After seeing the new “blade mastery” and after watching Mr. Llama torture himself in his xbox barb playthrough, I thought of an idea for a new barb mastery.
First Combine Spear and Polearm Mastery.
Then add a Missile Weapon Mastery (bow + xbow) with similar bonuses to the new Throwing mastery.
Will it be the next best thing? No
But it would be cool to theory craft around a bit. Maybe they’d add a unique barb helm with multi shot or something.
With this, bows would have indirect synergies with all classes. The only thing you can combo between barb and bows atm is Howl and Battle Cry which lacks range. Maybe Grim ward with this new patch coming out.
Bow/Xbow Combos:
Ama-Bow skills and passives
Paladin - HF, Fana, Holy Freeze…
Sin - Venom, BoS, Cloak
Sorc - Enchant, maybe Blaze for kiting
Druid - HoTw and summons
Necro - Curses and summons
Barb (Bard lol) - shouts, grim ward, new bow mastery
You do realize that there actually aren’t any viable daggers in the game to warrant use? These are changes made without much consideration.
They could have just condensed the masteries into melee weapons and ranged… 
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Daggers is for throwing knife just like axe mastery is for throwing axes.
But I get what you’re saying.
Throwing weapons fall under throwing mastery.
Daggers are a separate weapon class…
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Grief+Fleshripper doesn’t sound bad for boss killing on Frenzy Barb actually. Or heck just double Fleshripper on switch then finish on Grief+Lawbringer/Last Wish if you’re rich.
I still think Sins should be able to Dual Wield Daggers though.
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From my modding experience I’m pretty sure Throwing knifes are both thro and knif class.
Might be wrong tho. I’ll have to double check
Most if not all the wikis say they are also daggers.
I’m not at home atm so I can’t test it.
But, this might mean that maxing both blade mastery and throwing mastery would benefit a T.knife barb. One would boost melee damage on Frenzy and the other on double swing.
Same as throw barb builds that max Axe mastery and Throw mastery.
I vote just make Throwing Mastery into Ranged Mastery, they’re already adding Pierce and quantity stuff, but combining spear/polearm and making a dedicated bow/Xbow mastery works just as well. And yeah it would be nice for my xbow barb to be more viable than he is, it’s not like he’d become anywhere close to broken or OP with a little love, and all the other classes get to use bows better some way some how, why is barb left out of the fun?
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Yes dual dagger bladesin would be so cool.
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Daggers on blades help alot the leveling dual wielding though.
Agree. If we had melee 1H, Melee 2H and ranged weapons would be great.
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I can get behind this change
If Barbarian get any type of bow mastery before Paladin get’s proper 2h weapon support. I’ll be super mad.
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They definitely beed to create more incentives for 2 hand builds across the board
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- One handed mastery for all one handed weapons.
- Two handed mastery for all two handed weapons.
- Ranged mastery for all thrown and ranged weapons.
Done.
While they’re at it, increased stamina should increase mana/life regen.
Iron skin should also provide block chance when using shields.
just wait till i make my dual eth zodded fleshripper frenzy barb
I do fancy an idea to have a subpar bow build on every class (like sorc and paladin currently have), but barb’s skills just don’t fit…
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Even something like ghostflame would be a good swap for the magic damage to counter a phys immune.
Bow mastery belongs with amazons, not barbarians.
True that, I have two Fleshrippers waiting for my challenge build Uniques Only WW Barb, and those two Fleshrippers will be used/come in very handy for my weapon swap to take down Bosses. I was going to use them even before the upcoming change/buff to Sword/Blade Mastery, lol…
But we have to get bow mastery figured out before we can even THINK about Wand Mastery and Staff Mastery!
Thanks for reading,
Floopay
Isn’t Staff Mastery already in game via Mace Mastery? I’m pretty sure it works. Wand mastery is just silly though, no one wanting bow barb (which already exists) to be somewhat/slightly more viable is asking for silly or crazy stuff. Actually I just looked it up, apparently Mace Mastery also already affects Wands, lol