Small QoL Change - WW, Runewords and Durability

Hello,

Anyone remember playing a WW barb or WWsin and running up a massive repair bill after only a single run of something? Bust your WWsin or WW barb out and give it a shot in cows. WW prioritizes IAS on the weapon for a lot of hits, but this also destroys the weapon durability for PVM activities. From my vague recollection, a single run would net you a ~200k in repairs on your weapons. Runewords are definitely the most egregious offender, but this is true for rares as well. This will be mitigated somewhat by auto-gold-pickup, but i’d still like to see it balanced to a more reasonable level with vastly slower durability loss and reduced gold cost.

Thoughts?

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I think this level of gold sink is healthy for the game. Gold is way too easy to get, if you pick up and sell the right stuff you can reasonably sustain even the builds with he highest repair costs. If you’re running cows, your example, you should be dropping a lot of things that sell pretty high to NPCs.

I kindly disagree. It is currently a targeted gold sink to PVM WW characters whom are already underwhelming in PVM and would be able to use less charms due to having to pick up items to sell. It would require multiple inventory of items unless you are diligent with scepters/wands/Ammy’s(? I forget) per run. It is not balanced

I just made this video for you. It’s my ww barbarian clearing hell cows. I show at the start everything is repaired. The final repair cost and what I use to pay for it may surprise you.

The entirety of your argument is a logical fallacy. My barbarian in these first 2 video is not underwhelming, in fact it is one of 5 of the most powerful builds. This next 10 minute video is of my barbarian clearing Hell Chaos, killing Nihlathak and clearing Throne and Baal. The speed to which I kill Diablo and Nihlathak is unmatched, and a 10 second Baal kill is good in my books. Also, take note of how fast Lister and his minions fall. Notice the repair cost to clear all this only comes to 160K and that includes 2 merc resurrections (100K) and 5 charges repaired (45K). I’m also using two rune words.

The videos show that paying for repairs doesn’t need much gold pick up, nor many items to pick up to repair. It also demonstrates that having inventory 4/5s full of charms is not a hindrance.

This is not meant as an insult, but your knowledge of the game is outdated. It isn’t the game that needs to be changed, it’s you. And further more, the auto gold system in D2:R is completely underwhelming to the point of it being useless. It isn’t set up like D3s auto gold.

To further demonstrate the power of a ww barbarian, here is a 10 minute video clearing Hell Chaos with Nai’s Ancient Vestige (a caster set). :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

The three most powerful godly PvM barbarian builds all use indestructible weapons. Even good budget ww builds that easily clear and farm all areas of hell use indestructible weapons. You just need to educate yourself with builds made by clowns like me that have been developed over years of constant game play instead of relying on information of the past and from players who really are not that good at the game yet make outdated build guides for clicks and views.

The only time I’ve seen repair bills like what the OP is talking about is when I have stuff with charges and I’ve used the charges. I used to play zealers a lot and they could get a bit high, but not that bad. Making gold is a joke in D2, so I don’t understand the problem.

All the best melee rune word weapons are indestructible or they are rune words that can be put in phase blades, which are indestructible weapons.

That is true, but nobody starts with those (yet lol). Everybody doesn’t play characters that just happen to have everything best in slot. All kinds of things have charges, and there are all kinds of builds people can make with stuff they find.

I’m only saying that if somebody’s repair bill is that high, it’s not durability that is making it that expensive. It’s repairing charges.

I totally agree with you. I usually use Life Tap charges and Sanctuary until I’m clvl 93, then I switch to Amp charges (I pretty much only play barbarians), but it really depends on how much BiS I have and when before switching out Life Tap and Sanctuary. However my other comment about indestructible weapons was in the context of OPs post.

Ahhh damn so much effort in this post but I was referring to weapon durability only lol. I appreciate the effort but not so much the holier-than-thou tone though. I’m not advocating for some game-breaking change here. It is a very specific issue and if I mistakenly applied it to WW barbs(I’m talking in terms of killing efficiency here so yes, still underwhelming, I should have been more specific but I didn’t expect to get disected), so be it, but i’m not here to compare lengths with you. Whatever weapons you want to use or consider meta are a non-factor, the issue remains. It has nothing to do with education.

Try non-eth weapons that aren’t industructable or self-repairs. WWsin hits more per second, so Fury/Chaos claw combo that would be the perfect example. Tons of hits/second leading to crazy durability loss, and the repair bill is extraordinairy. Come back and apologize.

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I’m here as a current and long time barbarian player defending the current game from your outdated knowledge of the game which you’re using to sway change. I wasn’t comparing lengths with you. I was clearly demonstrating that your outdated knowledge of the whirlwind barbarian is just that, outdated. There are approximately 50 indestructible weapons a ww barbarian can use, and about 1/5th of those weapons are endgame capable. Again, the changes you’re asking for are not required, but it’s you that needs to change by learning new builds and how to use ww effectively.

Sir, I am trying to explain that there is a QoL improvement very specific to “ww and non-eth weapons” where durability loss is quick when you are playing the game correctly. You couple this with insane repair costs of runewords and now it is too much to bother with. Therefor, to improve life I suggest we nerf durability loss while ww’ing. A popular skill, and because some people who ww would like to do it on an asn.

I am not interested in talking about barbs. I am sorry i offended you by not choosing my words very very carefully sorrounding barbs and their abilities in my op

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Again, your information is outdated. Instead of thinking your old ways are the correct ways, learn new ways, as they are the correct ways as well, but better. As for the ww sin, she isn’t viable in endgame PvM, even if her weapons were indestructible. If you want to use her, you have to pay the repair costs. I personally don’t want the game change just so you can feel as though Blizzard has improved the quality of your life.

Btw, an Ort rune in the cube with your weapon fully repairs it. Ral rune fully repairs armour.

What a nice idea!

though for some reason I immediately thought of bolts/arrows being bought up to par with this. They dont really really relate. I think…

+1 for the removal/reduction of durability loss during whirlwind

Sigh.

What information was outdated? You seem to think i’m not aware of all the best/strongest/cookiecutter builds, but in reality I just dont care to play them anymore because for me they are simply uninteresting. If I misspoke in my OP I am profoundly sorry, I am not interested in talking about creating a build that is more efficient and negates this durability effect. But the most bothersome thing is this continues to be an irrelevant topic. I hate to say it again, but to bring you back into the argument at hand: I am not interested in talking about the way you play the game.

I am aware of asn capabilities though, thanks.

Listen, I feel this is a terrible interaction that is an outlier amongst its peer groups. The change required would have absolutely 0 effect on everyone else outside of the “Old-school-WW’er-that-refuses-to-make-a-hammerdin-to-adapt-and-be-new”(That was a joke, I dont mean to start talking about if Pally’s are the best or not) I feel it is a reasonable QoL change and would be enjoyed by many, at the detriment of nobody not even the integrity of the game. The only displeased would be the #nochanges crowd, or “because it’s dumb” This is a very specific change and you would have no idea if it happened. The perfect kind of change.

Give me an intelligent reason you dont like it

It was an irrelevant topic the moment you decided you needed Blizzard to make changes to improve the quality of you life by changing durability and reducing repair cost.

They are not going to change it. We’ve lived with it for 20 years and we are going to live with it for 20 more.

The… relevancy… of my claims ought to have nothing to do with Blizzards track record. I saw the screenshots regarding the snap cowking change and it has given me hope. This shouldn’t be controversial or whatever it is for you. Let others express themselves? I don’t know what to say man. Contribute to the discussion or kindly leave, this discussion is irrelavant to you afterall.

“@Blizzard, I don’t like making repairs, please change this so the quality of my life is improved.”

Sigh.

We’ve been over this. The message is “@Blizzard, I don’t like making repairs, please normalize ww durability loss so the quality of my life is improved.”

It already is normalized and has been for 2 decades. Again, the problem isn’t whirlwind, it’s you and your thing around how you think the skill should work in the game.

I agree about durability, for melee it causes me to have to stop WAY too often. I am kinda tired of it. Paying this or that means nothing but those frequent town STOPS… GEEZ.