Patch 2.6.8 and my thoughts and suggestions to barbarians

General Discussion
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I am a main barb player I would concentrate changes of barb.

2-Piece Bonus: Double the effectiveness of all Shouts. Feared Enemies take double damage.

All 3 shouts under tactics or just threatening shout? I would suggest all shouts (perhaps this would be way more strong) to gain all ruin effects. Or alternatively gain the base effect of all shouts link Inna?

It also would be pretty hard to link making damage to fear effect? Image, I have to fear enemies to gain the double damage but they are running everywhere. Do not want to play Tom and Jerry or hide and seek games. Once the resist from monsters, particularly RGs becomes immune to fear skills so how are we getting double damage to RGs?

Also can this set be set to all primary skills rather than frenzy only? We already have Blade of Warlord for bash, Dishonored Legacy for cleave, 300 spear for weapon throw and Oathkeep for all primary skills. Giving bonus to all primary skills would give a completely free choice for players to enjoy, even though there would be no other supportive items for those primary skills at the moment. However it leaves a open world with skeleton and add flesh and blood later days.

Perhaps, Undisputed Champion can be redeveloped to be all primary skills gain the effect of every rune?

Just my thoughts to barbarians.

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All three Tactics abilities are considered shouts. One of the Barb passives explicitly states that.

I agree that linking the damage bonus to the Fear effect sucks. It seems obvious that they intend players to use the Terrify rune of Threatening Shout, but this would only really work well if this were a Weapon Throw set, not a Frenzy set. This trait should be changed or another one needs to be added that reliably gives the damage this was intended to give us.
cough I suggest a trait that promotes the use of two-handed weapons cough

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Correct. The 2-Piece applies to everything in the Tactics category.

That’s actually pretty much the intention, though less Tom and Jerry and more Predator. :wink: Sometimes, we like experimenting with a different approach to game play so that every set isn’t just “do more damage.” Fear is a potentially interesting, but underutilized, mechanic and actually has a lot of currently unused synergy among items and other classes (particularly Witch Doctor). Independently, I’ve been theorizing around a build that capitalizes off of working with a zDPS Witch Doctor, which we haven’t seen much of for a long time, and I’m looking forward to seeing if it plays out.

We’re trying something different and outside the box. It’s almost certainly going to need some work (most of our new stuff does). This is exactly why we have PTR, and we’d like to see what people come up with during the testing period. Personally, I see the fantasy in playing a terrifying, feral warrior that enemies flee from, and there’s definitely some tools available to make herding fleeing foes a play style or mini-game of sorts. How and if that plays out long-term will take a little experimenting and observation, and we hope you give it a go and let us know your thoughts!

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I personally don’t like to chase enemies when Echoing Fury procs. I really don’t see myself having fun chasing ALL enemies every time I use Threatening Shout.

Seriously, the single most annoying thing while playing a melee character: chasing down enemies that like to run away.

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perhaps somebskills can stack damages or bleeding and release it when monsters run away? the further they run, the quicker they die?

does it sound more interesting?

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I appreciate the devs trying something new and different but I don’t have high hopes of this panning out well for a Frenzy Barb.

The main concern for me being that the damage reduction from the new set is contingent on Frenzy stacks. This leaves the opportunity for stacks to fall off while I’m chasing down feared mobs to hit them, this of course risks dying. This feels less like a terrifying predator and more like a desperate hungry person chasing food to not starve to death. If the flood of complaints about the high fear proc on Echoing Fury didn’t already tell the devs that this isn’t something players enjoy, I suspect they’re about to get an earful about it with this new 2pc bonus.

I’ll give you that it’s a potentially interesting mechanic, but I don’t think it’s going to be very interesting on this new set. I could, of course, be completely wrong and I really hope I am. This is why we have a PTR though. We’ll see.

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After reading the posts here I have to agree with most of what has been said.
The most notable thing being that fear would work better with weapon throw.
I am still very happy we get a Frenzy barb though as that was always a fun skill to use in the early days of D3.

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dmg reduction on stacks + fear for double dmg?
both unfun mechanics.
why not just flat dmg reduction for all sets?
chasing enemies arround is one of the most annoying things.

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While I can understand the wish, this is not a good option here. I already have a frenzy build using LoN and it is not fun when the fear on Echo of Fury procs.

I have had a single enemy run through a crowd and me not being able to hit it anymore.

Rifts with the wasp enemies will be an instant restart. You cannot catch them even with a fully stacked frenzy and EF Frenzy.

And as others have said, fear doesnt really work on bosses.

Honestly, with how things look now, I would ignore the fear mechanic. I would also possible just enjoy the new versions of the legendaries and use it with my LoN/LoD setup. Damage will be the same and DR would be the same, but no stacking needed.

And not to be all doom and gloom:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/frenzy-barb-patch-notes/11818/11?u=seiya-1765

Having what type of weapon you have equipped affecting how the 2 piece works was an amusing thought experiment.

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Agree. This reminded me of the WotW set back in the day, when we totally ignore the 2pc and 4 pc effects and just focus on WW damage. It was bad design. And so can this 2pc effect of the new barb set.
An other way of using this effect is equiping the Madawc’s Sorrow but it doesn’t seems like a good idea, since it’s 2-handed.
I agree on the idea of adding the damage bonus to all Barb primary skills. So we can equip OathKeeper and Blade of the Warlord to use Freanzy as a fury gen and Bash as a fury spender.

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I’m really hoping to see a video of you chasing a terrified chicken while the music from the Benny Hill Show plays…

:wink:

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Please ditch the idea of a melee characther chasing feeling monsters. Not fun at all. This style is more fitting to DH, not barb.

Also, why don’t they include Overpower in the set? It’s just work well with Frenzy.

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Awesome , keep up with the good-work. :slight_smile: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes:

But I do agreed with the fear mechanic, it’s just a very frustrating game-play mechanic and it goes against the core game-play of D3 i.e, killing monster and not chasing around for monster, perhaps tone down the speed of monster run away and also “Fear” can have many effects not just fleeing but Fear can make people stand still in fear.

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I like the idea of trying to work in fear, especially for the Barbarian (though Necromancer is also a good fit) and it goes with the set name as well - lol who wouldn’t run from a blood-crazed savage barbarian?

But the gameplay is counter-productive. If it was in tandem with something like Axe Throw or Ancient Spear, then that would work (and also be kind of cool, basically hucking a pointy thing into their backsides as they flee in terror) and there are other items that work in tandem with feared enemies but it honestly feels like to me at least, that that should be reserved for a different set entirely.

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Worst gaming experience, by far. Literally. Want an extreme example? Pushing in GRs. Stuff survives long. More enemies have to be dealt with simultaneously, meaning: We have to “gather” enemies and collect them in certain areas. Barb also has the best tools for that, hands down.
But this does not apply if we actually have to build up density over quite some time, just to kill all density in an instant.

Another point: Band of Might. “Don’t dare to use Charge (knock up effect, cc, cc-diminishing returns), don’t use Ground Stomp”

Because it is a horrible game mechanic. It’s like an enemy affix, but applied by the player against himself. (An Affix at “Waller”, “Wormhole”, etc. type of level: Difficulty through disruption of the gameplay (which is ok, really) and can sometimes end up in real frustrating situations. Now add scattering fear-effects on top of that.)

“Predator style hunting” might seem #cool against an enemy, but not against enemIES.

Fear against enemIES means: There is an enemy, and everywhere else are enemies, most of the battlefield though consists of “empty area”.

We also do not need yet again another class that hardly deals with Juggernaut-affix ( = always skips them. Have fun when finally getting Festering Woods! … with 6 Juggernauts.)

Same bias I am having with the Barbarian Set, I do have with the Wizard Set - in Solo gameplay, you MUST oneshot most targets quick, or… as difficulty raises… and you have to “gather and lure” enemies again together… you will reach a point, where you won’t be able to re-cast 5-headed Hydras faster than atleast 5 enemies did hit you.
At some point, this will be the case even with those 5-headed Hydras at 5.00 APS in theory.

Let’s also not forget multiple times per second ticking DoTs and ground effects. 5 Hydra heads dying, before they attack for the first time due to summoning animation.

Really, I appreciate the engagement into trying to come up with cool, new sets and gameplay through special new game mechanics.

But things like this are so special, they only work…

a) in a theorized world of no enemy interaction
b) or not at all.

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Add to 4th set piece : feared enemies are frozen in place. Ni need to chase when they are standing still :smile:

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I like this way of thinking and I hope we will see more of this in the future.
Gameplay for D3 evolved in playing like a sheepherder grouping monsters up (I really hope that it will be gone in D4) and then kill them.

This set should be fun with Pandemonium Loop and Rechel’s ring.

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It May be possible to suck enemies with vacuum cold rune of ww or ess of johan. Fear, pull (or spear maybe) , kill

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CC diminishing returns still persist.
-> overly complicated scenarios like Whirlwind-Hurricane sucking them back to you won’t work…
-> this short 3sec. fear most likely lasting much shorter or worse: Enemies being full cc-immune for short.

6 slots for abilities as cap persists, too.

“Needs ability to fear for dmg bonus” and “needs an ability to keep enemies in position to not run uncontrolled”

…is twice as bad as the sometimes given circumstance of…

“needs one ability to take effect”-cases.

It also does not spare us from requiring certain abilities for other items and/or the build in general.

On top of that, “freeze” as a fix to “feared enemies running away” would also mean, all enemies are immediately @ 100% cc-resistance for quite some time.

The fix to this problem is not by entitling “fear”, it is by changing this 4p bonus completely.

If they want to enable fear in barbarian gameplay, they should do that by implementing more synergizing legendary powers, or change fear as a mechanic in general.
People do not avoid this specific cc-type for no reason.

Hiding a part of a set integrated damage multiplier behind a cc-effect pretty much means, that there will be cases where we can’t trigger this bonus at all due to other hard-cc effects being currently active or too high cc-diminishing-return-effect (especially on a class that easily turns enemies cc-immune in seconds with “baseline barbarian repertoire” like AncientSpear-RageFlip or “chosen ability” to proc [Band of Might])

… while this specific cc-effect not being helpful at all when you are actually trying to fight and kill your enemies.
Fear is pretty much a defense-oriented cc-effect. Disabling enemy actions AND gets them away from you. Especially if you got no movement-tool and get stuck between hordes of enemies, it frees you.

If it takes additional cc-effects being applied while enemies are feared…
…to counteract what fear actually is supposed to do…
… why even chosing fear as trigger here?
… why enforcing the use of fear just for the cause of fear being used at all - while not changing the reason for people avoiding fear as a mechanic in the first place?

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The fear effect could be good if to froze monsters on the spot. Fear manifests itself in two ways, either you run away from any leg or you’re so afraid that you’re just standing there. For Diablo, the second way is more suitable in my opinion.

During a greater rift, we spend our time gathering the monsters. It’s not to discard them with this two-piece bonus …