Shouts have a problem with both (1) design and (2) effectiveness post-nerfs. They are separate issues.
Design: shouts are definitely the most effective strategy but they take up three active skill slots and without them Barbs are gimped. So you have to take them and you won’t even engage in combat (at high level endgame) without them, but it means you have only 3 slots left, one of which is often taken up by a defensive skill Iron Skin. So that means you effectively have 3-4 passives that are not at all engaging to use.
Shouts should be consolidated into an offensive (War Cry + Rallying Cry) and a defensive (Challenging Shout and Iron Skin). Barbs should be able to do work even without them, and when they are used they should be situational like Wrath of the Berserker. Meaning they should last much less time and be used very strategically so they are actively engaging rather than just a standard pre-buff for every battle.
Effectiveness: right now Barbs with shouts are adequate, but we are absolutely pathetic when they are down. The window of effectiveness keeps getting shortened by (1) nerf to shout effect and lengthened cooldown back in first round of nerfs and (2) nerf to CDR in latest patch. So we are dependent on them, and less able to use them than before.
Crappy situation all around. Barb as a class needs a fundamental re-design. This says nothing about our really lacking DPS at high end, esp. in single target situations. Our best DPS skill, HOTA, only matches others but unlike skills like Bone Spear Necro that can sustain that DPS, HOTA can only burst. So we fall WAY behind. We also lack easy ways to apply vulnerability, whereas Bone Spear literally applies Vulnerability with every single cast and no limitations unlike Exploit glyph that only gives us a 3 second window every 20 seconds. That means we have very very limited windows to apply burst DPS and our burst DPS is only equivalent to the sustained DPS of the better classes. This is completely messed up.
A big part of that is that Barb paragons are super weak. Necro/Rogue/Druid have multiple 15-40%x global DPS multiplier paragon nodes. Our one glyph with more universally accessible multiplicative bonus only gives 8%x lol. Others give ~8-12%x but are tied to weapon types that most won’t choose for other reasons (or that can’t be used with HOTA, our best DPS core skill). Those others can only be stacked with that one 8%x glyph.
The reason why our paragon is so weak is that we get access to more stat sticks. But, (1) that isn’t going to be make up for 5+ missing global multipliers (extra stat sticks give us 1-2 more multipliers through aspects) and (2) the affixes on those stat sticks are now nerfed.
Our only core skill that has sustained DPS, whirlwind, was nerfed into the ground. The rest of our core skills have burst DPS. Burst DPS HAS to be higher than sustained DPS, for obvious reasons. This worked well enough when HOTA bug existed but it was clunky / not accessible for controller players, and it’s now gone. So if we are confined to burst DPS only, we need access to DPS that is HIGHER than others, not equal or less. HOTA is only equal because it has the Furious Hammer multiplier on top, the rest of the core skills lag way behind without that.