One of our primary goals with class changes in patch 1.0.4 is to help improve build diversity. Of course, this has been a goal for the Diablo III development team since launch, but our approach this patch has been a little different. For 1.0.4, we're taking a good look at some of the most unpopular skills for each class, figuring out why they aren't being used in your builds, and then seeing how we can make them better -- either by redesigning how they work or just buffing the hell out of them. For barbarians, we focused on improving the following areas:
Bash and Cleave are not very attractive compared to Frenzy
Many of the damage-oriented Fury Spenders don't do enough damage to justify the spot on your bar
Fury Generators Frenzy:
It’s easy to see why Frenzy is the most popular Fury Generator right now. It generates a solid amount of Fury, it has the highest single-target damage of any Fury generator, and it has the highest single-target healing using Life on Hit. The bonus attack speed also provides good combat mobility as well as the option to focus all your damage on a single target or distribute it between multiple targets as needed. We're going to buff Bash and Cleave to be viable alternatives to Frenzy for people who would like to try a different play style.
Bash:
From a design perspective, Bash should be the definitive choice when it comes to maximizing your Fury generation. That’s not currently the case, and given the current state of the game, this means attacking the problem from two sides. First, we need to make Fury a more attractive resource to build up (which also means making Fury Spenders more attractive, which I talk about below). Second, we’re going to increase the amount of Fury generated by Bash from 6 to 8, as well as the amount of weapon damage done by Bash from 150% to 165%. The goal is to make Bash not only a very compelling option if you decide you want to focus on Fury generation, but also an appealing single-target alternative to Frenzy if you don’t enjoy its mechanics (like having to manage Frenzy stacks). Currently, Frenzy surpasses Bash in single-target damage as soon as you have your third stack of Frenzy, and it feels like the breakpoint should be around the fourth stack instead. These changes should help better balance the appeal of the two skills.
Cleave:
Looking at the three basic Fury Generators (Frenzy, Bash and Cleave), the role of Cleave is fairly straight-forward: it should be the clear winner when there is more than one target to hit. In a single-target situation, however, Cleave will always perform worse than Bash and Frenzy. While this is intended to a degree, the amount of single-target damage you currently have to give up feels too great to make the trade-off worthwhile. At an extreme, if Cleave did almost exactly the same damage as Bash or Frenzy, but had the ability to hit a second target when one was around, Cleave would definitely become that “clear winner.” So, to make it more appealing to some players, our goal is then to find that sweet spot between where Cleave is now and doing the same single-target as Frenzy and Bash. We’re going to increase both the damage and proc coefficient on Cleave to close the gap when fighting a single target.
Fury Spenders For many players, using Hammer of the Ancients, Seismic Slam, or Rend just doesn’t seem worth it. To make these skills more attractive, we're going to straight up buff their damage across the board. How much? Well, we noticed that more players useBattle Rage than any of these other Fury Spenders, but Battle Rage is less exciting to use and doesn’t quite evoke the same visceral joy. So, we used Battle Rage and Frenzy as our starting point. We basically asked ourselves the question "How much damage would Hammer of the Ancients have to do in order to make Frenzy + Hammer [of the Ancients] as appealing as Frenzy + Battle Rage?" Players who really want to go the extra mile for the most damage could go so far as to combine all three skills together, so we kept that in mind as well. Hammer of the Ancients vs. Battle Rage was a simple starting point, but we used similar approaches with Seismic Slam, and Rend. The basic idea was: Fury generation isn’t attractive to players because Fury spending isn’t attractive to players, so what do the numbers need to be to fix that? To continue using Hammer of the Ancients as an example:
We're increasing its base damage from 200% to 325%
We're increasing the damage for Rolling Thunder from 155% to 275%
We’re increasing the damage for Smash from 270% to 406%
And to provide another example, here’s what we’re doing with Rend:
Weapon damage increased from 210% over 3 seconds to 700% over 5 seconds
Lacerate weapon damage increased from 271% over 3 seconds to 903% over 5 seconds
Bloodbath weapon damage increased from 60% over 3 seconds to 100% over 5 second
With these improvements (Whirlwind and Seismic Slam will be receiving similar tweaks to improve their viability), we hope to see Fury Spenders become more appealing for all levels of play.
But What About… I'll close by adding that there are no changes planned for either Sprint or Battle Rage, so all you crazy double tornado barbarians will still be able to log in after 1.0.4 goes live and continue with your current build. Or, you can try out some of the new toys we’re adding. Either way, we hope you have fun and are looking forward to 1.0.4!
Be sure to check out our other class previews for patch 1.0.4:
Demon Hunter(Coming Soon)
Monk(Coming Soon)
Wizard(Coming Soon)
Witch Doctor(Coming Soon)
Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III. He is currently trying to convince a friend to make him a baneling plushie doll. (Any takers?)
Patch 1.0.4 Class Preview Schedule
It looks like will be seeing the Wizard later today, and the rest of the classes sometime tomorrow.
All five heroes are getting buffed in 1.0.4, and we'll be posting previews for each class over the next couple of days to give you some insight into what's changing.
As each preview is published, we'll update this post with a link, so be sure to stay tuned to see what improvements we have in store for your favorite character!
what are the incentives to go 2h barb when you as 1h+board can just bypass all the trashmobs and just slam down the elites? i dont even take down the minions when i dont have to. (i think 2h i way cooler tho, but effective?)
Now all I need is one perfect Skorn drop and the hammering can commence.
Looking at how they buffed the already solid barbarians I think that the other classes are gonna get some serious love too, especially the witch doctors.
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"Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the small death that brings total obliteration."
For 1.0.4, we're taking a good look at some of the most unpopular skills for each class, figuring out why they aren't being used in your builds, and then seeing how we can make them better -- either by redesigning how they work or just buffing the hell out of them.
So, in all the examples they give, the fix is just to buff the number values of under used skills. Don't get me wrong, I think this needed to be done, but it could have happened months ago in a simple tuesday patch. I kind of expected something new... maybe Cleave building stacks of a bleed on elites or something. Maybe when the patch notes are released we will see more redesigns and not just buffed values added to existing skills.
This is definitely going to be a very interesting ordeal - and I think one of the best things Blizzard is doing is NOT nerfing the builds that are going on right now. I do play a double whirlwind barb (just started) and it is absolutely a ton of fun - so having my bash buffed is fantastic - but now we're going to see if these other abilities will allow for some more viable builds besides double WW - I'm just not sure, but I guess we will see.
Re: the 2H vs 1H/Off - I think we're going to start seeing some 2H Whirlwind builds and some other 2h builds - especially since 2H in general are getting a buff in how the damage scales to DoT spells (Run like the wind) - Not to mention, some of these legendaries are insane, and have some incredible procs that will be fantastic for WW barbs...
On the Legendary train now - I think every WW barb will be going for the Firechains and Molten proc legendaries... I mean... hello... fill the room with fire... GG - guess we'll see
*** Shameless Self Plug Signature ***
I will be covering some of the changes (more importantly the Wizard changes) on my youtube channel and live streaming on twitch.tv/prostasisx - I'll see you guys there
With the LE-GEN-DA-RY and this barb previes (I use HoA, I'm a romantic), my only real concern is the nerfing of Inferno. Why now when the skills are being buffed?
Blizzard is delivering, at last...
They stated that they shouldn't have put inferno in... or at least the way they have designed the item hunt and inferno. They are basically just making it "another difficulty" and not an endgame tactic. I believe they announced they would be adding something new for end game... don't remember if that was in 1.0.4 or a future patch.
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
With the LE-GEN-DA-RY and this barb previes (I use HoA, I'm a romantic), my only real concern is the nerfing of Inferno. Why now when the skills are being buffed?
Blizzard is delivering, at last...
They stated that they shouldn't have put inferno in... or at least the way they have designed the item hunt and inferno. They are basically just making it "another difficulty" and not an endgame tactic. I believe they announced they would be adding something new for end game... don't remember if that was in 1.0.4 or a future patch.
Exactly - Inferno's whole concept failed - Blizzard knows it.
It started as flat difficulty, somthing to provide a challange at all times
That didnt work
Then they made it just a stupidly (we doubled it!) over tuned 4th difficulty - all that did was highlight the games flaws (bad items, poor pacing for upgraded.. you name it, inferno made it more obvious and bad)
Now, they've basically brought inferno more in line with just another difficulty, nothing special about it except its the last one. Thats how it should be.
Now we all just need to wait while they plug in some kind of end game fun (Levels of excelence?)
but someone here mentioned witch doctor needs buff. at the same time this is the least played class so they have cheaper items.
theadzig: yes i am aware of that, so probably killing everything is the way to go after the patch. i still wonder what the droprates of trash is compared to elites. this 4x would be the same as having 400% mf i think, but only if the legendary droprates also would have increased (which they will not for some reason).
what are the incentives to go 2h barb when you as 1h+board can just bypass all the trashmobs and just slam down the elites? i dont even take down the minions when i dont have to. (i think 2h i way cooler tho, but effective?)
2H will have higher affxies to compensate the fact you lose the stats of an offhand, for example, they can roll up to 200% crit damage in 1.0.4 to compensate for two weapons rolling for 100%. The gap between 1h and 2h is going to be smaller.
So, in all the examples they give, the fix is just to buff the number values of under used skills. Don't get me wrong, I think this needed to be done, but it could have happened months ago in a simple tuesday patch. I kind of expected something new... maybe Cleave building stacks of a bleed on elites or something. Maybe when the patch notes are released we will see more redesigns and not just buffed values added to existing skills.
They gave us examples for one class so far. Maybe they thought barbarians mechanics were all pretty solid, they just needed numbers to compensate. I'd bet we'll see more redesigns in the Witch Doctor blog...
I'm a bit split on their design of not nerfing any abilities. On one hand, it's nice that they aren't touching builds that people currently find enjoyable. However, on the other hand, if they truely want build diversity, you need to nerf things. Battle Rage is a perfect example... it's just too powerful and is something you pretty much always want in your build.
Either way, I think a few of the mentioned buffs to skills seem a bit too much. 400% damage on smash? Are you kidding me?
chaoslux: yes i am aware of this. my point is that i dont see why anyone would go a two hander instead of 1h+ shield because with 1h+shield you dont need to waste any time killing trashmobs on your way to kill elites, you just run past them. but with a 2h many people will probably die trying to bypass everything because its harder to have enough survivability without the shield. so i see a much higher elite kill per minute ratio when using 1h+shield. (im talking about pre 1.04 here).
I'm a bit split on their design of not nerfing any abilities. On one hand, it's nice that they aren't touching builds that people currently find enjoyable. However, on the other hand, if they truely want build diversity, you need to nerf things. Battle Rage is a perfect example... it's just too powerful and is something you pretty much always want in your build.
Either way, I think a few of the mentioned buffs to skills seem a bit too much. 400% damage on smash? Are you kidding me?
Battle Rage is not used in every build. A better example would be Warcry with the resist rune.
but someone here mentioned witch doctor needs buff. at the same time this is the least played class so they have cheaper items.
theadzig: yes i am aware of that, so probably killing everything is the way to go after the patch. i still wonder what the droprates of trash is compared to elites. this 4x would be the same as having 400% mf i think, but only if the legendary droprates also would have increased (which they will not for some reason).
The only thing that is cheap is the mojo. All other gears are share with the wiz.
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Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Barbarian
Blizzard has just posted the first of the class preview blogs.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
For barbarians, we focused on improving the following areas:
Fury Generators
Frenzy:
It’s easy to see why Frenzy is the most popular Fury Generator right now. It generates a solid amount of Fury, it has the highest single-target damage of any Fury generator, and it has the highest single-target healing using Life on Hit. The bonus attack speed also provides good combat mobility as well as the option to focus all your damage on a single target or distribute it between multiple targets as needed. We're going to buff Bash and Cleave to be viable alternatives to Frenzy for people who would like to try a different play style.
Bash:
From a design perspective, Bash should be the definitive choice when it comes to maximizing your Fury generation. That’s not currently the case, and given the current state of the game, this means attacking the problem from two sides. First, we need to make Fury a more attractive resource to build up (which also means making Fury Spenders more attractive, which I talk about below). Second, we’re going to increase the amount of Fury generated by Bash from 6 to 8, as well as the amount of weapon damage done by Bash from 150% to 165%. The goal is to make Bash not only a very compelling option if you decide you want to focus on Fury generation, but also an appealing single-target alternative to Frenzy if you don’t enjoy its mechanics (like having to manage Frenzy stacks). Currently, Frenzy surpasses Bash in single-target damage as soon as you have your third stack of Frenzy, and it feels like the breakpoint should be around the fourth stack instead. These changes should help better balance the appeal of the two skills.
Cleave:
Looking at the three basic Fury Generators (Frenzy, Bash and Cleave), the role of Cleave is fairly straight-forward: it should be the clear winner when there is more than one target to hit. In a single-target situation, however, Cleave will always perform worse than Bash and Frenzy. While this is intended to a degree, the amount of single-target damage you currently have to give up feels too great to make the trade-off worthwhile. At an extreme, if Cleave did almost exactly the same damage as Bash or Frenzy, but had the ability to hit a second target when one was around, Cleave would definitely become that “clear winner.” So, to make it more appealing to some players, our goal is then to find that sweet spot between where Cleave is now and doing the same single-target as Frenzy and Bash. We’re going to increase both the damage and proc coefficient on Cleave to close the gap when fighting a single target.
Fury Spenders
For many players, using Hammer of the Ancients, Seismic Slam, or Rend just doesn’t seem worth it. To make these skills more attractive, we're going to straight up buff their damage across the board. How much? Well, we noticed that more players useBattle Rage than any of these other Fury Spenders, but Battle Rage is less exciting to use and doesn’t quite evoke the same visceral joy. So, we used Battle Rage and Frenzy as our starting point. We basically asked ourselves the question "How much damage would Hammer of the Ancients have to do in order to make Frenzy + Hammer [of the Ancients] as appealing as Frenzy + Battle Rage?" Players who really want to go the extra mile for the most damage could go so far as to combine all three skills together, so we kept that in mind as well.
Hammer of the Ancients vs. Battle Rage was a simple starting point, but we used similar approaches with Seismic Slam, and Rend. The basic idea was: Fury generation isn’t attractive to players because Fury spending isn’t attractive to players, so what do the numbers need to be to fix that? To continue using Hammer of the Ancients as an example:
But What About…
I'll close by adding that there are no changes planned for either Sprint or Battle Rage, so all you crazy double tornado barbarians will still be able to log in after 1.0.4 goes live and continue with your current build. Or, you can try out some of the new toys we’re adding. Either way, we hope you have fun and are looking forward to 1.0.4!
Be sure to check out our other class previews for patch 1.0.4:
Patch 1.0.4 Class Preview Schedule
It looks like will be seeing the Wizard later today, and the rest of the classes sometime tomorrow.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Wednesday (8/15):
The only thing missing is a buff to Barb Bros and Quake, to make them as potent as WoTB.
I bet the Monk gets some similar stuff when it comes to EVERYone using Fist of Thunder cause of its faster Attack Speed (LoH)
Double tornado is already too strong. Don't think they are going to do anything about it.
I would have them to bluff Slam.
Looking at how they buffed the already solid barbarians I think that the other classes are gonna get some serious love too, especially the witch doctors.
So, in all the examples they give, the fix is just to buff the number values of under used skills. Don't get me wrong, I think this needed to be done, but it could have happened months ago in a simple tuesday patch. I kind of expected something new... maybe Cleave building stacks of a bleed on elites or something. Maybe when the patch notes are released we will see more redesigns and not just buffed values added to existing skills.
Re: the 2H vs 1H/Off - I think we're going to start seeing some 2H Whirlwind builds and some other 2h builds - especially since 2H in general are getting a buff in how the damage scales to DoT spells (Run like the wind) - Not to mention, some of these legendaries are insane, and have some incredible procs that will be fantastic for WW barbs...
On the Legendary train now - I think every WW barb will be going for the Firechains and Molten proc legendaries... I mean... hello... fill the room with fire... GG - guess we'll see
*** Shameless Self Plug Signature ***
I will be covering some of the changes (more importantly the Wizard changes) on my youtube channel and live streaming on twitch.tv/prostasisx - I'll see you guys there
They stated that they shouldn't have put inferno in... or at least the way they have designed the item hunt and inferno. They are basically just making it "another difficulty" and not an endgame tactic. I believe they announced they would be adding something new for end game... don't remember if that was in 1.0.4 or a future patch.
Exactly - Inferno's whole concept failed - Blizzard knows it.
It started as flat difficulty, somthing to provide a challange at all times
That didnt work
Then they made it just a stupidly (we doubled it!) over tuned 4th difficulty - all that did was highlight the games flaws (bad items, poor pacing for upgraded.. you name it, inferno made it more obvious and bad)
Now, they've basically brought inferno more in line with just another difficulty, nothing special about it except its the last one. Thats how it should be.
Now we all just need to wait while they plug in some kind of end game fun (Levels of excelence?)
They're on the right track though. Good job Bliz
Can't wait to see the WD.
but someone here mentioned witch doctor needs buff. at the same time this is the least played class so they have cheaper items.
theadzig: yes i am aware of that, so probably killing everything is the way to go after the patch. i still wonder what the droprates of trash is compared to elites. this 4x would be the same as having 400% mf i think, but only if the legendary droprates also would have increased (which they will not for some reason).
Elites getting 25% less health. Damage going up about 100% on abilities.
It's essentially a 50% nerf to all difficulties. Not to mention the new legendaries.
2H will have higher affxies to compensate the fact you lose the stats of an offhand, for example, they can roll up to 200% crit damage in 1.0.4 to compensate for two weapons rolling for 100%. The gap between 1h and 2h is going to be smaller.
They gave us examples for one class so far. Maybe they thought barbarians mechanics were all pretty solid, they just needed numbers to compensate. I'd bet we'll see more redesigns in the Witch Doctor blog...
Either way, I think a few of the mentioned buffs to skills seem a bit too much. 400% damage on smash? Are you kidding me?
Battle Rage is not used in every build. A better example would be Warcry with the resist rune.
The only thing that is cheap is the mojo. All other gears are share with the wiz.