Looking over the 2.1 PTR patch notes again, it seems Shroud is going to be BiS in Season 7. All the passive in the skill tree for barbarian is good with little conditions. Might even be possible to play all passive with one active skill.
Yeah it is. Few exception is rage of harrogath fow WW and the new chest for Hota Quake build.
Speaking of passive skills, this new weapon temper recipe looks good :
Vehement Augments – New Weapon Tempering Recipe
- +Ranks of Warpath
- +Ranks of Belligerence
- +Ranks of Heavy Hitter
Those +Ranks of Belligerence is insanely good for Frenzy build. Too bad they didn’t buff Battle trance, the damage bonus is too low.
I’m ok with this. We still need the boost. I just wish they would do something actually interesting with the Stealth mechanic.
Blizzard tried. It’ll just get abuse. AFK builds still exist. Shroud would just put them in a different league.
It should not grant Stealth when not in combat, but Blizzard shot themselves in the foot only having 6 Hot Bar Slots. What would make it the strongest is if you could Click It to use it on demand and there was a CD on it.
Alternatively, it could be Defensive and act as a disengage mechanic where when you take X damage it purges all negative effects and you enter Stealth. This effect would need to give you a Global ICD of like .5 seconds however so you do not accidentally break Stealth spamming your attacks and can react to Shroud proccing Stealth.
It is extremely powerful from an Offensive perspective. The bad thing is as they introduce more and more Uniques, Mythics, and Aspects, Item Budget stays the same making building things much harder. You have to basically take a poison pill just to afford things.
Defensive Aspects for Barbarian are a prime example. Helmet, Chest, Legs, or Amulet only. Perdition, Shako, Ugly Bastard, Joritz, and even Godslayer belong here.
Chest you have Tyraels, Shroud, Rage of Harrogath, and the new Mountain HoTA Chest (that fundamentally creates a build).
Legs you have Tibaults primarily. If you want to try the new Summon build, that means Bearings in this slot. This is really the only contested slot easily available for a Legendary item.
Amulet. Oh man. Banished Lords, Battle Trance, and Ancient’s Oath all define builds.
When you have stuff like Iron Warrior, Bul-Kathos etc. that all create builds or allow Skills to function properly, it becomes a bit of a problem. If you do not use a Weapon Mastery ability to spam Fortify, good luck trying to fit in Warbringer and Numbing Wrath Aspect.
Blizzard absolutely has to roll in a lot of these Aspects into the Skill Tree. There is no reason why Iron Warrior is not the Enhancement to Iron Skin. Fortify Generation should be Passive in more Active Skills tacked on.
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It is guaranteed BiS for any Unconstrained Build given that Unconstrained is the only Key passive that benefits from Shroud. On top of all the minor buffs, which add up to some major buffs depending on your build, it gives you another 35%(x) dmg for free.
Battle Trance doesn’t define anything. The 30%x is abysmal, and the increased attack speed to other skills is sheer waste. Both Locran’s and Selig outperform BT for Frenzy builds, and a legendary with Adaptability is literally 7-10x stronger than any of them.
The multiplier for Battle Trance needs to be 150-200x, and the secondary should either give splash damage and/or 20-30% cooldown reduction.
In an optimized Frenzy build, there’s 2 Barb uniques, 3 mythics, 4 generic uniques, 2 generic legendary aspects, and 1 Barb aspect. That shows a glaring discrepancy in our aspects, tempers, and uniques. Pretty pathetic.
Still can’t do pit 100 with perfect aspects/gear, maxed glyphs, max res/armor, 4k+ str, 20k life, 100% crit chance, 4k+ crit damage, and 3k+ all damage.
I agree 100% that a lot of stuff needs to be baked into skills. We need a full revamp/overhaul done by competent players.
Too little, too late, though.