Expanding The Meta - Trash Killers Post-Bazooka

General Discussion
1

Based on this message by Nevalistis, it’s pretty clear that Blizzard is aware of and wants to take action against the Bazooka / StarPact Wizard that has dominated the role of trash killer for several years now.

Disclaimer: Before anyone says I’m biased; My main damage dealer is a Bazooka / StarPact Wizard. I’ve used it extensively since 2017, even before the Bazooka mechanics boosted its power and you had to play with Firebirds (a much weaker iteration). Having mained Wizard for so long, I’m under no delusions about its complete imbalance in the context of the game.

I. StarPact

One of the major issues people have had with “the meta” in Diablo 3 is that since the party size is limited to only 4 people, there’s more than likely not enough room to fit all classes. Since people gravitate towards the path of least resistance, they’ll fill the roles needed in a 4 player group with whatever class they think is the most efficient at it.

The only problem with things as they stand is that StarPact is so much stronger than any alternatives, that there’s no point even trying to play anything else. StarPact deals quadrillions of damage in an area instantly, killing entire packs of elites plus anything near them in one shot, without pylons and without a very high paragon requirement.

To compound that problem, the build more or less requires macros to play efficiently. Note that before 2.6.7 it was doable manually and this isn’t meant to take away the raw muscle memory skill needed to play the build manually. But don’t kid yourself; the vast majority of people playing this build aren’t doing anything themselves besides firing off a macro.

II. After StarPact

Blizzard has signaled that they’ve intentionally tried to adjust the mechanics that make Bazooka’s damage possible but that they didn’t finish the job with patch 2.6.7 / 2.6.7a, since it’s still possible to macro the build and do comparable levels of damage. However, this means that most likely after Season 19 is over, the build will be killed for good and new alternatives will have to work.

This is where Blizzard really has an opportunity to create variety, and where the community, regardless of what your “main” class is, can help.

The role of trash killer doesn’t really need to be excessively complex to be fun to play, nor does it need to require macros. All classes can do it with the right number adjustments. I’ll provide one example for each class.

I guarantee you that after Bazooka is gone you’ll see variety in the trash killing role if these are balanced within 10-20% of each-other. Why? Because I’d damn sure rather play a trash killing Demon Hunter or Barbarian that deals 100T damage over a Wizard that deals 115T damage.

Because when the numbers are close enough together, personal preference, skill, and gear level matters more. What you can’t have is a Demon Hunter trash clearer that deals 100T damage up against a Wizard that deals 5000T damage.

1. Barbarian

The Earthquake set (non-Seismic Slam) is a prime candidate for a trash killer. It works with area damage, the player can control where the damage goes. The rotation is slow-ish, it’s not that fast in rifts by itself, and shines with other classes that can group stuff up for you. It’s also bad against bosses / single target / things that move so it has its weaknesses.

2. Demon Hunter

A sentry related build could be good for this. Or alternatively, bring the old Ball Lightning build back. They’re both slow, rely a lot on positioning, and require a good setup for the damage to ramp up.

3. Monk

Admittedly, the last time I played a damage oriented Monk was Shenlong’s so I’m really out of the loop here. But I do know Monk generator builds have insane independent multipliers from gems and legendary powers / sets and there’s no reason you can’t make one viable. The Mangle rune on Monks deals AOE fire damage.

4. Necromancer

Blizzard recently adjusted Blood Nova and gave it a new item. With some more oomph and a few multipliers elsewhere, this could work. So could a generator-oriented build, which already works in 150 but it’s much worse than Bazooka so no one plays it.

5. Witch Doctor

Firebats had a use here, then Spirit Barrage after that. WD was the trash killer for a long time. These only need number adjustments. A Firebomb build would also be cool to see.

6. Wizard

Ironically Wizard StarPact, without Archon, was a balanced trash clearer! It had decent damage but it couldn’t do well against every map / mob composition, especially when density thinned out. Also, Wizard Hydra DPS build then? Frozen Orb when? So many opportunities in this class, none get explored due to Bazooka.

7. Crusader

Many options here, including Shattering Throw, Falling Sword, Condemn, or the new AoV set.

To conclude, the point of all of this is to open your mind and see past what the game is due to the meta and consider what the game could be when clearly busted metas get reigned in. Please feel free to add your own ideas, particularly for the classes you understand well.

23 Likes
2

The 4 player meta since season 4 has stagnated relative to what classes are “essential” zDPS. I think that this is a topic that Blizzard should interrogate to expand the meta even further.

2 Likes
3

TR flurry monk could be really good, i think the area of effect is too small though? Plus if they made it much better it would become op solo.
The issue with some of the trash killer builds is area damage lag, star pact is pretty good because its mostly just one blast, while the others are often continuous.

3 Likes
4

Yeah that’s a separate issue. But honestly you can design around that problem by limiting the number of hits in a build.

StarPact and Whirlwind Rend are good examples. When you build Whirlwind around Rend damage, calculations go down and lag is greatly reduced.

5

The problem with bazooka is the sheer number of dynamic multipliers it has (Wave of Force, Arcane dynamo, double Archon stacking, Deathwish, Etched sigil, etc.) No other trash killer even comes close. Other classes will need a complete overhaul to even be remotely competitive.

If they nerf bazooka to be balanced with other classes, not only is GR 150 going to be difficult, even the mid 140’s will be challenging for the 4 player meta. Not many people will be fond of that power being taken away from them.

6

When Blizzard destroyed the Twister Wizard people were angry for a total of a day and it didn’t affect game activity in the slightest.

Everyone knew the build was busted and everyone saw the nerf coming.

Life goes on.

As for complete reworks; you can achieve a lot with numbers. StarPact without Fazula / Archon multipliers is actually not that strong compared to other builds if you adjust them. People forget how weak StarPact is/was without Archon.

As for GR levels it looks like they’re going to be moving people away from 150s, not closer to them. If they wanted more action at 150 they’d be buffing towards it (AOV, SP, Thorns) instead of away from it. All signs point towards GR levels coming down in the future.

4 Likes
7

Since Barb and monk have taken two spots in meta since S4, and these two classes will still dominate in the future except major changes of GR mechanism (it won’t happen since D4 is approaching). Therefore, it is urgent to bring DH and Crusader back to meta (at least for once before D4, plz). Since S4, wiz, wd have been trash killer; monk, wiz and nec have been RGK. DH impale seemed capable, but nec is just way better.
So, Plz give DH and Crusader a chance to join meta before D4 .
DH: Ball lightning, Fan of knive, Sentry as trash killer; or Imaple as RGK (Impale really need a new bracer like Barb’s bracers of the first man: increase impale attack speed by 50% and damage by 150%, the number can be adjusted for sure.)
Crusader: Condemn as trash killer; Heaven of fury as RGK (Maybe it will happen this season, even with the neff)

4 Likes
8

Fire WoL would probably be a better candidate IMO. It has so much more AoE. A monk Gen build, if Blizz wanted to build one right, would be a boss killer with WotHF: FoF, trapped, Mirinae, etc. With the highest proc coefficient in the game, access to the most universal multipliers I’ve seen in a class, the build is so close to single target greatness that I want to pull my hair out, thinking about how Blizz is screwing it up.

3 Likes
9

As for complete reworks I also disagree; you can achieve a lot with numbers. StarPact without Fazula / Archon multipliers is actually not that strong compared to other adjusted builds.

I don’t know if it’s as easy as just putting extra multipliers on another trashkiller build. That could throw off the balance for the solo leaderboards and cross-class parity.

I remember before bazooka was a thing, LoN Starpact was still considerably stronger than the second best trashkiller.

10

Let’s imagine that they completely remove bazooka, and revert it back to a more balanced version of star pact.

Would we be happy if that was still the most efficient trash killer?

I think part of the issue with bazooka also stemmed from how ridiculous it was even in 150s - players like LexyuTV posted detailed guides how to play this without a macro - and how it could one shot trash and elites. That, in combination with gimmicky play like thorns necro, is part (to me) of the overall issue with the push meta.

I personally wouldn’t mind seeing an adjustment to boss killer specific builds or creating new ones. I am fond of impale dh (though it caps lower than necro still after nerf afaik) and the idea of having an ‘assassin class with huge single target damage but not much else’.

At the end of the day I do think games like this pigeonhole metas in stone even if there is some variance in roles among class say, 15% loss of efficiency here and there. This because high end players drop loot so fast (I’m being polite here wrt some of them and ‘cookies’) that they can gear up alts in a few days. So of course they’ll continue with the meta rather than pushing with less efficiency.

If it took months to gear someone out properly then yeah, you may see more variance in group composition based on who is online…but I don’t see that happening in D3.

2 Likes
11

The cross class and solo parity is already out of whack so I’m not sure why that’s a concern they could not tackle simultaneously. It’s always been out of whack.

As for LON StatPact, it’s strong but nowhere near Archon StarPact. Nothing’s stopping them from nerfing LON SP as well.

12

I think they have to functionally kill all variants of Star Pact completely to see anything else come in. The precisely targeted,single huge hit mechanics of the build are very advantageous compared to IE Firebats, which was outrageously laggy. There are other classes with similar huge hit mechanics but the damage just isn’t high enough or isn’t controllable enough.

Regardless of what class is actually the trash killer I don’t think anyone wants to go back to the lag fest that many of the previous trash killer builds were. To me, this means that any future trash killers are likely to maintain the single huge hit play style, and any buff requests for future trash killers should probably be made with this in mind.

2 Likes
13

Even Tal Rasha was still much stronger, and even Original Firebird Starpact was much stronger. Tal and Firebird were playable without macros and were fun because of that. I liked that this build was hard to handle. And macros is sht, it’s like cheating for me.

4 Likes
14

honestly, i’d love to see a hammerdin trash killing build, that’s a playstyle i’ve always really enjoyed.

3 Likes
15

Yup they could totally buff some numbers on the Tower of Light set on the Crusader to bring the hammers back with a vengeance for trash killing.

2 Likes
16

Love these ideas, Ulma. Would be great to see the trash-killer role shifted to some different classes, and they all would only need to be roughly on par with each other to be viable choices.

Absolutely love this idea. Fire EQ is a fun, simple build that doesn’t have demanding gear requirements.

4 Likes
17

Yes, this, a thousand times this. Love that build and play style, and would love to see it shine in groups!

1 Like
18

Yup. DH Ball Lightning was awesome!

It’s a shame varied and interesting area damage builds fell by the wayside.

19

What would it take for it be viable once more? Bigger multipliers, sure, but I can’t remember if there were mechanical issues that held it back.

20

From the top of my head : travelling ball lightning doing ticking damage against stationary enemy, meaning you are very reliant on how you position compared to the target, otherwise the target might be very quickly outside of the range of the ticks.

Taken this into consideration, you would probably have to introduce insane modifiers for it to do reasonable damage, which might break some other things.

If anything, I think the best shot DH has as a trash clearer would be some kind of turret cluster arrow build.