I think it will have an amusing effect. That being that all those attacks will even out the rng on attacks, such as crit and AD.
That said, up to 60 attacks per second and AD, something is going to not go well. Will WW lose its lord of lag title? It will also make Bane of the Stricken very good.
The more I have looked at things, and after Rage and I looked at the math, the more I am certain Bastion will be best for only 2 mobs at a time. In a large group, it will slow down its effect.
However, I have noticed one major benefit even in large groups. EF loses it stacks when things do not die fast enough. If they are weakened while clearing other mobs, the last kills will go much faster. Aka, initial fight will go slowly, the things will die in an avalanche as you start attacking faster and faster.
If it was not a two-hander, Messerschmidt would be amazing as you could clear the cooldown on WotB very fast.
The only way I see this working is if this “chain” also applies a physical restraint that keeps elites and trash alike locked within that 15 yards radius. If not, it’ll be a fail.
Honestly, given this change, I think it may make the Fear bonus feel more like exactly that - a bonus when it happens and you can capitalize on it, rather than the crux of the set. Personal opinion: I think you could opt to avoid using it and may still have a decent RGK option (with possible synergy with a Horrify WD). I’ll also admit I’m not a top tier theorycrafter, but this is probably how I’ll use it in my runs with friends next Season.
I’ll talk with the devs, as I always do, but I had shared the original intent already in another thread. We’ve done quite a lot lately to lift up Barbarians, and we wanted to add a different, fun, and thematic set to the mix. We’re interested in the idea of a “herding, then culling” sort of fantasy here, so that’s what we’re trying to capture.
Of course, if it’s not a fun set, that’s one thing, and we’re open to revisiting. We’re not always trying to put in the next best performing set. At the end of the day, we are making a game, and we want there to be fun, interesting things for everyone, at any level, to play. Either way, the version you see in the Patch Notes is what you’ll be able to play with on PTR this Thursday. How it looks before it arrives on live is what’s up for debate, and what we’re eager to see folks test.
No, no, it’s actually best when you’re just fighting one guy! Because then that extra damage gets piled onto that guy, rather than split up between a bunch of targets.
Ok, so at 10 stacks of Frenzy, Frenzy will hit 10 additional times, spread between all enemies within 15 yards.
So, let’s say a single hit of Frenzy does 100 damage, and you’ve got 100% AD, and Frenzy at 10 stacks, hitting…
1 enemy : Mob 1 takes 1100 damage from Frenzy
5 enemies: Mob 1 takes 300 damage from Frenzy, 160 damage from AD, 460 damage total . Mobs 2-5 take 200 damage from Frenzy, 180 damage from AD, 380 damage total.
10 enemies: Mob 1 takes 200 damage from Frenzy, 180 damage from AD, 380 damage total. Mobs 2-10 take 100 damage from Frenzy, 200 damage from AD, 300 damage total.
Again, this is all assuming these Bastion procs can trigger AD…
I feel like the set would be more beneficial if it was triggered off of shout and taunt mechanics (both, that way a group build could use a taunt in rotation with like Threatening Shout: Falter or Demoralize) rather than fear. I get that it would be cool if the fear was all flashy and goes off from time to time, but it becomes really useless, really quickly. I’m going to test the crap out of this set starting on the 6th, but I already have a big laundry list of ideas I’m gonna test, first, and then suggest. This is the primary thing I think needs to be changed, for real.
With this change to the way Bastion’s works (or, to the way we understand it to work), I think this means that essentially, you want most of the enemies to run away from you. You don’t want the Bastion’s effect to chain, at all… you want all that damage piled up on one target (a yellow elite or a RG).
So basically, you target your elite, you pop fear, and hope all the other mobs run as far away as possible: at least further than 15 yards, so they’re out of Bastion’s range. Then you beat the elite to death with 11x Frenzy damage (doubled again for as long as he’s Feared). And obviously, you’ll time this to the proper CoE cycle, etc, etc.
Yeah, actually, this makes me think that these Bastion’s procs are very unlikely to proc either AD or Bloodshed, in which case you’ll almost certainly avoid AD on gear and take BR: StP for the healing…
Odd thought that just came to me. You CAN use Messerschmidt in the season. Obviously not a normal mode balance concern, but something to try in PTR to see if it will be an overshoot.
The wish to have more mechanics explanation. I am really wishing to have the PTR tomorrow and not on Thursday. It should be fun to see what silly or amazing builds become possible.
Yeah, now it’s all kind of starting to make sense. The damage bonus from Fear is actually not all that important… the real benefit is that it scatters all the enemies away from you, so that your damage is focused onto just one target. Of course, that guy’s going to be running away from you too, but with 6+ attacks per second, you’re probably going to stun him with a Smite proc before he gets very far.
Ok, yeah, this is making a lot more sense to me. I still think the fear damage bonus might need a tweak upward, but I’m content to see how it goes on the PTR before I draw any firm conclusions.
I noticed on the non-GR run that things were getting stunned a lot more often then I thought they would.
However, on the GR run, there were less stuns. I really was not certain what was going on there.
If the extra attacks can all proc, then you will have many stuns hitting the main target if they are alone. There is also a much higher chance for the fear on EF to proc. 78.4% on 11 hits. That could either make fights more interesting, or cause massive running or instant immunity on some mobs.
Yeah, the more we talk about this, the more sure I am these Bastion’s procs won’t proc anything. I mean, if you stack AS in a bunch of places, you can get to a 5 frame Frenzy. That’s 12 hits per second, or 132 instances of Frenzy, via Bastion’s, per second. If all of those can proc AD, or need to be counted into Bloodshed, the game is going to crash, for sure!
You and me both here. Pain Enhancer is another place where it would get a little insane. If you got on procs on 10 enemies from the AoE on it, then you would get what, 30% increase attack speed on an already insanely fast attack. At in Bane of the Stricken and that will stack all of them at 60 stacks per second.
Maybe the Dev team could work with us and have the damage bonus take effect upon the casting of TS: Fear (it’s duration could be 3 seconds). This way we could use it vs RG.
Well, Stricken’s got that ICD, and its ICD is weird as hell. It’s supposed to be 0.9 * fpa (frames per animation), but I think it actually has separate cooldowns for different attacks (like, if you do a test with a WW setup, and are hitting an RG with both direct WW hits and Dust Devil hits, you’ll see that at the end of X seconds you have more Stricken stacks than you “should” have, given the attack rates of either WW or DDs, meaning that each of the two is stacking Stricken independently…)
So, yeah, who the hell knows how it would work with hundreds of Frenzy hits, if they were all able to stack Stricken. My guess is that they’ll have an unexcepted proc rate of 0 and won’t proc, or stack, anything…
I think that’s probably too specific… and besides, vs a single-target RG, you’re going to pile up Stricken stacks at an incredible rate. That plus 11x Frenzy damage, and you’re going to kill RGs fast. Let’s wait for some PTR playtesting to see how things go.
