lets get right into. war cry barb is by far my favorite character. im playing him for a long time. I was really excited for some changes and I really like the grim ward change and the leap speed but I do have some more input I wanna give - what is also important and was not addressed in the first 2.4 patch.
Problems:
MANA
Mana is by far the biggest issue. the mana cost with almost 50mana per cast is way too high. it is literally unplayable if you do not have an insight (with lvl 17med aura u even feel the difference between lvl13 and lvl 17med aura) on you or your merc.
there was already a post War cry needs mana cost reduction to be viable - #13 by Keith-1923 and I really support his statement there. my suggestion here is cut it AT LEAST in half. make it around 15-20 Mana per cast that would enable way more potential then a raw dmg buff.
DMG
The 30% is really appreciated and it helps. it makes p1 games way smoother. but if you wanna make it more viable lets say for p3-p5 games we need a bit more. I would suggest another 50-80% flat dmg increase (some people I was talking to saying it needs to be at least 200% but I think if we can reach the 4k dmg range with war cry we can do a lot of stuff) the problem here is also that it deals physical dmg (its even blockable in pvp) but we cant increase our dmg with might or concentration aura for example. that’s why we need a more raw dmg buff overall.
SYNERGIES
for the max dmg potential we already need to spent 80 points in war cry and its synergies. what means we do not have that much points left to spend somewhere else. as a war cry barb you want to spent a lot of points in battle order for more mana (really important - mana is really a thing). that leaves us with no points left for the cool new grim ward and its synergy. the 120% increase dmg and slow would fit perfectly into the kit. my suggestions is remove some synergies from war cry and give it to grim ward / find potion. just to make the build more versatile. take 2 synergies away. make the dmg per synergy higher and give us a full synergy with grim ward. that leaves us with more 20 points we could potentially use for find potion or battle orders.
RANDOM STUFF
the last stuff is just quality of life some thoughts that I had over the past years what war cry could need:
a. make it magic dmg. I mean why not? It would solve the physical immun problem.
b. give us a synergy for radius increase. the radius is really small. a tiny bit bigger would already help a lot.
I’m in the camp that says 200%… would still be a little weak. I’m not even thinking 8 players, just hell difficulty with 1 player.
The 30% increase being tested currently makes it feasible in act 5 nightmare now… but no further (with 1 player). The stun is nice, but with such a hilariously small range: there is no way I will spend time playing this character solo when I could be doing something else with the barbarian, or better yet, playing a stronger class.
Love to see a feedback post for this build I was going to make one but I’ll just add to yours. # 1- mana cost your on the right path here but I would say to make it balanced still needs to cost between 30-40 mana per cast. #2 damage - now we get to one of the core issues with the skill it just does nothing in hell pre patch 2.4 with a pimped out singer lv 50+warcry maxed synergies was about 2.1k dmg this damage needs to be more than doubled especially for this type of skill lvl scaling this needs to be closer to 5k damage that this level, so buffing the 30% to 100+% #3 radius buff this dosent need to be huge the barbs not a nova sorc it just needs a slight radius increase to have a little more area damage. TlDR- Basically double the damage decrease mana cost by 10-15, slight increase in radius also change one of the synergies to battle orders.
thanks for your reply. I hope more people leaving feedback for the war cry barb - I know its a really niche build and im a bit worried that it will be overlooked to easily.
I think you have a good point on the dmg there - maybe Im a bit too conservative on this part but I highly disagree with your take on the mana.
I played singers back and forth in different variants and mana is always and issue. I think it needs to lower than 30 to be successful.
the slight increase of the radius would be the dream. as well as the dmg changed from physical to magical.
*edit the mana issue goes way deeper than people think or aware off. the high mana cost forces you to give to your merc an insight but in a dream scenario your merc should take reapers toll to break physical immunities with decrep.
what are your options? I was running a build where I was self wielding insight. your still reach the 105fcr breakpoint and your merc can wear reapers toll and you finally can kill stuff. but now your are missing out on 6!!! potential skills points if you run double hoto.
and its getting even worse with the 200fcr variant. but I don’t wanna go too deep into that
im just hoping that the small singer barb community will be heard.
Just finished messing around with it and the war cry’s damage definitely needs to be buffed more and the mana cost needs to be reduced by half. Hopefully the devs do more with it.
To be fair, you need suicide branch, wizard spike, soj and a frostburn w/ insight merc to negate mana issue. But I feel like the mana can be an issue when you are playing on a player setting 8 without allies dunking in damage for you. Which leads to the primary issue of base damage.
I feel like the amount of skill points invested into warcry build isn’t worth the damage.
The thing is there needs to be balance with the build if being forced an insight merc is the trade off for having a viable singer barb then that’s what the trade off is dropping the mana Req to 30-40 on plenty with dual sojs and Probably lv 50+ bo. As to the change to magical damage I don’t like this for balancing in pvp, phys damage is fine. Now with insight act1 merc can handle phys immunes.
Outlined below are my recommendations to return the Barbarian to greatness…
Barbarian
The two skills Increased Stamina and Increased Speed should be combined into one skill, called Athletics (example). Stamina is a worthless stat since Barbarians tend to maximize points into vitality, which adds stamina as well
Improve Throwing Mastery by adding a chance to not consume a quantity of thrown weapon. Going back to town and repairing many times per run is highly discouraging for playing the new Throw Barb
Improve Grim Ward by removing the fear effect while keeping the slow effect and damage bonus. The fear effect is redundant with Howl and just annoying while trying to clear an area. Consider changing Grim Ward synergy from Find Potion to War Cry
Improve Find Potion by adding small bonus the Gold Find per level
Improve War Cry by increasing the skill’s radius by 1% per skill point
The knockback ability from Bash needs to be moved to Stun. I’ve seen too many players completely ignore Bash through an entire playthrough (even MrLlamaSC) because you have to chase enemies
Lastly, and most importantly, Whirlwind targeting/bugs/controls needs to be fixed and the damage scaling for early levels needs to be tuned. Currently, at first skill point, Whirlwind starts at -50% damage. At 20, it is 102% damage. Change scaling at first skill point to 7% and increase 5% thereafter for every skill point. At 20 points, you will arrive at same 102% damage. This will greatly improve the playthrough at early levels
Mana cost - I agree this should be toned down slightly (maybe 2 mana every 3 levels instead of 3 mana every 3 levels or something). Even with a 17 meditation insight and high mana it is a problem.
Damage - War Cry does not scale well in higher player difficulty, a 30% boost is simply not enough to be viable damage wise. I’m not asking for Nova damage, but I think War Cry damage needs a significant increase when you’re dropping 80 skill points into it. I think something like 4k damage at skill level 40 with 80 skill points invested would be a good starting point.
Stun - The strongest aspect of the skill, incredibly valuable and probably the reason the damage is so low. I would propose a nerf to the stun duration as a trade off for more damage. I don’t need to stun things for 8.8 seconds at War Cry level 40, I need to be able to kill them. I think lowering the stun duration to .1 per level would be a good starting point here (4.9 second stun at level 40. You could even cap the stun at 4 seconds or something).
I understand that War Cry is a “utility” skill, and that the stun is very strong for solo and group play, but even with these proposed changes War Cry will still pale in comparison to a lot of builds. We have multiple classes that can just 1 shot entire screens of mobs, so I don’t think these requests are unreasonable.
Find Potion - is among the list of the most underused/useless skill due to having no niche. Also, find item already drops potion which makes it even less worthy. I personally want it to vanish from the skill tree…
If the Dev is determined to change few aspects and willing to keep find potion, then
increase the drop rate of oil/poison potion for make it viable for double throw
Throw mastery increases oil/poison potion damage by 50% per level
Let potion damage work with grim ward (if it isn’t)
i completely support each idea. i would personally put more emphesis on the mana issue. your take on the stun is really good - i didnt open up that topic since i thought thats maybe too much to discuss. i also support the idea nerfing/adress the stun duration. i mean lets be real here if they wanna have the “easy way out - easy fix” they just reduce the mana cost of war cry by 75% and then we run double hoto and reapers toll on our merc to crank up our dmg.
I really hope they remove the fear because, as it stands now, Grim ward doesnt work for bosses or elites… so its kindaaaa useless compared to a curse or aura…
Have any of you tried putting 200-250 points into mana? Then using frostburn gloves with good caster gear. Then cast up your boo’s … You would find out that you would have something like 1000-1500 mana !!! And still have 100 points into vita. getting you 1000HP before Boo’s… If you want a caster, then you gotta BUILD a CASTER build!!!
AS for the damage, yes it is weak. But it should stay at the 2k range. What needs to happen is War cry should be procing with Deadly strike, Crushing blow, and open wounds just like smiters do. I mean why do the Paladins always get all the love? Smite and War Cry are the same skill. Just War Cry has aoe. At least let war cry hit with the barbs own X% of critical strike from masterys.
And ya, way to many synergy points invested here. And why do we need 2 other boo-crys that lower dam, att rating, and defence. Not like we can use them both at the same time???
And now we supposed to use grim ward also?? So is it buff,buff, then war cry? Or buff,buff,buff,buff— then War Cry??? WTH man? And the non melee Paladin build gets to cast some hammers with his one aura turned on, and he is god??? Come on Blizzard !!! HELP A BARB OUT???
I see guys u probably havent played wc barb before - on live server you need to max mana pool to think about wc at first place (arach/sojs/silkweave/double hoto or hoto+spirit and frostburns).
Mana cost is Ok for that skill - and please do not push bad changes.
I completely disagree with you. u can work around with a lot of mana. I have setups with 1.8k mana. but still its too mana consuming. i really wonder if we are playing the same game. with a lvl 49 war cry the mana cost is around 56mana per cast. that’s ridiculous. if you followed BT´s Stream yesterday he tested it with super high end gear - all points into mana. and a setup with 19 mana after kill. and a setup with 2k mana. AND he had still mana issues.
“If you want a caster, then you gotta BUILD a CASTER build!!!”? I disagree with that statement… other than an es sorc do you slam energy on a sorc? Nope hdin? Nope pnb necro? Nope windy? Nope etc etc.
Wc needs alot of love, sojs give bad mana I have 2 10 fcr 120 mana rings for pvm and get my mana around 2k mana and still drain it rather quickly. 150 warcries to kill hell diablo and 300+ for baal lol
I totally agree it needs mana cost reduction, and more damage for it to even be worth messing with any more. It’s already bad in pvp now due to diminishing returns
ITunes on d2r can show my singer at any time, so devs can see how much time and effort I’ve put into a singer. But instead listen to people like Llama which farm single player offline lower kurast on repeat with a sorc lol. He even admits he knows very little about pvp. Or reach out to stadiumpk n join a discord convo d2arena is getting alot of pvpers and is a great community.
I’ve played since .09, remember when act 1 mercs could shoot lighting when u add +skill items, orb when it really shined. But throughout all the patches characters have been tweaked improved and nerfed. But when you FINALLY decide to do ANYTHING worth noting with warcry this is it?? 30% damage??? But can no longer hold anyone down what-so-ever in pvp since you messed with fhr? Now it needs MUCHHH more help in damage/mana areas. A max block characters will 100% beat a singer 99/100 times. If you allow warcry SPELL to not be blockable then MAYBE just MAYBE it could be used. But as of right now this is just pathetic
Edit: also barbarian and sor. Have highest reachable fcr breakpoints, imagine when running 200fcr how fast ur mana vanishes. I keep seeing these guys talk like their isn’t a mana issue lol even with dual wizpikes with 12% dtgtm jewels= 24 15 dtgtm from enigma and 50 from a nightsmoke = 89% you’ll go oom without killing most bosses before ur outta mana and empty on belt pots lmao
And baal will mana burn your face off, better just to let merc do 100% of the work here
I would even say that find potion could be ditched for a mastery, wich would give extra dmg to warcry, less mana for all crys and more duration for all too.
