Let's discuss the barbarian, shall we?

PC General Discussion
1

First of all, I’ve been on the beta for more hours than I should be strictly on the barbarian. I’m currently in 9 pieces of level 2-4 legendary gear all centered on Whirlwind.

I’m at 520 attack power, 1785 armor, and 460 life. I have 170 strength, 66 intelligence, 80 wisdom, and 100 dexterity.

My build is 4/5 Frenzy, 4/5 Whirlwind, 2/5 Rally Cry, 3/5 War Cry, 4/5 Death Blow, and Call of the Ancients.

Barbarian needs major buffs.

Barb builders are incredibly underwhelming. We get no cleave builders and fury generation is pitiful at best. I use Frenzy for the damage reduction because being in melee, you tend to get beat up a lot and I feel like it helps me survive.

Suggestions for Builders:

  • Add cleave damage to Flay and splash damage to Lunging Strike.

  • Increase damage of Frenzy by 25%, Bash by 10%, Flay initial damage by 25%.

  • Increase Fury generation by 2 for each skill. Or by 1 per enemy hit by Flay cleave or Lunging Strike splash.

Builders are lackluster and we spend too much time doing wet-noodle damage to a single easy mob. Nothing is more demoralizing than sitting there whacking on a Fallen One for 10 seconds to get fury while a Sorc runs by literally demolishing every pack on the screen before you can kill it. And yes, this has happened so many times I can’t count.

Speaking of underwhelming, our Spenders aren’t much better. Sure, Hammer of the Ancients and Upheaval pack a decent punch but they’re costly and hard to aim, at best. Whirlwind is a joke, Rend is decent except for the fact where you spend all your Fury and still have 100 mobs on you beating you just now they’re dying slowly while they do it, and Double Swing is just there unless you get a Legendary to support it.

Suggestions for Spenders:

  • Increase the splash size of Hammer of the Ancients by 20%, cone size of Upheaval by 10%, and make Double Swing a full 360 arc.

  • Increase the damage of Hammer of the Ancients by 10%, Upheaval by 10%, Whirlwind by 50%, Rend initial damage by 25%, and Double Swing damage by 20%.

  • Reduce Fury cost of Hammer of the Ancients, Double Swing, and Rend by 5 and Upheaval by 10.

Our current Spenders are very weak next to the other two classes, currently. I don’t want the other classes nerfed, I want to feel like a giant barbarian smashing things to pieces. Not a burden on teammates.

Our Defensive skills are decent. We provide excellent buffs with Rallying Cry and can take the heat off of other party members with Challenging Shout but I still think they could use some adjustments.

Suggestions for Defensive Skills:

  • Increase the damage of Ground Stomp by 100%.

  • Increase the duration of Rallying Cry and Challenging Shout by 2 seconds on the barbarian.

  • Have Rallying Cry and Challenging Shout heal for 50% of health on use.

Overall, I think our Defensives are decent but as a melee character in the fray, we could use some extra help.

Brawling Skills honestly don’t need much. I would say give Charge and Leap a 20% damage boost as they’re pretty weak but other than that, the utility is good.

Now for our Weapon Mastery skills. I mean skill. Because if you aren’t using Death Blow, you are gimping yourself so severely you probably hate life worse than most as a barbarian.

Suggestions for Weapon Mastery:

  • Increase initial damage of Rupture by 100% and Steel Grasp by 200%.

  • Make Rupture a 360 arc.

Currently, Death Blow just reigns supreme. It one shots small mobs, resets cooldown, and does massive damage on bosses. A war cry with buffed Call of the Ancients and critical smack of Death Blow on the boss can top 5k in a swing at level 25 or more. You just can’t compete with that. And I don’t want to see Death Blow nerfed because it’s our only way of taking out lesser mobs with any sort of decent speed.

As for our Ultimate, I personally feel like Call of the Ancients is the clear winner but I’ve been using it most of the time. I dabbled with Wrath of the Berserker and Iron Maelstrom but they seemed underwhelming. Especially Wrath of the Berserker because our skills are so weak to begin with that barely enhancing them with 25% damage for 10 seconds just isn’t enough to make it viable.

Suggestions for Ultimates:

  • Increase damage of Iron Maelstrom by 10%.

  • Add 20% damage bonus when activating Wrath of the Berserk on top of the other benefits of Berserking and Unstoppable.

I feel like Call of the Ancients just dominates this selection like Death Blow dominates Weapon Mastery. The Ancients do too much damage and give too good of bonuses with Prime.

Anyway, as I said, Barbarian, as it stands, is frustrating to play. It feels slow and weak next to Rogue and especially Sorc. It definitely needs major buffs. Please don’t take this as a ‘nerf sorc’ post, because I don’t want to see anyone nerfed, just bring Barb up a bit.

2 Likes
2

All the skills suck except few. pls read my topic and try to have fun with barb.

3

I get that there will be a meta spec, and you may have found it, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the barbarian is severely undertuned.

4

A true ranged skill would of been nice to have like axe throw? We could use a generator skill like that and another ranged skill for a core.

1 Like
5

Okay, so, like many you’re making the assumption that the skill tree is going to carry your power level. I suspect this isn’t the case. Many builds won’t be viable without specialized items that unlock the full potential of skills. So far I’m getting the vibe the game works very similar to how D3 worked. Many skills are useless and don’t do nearly enough on their own.

You can tell the game is 100% designed around end game items that make certain builds viable.

1 Like
6

it would be fine for a single player game. pick barb if you want a challenge.

but if youre going for seasons/ladders you should at least try to balance things out a bit.

barb needs to be more badass heh

*maybe its actually very stong in the late late game since they got access to more stat sticks, who knows.

7

While I agree, I also feel like this is very detrimental to ladders/seasons. Sorcs will be level 70 before you get to level 40. While it’s great that end game is probably balanced, it doesn’t make it okay for early game to be trash.

8

As a future barb main, I tend to agree with your points, however, we kinda haven’t seen much yet.

Yesterday I dropped a legendary which had +50% damage into stunned targets. Made me think - what about a concussion build (which we sadly cannot build yet, afaik).

Frenzy with two maces to proc concussion stuns (they’re LONG, like 5 seconds iirc), HotA, ground stop for additional stunning, deathblow with axe, paired with +45% damage from weapon switches. Add +damage into cc’d targets on items. Not entirely sure how it’d fare against bosses, but hey, the thought is here =).

Other than that, I played my barb as full bleed build, was kinda alright. I do agree the ultimates are a bit of a non-choice though.

9

You are right. I rolled Barb first, then sorc. As a sorc I was melting bosses and mobs off screen in seconds that would given my barb a solid 2 minute fight. I can see Barb being OP in pvp though.

I tried a tank 2h bash tank/stun build and noticed a lot of the mechanics associated with that are just broken.

10

Bosses have this CC immunity bar, that whittles away as you apply stuns. It seemed to me that this immunity bar scales with boss HP. Meaning in vet difficulty you cannot stun as bosses have much larger health pools. When you do get a mob stunned that +50% damage increase to stunned targets from gear, but I didn’t notice that damage increase at all. The idea of a CC barb is super appealing to me, but like you said it just doesn’t work at this stage or is flat out broken.

Try it yourself, stomp a mob and use bash with the passives that give you fortify when you bash stunned mob. Doesn’t work. Get bunch of gear with +dmg to crowd controlled mobs, you wont notice any increase.

11

Yeah, it’s a stagger bar, I’d say they borrowed that from Lost Ark, but I don’t want to be unfair, maybe they had the same idea simultaneously =)).

Well, my idea was you’d spam stuns at the boss to fill the stagger, and then unload the buffed damage into the burst window provided by the stun. Honestly no idea if and how that’d work in practice, though.

If the actual passives don’t really work, though, that’s a different story. Hopefully they have a look at it some more before release.

12

I’ve got a barb at 25, a sorc at 25, and a rogue at 23 - all on world difficulty 2 - and I genuinely think the barbarian is absolutely fine. Great even.

I went with a whirlwind build too (although I experimented with a load of specs), and I was just wrecking things. Perhaps not quite as fast as the sorc, but near as makes no odds, and I’m not even sure it wasn’t as fast at all.

Early game I struggled with the barb the most, but yeah, once I found some good legendaries (for whirlwind), it was a cakewalk.

Obviously this is just my experience, but I’d just say if you like the barbarian then hang in their, things get better!

13

Barb is fine, you are right. Until I played sorc and noticed the disparity. It’s leaps and bounds ahead. Simple Hydra + fireball enchantment (mobs explode on death) combo lets you clear packs so much quicker then a barb it’s a joke.

14

Barb can be “fine” and do ok in game, but that doesnt change that it is still way behind sorceress (I havent played rogue).

I struggled a bit on my barb and it was a lot of deaths on certain bosses, but i got stronger and made it through. Sorceress was the easiest thing ever though

15

I’ve got to disagree, that sorc build was the one I was comparing the whirlwind barb to. My barb was absolutely on par with that.

I honestly can’t think of an issue with it. I would say though that it really did take a few legendaries to come into its own, and before that it was a bit of a struggle. Whilst the sorc was pretty much easy all the way through.

16

This problem, at large, is because items provide so much functionality to skills. This is not how the game should work. My build is good, because I have whirlwind gear that make it viable.

If I were to level up, I’d be forced to get rid of those pieces, and my build would become entirely not viable. That makes no sense.

17

They should stop the fury drop thing that is bad is d3, and equally bad in d4. It’s has zero plus point compared to every other classes resource, but all the bad points.

While other classes generate resource passively, barb Loses resource? If there is a positive to it? I can digest, but there isn’t

18

Just in the few hours of playing with the three classes, Barbarians are hilariously weaker than a rogue that can clear out rooms and single targets with ease.

If Barbarians need to build fury, their basic skills need to be high damage to begin with. Some extra passives because you have 4 weapons (and rogues get 3!) aren’t going to do much.

I don’t get what Blizzard wants for this class. They’re not really tanks, and they’re not really damage. So they’re just there to do what?

1 Like
19

You can’t get a meaningful idea of class balance in this beta.

You won’t even see many non-codex legendary item drops or uniques to understand what a real build will look like later on or how the powers interact.

For example, in closed betas Barbs could become extremely tanky combining damage reduction and an item that makes damage dealt to your resources before health and combine that with high resource generation. Who knows which items in the closed beta builds even still exist, but the point is that there’s a lot of items and interactions you simply won’t see in this beta.

In terms of resource generation, it was also possible to generate more fury than you spent in whirlwind as long as you were hitting enemies, so you could WW nearly endlessly through a dungeon until you ran out of enemies to hit. I know at least one of the items in that build still exists since it’s a codex power and it’s still in the codex. The power that generates resources on CC, which if it still works the way it used to generates resources even on hits that apply a slow.

Again, it’s impossible to say how items have changed since then or what ones have been removed or new ones added. The codex is just a small number of the more basic and boring powers you can craft on any item without having to find it.

20

I got all 3 level 25 as well.

Sorc is just too strong based on that early game. if you get +hyrda also you will melt everything.
Rogue is balanced, but melee rogue needs more changes to be as fun as ranged.
Barb? Well its pain to play, struggled on few bosses due to lack of proper damage with fury generation. I needed to spec more damage reduction to stay in melee and survive. Some said that barbs get much better late game with proper gear. Thats the problem with barb. Skills doesnt support this class early game until you find required gear