I started my journey to level 100 on June 1st as a WW barbarian- my all time favorite class in the franchise. For the first ~60 levels, my gameplay experience largely consisted of hitting demons with a pool noodle 5+ times with the hope of being able to whirlwind for 1 or 2 seconds and deal some damage.
As I engaged in these pillow fights, I watched my 3 buddies (2 twisting blade rogues and an Ice Shard Sorc) tear through groups of enemies with ease. But I was not discouraged- I knew going in Whirlwind would take time to come online, and that without gear it was going to be a struggle. The endgame would be my time to shine.
Around level 60, I made a breakthrough- the fabled âBold Chieftainsâ aspect finally dropped. I quickly put it on an ancestral ring that had rolled quite well, and my gameplay experience was immediately changed for the better. As I started to carve through mobs with sustained whirlwindâs, I was confident that my metamorphasis into a endgame powerhouse had begun. I went to sleep that morning with dreams of emoting on Uber Lilithâs Corpse.
The next day, it was apparent that something was wrong. My shout uptime was significantly worse than the day before, and thus my resource generation and survivability took a significant hit. As I looked through my equipped gear, I noticed that my Bold Chieftainâs aspect, which I had been so excited to find just the day before, had been nerfed by 50 PERCENT. I had logged on prepared to continue my ascent to endgame godhood, and was greeted with a spinning heel kick to the nuts.
It was at this time that I realized that the "Shout Cooldown Reductionâ roll on gear I had searching for had proven to be so elusive because it had been removed from the game entirely. I also realized that the almighty Unique Item âGohrâs Devastating Gripsâ had been nerfed by roughly 75 percent.
Although I feared my build may be dead, I pressed on. I found Gohrâs later that day and it felt decent against trash mobs at least, and as I progressed through my paragon board, my character started to feel good again overall. At level 66, I found an item power 805 2h axe with Crit dmg, Vuln dmg, Core Skill dmg, and Strength. I decided to temporarily abandon my plans to use a 2h sword, as the Axe was lightyears better than any sword I had found. (Note: I ended up using this Axe through level 100 and beyond- finally finding an upgrade today).
As pressed on toward level 100 with my friends, one of my buddies said he found an excellent leveling dungeon named âChampionâs Demiseâ. Running this dungeon was without a doubt the most fun I had from a gameplay perspective up to that point- the density allowed me to keep my fury levels high, and I enjoyed the feeling of tearing through my lane with ease. Apparently, this dungeon had been nerfed just before we discovered it, but it still trounced the EXP we were getting in tier 30-40 nightmare dungeons, so we kept grinding.
By level 85, my build from a gear perspective was nearly complete. I had perfectly rolled aspects in every slot- and a Rage of Harrogath, Temerity, and Gohrâs with perfect rolls on the unique aspects. I saw a youtube thrash Uber Lilith with Whirlwind, and was relieved that my dream of conquering the gameâs ultimate challenges was still realistic.
Of course, this youtuberâs display of dominance resulted in 2 crucial aspects being disabled for several days. It turns out- they were bugged, and were allowing WWâs damage to scale infinitely as long as it was maintained.
I understood the need for this to be corrected, but I found it rather disturbing that Blizzard had been spamming the nerf hammer on the barbarianâs shout uptime- which essentially nerfed every barb class, while somehow failing to notice that the âEdgemasterâsâ and âBerserk Rippingâ were bugged and scaling well beyond the intended cap.
I later learned this issue had been discovered during the endgame beta, and reported to Blizzard. I suspect Blizzard didnât actually read any of the feedback from these testers, but rather filtered the contents of the feedback to find the most commonly used keywords/phrases, thus they failed to notice it.
It seemed logical to me at that point that Blizzard would revert/re-adjust at least some of the massive nerfs they had previously delivered (particularly to shouts), seeing as they had been calculated in complete ignorance of a infite damage scaling bug. Alas, logic isnât much of a factor in Blizzardâs balancing decisions, and these nerfs remained untouched.
I continued leveling toward 100, alternating between sacrficing EXP by leveling my gems in Nightmare dungeons, and sacrificing progress on my gems by leveling in Championâs Demise, Ruins of Eridu, and Uldurâs Cave. I was running Uldurâs Cave and was attacked by the butcher. I killed him within 5 seconds, and finally hit level 100. Now it was time to see what the build I had worked so hard on was capable of.
I decided to push nightmare dungeons first- it became apparent around tier 70 that tier 100 was not going to happen. You see, at these tiers, I needed to drop some offensive aspects in order to survive even a single hit from most enemies. This resulted in WW dealing pool noodle damage, and the increase in survivability did little to offset the fact that I now had to engage each mob at point blank range for a longer period of time. My defeat was resounding either way in most instances.
I pivoted to Uber Lilith- and grinded away learning the fight. I havenât been able to get her past 50 percent health in the first fight. The reality is, the fight is going to take at least 20 minutes, thus requiring a ton of perfect dodges on her 1 hit KO wave attacks. This is theoretically achievable. However, because the gameâs servers perform like they are hosted in a remote region of the Congo, desync often occurs. Despite often being inconsequential in most content, this desync makes the Lilith fight infurating, because it makes the hitboxes and timing feel very inconsistent. In my 100+ attempts at this fight with WW, Iâve likely done more damage to my keyboard from slamming it in anger than I have to Lilith.
My best option at this point is to respec to HOTA- which I donât enjoy nearly as much. At one point in time, I had saved quite a few HOTA aspects that rolled well Just in case I ever decided to switch. I eventually got rid of these to free up space because I didnât feel like making a bunch of Mule characters to store items I wasnât using for my build. Great.
By the time I farm up the gear to have an optimal HOTA build, it will likely be nerfed to F tier. And even now, the HOTA barb still pales in DPS to every other classes best DPS build, at least in PVE. In PVP, this class one hits literally everything, and is absurdly broken.
When I started, I thought I was investing in a class/build that I would be able to conquer the gameâs toughest challenges with- Instead I ended up with with a WW Barb that excels at speedfarming sh@tty items that require level 100 and nothing else, that can respec into an âSâ tier PVP Griefing HOTA build. Yay.
At this point Iâm not 100 percent certain I will stick around for season 1. Iâm not interested in going through the tedious process of farming renown and leveling to 100 again just to have my build get nerfed to smitherines because saltyTbagz69 discovered a broken mechanic and killed the seasonal boss in 3 seconds.
TL;DR I followed a rainbow toward what I thought was a pot of gold, but by the time I reached the end, the pot of gold had morphed into a cauldron of cow maneur.
