So, I came back to try this season out and it is actually a pretty solid game right now but I always play as a Barbarian and fail to see one thing, what is even the point of the Barbarian when ranged characters can run and clear the full screen without even touching the enemies? You as a Barbarian need to connect your abilities to actually deal damage, ranged characters can run around far away at a safe distant and launch hitscan abilities that wipe bosses in seconds, say what? All I do on public quests is running around doing nothing, because everything is instantly dead? Yes, I feel that Barbarian can be very strong but the risk/reward i not really there, it is risky to stand next to an enemy that can 1 hit you, ranged does not need to deal with that, but melee do, where it the balance?
Another thing that is annoying is that most enemies are absolute garbage at dealing damage, even the elites, but then there is that one elite that just pinch you and you lose 5000% health or something from one hit, what? The hellspawns or whatever they are called are not balanced at all towards the rest of the enemies but they blend in to the masses when hundreds of enemies spawn at once and the whole screen is full of explosions and stuff… The screen is too cluttered to have these 1 hit enemies that you need to play around as a Barbarian, when you need to be next to them to hit them…
I do not understand why you make it so that many melee abilities require you to stand still to pull off while ranged characters can run around and blow the whole screen up without even moving an inch… Why do not ranged characters need to aim their abilities? One sorceress stood in the middle doing nova or something at an event and the whole screen blew up, what an awesome experience as a Barbarian.
Ranged is pretty much king in all arpg’s as far back as even Diablo 1
I’m not going to knock you for preferring a class but this is at least part of the answer to your problem, you need to get some variety, even if it’s just to understand some other class mechanics so you understand how to barb better with them.
Other than that, if you were running reasonably difficult content with other people at around the same power level than you, things wouldn’t be dead before you got to them. But, that’s a hard arrangement to eyeball even in a well-balanced ARPG because of all the interlocking factors (especially, that depending on gear, two characters that in theory are about equal in potential can have wildly different stats.)
I mean in World tier 4 where enemies die from 1-2 hits anyways, it is no fun as a Barbarian because ranged characters blow everything up. You feel useless at events because enemies are too easy and the only hard enemies will hit you like a truck whilst ranged players are 100% safe because they are at a range. This game needs higher tiers and the survivability should be the same for melee and ranged, it should not only be the melee that has to suffer, as it is in most of Blizzards games. I played a lot of WoW and it is the same in that game, they develop bosses so that you need to move around but ranged can still fight when you yourself need to run away.
Ranged classes are not that easy, you may have seen some end-game ultra geared sorcerers, but try it you will see it’s hard to play. You will get one shot quite a lot, especially when your shields are in cooldowns. Also they have nerfed some bosses, I remember at S1 and S2 the Butcher was quite a nightmare, especially for sorcerers ![:slight_smile: :slight_smile:](https://d3sh8v238hy4ki.cloudfront.net/en/d4/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=12)
Damn, I miss that good old Butcher, now we have a Fisher instead.
Barbs are quite capable of being screen hogs as well. Any time you are playing around other high powered characters you are going to run into the problem. Either enjoy the bounties for little work, or move on to an area no one else is in. In addition the overworld will always be on the weak side, do dungeons, or pits, if you want more difficult, or mindcage stacked in helltides.