Less go barb love incoming and amazing GR changes
I’ll spend some time tomorrow going over the numbers for BT and WT…
Actually, I can do Weapon Throw right now: it’s about an +11 tier buff. So, DieHarder should be expecting to clear maybe 110-115, rather than 99, at 3.5k paragon, using his current setup. Not nothing, but not nearly enough to make that build really competitive.
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That’s a shame. It was exciting to see that it finally received some attention.
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Amazing, no. Wallbang and charges before dealing damage… Heck no. ALso the missing life bonus… Urgh.
I was thinking about you when I read those notes, I’m sure you guys will give them solid feedback and steer it in the right direction.
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GR changes are juicy 
Is it sad that I’m more excited about the ability to close GRs over anything else?
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For Boulder Toss, yes. Weapon Throw has mechanical issues that will likely always prevent it from being a competitive build (sadly), but BT may end up competitive depending on how the Raekor changes shake out.
The Devs wanted Raekors to be a charge and then ditch a ranged weapon at opponents (spear or throwing axe).
Charging puts you in close range - toe to toe. Once your standing on the enemies toes you’re meant to use a ranged weapon? Seems odd.
No, you can cross monsters with your charge and If you are not far enough away you can charge second time to place you where you want. The mobility offered by Furious Charge makes it relevant to use skills such as Ancient Spear or Seismic Slam. But …
The big problem with Raekor is that it works with stacks that you spend with skills that use fury (now it is Ancient Spear). So you must use Furious Charge like a bull to have plenty of stacks and the most effective way is to do it against a wall.
From my point of view it’s not fun at all and I think a lot of players share that opinion. Just look at the season ranking on this set (Europe) :
1 : 143 in 12 min 32
2 : 133 in 14 min 08
3 : 130 in 8 min 09
4 : 130 in 12 min 49
5 : 126 in 12 min 30
6 : 124 in 14 min 47
7 : 122 in 9 min 42
8 : 121 in 14 min 58
9 : 120 in 11 min 53
10 : 120 in 13 min 32
It pushes not much, we wonder why lol.
Ok, let’s go over the changes to Barb stuff…
1: Weapon Throw
As I said, a build that primarily deals damage with Weapon Throw is getting an 11 tier buff. That comes from damage increases to Arreat’s Law (previously 0%, now 200%, so a 3x multiplier) and 300th Spear (previously 60%, now 200%, so a 1.875x multiplier).
3 * 1.875 = 5.625x, and 1.17^11 = 5.623.
The buff is frankly just not enough. The only person I know who has ever recorded gameplay with this spec is DieHarder, and he (playing quite well) did GR 99 with about 3.5k paragon. So that 99 would now be 110. Could that mark be beaten with more fishing, better gear, more skill, etc? Of course, but even if all those factors allowed somebody to do 10 GRs better, which seems very unlikely to me, we’d still be talking about GR 120 at 3.5k paragon, which is, in a word, BAD.
So, there is room for AT LEAST another 10 GRs worth of damage, without the build becoming anything close to OP. Frankly, the most sensible thing to do would probably be to have either 300th or Arreat’s increase Ancient Spear by 200% and Weapon Throw by 2000%. This would give you 21 / 3 = 7x more damage, or another 12-13 GRs of push potential. (If you wanted to split that increase between both spears, you could take both to +700%, which gives roughly the same overall buff).
Even then, based on the clears we’ve actually seen, with the WT bonus increased on one of those items to 2000%, we’re still only talking about DH clearing roughly 123 at 3.5k paragon. Not OP. Definitely not OP!
Let me say it again: the Weapon Throw damage can increase A LOT without being OP.
2: Raekor 2-piece
Well, there’s no change here, which is kind of a problem. Whether here or in the 4-piece, I think we really expected to see some sort of damage mitigation. As it stands now, the build is going to be super glassy. But, let’s move on to the 4-piece, we can talk more about the mitigation issue there…
3: Raekor 4-piece
I’ll start by quoting the new set of bonuses in their entirety:
- Legacy of Raekor (4-piece Bonus): Furious Charge gains the effect of every rune and deals 1000% increased damage. For every 1% Life you are missing, the damage of your Ancient Spear is increased by 2%.
So, the first part is identical to the old 4-piece bonus. I think that the Charge damage ought to be increased, at least doubled, to give Vile Charge a bump. Darkpatator did 135 with that build, with 10k paragon, back before the follower buff. And, he was a really excellent player- possibly the best ever at that particular build. Post follower buff, that 135 would probably be 138 or 139 with 10k paragon. Doubling the Charge damage (to 2000%) would bring you to about 143, and doubling it again (to 4000%) would still only take you to about 147-148 at 10k paragon, which is still weaker than either Rend or LOD HOTA, and comparable to Leapquake and Frenzy.
So: Charge damage on the 4-piece really ought to go to at least 3000%. After all, when are they going to touch this stuff again?
The second part of Raekor 4-piece is new. We now deal up to 3x damage with Ancient Spear, based on how much life we are missing. In actuality, you can really never get a full 3x, since that would mean you are missing 100% of your life, i.e. you’re dead.
What is really needed is a damage mitigation mechanic that allows you to stay at lower levels of life with relatively reduced risk. Perhaps they ought to incorporate a mechanic kind of like the one on the Necromancer ring Lornelle’s Sunstone, which gives you 0.95% damage mitigation for every 1% life missing. This still has significant problems, since it leaves you super vulnerable to one-shots, but at least it would be something to help you stay alive, while taking advantage of the damage bonus. If they really wanted to get fancy, they could combine the effects of Lornelle’s with the Wizard’s Force Armor rune for Energy Armor, which limits the amount of damage you can take from a single hit.
So: Some kind of additional damage mitigation is badly needed!
4: Raekor 6-piece
I’ll again quote the new bonuses:
- Legacy of Raekor (6-piece Bonus): Hitting enemies with Furious Charge increases the damage of your next Ancient Spear by 5500% and causes it to release multiple spears from its target. This effect stacks and is consumed from each released spear. This can only consume a maximum of 5 stacks at a time.
The first part of this seems to show a notable change. Previously, we built up stacks by using Furious Charge. We got the stack, 1 per Charge, whether we hit enemies or not. Now, we increase the damage of AS when we hit enemies with Charge.
Hopefully, the way that works is that you get 1 stack per enemy hit. That will significantly disincentivize wall-charging, since it is hard to Charge through large numbers of enemies while still hitting a wall. Fingers crossed that this is implemented well!
The next thing to note is the “release multiple spears from its target”. It seems to indicate that when you consume stacks to cast Ancient Spear, not only is the damage increased, but multiple extra spears also radiate out from the point of impact. It’s currently unclear how many extra spears that is, but my guess is that it’s 1 per consumed stack, i.e. 5 extra spears. If so, then when hitting with Boulder Toss, your damage would actually be (55x/stack * 5 stacks) * 6 spears = 1650x additional damage!
But, it is really hard to tell how well this build will perform. For one thing, nobody has played a Boulder Toss spec in so long that it’s hard to establish any kind of baseline. The combined buffs to 300th Spear, Arreat’s, Skular’s, Raekor 4, and Raekor 6 look like they work out to MAYBE 1.875 * 3 * 1.5 * 2 * 6 = 101.25x, which is 29-30 GRs worth of extra damage. However, we also don’t know if those extra spears from Raekor 6 will proc AD and BR: Bloodshed. If not, the build will be significantly weaker. And even if Bloodshed and AD work great, it’s hard to know if 30 tiers of extra damage is too little, too much, or just right.
So: damage-wise, this build might be great, but also might be terrible!
5: Summary
Weapon Throw buffs are way too low. Increase the WT buff (not the AS buff) on either 300th or Arreat’s Law to +2000%, or on both to +700%.
Charge damage on Raekor 4 should be increased, to at least 3000%. This would make Vile Charge decent without being particularly powerful.
Raekor badly needs built-in mitigation, especially something that will help us stay alive at lower life, to utilize the “missing life damage bonus” of Raekor 4-piece.
R6 Boulder Toss may do great damage, or it may do terrible damage. Right now there are too many unknown variables to tell one way or the other.
The Raekor wall-charging problem might be fixed/mitigated… or it might not be fixed at all.
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For sure, I hate it when the create new game bugs out after join/leaving so much! Now you can just find a low ping server and camp that out for the entire fishing session.
Potentially better is the chance for dream maps! I know all too well the current dream maps and how long it takes to get the 4-corner festering, but now there’s an even better chance of it?! Heck ya buddy!
If they reset the leaderboard you will have a permanent rank 1. Unless some goes gets it last minute.
Haha, well, who says there a better chance of getting a GG map?! Maybe an Orek’s Dream is so much better than even a great Festering / Battlefield / Desolate Sands / Fields of Misery that you need one to really push for a top rank… but they only appear roughly once every 1000 keys. 
In that case it is an improvement. GG map every 1k keys Im ok with.
My guess is by “small chance” is more like 1% territory. You start getting
into 5-10% range would be too frequent.
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Yeah it’ll be interesting to see what “small chance” means! Agreed that it shouldn’t be too frequent.
I also hope that it isn’t actually better than a “natural-rolled” gg map. More like: a primal of maps. So, it could be the best, but if so, only a hair better than a really well-rolled ancient.
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The small chance will have variation within itself so of course we will always fish for whatever is GG. Who knows maybe a rank 1 map becomes even rarer but overall decent maps are frequent.
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In that circumstance, it’ll be interesting to see how people, including us, feel about it.
Will we be saying “Ahhhh, there are so many more good open maps now!”…?
Or, will we be saying “Ugh, just another 4-corners Festering. Why the hell can’t I get a good map?”
I just read the notes again. Does the Orek’s dream rift include all of the key points below it or are those points below in addition? If it is in addition then we will be seeing a lot of decent maps. A big part that will take a lot of testing is the new progression and exp of the “bad mobs” they listed. This might as well be a buff to speed farming builds.
I believe it is “in addition”. I do wonder what it means when it says Orek’s Dream has a “curated list of maps and monster compositions”.
It could be that it’s basically “no bad maps, no bad mobs”… or, it’s possible (though less likely, I think) than an Orek’s Dream could actually have combos that are not part of one of the existing sets, i.e. you might get Swarms + Horror/Mother, or something like that.
That might make getting an OD too essential… we’ll see.
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