After seeing the patch notes and thinking about it for a bit, I had some thoughts I wanted to put out there. PTR might be over, but I just felt like saying something about it regardless. Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear are my favorite skills for the class, and every season I’ve played, I’ve attempted at making a build for it. So this is partly me wanting to give honest and probably futile feedback and offer the most reasonable suggestions I could think of to fix things, and partly because I’m upsetti spaghetti about the situation.
(What changes there are though, are decent. Looking forward to throwing things regardless of the jank.)
- A ranged playstyle is encouraged via Weapon Throw but zero supporting features to make it work as intended are given.
The lack of defense in the set bonuses of Raekor’s, Arreat’s Law gaining and losing its effect based on range, Zei’s Stone of Vengeance gaining and losing its effect based on range, and the No Escape passive being disabled based on range facilitates the absolute necessity of a large amount of CC on a large amount of enemies at a distance, quickly. The main issue is, there isn’t a reliable way to apply CC at range to multiple targets for Barbarians. Thus, the player will be swarmed and all noted effects will be canceled and they will quickly be killed.
Solution: Get rid of the Stupefy rune for Weapon Throw and redesign Sash of Knives
Stupefy as a rune is very underwhelming and is essentially never used. A solid fix would be to change Stupefy to an entirely new rune like:
- Teeth of Arreat - Weapon Throw now pierces all targets and deals cold damage.
This would synergize with the Iceblink legendary gem to give the soft CC the build needs in the form of Chill. This would also work with Frostburn Gauntlets for a similar result if the player prefers a hard CC option.
Sash of Knives isn’t particularly useful as it is in it’s current state, and it thematically fits the proposed change:
- Sash of Knives - Weapon Throw damage is increased by 350% and Weapon Throw now releases 5 weapons in a cone.
This belt should also probably be turned into a mighty belt for the sake of the “+X to Max Fury” modifier.
Weapon throw itself needs more damage to be a viable skill in the context of other builds such as Immortal King, or Legacy of Dreams/Nightmares. In addition to this, the multiple weapon copies would synergize with the proposed rune redesign to better CC large groups of enemies so the player is not immediately swarmed and have all their bonuses removed. This could also synergize with the Weapon Throw Ricochet rune to turn weapon throw into a ranged pseudo AoE attack that can be complimented by hard CC options like Zei’s Stone of Vengeance or Pandemonium Loop.
You have to consider that not having multiple projectiles on Weapon Throw is roughly equivalent to not having Bastion’s Revered on a Frenzy build - it just wouldn’t functionally work well on its own due to the nature of combat in the game, no matter how much attack speed you have.
- The current state of specific items and set bonuses for Raekor’s prohibit build variety
Namely, Ancient Spear and Furious Charge are the most negatively affected by this (oh the irony). Due to how the Raekor’s set bonuses are structured, as well as the effects of Skular’s Salvation and Arreat’s Law, the player is forced into a more narrow playstyle with little variety.
Solution: Combine the Raekor’s 2 piece set bonus with part of the 4 piece set bonus, and slightly adjust Skular’s Salvation and 300th Spear.
Furious Charge has Standoff, Vile Ward, Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan and the 2 and 4 piece bonuses of Raekor’s to boost it’s damage, but no great way to have Furious Charge itself be the centerpiece of a build. But what if the set bonuses of Raekor’s are combined into:
- Legacy of Raekor (2-piece Bonus) - Furious Charge refunds a charge if it only hits one enemy. Furious Charge gains the effect of every rune and deals 1000% increased damage.
By moving part of the 4 piece bonus onto the 2 piece bonus, this allows for a hybrid Immortal King build centered around Furious Charge itself being your primary ability. With this, you can utilize all the Furious Charge items to their fullest potential.
The largest issue currently with Ancient Spear is that the Boulder Toss rune is mandatory given how the supporting Legendary items work. Arreat’s law pushes Fury over the normal cap by 200, specifically to be consumed by Boulder Toss. The solution isn’t to adjust Arreat’s Law though:
- The Three Hundredth Spear - Increase the damage of Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear by 150-200%. The attack speed of Weapon Throw is increased by 200% and the attack speed of Ancient Spear is increased by 50%.
The added attack speed value for Ancient Spear is a placeholder, I’m not entirely sure how much faster it should actually be. This is just my best estimate
This change will put using Ancient Spear with any other rune to be more in line with Boulder Toss. The excess Fury generated by Arreat’s Law will still be useful in this context as as well due to the faster rate of expenditure. This will keep
Boulder Toss as the preferred option for Raekor’s, while also allowing other builds such as Immortal King or LoD/LoN to benefit fully from any Ancient Spear rune and the extra Fury granted by Arreat’s Law.
Skular’s Salvation further compounds the issue of Boulder Toss being mandatory by increasing the damage of specifically Boulder Toss by 100%. The fix for this is the most obvious:
- Skular’s Salvation - Increase the damage of Ancient Spear by 150-200%. If your Ancient Spear hits 5 or fewer enemies, the damage is increased by 100%.
There isn’t really much of anything to say about this. It’s as straightforward as it gets. The change supports the other Ancient Spear runes as more valid choices.
That’s about it as far as my thoughts and suggestions go. I’m not a super number crunching wizard so I can’t vouch that all of these suggestions are winners with 100% certainty. But I wouldn’t have posted all this if I didn’t think it had any merit to begin with. These are just the opinions of somebody who pretty much exclusively plays Barbarians because I never learned how to read and I really like to yeet things.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.