Nev's Blog and Barbs

Read her blog post here:

https://us.diablo3.com/en/blog/23093785/diablo-iii-and-ongoing-support-8-13-2019

The most pertinent bits are here as follows:

Our crew is hard at work crafting additional Themed Seasons, a new set for each class, dozens of Legendary powers, and some class balance changes. Quality of life and the occasional gameplay system updates are also within scope, as we evaluate how we can keep bringing new magic to the world of Sanctuary. These updates won’t arrive all at once, so if you don’t see something for your class right away, don’t worry; there’s something coming for everyone.

This is great news. We’re getting a new class set! And we’re getting buffed legendaries!

My only concern going forward is that we can’t have another Saffron Wrap incident. In other words, I really don’t want to get a bunch of buffed legs that, like Saffron Wrap, are useless. But I think our buff proposal will help insure that doesn’t happen.

Thoughts?

8 Likes

This post made my day!!! Gives us hope still for sure. Hope they take a look at each class and what those respective communities propose, take it in, analyze it, release what they deem is good and let us test it, then tweak and release it so no-one gets a massive power boost. Really hope this means we first in line for this but its really nice to have some positive reassurance from Nev and the team.

Here’s to hoping Barbs! Keep the faith.

1 Like

This blog is not good news in my opinion.

They want to introduce new items instead of fixing current items.

3 Likes

I take it as both that they want to introduce new sets/items but also fix ones that they currently have. I can see it be interpreted either way though. I always stay optimistic though so thats just me. I’ll be here til the end anyways. Diablo has been my favorite series since I was a kid so I ain’t going nowhere.

I hope so too–we definitely deserve to be front and center in terms of content delivery. But even if we have to wait a little longer, at least we know we’re gonna get some TLC. That, by itself, is a very, very good thing.

For them to be working on this now, it had to have been in the works for a while, so I think it’s fair to say that’s why Barbs didn’t get anything in the last two patches.

BTW, now I’m thinking of certain folk who went on and on about how our Barb Buff Proposal was just completely unrealistic, how Blizz is done making changes to the game, how we asked for too much, blah, blah, blah. I’m sitting here like:

Not sure why you’re jumping to that conclusion. The new class sets are, obviously, new, but the “dozens of legendary powers” likely refers to updates to existing items. Will everything get fixed? Probably not. Are we likely to see substantial changes to existing items–buffs, in other words? I think that’s a 99% sure-fire YES.

5 Likes

hahahaha yes. Felt this post was a nice stick it to the ones who doubted. Also very interested to see what type of new set we will get. My bet is on a Frenzy or Weapons Throw…some type of generator build. We shall see.

3 Likes

Yes! I’m high-fiving you, mah dude, all the way from the other side of the Internet!

I can’t imagine it will be anything other than a primary or Frenzy set, right? That’s easily the most requested build for Barbs. Makes sense. But it could also be something else–Slam, maybe? But that’s already covered in MOTE.

I secretly pine for a Boulder Toss build, but all we really need is a buffed Skular’s + 300th.

1 Like

:grinning: I guess that Blizzard has some of their own ideas about how they want the game to mature with the new sets and items that they are currently or will develop in the future. :grinning:

1 Like

It definitely reads like “new items” to me. By introducing new items and new mechanics it just introduces yet another level of balancing issues man.

Until they actually give a thorough balance pass through. I don’t want them introducing 50+ new items.

1 Like

That was largely my comprehension too: More new items than buffs to old ones.

1 Like

Whoa whoa whoa… when did Mr. Negative join the hype train?

The point is not to get too hyped over Blizzard throwing us a gnarly, pre-chewed bone. The point is to manage expectations.

Welcome aboard sir. Open season for all forum posters to start the wild speculations.

I don’t know. It took them how many weeks to approve the blog post? I’m starting to slant to the “too little, too late” camp. I will be spinning this season, just maybe not here… Think it might be time to take the Path more traveled by.

The new blogpost gives me hopes that the barbarian will get deeper changes beyond the changes named in proposal #1.
Maybe that is the reason why this patch has so little, at least i would like to believe so. They might be working on a big rework of the barbarian class.

I hope they dont give us things we didnt want and actually come up with a legit solution to many of our problems and i hope the new set will be a generator focused set, because i know that many folks wanna use generators, but they are utter useless right now.

If barb is the first in line, barb balance will last only a season. The nexts in line will definitely overpower barb in the following seasons and overall balance may bever change… Every class will get something. Balance seems irrelevant.

:frowning:

1 Like

There may be a few new items, but I think the lion’s share of what we’ll get will be buffs/alterations to existing items.

I’m not so sure. I think the devs have taken away a few important lessons from the last few patches, particularly to the community’s response. And I think the more organized buff proposal that we put out has made an impact. I suspect that, barring any glaring problems, balance will be better going forward.

Let’s all remember that we won’t get everything we wanted–and some people might not get much of what they want, period. For example, I’m heavily biased in that the things I want most out of the proposal are the Rend and Boulder Toss items, but we may just get some buffs to EQ and Slam. In that example, I’m not gonna be a happy camper; I wouldn’t be mad, of course, since EQ and Slam needs some buffs, but I’m certainly not getting what I want.

Point is, we need to temper expectations.

We also need to reinforce to the devs that the stuff in the proposal is the stuff we want–or at the very least, the kind of balancing proposed in there is the kind of balancing we want. We need, more than ever, to come together and advocate for worthwhile buffs, for better cross-class parity, and for broken sets and builds to receive long-overdue attention.

1 Like

FYI: We should brainstorm about the new set.
I opened a thread here but Trolls may directly jump in without having any idea about barb builds. So for now only an inspiration thread to devs as we cannot be very specific (only some ideas may work)

I suggested a 4P set only with some items having legendary powers. And not gonna reply to any troll posts there.

1 Like

Hot take:

Next patch, Season 19 - new sets for all classes, with new supporting legendaries for each set. Possibly redesigned existing legendaries with a handful of new ones thrown in where there is a lack of older models with no legendary power. Having announced that new sets will be released in the future, there will be pressure to release them ASAP, and I would expect this will be the focus of the dev team for the next 2 months. Best case scenario is there are some minor adjustments to severely lacking sets at this point, but I highly doubt it.

Following patch, Season 20 - fine tune the new sets and hopefully rebalance old sets. I do not anticipate old sets to be rebalanced before the set patch as they’ll want players herded into the new ones for testing/balance/QA/QC purposes. I desperately hope that the balance patch isn’t put off until Season 21.

So, another 6 months at a minimum before any existing sets are balanced/fixed/adjusted, whatever you want to call it.

Still, new sets would be worth putting any class balance efforts off for that long imo. We just need to survive Season 18 first.

My two cents.

I don’t see them releasing all the class sets at once. My guess is they’ll stagger them to handle the workload with the CG team. Maybe 1 class per patch? Maybe 2?

New sets and class items will be announced … at BlizzCon 2019.

Closed PTR at BlizzCon for attendees to play them that weekend.

Live launch the following week.

Called it :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

2 Likes

Boiz, design some sets and throw them here. Let them know what kind of sets barbs need:

An example:

1 Like