So came back to diablo 3 and mostly playing str, however compared to Crusader, Barbarian seems very underpowered with all builds. Was checking the non seasonal leaderboards aswell to confirm that. Barbs is like 15 tiers lower solo than Crusaders, however that is probably because norwalds set is so overpowered right now. Thoughts?
What leaderboard are you looking at to find a 15 their gap? There is a gap but not anywhere near 15 tears. The top clear on the new leader board show a 2 teir gap on the NA board. For the world leader board sader is at 150 with 15k paragon in 12 minutes and barb is at 146 with 7k just under 15 minutes.
The problem with looking at leaderboards this early is players tend to play the best or overpowered builds because that’s what fuels 4 man metas. So right now necro/wiz/safer will get all the action and it will seem like they have more top clear. Give it a month and barbs will have there 150s posted. Also barbs have the 4th best solo clears right now so we are not in a position so claim we are underpowered.
Barb top clear 146@7.5k
WD top clear 143@9k
Monk top clear 143@9.2k
Dh too clear 142@14k
Lol… underpowered. When Wastes had Rend added that was the build of the moment.
Barb is fine. They could do with some extra damage on most sets, but Barb is probably the only class that can claim that each of its sets is both viable and fun to play.
Besides, you’re not going to be touching anywhere over 130-135 unless you have 3-5k+ paragon. Just pick a class you like playing and go as far as you’d like with it.
Well, I wouldn’t say Barb is underpowered. Really, in terms of items and sets, we’re mostly in a good place. All we need are some significant buffs to a few supporting legendaries and set-bonus multipliers and all our builds would be competitive. Rend is our strongest build, and while I hope it stays that way (purely my bias), I’d like to see our other builds get within a few tiers.
Other classes are in much worse shape.
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They could in nerf the belt back to 200% 
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Context writing this thread was after I slapped together the Akkhan/Invoker bombardmentbuild and went to gr 117 after I got bored, then back to Barb struggling with GR110, so no Barb aint underpowered, Crusader is just to op
This last post is a more accurate statement. Blizzard stated awhile back that they balance based on a 130 GR clear at 5k paragon. Very important to understand that this is for the average player. Now if we talk about clears around that level and what is possible then that is different story. I personally cleared 136 before I hit 5k and Seras had multiple close calls both RNG and his own fault that cost him 140 clears sub 5k. Rage has also recently cleared a 136 with MOTE at 3.6k paragon which is our second best build.
We are in a good spot. No OP builds with both HOTA build probably needing some adjustments and raekor needing a rework. Frenzy will need some help too if it is ever to compete with sader for RGK.
Wouldn’t call them underpowered. Barbs have one amazing build - ww/rend - that can do every activity in the game really fast and efficiently and can even push very high with optimized gear and experience probably all the way up to gr150. There are very few other builds of some other classes that are better at pushing, sure, but nothing can go wrong with a sping-to-win barb. His second best build is also great, and has amazing single target damage. And let us not forget the fantastic supporting qualities of the class making barbs probably the best support in the game, so there is a spot for barbs in every meta. If I were to rate them as a class overall I’d probably give him a high score and it’s my favorite class by far. The other builds are somewhat lacking in power so if you want to play a really strong barb you might want to focus on either wrath of the wastes or horde of the 90 savages.
Tale as old as time.
Underpowered for what?
I’d say Barbs are about 10 times more fun to play than other classes.
So, on the ‘fun’ leaderboard, they’re way ahead!