Played a lot of ptr. I leveled up a barb from scratch (no boost), leveled glyphs to 21/15 and tried lots of builds and new tech.
Dust devils is obviously very strong and good for casuals and consolers (super game 
friendly. Tried both whirlwind, double swing and both. I preferred the double swing version but WW is spinning and winning.
HOTA was probably the biggest surprise. I expected it to be terribad but with tempering mods you can increase the size of the hota to fill the entire screen. It’s a lot tankier and self sustainer compared to DD also. Graphics are better too.
Thorns is very good as well. Can mix DD tech into the mix with a Rage of Harg chest and your timers reset very fast. Kick is great way to spend fury and bear clan works if you wanna leap around as well. Thorns isnt really the star but it mixes well.
New items are great. Double swing gloves very cool. The cota pants need more ancient cooldown. You can temper mods with much higher value. Seems cheap in a bad way on the pants.
Anyways, barbs dps is going up in season 4.
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Good review. I’m just sad to see that we’re another season closer to a D3 clone. The power creep is unreal.
Yeah. They really should have planned better, but, D4 is a live service game. Glad they are adapting. Numbers arent too bad yet. 18 trillion hps in D3 is not a lot. Here its uber boss health. Power creep not terrible. Yet. 
Rend Barb felt good and honestly with the ranged temper seems pretty good. Plan to maybe season start with it since I love RoH playstyle. If they fix Rupture and Gushing Wounds would be amazing.
I’m surprised WW doesn’t mesh better with rend like in D3. They gotta be getting a lot of negative feedback from druids, etc, that we are stealing their tornados.
I would jump into the PTR so I can do personal testing but it’s a Blizzard PTR. Nothing works. Can’t tell if something is functionally as intended or buggy. I’m glad there’s people willing to try out different build ideas. I saw Rob made a Upheaval build that can hit monsters off screen and through walls lol.
yeah you can scale the attack size up to the moon. earthquakes hit the whole screen, hota is a 360 kaboom that rocks the whole screen. sorc with meteors is a lot worse than anything we got thou lol
The whole size thing is stupid. It does make sense for some effects I agree. It should not be a thing for Rend. Your 2handed sword has a certain physical length, maybe 84 inches or something like that, and Rend should never hit beyond that length using some weird sizing mechanics. Make it make sense lol.
They are turning this game into something not even remotely grounded in the physical world anymore (for weapon range, swing arc etc).
/sigh. Well, all that said, I have a choice not to use rend size so I will not use it, at least I still have that option thankfully.
I like the size stuff, but I think it can be scaled better. Guessing the server admins don’t like it either, lol.
It’s still a PTR. So no doubt there’s going to be a hard cap to the radius on certain skills. I just hope the cap is listed somewhere in game so we don’t waste time, materials, tempered limit on more radius that does nothing.
I don’t mind size on Rend, why can’t a Barb swing his weapon hard enough to cause wind to cut demons. I mean there is less realistic stuff in the game.
I just wish Rends base size was larger and could temper for more interesting affixes.
Also when will WW get some love. Skill is still garbage
Whirlwind is a movement skill in Diablo now. In D3, rend does all the damage. In D4, I guess it will be dust devils. But, together, WW is super strong.
I love Bleeding but GW and Rupture has got to get fixed. Personally, I think the Fields of Crimson needs to be an Aspect instead for Rupture and Rupture should never consume Bleeds (Wanton Rupture goes bye bye). Rend needs its own Offensive Aspect would be fun to see Flowing Veins from S2 increasing Rend Damage by x40% to Vulnerable or moving enemies.
WW needs to allow Shouts, Iron Skin, CoTA, and WoTB to be used while channeling. Gohr’s should allow Weapon Mastery Skills to be used while channeling. Bathe in Blood from S2 needs to make its return as an Offensive Aspect for WW (20% Damage / 15% DR) while in Pool. 2H increases this to the 40% / 30%.
Should just rework bathe in blood to an aspect that gives damage and DR while channeling. WW and Incinerate Sorc and LS Druid could use it. No need for the pool consider how rest of game is evolving.
Maybe if gohrs procced rupture it could make it fun, but some of this stuff needs more work.
Hmmm… four Rend barbarians spamming Rupture would be a problem.
4 Barbarians spamming anything is going to kill everything so that really is not a concern. Besides, Rupture only has 1 Charge (2 with Weapon Master) and only reduces CD slightly with ranks making it a terrible Skill to invest in. It isn’t like GW Overpower proc is amazing. An 85% Bleed over 5 seconds, oooh wow.
Overpower on GW makes no sense unless Rend is given a chance to Overpower once ever 5 attacks. Now if Crits caused that 85% bleed proc… you’d have another reason to build crit chance and damage for GW.
Overpower on Rupture at least good for Decimator.
I agree, it would make more sense to just have Crit be the mechanic for GW but with thr change to Rupture always Overpowering, you will see lots of that. Earthstriker and Bonebreaker are more than enough to have Rend always OP, you just have to be strategic with what Skills you take so OPs are not eaten.
If you run with a Basic, Bash will have a surprising amount of synergy with Bleeds and give you a much needed source of Fortify. That can give you guaranteed OPs super fast with Cleaves now is my understanding.
For the effect though, I think the Overpower on Gushing Wounds is very lackluster. 85% Bleed is hot dog water. Having every Bleeding enemy Overpowered erupting and causing 85% damage to all surrounding enemies would be very good. Gives you inmediate damage and scales VERY high. 4 bleeding enemies nearby would be 4 x 85% or a 340% explosion. 10x is 850% which is quite nutty.
An alternative would be to have GW Overpower proc the Bathe in Blood Pools which give you 40%x Damage and 30% DR while standing in the Pool. This could be extended to work like Quake where it makes any Pool effect carry the GW properties making Fields of Crimson BiS.
You could have it extend to ENEMY pools which would be huge for survivability and basically enrages you so you WANT to stand in pools and soak damage as you obliterate stuff but it is a double-edged sword. That fits the DoT theme.