The initial nerf on WW barb to cut cooldown from 12 seconds to 6 seconds and challenging shouts were based on the bugs of unique gloves, the two codex edge master and berserk ripping. Then the three bugs was fixed but we still lose the full shout coverage which leads WW barb instant death on higher level dungeons. Not to mention other nerfs including the chest cooldown reduction also removed.
Barb is originally designed to have full shout coverage and it should have kept that way!
The streamers who were showing off WW barbs were due to the bugs, not full shout
Coverage.
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I’d say bring it up to 8 seconds cool down is good enough, it gives an average barb with CD on helmet and amulet along with Marshal glyph to have only about 3 seconds of downtime. 3 seconds is not too OP while short enough to stay in the fight without having to fully disengage. Still require some management of uptimes instead of just smashing 3 buttons mindlessly. I think this will be perfect for balance
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My shout CD’s are fine on WW. Roll into more CD on your gear. If you’re unable to, stop trying to run into NM Dungeons with enemies that are +20 to you.
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Barbs are in a weird place in which you are an absolute unit when blowing all your CD shouts but yet hit like a wet noodle when this is off.
This is however true for most classes. The game is gated first by gear and second on higher level NM dungeons by CD.
The solution: Kite.
This means we would have 5 secs of downtime running around like a headless chicken before re-engaging when the CD is up.
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Lmao you are saying that WW is not very viable in higher level NMD, which I agree. Doesn’t it mean that WW build needs some buffs or QoL changes now?
Yeah, if you’re unable to have a decent CD on your shouts, you’re not going to be able to do higher level NMD. Are you somehow thinking that some scuffed build and gear loadout should be pushing 50’s or something?
Realistically right now, Barb needs to have 30% CDR and Challenging Shout levels (4 from Chest and 3 from Amulet) to be able to function just “OK” in NMD. It really isn’t easy because Barb needs fury management stats and other stuff as well AND now we need to factor in Armor % in gear.
For higher NMD, a semi-hardcore Barb only has a small window of success with HOTA as since it can be played with kiting and burst style. I think I can currently do T60-70 without any problems with HOTA but WW definitely will struggle more. The sad reality for Barb is that we have to move forward by squeezing every bit of our god-rolled stats for damage and increase our armor/dmg reduc/resistance, which is really painful while yielding limited results. I hate to but am forced to say that with similar efforts, a werewolf Druid can survive and dish more damage with ranged in higher NMD - but that’s probably the reality.
I have made similar comments in other posts about the Barb balancing, if a revamp over the 3 shouts are too much to consider at this point, at least give Barb back the damage reduction scaling (per level/change of skill point), better uptime on shouts (via other means). I believe the complaints will be less even if Barb takes a further slight nerf of damage (don’t make it huge of course) in exchange for the deserved tankiness.
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I agree, Necro can just Bone spear through stuff, mage can CC/teleport, Rogue has everything to control the pace, druid has infinite healing barrier dmg spirits reg and fortify, we only have our shots and no range which means that we have to be on top of the enemy… That’s cool and all but currently, the game Is shouting, having fun, then waiting for CD not having fun, shouting again … It feels clunky, anoying and not fluid at all… I’m talking about a lvl 70 char … Either they should reduce the CD of shouts, or give us passive bonus to something
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Like in D3 2min shouts. Hate short buffs everywhere. I thinked 20sec buff is short, but 6 sec!!! this is annoying.
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It would be too easy and OP if we can maintain shouts 24/7 in earlier levels (I still consider 70 early, but QoL changes should be made) since it defeats the resource management purpose. However, in true endgame (i.e. with most BiS gear online), we should be able to continuously apply shouts because, after all, we are the only Class that needs to stay up close with the mobs. We really need damage reduction.
Why would we play a melee Class when it offers no competitive edge on defense? Then why don’t we just play ranged and have other forms of hard CC and brief invulnerability skills for more safety - if mobs are going to 1 or 2 hit any Class anyways in high level NMD? Sometimes the simple example and answer point to the main issue.
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I feel WW Barb is fine right now.
Get resource regen on rings. It helps.
No, you will realize post 100 level that resource regen/cost reduction even on max (boots, amulet, rings, stats, aspects) is not enough - because it’s not resource issues alone to begin with. The current Barb just isn’t tough enough (not saying that it cannot dish out damage).
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Shouts seem like they are balanced around endgame with pretty decent gear and like 5 or 6 paragon boards.
You need a full skill build. You need the aspects: Bold Chieftain and Echoing Fury (good rolls). You need high CDR rolls everywhere you can get them (head and amulet). You need the Marshal glyph and the Disembowel glyph to make it feel smooth in gameplay.
And because of the way Disembowel works you need to reliably crit, so you need high crit rolls everywhere you can get them. If using whirlwind, you will have massive fury problems until you can get enough resource regen and fury cost reduction on gear, fury on kill from paragon and fury on crit from the Wrath glyph.
At endgame this all comes together where you use your shouts to reduce the cooldown of your other shouts and crit like a maniac to bring them off cooldown sooner. As long as you can keep up the fury spend to do this and you move between packs of enemies and kill them fast enough, you can keep the shout chain going and it feels pretty good.
But from level 1 to 70ish, its a pretty miserable experience where you have long gaps between berserking/unstoppable and then you get owned by an invisible spider net or cold enchanted elite. Rallying Cry and Wrath of the Berserker are not only your main sources of CC immunity but they are also your CC breaks.
You suddenly take a tonne of damage if Challenging Shout goes down. You will be fury starved if Rallying Cry is not up and its the worst with Whirlwind because this ability is simply not designed to work at all without a tonne of gear and paragons. You can channel it for 2 seconds from max fury before you are fully depleted!
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I feel like it’s enough
I am able to maintain 100% uptime atm with good density. If the density is low or packs are really far apart it can get rough real fast. I have perfect CDR on Helm and the Amulet as well as almost perfect resource gen. We could use a small QoL bump in the Cool Down department.
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i have had the best rng on my loot so atm i can have my shouts on a 5 second downtime before i can use them again on big packs of mobs
I think 8 or 9 second will be on spot but 6 is so low (better than nothing)
I think 10-15 second would would be fine. 25 seconds cooldown is just stupid unless they increase the uptime by 50-100%. The need for unstoppable 24/7 should just be deleted from this game, give all characters unstoppable for a period of time after a stun or two.
Yeah but in harder contents post lvl 100, the shouts really can’t come together. The current problem is not on CD alone. For example, if you don’t have 8K armor plus decent resistence (unbuffed), even with full uptime shouts plus all glyphs maxed, Barb is still very squishy in NMD 70+. We are talking about challenging rank 11 there.
The reality is that Barb is just weak in end game. Yes you may still have lots of fun with the WW build and HOTA build but it all goes until NMD 70/80 at best. Is it good enough for a Class? Definitely not.
Barb needs changing, QoL changes, or buffs. It’s as direct and simple as that. Thanks though for spending the time to explain how a barb progresses.
Disembowel has a 10% chance to reduce CD’s by 1 second when bleeding enemies die. 20 enemies on average would shave 2 seconds off the CD. If you’re using the pull aspect and you’re grouping this should be easily achievable. If they ever fix Rage of Harrogath, if you were weaing that you’d be 100% up all the time again.