Suggestion for Raekor rework

Barbarian
1

A while back there was a community discussion - as I am sure has happened several times in the past - about a raekor rework, and it got me thinking about ideas for this set, which struggles so hard to compete among barb sets and among all classes generally.

My initial idea for this set was to capitalize on the theme of fury, stacking and generating as much fury as possible to deal the most damage. The idea I see from this charging bull set is accumulating pent up rage and dumping it on your foes in a satisfying way. This build has the potential to be very simple or more complex and timing sensitive with different setups. I like that you can use Raekor as a charge build or as a fury spender with the Raekor effect, although in practice this set’s assets are eclipsed and coopted by the slightly more powerful IK set, 3rd among the barb sets in performance. As a result, Raekor is little more than a support barb suit with little practical application.

My goals for this set would be to have it capable of doing speeds of around 100-105 with 1000-2000 paragon, which I think fits best with the charge theme; and have a pushing variant with spenders that would be slower but go higher, hopefully even to upper 130s or 140.

Set rework:

  • 2 piece: Furious charge deals 500% more damage and generates twice as much fury. These bonuses are doubled and a charge is refunded if you hit only one enemy.
  • 4 Piece: Furious charge gains the effect of every rune, and enemies hit by furious charge grant stacks of Raekor’s Rage, which increases the damage of fury-spending skills by 50% and reduces damage taken by 10% per stack. This stacks up to 50 times.
  • 6 Piece: Your damage is increased by 10% for every point of fury you have generated in the last 5 seconds. Fury generation beyond your available pool is limited to 300% of your maximum, lasting for 5 seconds.

Here are my thoughts on why I think this rework will work well - note: I am not at all set on the numbers, I havent worked them out, just placeholders to show where the damage comes from and how it scales.

  • The two piece bonus for raekor is arguably the most boring set bonus in the game. It has practically no effect on your playstyle, and is a minimally beneficial utility feature at best. A good 2-piece ought to have SOME effect on the player’s damage to incentivize a unique playstyle. This achieves the effect by relocating the four-piece bonus to the two-piece, and leaving the rune unlocks where they are.
  • The four-piece still unlocks the runes, and introduces the fury-spending damage aspect of the build. It also introduces some DR, which may or may not be necessary, but it feels strange to not include anything on a modern set/build (I am aware that Morticks and Band of Might are nearly ubiquitous on barb builds, but is that a good thing, or just a necessary one?)
  • The six piece is the real game-changer, stacking and generating fury to increase your damage, which allows players to utilize EITHER the furious charge as a damage dealer / speed META build, or for the spender/push build. The mechanic is similar to Requiem Cereplate for necromancers, which grants life and essence in excess of the maximum for a few seconds. My goal is for Barbarians to have a soft-uncapped pool for a few seconds to deal maximal damage. We have seen that any uncapped skills or affixes usually get nerfed, but an appropriately high ceiling is a good compromise. I would fully expect that barbarians could reach their 400% capacity within a few seconds to spend on a CoE cycle with ease. Even fury generation on bosses is taken care of with retaining the single-target bonuses of the existing 2-piece, but with a damage-enhancing twist.

How will the build(s) work?
A furious charge-style speed META would look similar to the way it is set up currently, but be much more effective. I want to suggest an additional bracer item to the game that would have appeal beyond this set, but could be excellently applied here:

Marduk’s Rage: your speed, damage, and fury costs are increased by 80-100% (barbarian only).
Note how this bracer scales the damage of the furious charge AND the spender variants, while synergizing with the speed boost to damage that FC builds already enjoy with Standoff. This bracer has the ability to compete with Mortick’s brace in many scenarios.

  • By the way, Marduk is the Babylonian god who slew Tiamat the dragon by charging down her throat. Seems thematically cool.

The push variant will be focused on the spenders, just as it is currently. There is an existing meta which uses HotA, which I am ambivalent about personally. I’d love to see this build somehow incorporate revenge, but it isnt a spender. Someone else can theory craft that part if they want to.

Overall, this would change very little to the actual play-style of Raekor, just capitalize on its theme and flavor and introduce better scaling damage for two different builds.

Those are my thoughts, I’d love to hear yours. What do you like about this concept for a rework? Where are the flaws? I’d love to see some better worked out numbers, but I have no skill for that. Do you think this would be enough LIKE the current Raekor while also changing it significantly enough to feel better as a playstyle?

1 Like
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I love the creativity here. Thank you for posting.

I think there are problems with this concept, some of which carry over from the existing set.

I really like this, but depending on your approach, doubling the damage against a lone target is unnecessary; it would only be valuable vs RGs that don’t spawn adds, because you’ll never waste time killing a lone elite.

I like the DR part of this, but I don’t like the global multiplier to spenders–and yes, that’s also the problem with the current set. Global multipliers are tricky because if left unchecked, they make their parent set better at what other builds and sets do.

In my opinion, the simplest fix is the best fix when it comes to Raekor. The build was originally intended to use Charge to clear trash and Boulder Toss to crush elites/RGs. The problem is that Vile Wards and the IK set makes Charge way more powerful than BT. So, rather than redesign Raekor, the easiest fix is to jack up the damage on The Three Hundredth Spear and Skular’s Salvation. If those two items have massive, massive multipliers, Boulder Toss becomes your weapon of choice against elites and RGs. It also means you’ll equip Standoff (2H Weapon) and Cube Three Hundredth Spear, which negates combining the set with IK. Other Cube slots would go to Vile Wards and Band of Might so you can wear FnR or COE + SOJ.

1 Like
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Whatever happens with Raekor, as long as they allow you to keep a charge by hitting at least one enemy I’m cool with whatever.

4

Don’t know if typo, but 10% DR * 50 is 500%.

EDIT: Also want to point out, this should NOT reflect the same build we have already. Using charge to create stacks for another skill. Raekor should solely rely on charge and possibly some other ability, if only for the sake of balance. If you haven’t noticed, the way it’s designed is a crapshoot.

If the design were to for some reason stay the same, the stacks should be reversed. 1 stack per swing and 5 stacks per charge. Also have the damage that 5 stacks do and convert it to 1 stack instead. Even then it’s still a crap shoot, between it being a clunky weird design and as usual, another hota build.

5

Its not terrible now. It just takes too long to gain stacks. When stacks are up you can see it hits pretty hard.

6

Let’s just tweak the 6 pc from:

(6) Set:
Every use of Furious Charge increases the damage of your next Fury-spending attack by 5500%. This effect stacks. Every use of a Fury-spending attack consumes up to 5 stacks.

to

(6) Set:
Every kill of Furious Charge increases the damage of Furious Charge attack by 5500%. This effect can stack up to five charges (after every kill), but loses a charge/stack with every hit after or failed kill.

This won’t necessarily put an end to wall charging, but it should make it less mandatory, IMHO

1 Like
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Its not just the fact that it takes too long, I think ANY build shouldn’t have stacks unless they are completely manageable. Firebirds is the closest to manageable but because they drop off, it makes any build besides MI extremely difficult to justify using. Raekor and Vyr’s are two designs that are fun in theory, but in practice are pretty terrible. Raekor’s isn’t limited to difficulty on how many stacks you can get, but I shouldnt have to charge for 85% of the rift, as you basically eluded to.

As far as Vyr’s, when you are roflstomping stuff, you can easily hit like 400 stacks. On a difficult level, you are lucky to maintain 120-150, effectively the higher you go, the weaker you get. Coming back to Raekor’s, they made 2 items that make charge stronger, but you have to do a weird workaround to use it which is part raekors and IK. I stick with my guns that Raekor should be a charge only build and possibly a supplemental skill to go with it.

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Yeah, they might want to take out the stacks to change it for something else or make them quicker to generate (per hit, 10x per hit, something).

I’ve been goofing around with it. I’m up to 115. It’s starting to slow down lol.