefully we get it soon!

7 Likes
3

Nope, not even a little.
Does WW need help? Yes it needs a lot of help.
Was I disappointed with the change to Leap Attack? Yup, but it’s still better than it was.
Everything else about Barb is looking good for 2.4

If you don’t see the value in the new Grim Ward, then you need to give up your Barbarian membership card.

1 Like
4

Yeah, but you gotta agree, that every class now has a decently strong build for ladder start, EXCEPT barbarian.

4 Likes
5

Leap + doom is quite an annoying combo esp team pk so why not?

Would be nice if throwing mastery gets embedded in other masteries instead of being a standalone skill though

1 Like
6

The first character I ever made was a nat sin dragon claw character, I thought I was hot stuff, then I got some good tips for my second character barb, which I never really lost BVB unless someone was wearing all eth gear.

I wasnt around pre ww nerf (where it was based on weapon ias when I started). I divulged a little in PD2, but ended up making a frenzy barb on that for season one, and haven’t played it since.

I just feel like barb, since my understanding since my inception of 2005, used to be a pretty solid character to farm pve, and pvp with. BvC, BVB, Zerk (which I also didnt mention got a nice buff on the build structure) just seems pretty lackluster when compared to other characters as far as farming techniques.

Maybe zerk will be the end all be all for PVE with this iteration of the patch.
I didn’t play any of the PTR but kept up with most of the top streamers (Llama/Coooley/Dbrunski/Sweet Phil/GingerGamingMentor(Super sweet set upgrade videos)), and read up on the forums.

I guess I was just really hoping for something more, the AR is actually a huge bonus, as well as the other changes to the overall character’s play styles.

If grim ward helps Zerk barbs, pit farming could be HUGE early game (if you find a weapon, i mean lets be honest here, if you are melee and you have a stick, you hit with the stick and it breaks even when poking the enemy in the eye, then you cant have a run on sentence this acute about being pigeon holed into laughable damage for any melee class.)

Even Larzuk farming zerker axes is a taxing avenue, as you might not get the damage needed when you craft with said axes. Is it possible? Of course it is, I have done it single player and in ladder resets. Is it fun? Maybe…

Barb needs help in some way, I don’t know how to pinpoint the major issue though.
Gear checks/drops/crafting aspects/overall % damage from MELEE skills could use buffs early on. Maybe that is the key, give them bigger damage to start with and diminish them in the late game (but not too much :rofl:)

I guess the devs really are walking a thin line with barbs, I just wish I didn’t have to rely on 129837093248472 AR to hit paladins (man do they really need the best block in the game…), I still think they are the MOST OP CLASS and they got a huge buff to FOH, in PVE and PVP.

I just want more barb love. :weight_lifting_man:

1 Like
7

WW is only bad at low level so a non issue. Most of your time playing barb will be at high level where ww is good

Throwing barb works with -not the best in slot weapons- as well, watch different builds on youtube, easy to find

Frenzy was and still is very good.

What more do you need?

Its the best gold finder in the game, and a top tier mf class with frenzy (and very fun to play) - I have a fully geared infy light sorc and still use the barb for mf, that should say something
It’s the best class in melee duels (WW) and if geared correctly can destroy casters as well

lacks aoe, maybe a buff to boost some skill to perform aoe will help him reach op status like pally :smiley:

8

I would agree that Barb is the weakest at ladder start. If the Barb can make it to 30, Singer does quite well with a couple Spirit Swords and a Lore Helm.

9

While I agree with you on some stuff.

I think Throwbarb changes are really good now. Since you dont suffer from being melee to hit monster - AND get smacked in the face. I beat Hell with selffound throwbarb on 2.4 PTR in few days. Without excess farming anything. Just progressing and going forward.

Grimward with flee is really good for hardcore I assume. But very bad for softcore. And very bad for melee barb.
Daggers is kinda meh, also can help as 1 pointer for throwbarb to Frenzy-up.
Leap attack without proper AoE or some curse on enemy is unusable.
Frenzy got another laughable synergy, if it at least was some Shout, BO or other…

10

Funny enough. Frenzy barb has already too many skills. Now he gets another non damage synergy. Who the hell will use that?

5 Likes
11

I heard maybe some speedrunners may use it… I dont know…

I mean its not a bad synergy. I can see it used without Enigma to get from A to B faster by hitting passing-by monsters. The least they could do to synergize it with Increased speed, so you are fast at least.

12

Yep, I understand that the stamina skill is completely useless…but this just seems forced :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I think the grim ward skill is kinda nice, although you basically need like 20 points into find potion for it. The barb generally has (except whirlwind) not that many points to spend.

But it is annoying that all monsters flee. That way you have to chase them even more and skills like whirlwind do not work that well with it, because the monster groups split up.

In conclusion, the entire thing is not perfectly designed. Hopefully, 2.5 will alter it a little bit.

2 Likes
13

Well I agree with you. I wrote numerous feedbacks regarding Grimward.

I doubt they listened…

I wrote that Fear should be removed, and only Slow + Damage taken be left on Grimward. I even like the Corpse requirement, just make it able to use on almost all corpses. Regarding if it should target bosses I don’t care… if it does or not I would still use it without Fear. If they did remove fear, it makes great utility for Whilrwind/Throw barbs to “group-up” monsters and smack them with AoE/pierce. Fear is doing quite the opposite.

Another thing is barb usually don’t have much skillpoints left to fully utilize it like 20 FP + 20 grimward. I think its enough if you max 20 FP + 1-5 in Grimward for decent slow. Instead full screen AoE you can create more grimwards.

14

Agreed. Seems like forcing us to dump points into an essentially useless skill to give what’s basically a QoL change (vs. outright damage or survivability) to Frenzy builds is kind of a tough sell. If they want us to use under-used skills, seems like improving the skill to make it more valuable would be better than giving us a questionably valuable synergy when frenzy build points are already tight.

Frenzy has 2 damage synergies (3 if you count the small magic damage bonus from Berserk), so that’s potentially 60 points right there (Taunt, DS, Frenzy itself), plus 20 points in a mastery, and 20 in BO. Then between 1 point wonders and pre-reqs you’re looking at probably another 15, and that’s assuming you’re taking the new Grim Ward as a 1 point wonder and Find Potion only as pre-req to Grim Ward and FI. That also leaves you with probably somewhere in the high 30s/low 40s FI % chance if you want to hork, depending on gear, when people usually try to push that more like 50%.

So you’re at ~115 points, lvl 99 gets you 110 with all quest rewards, and you haven’t even pumped Increased Speed or Find Potion yet. I could certainly see the intent was to force you to make some “hard choices” but when other builds don’t have the same amount of constraints, it just feels a bit too forced. There’s a bit of fat though since I’m assuming you’d want War Cry for stuns and Battle Cry for CtH/Damage Reduction, but BiS geared and high level characters would probably not need it, so you could potentially respec into a leaner build that didn’t need as many pre-reqs.

I guess the thought would be once you get end game gear you can say your damage is “enough” with only partial frenzy damage synergies, so the duration, horking, or grim ward benefits may become more feasible. Patch notes don’t list the actual numbers with damage taken increase to enemies effected by Grim Ward, is it possible that points to that or synergy would actually provide more damage bonus than points to DS/Taunt?

Maybe trying to shoe horn horking into Frenzy vs. a Zerker is also ill advised? I just feel like I should be horking with any Barb I play assuming I can eliminate cold damage…

1 Like
15

Barb is already a demanding class, that is pretty bad without great gear.
To add hard choices that basically only cripple the damage even further makes no sense at all.

2 Likes
16

I agree I was hoping the 2.4 changes would alleviate the gear dependency to make progression easier and reduce the “requirement” * to have end game gear before making barb.

It seems the changes to the mastery base damage and AR are in line with that (but not sure if they’ve gone far enough?), but the skill synergy we’ve been discussing above certainly seems baffling.

*I know it’s not really a requirement and I myself used barb for my initial okay through of D2R but there’s definitely some rough spots in the progression that are worse for barbs/melee in general than casters that would be nice if they brought into parity.

17

That being said, I will start ladder with frenzy barb. Hopefully the new runeword for swords will make it an easier start :slight_smile:

3 Likes
18

I’m at slot cap so debating whether to do ladder or not. Interested in playing with the new RW too though so a little torn. Also kind of want to play with HF paladin. May just wait for the LO-RW to be active on NL.

19

DUMPSTER TIER 100% TRASH

Barb is lowest on the totem pole.

20

Barb’s suck atm. Need to fix leap and whirlwind