I leveled a WW Barb to 100- My journey, and why I feel scammed

[WIND-1283]

I read the whole whiney thing. It was cringe.

[ChristPunch-1129]

I’m having fun with an Ice/fire sorc. Great build, at least for leveling.

[JustinFan-1165]

The major issue for barbarian is Toughness/Recovery. Barb will be one shot by elemental dmg in >80 nightmare dungeons. This destroyed the dmg potential of WW. If you want to do some dmg using gohrs, you must stand in the center of mobs. However, the resistance mechanics seems not working good. The dmg reduction of elemental dmg scaling is different than armor.
To fix WW:

1. Fix Resistance Mechanism, make resistance more effective!!!
2. Fix Attack Speed Increase won’t affect WW tick rate, issue. The bug I submitted, plz fix it. High priority.
   After these two fixes, WW will be much better, then we can test the dmg potential.

[Moxxie-11371]

Hey thinks iceshards doesn’t have resource issues? made me laugh.

[Gibs-1324]

@Swampmonster-1283

At this point I’m not 100 percent certain I will stick around for season 1

Season 1 will be worth playing, either because they will sort some issues and have decent end game content. Or, it won’t and you can validate the decision to move on.

[McVade-1438]

I don’t understand what gets a build nerfed and what doesn’t… so many builds can just melt everything they look at. What defines a build as overpowered when most builds can push a few buttons and delete a pack in WT4 once they come online?

[Brophog-1113]

@Swampmonster-1283

At this point I’m not 100 percent certain I will stick around for season 1. I’m 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.

I think a lot of people need to just wait to Season 3. Those that continue to play need to realize this game is going to be complicated to balance and is going to take many months, if not years, to get right.

[Teksuo-1449]

my fresh barb is 51 now and i can say that 1-51 is a lot smoother on barb than it was on druid heh.

the trick to enjoy barb is to play a slow pulverize druid first (rip he died at 87)

[Alejinh-1453]

meanwhile, rogues, sorcerers, and necros are 4 shotting uber lilith, the answer to this must be - nerf barbs-

[Crispy-21464]

@Swampmonster-1283

At this point I’m not 100 percent certain I will stick around for season 1. I’m not interested in going through the tedious process of farming renown and leveling to 100 again

I am certain that I won’t play seasons. Leveling is tedious, renown something I do not want to repeat and loot is lackluster.

[Zoot-1177]

@Swampmonster-1283

a cauldron of cow maneur.

You found the secret cow level. It’s 100.

[Whitigir-1401]

Amazingly summarized the barb class. I feel that blizzard hát it so much, it should be deleted. Druid just shreds and melt stuff in trash gears in comparison

[WasabiCannon-1317]

@Brophog-1113

I think a lot of people need to just wait to Season 3.

If the game is not going to be ready till season 3 then maybe they should have delayed the launch.

All this has done is get them an advance pay day at the cost of losing the first impression on millions of players.

[TrickyD-1714]

Did you lose everything to dc? THen meh

[Swampmonster-1283]

Where did I say Ice Shard sorcs aren’t resource starved? A lot of classes in the game have resource issues. My point was that after building resource, WW as a core skill brings little to the table in terms of damage because it can’t be maintained, and I was often a non-factor in my group EARLY IN THE GAME. I then listed the classes present in my party for context.

[Timlrs32-1722]

There is still a lot that hasn’t been discovered in regard to builds. My biggest complaint with the Barb is that shouts are mandatory for your damage and survivability. I hate having to spam 3 buttons every few seconds to ensure that I can DPS and not die. I am hopeful that as they continue to develop the game much of what annoys us now will be fixed. I do not for one-second think that they want people to have a bad experience playing the game but I do believe that the game is undercooked. Having the game in our hands and getting feedback to their team is ultimately what is best for the continued growth of the game. They could have kept the game in dev and had more testing but we would have probably wound up in the same place. We have played it and what launched is a solid base to build upon. The systems and gameplay loops need work and further iteration without a doubt. I am actually stoked that this is a live service game and as long as they stay away from P2W elements I will continue to support for the foreseeable future.

[Tigerking-11256]

Sorc is the worst end game class by a mile.

[Moxxie-11371]

It’s simple. You claim other classes are breezing through the game, which isn’t true so get that out of your head. Right now. We are all resource starved, especially sorc. We are the most stat needy, and resource cost intensive class and the weakest.

Your class, and your build is the most powerful in the game, so it really makes me laugh when you say this. Early game is fine, we are all in the same boat there. Only ones that don’t really have an ‘issue’ would be rogues.

[DiemfersDie-1220]

I played a sorc and breezing through the game I think is a pretty good description. Sorcs don’t need any legendary powers to be good early on(maybe the barrier when you hit an elite), rogues need 1 legendary power to be good early on(right next to the first zone) and Barbs need a couple legendary powers to be good early and they’re not in the first zone so they still have to level a bunch before they can get them.

[ChrisPvp1982-1868]

@Swampmonster-1283

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 ‘Bold Chieftains’ 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 whirlwind’s, I was confident that my metamorphasis into a endgame powerhouse had begun. I went to sleep that morning with dreams of emoting on Uber Lilith’s 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 Chieftain’s 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 Reduction’ 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 “Gohr’s Devastating Grips” had been nerfed by roughly 75 percent.

Although I feared my build may be dead, I pressed on. I found Gohr’s 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 “Champion’s Demise”. 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 Gohr’s 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 game’s ultimate challenges was still realistic.

Of course, this youtuber’s display of dominance resulted in 2 crucial aspects being disabled for several days. It turns out- they were bugged, and were allowing WW’s 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 barbarian’s shout uptime- which essentially nerfed every barb class, while somehow failing to notice that the ‘Edgemaster’s’ and ‘Berserk Ripping’ 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 didn’t 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 isn’t much of a factor in Blizzard’s 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 Champion’s Demise, Ruins of Eridu, and Uldur’s Cave. I was running Uldur’s 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 haven’t 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 game’s 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, I’ve 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 don’t 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 didn’t feel like making a bunch of Mule characters to store items I wasn’t 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 game’s 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 ‘S’ tier PVP Griefing HOTA build. Yay.

At this point I’m not 100 percent certain I will stick around for season 1. I’m 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.

bro you dont have to type out a novel.

Just do what 95% of other people who have played this game have done.

D4 is not a good game because “insert”

They over nerf and over buff things as a STRATEGY to keep people re rolling and re gearing. It was discovered in world of warcraft that people wouldn’t quit if they nerfed their class into the dumpster that they would just flavor of the month re roll, thus born the hamsterwheel of nerfs and buffs.