Immortal King, Ancients

Barbarian
1

In S21, I managed to get my hands on an IK set first;

My first thought was how compared to some others, IK is relatively useless until you reach 6 pieces, and the second was how far behind it is of Wrath of the Wastes in performace, and the third, how … weird the summoned Ancients are;

Clearly they are central to the set’s theme, but all they are really good for is fulfilling the set’s requirement in exchange for your damage and defense bonus, plus generating resource and providing further defense via their runes.

Granted, that’s not nothing, but have you seen them fight on their own? They’ll valiantly charge an enemy, and hack at it with great ferocity, only to deal no noticable damage at all.

In a fondly delusional way, I’d like to propose a way to solve all three problems at once:

Extend either the 2pc or 4pc bonus to also make the Ancients repeat every skill the player casts at the nearest enemy; If I charge, they’d charge. If I whirl, they’d whirl, ect; Adjust numbers as necessary.

More damage would be dealt, the set would be more useful while fishing for your first full suit, and the ancients would have a noticable effect on the battle without becoming auto-play level independent pets, since they’d only do hard hitting damage when the player himself does, making the IK barbarian more of a leader of great warriors than a solo fighter or a pet keeper - as, in my opinion, he should be.

Thoughts?

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I like this idea. Unfortunately, I wonder how much coding it might take. For the balancing patch, I suspect that they make focus on number changes to the six piece sets.

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The Demon Hunter’s turrets do the same thing with the Marauder set; It might be possible to copy-paste the code with only minor alterations necessary.

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Thinking more about it. I wonder if the code for necromancer simulacrum can be adapted (they move with the player while the DH entries are fixed.)

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The Monk had a similar function via Rabid Strike too.

I think this is a great idea and the IK set, as you said, is quite lacking currently.

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I really like this idea. IK being a rounded set would make it possible to just screw around with skills and just have fun while not feeling like a toddler trying to tear down the great wall of China with a spork.

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In terms of raw skill numbers, Ancients are actually one of the more damaging of the Barbarian skills, and are actually worthy of the CD and overall awesomeness of the ability. If you were to remove all the gear and just whack at expert difficulty things, you would see that Call of the Ancients just melts through everything compare to other skills, even skills of other classes! They are, in fact, some of the strongest pets in the game, at least in terms of their baseline capabilities!

However, we don’t live in a D3 where the baseline damage numbers matter, but rather what the multipliers are. And Call of the Ancients only has 2 non-set modifiers - 2x from shoulders, and a 1.3x from IK weapon.

So, unfortunately, Call of the Ancients just isn’t going to preform at the level of other skills. If the Shoulders got buffed to 5-600%, and the IK weapon did the same, AND we got a 3rd modifier somewhere? The Ancients would just be clearing the entire screen like nobodies business!

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I did try to have the ancients do the dmg. I put the shoulders in cube and had the primal ik wep. I both 4 ik and waste and used the pet gem. Those ancients did nothing. Even lowered the diff and nothing. The ability to kill lots of trash wasn’t there. And the single target didn’t even work at all on the Uber bosses for the hellfire ammy. It’s sad cuz those are the same ancients from d2 and they were tough mfers.

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I can appreciate the creativity, Grim. It’s certainly an interesting solution, but I have a few problems with it.

Conceptually, you seem to be going for this:

But if the Ancients simply mimick your move set, they’re no different than a Necro’s simulacrums, or a Monk’s clones, right? Right now, each Ancient has a unique move set which, at least on paper, helps to distinguish them from each other–and from you. If you take that away, you just have three clones following you. Thematically, I don’t think this is going to achieve what you’re trying to accomplish.

Mechanically, it seems like a nightmare to balance. If you apply a static multiplier to the Ancients’ damage, you can’t account for the fact that different sets apply different multipliers to different skills. In other words, if the baseline for worthwhile damage is to be based on the skill multipliers baked into other sets (and frankly, there’s no other baseline, is there?), which multiplier are you going to use? If, for example, you apply 10,000% damage to Furious Charge, that’s going to be very different from the same bonus applied to HOTA when it comes to which skill is worth using. It would be impossible to balance.

What’s more, in order for multiple skills to be worthwhile in terms of damage output you would have to increase the set’s base multiplier to be better than other sets at their own specific skills. The IK set would have to be better at WW and Rend than the Wastes set, or else why not just use the Wastes set?

Finally, it doesn’t really solve the IK set’s core problem: a distinct lack of identity. What is the IK set supposed to be good at? Most folks would argue that a HOTA build is the bread and butter of the set, because most of our other hard-hitting attacks are covered by other sets. But the IK set’s global multiplier has never really been tuned properly for it, and it’s generalist design means it can’t compete with most other sets at anything.

I think the simplest way to fix the IK set right now is to buff the 6-piece multiplier to somewhere between 8,000-10,000%. Equip Remorseless, Echo Fury, and Fury of the Ancients, and let HOTA stand toe to toe with Pro-Slam and H90.

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We’re talking about a game where you repeat one attack indefinitely until everything dies. If I attack, and the ancients following me do the same attack, it’s completely okay.

Aha! But who said anything about buffing any damage? The ancients would repeat the exact same attack at the exact same damage as the player does; They get their damage from you, and you get your damage from the exact same items you’d equip right now.

No. Because your attack is repeated by the three ancients, that’s basically a +300% multiplier to your final damage number. I’d certainly not expect IK, the jack-of-all-trades set as it is to be better at whirling for example than WotW.

In fact this IS a change that would give it a very distinct identity. It’d be different than any other build, because you wouldn’t be buffing and standing behind your pets; You’d lead them from the front and fight as hard as you can, like the set’s namesake, the Immortal King would. You wouldn’t be stacking pet damage, you’d be stacking your own, because you need to hit hard for them to do the same.

I mean, my word isn’t law - sadly- but I believe I’ve thought this one out pretty well. Reasonably simple, fun, and quadruples the set’s destructive potential without a further boring % increase. And mimicked attacks are already present in the game.

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I actually suggested a similar idea several patches ago (and I don’t think I was the original person with the idea either) that the ancients attack with HotA when you do, and using your damage. So you got the 3x multiplier and more AoE since the Ancients would potentially be attacking different areas of the screen than you. IK HotA was one of my favorite builds, so I always go there with IK.

So I like the idea, but I also agree with Free’s assessments that there are some problems balancing IK vs. the other sets if it’s just a “general” set with no identity. Making it (more) of a “pet” set might help, but I think sticking to skills like HotA that are fun but don’t really have a home anywhere else, would allow the build to come into its own, so you didn’t worry about a IK WW build that was better than the WW set.

I would be okay with Free’s suggestion to buff IK up and let the chips fall where they may as well, and it seems more realistic in terms of what the classic games team is willing and able to do.

H90 plays pretty similar, but is more glassy, but with Frenzy stacks adding move speed also faster, so I’m almost wondering if it needs more than just damage multiplier from the set to be competitive…H90 has similar charge positioning but really fast movement speed with Frenzy stacks. So it needs to be balanced well as a build with less mobility I think.

I really think it would be cool if they could figure out a way to make our 2H mighty weapons be more than cube fodder. I’d love IK HotA to have GoJ to be BIS to use, instead of just cube fodder, but again, I think a change like that is not feasible within scope (plus depending how they did it I would kick myself for salvaging primal GoJ hah)

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Are they going to attack the same target you attack, or will they spread their damage to random targets as they currently do? If it’s the latter, their damage will remain insignificant. If it’s the former, well, now we have problems–several problems, actually. That works nicely for a skill like HOTA which has a relatively small AOE, but what about Rend? Or Slam? Or EQ and Leap?

Err, but if all 3 Ancients deal the same damage you deal, that’s 4 characters dealing 4,000% skill damage before you factor in supporting legendaries. If the Ancients attack the foe you attack–the Rift Guardian, for example, or lone elites–we’re talking about a focused 16,000% damage before you multiply that with supporting legendaries. For most builds, that’s not a huge deal, but for others . . . yeah, that’s not a good idea. This kind of tinkering would be a balancing nightmare, and all I mean by that is that the devs would have to be super careful not to let this one set be better at what other sets are supposed to do best. It also seems well beyond the scope of future patches, especially given the age of the game and the upcoming D4.

While creative, I don’t think this would be a good solution. Let’s be honest: The IK set is all about HOTA–and all it needs to make HOTA truly competitive is more damage. The easiest way to accomplish this is just increasing the set multiplier.

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Just making the IK set great would be cool in any form. It’s THE iconic set for barbarians but I would also like the Tal Tasha set, Nat’s set, Trang set…and where’s the griswald set?

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It’s still only a 4x multiplication of any current build you’d be able to do right now with IK. And 4x more damage means… 10 more GR levels.
I’m not sure if you’re overthinking it, or just dead set on not liking my idea for some reason.
It’s not like it’ll be in the game tomorrow if you don’t say something bad about it. Heck, the topic will sink in a week at best, and no devs, no admins, and not even MVPs will read it.
Chill out.

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Aside from all this discussion buffing the 6p bonus would benefit two builds and make it a quick fix for the devs. Charge and IK hota need a lot of help. IK hota does need more help then charge though.