I brought the popcorn.
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Let me address a few of the arguments flying around.
- âThe buffs to some of these sets arenât high enough, all these builds should be balanced by top clear.â
Well, that would honestly be fine. Balancing by peak or by average are both perfectly good routes to take, but you canât do both. I opted for average because I think this represents the best value for the most players. Average players, who might only drop 25 keys or something like that on a clear, will find all these builds to feel similarly powerful, with the lower fishing builds probably having a slight edge. Only super-serious tryhards willing to drop hundreds of keys on a clear will actually get more bang out of the high fishing builds.
- âThe buffs to the weak sets are too high, because the clear numbers will creep up over time.â
Well, first, thereâs already a âpadâ of a lower buff number on those builds. If I underestimated their potential, then the most likely outcome is that they will balance along the lines of âtop clearâ instead. Which, as I said, would be fine.
Second, when Zodiac Rend was created, it was completely new, and so estimating its potential was difficult. In contrast, builds like Ik HOTA and Leapquake are not really âunderplayedâ. They have, in fact, an enormous amount of play time by numerous skilled players, spanning years. The amount of data there is enormous. So the likelihood of those builds overshooting the mark seems very low.
The bottom line: This is -of course- not the only reasonable balancing scheme that could be proposed. But itâs as reasonable as any other. The numbers make good sense, and if they are off, they are not off by much. If you donât like it, there are other suggestions out there, like Xelâs huge list of ideas for all classes. If you like that, go advocate for it.
In the end, itâs all in Blizzâs hands. Weâll all just have to wait and see what happens, from the back seat, as always.
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I am never a big fan of huge single multipliers, so my suggestion is to always distribute the buffs out if possible. Looking at specifically Fire EQ and Vile Charge because those two stand out the most from the suggestions:
Lut Socks: Increase damage of Earthquake by 200% on top of casting Leap 3x
Vile Ward: Increase damage of Furious Charge by 200% on top of 35% increase per enemy hit.
This way Standoff doesnât need a 2,700% multiplier, and then MotE wouldnât need a 50,000% multiplier; which both just sound kind of ridiculous to me. But I guess that is where D3 is heading isnât it?
But either way, my suggestion as usual - slap buffs on other items. Distribute the buffs around, that way you donât jump to 1,000,000% increased damage after finding one item.
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Hey Jako, nice to hear from you!
I definitely hear what youâre saying. I thought about a bunch of that stuff myself. The reason I didnât go the âdistributionâ route is basically just simplicity. If you take away some of the buff to MOTE(6) and add new functionality to Lut Socks, that means Pro-Slam also wonât get a big enough buff. And as a result, instead of just buffing MOTE and Tribes, you now need to buff Lut Socks and Fjord Cutter as well. Itâs just more work for Blizz to do, at a time when they are (hopefully) looking at many builds for all classes.
Same thing kind of goes for Remorseless/Standoff/IK⌠while these buffs seem big, they donât cause any actual problems in terms of gameplay. Also, loading more of the buff for Vile Charge onto Vile Ward not only adds yet another item that needs attention, but also makes an already very fishy build even more so.
Ultimately, I would generally be fine with more dispersed numbers, but considering the amount of work Blizz has ahead of them, reworking tons of different items seems unlikely.
Edit: actually, I retract what I said about your proposed buff to VW making VC more fishy, since itâs an added flat bonus, rather than per-target. Still more work for the devs, though.
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Itâs far from an easy build, but weâre not really discussing âeasyâ vs âdifficultâ builds; that was a stance we held on the initial proposal, and one that I personally agree withâmostly. But here and now, weâre focused on getting all major builds into relative parity with Rend, and, as the devs themselves had stated, I believe Rend is in a fine place. If anything, I want other classes with builds weaker than Rend brought up to its level of power, but in no way should that entail nerfing Rend.
For the record, Rend is not an easy build. It requires the constant management of 2 cooldowns across two skills, precise control over Spear, excellent map awareness and grouping, and the correct application of hard-cast Rends in density on Physical COE cycles. We can get into a semantics debate about what manual difficulty means in D3 (but letâs not because I have no interest in that), but Zodiac Rend isnât a brainless build, particularly when youâre pushing it to its limits.
Itâs worth noting that we are advocating for our easiest build, Fire EQ, to be on par with Rend.
Donât hold your breath.
Criticism is one thing, but the same tired âNerf it!â argument that we, and then WDs, and then DHs, and now us again have had to listen to is, well, tired. And Iâm just not having it or listening to it, and Iâm certainly not taking that kind of nonsense seriously. You can support a different approach and we can disagree about methods, but when it comes to nerfing, Iâm 100% against it and thatâs not going to change. You and the Fun Police can feel . . . at liberty to beat your dead horse elsewhere.
This argument ignores the realities of Barbs. For our top clears most Seasons, the strongest build was Vile Charge, a build that relied on gimmicky wall-charging (some have argued it is an exploit) to achieve the maximum possible potential, and the build was extremely fishy, more than most of our other, weaker builds. The gap between VC and our other builds was substantial, and most of our highest clears required far more Paragon and better gear than other classes.
If you look at our original Barb proposal, youâll notice we discuss a specific historical context for buffs, and focus on more than leaderboard results.
Thatâs not important. Or rather, it is, but itâs something we never asked for, and we have often campaigned for, and failed to receive, any meaningful role in group play other than zDPS Barbs. I very much doubt anyone thinks of playing zDPS as playing their favorite class in a way that feels satisfying; rather, I think that even people who enjoy playing zDPS (Iâm one of them) enjoy playing that particular role, regardless of class.
I feel confident in saying Barbs would have happily given up our zDPS roles to other classes had the returns been the same. I think everyone would be on board with that. But the devs rarely balance group play, so thatâs out of our hands. What youâre arguingâthat Barbs have been locked in group play for yearsâis irrelevant. We didnât ask for it, and it doesnât reflect what Barb mains (or even Barb enthusiasts) actually want.
Very well-put.
Just to be clear: The arguments to nerf this, nerf that, Barb was so strong, blah, blah, blahâtheyâve all been thoroughly debunked on more than one occasion by folks such as Phoenix, Pro, Ulma, and myself.
This is a very important point, one that is often overlooked or ignored. We are not asking for buffs simply to insure that the tryhards can lock in perfect max parity with every major build. Forget that. No one except the tryhards of the tryhards truly cares about that, because no one but those very, very few individuals couldâand likely wouldâever achieve anything remotely close to this.
Our buffs are meant to achieve relative parity for all players, but definitely for the largest player base.
As Rage pointed out, that wouldnât provide the necessary buffs to other builds, such as Pro Slam, and if you buff Fjord too much, it could threaten to make other set-based Slam builds than MOTE, the set that actually incorporates Slam into its multipliers. Kind of a rock and hard place scenario, you know?
Itâs also less realistic to expect brand new affixes as opposed to larger numbers on existing items. And as for D3 heading this direction, well, it isnât heading there; it arrived some time ago and is sitting in the parking lot, chain smoking, and waiting for the heat to taper off.
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I watched ZeDark worldwide #1 rank barbarian era 11 clear on youtube. I did not see wall-charging. Am I wrong? What time stamps on the video did he do it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ihk0iouPI
To you and others. Other sets of players might like to have been in the meta for 18 straight seasons. This does not mean that barbarians should not have a good DPS solo build.
I have not seen any forum members who have claimed that barbs on historically strong throughout time. I have seen the argument that barbs were the weakest class for years debunked using D3resource as well as other diablo website with D3 game data.
As explained by darkpatator, a player that ranked top 5 worldwide across many classes in era 11 and era 12, the ww/rend barb is one of the easiest builds in his eyes for high clears. Since he played many classes at a high level, I value his thoughts on build difficulty as someone who has handson experience.
No, youâre not. But most every other clear required it, and the reason he didnât need it for that clear is based on the quality of the rift and Pylons, and that he could have taken the build a few tiers higher (I believe he estimated 137+ was possible). That doesnât change the fact that the build, like R6 HOTA, relies heavily on wall-charging to focus stack acquisition/DPS vs RGs, and that the vast majority of players who donât have 10K Paragon will be ramming their heads into walls non-stop.
Thereâs also that fact that this is from a 10K Paragon player and that 135, much less 130 wasnât remotely feasible for most players (you know, the ones weâre targeting with these buffs).
I think you misunderstood.
Weâve never advocated for zDPS roles, and itâs always been out of our hands. Weâd gladly trade to another class, but no other class has the tools we do. Thatâs on the devs, and it shouldnât impact what buffs we receive.
But the more important argument is the mistaken notion that playing a zDPS role = playing your favorite class in a way you enjoy. For many, it doesnât; many top zDPS Barbs are, surprise, not Barb mains, because zDPS is looked at by most players as a necessary role akin to a chore, and not a perk for the class as a whole. Itâs important not to conflate those ideas.
You must have played a different game than I. Itâs definitely been debunked, and if you want to look it up and do the research, please do. Iâve been down that road and Iâm done doing other peopleâs homework for them.
I donât care what Dark said. Heâs made more than one ridiculous claim in the Barb forums before and after his enforced vacation from the gameâtwice. He is not a legitimate (in the strictest sense of the word) authority. I prefer to listen to Ulma, AKA Archael, and other top players, including new authorities like Chris, who push the build to its limits on the regular, and folks like myself who have been dogging it since Vanilla when you had to get just the right gear from the AH to even get Into the Fray to give you perma-Wrath.
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Since wall-charging is allowed by Blizzard that means the estimate that the top clear is several GRs higher than 135. A 12 GR buff means it would clear 150.
I have done the research.
I even posted a link earlier. Barbarians have been âaverageâ since RoS released. Barbarians have been the top and they have been the bottom solo class. Other classes have had similar fluctuations and have been average during this time.
I do not know what ridiculous claim that you think he made. If it is about him clearing GR 140 during the PTR and the resulting lamentation change, he was right that the build was really powerful (the nerfed ww/rend build did GR 148 where two builds that cleared GR 147 and GR 148 were nerfed by Blizzard in patch 2.6.7.
The top end of the leaderboard is infested with botters. A bot can get you the gear but it can not complete the GR for you to be top 5 in the world.
I respect Ulma. He has been a high caliber player on several class leaderboards. I have not seen him comment specifically on the difficulty of the new ww/rend build in comparison to other barb builds or other classâs meta builds. He has requested nerfs to another class in threads like the one linked below.
Chrisâs play time (>95%) is on barbs. I do not know how well he knows the difficulty of other classâs top builds.
Was waiting to see if the charge was from a player with paragons that doesnât matter to 99% of players. I hated charge and the mechanics of it was toxic.
As far as it being easiest? My WD is easier, my previous seasons with impale or MS was easier, my crusader was easier, and my frenzy build is easier. Non of these I have to rely on using a skill with a wonky hit box to pull mobs to me, I didnât have to hard cast any of the auto cast spells in certain points, and the mobility of the build (ww) has to have mobs to work. Canât just spin around to get away or to another pack if you go the wrong way.
Ever died on Wwrend using the optimal weapons and got death locked? I have, you donât start off with fury to wwâŚyou have to get hit basically to get enough to start all your buffs back up from scratch.
As far as I have seen over the years, there has been a plethora of classes and builds in each that can reach the top for that time period. Not talking about era 11, so much in so many classes have been changed since then. Ww was probably #1 in most cases solely due to it being the most wanted skill to be used, iconic, fun, good mobility.
P.s. I hate zbarb and even using barb since the beginning, I have never used a zbarb. Give the role to someone else, I wonât cry.
3 Likes
I would like 300th Spear to increase Rcocheted by 3 axes, but Idk how much of an increased multiplier it should have. I think that Arreatâs Law should have a fixed Fury generator of anywhere between 8-12 (RNG & not determined by distance).
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Iâm looking at your post and thinking, what is your argument? This thread is about a community request for buffs to Barb builds. And thatâs it.
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I think that is the problem, the balancers have little or no idea on how to balance their own inter class builds so they have to knock down anyone who might have a grasp on what the individual class builds might need and not get too greedy, to even get close to any kind of balance in a specific class, much less all the classes and builds in the game!
I also think that if we leave it up to the Devâs to decide how and what needs to be âbalancedâ, without good input from players in the know, we will have even a bigger mess of a game when it is all said and done. 
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Why I said nerf was more of the perspective from me that rend isnât a hard build and as such itâs not considered âworthyâ of being so strong. This was only to show that how a build is viewed differs from person to person, as such you shouldnât put them into different categories because you believe one thing. It wasnât an actual call to nerf rend.
If you start putting them into higher maximum and higher average, youâll probably end up with quite a few high maximum and high average, because the builds change depending on what level yoou run it at. Rend is the perfect example of this, it has a superior max to any other barb build and itâs average is really high because you dont have to worry about certain things, you can be a bit more easy on the pylons and hard casting of rend and still do well, because itâs really not needed going down the levels, for something like IK hota which doesnât have great average clears, you still put it fairly low.
See my point? Iâm not advocating for everything to be completly equal in playstyle or power, in fact I expect some discrepancies here and there, but I dont value a build over the other in this case. Set the maximum to somewhat the same, let people figure out the best para farming build,speed farming build, t16 build etc, and then you have the knowledge that in whatever you choose, you can pick the build youâre best at and push with it.
Itâs probably not, at that level, but it doesnât change the fact that other builds run into similar problems at higher levels. Which is why I advocate that all these builds are treated equally in the eyes of buffing.
Ofcourse, I get that you can get tired, but itâs only an opposing opinion, as much as youâre tired of our side, we are as much tired of yours. Calling it fun police and refusing to acknowledge that side, I dont see it as a valid strategy.
And at this itâs not even just ânerf it all!â, itâs more having different views on how the buffs are being treated. People arenât dismissing the fact that these builds need buffs, they just question the numbers youâre using, and the methods on how youâre doing it. So dont lump everything into the âfun policeâ, treat the critique for what it is, opposing views.
Hereâs a tip, instead of heading to the barb forums to call out how unfair youâre being treated, face the criticism and either debate it or take it in. You have a lot of yes people over at the barb forums so your word carries heavy over there, but here itâs more open and people are more inclined to voice their opinion.
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Just chiming in to say I agree with most of the ops changes. Thanks for putting in the effort.
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Here we start again.
I checked a few numbers and I believe a slight buff may arrive those builds but I also foresee that at least one of those builds listed will be left in the dust and one of them will not see a noticeable buff to begin with.
H90 seem to be doing okay for now and I believe it wonât receive too much of a tweak soon. Additionally I think one of the high fishing required specs will be left in the dust to rot if their skillplay (reflexes, effort to manage and sustain etcetera; itâs developersâ scale, not mine) is not up to par with others. While each build might read as a âGR numberâ for you, it never was the case for developers who made this game as they were more inclined with finest details.
If developers deemed the buildâs place fit, then itâs due to many different elements that you can not fathom and itâs not because theyâre lazy or donât play their game like you believed so. They playtest the game for months before releasing it with each and every class tweaks. I hope weâre clear up to this point with all.
From the sound of all, youâre looking to rally others for a powercreep but fret not, youâll get it. Just not on the scale you wished for.
Just remember, opinions are opinions and you can not dictate anything to anyone while developers thrive to be objective. If youâre really good at something, listen to the people and try to reason with the scales, math and measures instead of calling them names.
Iâm telling this to both parties, Iâm kinda tired of endless debates and bickers.
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Are you sure thatâs the hill you want to die on? The words of a banned cheat do not do much for the credibility of your argument.
Also, someone needing that much paragon, is also not helping your argument.
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The point is moot as ww/rend has cleared GR 147 with less than 10k paragon and GR 146 at 8013 paragon with 2.5 minutes to spare.
What did you predict that ww/rend would clear during the PTR with lamentation at 200%?
How do you rank the builds being discussed in terms of their technical difficulty? What are the hardest barbarian builds/class sets to play? What are the easiest?
How high can H90 clear currently? IK-HOTA? Pro-slam? Fire-EQ? Vile Charge?
Itâs also cleared 148 I believeâŚonce.
None of which is relevant to this thread.
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Some people are just jealous of others performing better than their class, so they cry in forums for nerfs, to balance the game to their weaker builds INSTEAD of doing the OTHER WAY Arround.
Unfortunately what they donât get is that everytime any build gets nerfed whatever the class than other will take itâs place and than the âbalance fr34ksâ cry again, cause some build got too close to clearing 150 GR solo (or even cleared it) in game, instead of making all builds being capable of clearing it solo after investing enough of your time in the game.
Once again they donât understand that the game does not consist of ONLY players who run in META groups or even play META builds only, so when any builds get nerfed it destroys any chance at all for players (who might wanna try it) donât like playing in META groups or run as a support all day long and are happy to play the game few hours a day to even clear a 100-120 GR in season at all.
But hey if you donât play the way you should (aka META groups only) your voice doesnât matter right? 
No one gives a 
about what SOLO players want. Everyone only focus on the META and ofc anything achieved by META groups or even playing a SOLO META build and getting close to clearing 150 GR is important even if those players achieved it, by playing in META groups or just by being lucky in fishing GRs, or like now with the help of a âseason themeââŚ
The FUN Police doesnât give a about those who gets scr3w3d when their âStrong buildâ gets nerfed and now instead of clearing 120 GRs solo they are back to doing 105-110 max and for what?!
All in the name of imaginary BalanceâŚ
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Gonna throw my two cents in. This proposal is exactly that, a proposal. Why people have got their panties all in a bunch over it is truly mind boggling. This is simply what a few barb players have put together, with the agreement and approval of multiple others in the barb community, to bring the major class builds into parity with each other. The final decision as always will be up to blizzard. Maybe instead of throwing so much energy into trying to prove this as being wrong you could work on a similar proposal for what you want to see in the upcoming balance patch(es). Just a thought.
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