Gamebreakingly Overpowered? You tell me.

[vileguy]

Came up with this a few hours ago and posted it in the general forum. I'll just quote myself.

Inspired by Adree, I came up with this barb build, name pending:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...XUh!abf!YbZaaZ

I will describe the best case scenario, which is why this build would be potentially powerful:
Under 20% life.
Full fury.
+54% crit chance.
+50% crit damage.
+80% damage.
-82.5% damage taken.
+50% life steal.

Now this is all before gear is taken into consideration. To finish the example, I have to assume maximum frenzy is either 75 or 100.
Weapon toss for 1593%-1998% weapon damage to target and all targets within 22 yards.
With crit factored in, assuming 2x crits are normal, average damage per target is 3409%-4276% weapon damage average to all targets.

With 50% life steal, I can pretty much guarantee that's a full heal. Way overkill, but that means with only half fury you could still do an average of 2110%-2542% weapon damage. If you hit 5 targets, you heal yourself for ~5815% of your weapon damage.

I may have messed up on some of the math depending on how things multiply or add together, but regardless the combination of effects would be powerful under 20% hp, and when the stars align like this, the damage would be astronomical. edit: fixed the math I think.

Hopefully from a balance perspective, these numbers are higher than the reality, but I don't currently see why they would be. This would require 2 procs (revenge and overpower), fully stacked bash (easy enough to maintain), use of ignore pain (if you want 50% leech instead of 10%, probably excessive, but worth using to stay alive until you throw), and most impotantly, a corpse nearby (i think). This is by no means a ranged build, it's just using a combination of effects to perform a devastatingly powerful aoe attack that would potentially fully heal you, with no cooldown, as long as you're under 20% health.

[TheOatman]

Do you think the build could generate enough fury to sustain this?

[ThulRasha]

Since it is highly situational with a bunch of prerequisites, I don't think it's gamebreakingly overpowered.

[vileguy]

Do you think the build could generate enough fury to sustain this?

It's not sustainable no, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. Normal play would be spam bash, use revenge and overpower when they come up. So far not using any fury. When you have a large amount of fury and corpse ammo, consider using weapon throw. You might want to sit on full fury until you get +crit buffs, or at least until there is a big clump you want to kill. If you are getting low, pop ignore pain and throw. If you're under 20%, it gets the boost of damage equal to 20 fury * 9 = 180% weapon damage on your 50% life steal as mentioned. If it's not under 20%, still 40% life steal and however much your fury converts into damage. The key is keeping bash up for +80% and only using weapon throw with lots of fury, preferably when under 20%. You can also just spam free hammer of the ancients under 20%, leeching 10% with a high crit rate, and it costs no fury.

I assume that weapon throw wouldn't just give you the damage from all your fury without consuming it, and that you'd only bypass the 20 cost. This means that you can spam it when under 20% in an aoe situation to try and stay alive, whereas you spam hammer vs a single target, making sure to keep the bash buff up.

Since it is highly situational with a bunch of prerequisites, I don't think it's gamebreakingly overpowered.

I'm not sure it's overpowered. Being under 20% hp is being near death, and yes there are a lot of conditions leading to something like 4000% weapon damage aoe, but that's best case. Just being under 20% with lots of fury, even without the buffs, is potentially 1500%-2000% weapon damage aoe. 50% leech on that is huge, and even 10% is a ton of health depending on how many targets you hit.

With a build like this you could definitely die, but compare it to normal barb play. You've got an aoe, a single target attack, fury generator and dumper, self heal and mitigation cooldown. The thing that makes this stand out is that as far as I can tell this is by far the most potentially powerful aoe attack. Yea it takes full fury, but it's worth it for a full heal + killing everything + surviving without a cooldown.

[TheOatman]

I see. It would require careful timing and skilled playing but it also seems like it could be a ridiculously powerful and versatile build. I like.

Stuff like this makes me laugh even more when people try to say D2's skill system was better. The insane amount of options in D3 will reward those who are creative and can juggle a lot of different considerations while in combat.

[Risingred]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Xfg!acT!bcbacc

HC build, top of my head in a minute. The amount of healing/leech in D3 is just nuts.

[Doppel]

A lot of this seems rather situational and assuming of certain mechanics.
For example Bash with Indigo: You seem to assume the damage bonus applies not only to Bash.
Damage reduction: Maybe this only applies to physical damage.
The 40% life healed from damage taken while Ignore Pain is active: If this only applies to actual damage taken then you might heal nothing.
As for what's situational.
Ignore Pain: lasts for only 5 seconds yet has a 60 second cooldown.
Revenge: it depends on getting hit and even if you get hit then you still have only 10% it procs and if then you activate the skill the critical hit % it gives only lasts for 10 seconds.
Overpower: This is way less problematic as Revenge if having a high crit chance, but still it needs to proc, you need to activate it and only then you have extra crit for 6 seconds.
And then you have Weapon throw which is runed to be a one expandable skill.

I'm not trying to knock your build but this might be a case of "sounds good on paper, doesn't work in practise" since there's so much you have to try and juggle and only to be able to use a skill at it's maximum potential once every max fury ball.

[vileguy]

A lot of this seems rather situational and assuming of certain mechanics.
For example Bash with Indigo: You seem to assume the damage bonus applies not only to Bash.
Damage reduction: Maybe this only applies to physical damage.
The 40% life healed from damage taken while Ignore Pain is active: If this only applies to actual damage taken then you might heal nothing.
As for what's situational.
Ignore Pain: lasts for only 5 seconds yet has a 60 second cooldown.
Revenge: it depends on getting hit and even if you get hit then you still have only 10% it procs and if then you activate the skill the critical hit % it gives only lasts for 10 seconds.
Overpower: This is way less problematic as Revenge if having a high crit chance, but still it needs to proc, you need to activate it and only then you have extra crit for 6 seconds.
And then you have Weapon throw which is runed to be a one expandable skill.

I'm not trying to knock your build but this might be a case of "sounds good on paper, doesn't work in practise" since there's so much you have to try and juggle and only to be able to use a skill at it's maximum potential once every max fury ball.

I'm only assuming what the tooltips say is correct. Does the movement speed increase from frenzy only work when you use frenzy? The damage boost on bash only lasts 5 seconds and if it only worked on bash it would be fairly weak. It's safe to assume it works on everything until proven otherwise.

The damage reduction specifically says all damage taken in both cases. How can this be more clear. This also has no bearing on the focus of the topic which is the stacked throw damage. If it only applied to physical damage, that would be a barbarian problem, not a build problem.

Reread the tooltips please. Ignorance is bliss is 40% life steal for 5 seconds, not 40% damage absorb or wtvr you're imagining. I don't mind a 60 second cooldown that prevents 65% of damage and for a few seconds and then fully heals me, how is this not a desirable skill?

Revenge may not proc often, but 10s is a pretty long time for this buff. Overpower may or may not proc more often, and the buff is much shorter. The thing is, you don't need these buffs, they are just icing. With both you would have 57% crit without base stats or items. Without critting at all you're still doing 1500%-2000% weapon damage.

Finally I'm not sure what you are saying about weapon throw, that I can get 1 big hit and then I'm spent? If that 1 big hit is doing 2000% weapon damage or higher, that sounds to me like enough to kill an entire pack of normal monsters or come close to doing so. If they survive, you should be full on health and can build fury again. There's no cooldown on the throw. The only ability in this build with a cooldown is a defensive move, so you can do full damage without it. You can do good damage above 20% hp with high fury, even better damage below 20% hp, and if the cd is up you can survive while low and get a full heal. It may even be possible to fully heal on a good throw without ignoring pain seeing as 10% leech on a ~3000%+ aoe attack should heal a lot, but I don't even know what health #s are like.

Under 20% life.
Full fury.
+54% crit chance.
+50% crit damage.
+80% damage.
-82.5% damage taken.
+50% life steal.

Now this is all before gear is taken into consideration. To finish the example, I have to assume maximum frenzy is either 75 or 100.
Weapon toss for 1593%-1998% weapon damage to target and all targets within 22 yards.
With crit factored in, assuming 2x crits are normal, average damage per target is 3409%-4276% weapon damage average to all targets.

If we reduce it to 70 fury and not below 20% health, that's 50 * 9 = 450%, + 210 = 660% weapon damage. Let's say you have only 5% crit from ruthless, and that you have the 80% buff from bash cuz that's easy to maintain. Not using ignoring pain, you can do 1306% average weapon damage aoe and leech 10% of that. On 8 targets, that's 1045% weapon damage health gained. This build has powerful single target and aoe damage, a good defensive cooldown, and self healing. If you are able to get crit gear and dump fury properly, it can do insane damage.

[TheOatman]

Lets try to keep it civil, we're all assuming stuff here. At the very least we're assuming that this stuff won't change by the time the game comes out. If vileguy's assumptions are correct though, this build would be the type of thing you would probable need to juggle in order to solo inferno. The build I posted (insanity barb) would be fun but probably not suitable when health globes aren't dropping often (I'm assuming they won't drop often in inferno).

[Doppel]

@ vileguy: You might be entirely right on all of it. (And yes, i did misread runed Ignore Pain, but do consider it assumingly only applies for those 5 seconds ignore Pain is active)
I'm not saying any of those skills aren't good or desirable. But it just sounds to me that one needs to juggle a lot of skills to maximize your big area killer (weapon throw).
You need to power Bash for the extra damage that lasts 5 seconds.
You need to activate Revenge for the extra critical chance that lasts for 10 seconds.
You need to activate Overpower for the extra critical chance that lasts for 6 seconds.
And then you want to have your Fury ball at maximum to deal massive aoe damage with weapon throw.

If i would try to improve on this build, then i would look for one additional Fury generator.
I also would either dump Overpower or Revenge (because i think i would lack the skill to keep everything up all the time). I would also consider Battle Rage or Threatening Shout. And i'd look into Animosity to increase my Fury ball and No Escape to increase the damage of Weapon Throw a bit and almost ensure a free 20 Fury back into your Fury Ball when used.