I’m a DH main who this season decided to go with Barb since DH got sidelined again (I pray season 21 will be our time to shine). In the meantime, I’m having a blast with the new 90S Frenzy build but the WotW Rend build is so much fun too. It’s crazy how strong these builds are compared to all DH builds!
I think I have pretty much got the WotW Rend thing down and I wanted to post here to thank Free and other Barb guide-writers. I used their knowledge to take rank 9 on the season 20 leaderboards tonight with a GR130 clear with only 1700ish paragon; so thanks again for the detailed info!
Of course, my rank is going to be very short lived as the paragon 4-5k+ players will eventually crush everyone towards the end of the season, but this was a great feeling for the time being.
My hope is that DH well get the same treatment that Barbs got these last 2 patches but there isn’t enough persistent representation to catch the eyes and ears of the developers. My plea is that some of you vocal Barbs (you guys were born with loud voices, even louder now with the 2-piece 90S set) help push for DH buffs with cool ideas.
I also hope that some Barbs will want to play DH next season and show us what you guys can do with DH! If a DH can master Barb like a pro, I very much think the opposite is quite possible too!
Let’s work together to keep making the game fun and interesting to play while we wait for D4!
Thanks for reading,
Iria
P.S. I did have one Barb question: I know that manually-cast rends benefit from area damage, but I do not know exactly how it works. Does the rend proc area damage per tick? is it applied as a separate “area damage dot” at the start? or does it apply the area damage of the rend as a single hit upon start or end?
Congrats on your clear! I’m glad the guide helped, and if you have questions about the build, let me know.
When hard-cast Rends detonate (via Ambo’s), they proc AD. That’s all there is to it. And this is why we hard-cast twice in a row–to stack two Rends via Lamentation, both of which will, one hopes, not be overwritten by WW-applied Rends as you spin away.
I love the DH class, and I’m hoping for some juicy buffs for y’all (and Necros!). But that’s where my involvement with the class stops. Last Season and this PTR, Rage and I actively discussed this with the DH community, and we urged them to adopt some of our tactics in addressing buff concerns, uniting behind community veterans and representatives, and being explicit with requests to developers. We emphasized the need for community organization and filtering; it was fine to have big discussions where any and every idea could be thrown in the pot, but at some point, someone–or several someones–needed to step up and separate the wheat from the chaff. In an ideal world, those will be community veterans with a solid understanding of game mechanics, a good sense of what requests are realistic, and at least some working knowledge of game design or design theory.
I expected this advice to be well-received; after all, it worked for Barbs, extremely well, in fact, and many of the buffs were almost identical to ideas contained in our proposal. But this was not the case. Rage and I received a lot of push-back from community members, some of it bordering on outright attacks. In some ways, I understand where that might have come from: Here we were, Barb mains, telling DHs what to do and how to do it. Not cool, right?
But on the flip side, our methods were effective–the proof is in the Rend pudding, after all–and the main obstacle for the DH community seemed to be two-fold:
Major resistance to centralized leadership
No one willing to step up and do the work
Maybe that second point isn’t entirely fair; DH mains and community vets have been making requests for years, in PTR after PTR, and after doing that for so long and not seeing any results, why should they continue? Some posters responded along the lines of, “Why should I do Blizzard’s work for them?”
And that’s a fair point–fair, but inadequate. We Barbs also spent years complaining in PTRs, making thread after thread–many of them the most read, most active, and most highly rated threads in every PTR Feedback Forum. And when that didn’t work, we tried other tactics. Simply put, we mobilized, unified, and created content that could not be ignored. We had big, open discussions on the forum, and from those–and our own ideas–Rage and I worked for months refining ideas, separating the good from the bad (mechanically and in terms of feasibility), and writing, writing, writing. We wrote a 70-page Google Doc. Then we made a website, re-wrote everything–checked and double-checked our math–and went live. We contacted YouTubers, other Diablo-focused websites, and individuals in the community who had people’s ears. Our work was discussed in videos, on blogs, on Twitter, etc. Pretty soon, it was impossible for the devs to ignore it, which was precisely the plan.
My point is, this is what we told the DH community. We said, “Here’s what we did and it worked. Who’s ready to step up and do it?”
The answer I got was, more or less: “No thanks, we’ll do it our own way.”
Something else to consider is that work on sets and item buffs beings well in advance of a patch. It’s likely that whatever DHs and Necros are getting next patch is currently either finished or nearing completion for internal testing. In other words, if the DH community was going to mobilize, it had to be then, not now.
So, alas, this is one that DH’s are going to have to fight on their own. I wish y’all luck, of course, and I hope your buffs make you ridiculously strong.
That’s how I felt when I first made a UE MS DH around season 7 or so maybe, but reversed. I’m a barb main but I definitely enjoy playing DH too! Glad you’re having fun with Barb! I can’t imagine DH and Necro not getting new sets and an overall balance/polish next season, given the way they are rolling out new sets. It also sounds like they are going to re-position all classes again when all the new sets are rolled out, so that may be a Season 22 thing? Either way there should be ample chances for them to get the DH where it needs to be! I’ll gladly support threads for DH love!
First: congrats on the 130! That’s a really excellent clear.
Forgive me if I reiterate some stuff you already know, but I figured it’s best to start at the beginning:
Rend deals its damage entirely in ticks. This is the same whether or not you have Ambo’s active, it’s just that with Ambo’s, there are less total ticks, but they do much more damage.
There is no on-cast damage from Rend (you can see this if you start a game on a very low difficulty and then manually cast Rend on some foes: instead of dying instantly, they have full health for maybe .20 seconds or so and then explode).
As you know, Ambo-Rends (applied by WW) do not proc AD, while Hard-Cast (HC) Rends do proc AD (20% chance- the usual- on each tick of damage).
Ambo-Rends and HC Rends overwrite one another. So, if you HC Rend and then immediately start spinning, you will probably overwrite your HC Rend before it ever deals any AD.
As a result, the best rotation seems to be HC Rend - HC Rend - WW, repeat. This gives those HC Rends enough time to proc some AD before you overwrite them.
It’s possible to HC Rend three times, but this cuts it very close on dropping Taeguk.
The less WWing you can do, the more damage you will see, but the vast majority of your healing comes from WW, so there’s always a delicate balance between doing damage and staying alive.
I hope that answers your question.
I’m all for DH buffs, but as Free mentioned, 1) We already tried to be helpful with that and it did not go so well, and 2) It’s probably getting a little late in the game to be proposing more changes.
That said, I’d be happy to give it another try. I will say I don’t have enough recent DH expertise to really “crunch the numbers” on tons of items, but, I know you are a numbers guy yourself, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I’ll caution you that putting together a super-long list of suggestions like Free and I did is probably not a good play right now. The majority of our suggestions were not adopted, which, in a roundabout way, is what has led to WW/Rend being so far ahead of all other Barb builds.
Instead, I’ll refer you to a handful of posts in the recent DH buff thread in GD that Idolis started. In this section, dmkt suggests just a few items, one of which is designed to buff ranged builds, while another would buff mid-range/melee builds.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be these exact ideas, but I think this is really the way to go. It would allow for all DH builds to be significantly improved in one fell swoop, without the need for revisions to a zillion different items.
The most pertinent posts are 395 - 411, take a look:
I’ll say it again because I think it’s important: focusing broad-ranging buffs onto just a few items is the way to go.
In BBP, Free and I suggested 30-ish changes of which 7 or 8 were adopted, directly or indirectly. It was pretty cool to see that happen, but the uneven adoption of these changes led to the all-WW-all-the-time situation we have now. People are playing H90 a bit now, because it’s new, but my guess is that next season that will fade.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Let me know if you have thoughts on any of this, or specific ideas you want to talk through.
I see, thanks for the info. The way I did my 130 clear was by spamming the manual Rend while holding down the WW button. I believe this may have interspersed the casts in a way such that each monster had 1 auto Rend and 1 regular Rend at all times. Of course, this isn’t the optimal damage but I felt it was super safe.
I agree with Rage: broad-ranging buffs are the way to go.
I’ll add to it by saying that asking for buffs to make you viable in group (meta) play is a waste of time. If you get buffs aside from the new set, they’ll be on specific items that target under-performing or popular builds, and they will be focused on improving the solo experience. You’ve got one or two folk in the DH community who refuse to hear this, but take my word for it: Asking for group buffs is a waste of time. If a build gets buffed and incidentally ends up viable in group play, well, that’s icing on the cake.
You’ll also have folk who want drastic overhauls to items and sets. Again, this is not realistic, even if it’s not completely out of the question. After all, all of our Rend items got new affixes (albeit only one, Ambo’s Pride, received a unique legendary affix). Keep your requests straight-forward and simple.
Finally, a comment about something Rage said:
The emphasis is mine, and I hope the message is clear. After some initial tweaks to items like Remorseless and Fjord Cutter, those items never received additional updates (aside from a bug fix). As a result, their parent builds still lag behind Rend in terms of power and utility. They still need bigger multipliers–in the case of Remorseless, much larger–but it’s also clear that the devs are done with Barbs. And that’s fine. We did get one top 3 solo build that’s also incredibly useful for most game activities, and our new set is also very strong, but with a few more tweaks, we could have all of our builds within 2-5 tiers of each other.
My point is that we’re never getting those necessary “few more tweaks,” and neither will any other class. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a build that is top 5, and maybe your new set will be fairly competitive. Other builds will likely be stronger than they were, but intra-class balance is not a concern for the developers–and likely never will be.
I could, of course, be wrong. Maybe after next patch, when they sit down to balance things, we’ll get those “few more tweaks” our builds desperate need. But I doubt it.
The laws of thermodynamics are referred colloquially as “you can’t win” and “you can’t even tie”. The first law states that energy is neither created nor destroyed in a closed system, while the second law refers to the entropy in the universe increases with time. In patch 2.6.5, barbs were weak but at least had five builds within about 5 GRs of the top build.
Now:
Blizzard would have been far better off by simply modifying individually the 6-piece barbarian class set bonuses instead of adjusting so many supporting legendaries, resulting in poor intraclass balance. For DH, I almost do not want a new set. DHs have several builds that have similar power and unique playstyles. I simply wish that Blizzard buffs each 6 piece class set appropriately.
Set changes are definitely the way to go. I think that Blizzard does have some idea how to balance the game, but unfortunately, has not done a good job on overall balance. In the balancing patch falling 2.6.9, I sincerely hope that they improve both intraclass balance and balance between classes.
To date, there are five classes that have received new sets and power-enhancing updates to supporting legendaries: Barbarians, crusaders, monks, witch doctors, and wizards. Barbarians were the only ones that had a centralized, massive proposal to buff a multitude items and passive skills.
The current result for these five classes in terms of top worldwide clears are:
This observation demonstrates that the resulting power of the classes top build are divergent where barbarians are in the middle. Crusaders and witch doctors did not take nearly as aggressive steps to my knowledge and yet their top players clear GR 150. My point is that Blizzard does take feedback; however, the amount of effort put in to buff request a preferred class does not correlate with the magnitude of success.
Your comparison is dubious. Prior to the buffs, Rend was completely broken; the dominant WW build was well below this clear range, and our strongest build–Vile Charge–maxed out around 135. The Crusader and WD clears you’re referring to rely on their new sets, but ours is a fixed older set, and our new set can clear in the high 130s. In addition, we also received buffs to two other builds via changes to Fjord Cutter and Remorseless.
My point is that we received 2 patches worth of buffs that effected almost every build in our roster–and before that, we also received Mortick’s Brace–not a buff on its own, but, in the company of the other items, a welcome addition. I’m comfortable in saying the effort was justified.
Sounds to me like you’re saying, “Don’t bother, Blizzard does whatever it does,” which I’ve heard before, particularly from a few folk in the DH community who don’t want to be bothered to advocate for their class in ways proven to be effective.
You can worry about intra-class balance all you want. Meanwhile, DHs don’t have a single build in spitting distance of most other classes. If a new set fixes that, bring it on.
Barbs essentially received two new builds where I consider ww/rend new because of how this build plays with Ambo’s pride (with the controversial addition of auto-apply of rend). There is now one completely dominant barbarian build that far surpasses all others in terms of power, as Rage noted and your table supports. This phenomenon is not unique to barbarians and is true for several other classes. For example, how many witch doctors are not running a spirit barrage build?
I would simply be happy if they buff the 6-piece DPS bonuses of marauder, UE, and shadow by about 6-9 GRs damage equivalent, dependent on the specific set. Blizzard would not be introducing new mechanics and would not need to worry about strange/unintended interactions/mechanics.
As far as problems go, that’s a good one to have. It means we have a top 3 build that’s really good at, well, everything. It means we’re strong, fast, and efficient, where we used to be none of those things. All the other builds need is a little more juice to close the gap.
Y’all worrying about intra-class balance on a 8 year-old game with its sequel in active development need to shake off the Blizzard blues and enjoy the good stuff when (and if) it arrives in your stocking.
Did y’all organize and work to achieve this like the Barb community did for their class? What have you done to make this happen? Or are you just spitting in the wind?
You’ll be lucky if they ever touch the old items again. I hope they do, but I also hope the new DH set has you cruising 140+ in record time.
