Otherwise why play a barb. Every other class can aoe the screen like a god. Why not the Barb blizz?
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I think WW (and barbs, and all melee in general) need help, but I don’t think procs on WW are the answer.
I think in many cases the buff won’t be significant, and we’ll be left with WW barbs still under-performing, but the devs will say “but we already addressed the issue like you asked, what’s your problem?!”
In some cases something like Crescent Moon proccing static all over would indeed be awesome, but does that remove choices by making that mandatory BIS now?
I’m also concerned some options, like Death, that are okay on a Find Item WW barb now due to WW not proc’ing Glacial Spike, would now be a bad option since you would shatter corpses.
Right now we can chose a build that quickly procs on hit effects if we want DS/Frenzy (or even Conc/Zerk if you wanna go that route and have a shield or 2H weapon) and choose a build that doesn’t with WW if we want to avoid procs, which IMO is a nice place to be. The damage of the skills just needs to be increased without changing the overall mechanics, so skills/characters/builds keep identity.
I’d like to see them buff it in other ways, restore 2H FPA possibilities before they changed WW IAS with patch 2.4, restore decrep / chill no longer negatively effecting WW attack speed (or buff elsewhere to compensate - WW got stealth nerfed and it wasn’t warranted).
IMO to “do it right” there should be some combination of skill (all/most melee attack skills & masteries) AR/damage bonuses and item base damage all rescaled to have melee be more competitive. Rescaling base weapon damage has the advantage that if done correctly, RW that are more expensive than Grief with large %EDam, but currently do not out perform Grief, would benefit from higher base weapon damage more than Grief would, thus balancing RW at the same time. I think there’s room for some “power creep” if it’s restricted to melee builds and does NOT allow them to surpass current caster builds, so that the overall player power creep doesn’t change, but balancing around Grief has always been difficult, and this should ease that.
If that’s too big a project for what Blizzard is willing to do, then maybe a flat damage bonus like they did in the holiday bonus nights of terror would be “good enough”, and they’ve proven they can easily do it, but I’m not sure the bonus we got was even enough.
All JMHO of course.
NO ONE wants to click on every mob. So frenzy and everything else get old fast. AOE is what people use
If you set Frenzy to Right Click, you can hold Right click to aim where you run, and Barb will go that way, and attack any enemies on the way. If there’s a pack he’ll attack and automatically select the next few monster in the pack until they are dead, then continue on his frenzied killing spree way. No manually clicking every mob required.
It’s definitely an issue that people have lots of opinions on. Mine is that adding “splash” damage or proccing to WW is best case a band-aid fix that doesn’t address the real issues (poor damage/ar skill scaling and poor item base damage scaling) while also leading to losing some identity of the classes.
I’m a barb main, I prefer to run up/leap to enemies then lash about with WW/Frenzy to actually hit and attack the monsters, with my hits doing damage. I’d rather not convert it into just proccing things and having proc’d spells do all the damage. Plus in most cases those low level unsynergied spell damage will be very lack luster damage wise at end game, so I don’t think it will really get us where we want to be, aside from a few items like procing static or decrep/amp.
I’m not overly opposed to it (but am concerned about the Death/WW/Find Item interaction like I said before) but I’m concerned that it will be done in a vacuum and we’ll be left with the core issues unresolved.
Range of WW is also silly imo. Even with a polearm(Range 6) you must be basically standing on the Mob to hit it. I think i got spoiled playing a WW Barb as a main in D3. Blizzard did it right there. you lay waste to zones. In this game i wish i could farm with a Barb. But other classes are so much easier to clear areas.
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agree. ww needs to proc.
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make barbarians great again
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Agreed agreed agreed
Hard disagree. WW attacks too fast, it would be broken with things like Amp proc on Cranium Basher. Draculs would also be way too good if you could simple WW all day and never die.
- WW has insane attack speed capability
- You can’t die while in action
- Can’t be interrupted so no need for fhr or fbr
- Auto hits in aoe
- Is able to move while attacking
WW should absolutely have some downsides and not being able to proc skills is more than fair.
That’s where I’m at but I think for different reasons
But is somewhat nerfed compared to legacy D2 with the changes that make it so 2H (like the Cranium Basher you mentioned) can’t get faster than 5 FPA when 4 was previously possible.
But can die immediately after if game calculates you would have. Not sure dying a few inches over on your screen is much of a benefit. You also can’t use a pot while WW.
Not sure what you mean. It always is subject to AR check and isn’t actually AoE but quick individual attacks for enemies in range. If you’d have 5 attacks and there are 5 enemies in range, you may hit 1 enemy 5 times or each enemy once or anything in between. AoE hits all enemies in the area.
It, like all melee, is very gear dependent. It also has no synergies and skill %ed and %AR bonuses it provides aren’t great. In the current D2R version it’s now subject to attack speed debuff from chill and decrep, when it never previously was (although now allows stacking off weapon IAS - but is needed in order to hit break points that were previously possible.
It also doesn’t over-perform anywhere so currently it’s not like there’s no downsides.
That said I’d rather they fix the damage/AR in the ways I’ve stated earlier in the thread rather than make a change like this, so I agree with your disagreement of this specific suggestion.
LOL- how does barbs aoe compare to other classes? LOL. Why should i be able to wipe the screen with 2 shots with other classes and not with the barb? You sir have no idea what your talking about.
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LOL - how does anything I typed in this thread say I didn’t want Barb buffed?
Maybe read what I actually said? I’m 100% for barb (and all melee builds) buffs. I just don’t think having WW proc is the answer. Makes Death super annoying to use on a WW barb that wants to Hork, due to shattered corpses. Makes the barb not actually doing damage, but rather casting spells to do the damage?
My preference is for WW to be buffed in other ways, like the actual skill damage and AR (include some flat damage/AR bonus to help the multipliers, and increase the multipliers), buffs to weapon mastery (condense to not make it as punishing if you don’t know your end game weapon, improve bonuses) and increases to base weapon damage. Fix/undo the IAS changes they did in 2.4 that resulted in a nerf in some situations (2H, chill, decrep).
Some claim Melee is actually in a good spot, and it’s just casters that are OP. If that’s true, then buff melee to be on par with casters then buff monsters so casters and melee have similar challenge as melee does now.
I also am concerned that simply adding procs to WW will not be enough to get WW where it needs to be, but Devs will consider it “done”.
I’m also concerned it will limit gearing choices, now we’ll be forced to use specific proc-items. In my opinion it’s nice that you can choose Frenzy/DS or even Conc/Zerk for proc-based builds, or go WW to not have to worry about procs.
I agree there’s no reason you should be punished for wanting to play Barb. I just don’t think that adding proc to WW is the way to go about it, for the reasons I’ve stated.
If they fix the IAS issues I’m happy with how WW plays in terms of mechanics, they just need to improve damage and chance to hit.
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Yep, my eDeath CS barb would be dead in the water for Trav. 
I agree with all your points, making WW proc is not the right way to buff it. I’d like to see the IAS breakpoints reduced for 2H weapons and allow them to reach 4 frame WW again.
125 IAS needed for 10 WSM bases or 174 IAS needed for 20 WSM bases to reach 5 frame WW is just way too steep and pretty much forces you into getting Fanaticism from somewhere or using the BoS prebuff on Hustle to reach the faster breakpoints realistically.
I’m not saying that 2H weapons should be equally fast as 1H weapons but the gap is just too big right now, even a 20 WSM legendary mallet reaches 5 frame with 55 IAS or 4 frame with 125 IAS so why does a thunder maul (also 20 WSM) need to be glacially slow in comparison?
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Maybe ww should proc. So what if it did? Would it be OP if you’re using a weapon that procs something instead of griefs? No. I see assassins running around lighting up my screen with fireworks…
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The only thing that needs to change with WW is to make an attack on every mob in range at the same time as opposed to single attacks. This way you would actually be attacking every enemy in range at the same time instead of randomly hitting a couple mobs a couple times.
That’s my concern with it, in addition to the fact that I’m not sure it gets it where it needs to be. I’m certainly not concerned the changes (procing) would make WW OP.
I see the issues as damage and chance to hit more than anything else. I’d rather the devs start there.
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No procs for ww please. Just increase the attack rating massively and make it 4 frames for 2 handers again.