Devs please.. The Battle Axe/Poleaxe and Pit Fighter WW barb

Barbarian
1

First of all, thank you for remaking this game and adding the improvements you have thus far. Having fanaticism IAS from Beast apply to mainhand weapons has made Sword Barbs viable in both pvp and pvm. Thank you! Always wanted to use The Grandfather and be able to hit 4 frame whirlwinds!!

Now a request from a 20+ year old barb player:

There are no viable whirlwind builds beyond axes and swords (dual-wield) at this time. This is due to a few long-standing and inconvenient constraints:

  • Maces range and diversity in options is lacking: The runewords and even unique options are so limited, and what is available cannot compete with Beast/Grief axes or swords. Even with all of the variations of “Maces” (mace, hammer, scepter), comparable damage isn’t possible with the base stats of all maces and the runeword options to use them with. This is quite counterintuitive.
  • 2h weapons are far too slow to ever even come close to hitting a 5 frame WW breakpoint, let alone 4. We can’t use beast/fanaticism to compensate and therefore are restricted from using any 2h weapons effectively with whirlwind. Allowing barbarians to achieve 5 frame WWs with 2h weapons through various means must be realized!

Proposal:

  1. Expand mace options: Allow Beast/Grief/Doom/Last Wish/BOTD to be made in mace categories. Or a new runeword or two that makes them worth exploring.
  2. For all weapon masteries: Remove Critical strike bonus for 2h weapons and replace it with a significant IAS boost instead. (keep critical for 1h, replace with IAS for 2h axe/mace/sword and in general for Polearms and Spears). Enough to easily achieve 5frame whirlwind, if 4 frames is too overpowered for 2h weapons (we as players don’t even know but assume this is the case).
    • Or allow IAS to factor into WW when using a 2h weapon from helm/glove/amulet
      slots.
    • Both? (40 ias from mastery + armor slot IAS inclusion).

This will allow for the coveted “Pit Fighter (mace or mace/axe combo)” and “Pole/BattleAxe/Spear barb” WW builds.

Thank you for looking/considering.

2

as a 2h sword barb user since the vanilla d2, i disagree on removing critical strike on 2h. I don’t mind 2h being a bit slower. But I do care about dmg. Go read my suggestion I’ve made for 2h.