For Season 6, it would be great if the developers replaced the useless Stun skill with Cleave, a new skill dedicated to 2H-weapons. The goal of this change is to create more build/weapon diversity for the Barbarian. This skill would have the ability to hit multiple adjacent enemies, which adds an AoE ability to the Barbarian repertoire. To help make 2H-weapons viable, this skill would grant +5 Max damage per level (value will need testing via PTR). Lastly, to mimic Frenzy with the Increased Stamina synergy, this skill would have a new synergy with Increased Speed and grants much needed IAS to help bolster slower/heavier 2-handers.
Stun
Renamed to Cleave
Skill requires Two-handed Weapon
Skill now cleaves and hits up to 2 adjacent enemies next to your primary target (50% damage penalty applied to adjacent enemies)
Skill grants the following bonuses:
Attack Bonus: +5% AR per level
Damage Bonus: +5 Max Damage per level
Change War Cry synergy to Increased Speed and adjust other synergies:
If anything I could think of I would replace Stun with a skill called Smash. A mace only skill that deals fire damage to surrounding enemies. You would be required to wear a mace class weapon in order to use the skill. It should deal fire damage to the hitting target plus all monsters within weapon rangeadder. It doesn’t have to necessary be strong like sorc or druid fire but something to give the barb a reasonable amount of dps. Set it’s attack speed to reach 4.1 attacks per second (1-handed) and never misses. Kind of like Smite.
I also wanted to improve Berserk by giving it a mod identical to Smash. Have the skill do magic damage also damage monsters in nearby range on attack. Also give it a 30% chance to never miss. Lower it’s frame by 1 so it can reach over 3 attacks per second.
As I suggested long ago, the Masteries tree should have a skill to replace Increase Speed to Focus. A skill that provides dmg%, +ar, and attack speed increaded by. Provides 1% ed and 20 ar per level.
Just move Increase Speed to Increase Stamina. At level 12, Increase Speed is available where it provides both speed and stamina. A nice buff to improve the barb by a whole bunch.
These changes need to happen. It’s not year 2000 anymore. I mean c’mon. This should have happened by now.
I support something like this happening. Gives more viability and options for 2H and also gives Barb a bit better AoE without resorting to flat out “splash damage” everywhere, which I’m not as keen on.
I always thought a Cleave skill could either increase enemies hit or the “sweep arc” with more points, but the AR and damage bonus you’ve highlighted makes sense too. I do wonder though, is the flat max damage enough? +100 max damage at lvl 20 isn’t that much if you don’t have ED on the skill itself, but I suppose with the synergy and mastery you’d still have a decent amount of ED to multiply things through. Like you said, value will need testing. Some combination of ED% with the damage may be needed though, even Bash is only adding another 100% ED, which would be the only %ED the skill gets that’s not from the mastery. Compare to Concentrate at 290% at lvl 20, Frenzy at 185 with it’s 2x damage synergies on top of it, even WW is at 102 and (presumably) has much higher FPA and area of influence, although the max damage will certainly help offset that some, so yeah IDK, testing needed for sure.
Other concerns is that you’re looking at a lot of skills to potentially max:
Mastery
Cleave
Bash
Concentrate
Increased Speed
Plus the Barb staples of BO, FI and now Find Potion.
So that’s a lot of points to try to maximize damage output. That said maybe depending on weapon choice and how the break points work out you don’t need as many points in Increased speed, and similarly depending on gear you may not need the AR from Concentrate. So maybe that many points is okay in terms of “options/choices” trade off, but it may be more harsh than some other classes/builds.
Almost would propose just moving the Bash 5% Damage per level to skill itself, since Bash is already a synergy for DS. That way you save up to 20 points that you can play with for things like BO/FI/FP.
Keeping the Concentrate synergy would be kind of cool though, if you maxed both Conc and Cleave then you could use both situationally in the rotation with Berserk for PIs. High defense higher damage (maybe?) single target vs. faster attack with some AoE. Might be cool especially if Conc got some love like other threads have proposed.
I do like your idea of removing Bash synergy entirely and keep Concentrate and Increased Speed synergies. This would free up some points to make a Cleave/Conc Barb, with Berserk for PIs as you stated.
I was thinking if we removed Bash as synergy, a Cleave/Conc Barb with 1 point in Berserk for PI’s would work quite well. If we use all 110 points, it looks like a solid build with maxed out BO to boost both Conc and Berserk. Also FI with +skills works nicely…
This 2H build would have maxed out Cleave with synergies, has Concentrate on swap with sword/board for defensive bonus in dire situations and Berserk for PI’s.
Maybe instead of removing Bash as synergy, it would make more sense to replace it with Berserk for +1% Magic damage per level. This would be the same as Concentrate.
Since the Barb Combat tree already has a “dual wield” branch, I always wished it had a “2-handed” branch on the other side as well, with a general branch down the middle.
That would be a pretty big overhaul though, but at least one dedicated 2H skill would be nice.