Frenzy Barb! Patch Notes!

Barbarian
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Patch notes!

https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/23298649/patch-268-ptr-begins-26-1-31-2020

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Initial impression of Frenzy set: grossly inadequate.

Back in BBP we estimated that a LON Frenzy Barb could clear around GR 95 at around 2500 paragon. So at their current “5000 paragon benchmark”, this would be about GR 98.

The 6 piece bonus of this new set is about equivalent to LON (+10000% vs +9750%), so you’re staying about the same there. The 2 piece doubles your damage, assuming you can fully utilize that fear bonus without all the enemies running away from you. The bonus on Undisputed Champion gives you 5x damage.

So that’s a total 10x damage, “straight-up”, and Bastion’s Revered adds a bit more, though I’ll have to give some thought to the math of it… essentially it doubles your damage against single target, and splits that extra share of damage among targets if there’s more than one, which raises the question of AD…

For now, let’s just include that as a straight 2x in your damage.

So that gives us 20x total, enough to go up 19-20 GRs.

i.e. I think this set can clear about GR 118 at 5000 paragon. Get Ulmaguest in there, and he might be able to add on another 4-5 GRs, so maybe GR 123 at over 10k paragon…

And please note that this is, I think, a rather optimistic estimate. Like I said: grossly inadequate.

Edit: I guess that the setup you’d be using would be Oathkeeper in one hand, Echoing Fury in the other, Bastion’s Revered in the cube. EF might give you another GR or two.

Edit 2: So, I guess the full loadout would be : 6 pieces of set on shoulders, head, hands, torso, legs, feet.

You’ve got to take both Undisputed Champion (belt) and Depth Diggers (pants), so DD goes in the cube, along with Bastion’s Revered in the weapon slot. Note that this prevents you from using the Captain Crimson set for extra damage and toughness.

Your cube jewelry slot will most likely be BoM, though some high paragon players might be able to get by without it (these folks could run F+R, CoE, and FoT). You’ll probably wear the Endless Walk set, plus CoE.

(In hindsight, I think the ability to use EW will give you a few more GRs beyond my estimate for Frenzy LON, though you will be losing out on a bit of damage from items like Magefist or Cindercoat).

Weapons will be Oathkeeper and Echoing Fury.

For bracers, you’ll have to choose between Mortick’s and Vambraces of Sescheron… I suspect Mortick’s will be the superior choice for pushing.

Gems would be Trapped, Stricken, Simplicity’s Strength.

On the bar you’ll have Frenzy, WOTB:Insanity, BR: Bloodshed, War Cry (Impunity or Veteran’s), Threatening Shout (probably Falter), and either Charge or Stomp (to proc BoM). I think Charge is far more likely, since you’ve go no other way to move through enemies.

For passives, I think it’ll be Boon, Ruthless, Berserker Rage, Rampage (though Brawler could replace any of these except Boon).

You’ll need a ton of cooldown, to keep WOTB’s downtime as low as possible. Crowd Control will be a big problem, since you’ll have neither perma-Wrath nor Perma-IP. So you’ll want several good CC resist rolls on your gear.

EW + EF, which I wasn’t thinking of before, would probably give about +5-6 GRs to this build, so I’ll revise my “optimistic” 10k+ paragon estimate to 128-129. To have a shot at being even our second best build, there needs to be an additional 6x multiplier coming from somewhere. This would bring the build up to around 139-141 at 10k paragon.

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You are most likely correct here.

This was my first thought. It does limit quite a bit by itself. I know I use a LoN setup and, while it is fun, does not have much pushing power.

My EF on that LoN build causes fear and it is extremely annoying to chase down most mobs. I actually consider fear being needed for it to be a bad thing. You will lose uptime because of it.

The doubled shout could be very good depending on how Bloodshed interacts with it. Also, if the damage increase and crit on Battle Rage double as well, there could be a hidden amount of power there.

I would PERSONALLY got with RoRG to be able to use Aquilla, but I would not consider it to be a must have.

If things do not go well at first, I would hope they would add a damage modifier on it. As many have said, it is not that impressive on its own.

Bastion’s Revered though could be a game changer depending on what those extra hits do. One example, if it procs with the same chance as a normal hit, you could get double the stacks on Bane of the Stricken. If the extra hits on nearby mobs and you could do some decent damage to a huge group. Add in Bloodshed and AD and it should be interesting to see what happens.

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I don’t see why they couldn’t open it up to all generators. Either way excited to test.

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Yeah, absolutely.

That’s true. If, say, Bloodshed goes to 20% dibs, 6% CHC, and 40% of your recent crits, this could give you a few extra GRs. We’ll have to wait for the PTR to see how it actually works.

Fair enough, though this will obviously cost you some damage (50% or more, from losing CoE).

It is a bit unclear how the thing will work. It seems pretty obvious that against a single target, you’re basically doubling your damage.

But, lets say you have 3 nearby enemies. The new text says Frenzy “hits an additional time per attack. Each additional hit will chain to any enemies within 15 yards and the damage is split between all affected enemies.” I think there are two ways to read this.

Let’s say a single Frenzy hit is doing 100 damage.

In one way of reading that text, the first guy you’re hitting takes 100 damage from the “basic” Frenzy hit, and then all 3 guys within 15 yards have the other 100 damage, from the “additional” Frenzy hit, split up between them, i.e. guy 1 takes 133 damage, and guys 2 + 3 take 33 damage.

The other way to read it is that “guy 1” takes both the “basic” Frenzy hit and the “additional” Frenzy hit, and takes 200 damage, and that this additional hit then “chains” to surrounding enemies, and this damage is split between them (so guy 1 would take 200 damage, and guys 2 + 3 would take 50 damage).

In either case, because the damage of that “additional” hit is divided between the number of enemies you have around you, it shouldn’t make all that much much difference in terms of AD or Bloodshed damage.

I mean, let’s say you had 100% AD, and you were fighting some number of mobs within 10 yards (so, within the radius of AD, the new BR effect, and Bloodshed).

If that second hit (let’s still assume it’s 100 damage) is divided between 10 mobs, each will take 10 damage, and then each will proc an average of 10 * 1.00 * 0.2 damage onto all the other mobs, so each will take 10 * 1.00 * 0.2 * 9 = 18 damage from AD, and 10 damage from the actual Frenzy hit, for a total of 28 damage.

If that damage was divided between 5 mobs, each would take 20 damage, and then take 20 * 1.00 * 0.2 * 4 = 16 damage from AD, for a total of 36 damage.

If you were just fighting 2 mobs, then I guess that additional hit would do 100 damage to the ‘adjacent’ mob, and he would proc 100 * 1.00 * 0.2 * 1 = 20 damage from AD, onto the ‘initial’ mob (the one you actually hit with Frenzy).

None of these numbers are inflating your damage very dramatically.

As for Bloodshed, whether that “additional” Frenzy hit is separated into 3 hits, 10 hits, or 50 hits, the total damage is the same, so it will add the same amount to your Bloodshed proc.

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I’m actually happy that they made a generator build. I have no idea how viable it is, so I’ll leave it to the people who have more experience in doing the math.

Some thoughts:

  • I agree that this set should boost all primary skills, not just Frenzy. I think they limited it to Frenzy because it already had good support items in Undisputed Champion and Bastion’s Revered. Can’t recall if the other primary skills have similar items. EDIT: And they would obviously also have to change the mechanic of the 4-piece set bonus.

  • I wish this set would finally make using a two-handed weapon worth it (or let us dual-wield two-handed weapons…). The 2-piece fear damge bonus should be changed to “Deal double damage while equipping a 2-handed weapon.” :woozy_face:

  • Speaking of the Fear bonus on the 2-piece set… It looks like they really want us to use the Terrify rune instead of Falter on Threatening Shout, but I agree that chasing down enemies is annoying.

  • I wonder if the Frenzy stacks from the Echoing Fury also have the rune powers from Frenzy. The attack speed obviously stacks, but I never paid attention to see if we also got the damage bonus from the Maniac Rune.

EDIT: Any thoughts on how healing would be handled with this set? Life per Fury spent becomes useless, and the useful runes from Mortick’s Braces goes down from 3 to 2. Life per Hit is obviously important, but will this and the healing from Simplicity’s Strength be enough to keep us alive?

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I just had a thought where the season buff might make the set look stronger than it really is. If you use a weapon in the ring slot, you could get Messerschmidt’s Reaver in and that might allow WotB to be up more often. That is pure conjecture right now.

Hmmm, you would definitely be right here. I was thinking of how it acts wrong.

Edit: I need to not try and write when I am as tired as I am.
Ignore what was here before.

No, it is just movement and attack speed.

There is a problem I know from using EF. You need to kill enemies to keep up the buff. This means you only get ~5 seconds of buff time. It can take longer than that to take down an elite.

Having thought of that quirk:

This might actually not be a bad idea. The reason is pretty simple, you can cube Oathkeeper and keep Bastion’s Revered as your weapon to use.

I might need to be more than double damage because of the loss of a crit gem.

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Hadn’t thought about the loss of Critical damage from not having an off-hand weapon. But I really want to be able to use a 2-handed weapon.

If it had such a trait I wonder if other sets would also try to use the 2-piece bonus from this set. If it unbalanced things too much, the trait could be moved to the 6-piece bonus.

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I think that in a straight 1v1 comparison, a 2H weapon does about 30% more damage vs 2 1H weapons, even considering the extra CHD from a second emerald. Haven’t re-run the numbers, but that’s what I remember.

What if instead of doubling your damage, it doubled your attack speed? That would be awesome!

The only other set that could conceivably make use of this bonus would be IK…

Which I suppose could lead to IK HOTA dropping CoE for RoRG, and using Frenzy shoulders + one other set piece to get the 2-piece bonus. If that bonus stayed as-is, they’d take the normal setup: Gavel in the cube, hold Remorseless + EF. If it switched to a 2 hander either making you do double damage or attack faster, they’d hold Gavel and cube Remorseless. Either way, it wouldn’t be a huge improvement over the standard setup.

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Haha, what you had there before didn’t look totally unreasonable to me, at least from a quick glance. What was wrong with it?

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I am uncertain on that, which is why I said might. I just tried it on an already Frenzy setup character, dropping EF for the two-hander approach seemed to do about the same.

Part of the reason I want a Frenzy build is to see how silly it is when you have very high attack speeds.

There is a way to make it work with IK, but not as a HotA build. You can use Blade of the Warlord to do the rage spending for IK. You then use Frenzy to build rage back up. If it said “when using a one-handed weapon, Frenzy does another equiped primary attack.” I would make an IK build possible without macros. Then when doing a two-hander you get the increased attack speed and no proc.

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If you were using that with Warlord, wouldn’t that just dump all your Fury on every hit, basically?

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You take the damage done to each mob. To say 2 mobs, the damage each does on the split hit is:

  • 100/2, so each takes 50.
  • with the 100% AD it does an extra ~10 damage in average over time.
  • That means it is 60 damage on average.

So, what I did was multiply that number by 2 to get total damage done. So with 50 mobs, it would be (100/5) = 2. 2 * .2 = .4. 0.4 * 49 = 19.6. 19.6 + 2 = 21.6 damage.

And this is where I am not trusting my head right now. Is it *49 or *50. Does that actually hold up? My brain is not giving me a good answer since I have this sinking sensation I am remembering something wrong.

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I’m thrilled to have a set dedicated to a Primary skill, and especially to Frenzy, but as others have pointed out, there are problems with the set. My feedback–which is admittedly made without testing–is as follows:

  1. The damage multipliers for Frenzy are way too low.
  2. The reliance on “Fear” is innovative, but ultimately an obstruction.

My suggestions for fixes will be as follows:

  1. Buff the damage numbers: Minimum of 1500% per stack on the set, and UC should be 500-700%.
  2. Remove the “Fear” aspect from the set’s 2-piece bonus and simply allow enemies affected by shouts to take double damage. The Fear part will also lower the effective power of Bastion’s.

Something else to note about Fear is that it is a hard CC and monsters will quickly go immune (and thus you’ll lose the damage bonus).

A few other comments:

The optimal push setup will likely be 5 Horde of Ninety Savages (H90) + 2 Crimson. You’ll wear Band of Might and Compass Rose and Cube RoRG. You’ll equip Echo Fury and Oathkeeper with Bastion’s in the Cube.
Since this setup uses Endless Walk, you can’t use Flavor, so that diminishes the push potential compared to other builds right out of the gate. In addition, if you use Crimson’s, you’ll have to put UC in the Cube, and that locks pretty much every gear slot except bracer (except . . . see below).

With UC in the Cube, you can’t use Aquila in the Cube, and without Aquila and Band of Might, this build is going to be squishy.

Well, if you sacrifice using Crimson’s, you could put Zodiac in the Cube, Boulder Toss on the bar, and keep Wrath up pretty much all the time with lots of CDR rolls on gear and Boon as a passive. But that means you’ll need to stop attacking with Frenzy to drop a Boulder here and there which, while not a huge deal, will interrupt your ability to DPS solely to reset a cooldown.

That’s an excellent point. If I understand it correctly, the additional attacks simply jumps to a nearby enemy, and the damage of that attack is split between the original monster and the one linked by the chain. Even still, it seems vastly under-powered.

Another excellent point. I see why they did this: Frenzy ramps up over time and other Primary skills don’t, and trying to get the damage output of those other skills to match Frenzy is, frankly, almost impossible without some truly ludicrous multipliers amended to their items.

That said, this could be possible:

New Class Set: Horde of the Ninety Savages

  • 2-Piece Bonus: Double the effectiveness of all Shouts. Feared Enemies take double damage.
  • 4-Piece Bonus: Gain 5% damage reduction for 5 seconds when you attack with a Primary skill (max 50%).
  • 6-Piece Bonus: Every attack with a Primary skill increases the damage of Primary skills by 1000% up to 10 stacks.

I don’t think we can convince them to overhaul the set they just designed, so I would much prefer to focus on getting Frenzy in tip-top shape.

I don’t think that’s how it will work. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it will work similar to our passives–extend the duration of shouts. Falter, for example, would be 50% dibs damage otherwise, which isn’t a bad little buff.

Here’s another question: Do shouted enemies take double damage from any attacks? I’m talking about the 2-piece bonus. Because if so . . . this is going to get thrown into the zDPS meta right quick.

Life per Hit on weapons, and possibly bracer in place of Vitality. I’m actually concerned about DR and healing in this build, but waiting to see if testing confirms my fears.

On the flip side, y’all, if we can get this buffed into a strong place, we might have a spot as RGK in off-meta speeds. YAY!

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While I’m super excited that Frenzy Barb is finally going to have a set and be a real thing, I’m with all of you in this thread saying that the numbers don’t look strong enough. The Bastion’s changes look promising and I guess we’ll see where the numbers really end up during the PTR with proper equipment/rolls.

The one thing I think we’re going to have to absolutely be loud about and get changed is the 2pc linking a double damage proc to Fear. EF is already really really obnoxious to use in LON HotA because of its high innate fear and HotA builds relying on a lot of AD for large groups. I think Free has it right, changing the 2pc to ‘Enemies affected by shouts’. If I had to guess they might change it to specifically read “Enemies affected by Threatening Shout take double damage” which would open up some rune choices even if I suspect Falter would end up being the go to there as is usually the case.

Still, interesting times ahead fellow barbs. As long as we keep our feedback as clear and constructive as we have for these last few patches that have done wonders for the class, I think we can make this new set the real deal. See you fine folks on PTR.

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Nevalistis just confirmed that the Fear effect is intentially there to have Barb’s playing differently. :frowning:

Certainly, I can understand having this effect synergizing with zDPS WDs, but for solo Barb… Meh

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Shame, D3’s always been “play their way”.:frowning:

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Source?

We can work to get that changed.

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I assume this is what you are looking for.

Not a great sign, but we shall see how things go.

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Yes, thanks. I’ll put together a brief response there, but I’ll also contact her directly with feedback.

The set is mostly going in the right direction. It just needs some tweaks and bigger numbers to really hit home.

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