WW, Wastes, and Rend--A Response

Barbarian
1

All apologies for the wall of text, but I’ve been wanting to chime in about ww changes since we found out Blizz is pushing out the eta indefinitely. I’m happy to agree to disagree about rend, but there are reasonable objections to the current approach.

I do agree that auto-cast rend is bad. I’m worried, though, that adding rend to the bar might be worse.

First, we all know ww isn’t a lazy build without rend. Having to cycle through IP, WOtB, and Threatening Shout/Spear while managing cooldowns already means we spend more time looking at the skill bar than the rest of the screen. When thinking about what would make a wastes barb more fun to play, adding another step to the process doesn’t generally come to mind. I, for one, have no burning desire to feel like I’m playing a Mortal Combat combo move with ww.

To be fair, if we really could drop IP that would help the cooldown game quite a bit. The rend mechanism the proposal suggests for that has a problem, though–it won’t help vs. most rift guardians. Dropping ip means even more fishing for good rg spawns at lower rg levels. To me that’s not really a plus.

Beyond that, adding Rend to the bar means dropping Threatening Shout. That’s quite a loss in terms of both grouping and mitigation. Again, though, reasonable people can agree to disagree.

Beyond that, let’s look at what the current proposal wants to accomplish with rend–namely more area damage over time. If that’s really what we want, why not use a simpler mechanism like wastes adds x% area damage? This could have the same ultimate impact without interjecting rend into the mix.

I think this a much better approach for two reasons. First, as noted above, I’m not a fan of adding rend to the bar. As I know I’m not going to play another build–I’m going to keep advocating against that. In my mind, having played ww barb since the day D2 came out qualifies me to at least express a different opinion.

Second–and more importantly–we don’t know what adding rend to the mix in higher grs will do to our lag. Will adding another damage over time calculation make things worse? Who knows? Giving Blizz’s track record with lag and ww, I think it’s a bit foolhardy to suggest it’s nothing to worry about. I’m guessing everyone here would agree we don’t want to end up making things worse. I’m not convinced adding rend wouldn’t do just that. I am convinced simply making area damage hit harder would have the least affect on potential lag. As a rule, I always favor simpler solutions. Increasing area damage is much simpler than incorporating rend. It also requires much less testing on the back end. Minimizing Blizzard’s resources is something to be considered, too.

Adding rend to the bar also doesn’t address ww’s real weakness. We already do pretty decent damage in density. Our real weaknesses are killing elites and solo targets once we whittle down that density, and killing rgs that don’t spawn lots of ads. Again, a simple solution would be adding an affix–either to wastes or a supporting legendary–that boosts ww when hitting 3 or fewer targets.

Boiling all of this gush of text down to specifics, my Wastes suggestion would be this:

2 piece: While using ww deal an additional x% area damage
4 piece: damage reduction and when ww hits 3 or fewer targets, it does an additional x% damage
6 piece: ww does additional 10k damage

This change would have the benefit of directly addressing the weakness of the wastes build in a simpler manner that doesn’t risk injecting more lag into our gameplay. Is it perfect? Not even close. But it’s worth talking about.

TLDR: auto-rend IS bad; manual rend might be worse.

3 Likes
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I’m all for more damage of any kind except the increase of area damage. Adding more of what already causes us to lag is a bad idea. Yes at lower lvl rifts it will be fine because everything dies fast, but for push situations this does not solve anything.

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Pretty sure it’s bloodshed that causes lag, not area damage percent. Changing that number shouldn’t change how the calculation works, as far as I know.

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Hey, Jeb. It’s super late where I’m at, and I have to be up early, but I felt compelled to respond to this as it’s near and dear to me.

First, let me say that I really love this thread! I have a tremendous amount of respect for the elevated discourse you’ve begun, and I’m glad to be a part of it.

There are a few points to which I want to respond. I’ll try to be thorough, but again, it’s late, so if anything comes across as half-baked or strange, let me know and I’ll clarify at a later date.

I want to start by saying that our List 1 ideas don’t address Rend at all. That’s because fixing Rend is a rather complex issue, and it can only be accomplished via List 2-type changes. In other words, Rend can’t be fixed with only one of our ideas. It takes the combination of all of them to actually fix Rend.

That said, our ideas would simplify the Zodiac WW build by eliminating IP and PoC from the build. You wouldn’t need to accrue nearly as many Zodiac procs because the only cooldown skill you would refresh is Wrath.

Just to clarify, our ideas can be summed up as such.

  1. Add Rend to Wastes 6 (10,000%)
  2. Ambo’s Pride in the Cube replaces Furnace. This scales Rend’s damage with density and makes it beefy in terms of overall DPS.
  3. Lamentation replaces PoC and it’s DR replaces IP and PoC. Combined with Mortick’s, the build has more DR than ever before–or, at the least, as much as it had with PoC and IP with zero fussy secondary rolls and no worrying about cooldowns.

For more info on that, see our List 2 and the Detailed Explanations section.

That’s not true. Our fixes for Rend would definitely help vs the RGs. Again, check the Detailed Explanations section for more info. Here’s a snippet:

Another positive effect of this change is that it would be easier for the build to thrive in lower density, which has been a consistent problem. When fighting a 5 member blue pack, for instance, Rend would have a +250% bonus and would be doing about 73% of our total damage. In other words, Rend would be moderately useful in high density, and extremely useful in low density. This would be a positive change from the current situation, in which Rend is one of the least useful Barbarian skills.

This is also not true. Again, if our ideas are implemented in full, this is not a concern. We realize Blizzard could opt for other avenues to “fix” Rend, but we’ve tried very hard to emphasize that you can’t rix Rend in one way without considering its uses in other ways.

We don’t use Threatening Shout. Normally, Rage Flip does the grouping. If you have enough Paragon, TS can replace War Cry. In our proposal, Rend is replacing IP on the bar.

I think you’re confusing Area Damage with DOT bleed damage caused by Rend. They operate in vastly different ways. Since Rend can’t crit or proc, it doesn’t have a huge impact on server performance. Area Damage, on the other hand, does, since it is the result of a proc, and requires a calculation based on a variety of factors to total out, moment by moment. This was proven in previous era when Fire Bats WDs had to remove all AD prior to push attempts.

In other words, Rend isn’t going to cause a problem. Boosting AD, however, will. And if you want to fine-tune server performance under WW stress, you need to examine Dust Devils, which can proc AD and contribute to Bloodshed all while ticking multiple times depending on APS.

We don’t think set overhauls are in the cards. Every bit of evidence indicates we are correct, and to be honest, that’s fine. We just need better supporting legendaries.

Actually, we do.

Zero out AD in Paragon. Get rid of it on your gear. Drop down to the Wastes 4 bonus so Rend has all its multpliers in play.

Go into a GR 125+ and do a 3-screen pull, then Rend them all. What happens?

I know. I’ve tested it.

Nothing. No lag.

Rend is not the culprit.

Again, see our Detailed Explanations section. Fixing Rend via our ideas does indeed make us better vs low density or RGs. It will always be the build’s weakness, and that’s fine. Builds should have weaknesses so their strengths can shine.

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Thanks for the detailed reply, Free. Your response and a reread of the proposal do address a lot of the points I raised. My remaining concerns basically boil down to two things:

–This is a rather complicated fix for a need to increase damage
–I’m still not confident the execution would be flawless.

As to the first point, I don’t think it matter where our damage boost comes from (rend or ad) as long as it comes. I do think area damage is a simpler fix, though. As far as i understand it, area damage always fires at 50% frequency. Increasing area damage just boosts how hard it hits, not how often. Increasing ad power shouldn’t have any impact on lag (if this isn’t the case, then ad would obviously be a bad thing to boost).

As for the potential of rend to lag, I’m not sure a test using current conditions and lower damage is conclusive. As we’ve seen with Jako’s attempts to get ww to lag, there are interactions at higher grs that we don’t appear to be able to simulate at lower grs. We also can’t really simulate what will happen in multiplayer games (although I’m fairly sure wastes will never be welcome in multiplayer grs). At the very least, rend adds another damage over time calculation. It might not add any appreciable lag, but I don’t think we’ll know for certain until we see things in a live environment.

As underpowered as wastes is right now, at least it works (for the most part). I would hate to see Blizz go all in just to kluge it up.

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It’s actually 20% frequency. You’re right, though, that having 200% AD should not generate any more lag than having 1% AD.

That said, Blizz does not seem to be in the business of doing very much with AD. There’s the +AD stat on items, and that’s it. I don’t know why they do things that way, but it does seem to be the case. No item modifies the way AD works in any way, and AD is not included in any set bonus.

Sure. Free and I were pretty clear in our proposal that any and all of our proposed “List 2” changes would need to be tested in a PTR.

Rend can’t crit, but it CAN proc AD.

1 Like
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Always happy to discuss WW, Jeb. Like I said, I appreciate your posts, and your concerns are valid. There are a few things I want to touch on.

Well, yes and no. It’s very simple and straight forward in the sense that Rend is already included in the Wastes set and only needs some TLC from supporting legs so it can contribute to the build. I can see why you say it’s complicated–it takes adding Rend to the Wastes 6 bonus and two supporting legs to make the skill worthwhile. But I assure you that is less complicated than any other potential solution.

For example, many folks think Overpower could help the build, but when you do the math–and trust me, we did–Overpower is so far behind everything else that there is no feasible way to make it a damage-dealing skill. What’s more, its utility runes provide no meaningful utility. Just getting it to work would require a total overhaul of the Wastes set. When compared to that idea, getting Rend buffed seems like the path of least resistance.

This is true. My point was that Rend doesn’t cause lag in density the way that the combination of Dust Devils, AD, and Bloodshed causes lag. A simple PTR with our proposed items could quickly determine if our fixes would make the lag situation worse.

This isn’t exactly true. You can lock the game up at GR 100 or GR 140 depending on the conditions present and your approach. See Rage’s posts on that in the GD thread.

Again, there is no evidence to think that total set overhauls are in the cards, nor is a set that boosts or adjust Area Damage. I think it’s safe to say that your proposed Wastes set overhaul simply isn’t in the cards, and I don’t think it would actually solve the problems. Remember, this isn’t just about poor damage output–that’s a symptom of the larger issues: broken sets and outdated supporting legendaries.

Boosting AD will buff the damage, but that buffed damage is still being calculated on a skill that ticks depending on attack speed. WW is fishy and frustrating because it front-loads all of its damage into a skill that divides its damage into ticks–a channeling skill. Channeling skills are good at dealing damage over time (which is not the same as a DOT skill), and they’re great at stacking Stricken, but because they can be more or less channeled indefinitely, they have a relatively low damage output per tick. This means you have to deal the most amount of damage per tick to the most amount of enemies possible in any given scenario to deal any meaningful damage. This is why the build feels so weak compared to our other builds for so long. It has no nuke, no single-target damage, no burst. It can only scale with density, and thus it can only function in density.

Rend is baked into the set. It can, with some buffs, become a meaningful source of damage, one that reduces the frustration of fishing, and one that makes the build feel stronger far earlier.

Mind you, our approach has always been to, for the most part, leave sets alone and focus on supporting legendaries. In fact, the only set change we suggested is to amend Rend to the Wastes 6 bonus! We’ve never discussed how we feel regarding present set design because, frankly, that’s just not a realistic thing to try and change. For example, if you were to ask my opinion, I would argue that the IK and Raekor sets are broken. If I had my way, I would change IK to only buff Primary skills and HOTA with its 6-piece bonus, and I would change Raekor to only buff Ancient Spear and Charge. But sets are, it seems, set in stone. Supporting legendaries, on the other hand, and as evidenced from this patch and the last, are mutable.

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I imagine you are right about Blizzard’s willingness to make major revisions. It’s not exactly news that ww is underpowered. In terms of play style, I’d personally rather see the build continue without rend. As I mentioned, I’d prefer to see Blizzard tinker with density and single target damage more directly. As you point out, though, set reworks seem like more of a long shot. At the same time, if Blizzard does make all of your proposed changes, pressing 3 for Rend rather IP certainly isn’t a game breaker.

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Well, I’m only basing my opinion on the evidence. They haven’t modified a skill since Battle Rage, and they haven’t tweaked our sets in years. They have, however, been buffing and modifying supporting legs for several patches now, and with the upcoming new sets, it’s clear they’ll be doing fairly extensive work.

Based on the evidence, here’s where I think we stand in terms of realistic expectations:

Guaranteed

  • New affixes on existing supporting legendaries
  • Buffs to existing affixes on existing items
  • New class set

Likely

  • 1-3 brand new items to support the new set
  • Updates to legendary gems
  • Updates to certain critical passive skills
  • Buffs to affixes on existing class sets

Unlikely

  • Existing set overhauls
  • Active skill changes
  • Buffs to non-critical passive skills

Completely out of the picture

  • Game mechanics overhauls
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That list seems about right. Having played around with Mortick’s + Witching Hour a bit makes me think there actually might be an even simpler solution to Wastes’ damage issues. +250% chd (or so–just throwing the number out there) as an additional 6 pc bonus (or on a supporting leg) would be interesting to look at.

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Negative. Remember:

Adding more CHD isn’t going to solve the build’s problems or make it less fishy.

Channeling skills are not suited to shouldering 100% of a build’s damage output. They need support from other skills and damage types–DOTs, burst, scaling, or single-target. Rend is already in the Wastes set, and that is the best place to start.

I can understand that you’re not a fan of Rend, and it’s pointless to argue about what play style you like or dislike–that’s personal preference, plain and simple. But, like you said, if you hit 3 for Rend instead of Ignore Pain, it’s not a deal breaker. And if Rend dealt some significant damage and made our fights vs elites and RGs easier, well… who would complain?

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First, I want to agree that your proposed changes are the best the best interpretation and update of the original set intention that I can think of. Rend is in the set. If they’re going to keep it there, it ought to be useful. Full stop.

I have a bit of a harder time with your point about channeling skills. Your description certainly fits the current state of ww, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. WW in d2 is a good example here. As I’m sure you know, for a large part of the game, ww in 8 player games was useless. It wasn’t until we got botd ghost spears (or grief + beast if you were a fan of huge repair costs), that ww could (sort of) hold its own. The only thing that changed was how hard the ticks hit. I think the same approach could work for d3 ww. To me, it doesn’t seem to matter where the damage comes from as long as it comes. Rend gives dot. Boosting ww damage would increase the damage of each tick. I legitimately don’t get why one is any better than the other.

This last question led me to another: why do we need mutually exclusive solutions? To that end, it seems to me we could have a few strong options by simply adding a new affix for a weapon in the cube. To me, the best approach is:

  1. Rework the wastes set and supporting legendaries as you outline.
  2. Add a leg damage affix either to one of the crafted mighty weapons or a new one: x% chd (or just x% ww damage if that’s easier)

That way we would have 3 play styles using a mix of supporting legs.

  1. ww + rend–new and balanced
  2. ww + poc/parthians/ip–traditional and tanky
  3. ww + mortick’s/wh–traditional with more damage/fragility

I don’t see the downside in offering options through a very simple supporting leg change. I also honestly think adding this option would make the rend proposal more palatable. I really think you underestimate the pissing and moaning that is going to happen if every ww barb suddenly has to use rend. I’m guessing that’s a real consideration for Blizz.

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I don’t think it’s fair to compare WW in both games. WW in D2 wasn’t a true channeling skill in the sense that such skills operate in D3. There’s a similarity in that both skills “ticked” as you traveled, but that’s about it.

Well, let’s leave Rend out of the equation for a second, because we only discuss it since it’s always been part of the Wastes set. In other words, if the Wastes set was overhauled tomorrow to include, say, Ancient Spear, we wouldn’t discuss Rend at all.

Let’s focus on WW, a mobile AOE skill that divides its damage into ticks depending on APS. As you increase WW’s damage, you also increase the damage of each tick, but only by a proportional amount of the total increase. You’ll still need to tightly pack density, and you’ll still need to fish for that kind of density, because even at 20,000% damage, WW is still only dealing significant damage when you continue to tick (channel) on those enemies over time; the first hit of WW doesn’t deal the full 20,000% damage, just a “tick” of it. Technically, every tick of WW does the skill damage divided by 3.

There’s a great old thread about this here:

No matter how you slice it, if you front-load all the build’s damage into this skill, you will always have a frustrating amount of fishing required, as the build requires density to A) scale APS via PE, B) deal significant amounts of damage to many monsters at once, C) scale that damage with Bloodshed and AD, and D) heal via Blood Funnel. You’ll also always have a frustrating time vs RGs and elites.

In other words, to truly fix the build, it requires an additional source of damage to take the burden off WW. Back in Vanilla D3, that used to come in the form of HOTA or Rend. The developers opted for the latter in the Wastes set.

Again, Rend is just tangential to the discussion. It just happens to be in the Wastes set, and I’m confident it’s best to work with what we already got.

Because there will never be more than 1 optimal way to play a build. It’s also asking a lot for there to be two equally (or near equal) ways to play a build that revolve around the same skill. We come close to suggesting as much with our War of the Dead suggestion in the proposal, but that, even to us, is the farthest afield suggestion; we are, in fact, asking for two different builds: the standard Zodiac WW with Rend, and Rend-centric build where WW is just a mobility skill. We do something similar with our Avalanche items. Asking for 3 competitive ways to play a WW-centric WW build is, in my opinion, beyond unrealistic.

Let’s get the build fixed, period. Even that, most days, feels like it’s gonna take a miracle.

BTW – with our suggestions, you wouldn’t need Rend on the bar for low GRs or speed-farming. It would really only come into play for pushing scenarios. I’m mentioning that because I don’t know if you prefer to push with WW or just speed-farm and such. And again, your preference is your own–I’m cool with it, even if I am very much a fan of Rend and a more rhythmic style of play.

Well, put it this way. It’s already in the build. If all we have to do is swap IP for Rend, there might be some griping, but when players discover the build is significantly stronger and more durable, and when they discover it’s no longer as frustrating to fight RGs and elites, and when they discover it’s no longer considerably weaker than other major Barb builds at a given Paragon, and when they discover that it holds up well in just about every mode of solo play, well, I think most of those gripes will fizzle out into weirdly content silence.

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The one constant I’ve seen since day 1 of D2 is that Diablo players love to complain when things change–whatever that change is. You’re asking players who have been playing ww one way (and gearing that way) for literally years, to suddenly switch to a new play style. It might be the greatest thing to ever happen to barbs, but people will still complain.

I have to admit, at this point I’m curious to try out a new rend-centric ww build. I might like it. But I might not. I will say I’m really enjoying the new Mortick’s/WH play style. I only have to keep an eye on 1 cooldown, and I can actually watch the game rather than the skill bar for the first time in–again–literally years. If adding one additional damage affix on a supporting leg will let players continue to use the existing PoC/Parthians and new Mortick’s/WH builds, I don’t think unrealistic to hope for.

Thinking that the only way to go is a whole new approach to the build, on the other hand, is, in my opinion, setting yourself up for failure. Imagine for a second Blizzard goes to all the trouble to make all your suggested changes, and people hate it on the PTR. If there are no other options, you’ve got a problem–and probably we all do. I can easily see them scrapping the whole idea with enough pushback.

As for what I’m looking for, all I want to do is be able to keep up with my friends. The guys I play with most are friends from D2. As we’re older now, we grind a LOT less than we used to. We’re not pushing the outer limits of the game. Yet each season, the other guys–with similar paragon and gear–can clear 120’s while I’m not even in the ballpark. I really do hope there’s a way ww can push the barb leaderboard more realistically for those of you gunning for that. But I mainly hope wastes gets a boost across the board so all users see an improvement.

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I think the 2P should drop Rend for fury regen, but I’d have to run the numbers to see how maintainable WW is with the Istvan’s set, but IIRC, it’s not stable.

I would probably increase the DR on the 4P to 75% and drop Rend entirely. The 6P should drop the dust devil rune and increase WW damage to 15 - 20,000%.

After that, I would add an amulet effect: “WW gains the effect of every rune.” This allows you to better maintain fury, health, and increase damage. The reason it’s an amulet is because we don’t really have a staple for that slot.

Some people might argue that we need the traveler’s pledge set, but with the addition of the new Crimson set, this is no longer the case.

If it were up to me, I would discourage the use of abilities that required you to use another main damage source other than WW such as Rend or Boulder Toss.

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I think Free’s points that Blizzard will be reluctant to completely overhaul anything at this point make a lot of sense. With that in mind, I’m leaning more and more toward the idea that a ww damage affix on an existing weapon that we could use in the cube to replace Furnace (Skorn, for example), could solve a lot of our dps problems. To me, the simplest solution has the most chance of winning support from both Blizzard and the community.

On another note, lightning Istvan’s manages fury well; physical is a bit of a challenge.

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Lightning Istvan’s is not only stable, it’s never starved for Fury.

The build doesn’t need Fury regen for either Physical BK or Lightning Istvan’s. Fury regen is not the build’s problem.

That would decimate the build. In its currently optimized state, Zodiac WW is an AOE-centric build that relies on density (and thus fishing). Your proposed changes would make it more reliant on fishing by reducing its AOE capabilities and requiring even more mob density to be within the range of the WW skill attacks.

This is a bad idea. You don’t understand the build.

We have two staples: Flavor of Time (new) and Hellfire, both of which are better than giving WW all runes. Getting all runes would do nothing for the build aside from a little utility in low GR and T16 speed-farming, but even then it wouldn’t solve the build’s problem, which you don’t understand anyway: damage.

The build front-loads all damage output into a single mobile AOE-focused skill. As a result, it requires perfect AOE-friendly conditions to deal maximum damage.

They would? That’s interesting considering we don’t use that set in the build. That’s double interesting seeing as how that set is actually bad for the build.

Thank God it isn’t.

Go read the Zodiac WW guide and learn the build before making more terrible suggestions.

While that seems attractive, remember: one of the build’s core problems is that it front-loads all damage into WW.

The WW skill was never meant to deal massive damage. It’s a mobile spender that divides its damage over ticks. It’s not HOTA or Slam. It’s weaker, and if we want it the build to deal more damage and be less frustrating (but not, I would argue, require less skill), additional damage output has to come from somewhere–some other skill or ability that isn’t a mobile spender. Right now, Rend is in the Wastes set, and that’s the best place to start.

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I’ll admit that I bring a strong bias from my pvp days in D2 that makes me rather ambivalent about skilled pvm play. That said, you are right that it comes down to Blizzard’s preference. Rend is, of course, already on the Wastes set. I would suggest, though, that the fact Blizzard has completely ignored it could mean they’ve realized people who play ww barbs aren’t really interested in Rend. If that’s the case, boosting ww damage (not as high as HOTA or slam) would be the way to go. If they do want to incorporate Rend, your proposal makes sense. In either case, I’m enjoying the simpler mechanics that come with using Mortick’s in lower level gr’s. I’m all in favor of any solution that lets me stop watching as many cool downs. I don’t think that lessens the skill required to play. I just think it lets us focus our skill on gameplay rather than time management.

21

I’ve never cared a whit about PVP, and that ship sailed long ago for D3. But I don’t agree with the idea that D3 WW players en masse hate Rend. Back in the Monster Power days, before Loot 2.0, WW+Rend was the WW build, later eclipsed by the Double Tornado version. In other words, I think a lot of people would be happy to play a WW+Rend build where Rend actually dealt meaningful damage, and doubly so if it offered increased utility and reduced our cooldown management. Sure, it wouldn’t use Skorn, but it would pretty dang strong.

Remember, the ideas in our proposal are geared toward pushing with the build and making it less frustrating without lowering the skill ceiling. But it would mean very little if you’re only using the build to speed-farm T16 or low GRs; sure, you would be more powerful if you used Rend, but you could just as easily drop it for Sprint and use the standard Zodiac WW build for T16.

Let’s be honest. Set overhauls aren’t necessary, and if it’s not necessary, it’s likely not going to happen. Buffed supporting legendaries, including existing ones with new affixes, are happening, and we are where we are.

Edit: Funny old thread:

And an old video of the WW+Rend build in action:

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Don’t worry, I’m not under any delusion that real pvp is coming to D3 (I have hope for D4, but I’m not holding my breath). I just mentioned my background as a (partial) explanation for why I’m sort of non-plussed by any argument about pvm skill. Honestly, I think the “rend keeps the build requiring skill” business is the weakest part of your case. Rend is in the set. The functionality you’ve proposed, depending on how Blizz might implement it, could be very interesting. But it’s literally an occasional keypress. I personally think what skill there is in playing ww (aside from mastering the ever-fickle rng) revolves around positioning, grouping, and knowing when to fight, not managing the timing of skills.

Anyway, if Blizz does adopt a rend-centric update, we’ll certainly see how popular it is. I do know from my own experience that ww seemed most popular in game when Thrive on Chaos (iirc) allowed us to have perma-wrath back when that meant something. No rend required. :wink: