Right from the start, I didn’t like this mechanic. When your skill hits a monster, it should take damage. After using the Barber’s Heart, even weaker monsters need to wait for several seconds to die. It feels completely counterintuitive. The issue is, they made Barber’s Heart the strongest thing in the first season. Any build, just put it on, and you can tackle level 100. I used to be a poison rogue, and now my build is completely ruined. Then I found out on the community that all I need is to swap in Barber’s Heart. I don’t even need to change my paragon points, and I’m even stronger than before. Isn’t that ironic? I seriously question if the designers really understand what they’ve created.
edit: about “even weaker monsters need to wait for several seconds to die”, I might be wrong. Knowing that makes barber heart feel a bit better. But it still kills the diversity. It’s actually a balance issue, and it’s a big problem with no solution in sight.
Yes, it’s the only way Barbarians can deal competitive damage. It literally enables builds like double swing to clear fast, because the AoE of our ability is much smaller than the actual explosion.
Without Barber barb would be in the same sorry state it is in Eternal realm.
The thing about Barber is it auto explodes when you deal enough damage to kill the mob. This has been instrumental in clearing large packs of elites clumped together, and just clearing in general on double swing. The explosion is larger than double swing’s AoE lol.
This is when you need to make choice. You will use barber if the accumulation time out damages your normal damage in same time intervals or the radius of your skill is too narrow/close. Barber allows more defensive paragon/gear stat choices but its not compulsory. There are many options.
I use barber in most my builds, particularly builds with rotation similar to barber timings.
I think the developers understand exactly what they created: A fun borrowed power they (and we) can experiment with. They know it’s OP. It’s supposed to be.
Most everyone uses it because it’s so good, not because it’s required. I do think some of the other hearts could be better though. But Barber isn’t a requirement to kill things.
Yes, I finally decide to switch from poison rogue to Barber yesterday. NM80+ is a joke now. I stopped at NM88 last night because it is not fun at all. What are they going to replace it in season 2? I feel like the other wrathful hearts are fun to use and fit into different builds. Barber itself is a build and none of your gears, paragon, aspects matters. lol