After futsing with a Barb for so long, I've had some thoughts on some things. Just thought I'd share, and see what other changes/balancing stuff people would like to see in particular.
1 - I don't know about you guys, but I don't have much use for all those skills and runes that have effects that only activate upon the death of an enemy. The only time you'd really need those effects to come into play would be against elites and bosses, and they don't exactly die often. I kinda wish that rather than the activation scenario being "when you kill an enemy," instead it just comes into effect every so often, like there being a chance on hit or a chance on crit. Or something.
A middle ground might be to have those "when you kill an enemy" effects activate on elites after they lose so much health, kinda like how they can drop health globes after losing so much life.
Uh... they don't already work that way, do they? I've never actually tested it. Maybe I should do that!
2 - Some kind of defensive fury spender. The best we have right now in that regard is Sprint + Rush, for that 12% extra dodge chance. Which is nice, especially stacked with the 20% dodge chance from WotB. Kinda wish we had some more options in that regard, though.
3 - More uses for crits. The Ruthless passive description says that crits are important for "many skills and runes." Aside from Battle Rage and Overpower though, it doesn't really feel like it to me. At least, the other crit-based skills and runes don't feel particularly useful.
1. Less runes but make all of them useful/fun. Why they tried to put so many runes in the game is beyond me. With so many it is nearly impossible to balance and make all of them useful/fun.
2. Balance all resist better. I hate how 90% of gear needs all resist to be usable/sell-able for end game. Maybe for single resists double the values or have 2 single resists drop on more items.
Barb specific: (for the most part I think we are one of the more balanced classes, we have different viable end game builds)
3. Better fury spenders, a lot of non Double WW builds use no fury spenders. This just seems unbalanced to me.
4. Seismic Slam should knock back or stun Elites/Champs.
5a. I'd like to see some skills that benefit shields. (D2 had smite and holy shield)
5b. I went DW because I can run 2 defensive passives(to make up for the loss of the shield) and the mods from 2 weapons are more powerful then any of our offensive passives. Maybe better offensive passives, i'm still thinking out how to balance this better.
I made the last point A and B because they go hand in hand.
Yeah, agreed on Seismic Slam's knockback. That's why I dropped the idea of making it my primary fury spender, in fact.
Dunno if anybody saw me say this in my SS thread, but I discovered that a better alternative right now is HotA + Devil's Anvil. Though the AoE slowdown doesn't do any extra damage, it still procs LoH and "on crit" effects like Into the Fray. It's a really viable build. I've been using it in Act 3. Try it out if you want a different fury spender build.
I still agree we could use more fury spender builds though.
I also agree that we aren't terribly unbalanced, though. I'm not complaining that hard. Just thought it'd be worth talking about.
Shield-based skills would be neat, but at the same time it would also suggest the possibility of DW and 2H specific skills. Kinda reminds me of the three Warrior talent trees in WoW, actually.
Something I really enjoy is skills that kinda combine offense and defense. Revenge and Overpower both qualify. Overpower is currently one of my favorite skills, with Crushing Advance. (as a matter of fact, the reason I don't like Sprint/WW builds is because its hard to work Overpower into it) It'd be kinda neat if more skills combined offense and defense into one package. Like for instance it'd be kinda nice if, say, the Berserker Rage passive increased your defenses a bit, instead of just your damage. Even if that necessitated a nerf on the damage boost to keep it balanced, I'd still like it.
I guess we do have other offense/defense skills, but one of those aspects always tend to be too weak to make it worth it. Like both Rend and WW have runes that heal you, but it's not ever enough to be useful. That stuff needs to be fixed or replaced.
I wish for an extra skill slot, and for buffs like battle rage and war cry to last longer. Mostly the extra skill slot, so I could get either iron impact or crushing advance in my ww build without giving up my generator (instigation).
I wish I could bind skills however I want. Elective mode gets you most of the way there, but you're still required to have an "attack" on LMB, which is goddamn stupid. Holding down LMB hurts my wrist, I want something seldom used there. I ended up putting bash there since I mostly use WW I can do that from the keyboard.
I wish WW didn't rubberband all the time.
I wish Unforgiving were a base part of the class instead of a passive. Fury decay is annoying. Starting fights with fury would just be convenient, it wouldn't really make the class any stronger in terms of killing elites you otherwise couldn't, but it would help keep farming speed up.
All in all though, I think Barb is actually the best designed, most polished class.
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