PATCH 2.6.8 My 2nd thoughts on new set of Barbarians

General Discussion
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Background:

My initial thought and suggestion to Barbarian class in patch 2.6.8
Patch 2.6.8 and my thoughts and suggestions to barbarians

After viewing the contributions from other players from this post and feedback from Nevalistis the Community Manager, unfortunately it seems my side was overwhelming to the intention of new set, particularly 2-set bonus.

With 4k hours play with Barbarian (I know this is not a big number, but it is almost my 1/3 of total play time), I can stand up and proudly say I love this class and want this class to be playable well.

However some direct issues I can see from the new class and current game design:

  1. Chasing feared monsters with a melee skill isn’t a fun at all. I appreciate the dep team is willing to introduce a new mechanic however the current mode does not provide a good way to accommodate “fear”. In addition, fear is a crowd control and monsters will gain resistant and purple monsters like bosses and RGs are completely immune to fear. How this mechanic would work to a long-last battle or RG battle when all monsters are not afraid of us anymore?
  2. “Feared enemies take double damage”, from whom? Caster only or all barbarian in the team or a global buff across all classes? If this is a global buff, it is totally against the dep’s intention of not bring any more zdps way to play.
  3. Perhaps gaining all runes of 3 shouts is way to powerful however just double the current rune are not strong as I expect. I would appreciate in additional to double the effectiveness of “currently equipped” shout skills, please consider to provide War Cry with full rune effect. I understand this will also buff zbarb a bit, but I think it is still within an acceptable range.
  4. I always expect Barbarians, as only continuing class from D2 as well as the initial land owner of this world, shall not lose its soul skill of dual wielding of 2-handed weapons. Maybe the new set’s 4-piece bonus can give this ability to do so? I believe a new passive skill would be way more powerful and a lot of unexpected effects to the entire class, so only give the new set with ancient buff please. Most 2-hand mighty weapons are just belong to cube and nothing else. This buff will give this new set a really interesting way to utilise whose underestimated 2-hand mighty weapons.
  5. As I mentioned below, we have got several weapons for all other primary skills, this new set really needs to be for ALL primary skills. Bash can then consume 40 fury and then accordingly bash can be our resource spender. I can see Warlord is really key item to give many more options to play with. Frenzy as resource generator and Bash as resource spender, if both get buffed from this set, should really shine the entire way to play barbarians.
  6. From my last post, there is a very valuable from another player suggesting Skull of Resonance should be re-designed.
  7. Undisputed Champion. My previous suggestion was to buff this to all primary skills but it would be way too powerful. Perhaps this item can give each primary skill with an additional rune? Frenzy to gain Maniac (damage buff) rune, Bash to gain Onslaught, Cleave to gain Storm and Weapon Throw to gain whatever?
  8. Buff 300 spear and Arreat Law accordingly. Or make 300 only apply to Ancient Spear and give Arreat Law a firm link to Weapon Throw?
  9. Does additional attach from Bastion has proc factor? Does it trigger area damage?

Here is my suggestions accordingly:

  1. “feared enemies” shall be “crowd controlled enemies”. Alternatively like provoke, force feared enemies to run toward to barb instead of running away? Or feared enemies are too feared to run away and instead they are feared to stand up and turn around (OK, dont think turn-around means something else).
  2. Make it clear if double dmg is to char based or class based or global buff.
  3. Please consider to provide War Cry with full rune effect.
  4. Give back the soul skill of barbarians and allow 2-hand mighty weapons to shine again! To avoid too much unexpected issues, this buff shall be set to 6-piece and decrease the weapon damage accordingly to align with single hand weapon. I can see this may allow Horde work together with IK set however please see IK is not really playable at all with IK hammer as no one uses IK weapon at all. Really 4-piece IK will only give Wrath of Berserker almost permanent duration but lose 3 slots so I believe it is fair trade off.
  5. Buff shall be set to all primary skills.
  6. Maybe Skull of Resonance can provide a single rune or all rune effect? As a trade off, remove my suggestion to gain all runes for War Cry?
  7. Frenzy to gain Maniac (damage buff) rune, Bash to gain Onslaught, Cleave to gain Storm and Weapon Throw to gain whatever?
  8. 300 Spear: Increase the damage Ancient Spear by 100% each yard a monster is pulled? I know this only works on 2 runes but it is just a brain storm. Arreat’s Law: Weapon Throw generates up to 15-20 additional Fury and x% extra damage based on how far away the enemy hit is. Maximum benefit when the enemy hit is 20 or more yards away.
  9. Please clarify.

I surely understand these are a lot of request for change but please give barbarians plenty of love. In accordance with the game story, they are homeless now. Wiz are from Xiansai, WDs are from some jungles and something. They all have homes except barbarians. Not sure in D4 barbarians would have a new home but in D3 they are still homeless.

Please Make Barbarian Great Again!

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Well fear kinda kills it for me i hate chashing things down unless thats what the chains are for. Set looks good for a solo player. Looks like a elite chaser build.

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I am hereby having skill of Call of the Ancients to assemble and shout your War Cry, engage with your Battle Rage and yell your Threatening Shout with your Wrath of Berserker to the development team and do not let them to Ignore our Pain! Do not force all barbarians to become Frenzy and Revenge! Give us some loves or we have to Sprint and Furious Charge to run toward the development team with 2-piece of Horde!

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i am okay with the frenzy set.
they just missed (like allways) an opportunity to create something special and not the typical braindead set that is focused arround 1 skill.
2p: the bonus vs feared targets is meaningless, there is no human being who enjoys playing tom and jerry in d3.
4p: stacking DR is not fun or brings anything special to the game except annoyance
dont know why they dont remove this “mechanic” from the game.
6p: will end between 1000%-1500%

so the solution to “fix” this mess is pretty simple:
remove the fear and make it a flat dmg boost otherwise this set will end in the
" “fun” but useless" category

2 Likes
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I don’t think fear is a big problem. I look at the 2 piece set as using falter rune and then if you are using echoing fury with 15% fear you will gain the 50% and the additional 100% dmg when you fear them. Could be a really nice up for echoing fury use builds. If the set has 2 non traditional gear slots, say a ring, amulet and bracer, any 2 allowing us to use it with another set as well without ring of royal grandeur, the 2 set could be real nice.

Or, everything about it will suck.

Besides that, the design of the set for frenzy in general sucks grass.

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Maybe we should try it before flipping out? The fact that ww set is one of the best in game atm, you dont have much to complain about.

You understand if its garbage it will be buffed right?

Seems like enemies that do get feared will just melt with less need to chase them.

The only problem i see is that RG’s cant be feared. It needs to be a straight damage buff for a duration after using a fearing skill regardless of anything actually feared.

1 Like
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Also most of you clowns have not even used an echoing fury build lately, like they nerfed the ‘run away’ effect. I have 20% primal EF and barely notice anything running away other than the elites that are designed to run away. Its nothing like vanilla fear at all…

1 Like
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All of you complaining about the fear seem to be ignoring 2 factors:

1 - We do not know the chaining distance that they are adding
2 - Feared enemies do not run away blazingly fast. An average player can easily fear and instantly ground stomp to pull all mobs in for a massive damage boost.

Aside from that, there will be other ways to make this beneficial, and nobody has even tested it yet.

I have a feeling it will be fine, and if not, that is when we express concern, when we have anecdotal evidence of it not working. But I know that personally I will be using band of might and ground stomp to instantly fear and gather.

1 Like
9

Sky is falling apparently…

Very well summerized, I was thinking along these lines. Just like SB WD set, the DEVS are actively trying to create sets with new gameplay and be more dynamic. Not just pure multipliers. I’m excited to test both.

2 Likes
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the problem is that blizzard is not the best when it comes to balance things out
the best example for this is how much time it took them to “fix” bazooka (in a way, every idiot could have fixed it)
my personal problem with fear is the fact that it counts as a cc so you have to keep in mind DR and imunity.
the reason why every zdps will pick the 2p bonus is not the fear, its all about the shouts

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well thats the point, they also let broken things in, if the fear damage buff is group buff then thats huge.

“Feared Enemies take double damage.”

next season will also mostly be necro ‘rats’ that wont care too much if anything is feared.

1 Like
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This patch is… I want but I can’t.

It seems that they definetly nerf bazooka. But they’re bringing WD back with probably absurd numbers.

The other 2 sets are just a try to make old skills come back to other builds level, which means if not work enought, Buff the numbers in the second week of PTR.

Going back to barbarian set, as a main barb, this set just su.cks. actually with the buff that they add, LoN build (9750% from the 10000% with the new set) i’m pretty sure is better on single target, and you don’t need to chase enemies.

I still don’t understand 2p of the set, which says “increase effectiveness”. What’s exactly means? Double time on shouts? (We already have a passive skills that do that) double the effect of the shout (instead of 15% go to 30%?, Meh, If it’s like this works better as a support, or just to mix with other sets and increase some AD or survability), and as a last option, all runes for shouts? The craziest one to make zDPS barb inmortal.

To be honest, if we see this set Will be 2p bonus with other sets, unleast they Buff the 6p bonus, this set is just trash

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