 | Ways to Improve Barbarian in Upcoming Changes(1) | Category: BarbarianApril-23-2014 11:34 AM PDT (9 years ago)  |
| I posted this on EU and there hasn't been much response, so I'd like to see if any US players would like to contribute to what I hope can become a suggestion thread; my suggestions are detailed below. I have been doing a lot of thinking in terms of what could be done to improve the barbarian class in terms of rune changes and itemisation and those kind of things; due to the knowledge that Blizz plan on both introducing elemental changes and introducing new legendaries. I will by no means present that my suggestions are the best ones out there, but I feel some ideas can be taken and run with, with some community brainstorming. Without further ado: Disclaimer: Some of these have already been suggested before, of which I wish to re-highlight Broad Rune Changes/Additions Fire damage superiority reduced (suggestion by chizow) The fact that fire runes have such a large margin of damage in comparison to other elements is a design space that may need some tweaking. Sure, pure damage is fire's thing but whether it justifies a whole 100% base weapon damage advantage remains doubtful in wake of fire's dominance. To alter this positively is bring up the damage of other element's runes so that they are not so far behind fire, 'Bring non-Fire skills closer to Fire, within 10-15% (not weapon damage %, total %, ie. 640% vs. 710%) This does nothing to nerf Fire, it simply brings other specs more in-line with Fire and thus, brings up the overall viability of the Barbarian class as a whole. - chizow.' Another route to solving this, could be a parallel initial damage across the different elements, with fire runes applying a DoT affect (credit to Saloon for the idea). Generators need some more work: Currently, only a select group of generators considered, if used at all. These include: - Frenzy Smite - Frenzy Maniac - Frenzy Sidearm - Cleave Reaping Swing - Weapon Throw Ricochet - Bash Punish - Bash Instigation With 7/20 runes being the only ones considered, this is a big issue. I personally haven't thought about it much yet, please give your suggestions for generators below! Additional Synergy would be Helpful for Diversity (Idea from Maaciboy): We could alter some runes or passives to allow for addtional damage on bleeding targets. FOr example, Bash could have a rune that deal 100% more to bleeding targets, or we could have a passive that increases damage by 20-30% on bleeding targets. This would help rend out a great deal in terms of viability also. Cold Rune Changes/Additions Cleave - Gathering Storm: Quite simply, Cold needs a fury generator and this fits thematically both in rune name and it's effect. Whirlwind - Dust Devils: This rune is highly underused primarily due to the nature of the tornadoes. A few suggestions have been thrown about in terms of getting the tornadoes to stay stationary or have a tracking element, however, I feel the best way to improve this rune would be A) to make it cold damage, purely for diversity's sake and B) due to it being a cold skill, give it an added aoe affect like 80% weapon damage with a chill effect possibly and name it something like winds of the north. This would mean you could restructure the way the added AoE works (if we have a winds theme, we could have linear style blasts coming out of the whirlwind). Rend - Mutilate: For diversity on elements, this rune could also be made to have a cold dmg modifier with a rename to something like frostbite. I doubt this would bring it popularity, but you never know, and Cold needs more support given some of our coolest moves are in fact cold damage based. (Looking at you, Snow-capped mountains). Lightning Rune Changes/Additions Furious Charge - Bull Rush: Thematically, it would not be difficult to change this to a lightning skill, a name tweak that infers a thunder-charge type move would be sufficient. This change would enable Raekor's to perhaps become more of a build around set involving lightning-based gear sets, as currently Raekor's is far less appealing than the Immortal King's set and the Might of the Earth set, despite being very cool in it's set bonus. Fire Rune Changes/Additions Rend - Lacerate: Rend is rarely used and I think this is for a number of reasons. I think one way to provide sufficient support for this skill (the second, I'll come to later) is through making this rune Fire based. Now, most runes that have a flat damage increase are fire. For this reason, fire suits this rune and we could rename it to something along the lines of Burning Wounds. Physical Rune Changes/Additions Whirldwind - Blood Funnel So, physical is under-represented in comparison to lightning and fire, and some of the core reasons why lie with the lack of alternative to Boulder Toss builds. That skill is clunky and should stay clunky, you're lobbing a boulder, it shouldn't feel like zero effort. Similarly, the alternative of HotA whilst not too competitive, feels clunky like Boulder toss, so those disillusioned with boulder toss, probably aren't huge fans of HotA either. A viable whirldwind rune remedy this and could add some appeal to physical builds to those not so keen on boulder toss/HotA. One way could be to alter this rune to read: 'Critical hits restore 1% of your maximum HP, and increases your damage by 1% for 8 seconds, stacking up to 10 times.' Now, the exact stack amount may be too high or too low for it to be competitive, but I think this should be the line of thinking in terms of this rune for increasing the appeal of a physical build. Itemisation Improvements This is the big one, that I think all Barbs would appreciate, even if they disagree with the above. The core point of the following is tht Barbs need more legendaries that feel build-changing or at the very least specific-build-enhancing. To elaborate, items along the lines of these would be fantastic for the class: Waistguard of Sadism (Mighty Belt) 416-500 STR 416-500 Vit Secondary: Rend deals it's damage twice as fast. 3 Random properties This kind of item would add real appeal to going down the rend route and would make it highly competitive with the current top dog fury spender(s?): HotA (maybe Seismic Slam also?). Assuming 1 HotA-Smash per second, in it's current form, Rend-Lacerate would deal approximately 540% per second versus 640%. Given the less restrictive nature and 1-press application, Rend would become a very appealing option. Grips of Relentless Blows 650-750 STR 8-10% CC Secondary: Whirlwind gains X rune. (Depending on changes etc) 3 random properties This would go a long way to creating a viable but not overpowered WW build. For example, if we were to label the affix 'WW gains the Blood Funnel rune (factoring in a change similar to proposed above)' we would suddenly have diversity and competitive WW builds that probably wouldn't be overpowered as it would take more than a 10% dmg buff to make WW over the top good. There might be a better way to make WW more powerful than its current mediocre form through coefficient changes etc, but this is a line of thought that should be considered, as it gives the epic feel to legendaries whilst giving a potential boost to WW orientated builds. Zephyr Wings (Shoulders) (Thanks to Soci for suggestion) 10-15% Lightning Skills Damage 416-500 Main stat Secondary: Chance on lightning damage to grant 2-5% primary resource 3 random properties An item like this would give lightning-based builds a cindercoat-like item that really gives a unique bonus through itemisation. Subsequently, this would reduce the fire monopoly without simply recreating multiple cindercoat affixes. Shatterstorm Armguards (bracers) (Thanks again Soci) 15-20% Cold skills damage 416-500 main stat Secondary: Chilled enemies take 20% increased damage. Secondary: Frozen enemies dealt fatal damage, have a chance to explode dealing 200-300% weapon damage in a 10 yard radius. 2 random properties Again, another cindercoat competitor to increase build competition. Raekor's Judge (Mighty Weapon) 15-20% Physical Skills socket secondary: Dealing physical damage has a chance to double fury generation for 5 seconds 3 random properties A physical based idea for a cindercoat competitor. Raekor can be exchanged for any famous barbarian name. Two-handed weapon buff Essentially, two handers are way too far behind dual-wielding. Obviously the design of two handers is majorly influenced by Crusaders now, but when we factor in that they probably need a small damage buff again, and the fact that barring one or two weapons, barbs avoid 2handers like the plague due to weakness, this needs addressing. A potential change could be that they get a second gem socket. A way to mitigate this having too much impact, it could be enforced to have a different color gem or Crusader's could get a 5-10% damage reduction on their passive to stop them becoming too much of a god class Potential Mechanic Changes Whirldwind Coefficient: Since the Shard of Hate fix, it has become exceedingly apparent that whirlwind's proc coefficient of 0.13 is exceptionally low. Whilst in theory, the 0.13 would be justified compared to the amount of swings in a second of WWing; it is in practice, not producing a lot based off the functional and appealing procs we have at our disposal. A prime example of this is that Frenzy with it's superior coefficient outperforms WW in single target situation and whilst frenzy is single target, it isn't really an attractive option to go WW as Frenzy is a generator and as such, shouldnt really out damage a spender. This is with procced damage factored in. Eg. Thunderfury + Odyn Son or Shard of Hate. A boost to between 0.35 and maybe even 0.5 would mean WW be far more viable as a build around skill for those that want a mobile build to deal damage with. Whether this is compatible with above rune suggestions, I'm not sure, they are just multiple directions that would improve WW. Ground Stomp & Leap damage addition (suggestion via chizow) These skills give the class a great deal of utility but when considering they do 0% damage unless you run the fire rune, we find ourselves reluctant to utilise them or pigeonholed into the fire rune option. This breeds universality and diminishes diversity. Something as modest as 200-350% weapon damage could make them more attractive and promote diversity. Animation changes (Thanks again to chizow) This is a big issue in terms of fluid gameplay and one that makes certain choices a little less appealing. The big one is furious charge, whilst we have a whole set designed to abuse this skill, the animation is super clunky and puts people off. An animation fluidity akin to Dashing strike would greatly enhance the appeal of charge builds in general. Other skills that could use an animation tweak are skills like Rend and Revenge. I think it would be great for the community to feedback some legitimate suggestions, which I could then add onto the post, with credit given to contributors. If we endlessly bicker about how the SoH fix, ruined our WW fun or whether or not fire builds are the only T6 builds, we will not improve our class, we will just confuse developers. I look forward to the attempt to create a detailed and informative discussion thread for the relevant Blizz employees and I hope we can all pull in the same direction. | ||
 | Ways to Improve Barbarian in Upcoming Changes(146) | May-2-2014 10:43 AM PDT (9 years ago) |
| This is a very well constructed discussion, and I wanted to drop by and let you know that I've been keeping an eye on this thread. I definitely encourage everyone to participate, and chime in with your ideas if you want. Good job with starting this topic, HollowRain. | ||
| Ways to Improve Barbarian in Upcoming Changes(206) | May-6-2014 12:12 PM PDT (9 years ago) |
It's cool but...are you going to report that to the dev team or something like that (because imo, that's what people in this thread really want). And if not, why? I've been keeping a list of notes that I intend to bring up in our next developer meeting, and some of the things I plan to bring up are directly from this thread. Additionally, I'm taking notes from similar threads in the other class forums. | ||
| Ways to Improve Barbarian in Upcoming Changes(235) | May-8-2014 11:41 AM PDT (9 years ago) |
I mean it takes what, 15-20 minutes to read this? Please do not take this as offense mr. Grimiku, sir, but it´s likely that a lead DH/Barb dev could identify useful ideas better than a CM. Yes, it´s not the job of a dev to read forums, but from my perspective, outside ideas and what actual players perceive as issues with usuing particular skills, is a very helpful source for further work and shouldn´t be discarded right away just because it´s not coming from within the dev circle. I just think that a CM filtering this type of information might be slightly detrimental or less effective to the whole process, again I´m not saying you can´t do your job right, but that another approach might be better. Just some food for thought. No offense taken, and I'd be happy to provide a little more insight on the subject. Our developers do spend a lot of time on various forums, and pay close attention to the pulse of the community. In addition to that, they play the game quite a bit, and face the same trials and tribulations that we all do. I'd say we're more like additional eyes on the forums as opposed to the only ones reading them. | ||
