The barbarian basics aren’t in a great place right now, which is unfortunate as this was something that was noted a number of times during the beta.
Lunging Strike is the most popular option by a country mile because of the mobility it provides… a benefit that holds its value as the character increases in level.
I think the less popular options (frenzy, flay, bash) need improvement. One way would be to have their effective damage increased - this would help the barbarian quite a bit in the early going when fury is scarce. Maybe up bash’s hitting power, increase frenzy’s speed and give flay an AoE boost?
The most important buff would be a massive buff to their fury regeneration, like double it. I tried playing with Frenzy and WW and if I could make my fury bar full with 3-4 hits, things would play rather fluid and I had a lot more fun.
I main Lunging strike and it deals 10,000-20,000 damage and I feel that it is THE ONLY viable skill if you want to actually kill enemies at level 60+ with basic attacks.
Lunging = The best basic attack that you can use as a main if you get a lot of attackspeed to zoom around like a maniac between enemies. I do not even use a core any longer because Lunging is way more fun… Lunging is basically an useful charge which allows you to actually charge without the stupid cooldown…
Bash = This is just a slow and boring skill, it has been like this in all games and D4 is no different, it can procc Overpower and Stun but you need to stand still and it does not behave as a generating skill.
Flay = Good in early game because of its thorns, pretty mediocre in late game since its damage and bleed is mediocre, it also force you to stand still and that is bad.
Frenzy = Decent if you build towards basic attacks but it miss its fun runspeed which made it a fun ability in D2,D3. It can give you a little damage reduction but that means nothing when you need to stand still.
The problem with Bash, Flay and Frenzy share the same problem as with Hammer, Upheaval, Double Swing and Rend, ALL of these abilities force you to stand still and standing still is equal to getting hit by the enemy…
Whirlwind and Lunging is popular because they move you around the map and allows you to dodge attacks.
D3 ‘‘solved’’ this standing still problem with cheap items that made you almost immune for some time, but it was still not enough, ww was way better because it allowed you to actually move around…
Build some attack speed, and use 2 maces. Trust me. Bash is our best resource builder.
The 4 Crits to overpower however is just mathematically stupid. Who ever approved this on the dev team put no real thought into how difficult it is to Crit 4 times , let alone while auto attacking just to overpower once.its absurd.
Just like it’s absurd that every basic skill isn’t a frontal cleave or in the case of lunge a line pierce. Barb being single target on everything is bad design, even sorc arc lash is aoe. Druid melee builder is aoe, but all of barb builders are single target ? When you do this , to find you’re constantly collision blocked not attacking at all because your character is trying to find a spot to get close enough to attack but can’t so it’s getting collision blocked.
I feel ya man, such a huge difference with sorceress early game. Sorc clear packs with ease. I’m struggling w/ barb, its almost laughable. I’ve tried many different barb builds to try and compete w/ sorc and its not even close. gonna roll sorc i guess.
Yeah. I had to switch full time to my necro. Always been a barb main through every diablo game, even played warrior on 1. Now, im just so weak. I die regularly to white mob groups. tried a few different builds and the squishiness remains. Everyone says barb is good later but leveling one solo is hell and unfun. There goes my favorite class. Bah. Hopefully they give us DR or something
This is my feeling as well. It’s quite viable and very enjoyable to use. The rest, not so much…
I could live with the standing still if it gave the DR and increased movement speed. Also, the condition for the other rune (needing berserk for the IAS) should be removed to make it more competitive with the stacking DR. The approach of the devs to keep crit and IAS modifiers at manageable levels works really poorly when the skill is underpowered to being with.
4 crit to overpower is probably the reason to why I find it to be a bad ability. Overpower was the only reason to why I looked at the ability, but nope.
I can in my mind not understand why barbarian has no cleave resource builder attack, they got a very bad cleave as a core instead ‘‘for some odd reason’’. The legendary ‘‘tornado’’ effect for cleave is also very bad so it makes no sense that it is a core skill.
I’ve tried multiple times to make a basic attack Barb build, mostly because I’ve always enjoyed frenzy, but boy is it terrible.
Even with every aspect and the unique amulet… it just tickles the enemy in comparison to any core skill. Which, fair, core skills do much higher base damage, but why are there basic attack builds that work on other classes? Idk
Ive been running a frenzy dswing build for a while now and the biggest brnefit of frenzy is the atk speed while berserk. Most of my fury gen is from on proc stuff thst also improves with higher atk speed
Got the amulet that lets you build two extra charges of frenzy. It really helps out having 5 ticks instead of three. That’s an extra 40% damage reduction.
Combine that with basic gives 20%, then add in some damage res/close res/bleeding res and finally disobedience.
Top it off with a couple of chunky hit point affixes and you get to be really tanky.
Frenzy is good for damage reduction, but not good for damage… which seems really odd considering the idea behind the skill. It should be offense-oriented, but the devs nerfed the few things it could tie into in that way heavily before release, leaving only the tie-in with Double Swing through berserking.
Ive been considering Frenzy with rapid aspect, accelerating aspect, and battle trance amulet, with aspect of anemia to perma stun… But I also suspected that Frenzy has no lategame damage. (My experimental Barab is level 65)
However the single target frenzy makes it worse. It would be nice if it did a narrow arc/cleave of damage.
I did double swing and got “windlasher” aspect with the tornado/dust devils- man what an absolutely useless skill
All the tank in the world is not going to help you survive NM dungeons above your tier when you have to stand still and frenzy on 1 target at a time with low dmg.
We need an ult slot. This nonsense of having no mobility cos we need tank and dmg is boring
Well, just did a 39 and 40 with my two friends and I contributed enough with my damage to be useful outside of the slows and stuns and revives. Mobs where level 79-80 to my 72.
It’s not insane out of the park damage but it gets the job done. Leap in, ground stomp, kick, deathblow. It usually adds up to about 150-250K depending on crits, which I have at roughly 31% chance.
Frenzy hits for about 10K a swipe, I get roughly 2 attacks per second when all bonuses are fired off.
Not so called “S” tier but with my durability it’s enough.
You get it by stacking the right things, dexterity and affixes mostly. Also flawless technique adds 5. My regular is 26.5 to be exact, adding in more with flawless technique.
As for survival.
Leap creates a earthquake,so does ground stomp. Useless aspects amirite? Disobedience gets me .50% armor for for seconds when you deal any form of damage up to 50%. My armor mitigation often gets to 100% vs my level. It’s regularly 6353 but I’ve got it OVER 9 THOUSAND … … …ahem.
Ok, so then I have 20% damage reduction on basic, which is always up. Then affixes for damage reduction, damage reduction close, damage reduction bleeding, and damage reduction injured. Remember leaps earthquake? Even more damage reduction standing in it.
Hey, member frenzy? With battle trance I have 5 stacks of 8% damage reduction from that too.
I run war cry for unstoppable and that’s it. 1 point. No points into making it last longer or heal. No sage aspect. My only heal is a 5% chance to heal 950 damage on lucky hit. (BTW I stacked lucky hit too) and pots.
I also have the aspect that resets leap on kicks and ground stomps so I’m also extremely mobile, able to get where I need to be or away from where I don’t. With an affix for speed on my boots and swiftness I have 134.5% movement speed BEFORE the 15% buff from berserk. EVADE GRANTS 75% movement speed for 1 second. With all that speed you move FAST after an evade allowing easy reposition.
Speaking of berserk, unconstrained capstone, with deathblow, leap, and kick giving me great, but not perfect, berserk uptime.
So, that’s how I get it done up to and at tier 40 at this time.
War cray, frenzy, leap, ground stomp, deathblow, kick.
Kick is actually my “spender” it’s a good way to instantly burn 100 fury to set up the +98% damage on your next weapon master skill after spending 100 fury. Mostly of the time I just let my fury ride for edgemasters aspect. I also carry berserk ripping which is how I trigger bleeding for the +damage reduction from bleeding enemies.
tried a few different builds and the squishiness remains. Everyone says barb is good later but leveling one solo is hell and unfun. There goes my favorite class. Bah. Hopefully they give us DR or something