I am confused. You aren’t supposed to be able to put an aura in the left click slot. It’s not available in the list. You should only be able to put it in the right click slot.
Not really. Grief still outperforms those options. If anything Frenzy is the one with at least “an option.”
I am confused. You aren’t supposed to be able to put an aura in the left click slot. It’s not available in the list. You should only be able to put it in the right click slot.
Yes, whoops I said it in reverse.
With most melee, I put my attack on right click and just hold down. For Pally your right click is occupied so you have to left click on everything.
This was fixed. In the options under Gameplay turn on Quickcast. Then on the left side, select a hotkey for your attack skill. Now you can hold down that hotkey he will attack-move without disrupting your aura.
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Yup, I like using the “back” button on my mouse for the hotkey, so I can just hold that down and run around similar to doing it with right click.
Lets be honest, melee suffers most due to 2 things. First thing is Attack rating, spells are pretty much a 100% chance to hit, melee skills are maxed at 95% which is very unfair to melee builds which weakens them slightly when you look at how many times you can miss in a row. I have missed about 12 times in a row at 95% AR, yet a sorc can just hit and moonwalk away from mobs. For melee builds, you can attack and miss and die due to continuously missing attacks.
Second thing, Gear dependent. Melee and even bow builds depends on gear in every difficulty whilst spells only really depend on the level of the skill and mana potions.
Imo, to make a melee build more fairer, make the cap of attack rating be 100% and up a equipped weapons’ dmg. I hate that the barb is supposed to be a weapon master yet he suffers so damn much as a melee class compared to the others. He is technically only a stand out class when equipped with BIS.
I like melee builds being a challenge but it’s unbalanced when they are slower, weaker and at times depending on the build boring to playthrough with instead of it being more fun and not made to be hard work compared to other builds that are spell types. Auradin is the only build that can be fun, werebear/werewolf builds are only fun due to either using other spells/summons as well as the fact you look the part. Barbs only become fun when WW/double throw are geared up.
Just my opinion.
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Just to clarify, that’s not due to AR. That’s block chance, which tends to be quite high for a lot of monsters.
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Lawbringer is better on ww. The mobility and dps is much better on ww than frenzy. Nothing is good with frenzy except grief and frenzy is only marginally better at boss killing. Because AR exists ww’s 12.5 attacks are infinitely better than frenzy’s 5 aps
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WW doesn’t proc Lawbringer last I checked… so unless that has changed… Been the issues with WW for ages. Needs it’s merc to break immunes.
TBH the biggest problem with barb, is too many syngeries on Frenzy. Between mastery, BO, and Hork they just have too many needed things to invest in.
Barb is like if necro HADto spend 20 in CE, and 20 in a curse. Or sorc HAD to spend 20 into teleport, and 20 in warmth.
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That’s one of the things I’ve done in my mod is remove the Taunt synergy from Frenzy and increase the Double Swing synergy to compensate, there’s not really much “synergy” between Taunt and Frenzy so to speak.
Why would you waste time taunting and not attacking when your FRW allows you to close the gap nearly instantly anyways? The only time I used Taunt on my Frenzy barb was when annoying flying enemies were hovering over unpathable terrain like in the Frozen River or something but that’s about it.
Not sure what I’ll do with the Increased Stamina synergy, I like the idea but it just feels terrible to invest points into IS…
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Honestly all barb skills should have been like old physical bowa. Physical skills in general just shouldn’t have synergies. Leave that crap to casters. All Blizzards “buff” to bowa did… was make me never play my bowa again.
remove Concentrate/Berserk with single weapon limit. Why can’t use these skill with 2 weapon?
Yeah, but let’s be honest, melee/physical has plenty of advantages too.
#1 Crushing blow.
#2 Way easier to deal with immunities, though this benefit is less now due to Sunders.
#3 On-hit effects in general.
Leech, Crushing Blow, Deadly Strike, PMH, etc., etc. On top of all that of the “casts X on striking”, etc. There is a lot that melee applies that casting doesn’t. And some of it scales much better with players. There is a reason that when it comes to ubers, melee rules.
TBH, my relatively budget Strafeazon and Frenzy Barb now clear most areas faster than my comparable Blizzard Sorc. The main advantage of the Sorc is Teleport, not actual killing speed. They can all clear pretty quickly, but the Amazon and Bard are actually better at killing, though of course the Barb does die more often - almost always due to Mana Burn.
And Enigma doesn’t really level it because Enigma is suboptimal for any physical build. So you have to gimp you damage pretty hard to get Teleport for physical builds.
But really, kill speed is not the problem IMO. It doesn’t seem to me that melee is “too weak”. And at end game, you don’t have to have Grief, though of course you do need something fairly good like Eth Colossus Blade Death+ in order to keep up with Sorcs, etc.
But Frenzy has some pretty big advantages in being able to use two weapons, get double the weapon effects and to have those weapons both procing on-striking type effects (which WW doesn’t do). So, when you add in an amulet, rings, and two weapons, you can have a ton of effects going off with Frenzy. Same goes for Strafe due to pierce, with two rings, amulet, and bow.
I mean does casting have some some advantages? Sure, but lets not act as if its all doom and gloom for physical attackers.
I think that’s true at the “budget” level, the problem is those past the “budget” level physical builds really only get stronger with perfect charms, and 40/15’s, where as elemental builds just get to the point of 1-2 spells, dead screen. It doesn’t matter how hard a physical build hits they just have a hard cap on target access,
While Multishot zons are an exception, their damage cap is still just way lower than the damage cap of something like Mosaic, and their target access is lower than something like a nova sorc.
At some point it just becomes how fast can I get to the next screen of mobs, and ultimately single target falls too far behind, and Multishots damage isn’t good enough, nor can they get to the next pack fast enough.
That said I think they are overall more fun to play. The pre 2.3 Zon buffed Bowa was my favor build.
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i had no idea just how awful melee was until i actually tried playing barb - a class i haven’t played since before the time of runewords - this season.
melee needs buffs stat. this is beyond a joke… when one of the best specs is “hork” spec, you know there’s something severely wrong.
whirlwind needs to be hella buffed. we’re talking increased AOE range, increased hit chance, increased damage, increased speed, increased EVERYTHING.
literally take every stat of this skill and buff it to double or triple efficiency and maybe even add things on top of that, like lifesteal and skill procs (like amp damage).
while you are at it, completely remove ALL handicaps for dual wielding - this means no damage reduction for dual wielding 2H swords - not a single percentage point.
when a javazon or sorc can just effortlessly delete the screen in 1-2 casts and i have to run around for 30 seconds, juggling health, stamina, damage, prioritize targeting etc. including getting a streak of “luck” (Attack rating LMAO) to do the same thing, there’s something seriously wrong with the game design from a fundamental standpoint.
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Yeah IMO balance was better before 1.10. In 1.10 the monsters got a lot harder, melee got some skill synergies, and some nice RW, but overall I don’t think it was a net buff, whereas casters did get a net buff.
Progression with untwinked Barb can be rough, depending on what RNJesus sees fit to give you. Once you get to things like Oath, it becomes pretty smooth sailing, at least in low player count games. My low 90s Frenzy Barb feels downright OP in low player count games with Greif/LB, Fort, Highlords, Gores, LoH, and some passable charms, but that fades quickly above P3 - P5 games.
Honestly I’m not unhappy about that level of progression or even the fact that I’m not 1 hit killing in P5+ games, EXCEPT that it feels obviously bad when other classes are able to.
So some people say casters should be nerfed to the level of melee, and I’d personally be okay with that, but could see how many players wouldn’t. I can also see how if they buff melee to the point of casters, people who enjoy the current melee level of challenge would be turned off to the OP. So it’s sort of a tricky spot.
That plus things like Grief that are relatively inexpensive and slap super hard, mean balancing is tough. But requiring GG RW to kill effectively means the progression is considerably rougher than caster classes. That’s why rescaling the base damage of weapons has been suggested so many times - Grief would get minimal benefit since all it’s damage is flat vs. %ed, but more expensive RW that have %ED mods like Last Wish and BotD would get buffed, which is justified IMO given the higher rune cost AND the overall balance of melee vs. casters. They could also give slower weapons more of an increase than fast weapons, which would give us more choices rather than PB always being best.
I agree WW could use more damage and AR, certainly, and a clean up of the 2.4 IAS changes. It’s kind of nice that they opened up some options by allowing off weapon IAS, but I think it further cemented dual PB as BIS, which kinda sucks, and now being effected by chill and decrep when it never was before sucks. Higher range for some weapons like spears, Polearms, and large 2H Swords/Axes would be cool.
I’m still not sold on proc effects for WW. For things like decrep or amp it would be awesome, but maybe lock us into certain items all over again? It would also make Death on WW shatter corpses, which would suck for horking.
I’d like to see more incentive to use 2H weapons, even a single 2H sword, so IDK about removing the DW 2H sword penalty.
A reduction of the leach nerfing that happens in Hell difficulty might also be nice globally for melee.
melee needs buffs stat. this is beyond a joke… when one of the best specs is “hork” spec, you know there’s something severely wrong.
It’s not all that bad. Maybe you were poorly geared and not speced right or something. My Frenzy Barb, even in Magic Find gear, does Baal runs in like 7 minutes or less with ease. From way point to killing Baal, even while killing everything along the way and not just Leaping there, takes no time at all. I practically just run through the mobs. Only problem is against the Physically Immune flying witches, whatever they are called. I’m sure I could do it faster if I just Leaped over everything.
It’s not as fast as a FoHdin or whatever, but its by no means horrible, and with 3 hard points into Find Item, has the advantage being able to double dip on loot.
As for WW, I’m not really a fan. But for sure, one of the biggest advantages of physical has been having less issues with immunities, which has been greatly minimized as an advantage now due to Sunders. But still, its easier to deal with immunities as physical until getting pretty highly geared in elemental, like with Infinity, Facets, Griffins, Phoenix, etc.
I’m still not sold on proc effects for WW. For things like decrep or amp it would be awesome, but maybe lock us into certain items all over again? It would also make Death on WW shatter corpses, which would suck for horking.
Horking is a garbo skill anyway which also needs to be fixed.
don’t get me wrong, its nice to “double dip” loot, and i know its one of the best skills for HR farming, but the fact that cold shatter is a thing works directly against the concept, which means items like Ravenfrost is out of the question, which is a shame since it would otherwise be a BIS item.
Necromancer suffers from the same issue in regards to his cold mages, which cause mobs to shatter which means no/less corpse explosions - another reason why skeletal mages suck even more.
this could be remedied by completely removing the cold shatter mechanic, which serves no other purpose than to screw over certain specs/classes anyway… purism be damned tbh… we’ve long since abandoned that idea with the introduction (and buffing) of Mosaic, which is an outrageously strong and ridiculously cheap runeword that just so happens to be Assa exclusive.
and now being effected by chill and decrep when it never was before sucks.
God knows why they felt this should be a thing… this was a straight up nerf, and completely uncalled for.
I’d like to see more incentive to use 2H weapons, even a single 2H sword, so IDK about removing the DW 2H sword penalty.
what purpose does the penalty serve though…? it just disincentivize the use of the barb’s unique ability to make use of double 2H weapons (swords), and nothing else.
if anything they should remove the penalty, and just change certain skills to be more effective when only using a singular 2H, such as Concentrate and/or Berserk… i dunno, its not my job to balance this, but i think most people agree that the 2x2H penalty feels awful… like why would you ever DW 2x2H when you can just DW phase blades
It’s not all that bad.
Yes it is… its actually worse than bad… compare it to any caster/ranged spec and tell me its not gimp level… now if it at least had some kind of advantage such as more single target dmg, that would be neat because at least you could be of SOME use on bosses, but that’s not the case either.
My Frenzy Barb, even in Magic Find gear, does Baal runs in like 7 minutes or less with ease.
Yeah, and any caster/ranged class does the same in 2 minutes - 3 minutes tops. which was the point i made earlier when i said a caster can delete the screen in 1-2 casts, while it takes my barb 30 seconds to do the same.
It’s not as fast as a FoHdin or whatever, but its by no means horrible, and with 3 hard points into Find Item, has the advantage being able to double dip on loot.
Yeah see, that’s the wrong way to do the hork build. if you want any longlasting value out of horking, you need to dedicate way more points into both “find item” and “find potion”.
and this is another issue in and of itself as well… investing 20-30 or even 40 points just to double dip loot properly is atrocious. these skills should be one-point wonders just like corpse explosion, teleport and other such skills.
As for WW, I’m not really a fan. But for sure, one of the biggest advantages of physical has been having less issues with immunities.
Wrong.
Physical immunity is a thing, and now we have these nice things called sunder charms which makes caster classes even better compared to the melee equivalents.
you play javazon? lul just get a lightning sunder and you’re good to go.
same for sorc, just get fire/light/cold sunder and you’re good to delete everything that might pose a challenge.
meanwhile, you get a physical sunder charm for your barb, and its a waste of inventory space about 90% of the time and simply makes you more vulnerable for that same percentage of the time against EVERYTHING the game can throw at you, since only very few mobs are immune to physical, yet all of them inflicts physical, and the barb does in fact have a way to get around this without using a sunder charm, simply by investing a single point (or more) in berserk… magical immunity? just use a different ability.
on paper this makes barb look like he gets the better outcome, until you take into account that barb has basically no AOE and are much worse off in all offensive AND defensive regards compared to casters.
Yeah I’m not opposed to that.
To be honest I suspect it was completely unintended. I don’t know anything about how the game is coded so maybe I’m way off base, but it stands to reason that if WW used to ignore all IAS modifiers except weapon IAS, and they now “unlocked it” to take into account all other IAS sources, then the game sees decrep and chill negative IAS and takes it into account.
Maybe they did think about it and thought it was unfair that it wasn’t effected by those status modifiers when other melee attacks are, but given WW and all melee have lagged behind since pre-1.10, I agree it wasn’t a warranted nerf. I could see them “fixing the bugs so we have a better baseline to tune”, like they said with the Shockwave nerf, but the WW changes happened in 2.4 and they’ve never touched it again or acknowledged the communities concerns with how the overall change hurts 2H builds with the new BPs. Haven’t heard more about Shockwave either…
I’m guessing it had to do with balance issues. If you could get full 2H damage and still benefit from DW bonuses (double hit checks on WW, and swords are always considered the 1H BPs (or at least were)), that might automatically make 2x 2H swords BIS. Instead I think we ended up too far the other way, where there’s little incentive to use 2H weapons (1h or 2H) unless you need the sockets.
This one is also iffy. For Barb you have the option to 1 point wonder Berserk, which is pretty awesome as a way to deal with PIs, however lots of PIs are also mana drain, so you often end up screwed by a pack b/c now you have no mana to berserk them. For Frenzy builds it’s also quite a few extra points in pre-reqs, whereas WW it’s just the point to get it.
I feel like Zealot Pally’s have a harder time, Phys Fant builds pretty much have to rely on gear proccing something like amp or decrep (on you or your merc), or stacking elemental damage, but that’s not leachable and usually still pretty low compared to Hell monster HP pool.
Vengeance is quasi-viable but you have to spend a lot of points to make that work, that a typical physical Zealot won’t really be able to do. Zealot does let you choose the Holy elemental auras, but again, that’s an either or build dedicated situation, not an easy to use tool for a physical Fant Zealot IMO.