The Whirlwind Rend Nerf is effectively more than 7 Tiers

General Discussion
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Here’s a GR 133 @ 10k paragon with Lightning Istvan’s, Whirlwind Rend, on an open Battlefields with lots of small trash. I drag around a yellow so you can track its HP. You will quickly see how bad the raw damage is.

Can this clear 133 with godly trash and elites? Maybe, if I spent hundreds of hours fishing for a 1 floor conduit to burn down 7 elites barely clearing 133. Which is exactly what WW Rend could have done in PTR on 143 with the perfect map. Either Blizzard’s math is wrong, or the formulas they’re giving the public are lies. This is more than a 7 GR nerf.

Here’s some trash killing on a Fester:

Thralls on Fester:

You can test Lamentation + Ambo’s right now on your Barb, it’s easily a 10 tier nerf, not 7 like people predicted. For most players, it will struggle to clear even 130 at this point, which is a joke for other classes at similar paragon.

This is because before the changes to Rend, the only way to deal damage through the set was to max out on Area Damage and bring in Pain Enchancer (or Echoing Fury) to increase your Dust Devil spawn rate. Now, Rend is the superior source of damage, so naturally you’re going to cube Ambo’s and drop Pain Enchancer for a damage gem to boost Rends.

The problem now is that since you killed Lamentation’s damage bonus, the build lost the only direct damage you ever gave it (Rend nukes), resulting in more than a 7 GR tier nerf. The build is barely stronger than it used to be last patch, by about 2-3 tiers.

The people who screamed about Lamentation being too powerful at 200% are curiously silent today. Meanwhile;

  1. Crusader is annihilating 142+ easily, has already done 146 in 12 mins and a 147, and will easily be the first class to do 150 solo without any Season powers helping it.

  2. The Bazooka Wizard is still wrecking 150’s in 4 player, dealing Quadrillions of damage per shot, instantly killing elites in 4 player groups @ 150. They didn’t nerf it appropriately, and/or they don’t understand the build.

  3. Witch Doctor, Demon Hunter, and Wizard still have extremely capable 140+ builds.

  4. The new Crusader set can kill any 150 boss in a minute or less in 4 player. So what was the point of nerfing Thorns and Blighter?

It doesn’t matter how you look at it, the data and math definitely isn’t in favor of the people screaming for Barb nerfs in PTR. Sorry to be blunt, but if random gamers understand these issues and you don’t, there’s obviously a problem.

You got scared about a 140 clear in PTR when 140 at paragon 10,000 with a modern DPS build is absolutely expected. WD, DH, Crusader, and Wiz can all do it at that paragon or less. No one’s calling for them to be nerfed. I play both Barb and DH and I am happy other classes get fun stuff for high tiers. Why don’t you feel the same way about Barbs?

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Reminds me of that senator who wanted an internet ban/censor years ago…who proceeded to admit he doesn’t even use the internet.

It’s the equivalent of a nun being in charge of Caligula’s palace.

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has already done 146

A Korean has already cleared 147.

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Thanks, I will add that to the post.

It’ll easily do 150 within the week. Less than 24 hours of fishing is really nothing in the context of some of the crazier RNG maps in this game.

There’s no more confidence left in Blizzard’s ability to balance or tweak this game.

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Agreed.

Usual trolls asking for sader to be nerfed. Thanks for not joining that idiot brigade.

Revert the Lamentation nerf. It was done for the wrong reasons. Coming from a sader main, but I love WoTW and I’d love a reason to push both classes this ERA.

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The longer I think about this the more I think that somehow this was deliberately achieved. I mean, most people were testing Barb on PTR, so a lot of the focus was there. Yet the changes made to Crusader fly in the face of the adjustment to Bone Ringer.

To be charitable - as Free and you said in another thread - they just don’t test. Fine. But I’m willing to bet that they don’t test and then they - despite claims on this forum that those testers are ‘outliers’ at high paragon - adjust in a knee-jerk fashion based on wider community reaction - not just on this forum.

And this is the problem. If we treat this in absolute terms - barbarians are barely better off than they were before the patch. This, because Lamentation was nerfed outright rather than adjusted per the compromises suggested by the Barbarian community through Free and others (e.g., 100-150, not from 200 to 0). These positive suggestions and contributions were completely ignored.

Now we see Crusader - and good for them - facerolling higher GRs, so the trolls who always cried about ‘ugh spin to win ugh’ were just trying to shift the goal posts of the discussion. We also have as you say, Bazooka wizard still the best trash killer at150; now Crusader both for solo push and RGK at 150; Barb has no place in speed exp except as zbarb.

In short, whirlrend got pretty much nothing. Despite all the furor on this forum about barbs, Crusaders got a massive buff with barely a batted eyelash and barbs did not even get some time to shine through whirlrend.

This is awful from a marketing and product delivery standpoint. It reeks either of incompetence or deliberate bias - you can all decide for yourself which is worse.

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I don’t know what’s going on with them internally, just analyzing their end results with the patch.

It’s bad. The only way this stuff goes to a live product is lack of care. The numbers aren’t a mistake, these adjustments were done intentionally.

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  1. Here you are right. Blizz meant a little too good with the Crusi buff. But I’m sure they will adjust this as well.
  2. Now it’s getting silly. Comparing group play with solo GRs.
  3. Current state: DH = 127, WD = 131, Barb = 135. So if DH and WD would be easily 140 capable this would mean an average 11 GR gain. Let’s turn it around and say Barb will also gain 11 GRs and is 146 capable. I don’t say it, it’s just an examlpe to show how easy ist is to make classes look weaker or stronger by claimed numbers. Please, please stick to real numbers and not to any claims or feelings what other classes are capable of.
  4. I can’t say anything here because I didn’t test it myself. But seems again just like a claim to me.

By the way. Pre-Lamentation Adjustment Barb did a 140. Now you yourself did a 135. So it’s only a 5 GR Adjustment, isn’t it? Simple Math.

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to avoid creating a separate thread, do you think that, despite the nerf, rend build can still pull out enough damage to be competivite in the 105-110 region and possibly be used as an alternative to Rats, without requiring too much of a paragon advantage ?

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I did a 135 with Seismic Slam to test the new items, not with Whirlwind Rend. WWRend would have failed my 135 by huge margins.

Demon Hunter, WD, and Wiz can still do 140 on the current patch. Just because no one’s pushed them yet doesn’t mean anything changed. DH and WD received no changes to their pushing builds in the patch.

You don’t know what you’re talking about.

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He didn’t do it on WW…what a clown. I mean put a little effort in will ya…geez

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Oh, ok. Sorry, I really didn’t see that. Then the last point is not valid.
Sorry again.

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About #4 we tested it last night and several of my friends are running 150’s right now. Crusader RGK now can kill any boss in 1:00 - 1:20 without any pylons. 40 second kill with power.

The point is to compare the crazy imbalance Blizzard lets go on the live server with their fear of Barb.

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I have read (I think on Reddit in that 1dps 3 support 150 clear) that the Crusader can indeed do that to RGs - every RG except Vesalius, something about the ‘floating’ of it means that stacking doesn’t properly happen.

But your point still stands. Having to TP out (if that persists) from one RG doesn’t undermine a fantastic RGK role…

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I think the crowd is too busy complaining about the changes to Rend and are neglecting to mention to increase to hota and slam builds, your 135 clear is still great, and with seasonal buffs its easily 140+… is it as ridiculous as the Valor set, no, but that can be said for pretty much every other classes set builds.

WW is still going to be the best/quickest farm build for key farming, bounties, and GR gear farming… it doesn’t HAVE to be the top pushing barb build as well… and honestly, a build that only requires holding down the mouse button shouldn’t be a top clearer, but that’s just my opinion.

With all that being said, sucks the change happened, just like it sucked that chantodos and bone ringer got nerfed. I expect the same thing to happen to the Valor set before the season, but if not, then hope everyone gets some good use out of it before they do kill it in a season or two.

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Thank you but honestly 135 at my paragon is not good. I have a Wizard and a DH and they effectively do double the damage Barb does.

Seismic Slam is also under-tuned but that’s a different topic. But yes, it’s still stronger than WWRend. The WWRend nerfs absolutely gutted it.

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One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that legendaries tend to retain their old powers while set abilities can be changed on the fly (i still have a copy of the old trang-oul bracers and their cooldown reduction ability for example). That would explain why blizz is more cautious about a potentially overpowered legendary. Maybe they could add the rend buff to one of the set bonuses instead? Then backwards adjustment will be less troublesome.

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Not to detract from the whirlrend situation but will you try LoD HotA pushing?

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No. I hate HOTA and find it boring. :rofl:

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I am confused about your claim. As you claimed, WW rend is a different build as previous WW. Therefore, the neff on the belt only neffs the current WW rend bd, nothing to do with the old WW bd. The neff is 2/3 less damage, so effectively 7 tiers less. With that, I still think WW rend would do 130+, which is comparable with lots of popular builds in the game, like DH multishot and impale; monk’s WOL. Are these builds just trash? Definitely not! I can feel the frustration the Brab community have, but I don’t think the current WW rend bd is too weak to play. It is still a decent build for speed farming, and suitable for new Barbs to start with. Barb also have two builds to push, LON HOTA and Seismic Slam. I do think you can reach ~140 if you really push hard, which is pretty good compared with other classes except the current crazy sader.
You also claimed DH have extremely capable 140+ builds. Since I am DH main, I really don’t think so. I searched the US leaderboard, the current best is 138 (you did it, congrats). The build isn’t a normal LON rapid fire build, which needs really high paragon to survive. Guess what level did the third place reach, 131! Based on that, I really don’t think DH is better than Barb in solo GR.
With the buff Brab got this patch, I think Barb is now comparable with DH, WD, maybe NC in solo GR (around middle among all classes). Barb also occupy the spot in meta and Rath runs. I think Barb is in a pretty good situation right now and I really don’t know why Brab keep crying for the single neff they got. To me, I think classes like DH and WD who can’t join meta and speed runs need more love to perform better in solo GR, like the buff crusader get right now (it is too strong now, I agree).

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