Respec into a rend build, this one below to be exact.
(Ok so I cannot post links for some reason, its the Icy Veins Rend build, just google it)
Soooo much better than WW, the bleed damage just smashes bosses. Its hilarious to build up the bleed meter so much you can just Benny Hill kite them around until they die.
Just thought I would share for other struggling barbs who are thinking on ditching WW.
No I never had those gloves fyi.
Ive never really liked Rend as a skill unfortunately. It’s always seemed kind of lackluster to me. When they added Rend dependability to Whirlwind in Diablo 3 that marked the end of my interest in Whirlwind.
Looking at the skill animation in Diablo 4…yeah sorry but that looks really underwhelming to me.
The animation is mid, but the numbers don’t lie.
I agree it looks really lame. It is about the best you can do for leveling though.
This for sure. When I saw the animation for Rend at lvl 4, I immediately respecced.
Lol? Isn’t rend / bleed stacking top dog for end game WT4 runs?
Maybe now that Shouts are DOA and Rend isn’t super Fury reliant lol.
Main issue with Rend is that’s bad on packs, due to its short range and angle width.
I was thinking of respecing (started out Rend, then went to WW). Rend’s DoT makes it so that if you get rushed by fast mobs, it’s tough to stay alive. But I’ve also considered trying HotA, anyone running that (any good?).
There is Hamstring to slow them down and Rupture to instantly apply the remaining bleed damage. But yeah, had to lean into Fortify/Healing a bit.
Alright, there is a few issues with rend imo that will still keep it behind WW even after the nerfs and I’ll explain. I have been playing rend for awhile now, I went from level 30-57 using rend and the main issues is steel grasp sucks because it’s buggy, and rend is more fury reliant than people believe.
The nerf to fury generation hit the rend build almost as hard as it did WW, there are quite a few different rend builds but ultimately all of them include some form of shout and likely had both fury gen shout aspects in them, 1 of which was nerfed to reduce shout uptime.
Rend, the main damage skill, is a frontal cleave with a very short range… This should be turned into an 360 spin with a slightly increased range. The amount of mobs that just walk backwards away from you and escape your rend is too high, and you just waste fury sometimes trying to catch them.
Steel grasp is bugged. It sometimes pulls, sometimes it pulls things behind you, sometimes it pulls in the direction your character is facing instead of where your mouse/target is, sometimes it doesn’t pull at all, sometimes it pulls 1 inch, there are quite a few mobs that immediately move away after you pull them in because for some reason they didn’t include even a 1 second root to it, and when in group play it will not pull anything that is CC’d (why?). It’s frustrating to use. Unfortunately for bleed barb there is no better option for grouping mobs. Some builds suggest charge but charge is also bugged and most of the time you wont push any mobs you just run through them.
Rupture as a weapon skill is too slow and too single target. I love the idea, i really do, and I have the fields of crimson unique that makes rupture actually half decent, but I still can’t justify putting it in my build. Rupture needs work, it needs to cast faster, and it needs to splash in a larger range without the unique.
I have been trying very hard to make a bleed barb build because I love dot class fantasy. I’m not saying its unplayable, I am doing just fine in WT3 nightmare dungeons and helltides. What I’m saying is it’s clunky, it caught a stray nerf from WW, and even after the WW nerfs WW barb is still the smoothest playing barb with the highest end game potential. I hope to be proven wrong, but as someone who has been trying to make this build work, I just can’t see it.
TL;DR bleed build has issues and needs some reworking help.
I’m going full on bleed/thorns build. Taking the bleed basic skill, rend, rupture, and the bleed passives. I’m taking Taunt and all thorns passives. Rallying Cry for Unstoppable, and other passives that buff 2 handed damage, crit and overpower.
I’ll make tweaks as I go, but I’ve had a tough time with boss mechanics and I can’t stand toe to toe with anything. So stacking bleed plus kiting seems to be my only option.
I’m doing Lunging / Rend / Ground Stomp / Leap / Rupture / Iron Maelstrom and im having a blast at 60.
open with rupture, cause’s my rends to instant apply vuln, each time i use Rupture i heal 15% of my health, and i have damage reduction for all enemies bleeding letting me stay in a mobs face. once i get a vuln on several targets, hit with iron maelstrom to clear out the screen, then ground leap to the next pack and ground stomp to refresh iron maelstrom sooner and get fury, have very few fury issues, and decently tanky.
psssssssst!! dont tell em so much, they will nerfed this too
Damn I’m going to try this later.
Totally agree. I know a lot of people love WW (I personally hate it after so many years of playing barbs in D3) but it’s nice to see some “barb swinging large heavy object at stuff” builds that are actually viable.
I’ve been running: Lunging / Rend / War Cry / Challenging Shout / Rallying Cry / and swapping between Charge for trash and WOTB for bosses. I’m sure there will be a couple of standout builds once we all hit the highest tiers of Nightmare dungeons, but for the lower/mid-tier I really enjoy the build variety Rend offers.
Won’t be viable end-game. Animation is bad with a small hit radius. Will take extra hits over time which the other option would avoid with all the movement.
Something about Lounging Strike and movement…
You need to run shouts with rend at end game or else you’re too soft.
You couldn’t be more wrong.