Some thoughts on possible changes to barb

Barbarian
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Personally I think the barb mastery tree is the most poorly conceived skill tree in the whole game.

weapon mastery basically pidgeon holes you into using one type of weapon and limits build diversity. Imagine being able to use eth stormlash alongside grief, could absolutely crush in pvm. You technically can now but it comes with a significant damage and AR penalty.

While this is a very radical change i feel like the weapon mastery skills need to be done away with.

Perhaps preserve a generic mastery skill so characters still get the same AR/damage for the same skill investment. At that point the tree looks too sparse. I had some ideas for skills that would be unique to the barb and give the character a bit more differentiation.

One very obvious idea I had is “Shield mastery” but i think this kind of steps on the toes of the paladin and diminishes class uniqueness. Another idea was “life mastery” giving you passive life regen + life steal, but similarly i think this undermines werewolves. Some ideas that i had that i think are better and will be more unique to the barb are -

  1. Bul Kathos Edge → gives a % chance for Open wounds, could do something like a flat 2% per level, or have it diminish sharply like natural resist, e.g. 5,4,3,2,2,1,1,0,1,0,0,1…
    Add a synergy with stun, additional 4% open wounds to stun per hard point in this skill (maybe scale it down in pvp)

  2. Bul Kathos Fury → Gives a % chance for crushing blow, in a similar vein to bul-kathos edge
    Synergize with concentrate, each hard point in this skill gives ~4% crushing blow to concentrate

  3. Slight modification to iron skin
    Iron skin is unchanged but it now provides a synergy to concentrate. For each hard point in iron skin, adds ~1% PDR to concentrate, that is in addition to increasing your defense, concentrate will give you PDR while you are conking.

  4. Spirit Mastery → a few thoughts i had for a casting related skill
    reduce mana cost for all barb skills or increase mana regen and grant mana
    leech
    or
    grant barb a bit of FCR per level, have synergy with war cry to reduce mana cost
    per hard point in this skill

So in addition to getting rid of the pidgeon hole issue of the mastery tree, i think this will provide a few unique options to barbs. Barbs will be the only class with an intrinsic soure of crushing blow/open wounds/FCR. The synergies will help increase the appeal of two of the most underused barb combat skills, stun and concentrate. AFAIK stun is basically never used, and conc while “aight” is usually passed up in favor of the generally superior smiter.
A high chance of crushing blow and intrinsic open wounds might make the build a more appealing alternative for ubers. Smiters will still boast their never-miss, higher attack speeds and superior block, whereas conk barbs would have intrinsically high CB a bigger health pool and (somewhat) superior defense.

The open wounds/CB skills would also be a generic minor buff for barbs as they would be decent one point wonders. For PVM I think this is simply welcome as barbs underperform compared to most characters. IIRC crushing blow doesn’t work in pvp, OW would indeed be a buff, perhaps too much of one, but that might be addressable using scaling for pvp.

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I’ll be happy already if the first two WW hits land as in vanilla.

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The mastery skills could be pretty much sinplified …

Wep skills divided into 1h ,2h and trow
Increased stamina should add +flat lĂ­fe .

The changes i would make would be focused into the combat skills .
-merge bash and stun . Replace stun with cleave : 2 handed wep req.

Leap attack aoe damage as a wep%
FIX WW (4th and 8th frames Bug) and make it not suk at lower levels. Also lower ww BP to 2handers to diversify wep usage . Also ww does x% more damage if a 2hander is used.

In general give Ppl tools to build the 2handed barb fantasy cuz atm there is Zero reason to go 2h .

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I like your idea of giving % open wounds or % crushing blow to skills. As this will make barb less weapon dependand, way less. And thats good.

Really there should be just 1-handed, 2-handed, throwing mastery. When you think about it, throwing mastery allows you to combine throwing knives (new blade mastery), throwing axes (axe mastery) and javelins (spear mastery) without problem!
However I think we will not get such big change like merging of masteries any soon if ever, since there are not many barb players and in polls people talk and comment more about other stuff not-barb related.

Iron skin should simply give 1% pdr per hard point on Iron skill itself. Then maybe there is more reason to pump points there.

I dont like your spirit mastery idea. I think barb should never be any master of magic stuff. He should be simple warrior or tank and related stuff.

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Yeah the spirit mastery is the most iffy one, the main motivation for it is creating some kind of interesting way to buff war cry but i get its not very lore friendly, it also might make the buffs from the mastery tree too broad.

Basically the motivation is for creating an effective AOE build for barb, because barb is the only class that doesn’t have a viable end-game multi-target build, although the new throw barb might resolve that and whirlwind while not exactly being multi-target is kind of like one.

1h/2h/throwing would be a decent way to preserve the lore friendliness, as a “general mastery” like what project diablo just feels lazy, but at the same time for a build like WW i’d like to be able to rock an etomb or ebotd and switch to dual griefs. Still moving to a 1h/2h/throwing would be a big improvement.

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You already mentioned it. Throwbarb is great AoE. I play him daily since 2.4 launched, that 50% pierce from mastery itself is great AoE. If they removed Grimward Fear effect, Throwbarb pierce in line could be used to maximum effect - imagine hoarding cows, slowing them by 50% that still follow you, you Leap attack (reposition elsewhere) and start smacking them as they are lined up.

Second tought I ve been theorycrafting is new Leap attack AoE damage. It gets better than Warcry damage early on. Its downside is its speed of applying it. Its pros is 10 mana cost compared to warcry and massive singletarget damage. Then with +combat skills you can bump it up to like 1500-3000 AoE damage. Coupling with Grimward damage sounds very good. But again sadly the Fear is contraproductive since it make cows run in all directions and dont group them.

I think we should ask blizzard for Grimward fear removal and replace it with new unique curse. Then any barb build aside Berserk will do massive damage.

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Barb’s are dead in 2.4 especially whirlwind

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I’ll get to my thoughts on Barbarian Masteries/Warcries another time but I wanted to comment on Barbarian Combat Skills. Barbarians have multiple AoE skills: Whirlwind(when fixed), Leap Attack(bit unorthadox but it’s AoE that if improved could be pretty nifty) and Double Throw if you manage to group enemies and then pierce the initial target. The rest of the Barbarian Combat Skills are all solid against single targets save for two: Bash and Stun. Both are rarely used as a primary or even secondary skill in any build so I figure I’d recommend the following changes:

Bash:
Knockback removed
+ Physical Damage removed
Bash Damage starts at 50% and increases at 10% per level(up from 5)
Bash Attack Rating starts at 50%(up from 20) and increases at 10% per level(up from 5)
Each level of Bash adds 1% Crushing Blow to attack
Mana Cost: 2(unchanged)
Receives synergies from Seismic Slam(+5% Damage) and Concentrate(+5% Attack Rating)

Bash is plagued by its Knockback effect. Its bad enough for enemies to run away(like Fallen) and having to chase them down but to knock the enemy back just feels like a detrimental effect. Also the +Physical Damage seemed insignificant when compared to other skills, hence was removed. Now Bash implies dealing catastrophic damage in one single blow and no other attribute says this more than Crushing Blow. It may be a bit overkill/OP to have CB on a level 1 skill but then again Paladins have an OP Smite at level 1 so… if we’re talking about balance, that’s the major elephant in the room.

Stun:
Skill renamed to Seismic Slam
Skill requires 2-H Weapon
Barbarian slams ground sending AoE shockwave(in similar fashion to Druid Shockwave) forward that damages/slows enemies in area of effect
Skill always hits
Base Damage starts at 0% Weapon Damage + 5% per level
Slows Enemies 30% + 1% per level
Mana Cost: 4(up from 2)
Receives Synergies from Bash(+5% Damage), Concentrate(+5% Damage) and Grim Ward(+1% Slow)

Stun in its present form simply is too weak so I drew upon Diablo 3 and pulled one of its better AoE skills in Seismic Slam. This skill would require the use of a 2-H weapon(something that really needs to be encouraged on Barbarians) and always hits so in a way this is a “caster” skill that relies on what weapon you have to deal damage. However, even with a pitiful weapon, the main draw of this skill is the sheer “Slow” effect you’ll place on enemies, allowing you to do some CC if you’re supporting your Merc or an Ally.

Btw, if you’ll notice on SS, I added Grim Ward since I intend to overhaul it when I address Warcries.

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Figure I’d add my Warcry and Mastery ideas after fleshing them out a bit.

Warcries

To start with Warcries, theres really only one skill, at most two that need attention: Grim Ward and Battle Command. Grim Ward is rather obvious, but you may be asking about why Battle Command, it’s already great. Battle Command is a cliche 1-point wonder. There’s no point in investing anything more than that but if there was an incentive to do so, then it’d completely turn Warcry and D2 Meta overall on its head :wink:

Anyways when it comes to Grim Ward, the biggest buff it could receive is to remove the corpse requirement to place it. A Barbarian should be able to plop down this Ward wherever he wants(like an Assassin Trap) and its area of effect is dictated by its level. Now instead of fearing enemies, which is the bane of all melee classes frankly, it instead SLOWS enemies near the ward. If used in conjunction with shrewd Battle Tactics, this would greatly enhance the Barbarian’s combat effectiveness while shoring up one major con of the Barbarian in that it doesn’t handle mobs very well. If he can slow them down, it helps the Barbarian a great deal in mowing them down one by one.

Grim Ward’s Slow effect would receive a synergy bonus from my Seismic Slam idea above(and vice versa). Meaning a Slow Barb could be the new CC Barb.

As for Battle Command, the idea I have for it is shall we say controversial. Currently it grants one bonus skill point to everyone while active, regardless of level(hence why its a 1-point wonder). My idea scraps that philosophy and basically makes Battle Command a must-have 20 point investment by gradually increasing the +Skill bonus based on the number of HARD POINTS invested. It’d be as follows:

0-4 Hard points: +1 Skills
5-9 Hard points: +2 Skills
10-14 Hard points: +3 Skills
15-19 Hard points: +4 Skills
20 Hard points: +5 Skills

The 0 Skill investment on +1 is a reference to Call to Arms runeword which grants Battle Command to any class using it. Since its not “Hard Points” into the respective skill, the most it can do for non-Barb classes is +1 Skills and for Barbarians itself, it merely increases the duration, not the bonus.

Changing Battle Command to above would basically make any 1-point wonder on a Barbarian effectively a 6-point wonder. Ditto on ANY class that should happen to be Battle Commanded by a Barbarian.

Combat Masteries

As for Combat Masteries, this page really needs an overhaul. For starters, Blade, Axe, Mace, Spear and Polearm Mastery should be condensed into one skill: Melee Mastery. In their place, I add Shield Mastery, Bow Mastery, Ferocity and Recovery.

Melee Mastery: Encompasses all Weapon classes used to deal Melee damage. Grants %Damage, +Attack Rating, %Attack Rating and %Critical Strike. The integer buff to Attack Rating is new and modest(+25 per level, hence +500 to Attack Rating at level 20).

Throwing Mastery: +Attack Rating bonus added.

Barbarian Attack rating at times can be annoying. Adding an integer bonus to Attack rating will make %Attack Rating bonuses from Mastery+Skills that much stronger.

Shield Mastery: Grants +Block Chance and Faster Block Rate for the Barbarian. For Barbarians opting to Sword and Board, this Mastery is for you.

Bow Mastery: Bow Barbs are a niche thing but this Mastery grants a special combat buff to using Bows and Crossbows. It has Critical Strike and Pierce like on Throwing Mastery but does not have replenishment(since you’re using Arrows/Bolts… those are easy to replenish).

Ferocity: Grants an inherent Attack Speed buff for the Barbarian. This mastery is especially useful for Non-Frenzy builds like Concentrate/Berserk and can help achieve higher breakpoints.

Recovery: Grants an inherent bonus to Faster Hit Recovery. Definitely a 1-point wonder but a very useful one.

I also have Hard point ideas for Iron Skin and Natural Resistance respectively.

Iron Skin: +1% Physical Resistance per hard point

Effectively mirrors the Assassins’ Fade skill. 20 Hard points = 20% Physical Resistance

Natural Resistance: +0.5 Max Resistance per hard point

Effectively mirrors Paladin’s Resist auras but also applies to Poison Resistance. 20 Hard points = 85 cap on all Resistances.

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Overall barb is still suuuuuuper hard to start in a ladder. WHY is this necessary?
I would greatly change the barb and buff the hell outa it. For instance, AR to whirlwind.

Also, if you use maces, you normally lack dex. You hit nothing at all.

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