This doesn’t make much sense to me. For clarity, a 50X increase in damage is equivalent to 25 greater rifts, assuming survival is non-issue. If we assume that rend in non-season could clear 120, the it doesn’t make sense.
Check the PTR leaderboards or see below. I think all 15 PTR clears are Wastes/WW build (even the one that doesn’t look like it because the person transmogged their gear).
If you are getting more data (e.g. the entire leaderboard), you can use the API, but there is more of a learning curve. In the API, it does not give the build. For that, you would have to look in game/online. That is why I stopped at top 15.
Free can speak for himself/herself, but this is my impression. I think her argument is that WW is an easier build to play (less skill) and therefore, this build should be inferior in its ability to clear higher greater rifts than more technically demanding play styles (or equipment intensive). The ability of auto rend further removes skill/tactical aspects from the build.
I am keen to believe them when they say that the rend aspect of it created lag, so the 1 sec detonation was applied.
I also tend to like that rend does a lot of damage in this setup, as the theme of a whirling dirvish is spinning, thus tornado’s and then your blades slicing through the air auto applying rend makes sense.
Hence why I think the auto apply portion of Ambo should instead be part of the 2pc, and the 2pc waste bonus should be on Ambo.
After that, I am fine with tweaking the ww and rend damage to be a more even split, but I see no reason to remove the auto rend as it fits what I would think of if I saw a berserk barb spinning with mighty weapons in hand.
I do like the idea of having Ambo instead multiply our WW damage to enemies that have been affected by rend in the last 5 seconds part as well, and would be fine with that replacing the rend lasts 15 seconds and deals x% more damage.
Those of you complaining about Rend doing the damage instead of Whirlwind…
You make no sense to me.
You’re still spinning. Just because there is a new mechanic added to the spinning doesn’t mean you’re not using Whirlwind for damage.
However, I do find it weird Skull Grasp is becoming irrelevant. That’s just weird in my opinion. So I would like to see it maybe receive a Rend buff in order for it to be usable again in 2.6.7.
First thought is to move WW4 triple Rend damage bonus to Skull Grasp. That is, remove triple Rend damage from Wastes 4, and include Rend damage on Skull Grasp legendary power.
Just stop it already.
We have a functional high gr clearing WW barb that wouldnt get chased out of speed grifts.
We have been wanting this for YEARS and now we get it and some people are whining how the damage is done.
Just enjoy it people
You know after all this time begging the Dev’s for Rend to actually do damage and they did, people now want to remove one of the Wastes set Rend damage buffs to something else so Skull Grasp will be used in the build, to me that makes no sense at all. Why rebuild the Wastes set to fit Skull Grasp so it can be used, that will never happen with a short PTR anyway, instead of rebuilding Skull Grasp to fit the Wastes set as it is now, if people really want to use it?
Irrespective of what skill technically does the damage, it is still a whirlwind set. If you remove whirlwind from the build, how much damage does it do?
You say potatoe I say potato. At the end of the day, whirlwind in combination with rend does massive damage in its current iteration. I think you should read Ulmaguest’s post on this and why it is advantageous to have rend rather than whirlwind be the main damage dealer.
But the current iteration is not the only way to optimize the build. We’ve swung the pendulum completely in the other direction, and what Jako and I are saying is simply that a better balance can be achieved without nerfing the build or lowering its max power potential.
The buff to whirlwind is incompatible to basic tenets of the barb buff proposal. The main idea was to get intraclass parity/build diversity and have a top build that was more middle of he road in terms of solo DPS. Repeatedly, it was reiterated the idea was not to be the top build.
Since no other class has really good intraclass balance, I think it is silly to ask for this.
Simple questions:
Does the buff to the whirlwind/rend build increase the difference in barb build inbalance between the top and bottom?
I suspect the answer is yes.
In the PTR, a 140 has already been cleared. It looks like at least in terms of solo the current buff may be competitive as the top build if the changes go live. As of now the PTR clear is only 1 grifts behind the top American Wizard clear (that is getting nerfed) .
This my concern is this, if a Nerf is coming due to leaderboards, the chants non-Barb (who never want to see a prosper), and us showing discontentment with iteration Rend/Wastes, that the Nerf would be more severe than it ought to be.
At this point, no changes be made. It’s going to go live as is, nerf or no nerf. We can discuss tweaks later. But for now let’s be thankful for what the Devs have given us.
This is true, but not possible given the limited number of items available in this patch. Builds that rely on gimmicks (R6 and VC) will no longer be the top. Our approach was, always, a conservative one: pitch an elevation to all Barb builds and address intra- and inter-class parity via buffs. The developers took a lot of influence from the proposal, but they haven’t followed it 1:1. Saying the current buffs are “incompatible” to the proposal doesn’t mean much when Rage and I don’t work for Blizzard.
We never asked for a top-tier buff because we figured that was out of the question. If we got one, good. We deserve it. And I will fight to keep it.
It is laughably silly that you wouldn’t ask for this, but ooooookay.
That’s . . . not a yes or no question?
And for the love of God, stop posting your dang tables everywhere–they make posts a mile long.
