Seeing a lot of complaints about WW Barb. I am by no means an amazing player, and I’ve gotten it to the point where it works at level 75+. Despite all the nerfs, even without Edgemaster’s and Berserk Ripping (arguably our two strongest aspects), it still works pretty well.
It’s worth noting that this footage was recorded at level 77. Things could change drastically after level 90 or in high end NM dungeons. I do not know.
The gameplay is pretty strong. The issue, as I see it, is threefold:
The amount of time and investment it takes to make WW playable is outrageous. It shouldn’t take 60+ hours to start using a core skill that you get at level 3 effectively. WW needs to be usable from the start.
Too much reliance on shouts, and too much investment / RNG required to get shout cooldowns reduced to a point where you can actually play the build. Fury regeneration should be buffed baseline, or shout cooldowns should be reduced substantially.
The build requires huge packs to function. Killing small packs makes the build feel absolutely terrible. In this dungeon there is a lot of density, so it looks great, but doing outdoor activities with little to no density the build suddenly feels sluggish. It needs better single target / low target killing ability.
Funny thing is, if you were playing a Sorc, Druid or Rogue, you’d be done in half the time and that’s somehow perfectly balanced.
I legitimately have no idea what they base balancing decisions on, but yeah, this does feel OK. May give a spin to win build a try in the future. Right now, having fun with a hokey Rend build.
I was looking forward to using WW its one of my favorite barb skill of all times. Then Barb gets nerf 7 times in pre-launch. Game turned into a snore feast for me. Hopefully it will get better and by better I dont mean at higher levels. lol
This actually looks very solid IMO. Aside from the time you almost got instantly gibbed by two exploding mobs while trying to get the shrine, the build looks extremely tanky as well. Good damage, decent speed, high survivability…that’s all you need in a Diablo game.
People aren’t complaining that it doesn’t work. It does work, relatively well. IT’s just weaker than what other classes can do in terms of aoe damage efficiency. The only benefit to playing a barbarian is they’re tanky and have lots of unstoppable.
NOT to mention most of the other barbarians core skills are pretty bad and struggle to group up enemies effectively to kill them.
They need to buff a lot of stuff. Build diversity is non existent on t4 past level 70.
Reason i didn’t start a barb was because it seems every good build requires shouts to perform. I find pressing a few buffs now and then to be pretty boring.
It seems like most build are pretty garbage until exactly level 67 for some reason. I think its paragon related. Barb was awful to start the game with though very slow starting with ww.
Like keeping damage tuned tight makes sense in a game like World of Warcraft… but more classes than not are basically 100% capable of one shotting the entire screen solo and barely have to stop moving to do it.
What possible judge do they use to assess a class is overperforming.
Is it: “We found Whirlwind Barbarians were killing things approximately .012 seconds faster than most other classes, therefore we’ve tuned them.”
Yeah it looks alright until you realize this is just a normal dungeon not a nightmare dungeon. At a certain point mobs your own level are pretty easy regardless of build.
The problem with barb is that the amount of effort you need to be able to do what that guy is doing is WAY more effort then what other classes need to put in in order to do that.
I honestly expect rogue and sorc to get a nerf hammer just like we did. In aoe were pretty good but our st is trash atm.
I get thats what our build is ment to do, but then you look at sorc and rogue who do both extremely well. Hopefully our 2 disabled codexs get re-enabled this year.
There are a lot of builds that have these “problems” you mention. Pulverize druid (my main) for example. Sucks at low level cause it requires tons of builder spam and entirely reliant at endgame on large packs 10+ mobs to spam it or else the spirit cost doesn’t have a high enough chance to be refunded. This makes it pretty bad at single target relative to other builds because it reverts to playing like it played at level 10.
They’ve leaned pretty heavily into resource management in D4–so don’t think it’s just barb that suffers. At least you can mitigate a lot of it under proper conditions.
Can you point me to a video of a Sorc killing faster than this WW Barb? I just watched a few high level Sorc videos, and they look slow AF compared to this.
Personally I think all classes need more balancing and many skills for each need buffs NOT nerfs. There is already level scaling and talk of world tier 5 coming on season 1 (not positive)
To me, there is something off with build variety. Im a sorc. For endgame it’s generally ice mage, fire mage, or arc lash builds.
Fireball? Ha. Great enchantment but as a skill you’re out of mana in 3 casts. Skill into mana options and lose out on other options. Chain lightning? More mana starvation although it’s a good skill.
D4 is still an infant but I really hope they don’t continue the trend of nerf city. I don’t think we need 10 more difficulties but I also want to mix/mash more builds/have more options. Let progression be more experimental if anything and then scale back if need be.
Play in a group with some friends that are playing Druid or Rogue.
You’ll find that you’re managing but not actually doing that well. Whenever I play with friends who went Druid or Rogue they demolish everything 3x as fast and they’re not limited to large mobs to do it.
Barb is weak and slow now in comparison. Playable, sure. But way underpowered compared to the rest.
See and that’s the issue. Instead of blizzard buffing other weaker skills or testing classes/group play they see large numbers and go “Oops…Well we can’t have that!”
I’m fine with scaling back if need be, but I hate feeling limited in build variety/freedom especially for endgame whether it’s solo or with a group. The game should be very free flowing and each class should have 4-5 great build options. Not 1 or 2 at best. But that’s me.
