I believe this is the intent, and like you point out, we’ll have to see how it works on the PTR. I have my doubts about some of the Rend changes, Ambo’s being the biggest concern, but it could be very, very powerful.
Bane of Trapped, follower CC, cold EQ, cold Avalanche, chill effects on gear, and a few others. Permafrost is the best method, obviously. Folks who want to use Rumble, well, that was never really going to be in the mix. Rumble is, plain and simple, a Fury dump that can’t be spammed. It either has to buffed as a nuke (as does Boulder Toss) or it will never deal meaningful damage.
Barbs don’t have toughness issues in most of their builds. DPS is the problem.
The difference is that previous patches that boosted barb also boosted the other classes so that the relative power difference didn’t really change. The proposed buffs for this patch don’t also “move the goal post” like previous patches, so the barb power level is likely to improve relative to the other classes, which is the whole point.
All of them are either irregular, have a relatively large cooldown or have a limited range and I personally would like to use a rune that is not Permafrost.
I remember that you and Rage made the suggestion of letting Fjord Cutter (or another weapon) to increase SS’s damage against slowed targets, but I can’t remember the reasoning behind why it should only/primarily benefit the Permafrost rune.
That was the main reason why I build my LoN/LoD Seismic Slam Barb, because I wanted to play a build that spams SS and not just uses it as a fury dump.
But if you don’t want Rumble to become too powerful, then why not suggest a weapon that buffs all runes except Rumble. There already is something similar in the game, with that one Necromancer item that iirc gives Command Golem all runes except one (or was it Army of the Dead, dunno). Then Permafrost would not be the only viable rune with the new Ambos Pride.
According to this scheme just Dust Devils create lag because of tickrate damage, still nothing that servers can not handle. Rend is now a cumulative instant damage on WW hits so people would give away their Lag Enha-- I mean Pain Enhancer to gain stability on framerates hopefully. May be Gogok of Swiftness can replace the Pain Enhancer now all WW barbs using Crimson Set as a side dish with RoRG?
I’m not sure if I got you right.
Ambo’s Pride only work with WW collision and too early to talk but I believe Hurricane skillrune most probably will be the best pick amongst all.
In case you meant other crowd control, then there are plenty under Barbarian’s skillset. Avalanche and Earthquake are two for instance.
I was hoping Fjord Cutter to be a Frenzy based legendary item with stacking chilling aura with each attack. Now I guess it will be a side dish for IK-MotE Slam Builds or there will be Cleave-Slam based builds with MotE. I was hoping for Seismic or Cleave would be paired with AS-Boulder Toss with new approaches or Overpower/Revenge to be any useful. No sign of that on the horizon yet.
I hope they consider tweaking Barbarian skills or at least look at unused skills when Blizzcon arrives.
Actually barbs were weakest but the balance patch at S11 helped a lot.
However, in the current LBs, R6 HOTA pandemic is everywhere. It probably shows +5 grs in these mean curves for barbs. So barb may actually be still behind other classes by about 4 GRs.
Agreed. Missing channeling is a nontrivial toughness nerf. WW build has too many competing slots. If the barb could use stone gauntlets with ice climbers, the problem would get solved but…yea… As it stands, doesn’t look too great.
With Ambo’s Pride in the cube, I don’t see why having free damage is a bad thing? It’s also significantly more fun than having The Furnace in the cube like a LOT of other builds
You’re replying to an alt of–guess who? Yes, an individual who posts in a nearly identical fashion, who, along with other alts, likes posts by a certain other that confuses data, fails to understand context, and argues incessantly about nothing. I’m sure you get my drift. And anyway, the individual’s points are, well, not salable.
That wouldn’t do anything to buff primary skills. They need so much work that it’s not funny.
No. Server lag is primarily due to Area Damage calculations caused by a combination of Dust Devils and the WW skill–the fact that both tick and that each tick can, and often does, proc both AD and Bloodshed.
The proposed changes are likely to reduce lag big time, but there may be other unintended problems. We’ll know soon enough.
LOD Slam will never compete with a MOTE-based Slam build because of the massive set multiplier difference.
The difference between IK and LOD is practically nothing in terms of set bonus multipliers. But MOTE gives Slam 20,000% increased damage as a base skill multiplier, and then you factor in Peak, the new Fjord, and other separate multipliers.
And that’s fine. LOD is cool, but not every skill/combo is going to work well with it.
It was meant as a direct buff to the Pro-Slam build that uses Permafrost to spam Slam and proc Trapped at a distance. I think it’s going to succeed wonderfully
I have already set mine up (Lightning build) with lamentation and Lacerate rune to see if it applies double stacks with the extra damage instantly. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.
How could LoD Slam be buffed without overpowering MOTE versions of Slam?
Maybe with an item that gives SS a certain damage bonus as long as you have no set bonuses active, but maybe there are more fancier ways to do that.
In regards to visuals and sound Frost Slam = worst Slam, but that is just my opinion. The other SS runes (Strength from the Earth, Rumble and Shattered Ground, but Stagger not so much imo) look much better than Permafrost.
Aesthetics plays a huge role for me personally. This goes even so far that I even play a Wizard build with the unruned version of Arcane Orb, because it looks by far the best, since the other visual effects for the other runes are not really aesthetically pleasing enough for me (Scorch, Spark and Frozen Orb are just giant black/white orbs).
I was kinda disappointed when these runes were introduced because they didn’t look really good, but I can understand that nothing better could be done with a limited dev team, but in regards to Seismic Slam, it would be nice if some of the better looking SS runes would be buffed as well.
Adding a damage proc to a related legendary item just like LTK spirit stone of Monks? Gyana Na Kashu or whatever. LoD/N setup can abuse damage procs, traditional specific skill damage based sets can’t.
Yeah, that could work, but the question is “What could it proc?”.
The only thing that I can come up with atm that thematically would make sense is procing an Earthquake and/or Avalanche when you hit an enemy with SS, but these skills are already getting buffed by the MOTE set as well.
SIDE-NOTE: In the next season, the varied buffs - ring of fire, meteors, angels etc etc will raise the bar of leaderboards.
While the mathematics wizards will still get it right, the levels attained starting a fresh character in next season will be different from doing a character in non-season mode.
Sooo, the new rend with WW is like the WD soul harvest build where the damage of haunt is instantly applied once harvested? (Don’t be mean if I got this wrong, I’m not into how the mechanics of the fame works lol).
