Early Barb PvP Impressions

**JEB90** · 16-01-2013, 04:46

So I checked out the test realm and had a couple duels using my barb. Here are a few observations:

1. The arena mechanism is lame. When you kill someone, they res with full life a few seconds later while you are stuck with whatever you had left. I suppose this is OK for jumping back into a free for all, but they ought to do something like refresh the life of the last player standing if everyone else is dead. As it stands now, your reward for winning is likely being the first one killed in the next round.

2. Throwing works fairly well. I actually managed to tank and kill a DH repeatedly while throwing (after adding a stormshield and a justice lantern).

3. WW kills pretty efficiently, too, as long as you have a fury generator (I went with unforgiving in place of nerves of steel in the standard build).

4. Stun skills also work pretty well. Ground stomp seemed to stun for quite a while when I used it with my throwing build.

5. Monks are pretty tough in melee. The one monk I saw (granted he was lvl 100 paragon, so he probably had pretty good gear, too) was very tough. The monk might end up being the best melee dueler. He left the game before I got the chance to try throwing against him.

**mortuus** · 20-01-2013, 16:06

pvp in general is lame.. this game was never meant to be about pvp really.

**JEB90** · 21-01-2013, 04:18

Originally Posted by mortuus

pvp in general is lame.. this game was never meant to be about pvp really.

I don't know why you would think that and how you would possibly know. D2 had a thriving pvp community for a long time, and D3 was pitched as having better pvp until...oh...right up to the launch.

**Yodies** · 21-01-2013, 16:10

Thanks for the early impressions. Bit disappointing to hear pvp was scrapped but w/e I guess. Was pvp something you will do lots of come patch time? Does the game record your kills?

**Karth** · 23-01-2013, 17:52

I haven't pvped nearly enough, but I agree about Weapon Throw and stunning skills. Even better, combine the two; Throwing hammer with dual-wield speed and enough throw cost reduction is really funny.

The bad thing about barbs in pvp, it seems to me, is that we lack a 'X seconds of immunity' skill like WDs, DHs, and Monks have. I fought one monk (who seemed much better prepared for pvp than I; my itemization is all set up for pvm, though I can rig some junk up) and it was just pitiful; he could charge in, smack Serenity, unload on me, and that's it, I'm dead; I can't stun him or damage him during his four seconds of Serenity, which was enough to get rid of my 850k ehp with War Cry (+ a bunch from Ignore Pain), or close enough; I couldn't HotA him down in the time before or after his Serenity that he required to kill me.

I really need to try it out more, though; I only played around a little bit on the PTR as I dislike making progress that vanishes! XD

**JEB90** · 24-01-2013, 16:36

Originally Posted by Karth

I haven't pvped nearly enough, but I agree about Weapon Throw and stunning skills. Even better, combine the two; Throwing hammer with dual-wield speed and enough throw cost reduction is really funny.

The bad thing about barbs in pvp, it seems to me, is that we lack a 'X seconds of immunity' skill like WDs, DHs, and Monks have. I fought one monk (who seemed much better prepared for pvp than I; my itemization is all set up for pvm, though I can rig some junk up) and it was just pitiful; he could charge in, smack Serenity, unload on me, and that's it, I'm dead; I can't stun him or damage him during his four seconds of Serenity, which was enough to get rid of my 850k ehp with War Cry (+ a bunch from Ignore Pain), or close enough; I couldn't HotA him down in the time before or after his Serenity that he required to kill me.

I really need to try it out more, though; I only played around a little bit on the PTR as I dislike making progress that vanishes! XD

My experience with a monk was very similar to yours. I think without any balancing by Blizz, we are going to have a tough time against other classes that can shield. The damage output can be so high that we will simply die while they are immune.

**Medivon** · 10-02-2013, 17:39

It may be that way right now but that's. because we're all basically glass cannons built for pve. We as players are going to have to learn to sacrifice some of our huge dps and aim for more survival builds and gear. Figuring out how to midigate the high dps from other players. This same thing occurred in early diablo 2. Ppl just didnt know what they where doing yet and it's more of a trial and error to see what's gonna work the best as far as keeping u alive and doing enough damage to kill the other players. Remember having max block max damage reduce and max resist all. As well as hit recovery and attack speed break points etc.. All those things needed to be perfectly balanced to be gods in d2. We just need to figure out the balance in d3 before the one shotting will end.