Been thinking about the state of Barbs as a class lately, and I can’t get over the fact that Raekor stands out as our most awkward set. Everything else I’m really happy with, and our other sets have strong mechanics and identities. It’s been a while since we’ve discussed it as a group, and since I’ve come up with some ideas I’m bumping this old thread.
The Goal
Incentivize movement, remove wall-charging, and increase single target damage. And, as always, maximize build diversity.
Suggested patch notes
Furious Charge: Internal cooldown is increased.
2-Piece: Furious Charge refunds a charge if it hits only 1 enemy, and deals triple damage to the first enemy hit.
4-Piece: Furious charge gains the effect of every rune and deals 2000% increased damage.
6-Piece: Every yard traveled grants a stack of momentum, reducing damage taken by 1%, stacking up to 50 times. Each stack also increases the damage of furious charge by 100% and Ancient Spear by 500%. (Stacks rapidly reduce while standing still.)
The 300th Spear: Increase the damage of Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear by 600%.
The Theory
The whole idea behind this rework is that you gain power from movement.
The triple damage in the 2-piece should more than make up for the loss of wall-charging. The internal cooldown may seem redundant with the new 6-piece bonus, but this is necessary to keep IK6/R4 balanced.
The 4-piece and 6-piece bonuses have to be carefully tuned so that the relationship between pure R6 charge and IK6R4 makes sense. R6 should be a little stronger, but not by much. Likewise, IK6R4 should be stronger than IK HotA, but barely. This ranking gives every build a purpose.
After trying to figure out how to balance all the various spenders that could potentially be buffed by the 6-piece, I decided it was easier to just go all-in on Ancient Spear. Slam has MOTE, and HotA has both LoD and IK, whereas BT has no competitive build.
There would likely be 3 ways to play this reworked set: Charge, Boulder Toss, or both. The supporting legendaries for Charge and boulder toss don’t compete for slots, so you could equip Standoff and Skular’s while cubing 300th and Vile Ward. This would make you give up quite a bit of DR, though, so it might be worth going all-in for one of the skills so you can equip APD or furnace. R6IK4 isn’t even out of the question, but I believe that CC or Aughild would be a better and less costly option.
IK6R4 gets roughly double damage from the new 4-piece, and much better single-target. I’m thinking this would make it competitive with IK6 HotA. This is important since it remains our only viable hybrid build, and a classic. Because of the separate leaderboards, having both R6IK4 and IK6R4 is acceptable. Like I mentioned before, I don’t think R6IK4 would end up on the leaderboards much, since it’s a very high price to pay for perma-WotB.
The wildcard here is how the BT buffs would effect MOTE. I have a hunch that it wouldn’t destroy the MOTE eco-system, but could be wrong.
Anyway, I’m done. Let me know what you guys think about my ideas.