Is it me or is Blizzard’s bias showing? Barb had to be nerfed immediately, but crusader gets to sit through a season before they’re touched.
Well, then I hope people stick to nonseason comparisons and stats. People who achieved high GR levels in season 19 in is in part due to the seasonal buff.
Ageed. The whole set revolving around igniting enemies has had the effect of making the playstyle idiotic, one has to ignite an elite and keep it alive to be able to do any damage and survive. No set, no build should have any need of keeping things alive.
In another thread I had a small suggestion of how to change the set.
2-piece: Keep it as it is.
4-piece: While Hydra is active, reduce damage taken by X%. Or Casting Hydra reduces damage taken by X% for Y seconds.
6-piece: Increases the damage of fire skills by 8k-10k%.
The whole point here is to simplify things. Keep it a fire set but get rid of that moronic ignite requirement.
Thank you. That link is even nicer because it shows all areas together.
All I am going to say here, is that comparing the best a class can do, that shows the difference have gone up to only 3. And yes, I know that can be a pretty hefty amount of damage. But even Barbs after that nerf was willing to accept a difference that small.
In my opinion, the only way they could actually get things balanced would be to rip out every item or set bonus and rebalance them with the idea of “what does it work with”. They need to literally redo everything so that they mesh better without the 800% damage modifiers some items have. Then they would have a chance at better balance across all sets.
Is this likely to happen, pretty much impossible from what I see. They do not have the money, manpower, or reason to go that far. There is also the problem that WoW showed with a universal reduction of power for technical or balance reasons. No one will like it, even if it makes everything play better.
Can I dream, yeah, but it wont have anything when I wake up.
Something like this could work nicely.
Only thing I see that would end up different is that pretty much every set bonus like this requires the 4 piece skill to also be active for the 6 piece bonus. But that would be pretty minor with how easy to cast, and long they last, hydras are.
For firebird, they should change the following imo:
Just checked EU LBs manually. In top 200 DH clears there are only 38 players who used RapidFire build. So particiapation of top build in top 200 clears is less than 20%. if I checked top 500 clears participation would be even smaller.
Already at rank 25 there is GR 128 clear with Impale.
When you compare that to Barbs leaderboard for example… it is night and day. All top 200 clears on Barbs LBs are using same build.
That is because of set balance.
WW is literally the only set that can get that high. Some of the other sets are more complicated and sometimes more fun, but they are so much weaker that the majority will not use them.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/top-7-solo-group-barb-builds-season-19/83
That thread is done by some of the best theorists for Barbarians. It shows a simple truth, the theoretical max drops off immensely after WW. An 8 level difference is pretty sad.
It is why I agree, you do not need to look at it per class, but per set.
I would prefer for every set to be equal on normal solo to every other and balanced such that even 4 mans cannot clear 150.
As I said a moment ago, impossible.
Something similar is happening with DH. RapidFire is so far ahead. BUT even if it is so much stronger only few are using it because build is really unenjoyable to play.
You need to use UE and Imaple for everything else so you can prepare your RapidFIre build to only push solo with it. RapidFire is useless for anything else. You can’t say that about WW/Rend.
One of the things I find interesting about this is that people can’t even seem to agree on what makes Rend Barbs strong (Ignoring Crusaders for the moment as I’ve not played/researched them enough to discuss).
Some people say you need to nerf the Lamentation buff, but then others that want it nerfed have said it’s Barbs ability to pull big groups together that gives it the biggest advantage.
So does that make Rage Flip the OP component, and not Lamentation? Does how Rage Flip works need to be looked at?
Yet others I’ve spoken to, who don’t want Lamentation nerfed say that Pylons do the majority of the work, and certain clears would not have been possible without FoT.
So is FoT the issue, and does it need to be looked at and/or reworked?
I don’t think the issue is just as simple as saying nerf Barbs.
However, I am all for weaker classes/sets to be brought up if need be.
Also, I would like to see classes have more than one choice of a strong set. As someone said earlier, Rend Barbs are all the rage, simply not because of choice, but lack of alternatives.
IMO, builds doing everything are bad. It’s good that some builds are great at speed farming, some are great as single target dps, some are great at bounties, etc.
If a build excels at everything, it means other builds not only suck but are also less played, which tends to mean they get forgotten and never get buffed.
WW was always a decent speed farming set (as far as barb go), and thanks to that it was never really forgotten and now it’s gotten buffed. Slightly too much.
I wouldn’t mind seeing the belt going back to a milder 75%, maybe 100% dmg buff. Nothing crazy, just dials back a little bit to try and nudge it in the right values.
On the crusader side of things, BIG UFF. When they announced the new set, I just couldn’t believe it. I knew it was completely OP. My clan mates and I made plans to clear a 150 without a wizard in the group in NS, just 3 sup and a crusader, and we did it without even stutter stepping, in less than 10 minutes, with… pretty much nothing.
Then they nerfed the build by a crazy amount. We’re talking going from unlimited stacks to 5-10 seconds worth of stacks. And the build STILL cleared 150 in non season. In 10 minutes. But this time, only in solo. I don’t think it is feasible to bring a solo crusader DPS in a 150 4p without season buff (with the current season buff, easily, we did it 2 weeks into the season with ease).
The first thing I would like to see adressed on AoV shotgun is the animation canceling. It’s way too strong and it’s really not fun to play. A lot of players I know just use a macro to do it, because it is the only way to get it to be smooth, and it’s the only way to maximise DPS. Yes, you can do it by hand, but it’s impossible to hit consistently imputs every 80 or so milliseconds to maximise DPS.
This will already be a big leash on this build, but by far not enough.
The second nerf I would like to see is on the 2p AoV set. Right now, it gives 2^3 = ×9 damage. I would nerf it on the ptr to 1.5^3 instead, for a maximum buff value of ×4.375. If it’s too much, you can always buff it again after the first ptr iteration, to either 75% or simply its original 100%.
Buffing the necro is another issue altogether. One thing thorns necro had wich made it great was it was tanky. All other necro builds are as glass cannon as crystal can go. That’s something that should be addressed first and foremost. Playing necro in solo does not feel good because of that. I’m not asking for barb levels of toughness, but at least a little bit more wouldn’t hurt.
Most of its build are strictly single target or mostly single target (even skeleton mages I consider single target because they are only ever shooting one target at a time). This means they get bodied by large groups of small mobs, and, guess what are the best mob types in the game ? Mob types with large groups of small mobs. So of course, necro suck because they can’t really benefit from that.
I would like to see a pure single target necro build being buffed, most likely for me it would be pesti-lancer, as it used to be a great boss jkiller and if crusader is nerfed we will need a new boss killer for 150s. And I would like to see some kind of nova or poison scythe build buffed/created, to cater to the players who like AoE centric builds.
I would also like to buff rathma set, as right now it’s completely overshadowed by LoD, which doesn’t make sense imo.
I agree. But I gave up on that idea because it is clear Blizzard does not have resources to do more than one build per class at a time. So I think DH needs one strong build that can be used for things WW/Rend is used for right now. New set can go with Elemental Arrow, Chakram, Strafe… They can buff existing sets also.
It would be going back to necro RGK too quickly after necro lost spot in META groups. DH is out of META since season 2!!! Be it trash killer or boss killer but DH really needs META spot.
Crusaders and Barbarians are about right where they are. The reason 150 solos are down is because of the season buffs.
But yes, necromancer need a buff.
??? DH Impale was very much in the meta not so long ago. Sure it wasn’t in the pushing meta but for everything else, it was good. Only beaten by thorns necro (now nerfed) and shotgun crusader (soon nerfed).
But impale is the most boring boss killer in the game, tied with invoker crusader. I hope to all gods that I never have to play it again in push. It’s just so god damn boring. Pesti-lancer necro wasn’t that boring. You have to time your bursts, you can give crit chance to your wizard, you have to know your dps very well to maximise power and channeling usage. Like, it’s not super interesting but it’s clearly better than impale DH. And even if they make pesti necro good again, they can also try to make impale just as good as necro bk and let players decide what they want to play. Like what good balance should be.
I wouldn’t mind a good DH trash killer though. But right now, I’m not seeing it, because DH can just abuse their OP defensive buffs to bring anything given to them for 4p trash killing into solo pushing monsters. Maybe the new set works out but we’ll see when the time comes.
It is easier to think of gear/set bonus changes rather than modifying skills. Given this for rend barbs, the largely invariant gear that is worn/cubed is
6 piece waste set (or 5 +RoRG)
Lamentation belt
Ambos pride
Morticks Bracers
FoT necklace
Nerfs to FoT are likely off limits because several classes use this item.
A nerf to Morticks does not make sense as multiple barbarian builds use this item.
Ambos pride is essential utility to the build.
Therefore, one could envision modifying the Waste set bonus or lamentation.
Well that was I was thinking is probably going to happen as well.
So say they lower it to 125, 100, or any arbitrary hypothetical number at this point. The question is, does that fix it?
Lowering the Lamentation % doesn’t stop you from pulling entire maps to the pylons and blowing up 75% of the progress bar, in quick time.
I’m aware that changing Rage Flip is problematic as other Barb build use it, and same with FoT as every class has builds that use it.
But the problem is if you lower Lamentation too much, you risk making it useless, and you’re back to Barbs running around using the banging their heads on walls exploit.
Or even worse, going back to the old WW build and lagging the servers into oblivion.
I only see 2 Crusaders having cleared GR150 NS in Europe. No one in the US or Asia.
It was off-meta spot for things not as good as what META group with necro was doing. It was not the best option for party so it was not in META.
Finding spot for 150s with DH was hard. Finding spot for 150s with necro was easy. And no I am not speaking about pushing.
How many 150s you did with DH in party? How many you did with Necro in party? People are farming 150s today…
Ah, couldn’t find the Chinese leaderboard.
Dear Devs,
Don’t listen to this guy. You can buff under performing classes. Barb only doing as well as they are bc of the seasonal buff. Sader and barb finally get some love and troll asking for nerfs smh. Troll gonna troll.
Nobody wants this to occur NERFS are not required. If you even remotely NERF either classes they will just become UN FUN. Look what happen when you nerf VYRS. Nobody even plays it. Please dont RIP these classes again