Improving melee by making them less dependant on weapons and a slightly more on skill points

General Discussion
1

Attack SKILL FLAT DAMAGE

Each attack skills that don’t have a flat damage buff now get a flat physical damage bonus for each skill point

Ie: Bash gets (clvl/10)*slvl

So a lvl 90barb that invested in bash up to lvl 30 now sees his bash give +270 damage (90/10*30)

This could also be applied to other attack skills from other classes

Overall, changing masteries like this makes them more interesting and less of 1 skill wonders, they become interesting investments

As for combat skills, it makes them really worth the investment and close part of the gap with spells.

In both situations +skill become interesting and don’t ruin you rare item anymore. It also makes skiller GC interesting for barb

Note: all values in there are for demonstration purpose only they are not meant to be balanced

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While we are at it, buff barb masteries to make them more interesting, unique and worth investing points in them

MASTERIES

I think a better solution would just be weapon masteries that aren’t tied to any weapon type or play style

But rather just be a huge passive stat+ Small drawback

For example:

  • crushing mastery: + to crushing blow - to attack speed
  • precision mastery: + to deadly strike , - weapon range
  • range mastery: +pierce, - to attack rating
  • slashing mastery: + chance of open wound, + open wound damage, - hit damage%

This kind of system works for every weapon type and playstyle

Same goes for iron skin and natural resistance but half current value half new. Natural resist still gives resistance and iron skin still gives defence but to a lesser value

Natural resist aims resistance values on gear

Iron skin aims defensive values

So if you have 30pts in iron skin and natural resist and use a coa, it’ll boost its defensive stats by 30% and resist stats by 30% as well. Making it go from 30resist to 39 and 15dr to 18*

Increased stamina now buffs your melee damage based on how much stamina left you have

Formula example: (remaining stamina/clvl)*(slvl/2)

So if you have 1000/1200 stamina with a lvl 90 barb and a lvl 20 skill you have

(1000/90)*10= 110% inc damage

Having this skill prevents stamina potion from working

increase speed now not only increase movement speed but also attack speed

2

Unnecessary post; there is already a current topic about Barb Mastery reworks. Use that to continue the topic of updating Barb Mastery as opposed to the constant spam and highlight to your numerous topics, please.

9 Likes
3

Except that it’s no the same thing

This post is lift by a different issue, tackles it differently with a different solution

It’s also 10x more elaborated

And what you claim as being the same topic is only but a fraction of the topic which also adresses other topics

Stop being the salty forum police

4

The bulk of your post was related to mastery, which we have a current active topic on. The lesser part of your post, is yet another bad idea to turn physical damage dealers into mage mechanics.

7 Likes
5

Point me where the other topic talks about

  • natural resistance

  • iron skin

  • blunt mastery

  • sharp mastery

  • slash mastery

  • thrown mastery

Where on the other post does it talk about reworking then altogether to affect the items themself instead of your character?

Go ahead quote it, I’m waiting

Meanwhile you are just a toxic sad lonely soul that just wants to derail my post because it shares a single freaking Word with another existing topic

6

It was always annoying that Barbarian need to pick one weapon type. Isn’t it cool trying new, better weapons? Imagine that feeling when u have 20 sword masteries and some cool af mace just drop and its better than Ur sword even with masteries; Barb untwinked is cookie cutter, even with budget gear He is more like cookie messy smasher. Imo masteries should be changed to dual wielding mastery, weapon & shield mastery, two handed weapon mastery and throwing mastery :c…

3 Likes
7

I’d argue that it simply needs to better differentiate weapon type gameplay, rather than push you towards a certain kind of build. For example, Spear mastery could get you extra weapon reach, or mace mastery could give extra damage to undead. The point is that it needs to increase differences between weapon types, so that the commitment to them feels justified.
That being said, I’d really like Diablo 2 to go towards reset points (similar to PoE) rather than full resets, so that it feels more justified to correct a mistake (or alter the build slightly due to loot) while building a character, as opposed to being constrained to completely redoing it.

As for initial thread suggestion, the mastery suggestion puts way too much emphasis on the equipment, making the difference between mediocre and top-end equipment even more problematic. And I’m not sure why Se*calibur feels there is a need to fundamentally change how those things work. The only 2 issues are that weapon masteries are 5 times the same identical skill (plus throwing mastery now properly distinguishable) that forces a meaningless commitment to one weapon type, and that Increased Stamina is mostly useless.

8

Won’t be useless if they actually do something about it

9

I am not going to one of your shameless plugins.

1 Like
10

I agree that untwinked Barb should be one of the most epic experiences in the game and unfortunately it doesn’t feel that way.

It never felt great investing some points into mastery just to see a rare axe fall in Act 1 and not be able to use it, and then the same scenario repeats in every act and difficulty.

I guess the only redeeming factor would be that Barb does have a speed run meta to get him through normal. So you have a whole difficulty to decide what weapons you will use after normal.

But you’re right, it should be an epic adventure of picking up all kinds of weapons as soon as they drop.

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I think his complaint is you should just use other people’s posts about the topic. Someone posts about masteries to get a discussion going, then you immediately post about masteries saying the same thing and then expanding on it.

Even replying I’m keeping yours going over his, but whatever seks. Just feels like you are spamming the forums with clone posts instead of using others.

3 Likes
12

I think he just like listening to himself and wants to be praised on what great ideas he has. There’s already a recent topic started on masteries, instead of expanding on it, he feels like he needs to put his stamp on it. Just gonna ignore new topics he starts.

1 Like
13

And nothing of value was lost

14

No value was offered. I think that’s the problem everyone is pointing out. Enjoy your solo party.

2 Likes
15

IMO if barb’s damage goes up he becomes overpowered. This dude is so damn tanky. You cannot have that and loads of damage.

Just finished act 3 hell with my SSF level seventy-something leap attack barb and he literally was NEVER in any danger. Council? no problem. Dolls? pfft i got so much life AND a shield with max block and max res (except poison) and high defence at the same time. Things hit too hard? Battle cry helps with that. Wanna do some kiting? Grim ward and taunt are amazing.

On top of that I challenged myself with limited town portals (i am not allowed to buy any scrolls or books of TP!). And find potion helped so much with this. The only issue is long lasting poison.

Barb is a very strong character and doesn’t need any buffs. He’s just strong in a different way than your typical casters. He is slow, but he is reliable and unstoppable. In a perfect spot.

16

Your numbers analisis is top notch and we barbs apreciate your work with WW. But your relative comparisson between classes or concept definition seems pretty lacking.

What You just described is pure weakness . Weak is a relative concept , if You are last it doesnt mean You are “right” it means You are slower /worse than others or simply , all others are Better than You .

-you refused to call the ww buff when it clearly put a debuff via slows , wich wasnt an issue And destroyed 2h ww with a -1fpa wich translates to (You are the númbers magician…) what about 20% damage nerf? Ww changes were pure “comunism” : “hey now You can ww with a white wep at 6fps súper ez… but Also that EBOTD no longers hits af often as before”…

Back to barb: the barb is tanky , it is suposed to be , but Guess what certain cleric guy is Even tankier and deal a gazzillion more damage . Certain witch Also is tanky and if You are not blind things won’t Even reach You… just to name a few … what are their cons to said survability?

Grim ward is still terribad outside trowing barbs , simply cuz it delays your killing time (mobs running away) melee don’t want mobs running away . When we want,it is to scape and we have howl for that . Want an useful grimward? Make it aOE taunt.

You are playing your fantasy and thats ok , cool , but You KNOW , that outside horking , the barb is dead last ay everithing else . Infact érase find item and barb population drops what ? 50%?

Barbs need heavy changes , just to name a few and some are general changes. 2h wep and 2h WW. Stun is useless, leap attack is crap. , Increased stamina, dependance on swords, the horrible value of stre vs stamina , the core melee mechanics. Etc etc . Crank those up and You may have 75% of the power of a top class .

17

Honestly… without dicthing the current design and starting from stratch barbs will ALWAYS farm at 40-50% of the speed of top builds at most. It’s just a limitation of single target or a SLOW moving AoE. Even if every tick of WW one shots, it’s still SOOOO much slower than just throwing a couple spells/javs to the edge of the screen and teleing onwards.

End of the day barbs are good for two things. Trav farming and BO bots for HC. That’s never going to change. WW/Frenzy could do 10,000,000 damage a tick/swing and it still wouldn’t put them on par with Sorcs/Zons for farming.

It’s just like druids. No matter how much you buff their numbers they will never farm at those speeds. It’s a limitations of how their mechanics work. Honestly I’m okay with that. Currently mostly playing a Fire druid myself. Yeah it’s slower(though honestly respectable)… but I find it more interesting for long grind sessions as it’s not just spamming 1 button. I even mixed it up and just started rocking an Act 1 Cold Merc with an insight bow for easy of play. Got annoying swapping mercs weapon for the occasional Fire/Physical immunes on Baal wave 5, or dragging it.

18

Blasphemy! They MUST zoom zoom kill and explode the screen, they are the Barbarian after all! In all honesty, all I care about is updating their Whirlwind update, and updating Double Swing. Everything else is fine as is, and if they update unique/sets slightly, the rest will fall into place quite nicely.

19

The thing is though… WW is never going to be objectively “good” with how slow it moves/it’s range. Any decent caster build clears a whole screen in the time it takes a Barb to do 1-2 WW’s lol. Not that I have a problem with this… it’s just people that thing Barbs can be “good” with just a numbers change… will be very disappointed.

TBH Barbs are more of a “Bard” than a Barbarian. :stuck_out_tongue:

20

I was being sarcastic with the first bit, if that didn’t catch, lol. Whirlwind is fun however, and I never played it beyond a full IK set outside of the attempt I made back in 1.09 when a friend gave me a Grandfather and I’m pretty sure a Doombringer, and I never cared for it back then, but I didn’t have an understanding of how it worked either. I’m mostly a fan of Double Swing Barb, and it lacks the damage scaling to really be fun in Hell. Even my Barb on NL D2R with a Lightsabre and Doombringer is very slow killing, which really gets tedious in the skele zones, especially without Dracs, but you need the attack speed that Drac’s lacks.