It’s what I suspected, thanks. I’m certainly not gonna add TWO more Aspects, just to make a single Skill’s damage interesting.
I haven’t played any other classes (or characters) in D4 thus far. So, I wouldn’t know about damage sucking compared to other classes. And I’m pretty much casual, so I’m not gonna go much deeper into improving my Barb’s efficiency.
But it does look like damage is broken. Simply put, a lot of sizeable or even massive damage bonuses end up being negligible. Even if you go for those that multiply, instead of those that add. I’ve improved Lunging Strike’s displayed minimum damage from 7k to 10k, and I still need the same amount of hits to kill each kind of enemy. I can only kill the weakest ones, with one hit. All others seem to need at least 2, and the tougher ones at least 3. Regardless of whether they’re seriously below me level-wise, or seriously above me.
Same with Death Blow. Its increases have been way bigger of course, as its base is a lot higher to begin with. Yet the tougher enemies still survive it, more often than not.
It’s like a lot of monsters have this “cheat death” thing (I saw vague references to it around even, after I started suspecting something of the sort existed). Where they survive with just a little health left, regardless of actual damage dealt. And then I find a weapon with a seriously higher base damage, equip it, fully upgrade it, etc… Run into the same type of monster, same level… And they keep surviving the first hit in the same fashion.
I do notice progress. I started doing Tier 4 around like 62 or so. It was a struggle. I went from handling everything easily, to dying sometimes, taking far longer to beat each mob, and often needing to run around and dodge a lot to make it through. Although I knew I was doing a fine job often enough, considering I was facing mobs 10+ levels above me with a non-optimal build.
Now, I don’t die anymore and it only gets significantly challenging if I run into an unfortunate combination of monster powers (like 3-4 elites with powers that severely slow you or paralyse you). And even then, I survive with around half my potions left. So, it’s back to “easy with some exceptions,” which is fine I guess.
But it still feels like damage doesn’t make full sense, even when you apply the well-known formulae.
And of course, the only exception to that, where damage actually makes sense and you can boost it real high if you focus on it… Is Crit + Vulnerable. And I don’t wanna make a build around that, because it honestly bores me to mimic the trend for efficiency’s sake. I can take specific suggestions, but copy/pasting someone else’s entire build? Knowing ANY deviations from it, will result in a less powerful warrior because the game has only one strong build for my entire class?
It feels lame, to play on someone else’s ideas so fully. Like someone else is playing for me, and I’m just following their instructions.
(Just my opinion. If it makes someone happy to play like that, I’m glad for them.)
I usually don’t blame the developers, for something like this. But in this case, I’m pretty sure they just didn’t balance it out so we’d have more viable options.
I still feel my build IS viable, though. But I can understand how it’s unacceptable to many, since a lot of people prefer a faster gameplay.
Also, the problem with a “optimal builds you find online” in a lot of games… Is that they invariabaly rely on exploiting loopholes and bugs. Technicalities, exceptions. They often deform the character concept utterly, to achieve that. And when the developers release a patch that fixes the bug they were relying on… Bye bye build.
It happened with the first major HotA build. I knew it could happen, so I avoided it even though I liked its potential on the first beta.
The HotA build clearly relied on a very obvious bug, and deformed the character because it made the Barb’s main attack an AOE one that was barely melee. Blizzard clearly never intended for the edge of that attack’s AOE to be so much stronger. I’ve known the gaming world for decades, so I knew the risk of them fixing that was high. Just as I knew the less objective people among the players, would whine about a nerf that’s actually a correction. As if they didn’t know they were exploiting a bug, instead of playing the game as intended…
It reminds me of D2’s Hammerdin. Even though that one was never “fixed,” it’s still the same tricky thing. Worse even, though. A melee warrior class, turned into a literal ranged spellcaster to exploit loopholes.
I’d rather stick to the character’s actual concept. If I wanna play something different, I’ll change class or play another game. Simple.
That often means, that such fixes from the developers almost never have a significantly negative effect on me.
