Updated this thread with some additional suggestions.
See the main post here: Simple and Practical Class Balance changes - looking for feedback
I have a “buff” for smite that is perfectly in line with how the devs would do it if the paladin was a druid or barb.
Increase smite damage per level by 5%.
Sanctuary aura now synergizes with smite. Every hard point in sanctuary gives smite an extra 0.1s stun duration and converts 1% smite damage to magic.
Due to an unintended bug, smite can now be blocked and also treats the shield as a 1 handed weapon. As such, it no longer benefits from any weapon mod on the offhand weapon that another dual wielding class wouldnt also get.
New runeword
“Tyrael’s Wrath”
Scepters only
Cham Gul Fal
Freezes target on hit
20% bonus to attack rating
10 to strength
+3 to all skills
+3 to Holy Shield
20% faster hit recovery
40% increased attack speed
Slain monsters rest in peace
Lvl 1 salvation aura when equipped
20% chance to cast lvl 10 lifetap when struck
grants “sanctification” buff that lasts for 6 seconds after a successful hit
Sanctification
Upon a successful hit with smite, sanctification buff gives smite a 25% chance to ignore block
Players under the effects of sanctification heal twice as effectively from all sources.
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good change overall
easy to follow and rebalance the next patch
only issue a lot of coding in these change because d2re dev team is only 1 guy working in the basement of is house
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You’re not wrong there. I’ve tried to keep these changes as close to “soft coding” as much as possible for this reason.
I’ve made a number of edits to this post over the past few days, looking for feedback from all.
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I agree with the vast majority of the start.
I disagree on the Mosaic/charges side. I think that charges should not be consumed but only run out without use. The mechanic is too messy with percentages. Claw mastery could then grant extra time like the Increased Speed synergy for Frenzy. At early levels, you might have something like 6 seconds before it runs out, allowing an extra couple of hits. When maxed you could get up to 15-20 seconds similar to Mosaic. Then they can just drop the chance to consume from Mosaic, as it’s decent enough to still be useful for the price with the 8-15% each elemental damage boost.
I don’t agree on the nerfs to Fireball to encourage the use of Meteor. People don’t use meteor because it’s clunky. Nerfing Fireball wouldn’t stop it from being clunky, and would just discourage people from playing a fire Sorc.
I don’t agree on the changes to Spirit and Grief. While the runes are cheap, it still takes several re-rolls, and a Monarch shield for all but the Paladin. On the sword side it’s only a short transition piece. I do agree on your ideas to make a melee equivalent to spirit.
I think Grief is fine as is, and that the other weapons are the issue. Increasing the base damage on the weapons - as you have done, but maybe a bit more - would help the higher level runewords shine. I’d love to see BOTD being the chase weapon.
I’m not 100% sure on the +1 damage etc on skills. All the skills provide percentage weapon damage bonuses, so I feel like the more natural fix would be to buff the base weapon damages. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of + damage, but I currently lean towards the weapon damage fix instead. I’m open to hearing reasoning for the other side.
Just adding one last part to say that I hope that the above doesn’t come accross as overly negative. It was a very large post, and I was just trying to provide feedback on the lines that I thought needed adjustment. Your post has obviously had a lot of thought put into it, and I mostly agree with you.
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For game play, I think dolls should be nerfed. They are rough on melee. I am plan on making a spearazon this ladder. Normally dolls can be found in the Flayer Dungeon, Durance 1 and 2, Icy Cellar, and the Throne Room where they are red and blend into the floor. 
I perhaps phrased this in a weird way but what I really meant is meteor comparatively to fireball didn’t get as big of a nerf to try to entice more usage out of it.
With fireball receiving nerfs to it’s synergies in the same vein as lightning and nova, fire builds may rely more on meteor since they are spending slightly more time clearing content and might now find that meteor does play a role in improving clear speeds.
That’s why I don’t want to alter their final stats, but those two runewords in their current state are still best in slot items for a lot of builds even if they don’t get perfect rolls anyway.
I don’t know… If a perfectly rolled rare melee weapon can barely compete with the strength of grief, then that sounds like grief is the item that doesn’t fit in with the rest of the picture. Still, it’s why I haven’t nerfed the stats on grief but just changed the required runes to roll one.
Even if grief required a Jah rune to roll, I think its strength still makes it worth it, and certainly more economical than say rolling a last wish or fury.
The idea is really to implement both approaches. Both approaches have the same higher level purposes but fill slightly different roles.
Skills with flat damage
This helps early game melee builds to be slightly less gear dependent in case they get unlucky with their item finds along the way to nightmare and hell.
Lots of melee based damage skills currently have enhanced damage only, but enhanced damage on a very small number still doesn’t help the situation.
This change also makes +skill gear or sinking hard skill points into skills more impactful, especially during the late game where that 7% enhanced damage per skill level does very little.
Weapons with improved damage
Improving damage on certain weapon types aims to bring more diversity in weapon choices that melee players decide to use.
Crossbows for example are not a great option for bowazons, but with buffs to crossbow damage, we might come across more situations where someone might choose to use a crossbow.
All good mate, thanks for the feedback 
That’s certainly another approach that has some potential to explore. Some reasons why I’m still leaning towards the original suggestion, some which you may agree or disagree with:
Requires a hard code change
It requires adding a hard code change to introduce varying time levels on charges.
By contrast, adjusting percentages on chance to consume a charge is easier since this only affects the probability of charge consumption which already exists.
Not big enough of a nerf
I do think your idea so far is not enough of a nerf, it might affect assassins doing Baal waves, Shenk/eldritch pair or low density terror zones, but in Chaos, cows, pits, they will be zooming just as fast as now.
Forces assassins to use enigma
With timers shortened, assassins will have a greater dependency on enigma to make their build work to help keep the uptime on all their charges.
It might be somewhat of a moot point, but it would be nice for budget dual mosaic builds to be able to use hustle and not get frustrated with losing their charges all the time.
Doesn’t solve the visual overload issue
The issue of visual overload and graphic card stress doesn’t get solved with the chance to not consume a charge stays at 100%.
Skill ceiling
With charges not guaranteed to stay online after a finishing move, this creates a playstyle that forces assassins to pay attention to their charges. It honestly doesn’t sound like a bad idea in my opinion, especially once we get the other quality of life improvements implemented.
I agree, make the explosion much less punishing or have a short delay.
I actually think you backing down the flat damage for WW may leave it too weak, but it’s probably a good starting point for PTR especially if you are buffing base weapon damage too.
IMO both would be nice. Bump the base weapon damage but have the skills provide some flat damage (in addition to the percentage based ofc) to help progression when you hit the wall and can’t do high enough content to get better weapon bases. At least your skill points would give you some more flat damage to be multiplied through, so you’re less reliant on RNJeaus.
I agree buffing base weapon damage to leave Grief where it is but get other more expensive rw that give %edamage to perform it.
Even with Fort and Grief and other high end gear barb damage starts to fall off real bad above players 3, so I don’t think Grief current performance is too much.
I also agree that barb builds, especially frenzy are extremely tight on skill points, so condensing some synergies while boosting overall damage and attack rating would be awesome.
Agree on rethinking WW breakpoints to make 2h viable again and fix the decrep/chill speed debuff that WW never had before, either by making it immune again or buffing it further in other ways to compensate.
I’m not phased if it’s +1 or +2 per skill level either way; I thought +1 would be enough for now in conjunction with everything else including the other buffs, caster nerfs and fixes to the IAS breakpoints for 2-handed weapons.
Afterall, the goal is to write this post up for something that the devs can take and start testing, not to get everything correct right here right now.
Side question, does anyone know if Frenzy improves the Barbarian’s attack speed for other skills such as Double Swing and Berserk, as long as one or more Frenzy stacks are active?
FYI for those curious about the 2H Whirlwind nerf, see this video here:
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Completely agree, like I said it’s definitely in a good place to go into PTR.
Yes it does. I believe some people have even tried that to get more favorable WW breakpoints. Personally seems pretty clunky to me and now you’re having to get frenzy and possibly increased stamina for the duration just to get back to where WW was in legacy.
For berserk its pretty awesome though. My frenzy barb with Grief PB berserk super fast if I have frenzy stacks up and switch to zerk for PIs.
I think it’s common for people to charge up with frenzy and then switch to DS also, but I personally only use DS for situations where I’m out of mana.
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Added some extensive notes about the Martial arts Assassin changes.