Patch 1.0.4 Preview: Barbarian
Blizzard has just posted the first of the class preview blogs.
Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(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:
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:
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%
- 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
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)
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 Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
(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.
Wednesday (8/15):
Wednesday (8/15):
- Barbarian
- Wizard
- Monk
- Demon Hunter
- Witch Doctor
You're right, that's a better example.
It's a overview to give you an idea of what they have done (not everything), did you see any title stating "official 1.0.4. patch notes"?
Given that it's DPS buff of 100% on some abilities to bring them in line with other more effective specs, I think you might be overstating your case slightly.
Exactly. If they leave the skills that "everyone uses" untouched, and they buff the skills that "nobody" uses because they simply don't cut the mustard in Inferno, then that's hardly "damage going up about 100%".
This looks pretty solid to me. I played around with a lot of different builds while levelling my Barbarian main. Used Cleave as my main attack most of the way, with the corpse explosion rune, it was great fun. Used Rend a lot. But then I found that I needed to minimax to be able to cope in Inferno, and have been using - you guessed it - Frenzy, and no fury spender skills. I'd love to be making tough choices about builds again.
I suppose your right but considering the backlash Blizzard receives I'm not surprised they didn't put any brief sentences in. If we received a blog that comprised of 4 lines of every change for the Barb with no reasoning or details I'm quite sure there would be a lot of WTF. It would be nice to see a "book" of line by line every single detail the have worked but that's asking a bit much. You could also be right and they are only focusing on offensive abilities. Maybe defensive abilities will be in 1.0.5. Overall I'm happy with at least knowing that I can use a fury spender, use a different fury generator and have worthwhile legendary items. This will keep me very happy till 1.0.4. and there are still many announcements to be made.
TL:DR job well done Blizzard I'm excited for the new patch.
agreed, i was really hoping for some new INTERESTING updates, not just more number changes. I like the changes i guess, but i kinda was just yawning my way through it, nothing really stuck out...
on a side note, legendaries are starting to look better!
these are skills almost no one uses, so if you start using a skill you've never used before...
what's the point of making brand new abilities if people aren't even using the different ones already available
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
I have a strange feeling they might be.
Well...
I also can't see any text in the quote box in shootingbull's post nor the blizzquote in Aldrek's post. Again, the problems went away once I disabled AdBlock+ but normally I don't need to. /shrug
Your AdBlock is probably blocking the chuck of HTML that displays the colored text. That's how those things function. Try adjusting the settings for the site and see if the text pops up again.
Hero profile for the streamer at twitch.tv/goodideagaming. This is essentially the reason behind the 50% nerf to CM/WW wizard build. The build is still possible, but you will no longer be able to perform with budget gear; you will have to max out critical chance. Way more effort and gold (or cash for RMAH users).
I'm a little bitter over this, considering how fun* it appeared and something I am slowly working toward. I don't want them to nerf Barbarian just because my favorite class/build is nerfed, but... daaaaaaaang.
*Fun shall be understood to mean "I kill the monsters without running away all over the map."
I can "select" the lines, but nothing displays, so no case of blending. I tried changing a couple settings as you suggested, but there was no change. It's really odd for the thing to be acting up on this website now after all this time, but it's not too big a deal for me.
Thanks for the help anyway, aldrek. I'll just disable it for this website from now on.
Yeah, none of the class preview news posts display properly with the addon. It's fine, I can live with trusting this website.