So I ran all the numbers for the new season 8 and even after all the WW buffs it simply remains a support skill for other builds. Every single earthquake triggered by Tec rune is 10-100 times more powerful than a maxed out WW build with 29 ranks in WW and Gohrs grip uniques. Its a bit unclear as well, what we should expect here, a EQ nerf or a WW buff or both? Because Necromancers are even hitting for 10x more than the best Quake build -_-. I’d prefer a massive nerf (again) to S-tier builds and a buff to all Barb core skills.
Blizzard, please check your numbers!
same here, i ve open pit level 130 solo in season 7. i was ran pit level 120 with my barbarian earthquake build easly with half time on my every turn. Now i cannot damage any of mobs on pit level 90. I ve lost nearly 40 pit level. There is no way to play earthquake build anymore with my items. Is this what developers really want to do with nerf, or is there any software mistakes that kill earthquake build?
Earthquake isn’t really the problem here, even after all the nerfs its still S-tier and all other top Barb builds rely on Earthquake to do damage except maybe Mighty Throw, that could be played without quakes.
What you experience in the Pit are 3 effects. First, Earthquake has been nerfed about 13x, which was necessary, because it was extremely powerful (and still is). Then you lost the Witch powers of S7 and ultimately, which is the biggest change, Pit has been rescaled to have about 15% more monster HP from level to level (exponential growth), meaning the old 120 is about the new ~97.
All in all, if you did 120 comfortably, you should feel about the same in around 80-85 roughly, depending on how hard you pushed Witch powers last season. That is just the new reality and I think it was the right decision to do it, because initially no build was supposed to speedfarm 100.
Personally my issue isn’t really with Earthquake or at least not directly. My issue is, that even with all the buffs to Whirlwind, it is simply a joke compared to Earthquake. And I found out that its probably even worse, because the “buffed” bleed rune of WW seems to be bugged: Furious Whirlwind does about 5x less damage than it should - PC Bug Report - Diablo IV Forums