Barbs in 2.7: Community Discussion

Barbarian
41

Well, no, probably not.

In particular, if H90 Frenzy ends up too strong, it will end up dominating the leaderboard to the exclusion of everything else.

That’s what happened an era ago on the DH leaderboard, which was completely dominated by S6 Impale. Even though UE Multishot was able to clear just as high, or even a hair higher, nobody played it, because S6 was a lot less fishy.

If H90 ends up with a “top clear” as high as the fishy builds like ZR, VC, or Leap, then it will just hands-down be the best at everything, and the others will not see much playtime.

42

Of course, the goal is not to make it too strong. It shouldn’t be the goal for any of these builds.

I don’t think she will be better at everything. WW will be even faster for speeds (depending on the level), keys and bountyes without a doubt. That is, both will have their shine. But if there is a certain fear if it gets stronger than WW, then perhaps you should decrease your buf just a little, not much.

About MOTE, I think this should be closer to WW. MOTE is not so fast, not so good for speeds, bountyes. So, at the very least, should be able to compete with WW for the top.

43

That’s what I already did, bro!

What MOTE are you talking about? MOTE Leapquake is just as strong in this revised set of numbers as in the original ones. It’s just that more of the bonus has been moved from MOTE(6) to Blade of the Tribes (550% in the original numbers, now 800%). Pro-Slam has moved down just a little.

44

So, I agree.

Pro-Slam

I think that for this build to be similar to WW, it must have a 3.5 buff (148 @ 10k). It will probably still be a little weaker because the person who closed 148 did it below 13m

45

Good thoughts.

IMO, all builds can have a buffer so that they are close at a high level.

If a build stands out in any way, it is because of its characteristics.

For example,

WW stands out at speeds, low GRs, at high level will stand out only with cond and a high number of yellow elites on a large map.

H90 It will stand out in medium level GRs (not a push). It will be good for killing the boss, and elites without adds, but it is very bad for cleaning up trash.

MOTE Pro-Slam It will stand out in medium level GRs. It will be good for cleaning the trash, but very bad for killing the boss.

46

Well, compared to ZR, Slam is considerably less fishy, since it doesn’t use spear or FOT, and also kills basically all RGs better (both single target and with adds) because of its high single-target damage. It’s also the least played of all the sets discussed, so there is more uncertainty as to how far it can go.

I mean, my new numbers peg it at 146, but it might very well hit 148 anyway. The only time it really got pushed was during the short “lost era”, which was purged from the leaderboards due to the Fjord Cutter bug. Since then it’s been strictly back-burner.

Anyway, bottom line is that I’m confident in these numbers. With these buffs, these 6 builds will all be VERY GOOD. Might one of those 6 unexpectedly come out on top? Sure, of course. But even if that happens, it will be a margin of inches, not yards.

2 Likes
47

No offense meant here, but why is 10k paragon your baseline for these guestimates? Wouldn’t it be better and more realistic to do them at say half or a quarter of that? I don’t see much of the general player base being at 10k paragon to be frank.

48

sorry for my bad english. I didn’t get it right.
Which one kills the boss faster?
In my experience, ZR is much stronger for killing the boss, while SS can take ~ 4m for a push, ZR is ~ 3m

I looked at your previous proposal, I think 70k for MOTE would be ideal, definitely not yet as strong as ZR (max PUSH).

49

Lots of excellent, productive discussion in this thread. Thank you all for contributing. Let’s keep it going.

Slam kills bosses much faster. Note that Pro Slam is not the same as Physical Slam with the MOTE set; they are two completely different builds.

Very much semantics, bud. While I don’t think any unintended interactions are likely to occur by buffing pre-existing items, I do agree that there’s always a level of uncertainty when you start fiddling with multipliers. It can be calculated precisely, but rift conditions can’t, and that’s where hidden performance potential could rear its ugly head. But here’s another way to look at it.

We can take the highest known clears of a build at their Paragon, and then compare that to the Paragon of the highest ZR clear. If they line up, we can calculate a buff number range to get the build within 3-5 tiers of ZR at that Paragon. That would be purely theoretical potential, of course, since different builds work in different ways, but it would still give us a range to offer the devs so they could better tweak and test it internally.

For example, ZR can clear 147 @ 10K Paragon. If Pro Slam did 138 at 10K, all we need to do is figure out how much to buff the damage numbers on the MOTE + Fjord to get that build within 3-5 tiers of ZR. That might look like the following:

  • MOTE: 40,000%-50,000%
  • Fjord: 300-500%

Please note that I pulled the above numbers out of thin air; they don’t represent real math, because I don’t do that kind of dark sorcery. Also, these are not the affix ranges, but the ranges offered to the devs as a way of saying, “To get this build competitive, the buffs need to be somewhere within this range.”

If, however, Pro Slam did 138 at 6K, we would need to reduce our proposed buffs in order to compensate for the eventual increased Paragon.

I’m suggesting this as a way of using high-clear data and considering the more average potential of the larger player base in one calculation. Thoughts?

2 Likes
50

I discussed this at considerable length in my reply to Blayze, here.

I took a bunch of stuff into consideration in coming up with the “current top likely clear” numbers I did (which informed the buff numbers needed). Again, discussed in my reply to Blayze (in the second section), above.

These are the numbers I’m suggesting:

Which will make Leapquake, Pro-Slam, Vile Charge, IK HOTA, and H90 Frenzy all into competitive builds.

51

Overall I would would like to see a buff to Leap and Rend, and a small change to Whirlwirnd. I know I suggested them before, but for me they would really enhance the gameplay.

Leap

Leap could have 2 charges by default instead of a cooldown, which would give the skill a lot more flexibility, so it both can be used to leap into a group of enemies, but that you also could eventually use the second charge of Leap as a means to escape.

Currently you can only use Leap either as a tool for engagement or as a defensive tool for escaping (I am talking about the base skill here, not the version with Lut Socks and the MotE Barbarian), but a second charge would give the base skill a bit more flexibility, which would make the skill more appealing because it would give additional utility and maneuverability, while still not making it OP.

The Launch rune or the Toppling Impact rune could get redesigned to give a 3rd charge since they are not useful in the endgame and the Lut Socks legendary boots can be redesigned to grant this new rune for free and maybe also to increase the damage of Leap by xxx% or reduce the cooldown of Leap by xx%.

This tweak to Leap wouldn’t change much for MotE Barbarians since the gameplay would stay the same, because you still could Leap 3 times in a row and get the charges back quickly by spending Fury via Seismic Slam, but Leap would become more attractive during leveling and for other endgame builds as well if it would have 2 or 3 charges by default or via runes.

Giving Leap a second/third charge is better than Lut Socks’ current 2 second window in which you can leap 3 times in a row, because with charges you could choose when to use the charges, instead of being limited into a 2 second window, which gives Leap more flexibility.

Rend

Rend would be more interesting for non-Wrath of the Waste builds, if it would incorporate the effect of the Mutilate rune into the base effect of this skill, which is that enemies take xx% more damage from either all sources or your own attacks (but multiplicative, not additive) while they are under the effect of Rend. A 10% or a 15% damage increase from all sources or from your attacks should be enough.

It would give other builds an incentive to also use Rend as a secondary damage dealing skill in addition to their main damage dealing skill, because skills like Hammer of the Ancients, Whirlwind, Seismic Slam etc would also (indirectly) get buffed by it.

The Mutilate rune then can keep its current effect, but simply increases the amount of additional damage enemies take while under the effect of Rend further, so this wouldn’t require much tweaking.

If more stuff is required to make Rend more appealing to players, its base duration can be increased from 5 seconds to somewhere around 7-8 seconds while still keeping the same damage per second.

Whirlwind

I always thought that Whirlwind needs a rune that increases its AoE (from ~10 yards or whatever it currently is, to ~15-20 yards). The Hurricane rune is a perfect fit for such a rune, especially since its current effect is mostly underwhelming.

The damage increase of Volcanic Eruption is okay, but it could kinda use a bit of flavor, like leaving behind a trail of fire for x seconds as well.

The Dust Devil rune was buffed many patches ago from 120% damage to 180% damage to better work in alignment with the Wrath of the Wastes set, however, this also leads to the Dust Devils rune outshining all other runes. Maybe some readjustments can take place here by nerfing Dust Devils but buffing the Dust Devils damage bonus on the Wrath of the Wastes set, to bring the rune back into line and to provide more choice for LoD builds and during leveling.

52

Right, I get that. I’m not disputing the numbers, just suggesting that offering a range that posits top potential clears may be helpful in communicating the nature of the requested buffs. For example:

  • IK from 4000 to 15,000-20,000% = +10-12 GRs

Rend doesn’t need anything. It’s already very powerful. I really don’t want to tinker with things that work.

As for skill changes, I very much doubt that’s going to happen. I can appreciate that you may have a different opinion, but we need to be realistic. It’s likely the devs are going to try and balance all classes in some form, and while we don’t know exactly what that entails, it’s safe to say that their focus will be on things that are broken or severely under-powered. Skills and sets that work are likely to be passed over in favor of working on things that demand more attention. Rend works. Leap works. Even Whirlwind works. There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re not broken, and their corresponding sets aren’t broken. You can make a good argument that Raekor is broken, and I would agree, but the rest? It’s fine the way it is.

2 Likes
53

Well, here’s the thing-

Taking IK from 4000 to 15000 will always be about an 8.5 GR buff, and taking it to 20000 will always be about a 10.1 GR buff. Those numbers are very clear, and the math is simple.

The ambiguity is in the numbers I came up with for “how high the build can go, right now”. It’s true that I basically cooked up those numbers, taking various factors into account. And so, yeah, they definitely aren’t absolutely bulletproof.

But: SOMEBODY is going to have to cook the numbers that way, in order to determine what buff is needed. And frankly, I trust myself a lot more than I trust the CG team to make that kind of informed estimate.

So, why hand them a range of numbers, when they probably won’t know the difference between one end and the other? Sticking to a single number for each buff keeps it nice and simple.

1 Like
54

I think this is best too. My feeling is that if you give the developers a range of numbers they’ll just use the lower end of the suggestion to play it safe. Hell, they might even use numbers lower than those you suggest.

1 Like
55

It depends from which perspective you look at it.

From my perspective as someone who primarily plays LoD builds because I don’t like basically any of the set-meta builds that are being enforced, Rend is very unappealing and I would be a lot more compelled if it would last longer and caused enemies to take 10% more damage from you other skills.

I respect your perspective as well, but if we don’t try and share such suggestions than they wouldn’t be heard in the first place and would never be implemented even if there was an opportunity for it to happen.

Depends on from what perspective you view it.
From my perspective (and I know it is not the only one), they could improve.
It is not just all about sets and set-meta builds.

56

Yes, and that’s obviously a risk even if we present solid individual numbers.

I’d like to say to everybody that the best time to get this issue into GD and start making a bit of noise about it is now. Actually, even that’s not right: the best time is two weeks ago… but that’s not available to us.

When Free and I did BBP, it was finished far too close to the season end/start date. As a result, nothing from the proposal except the re-addition of Mortick’s ended up in the game until the following patch, by which point the whole balance picture of the game had changed significantly.

We don’t want that to happen again, because it is, in a word, BAD.

You all know my thoughts on what we should ask for. Or, if you somehow don’t, here they are again:

This will, hopefully, give us six viable builds, all able to clear at least 145+ :

Vile Charge
Fire Leapquake
Pro-Slam
IK HOTA
H90 Frenzy
Zodiac Rend

What else is there to discuss? Are we going to keep beating this dead horse? Or are we going to make ourselves heard?

4 Likes
57

But it is.

I’m not saying that’s a good thing, and I’m not saying that’s how things should be, but that is how things are. LOD/LON haven’t been a priority–that’s plain to see–and sets almost always overpower those options (especially for Barbs). Getting LOD and LON on par (or even close to) set-based builds is . . . not realistic. I mean, your suggestion is here, and it’s just as likely as anything we suggest to be communicated to the devs, but I don’t think it’s feasible.

Oh, me too, bud. Me too :rofl: :rofl:

Anyway, I think the point of a range is to give the devs a better, clearer idea of the relationship between buff number X and + GR number Y. It’s true that they can probably compute this on their own, and it’s also true that the simpler route is to simply suggest a single, direct value, but I think the range offers them some perspective on where we’re trying to get. Simply saying, “We want +10 GRs on this build, which will require X” is perfectly fine–I’m not opposed to it. But I think that adding the range offers a little more guidance and nuance, more of a “If you do X, we’ll get Y, but we would obviously prefer X+.”

Basically, I’m just thinking about the bigger picture. My feeling is that the more info we give them about our class and how our builds perform, the better equipped they are to make a good decision. From what I know how the devs work–and what we can learn from the differences between our former Buff Proposal and the actual implementation–is that even when we’re spot-on with our numbers, the devs are just as likely to do something else.

EDIT: Actually, a different way to communicate what I’m trying to get across would be to elaborate on what each buff means in terms of a build’s current potential. It may mean simply wording it differently. Let me think a bit.

I can communicate this directly to the devs–at least, I think I still can. I’m not sure a thread in GD is even necessary; I can link this thread to them there. I do know for a fact that CMs are checking class forums, so it’s likely they’ve already seen this.

58

I’ll work on that: explaining the origin of each “highest current likely” clear number, and the buff number that goes with it.

59

Yeah, I think that’s the way to go. Something like:

  1. X is where we are now with a given build.

  2. To get to Y, we need + whatever % on this multiplier. That will get us into these ranges at these Paragons.

If you math it out, I’m happy to write up each build with a brief explanation of nuance, mechanics, etc–basically anything they’ll need.

Switching gears . . .

I understand Clueso has voiced his concern for LOD and LON, but I don’t see mechanical changes to skills as feasible. Is anyone else concerned about this? Is anyone concerned about R6 HOTA? Personally, I’m fine with R6 HOTA biting the dust, and I don’t see a way to make other pure-Raekor builds viable without massive buffs to supporting legendaries or a total overhaul of the set.

60

While this is true, a lot of things have changed as well.

We’ll agree to disagree on that point.

Yet we have 8 years of experience that shows the exact opposite.

Look, I’d like to see all builds/classes within a few GRs of each other, although I am sure that would just change the complaining to “X can do 3 GRs more than Y, nerf X now!!!”

But we also need to be realistic. There are very few people working on this game anymore, and they never achieved balance when there was more. It’s not going to magically happen in the next patch. It might take the next few patches, or even longer, or maybe even not at all.