Hope everyone is well and safe despite COVID-19 ravaging the world. >:/
So in the past when it came to playing barb, I really liked WW/rend Bul-kathos/Solemn Vow and the WoTB/Furious IK/Raekor IKBB charge builds. Aside from chasing solid set pieces, it was also challenging, but fun to chase better versions of the weapons too. I mean, nothing like dropping many tens of thousands of shards on stingy Kadala or hundreds of forgotten souls hoping that a reforge would produce an ancient legendary weapon. Sad to say, my luck (eff you RNG!) was never any good.
In any case, since it’s been three or so years since I last did a season, is there anything I should be keeping an eye out for in terms of top tier weapons? Or have things really not changed all that much? I’ve been reviewing the threads here and read up on some of Icy Veins barb guides (thank you thank you, Icy Veins!), so it does seem like barb playstyles overall have been mostly static and straightforward for a while now.
I do remember that the furnace was at one point one of the best (if not THE best) weapon because of its elite damage ability and nicely rolled ones were very rare until Kanai’s Cube. I did find a furnace the other day that rolled decently but cubed it -which I admit was not easy to do. But this season so 6 days in (started the season pretty late) I have been struggling to get any decent weaponry so I’m stuck with an ancient maximus for now. It’s pretty slow going and I forgot how much gating there is with GR progression if you’re not lucky with weapon and gear drops RNG-wise.
i do apologize for making such a long-winded post that basically could be succinctly stated as:
Have there been any new toys for barbs to play with or is it still pretty much business as usual in terms of commonly accepted builds and playstyles for both GR pushing and farming higher torments?
Thanks for readying my /blogish post!
p.s. What the heck happened here? I can see that the forums got upgraded and that I lost my post count, but I’m not able to review older/archived topics from before? And uh… have most of the OG barbs moved on? I went back through the barb topics and didn’t see some of the names I remember, especially CC123. Good to see Free here though, still kicking the crap out of demons and baddies. ;D
Absolutely, and it’s covered in the stickied guide for the build…
The Whirlwind build has changed massively if it’s years since you last played. They added Rend to the set bonuses and amended Ambo’s Pride to cause WW to auto-apply Rends and the damage to be done over 1 second rather than 15, and the Lamentation belt to increase Rend damage by 100-150%. This changed the build to be all about Rend, and WW is just used to apply it.
There’s also a choice of weaponry (covered in the guide) depending on what you’re doing, i.e. speed-farming / low level GRs, pushing, and high-end pushing.
Yeah, that’s makes sense. I mean, aside from even MMOs it can be hard to keep people interested in content stays stale and doesn’t change. I stopped playing myself because I got burnt out from a string of really bad RNG. I think my paragon level was close to 2.5k at the time and my break lasted longer than I intended.
Current patch (current Season): new set (H90) based around Frenzy and Shouts. See Rage’s stickied guide for build info.
Last patch: Updated Wastes set, Ambo’s Pride, and Lamentation (see Zodiac Rend build guide); updated Remorseless (small buff to IK/LOD HOTA; updated Fjord Cutter (elevates Pro-Slam to major build 135+, see stickied guide)
Two patches ago: Mortick’s Brace reintroduced (replaces best in slot bracer for a few builds, nothing special).
Our strongest build, Zodiac Rend, is among the top 3 strongest solo builds in the game, and extremely good at everything–speed-farming, Bounties, pushing GRs, and even a little very low off-meta group play. It’s easier than ever to gear and play and much tankier than it used to be.
H90 Frenzy, our new build, is easy to play, but pretty tough to gear properly. It’s currently our second strongest build.
Pro-Slam is neck and neck with H90 for second strongest build, and tons of fun to play (see Prokhan’s stickied guide). But it is, unfortunately, the hardest build to gear up in terms of required rolls and stats.
Everything else is business as usual.
We received some major buffs over the last 2 patches, and while other builds could use small buffs to be closer to Zodiac Rend in terms of power potential, we’re in a good spot.
In terms of community veterans, S4 checked out, Prokhan is gone most of the time, and CC stepped out years ago. Rage has stepped up big time and is a fantastic addition to the community, and other excellent folk like Phoenix, Meteorblade, and Basshead are making this community better than ever. And yeah, I’m still here, still doing my thing, though I don’t have much time to play of late while I work on my dissertation.
Hey, thanks for the reply! I definitely plan on pouring over that guide. There are a few others I found that help too.
Oh, are that damn ramadaladingdong items that provide a socket still rare as hell? I went through nearly a thousand paragon level before one dropped for me the last season I played…
@Free -thanks, Free! I really do appreciate all the hard work and effort you’ve been putting in all these years. It truly is nothing short of amazing.
Dang! I should have read your guide way earlier though. I’m at work now and I’m going to print it out and take it back to my hotel. Quality time, baby!
This season, I completed Guardian (day 3 of the season) before my first Ramaladni’s Gift dropped. However, now, just three and half weeks into the season I’ve got about 45 of them in my stash. At this point, if you join any public content (e.g. split bounties), just say in party chat that you’d appreciate it if people would drop these for you and you’ll get loads of them because most players have more of these than they know what to do with.
If you want a good laugh about RNG, and how much it hates me, you should see my season 20 comments in the WW/Rend guide about how many of the same BK sword I got in a row, without getting the other one…I think I made it to 20 or something ridiculous like that…
If it makes you feel better, not only is this the story of my life for any video game I play that deals with RNG, I last played maybe season 6 or so and I would get both Bul-kathos and Solemn Vow swords from time to time but with the absolute worst possible rolls you could ever imagine and rarely with a socket. I mean, absolutely useless. The only positive I took from it was they went toward my forgotten souls stack which I ended up dropping well over 600 of them at one time trying to reforge an IKBB for an ancient one which of course never happened.
So after that, I took a break… and now I’m back for more punishment! Bring it, baby!!!
I am having a blast since my long break as well. Started my season a week and a half ago and just casually did GR 90 in 4 minutes yesterday. The Zodiac Rend build is absolutely ridiculous in terms of power and viability and I’m not even playing it right half the time nor is it properly geared. Haha
