Looks like DSwing/Upheaval/Rend may be elevated due to the buffs and nerfs.
Some things I’m wondering (that needs testing/people smarter than me):
Are shouts still necessary? I think the heals from the three shouts may be more necessary, but then again so is Iron Skin seems extremely important for damage reduction now.
Ground stomp may be beneficial, too. The stun+hp regen are critical.
Are high stun builds going to be on the uprise?
The nerfs stink but there are plenty of posts on them. Trying to brainstorm target builds.
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I didn’t notice any nerfs to shouts, so I believe shouts will still be really strong for most higher end game activities. Will have to wait and see if the malignant heart system changes any of that.
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Agree. Shouts are going to be important. But are Ground Stomp/Iron Skin catching up?
The defensive nerfs are going to be painful.
Dual mace frenzy witt mace passives feels great so far. You might be onto something with stuns.
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Stun/control build now? What about synergy between the new unique sword and the current unique cold dmg boots? Do we just pray to the rng gods to cc things before they murder us instead of smashing them into the earth before they get a chance to?
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Literally nothing will change.
3 shouts + Iron Skin will continue to be meta for pushing NM content.
HoTA is still the meta due to its damage scaling multiplicatively with your Fury bar.
Vulnerable took a big nerf, which hurts DS, bleed, and thorns builds more than it hurts HoTA.
Barbs are now the same, but worse.
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Don’t forget to factor in the indirect nerfs to barbs like the cdr and hamstring nerf. Dunno who came up with it but I’d like to groundstomp his or her as$ to the stone age
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I mean this was part of the DSwing builds before. But I think given the situation controlling mobs is our strength.
But I’m really just looking to hear others thoughts.
I like your idea on the cold synergies. Cold + stun may also be able to be leveraged.
I’m looking at a control build I think but obviously I have to think about things a bit first.
Hamstring nerf feels like the worst thing on the surface, other dmg multipliers aside that effect all classes, losing that slow/bleed synergy passive dmg multiplier really sucks for us
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Azure and upheaval could freeze entire packs, then use veteran brawler and new charge aspect to pancake em, no?
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I don’t think Upheaval plays well with Lucky Hit that’s much
Yeah the hamstring nerf is (not so) lowkey one of the worst hits we took as an entire class. HoTA nerf isn’t great, obviously, but the vulnerable nerf hit a bunch of classes.
Hamstring for this class individually hurts quite a bit. But still, I wonder if we can leverage other player CC types to mitigate that.
The concern there though, is even with that layer of defense (CC), can we do enough damage to make that worth it? I think there will be ways to do it, but very different than how we do it now.
I do agree with the idea that the three shout meta isn’t going anywhere. But I wonder if a CC build will be in the convo now. Mitigating is mitigating. Which allows for more damage?
Thats a good Q, I’m going to swap hota for upheaval and maelstrom for charge and see what i can do
I like where you’re going with this. In theory this sounds awesome. I wonder how it works in practice and how hard to get the cold sword and charge aspect will be.
I was thinking frenzy with The Picana and The Barber malignant hearts to make frenzy an aoe but I am not sure those would scale well enough in the late game.
Im honestly worried about the defensive nerfs more than anything. Barb already lived and died by armor and DR stacking, those took ugly hits.
Azure and charge are eternal right?
But having an aoe generator could be beneficial. Frenzy + cold + ground stomp + upheaval/DB could be fun. But ya, not sure on scaling.
Good thought though.
Looks like for me it is an uninstall
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