As promised, the emergency patch went up earlier tonight. There are almost no general changes, and aside from the bug fixes virtually all the changes are balances to character skills. Judging by the very minor changes, the balancing is going pretty well. Earlier in the beta when things were still rough we saw skills doubling in damage or cutting cooldown by half, that sort of thing. This patch is much subtler; most of the changes just increase or decrease skill damage 5% or 10%, as the devs clearly think they’re getting very near the final state.
Here are the few general changes, including the two bug fixes that necessitated this quick patch.
Click through for the full patch notes. The Crusader got by far the most changes since he’s still new, but there are a few skill tweaks for every character. The Barb changes are proving somewhat controversial with multiple buffs and nerfs for the class, but a general decrease in Fury-generation that provoked some outraged (and hilarious) complaints on the Battle.net blog post.
Diablo III PTR Patch 2.0.1 – v.2.0.0.21962
Below you will find the most current PTR patch notes for 2.0.1. Please note that this is not the final version of the 2.0.1 patch notes and that many changes may not have been documented or described in full detail.
GENERAL
CLASSES
Barbarian
Active Skills
Passive Skills
Demon Hunter
Active Skills
Monk
Active Skills
Witch Doctor
Active Skills
Passive Skills
Wizard
Active Skills
Reaper of Souls Closed Beta – v.2.0.0.21962
Below you will find the most current Closed Beta patch notes for Reaper of Souls.
ATTENTION: Please note that the Closed Beta also includes all changes from the PTR.
GENERAL
ADVENTURE MODE
CLASSES
Barbarian
Passive Skills
Crusader
Active Skills
Passive Skills
Heavenly Strength
Demon Hunter
Active Skills
Monk
Active Skills
Epiphany
All Runes
If you want some bonus lulz, check out the comments on the Blizzard post. The first few are from outraged Barb players who I suspect are still seething over the fact that their entire RoS experience won’t be WWing around while mashing Sprint in perma-WotB mode. A couple of quotes, because my virtual champagne glass was overflowing with their delicious tears.
These Devs have and still are the dumbest people I have ever seen. Only ones that beat them are the Idiots at MAXIS and [email protected]#$ty 2013.
Barbs are so boring now they’ll be even more boring. PLEASE rehire Blizzard north.
Devs please go make hello Island kitty adventure cause you don’t know what A diablo game truly is about. Go back to idiotic wow you no talent devs.
They have been nerfing the Barb for months these guys suck they need to go back to wow and stop making this game Wowblo
Jay willson know what this game is. Josh ?? nahhhh …. he is really from CONSOLE guy. Not even know what this game is. First I thought he was good guy but eventually he is sooo bad for this community and game.
I don’t get reason to nerf barb fury generation. Blizz think bash and cleave are TOO GOOD or game-breaking skills ??? LOL we use them because all other fury generator are TOO BAAAD. not too good. ARE YOU REALLLLYYYYYY PLAAAYY THIS GAAMMME BRO ????? DO YOU EVEN PLAY ????? you guys need time to PLLLAAAYY this game not nerf or buff NUMBERRSS.
Okay, sorry for quoting all that QQ, but it made me laugh and laugh. They’re even nostalgic for Jay Wilson now! I guess if all you play is the Barb and you don’t care about overall class balance, that makes sense. After all, the Barb was wildly OP for almost the entire lifespan of Diablo 3, and Jay Wilson was the game director for most of that time, so…
Personally, I think the Barb is fine now. My RoS beta barb is probably my 4th best geared char and he can do Torment 1 adequately. (He’s actually as fast or faster killing speed vs. my Monk, even though the Monk has much better gear. The Monk feels much less danger of death, though.) Our Hardcore Forum mod ZappaFan has been a big Barb player forever and he’s solo-rolling Torment 2 now in the beta, and yes, that’s in Hardcore.
I know everyone likes to root for their favorite class, but there’s this thing called “balance” and it means (in theory) that none of the classes are way better or way worse than the others. Most likely the impending enforcement of that principle will come as a shock to long time D3 barb players, but if RoS and D3v2.0 brings us four classes that are much improved in fun and function, and there’s much better class parity, I think that’s a net gain for the game.
RoS mirrors D2X perfectly by bringing the Barb in line with the other classes. It’s once again the end of spin-to-win. History does repeat itself. 🙂
There’s no way this was going over nicely.
It was like, “We’re taking away your BFG9000 with unlimited ammo, and giving you Half-Life’s MP5.”
I love it. Flux the barb hater. You know … it’s like the movie as good as it gets; it’s not that you all had it so bad, that bothers you, it’s that other people had it so good.
Who’s really QQing?
It’s been everyone who’s had to deal with their favorite class sucking for the last few years. Sure, if you wanted to be a DH or a Monk … i think your life sucked in D3V. I really do. Sorry Flux.
But, what’s more fun than vengence? right DH? Cause that’s what’s really happening here. People that felt like the game was imbalanced because they couldn’t keep up with barbs are now enjoying watching the barb get neutered.
The barb was fun before. It took me a long time to gear up my barb to finally be able to WW endlessly … but, once he was there, I enjoyed him.
So, what’s wrong with that? nothing. The real problem before was that monks sucked SO bad. And that DH’s were like the most fragile players in game.
Flux … if you think that it’s good for the game, to see such a huge population (we’re talking about a massive % of players) of Diablo players utterly disappointed … then you obviously don’t really care about the community … you care about yourself.
I enjoy your podcasts and I get your sense of humor. Your a funny bright guy, but, i care about this game and I loved the WW barb.
and, it’s a drag to come to your forum every day and watch you flagrantly disregard a large % of your community and readers. So, I have to play a HC Monk or DH to be your pal? Or perhaps I can be like that droning WD friend of your who goes on and on about how every nerf blizzard makes is awesome … LOL
The MP5 is not a bad weapon at all. It can deal with just about any situation, and the grenade launcher attachment is just classic. Most importantly, it’s just plain fun to use. I mean, do you really think Half-Life would have been a better game if you had a BFG 9000 with infinite ammo? Hardly.
Barb was overpowered compared to other classes. Therefore Blizzard balanced the game. What don’t you get about that?
You have no idea on how big of a population is going to be disappointed by this. My educated guess is a very little percentage of the population, since if they are going qq about things like this, they should’ve left ages ago. And them leaving probably makes the game better in long term since Blizzard will get less shitty feedback.
If you love the WW barb, why don’t you keep playing that? Or did you only love your WW barb because it was overpowered?
@weavers … you must have been playing a monk or a DH too. You obviously don’t get it; the barb played well … once you got it to a certain level … it was an enjoyable experience to WW all the live long day. No many other players could keep up. Wizards and WDs eventually got it going too. But, Barbs pretty much had the balance right from the begining.
So you say that they’re ‘balancing the game’ LOL … you’re an idiot. Nerfing one of the characters that actually plays smoothly isn’t game balance, it’s vengence.
What they really needed to focus on, was making Monks and DH’s really bad A$$. period. There’s no need to Nerf Barbs, Wizards & WDs.
And if they’re so worried about gear from the past being too powerful … how about just making a super freaking hard level of the game; a level past torment 6 where event the most geared, OP players can’t kill anything quickly.
give us back a right to use the mystic for anything, give us open trade, put back attack speed where it was, make CD still spawn on weapons and tell kiss A$$ winers like Weavers to go play spin the bottle with Travis what’s his face and Xanth.
[quote]So you say that they’re ‘balancing the game’ LOL … you’re an idiot. Nerfing one of the characters that actually plays smoothly isn’t game balance, it’s vengence.[/quote]
So your main argument is that Blizzard is out there to lash out a vengeance against the playerbase instead of balancing the game?
I’m glad to see the bash ‘nerf’, though it did get a buff on damage. Cleave has always been my favorite fury generator, but even in the beta I’ve noticed myself reverting to bash simply due to it’s faster generation. I wish cleave hadn’t got hit in damage, 20% lower than the bash will be noticeable single target, but i guess that makes sense for the trade off of a AoE swing. But overall I think it’s a good change that will open up the other generators as viable.
I was using weapon throw on PTR (even on melee range). Felt better than bash and had a nice damage, always getting buffed, nice fury and build changing effect.
*Still snickering over the forum comments*
I never liked bears and all but, nerf WD again? And what’s up with “wizard damage doubled” (or something)? Wasn’t for smart drops (I don’t plan to main an int class) I would disintegrate some serious trash mobs on lower dif. with wizard. 🙂
On barb fury generation – I always used a generator, even when it wasn’t mandatory. On PTR, there was a choke sometimes while using Rend and some other skills. It isn’t boring only compared to WW barb, it is boring compared to other classes, imo. It was fine on the first PTR, but WW was maybe still too nice with whole screen vortex.
I only played on PTR, I would have to test on RoS to draw conclusions, but it seems barb isn’t good against single targets on higher torment. Imo, it just fells slow compared to everything else, since I couldn’t find a build with enough room for sprint between packs.
Talking about mobility, that cooldown increase on steed charge… Just wrong… 🙂
The change to teh WD that zombie bears only appear 4y away from you could be quite a nerf, in function. Currently it’s enormously powerful to use Piranhado to debuff and hold enemies in place, and stand in the middle of that and spam Zombie Bears. But if the bears won’t hit things right on top of you, WDs might have to reposition a bit. It’s only 4 yards, but still…
They killed one build and keep reducing the damage of the other two builds. Pets still aren’t that good. As compensation we get some slightly buffed basic attacks! It’s like the Necro all over again.
Don’t care about Barb, still waiting for more love for WD pets.
And what i see? Tasker and Theo 2 times weaker now -_- Goddamit.
Also Flux is bribed by Blizz PR team obviously, LOL 😀
“I know everyone likes to root for their favorite class, but there’s this thing called “balance” and it means (in theory) that none of the classes are way better or way worse than the others.”
So that’s why there is no Druid class. It was just too OP, there was no way of nerfing it, cause it still was OP, so they killed him before announcing. Smart.
I must ask…
ARE YOU REALLLLYYYYYY PLAAAYY THIS GAAMMME BRO ????? DO YOU EVEN PLAY ?????
If so, you might want to try THIS now:
– Energy Twister
Increased base skill damage to 1000%
Skill Rune – Raging Storm
Increased combined twister damage to 1935%
I always loved the mechanism of that rune effect, hopefully this buff will make it worth using.
Same. My first thought was ‘hey, maybe Energy Twister will actually be useful now.’ Apart from CM shenanigans, Twister was always a garbage skill, mainly because it would never stay on something long enough to do real damage. That, and because it had a stupidly high AP cost for it’s power level (35 AP? Really?) Hopefully it will now do enough damage to justify it’s high cost.
The wizard is amazing now. So many fun offensive skills are viable. I’ve done multiple different builds in RoS and lots of them work really well. Wizard is arguably my strongest beta char, despite much less play time and gear quality than my DH, and despite me constantly changing around my build instead of finding one to stick with and specializing gear for it. (2 or 3 +15% damage to skill items make a huge diff.)
The key to the Wiz now is not so much the tweaks to skills, but the overall combat and game play changes. It doesn’t feel so essential in RoS to have perma-stun CC, or multiple defensive skills, which opens up a much more fluid play style and lets Wizards use multiple offensive skills at once.
“perma-stun CC” isn’t essential now. It’s just faster on annoying elites. It’s better dps to not freeze at all except to get the deep freeze buff.
W/o perma-stun (or near that level) you could not survive as melee wiz before. Now I feel like a boss!
Sure you could. Was it as effective? Nope. Illusionist will get you out of almost anything.
Just made this comix 😀
http://oi62.tinypic.com/e7ytl3.jpg
Hey, I know people like going full retard about Barbs but….
Yes, WW Batbs are dead. At that point, no one who lacks an obvious hate on would think they need more, especially when the nerfs come in the form of fury generation which they were already about as good at as a baby is at powerlifting.
This also nerfs everyone else except Wizards, for some reason and it’s very, very random. This is one patch they should have just left well enough alone about as the last one was actually making a bit of a good impression. Even I defended them, and you know that doesn’t happen unless they’re right.
I’m pretty sure hardly anyone outside Blizz (since they have actual stats) knows what the balance of things looks like right now so declaring WW dead or anything too weak/strong at this point sounds highly premature to me. I’m sure there are plenty of people in beta successfully using WW as a central part of their build.
WW is probably still a useful part of builds. However, the ‘WW Barb’ is well and truly dead, because the whole point of the WW Barb was the interaction between Sprint-Run Like the Wind and Battle Rage-Into the Fray. WW was actually not an important part of the ‘WW Barb;’ the main thing that made the build work was having infinite Fury generation, and thus infinite duration on WotB. WW was the best way of getting around quickly, and thus spreading lots of tornadoes behind you, while still doing damage. Most people just used the Whirlwind rune that let you run at base speed, so that they could drop more tornadoes.
I think that if people continue using WW in their builds, it will probably be for Wind Shear, since it now sucks enemies in. Barbs get Avalanche as a lvl 61, and I’ve heard that Avalanche is really strong. I would predict that people will use WW-Wind Shear to draw enemies in, then nuke them all with Avalanche.
Also, with Weapon Throw now being a Fury Generator and Ancient Spear no longer having a cooldown, it’s possible to create a ranged throwing-Barb, especially if The Threehundredth Spear still retains its massive bonuses to Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear. If that does become a thing, WW could remain on the bar as a more defense-oriented movement skill, more for repositioning during fights than just holding down for the whole fight.
That’s what I always found absurd about that build. That WW was almost irrelevant. The point was just spinning as a cyclone delivery device, and that’s what made it so cheesy. It just felt wrong for a Barb to do his best damage by running past things and letting them die behind him, especially when his mainstat boosted his defense enough to make him mostly unhittable while he did it.
You are probably thinking of the earliest versions of the double tornado build. For a long time now, most of the damage from the build is from rend or HOTA, although sprint certainly adds a good chunk.
WW adds some nice damage too, but really it’s main point is to move through mobs to get to the center to rend.
I think WW’s damage is about right currently. It’s a good compromise for its usefulness.
Barb are in a weird place. Fury generation is actually fine, it’s just that the entire meta game revolves around not using primary generators. Take at least one non primary fury generator, get at least 10-20% CD reduction, and enjoy endless Fury. If at any time you’re using a primary, you’re doing it wrong.
With Rush – Stamina, and a measly 20% CD reduction, (paragon and two slots) I can get 50-100 Fury every 8 seconds.
lol Sorry, that came across as a bit of know-it-all, all that hyperbolic QQ lead me to stating the obvious.
WD again nerf? Are u serious Blizz?
“Wowblo”… awesome… I’ll file this away for later use
Barb is by far my least played class but Im surprised by this new round of fury nerfs. Seems overkill to me.
Glad to see WW barbs dead. Worst build in all of diablo 3’s history, from the perspective of ruining party play.
Explanation found just now for the channeled skills buff. They stealthed nerfed arcane dynamo, which no longer snapshots for the duration of the channel. In plain english, it doesnt do anything useful for channeled spells now. Confirmed with test Ghom runs. Overall, this makes channeled builds weaker than before the patch, although if you want to be positive, it frees up a passive and a signature spell.
hmmm….Inner Sanctuary increased duration….this could be interesting. Found some legendary spirit Stone with leg affix that returns 99 spirits when casting IS …
Always a pleasure reading your columns, Flux. I have played almost 2k hours on a barb and still love to play my barb on the PTR. Fury generation isn’t too much of a problem for me, I switch out passives that increase fury generation as opposed to others that I would have used had I been using my WW-WotB set. The game is significantly funner now, as tactical enemy engagement is a necessity. I believe that many of the complaints about the balancing changes are coming from individuals who feel entitled to having the ability to role Torment 6, since they can mash MP10 on Vanilla. I could be wrong, but that’s the way it sounds…
QUOTE
I don’t think you are wrong at all.
QUOTE
I don’t understand this criticism at all. Are you trying to contend that Barbs were not wildly overpowered for the entirety of D3V? If so, then you’re trolling and I laugh at you. The entirety of the serious D3 community (serious meaning we pay attention, have spent some time gaining paragon levels and optimizing routes and studying builds) acknowledges this fact.
If not… then what exactly are you criticizing? If you acknowledge D3V barbs as OP, then you have to also acknowledge their nerf being good for the game. I see this post less as “barb hating” and more “class parity celebrating” with some much deserved mockery thrown at the crybabies throwing outrageous temper tantrums because they will no longer be playing THE best class.
I don’t know where you get your numbers to back up your “massive % of players” and “large % of your community and readers” comments, but anyone who cares about D3 and has even the most basic grasp of game dev knows that the RoS Barb nerfs are a good thing.
I think he was saying that it would be better to build up the other classes than to tear down the one class that so many people played because after taking the lengthy time necessary to optimize gear it was fun and rewarding.
He doesn’t think that cheering when one class is nerfed is a good idea on the part of the community, because then what happens to the next class that is the most overpowered?
I think optimizing gear is more a part of this game than it’s ever been, so he’ll be pleased with that.
The problem is that when a class is so overpowered that it has infinite resource, fastest movement speed, CC immunity and ridiculous HP recovery then buffing the other classes to this level would dumb the game down to such a level, that it literally doesn’t require any player attention at all.
Nerfing one class also require less effort and it’s less likely to cause balance issues than changing all the others. The simple fact is that sometimes nerfing is the right thing to do.
Ya I don’t think there is much that could have been done about it. Several skills/builds were just wildly strong and felt mandatory and eclipsed most other skills. Critical mass, archon, snapshot gloom, wrath of the berserker are all getting the nerf they really needed. I suspect the mob density changes (read: barren wasteland) are taking care of grave injustice as that skill is pretty ridiculous in live today.
Speaking on barb, though, I have played each class to paragon 100 and have tried virtually all builds and kept notes on my farming efficiency.
This is what I have per class as the best I can average (ranked in order.)
Demon Hunter – 145M xp/hr with Rapid Fire, Vault/TA for mobility
Wizard – 175M xp/hr with SNS, Wormhole for mobility
Witch Doctor – 175M xp/hr with CoB, SW + Stalker for mobility
Monk – 215M xp/hr with Bell/EP, Tempest Rush for mobility
Barb – 285M xp/hr with WoTB/Rend
Barb smashes the other classes from between 33% – 96% and is virtually unkillable (I rarely rarely die doing VSORCs runs as barb, but get killed plenty as most other classes.)
I don’t get this Barb complaints. Someone was using this runes? Only thing that could affect mine dead HC barb is weapon throw buff. They simply made mine build more powerful. Wow, that’s one cool nerf 🙂
QUOTE
It isnt about nerfing whoever is most strong. It is about nerfing things that are too strong. Too strong being ‘breaking the game’. WW barb did that, CM wizard did that.
Making more builds as broken as those two would not be a solution, it would only make everything worse.
QUOTE
And how does making bad fury gen worse qualify as “too strong”?
That said, he’s right. Rather than dive out of a plane and try and crash as fast and hard as you can why not fly? Instead of racing to the bottom with “it’s better than me, nerf it” how’s about bringing the junk up?
The *have* brought up tons of junk. One should try and find a nice “this feels good” middle ground, not constantly push everything up because MOAR.
I’ve always loved Barbs, I still do in the current state of RoS. Anybody that truly considers themselves a Barb lover will adapt to the changes. It’s not that hard. They are still a very powerful character.
QUOTE
QUOTE
I’m not speaking about the fury gen nerfs, just the barb nerfs in RoS to WW.
In a game without enemies that could endanger you while flying, then you should not be able to fly 🙂
QUOTE
Yes you are right
QUOTE
I’m guessing you’re a fan of 4th edition.
I will continue to disagree with all these players; i don’t care if you OWN this site or any other. It’s not hate; it’s debate. But, it’s obvious this is where non Barbs go to feel elite an cool. LOL …
news flash … your just a geek; like me. There’s nothing cool about you because you play a HC DH and die and lose all your best finds.
So barbs are too OP? Is that the case? No … I say they were probably the ONLY class that was right at launch.
So, if you’re following what I’m saying, and your not wetting yourself waiting to counter: hear this
The biggest argument here really is whether or not ROS is a new game or an expansion.
People with the ‘this is a new game mind set’ argue for the nerfs, the new limits being put on fun … the clean slate.
people with the ‘This is only an expansion of the game I’ve been playing for 2 years mind set’ want to keep building on the characters they’ve already been working on.
One of the major issues, I find, between these two mind sets are the facts that certain people feel like they want to see the game as totally new because of the way they play Diablo today. HC players have a certain mind set.
And, the fact is that the mediators of this site are pretty strictly HC. So, they’re pretty much used to starting over all of the time. Change is just part of their game, as is loss and acceptance. (*with the exception of that guy that goes on and on in the podcasts … what’s his name? Runkill? He’s the one that’s always agreeing with every nerf along side of that nasel sounding droning guy, … xanth or zanth.)
I love HC. I get it. But, to some of us who don’t play HC our builds are different. Non HC players; players with dayjobs; We carefully stack our gear and make incremental improvements that take a long time; especially if you play legit.
As someone who sees ROS as an expansion only, I want to see my player, who i’ve worked hard to build, on top. I want to see him on his best game and I want some of my years of hard work to pay off.
I understand how a HC player might have a hard time putting himself in my shoes, he doesn’t even have the 10th character he built, let alone the very first guy he named on the D3V release day.
HC people try to understand that there are more people that don’t play HC. Those people think more like I do.
Don’t tear down, build up. I’m not interested in the road to mediocrity; but keep nerfing the character classes that work ‘too well’ and you’ll end up with a bunch of middle strength classes.
Strong barbs, WDS and Wizards tore up the game and it was fun. Accept it.
I wish the same things for monks and DHs. I’m glad they’re finally getting the attention they deserve but, cutting the legs out from classes that were fun and making them weaker … it’s just stupid.
I once heard Flux say that he liked the things about this game that made him ‘feel super.’ I agreed with that then and still do. I’m not looking for a model of the real world, I’m not looking for this balance that’s so perfect it’s always keeping me down a little. I want to be super. That’s why I indulge in this stupid fantasty game. YOu people amaze me … go make out with travis
Your delivery of your argument is just ridiculous. You call it a debate and call multiple people names, generalise people and disrespect them. That is not a debate – that is being offensive/rude and saying whatever you want to say however you want to say it, which is shitty attitude.
Your actual argument, hidden behind all the personal attacks, is that you want your hard work to pay off by not nerfing the Barbarian. Are you serious? This isn’t wow. If you want an mmo experience that preserves one character forever, go play wow. Diablo should really be a game of constant change, challenge and discovery, not “watch my barb own trash mobs with ww build” simulator.
In case your argument was resting on the basis of “they should buff everything rather than nerfing some things” on the basis of fun, it falls apart because Barbarian has about 25 more skills that what is required to play ww barb. If you enjoyed the concept of ww build, you can keep using it. If you only enjoyed ww build for its efficiency, then you can discover something new.
You talk as if a nerf to ww build completely destroyed the fun factor of playing barbarian – so does that mean every single barb player in the world will uninstall Diablo 3 now? Obviously not, because there are 25 other skills to choose from (and 5 other classes, wow), which means that it is your personal attachment to barb that is causing this frustration, not the balance and design.
Actually release barbs were…. kinda like now. Just stand and derp spam weak attacks. WW came a bit later, WW as a viable offensive option later still.
Well, I’m not a Diablo Historian. So, I’m just going to have to stand by what I said; barbs have been running well; they WERE fun for a while.
Barbs and monks were the worst class at launch. Demon Hunters ruled the roost, funny enough.
On live I had fun with Seismic Slam. Due to lack of play time with Barb, I had planty of fun playing with Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear. I got nerfed across the board.
The barb nerfs have nothing to do with hardcore vs softcore.
With Wrath of the Berserker and Thrive on Chaos, the barb is so much stronger than any other class, it’s just silly. He’s the only class where the more elites you can pull into the fight the better. He ignores the most dangerous affixes, and the other affixes, he simply WWs around them (all while continuing to deal damage.) The ONLY time as a barb, I get even remotely worried (with WoTB up) is in a narrow space when they drop walls and arcane beams from a horde. And even then, I can just use my insane speed to change the fight to a better location.
I LOVE barb’s permaWrath. But it’s just way too over the top. None of my other characters are even close (see my post above for farming efficiency – I have a p100 for each class.) Turning all of them into super hero barbs isn’t the answer, I’m afraid.
@angelicPengis
I’m sorry but, you’ve totally missed my point. You might have P100 ear rings in each nipple but, you can’t see what I’m saying.
The whole point I was making about HC people seeing things in less permanent way effects the advice they dispense; it’s true. Every day is nearly a clean wipe for them unless they find a ‘safe’ way to farm. But, eventually they die and start again. A soft core barb player has a very different point of view than a HC monk.
If you think I’m the lone nut, just go to the Diablo forums. I’m just the lone nut on this forum where the dejected HC monks and DHs go to hang out and feel elite.
I frequent the diablo forums a lot (I’ve even got a few guides on there – I’m there far more than here.)
I understood what you were saying about hardcore vs softcore mentality, but when it comes to how overpowered the barbarian is, it’s certainly not restricted to a hard-core player thinking that.
Like I said, I’m no Barb hater. Perma-Wrath is awesome and completely broken.
The game has been dubbed “Barblo 3” for a reason.
QUOTE
Rend is more a recovery tool, sprint is the dps (and requires you keep moving).
Anyways the point is any notion of barb superiority was gone already, so nerfing them some more, along with everyone else randomly is just unnecessary.
Not with a high end skorn it’s not. Rend is doing more damage than anything else. The best xp farming (at least that I know of) is all about maxing your crit rend damage.
Im a ww hating barb. I play furious charge and frenzy. Now after patch and nerf i think ill play ww because it looks more diverse in what build can be build around it *_*
Infinite WW was boring as fuck so that nerf doesn’t concern me. Rage generation with other rage spenders is fine tho, they aren’t made to be spammed, people seems to forget that they changed them to hit harder at the cost of being used less frequently.
QUOTE
I’m really looking forward to this. Wizard was badly broken in D3C. My first steps in RoS are going to be to revisit my p100 wizard and try out the revamped skills.
I finally caved in and have been playing a ww barb, just because it’s stupidly overpowered and I needed some easy xp before RoS hits.
I’ve been playing Wizard on PTR (sadly no RoS). I can play Torment III with little problems, and Torment II with no deaths. The play-styles all feel much better now; the Wizard feels like a combo-class now. I’m playing a Lightning Wizard, using the interaction between the lightning runes of Wave of Force and Meteor. Wave of Force makes enemies take 15% more damage from lightning for 4 seconds, and Meteor increases the damage and roots enemies for 5 seconds on a critical hit (my CC is 55%). The extra 15% damage from Wave of Force is really relevant; I wish I could find gear that had more extra lightning damage on it. Sadly, while I’ve found great gear for Cold damage, I can’t get anything with good stuff for lightning. I’d be willing to drop CC, probably down to about 45%, but anything I’ve found with good lightning damage on it has terrible mainstat/vit. Also, my few relevant legendaries are all lightning-based, so I don’t want to change away from that build.
That said, Wizard feels much, much better. In particular, I really want to credit the Shield mechanic as being fantastic: this is the only reason that I can survive in melee/near-melee range in PTR. I really want to get a high-AS build going and make a Spectral Blades-Deflection build, but so far, my AS is too low. Still, the Dominance passive is really great. Now that enemies don’t have too much health on Torment difficulties, its actually possible to stack Dominance up to decent levels, and at 10 stacks, it’s giving me an extra 25,000 shield for 10 seconds, which allows me to fight packs without much fear of dying.
As for skills to try out, I’d suggest Meteor as being great overall. It’s base AP cost was reduced from 50 to 40, so it’s much more available now. In addition, with strategies like stacking up RCR or CDR, you can run entire builds on it. As many others have pointed out as well, Arcane Orb-Frozen Orb is now an excellent skill, and should probably be run on any Cold Wizard. Unfortunately, I haven’t looked at that many other skills; however, from playing through a new Wizard up to 60, a lot more skills look viable, and a lot of previously-necessary skills are no longer necessary. It felt better than I can say to finally be able to take Diamond Skin off my list and still be viable :).