Weapon Throw: What the Hell?

PTR Feedback
1

I’ll cut to the chase: Weapon Throw is bad.

It was bad before (a WT-centric build in competent hands was clearing around GR 100 at 3.5k paragon), and it will be bad still (the buffs to the two spears add 11 tiers of damage, meaning we’ve moved up from GR 100 to 111).

So, on its own, the skill/build is very underpowered. And as a component of Raekor, it doesn’t fit at all. It doesn’t benefit from the Raekor 4 piece or 6 piece damage bonuses, and does a far worse job than Charge at generating the two things you need to deal damage, Fury (poorly) and R6 stacks (not at all).

The way I see it, there are basically three paths forward from here.

PATH #1: DO NOTHING

This is exactly what it sounds like. No further changes or buffs to Weapon Throw.

The result of following this path is that Weapon Throw will continue to be a mostly unused skill, except for a few “just for fun” builds played by afficionados.

PATH #2: INCORPORATION INTO RAEKOR

This path involves somehow making the Weapon Throw skill into an integral part of the Raekor set. Obviously, it is not that now. But, what role could it fulfill?

Well, one possibility is that they take out the “missing life damage bonus” which some people (including myself) think is interesting and cool, but many others really don’t like. And just replace it with a Weapon Throw debuff on mobs: “Enemies hit by Weapon Throw take 200% increased damage from Ancient Spear” (for some amount of time, I suppose… 8 seconds?).

This of course would mean that you basically must take Weapon Throw in order to play competitively. And the new cycle of play would be: Charge around to build R6 stacks, then debuff mobs with Weapon Throw, then hit them with Spear (probably Boulder Toss).

Another alternative is that Weapon Throw could be part of a R6 Spear setup that is separate and different from the Charge / Boulder Toss one. With a few adjustments, you could have a Weapon Throw / Jagged Edge setup that plays purely at range:

Add to Raekor 4 piece: Hitting Enemies with Weapon Throw increases the attack speed of Ancient Spear and Weapon Throw by 10% for 8 seconds. This stacks up to 10 times.

Add to Raekor 6 piece: Hitting enemies with Furious Charge or Weapon Throw increases the damage of your next Ancient Spear by 5500% and causes it to release multiple spears from its target.

And adjust Arreat’s Law: Weapon Throw generates up to 75 additional Fury based on the distance of the enemy hit.

This would allow Weapon Throw to build R6 Stacks and generate considerably more Fury, while applying a significant speed-based damage bonus to Ancient Spear. This would mainly help the runes other than Boulder Toss, since BT consumes all Fury with each hit, meaning attack speed is really not a factor in its damage. The result would be two different playstyles for the set: one based on lots of Charging plus Boulder Toss, and another based on staying at range, and hitting with Weapon Throw plus, probably, Jagged Edge.

So, there you have two options for integration of WT into Raekor: the “WT debuff” and the “mostly ranged playstyle”. There are, of course, many other possibilities. But the bottom line is: if WT is going to be part of a Raekor build, it’s got to do something.

PATH #3: FURTHER BUFFS TO IK/LOD WEAPON THROW BUILDS

This path involves adding more damage to Weapon Throw either via number increases or via new items/mechanics. To get to a spot where it is really considered playable, which I would say is doing around GR 130 at 3.5k paragon, IK/LoD Weapon Throw needs at least 19 tiers more damage (beyond the +11 it is already getting). For comparison, this would make it roughly comparable in power to Pro-Slam, which sees limited play these days due to low power. And, to get +19 tiers, you need about a 20x (+1900%) multiplier.

That could be split up in different ways, of course: as a single 20x multiplier, or as 4x + 5x, or as 3x + 3x + 2.25x… you get the idea.

The simplest way to do it would be to just massively increase only the Weapon Throw % on both Arreat’s Law and 300th Spear. But, to get to the required 20x more damage, we would need both to have a +1300% bonus to Weapon Throw on each ( (14*14) / (3 * 3) = 21.78), which is maybe too large a number.

You could have both at +800%, which is not unprecedented (Gavel, Remorseless, Tribes, are all around this range), and then add another item that helps the build, either through another number increase (2.25x / +125% would be what is still needed), or a new mechanical effect (Weapon Throw splits when it crits, or it pierces, or it pulls enemies into a tight grouping, etc). We have several items, for instance Saffron Wrap and Skull of Resonance, that are never used. Either of those could be reworked to provide a beneficial effect. In addition, we also have two powers- Revenge and Overpower- which are not part of any set or significant build. It would be cool to see one or both of those synergizing with Weapon Throw (or even with all Primary attacks) in some way.

The bottom line, though, is that however you slice it, Weapon Throw needs MORE DAMAGE if it is going to be the centerpiece of an IK or LoD build.

16 Likes
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I like the pairing off Weapon Throw with BT.

WT % damage should be included in Skulars. Maybe a Belt that increases the damage of Weapon Throw by 600% and every hit increases your maximum Fury by 10% for 5 Seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

With your afforementioned change to Arreat’s Law that WT generates up to 75 Fury based on distance. And something like you said of a pierce etc. effect maybe added to 300th spear, cause it’s a plain damage multiplier item.

1 Like
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Nice work, Rage. And thanks for posting. My comments below are directed more to the devs and folks who may not know the state of Barbs.

I want to add that even for die-hard WT fans, they’ll still massively underperform when compared to other Barb builds, even if they’re expert WT players. The gap between the PTR-buffed WT and all other major builds is enormous.

Your idea is rock solid, but personally, I’d prefer to see WT be an IK- or LOD-based build. If it remains part of Raekor, well, anyone who wants to play WT will also have play some form of R6 Spear, whereas incorporating the skill into LOD or IK builds will allow for more build diversity.

Hear, hear! Saffron Wrap is useless, and we have quite a few other Barb-centric items with no or equally useless affixes.

I mean, imagine a reworked Skull of Resonance that applies Demoralize to every enemy hit by WT? Imagine a Saffron Wrap that doubles WT’s damage against enemies effected by Threatening Shout? So many cool possibilities!

6 Likes
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Further buff it. I dislike the “charge then apply another buff before dealing damage”.
It would become a “charge, stack buff THEN deal damage”.
I suggest putting it on ik set or leave it out of the current buffs.
It would be like wizard typhon. Needing so much before dealing damage…
I agree on either lod build or ik build.

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I put the three “paths” in what I think is, unfortunately, the order of likelihood that they’ll be followed.

Most likely BY FAR, I think, is that they won’t do anything further with WT and it’ll just be bad.

Second most likely seems to be incorporation into Raekor. It’s always hard to tell what the dev team intended to do. So it’s certainly possible that they intended to make a combo WT / AS Raekor build, and just forgot to, y’know, actually make WT do something.

And, least likely is that they’ll buff WT very much more in an IK or LoD setup. I mean, to do it, they either need to add huge extra buffs to Arreat’s and 300th, in excess of the multiplier on any other Barb item (but, which would frankly be fine, because: where’s the harm?) Or they need to add big extra buffs to those spears, and then reconfigure an existing item or create a whole new item, with an additional mechanic that adds further damage.

I mean, look at the other changes they’ve made partway through PTRs (somebody correct me if I’m wrong about any of these).

Frenzy got: 10% extra mitigation, plus addition of Stun + Freeze to 2 piece.
Firebird’s got: first, buff shifted to only non-channeling skills, and later, nerf shifted from 1/4 damage to removal of pet damage.
Arachyr got: a change to the infestation mechanic.
Marauder got: damage moved from the set to Bombardier’s Rucksack, and some extra damage for Cluster Arrow.
Leapquake got: Tribes damage reworked into a single multiplier.

etc, etc, i.e. none of these were super ambitious changes.

So: I’m not super hopeful.

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What if WT gets a huge dmg buff when you don’t have any Fury left?

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That’s basically the power that’s on Dishonored Legacy (but for Cleave).

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Yes. So? You will deplete all your Fury whit BT, now you have a dmg bonus to WT that refills Fury, now your BT is buffed again on top of the charges from FC.

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Well, like I said, I really doubt they’ll add a new item with that power (or any power) at this juncture. So they’d need to cram it on an existing item. And it would need to be a colossally huge bonus.

For instance, if you stuck that power on 300th spear, you’d have:

Increase the damage of Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear by 150-200%. Weapon Throw deals up to 2000% increased damage based on percentage of missing Fury.

3 Likes
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Rage you are probably right. That we can’t await to much changes at all. If they are going to improve something it’s most likely the “Seasonal Theme” to make it more appealing.

A dream would be that they are again give the devs a free hand. So they can develop what they want. This got us the Armory. And I still have hope after Microsoft bought ActiBlizz they are going to support older games more. The support AOE II & III DE receive is amazing.

And I would love to see some more community activity. A Twitch talk between PezRadar, a Dev and Rage would be amazing.

Nevalistis tried it so hard to establish such a format, but always seemed to have stones thrown in her way.

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Oh Yeah I forgot that part :laughing: I would like to see this on 300th Spear just the way you wrote it. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I don’t disagree a bit :cry:

I think “where’s the harm?” is the operative phrase. Without massive multipliers, WT is going to be right where it is now: in the trash.

With massive multipliers, it could be a fun, potentially viable (at least more so than it presently is) IK or LOD build.

Back when Rage and I wrote the Barb Buff Proposal, I talked to Nev about that very thing. I contacted a few of the devs directly and was told more or less that it was never going to happen. I can’t recall if the Classic Games team was in at that point, or if it was still a transitional period of overlap between the former devs and the CG devs, but needless to say, not even Nev could get that ball rolling. Bear in mind our proposal was making the rounds; every streamer was talking about it, and every Diablo-related website was linking it.

What’s more, the devs literally lifted some of our ideas and put them in the game. I don’t mean to imply that’s a bad thing–it’s exactly what we wanted to happen! We were thrilled! But even then, even when our work was being integrated by the dev team, they wouldn’t or couldn’t communicate directly.

Ever since Yang left, there’s been zero effort or desire on the part of the dev team to interact with the community. It may be a matter of policy, or it may be a choice. Either way, it’s abysmal.

6 Likes
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First and foremost, that title is a killer, it’s perfect :laughing:. After years of ideas all that was given was a dismal buff.

You’re right.

As Free, and you and others mentioned Path 3 would be the best route.

I would satisfied if the Devs copy a pasted Sash of Knives effect to proc on enemies hit with WT on crits. 300th gives Weapon Throw “gains all runes”.

And yes even this preferably in reverse, incase some want to play pure Weapon Throw without BT.

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“Honorable Future”? :wink:

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That’s a great start. The true perks would be a base damage increase to 400%, the ricochet effect, and a base Fire damage. The other runes are more or less worthless.

From there, a massive damage multiplier and something like a piercing effect, multiple projectiles, or a shout application would be a great. A 2600% increased damage multiplier on enough hammers in a small window of time would return some substantial AD and Bloodshed procs, and if those hammers are piercing and applying a Threatening Shout or some such effect, well, that sounds like an interesting build.

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Even beyond that, it’s deeply strange. I mean, they won’t even communicate to take credit for great stuff that they do.

Prokahn and I both posted bug reports about Relentless and Sword and Board not interacting properly with the Crimson Set. We never heard back, not a peep. I only later discovered, because somebody was asking me questions about it and I ended up re-testing, that the problem had been solved, and it now works perfectly.

Crazytown.

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I’m haveing a nother idea. But I’m not shure about it.

2p bonus: Weapon Throw gainis the effect of every rune and deals 1000% increased damage.

4p bonus: Furious Charge refunds a charge if it hits only 1 enemy and gives 10% damage reduction for every enemy hit up to 50%. (I’m not shure about this part)

6p bonus: Hiting enemies whit Weapon Throw increases the damage of Furious Charge and Ancient Spear by 5500%. This effect stacks and when hitting your target whit Furious Charge relises multiple Ancient Spears consumeing your stacks. This can only consume a maximum of 5 stacks.

It’s pretty wonky but an interesting mechanic maybe. I haven’t realy thought it through.

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And then some.

And then some more on top.

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Well, Vile Charge would really be toast then, since it couldn’t access the R6 Charge damage.

Weapon Throw still wouldn’t really do any damage.

And it would be super hard to actually aim your spears in any meaningful way, since you’d be popping them out from Charging enemies.

Also, you use Charge to move around, avoid damage, and proc BoM, and it would be hard to do any of those without accidentally casting a bunch of Spears and spending all your charges when you don’t mean to.

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One can only wonder. She was a great CM, but with how Blizzard policy or devs were/are she could not shine more. Then she made the video about “the forges of burning hell” I felt she was not informed what is going to happen next. Everyone thaught D4 announcement and then D:I fiasco happend. Blizzard canceled HotS and brought out a unfinished Warcraft Reforged.

Blizzard has to change to a more open communication. Giving estimates and Road maps on their franchises. Especially without no more Blizzcons.

But enough Off Topic.

1 Like