Hello Blizzard,
I want to provide you some feedback and ideas which will improve some of the most underwhelming builds and characters in the game, which will not going to take a lot of effort invested.
More precisely the melee and semi-melee builds.
The main problems with melee builds are:
-
no area of effect (AOE) skills
-
attack rating (AR) is always lacking
-
melee skills are always item-dependent
-
which leads to slow clear speed at all difficulties, especially at the beginning of the ladder when we don’t have best in slot (BIS) items. And even with bis items, melee is just underwhelming in comparison with casters.
Overall melee weapon dmg is too low. Including bows, crossbows, throwing weapons and spears – I will provide feedback for weapon dmg in other topic.
First of all, I want to address the Barbarian, which is the most underperforming char in the game, hands down.
Barbarian and Whirlwind (WW)– the most notorious barb ability is not able to efficiently clear more than Players1 if you don’t have Grief. Pity!
Good changes with the last 2.4.3 patch, but still not enough. The AOE of the skill needs to be improved just a bit and should hit all the targets simultaneously like a real AOE skill. Improve the damage at higher skill levels. In 2.4.3 high lvl WW is dealing less dmg than before. WW needs at least 20% dmg and AR increase per lvl. At lvl 20 400% AR and 400% DMG sounds fair. Now at lvl 27 WW has 180% AR and 160% dmg increase, which is way too low. In order to be competitive to the top tier builds, WW needs at least double the damage. And even than it is not going to be overpowered. Just compare it with Fury Javazon, Hammerdin or Cold Sorc. They can easily clear the whole game down even with mediocre gear (except the immunities), while the Barbarian is bound to kill his enemies one by one with underwhelming weapons, until he finds Lo rune for Grief. Even then he needs so much more specific BIS items to be semi-compatible.
Decrepify should not affect WW attack speed.
On Strike/On Hit mechanics – WW should be able to proc On Hit skills and effects on both weapons. This will open more possibilities and will diversify the WW builds. There’re good weapons with curse/spell on hit. Again, compare it with Zeal – it hits 5 times so fast and can cast everything, while WW is with slower animation, less dmg & AR and it is not able to proc anything.
Barbarian Masteries tree – put 1% Crushing Blow (CB) for every level of every weapon mastery. So at lvl 30 Blade Mastery for example, the player should have 30% CB with swords, which will open a ton of possibilities for item choices. It will make Masteries grand charm skillers usable, as for now they are completely useless. And will also make Guillaume’s Face helm and Gore Rider boots not mandatory for killing bosses and elites.
Barbarian Leap Attack – make Leap Attack deal solid AOE dmg! Leveling with barbarian is the slowest and the hardest. With this change leveling should be comparable with other characters. The Barbarian just needs some AOE skill in general. Now Leap Attack hits only one target with full dmg and the other part, which is actually AOE, is just miserable.
A synergy with Stun, which will make Leap Attack stuns enemies for very short period of time.
*Make Leap Attack able to teleport your Mercenary where you land, like the Teleport does. Sorceress’ Teleport already has that. This change is essential, as the Barbarian always struggles to keep his merc near him, hence all auras or effects from the merc are always underused. Even worse – when you leap, your merc is getting stuck somewhere and is not able to help you at all. This will make Enigma runeword less mandatory for barbarians.
Barbarian Berserk – great single target skill, but again, it costs your whole defense. The Paladin has his Smite, which always hits. Make Berserk always hit! It is magic damage, right? And it is level 30 skill, right? And all magic skills of all the casters always hit. Why the Paladin is the only melee char, who can take advantage of this?
Berserk should always hit – this will make him Uber killer viable, like the Paladin is now.
Barbarian Grim Ward – perhaps the most unused skill in the game. Make it summonable from undead enemies. Half of the enemies in the game are undead and the skill is unusable against them. I would suggest to remove the fear effect, as it is slowing you down instead of killing the monsters faster. We already have Howl which is doing the same thing.
Barbarian Iron Skin & Natural Resistance – put 0.5% physical resistance per Iron Skin lvl, so on lvl 20 the skill should provide 10% phys res.
0.5% magic resistance per Natural Resistance lvl, so on lvl 20 the skill should provide 10% magic res.
Both changes will provide a slight survivability improvements for the barbarian.
And again, this will make the Masteries grand charm skillers more usable and desirable.