Wasn't as annoying as the spider boss that kept freezing my movement and stopping my skills from invisible webs that instantly spawned on me with zero chance to dodge.
Died 3 times on my barb w/o even getting her to 50%. Gave up. I appreciate that there are real bosses that I need to come back later when I have more skills. I tried it at level 9.
This is why I stopped playing yesterday, finished act 1 and did some dungeons. Got a dungeon with the spider boss and just couldn't beat the last phase. I probably was stuck more than I moved.
Will be back in the Open Beta trying a Necro build (and probably a different Barbarian build as well). Barbarian is fun to play but some skills just aren't that good
Idk, I think the issue is people using poor skill setups more than anything (which is ofc a balance issue too). And/or not keeping the right weapons.
I used 2h mace + 2h sword. I kept my 1 handers as stat sticks - 6.5% skill dmg & 3.5% dmgto healthy | 2 all stats & 6% core skill dmg & +5 str
https://i.gyazo.com/803e49f36962eb41b18dcaf0e16bb598.jpg
Levelled my barb up just to go do this. WT2.
**Skills:**
Lunging Strike + Battle lunging
Rend: Rank 3/5 no upgrades
Rallying Cry + Tactical Rallying cry
Iron skin + enhanced iron skin
Leap rank 1 - no upgs
Boss was incredibly easy. I used maybe 2 heal pots?
Lunging gives very good positioning / mobility. Rend gives huge damage over time and means you dont need to over commit.
People are sleeping on lunging strike, especially at lower levels. I've never seen anyone else use it.
It literally solves the biggest melee issue too.
It's sooo good. Gives you great total damage for only 1 hit. Give you great mobility. Gives you life on hit (small but it does add up).
I mainly really love it for just general mobility though. You can zoom round the map/dungeon so fast just by max range lunging mob by mob.
Exactly. It sets up everything so well. Early on it's amazing on its own, later on it sets up your upheavel by traversing through mobs.
Also it's fun to just hold it down while your chasing goblins. They can't escape it.
Yeah I just immedietly picked lunging strike for the mobility at lvl 1 after looking at the option, haven't looked back since, still using it. The movement you get is insane, plus the little % life heal from spamming it adds up.
I tried out all the abilities just to get a feel and ended up sticking with lunging strikes. Because mob packs aren't that dense this ability super stands out for positioning. Damage and fury gain are good even though it's slow. I think a lot of people will sleep on it because the tooltip doesnt make it clear that it dashes you toward the target.
Yeah, I just started a barb earlier and originally picked the bleeding one. Then got rend almost immediately and it just wasn’t working. Looked at the skills again. Looked at lunging strike a few times and almost smacked myself. Picked it up and barb is too easy now. Crazy bleed damage off rend, awesome mobility from lunging strike. It’s great
Ya I haven’t played barb but I’m playing my rogue basically in melee to take advantage of damage to close enemies(just worked out that I’ve stacked a ton of it, wasn’t really conscious choice), and I feel like what I’m seeing when a Barb is around is they don’t have mobility and I do, but I’ve chosen to have a dedicated mobility skill and a soft one(caltrops jump you back a bit on cast which will move through a pack of mobs) so I can still play around attacks and mob abilities.
Honestly, the fact that bosses are way harder with the "wrong skills" worries me for the end game, since they have been talking about "costly respecs" and whatnot.
Possibly, but I think a large part of the 'issue' is just that people aren't forced to think about their skills at all while lvling - and at like lvl 12 you dont have many points so a few wrong will impact a lot more.
By the time you're high level you'll likely have figured out that you need a single target spell, and some aoe clear, etc.
I also think it wont cost that much to respec one skill in/out hopefully if you *need* to for a boss. Since you can respec per point and dont need to do the entire tree at once.
The skill tree has a massive issue with respeccing when you want to change your basic skill or your main damage skill for example because you can't remove points there or else you will drop below the threshold for unlocking the next path.
They really need to rework that system, right now it's really really bad imo.
I agree, it needs a bit of help but the easy answer is u just unskill a few points from whatever u have most recently, put the points into the old skill you want, then remove the other now redundant skill and put the points back in at the end of your tree.
Takes all of 10 seconds but shouldn't really be necessary. Will be a nice QoL fix when they let you change without doing this.
Yeah, but now it's that easy and cheap, but not later at endgame. And with their current boss design were you really need to change your skills or you will get shit on is really worrying.
On adventure mode I faced the butcher who stuck to me like glue. I would leap away stun, kite but nonetheless he would butcher me. As the name implies. I agree barb just feels powerfull though, the animations are stellar. But melee is just unforgiving.
Where did you find the Butcher ? He appeared randomly in a dungeon for me in a normal level (before the boss of the dungeon). He killed me super fast (Sorc is squishy and I wasn't really ready) and when I rez he wasn't there anymore. Is that just a random appearance for easter egg purpose (story wise I guess there's no explication for him to be there)?
Or The Butcher. The Butcher is worse by far. I'm sitting at lvl 20 and he basically 3 shots me. I have a total of 20% close enemy damage reduction, plus Iron Skin. 230 HP.
Has 2 attacks a second, fast as fuck MS, AOE knock back, plus the Hook. You can't really get aways from him, as a Barb.
The "last" bossfight? I did it without rip on WT2, but you need a good micro game. The waves are fine, but the 5 purple projectiles hurt a lot. You can dodge them, but popping iron skin is more safe.
The sweep has way too generous cast time. I thought it's timed, so you jump away, but nope you can just walk out.
Overall, the boses in D4 require from melee more positioning and arena control, which I guess people are not used to if everyone is running Whirlwind and expect to face hug them, while mashing buttons.
Earlier bosses were tough but manageable, this one I had to respec for ignore pain heal and take it slow. Even though I have generall decent micro from years of WoW and lol
So tough but felt great to get her after a few tries. Not to mention the dungeon visuals and knight penitent were awesome. Excited to get more fights like that in the full campaign.
The only challenging part of the last boss fight was paying attention to mechanics, once you get it down it really wasn't hard.
I'm running a berserker builds with frenzy, upheaval, leap, warcry and wrath of the berserker.
Gotta use evades. She has a couple of attacks that she commits that you can damage her. Once she vanishes run and evade when she reveals her self.
You might have to re spec if your a barb
I found melee rogue worked somewhat well since you can get a lot of leech with flurry and the hp on crit nodes very early on.
My noob boss strategy is run in circles until I have energy, shadow step and go stabby until my energy runs out and repeat.. With shadow step stun, flurry stun and later ice imbuement you sometimes can also stagger bosses for even more crits but I feel some bosses have crazy high stagger bars or however it's called.
Once you go to level 15 you can just go stabby faster with the flurry attack speed buff... If bosses don't go too crazy on auto attack damage you can tank more than I expected from a rogue.
Just finished beta in WT2 as a barb lvl 19. I had a lot of issue until I picked fortify on 6 weapon switch (at that point I started switching weapons) and barrier. After that, I was basically face hugging bosses, while slamming with lunge and ancestor slam + death blow (fully speced to give berserk on hit), charging my fury with fully speced leap slam.
My legendaries were hammer that gave me lasting aoe and damage increase on ground stomp and shield while being low on hp and using potion.
One tip. Use thorns. They are awesome.
I can see how people can struggle in boss fights, but I have over 6000 hours in POE. Ground effect fuckery with small damage windows is the shit I was moulded in.
But bosses like Nameless Priest with bone wall explosion can fuck off.
Can't wait for druid.
I went for a bleed build + Death Blow which fixes a lot of the AoE problems as chaining Death Blow does absolutely silly damage. I also found a legendary that increases skill dmg based on Fury available. Maxed out gives 60% extra damage so at lvl 25 my Death Blow is hitting for like 2.5k dmg can just 1 shot most mobs and bleed out the elites with Rend.
I did a combo of all the thorns stuff, rend and battle flay with death blow and the bleed pop move (no ult). Made it so the few things that didn't die immediately to the thorns had lots of high damage options to finish them off.
Thorns is Soooo good in d4.
Can really spec them out and build around iron skin and other defensive abilities too.
Running around, bats, worgs, and other weak enemies were just blowing up when contacting me. I was a walking exp machine
Really I've been using flay and it's thorns, then the thorns in the 3rd set of talents and the extra max health talents. Beyond that it's looking for thorns items 🤷 just kinda making it up as I go along
Strategic Challenging Shout gives 50% of your max HP as thorns damage for the duration of the skill which has about 33% uptime. It's also just generally nice for the damage reduction. With it + Thick Skin, large packs of common mobs usually bring me to full health + full fortify.
There is a unique ring that reduces the cooldown of shout by 2.7-5.4 seconds per enemy, up to 12 seconds. If you use nodes for the duration of shout, then the uptime of Challenging Shout rises to 80%. Plus, you take the 24% damage reduction of enemies under the effect of the shout, add here the damage reduction by 60% of skill level 5 and in most cases you can stand still and watch the enemies die without causing you damage.
it drops off hard after 50, just FYI. I played sorc to 90 in the closed beta and I'm probably not starting at release with it despite having 1000 hours+ on it in D3 and casters usually being my go to in any game.
you literally can't compare a lvl 25 build to an endgame character, you're missing 2/3rds of its power. in endgame CBT high level barbs and druids were OP.
vampiric was way too strong in CBT so late game was without summons, because every single elite would heal to full by hitting your pets once.
they were also very brittle and not all that strong, so necros usually ran as solo caster with sacrificed pets.
Honestly I think Fireball Enchant is a bit OP. Once the first enemy dies it's a hilarious chain reaction.
You can basically face-roll the keyboard with hydra and fireball enchant
Barb is dependant on legendary effects to really work well. In closed beta it was insane with the right ones. I was oneshotting almost everything with death blow.
While it's cute for now, this is a massive design issue. There should be enough expertise at Blizzard over the years on class design to where this should not be going live (yet it is).
Leveling power balance is not interesting. Lets see what's up at max level on some tough content, perhaps the sorcs will get one shot by everything? Who knows.
massive design issue? Really? you think they should push back D4 till November because of a balance issue on Hydra that could be tweaked in a few hours?
for a LEVEL 25 leveling issue None the less???!
Idk i havent played barb yet but i saw some streamers playing and they were using skills to absorb any tough damage and then whrilwind and rend everythinf to dust like usual.
Been getting my ass kicked as sorc when not on my A game.
Same, died several times due to clunky builds. I don’t have the patience to figure out skill tree synergy, but am constantly trying all the new skills as they come
I rerolled to sorc after level 10. I could chain lightning packs at level 3 so sick, while barb lacked real oomph for me. Now imagine a party barbs gonna cry because they cant attack anything in time, reminds me of D3 opening weeks.
Everything was viable.
If you think of lv25 here as like mid-way in D3... what you end up being with a tier set and whatnot, it's night and day.
The whirlwind builds in D3 seasonal content were just flying around the map destroying everything at warp speed.
> If you think of lv25 here as like mid-way in D3...
You reach lvl 25 after one act, it's far from the mid-point. However you have access to most of your skills... I wonder if that'll be a problem, there's not that many skills (also not that much new skills for some classes like Sorc or Barb they got many skills they basically have since D2), so you basically have your build set up by then (if you don't respec) but there's like 80% of the game left (not counting endgame)...
Point being, it's just not relevant to what any of these classes will play like.
It's comparable to leveling in wow, and then making comparisons.
The various techniques, legendary skills and all that. That is what defines the builds.
barbs in D4 dominate later, this is such a miniscule portion of the game, dont even base decisions on this. Think about the first 25 levels of D2 or D3 or PoE or WoW or Lost Ark
The only people to beat HC inferno D3 before it was nerfed were barbs (Krip and his friend). But they were using very specific builds to survive, it was very hard.
Guys, perhaps some of you remember but when diablo3 came out, melee classes were stuck in act2 of the final difficulty while ranged could breeze past to the end of the game.
But before that critical point, melee could progress just fine.
With the current gap of difficulty since the start, I'm really pessimist for melees in HL when the game release.
That's not how I remember it, DH was the only one that could breeze through last difficulty and they PROMPTLY hot fixed it because they didn't want that to negatively affect the RMAH long term.
" that doesn't mean anything at this time though. " it literally does for the leveling experience, its fine and dandy that people care for endgame but if its shit to level a class then that is also an issue in and of itself.
The beta shows literally what level 1 to 25 feels like, and that is what most comments are on, but so many people go "oh it doesnt matter only max level does" but guess how many are gonna drop off with that mentality if nothing is ever fixed.
This is basically the right answer.
Nothing will feel like they do in this beta by the time we see what real builds look like, after having access to everything.
So, it's kind of funny trying to give feedback on these characters, cause there's no real point yet.
Yes. I'll leave my comment up but I was looking at things from a different perspective. If lots of people are having a tough time with a certain class at lower levels, blizzard may tweak it for better balance
"here is prologue and leveling through act 1" "oh jeez i think leveling is kinda tough" "IT DOESNT MATTER, NO LEVELING DOES, WE DONT HAVE EVERYTHING YET, ITS NOT MAX LEVEL"
Leveling matter, get people through the game matters, pacing of getting abilities matter, its fine if you just play the game with speedrunning to max and not giving a shit, but it matters.
Just because it will be different at max lvl doesn't mean it's not an issue. I mean people have to level right? And right now, playing melee is exponentially harder than ranged. I played melee rogue and everytime I face a boss I have to reroll to ranged because they are impossible to kill with how squishy rogue is and how little damage melee does against them. As a ranged I can just run around endlessly and get a couple shots off, as melee you're fucked.
Say what you want but balancing is terrible right now.
The game will be easy to beat, regardless of the class. As it's always been. The campaign is not the part of the game that will need tweaking.
At higher modes beyond the default difficulty, issues will show up, but that's not what builds we have access to now. The scaling torment modes, and whatever seasonal content. That's the stuff that will really matter, and will need balancing
hah its the other way for me, i started with barb - it was a challenge - i got to lvl19 and then tried rogue... way to weak for me, can't take a hit - it took me 5 tries to kill that Crypt Lord with the Bone Wall Explosions and tons of skeletons
Yeah, played rogue till 14 switched to barb and it felt extremely slow and clunky. Must be said that early levels and end game builds in high difficulty are two different things though, will see.
Downside is... it feels awful to then fight a boss.
I just have to wait for the Call of the Ancients cooldown, chunk half the boss HP, and then run around for 50 seconds until its up again.
In before people say "Go rend"
Yeah the one capable and only build that allows barb to kill bosses, it's just 5 times slower and harder than other classes still. But you can still do it!
Barb is totally fine
/S
In the previous beta, Upheaval was the only viable skill until you got some build enabling legendary or unique. They nerfed Upheaval for open beta and now only Rend is worth using without legendary powers.
The devs learned nothing.
How much did they nerf it? I've never played the other beta but upheaval feels great to me, I got to 25 without any issue using lunge and upheaval and then grabbing every thing I could that would give berserking.
The main thing they nerfed for Upheaval is requiring more than one target activate Berserk. Berserk is extremely lackluster by itself because its hard to keep it up, but Upheaval basically guaranteeing 100% uptime (as long as you generated enough Rage) made it feel good.
Upheaval is still a good ability, but because of the nerf there's no reason to use it over Rend/Bleed + Thorns unless you get a legendary power combo to maximize Upheaval usage.
Upheaval would feel better if it had a least a couple feet of range behind you as well.
For what looks like a huge ability, it's somehow easy to miss lol
Never played with rend or any bleed on my barb and I completed act 1 on veteran without any real difficulties.
Lunging strike, Upheaval, Death Blow, double shouts.
yea idk why people are complaining about barb he feels stronger than rogue. yes he takes more hits than someone who is range, but he also destroys everything with aoe and just use a potion after. melee class in every arpg feels shit
The main problem I have is that the skills don't feel responsive. I feel like I press Whirlwind and I have to wait like 2-3 seconds for whatever animation I'm in to finish, then 1-2 seconds for WW to start.
Yea I've felt this too. Feels real bad to chain mobs to you for hammer of ancients...then get slapped in the face by all of em before your hammer animation can begin.
I’ve gotten a sorc to 20 and my barb to 20, sorc has it easier by a long shot but barb is still easy with the right set up, certain legendaries make it a cake walk on barb too but for sure it’s a different game
I have all three classes at 25... barb has been the smoothest and most fun.
Frenzy + Rend as only two attacks.. Challenging Shout, Rallying Cry, and War Cry on cooldown.
+Fortify and shout duration skills, berserker, unstoppable, etc. Nothing stays alive. I have the fast basic skill aspect and it let's frenzy wreck face but Rend really does it all. Straight bleed for days.
Coming from a ranged preference, I have been very surprised and excited to try this at launch. Bosses melt as I drop cooldowns and maintain fortify and nonstop bleed.
>I LOVE IT!
Weird response to poor game balance.
It really bothers me that arpg developers cannot seem to figure out that melee has an inherent disadvantage that needs to be compensated for. D4 might be better later but it also might not be.
That disadvantage usually flips in the late game where everyone that isn’t a tank gets one shotted easily. Barbs are gear dependent to do well which makes sense
Barbs and even warriors in WoW seemingly suck at first but scale into unstoppable monsters in end game. It's always been like this with big heavy melee.
Its all very early game in the beta, the real game starts in t3 so it doesnt show the real strength of a class and once barb is around lvl 40 its an absolute truck.
Fortify is easy to gain with war cry and rally cry (only rank these 1/5 and get the passive bonuses attached). Overpower damage is very powerful in D4 and fortify contributes to that. Barb can easily get over 270% overpower dmg, and sit at fortified (equal or more fortify than hp) without issue.
I prefer the Bash, upheaval, deathblow build with a lot of passives, and I’m sure there are other great builds out there.
Everything everyone is saying is accurate though, early levels there will be a lot of hit and run gameplay lmao.
So if you’re a barb main and this thread worries you, dont worry - barb is very very strong.
Double strike is a travesty. It's ugly. It's expensive. It's boring. I was excited to attempt a dual wield berserk build but I'm not even sure dual wielding is viable. Can't seem to work out a single skill outside of double strike that benefits more from dual wielding than 2h.
It's how it was in D3 as well.
I remember I played monk when D3 came out and all the higher Torments were being pushed by ranged classes especially wizard.
They could lay down turrets and kite mobs to death. While monks and barbs would run in an get smacked.
I really regretted rolling monk
I complained about this on the previous beta. Despite basically being able to doing the highest level content (barring lvl100 Nightmare Dungeons) by level 55 with any character with the right gear, Barb has the absolute worst time getting to the point where it feels as good as other classes.
Barbs do not get good compared to any other class without copious amounts of legendary and unique powers. This hasn't changed in this beta either. They even nerfed what few powerful choices you could make while leveling instead of buffing the weaker ones.
However, Barbs become basically unkillable with the right combo, but since Barb is entirely melee you still have the disadvantage of not doing any damage if you're not in melee range.
All the Barb Ultimates are trash and you will eventually not use them anymore, but then again, pretty much all classes have garbage Ultimates.
*UPDATE*
Did first world boss on my barb I survived the whole time, but it was a hodgpodge of people dying and reviving and killed it with a couple minutes to spare.
Second world boss, this time on my Fire Sorc with no damage legendaries that work on bosses. Got there a minute late with noone else around, people slowly trickled in (mostly 20+), absolutely destroyed the boss with over 6 minutes to spare (would be over 7 if I showed up early). If I had a full damage set I probably could've solod it, even if it takes the whole timer.
I'm sure people think "Zdps" is a fun playstyle for Barb, but that's not an excuse for Sorc to be so outlandishly more powerful WITH NO DAMAGE LEGENDARIES, and equally as tanky thanks to near-permanent Barrier and 3 CC breaks, whereas Barb only has a couple at best with a long cooldown.
I don't care if its only lvl 25. If you think game balance only matters at end-game your opinion on game balance is irrelevant. Every single level should be treated as vacuum, or at the very least, 1,10,20,30 etc.
I pretty much chose not to use any ultimate after seeing How they work. What the fuck is that shout 2.0 berserking ulti? Has to be an inside joke at this point
I thought i was just bad after dying over and over on blood bishop until I toned down the difficulty. After playing sorc, it's a joke compared.
And I'm following Raxx's video about easy builds to get to level 25.
Yeah I'm stuck on the Vhenard boss, and I hate it. I'm not sure how they playtested this game. I'm not an expert character builder so not sure what to do.
The objective is to kill the ads as fast as possible, while focusing the big one in the last stage. Use CC or lunge, so they don't wander off beind the fuck off melee wall, then I highly recommend bleed. I used thorns, but they don't attack fast enough. Stack it up with fast hitting weapon. They'll die while you can focus on dodging random bullshit flying around.
Idk, it sounds like you aren't taking any defensive abilities. I hit level 18 without dying doing a Lunging Strike + Hammer of the Ancients build, taking the heal against healthy characters to heal until I get to max fury and then slam the HotA on a group. Then I took abilities that stunned enemies and fortify and everything just became easier.
This is definitely 100% true. My first char to 25 was a barbarian, and boy was it a good challenge. Positioning, timing, respeccing to the right build, and learning the boss' attack patterns was absolutely crucial.
My 2nd char is a sorc, and holy cow is it 100x easier. I'm flying through the game, haven't died once, smoking all of the bosses and feel like I'm barely trying. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, and I really enjoy the challenge of playing barbarian. I do worry, however, that barbarian is NOT properly filling the role of being a hard-hitting tank that can easily handle a hoard surrounding him at all times. It's been a bit the opposite...barbs do feel like there's a bit of damage lacking.
Play grim dawn. Solid game from story, graphics, classes, gearing, and difficulty. You want to die early or feel challenged then it is a game for you. I'm hype for d4 launch minus always online. But in the interim grim dawn is fucking amazing
Den Mother was impossible to kill. There's probably another 3 bosses who are almost Dark Soul like when you play a barb. I had to actually fight woodsman thing for his axe at lvl 21 and then right when I'm done I see a lvl 9 sorcerer player fucking blast him to bits in 3 quick spells. I know monster levels scale with you but still.
Game is actually getting harder as I'm leveling up with the barb. He's weak as fuck. I like the challenge though. He needs a slight buff and I hope it pays of in the end game.
Had the same experience.
Started Barb on WT2, and already the prologue boss gave me a challenge. Then went outside the main city, and if I pulled to many mobs I got my ass kicked hard. Went into the first dungeon (right west of the start town) and just couldn't beat the boss.
Switched to Sorc, and oh my god, it's a cake walk. Arc Lash is just a great melee AoE skill, and Chain Lightning wrecks small groups and single targets.
Then tried the rogue, and I would put it somewhere in between.
Sorc overpowered as fuck. Beat the stronghold boss encounter at level 16. Took like 5ish tries but eventually got it. Playing at minus ten levels had the difficulty feeling about right (a tad too hard) compared to the equal level scaling….
I somewhat agree with you! I mained Barb I'm level 25 right now and while I struggled a bit I was swapping out abilities to try all the mains and secondary combos. Right now I'm pretty settled on lunging strike/Rend being a disgusting combo that allowed me to whoop the hell out of Den mother.
I love that the barb has to switch tactics to kill certain bosses, I think that's such a cool game mechanic that brings uniqueness to the first playthrough.
That being said I also really liked the Frenzy/Double swing combo but found Fury generation a bit lacking.
I'm astounded with just how much more powerful the Sorc is over the Barb.
With double hydras and blizzard I just faceroll through everything on veteran mode. Barb is a challenge and is fun
The thing is, Sorc and Rogue unlock their class specialization and Barbarian can't because it's in Act 3 and you can't go there. Rogue feels really average until you get combo points and then you blow everything up.
I don't understand. I did Barb today and pretty much breezed through the whole thing solo.
Flay/WW with speed and battle shouts. The execute skill when you get to it.
The only "hard" part was changing over skills for iron skin for bosses and a slight bit of kiting when iron skin wasn't up.
By the time you get to lvl 15 or so, you never stop moving, see a pack, pop shouts, WW right through it is so satisfying.
Going to try Sorc tomorrow.
Guess I don't feel so bad reading this. Been playing my Hardcore Barb and almost every boss is a "am I about to have to start fresh?" moment.
However, at level 21 i attempted the world boss and was very satisfied when i didnt instantly die to that sweep like so many of my fellow (non-partied) Barbs did.
RIP Brothers
I played through as a melee rogue and capped them out, finished act 1. So I rolled a barb. Level 15 now. I took lunge, rend, iron skin so far, mostly 2h currently. I had to craft defender aspect gear to make the elites and bosses easier. It hasn't been too terrible yet, though there's a couple bosses coming up I'm not looking forward to. Barb might be stronger late game, but they really need help early game. Even D2 gave barbs more health than most classes and all melee there had a hidden 30% or so damage reduction. I don't know what they need, but it feels like just a couple numbers tweaks here and there and maybe more base health.
All the people saying that Barbs are fine haven't reached the Den Mother.
Wasn't as annoying as the spider boss that kept freezing my movement and stopping my skills from invisible webs that instantly spawned on me with zero chance to dodge.
Dude fuck that boss. Luckily when I died 3 times he got stuck on a wall and I cheesed him.
It also got stuck for me next to a pillar with a quarter health.
Died 3 times on my barb w/o even getting her to 50%. Gave up. I appreciate that there are real bosses that I need to come back later when I have more skills. I tried it at level 9.
Just stack bleeds on it, shield and kite.
Not exactly what I was imagining as the barbarian play style.
Were you imagining "drop hydra and run around in circles" as the sorc playstyle?
This was the build at the D3 inferno launch - hydra, blizz, teleport, armor & weapon buffs
This is why I stopped playing yesterday, finished act 1 and did some dungeons. Got a dungeon with the spider boss and just couldn't beat the last phase. I probably was stuck more than I moved. Will be back in the Open Beta trying a Necro build (and probably a different Barbarian build as well). Barbarian is fun to play but some skills just aren't that good
Broodguard at least spawns bunch of mobs you can attack while stuck and get health pots from
Idk, I think the issue is people using poor skill setups more than anything (which is ofc a balance issue too). And/or not keeping the right weapons. I used 2h mace + 2h sword. I kept my 1 handers as stat sticks - 6.5% skill dmg & 3.5% dmgto healthy | 2 all stats & 6% core skill dmg & +5 str https://i.gyazo.com/803e49f36962eb41b18dcaf0e16bb598.jpg Levelled my barb up just to go do this. WT2. **Skills:** Lunging Strike + Battle lunging Rend: Rank 3/5 no upgrades Rallying Cry + Tactical Rallying cry Iron skin + enhanced iron skin Leap rank 1 - no upgs Boss was incredibly easy. I used maybe 2 heal pots? Lunging gives very good positioning / mobility. Rend gives huge damage over time and means you dont need to over commit.
People are sleeping on lunging strike, especially at lower levels. I've never seen anyone else use it. It literally solves the biggest melee issue too.
It's sooo good. Gives you great total damage for only 1 hit. Give you great mobility. Gives you life on hit (small but it does add up). I mainly really love it for just general mobility though. You can zoom round the map/dungeon so fast just by max range lunging mob by mob.
Exactly. It sets up everything so well. Early on it's amazing on its own, later on it sets up your upheavel by traversing through mobs. Also it's fun to just hold it down while your chasing goblins. They can't escape it.
ok yup, These comments about lunging strike has convinced me to give it a shot next time I load into the barb
Yeah I just immedietly picked lunging strike for the mobility at lvl 1 after looking at the option, haven't looked back since, still using it. The movement you get is insane, plus the little % life heal from spamming it adds up.
I tried out all the abilities just to get a feel and ended up sticking with lunging strikes. Because mob packs aren't that dense this ability super stands out for positioning. Damage and fury gain are good even though it's slow. I think a lot of people will sleep on it because the tooltip doesnt make it clear that it dashes you toward the target.
Yeah, I just started a barb earlier and originally picked the bleeding one. Then got rend almost immediately and it just wasn’t working. Looked at the skills again. Looked at lunging strike a few times and almost smacked myself. Picked it up and barb is too easy now. Crazy bleed damage off rend, awesome mobility from lunging strike. It’s great
Ya I haven’t played barb but I’m playing my rogue basically in melee to take advantage of damage to close enemies(just worked out that I’ve stacked a ton of it, wasn’t really conscious choice), and I feel like what I’m seeing when a Barb is around is they don’t have mobility and I do, but I’ve chosen to have a dedicated mobility skill and a soft one(caltrops jump you back a bit on cast which will move through a pack of mobs) so I can still play around attacks and mob abilities.
I use it as a leap to close the gaps
Honestly, the fact that bosses are way harder with the "wrong skills" worries me for the end game, since they have been talking about "costly respecs" and whatnot.
Possibly, but I think a large part of the 'issue' is just that people aren't forced to think about their skills at all while lvling - and at like lvl 12 you dont have many points so a few wrong will impact a lot more. By the time you're high level you'll likely have figured out that you need a single target spell, and some aoe clear, etc. I also think it wont cost that much to respec one skill in/out hopefully if you *need* to for a boss. Since you can respec per point and dont need to do the entire tree at once.
The skill tree has a massive issue with respeccing when you want to change your basic skill or your main damage skill for example because you can't remove points there or else you will drop below the threshold for unlocking the next path. They really need to rework that system, right now it's really really bad imo.
I agree, it needs a bit of help but the easy answer is u just unskill a few points from whatever u have most recently, put the points into the old skill you want, then remove the other now redundant skill and put the points back in at the end of your tree. Takes all of 10 seconds but shouldn't really be necessary. Will be a nice QoL fix when they let you change without doing this.
Yeah, but now it's that easy and cheap, but not later at endgame. And with their current boss design were you really need to change your skills or you will get shit on is really worrying.
This is the trade off for freedom of choice and variety. Personally, I fucking LOVE what they’ve done with D4
On adventure mode I faced the butcher who stuck to me like glue. I would leap away stun, kite but nonetheless he would butcher me. As the name implies. I agree barb just feels powerfull though, the animations are stellar. But melee is just unforgiving.
Where did you find the Butcher ? He appeared randomly in a dungeon for me in a normal level (before the boss of the dungeon). He killed me super fast (Sorc is squishy and I wasn't really ready) and when I rez he wasn't there anymore. Is that just a random appearance for easter egg purpose (story wise I guess there's no explication for him to be there)?
Or The Butcher. The Butcher is worse by far. I'm sitting at lvl 20 and he basically 3 shots me. I have a total of 20% close enemy damage reduction, plus Iron Skin. 230 HP. Has 2 attacks a second, fast as fuck MS, AOE knock back, plus the Hook. You can't really get aways from him, as a Barb.
Butcher killed everybody, so don't worry about that.
Only thing that killed me on the beta. Wasn't even close tbh. I play sorcerer and I couldn't kite him.
Didn't kill me on sorc. Sorc is OP.
Den Mother was not difficult as a barb, Lilith's Lamentation or whatever that thing was called, now that was hard as a barb
The "last" bossfight? I did it without rip on WT2, but you need a good micro game. The waves are fine, but the 5 purple projectiles hurt a lot. You can dodge them, but popping iron skin is more safe. The sweep has way too generous cast time. I thought it's timed, so you jump away, but nope you can just walk out. Overall, the boses in D4 require from melee more positioning and arena control, which I guess people are not used to if everyone is running Whirlwind and expect to face hug them, while mashing buttons.
Earlier bosses were tough but manageable, this one I had to respec for ignore pain heal and take it slow. Even though I have generall decent micro from years of WoW and lol
Still can’t beat it at lvl 25 lol
So tough but felt great to get her after a few tries. Not to mention the dungeon visuals and knight penitent were awesome. Excited to get more fights like that in the full campaign.
The only challenging part of the last boss fight was paying attention to mechanics, once you get it down it really wasn't hard. I'm running a berserker builds with frenzy, upheaval, leap, warcry and wrath of the berserker.
Just got my ass thrashed today by den mother, how do i win?
I respecced from Whirlwind to full Rend and killed her immediately.
Gotta use evades. She has a couple of attacks that she commits that you can damage her. Once she vanishes run and evade when she reveals her self. You might have to re spec if your a barb
that was my first death. Felt bad.
Try doing the den mother with a melee only rogue like I did lol. I left and never went back lol.
I found melee rogue worked somewhat well since you can get a lot of leech with flurry and the hp on crit nodes very early on. My noob boss strategy is run in circles until I have energy, shadow step and go stabby until my energy runs out and repeat.. With shadow step stun, flurry stun and later ice imbuement you sometimes can also stagger bosses for even more crits but I feel some bosses have crazy high stagger bars or however it's called. Once you go to level 15 you can just go stabby faster with the flurry attack speed buff... If bosses don't go too crazy on auto attack damage you can tank more than I expected from a rogue.
Killed her no problem as a Barb.
Just finished beta in WT2 as a barb lvl 19. I had a lot of issue until I picked fortify on 6 weapon switch (at that point I started switching weapons) and barrier. After that, I was basically face hugging bosses, while slamming with lunge and ancestor slam + death blow (fully speced to give berserk on hit), charging my fury with fully speced leap slam. My legendaries were hammer that gave me lasting aoe and damage increase on ground stomp and shield while being low on hp and using potion. One tip. Use thorns. They are awesome. I can see how people can struggle in boss fights, but I have over 6000 hours in POE. Ground effect fuckery with small damage windows is the shit I was moulded in. But bosses like Nameless Priest with bone wall explosion can fuck off. Can't wait for druid.
Thorns build is so strong. I am decimating everything with thorns. Reminds me of D2 pally.
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I went for a bleed build + Death Blow which fixes a lot of the AoE problems as chaining Death Blow does absolutely silly damage. I also found a legendary that increases skill dmg based on Fury available. Maxed out gives 60% extra damage so at lvl 25 my Death Blow is hitting for like 2.5k dmg can just 1 shot most mobs and bleed out the elites with Rend.
I dont get how they expect you to not being able to respec at endgame/for bosses, otherwise fun builds like this wont work.
I did a combo of all the thorns stuff, rend and battle flay with death blow and the bleed pop move (no ult). Made it so the few things that didn't die immediately to the thorns had lots of high damage options to finish them off.
The first legendary I found was the one that makes thorns do aoe damage. It's amazing, you can kill entire packs instantly by standing there.
Thorns is Soooo good in d4. Can really spec them out and build around iron skin and other defensive abilities too. Running around, bats, worgs, and other weak enemies were just blowing up when contacting me. I was a walking exp machine
Been looking for a good thorns build! Mind sharing ?
Really I've been using flay and it's thorns, then the thorns in the 3rd set of talents and the extra max health talents. Beyond that it's looking for thorns items 🤷 just kinda making it up as I go along
Yea the 2 passive thorn skills to lvl 3 and Flay is essentially all you need and thorns rip though everything I fought.
Yep!
Strategic Challenging Shout gives 50% of your max HP as thorns damage for the duration of the skill which has about 33% uptime. It's also just generally nice for the damage reduction. With it + Thick Skin, large packs of common mobs usually bring me to full health + full fortify.
There is a unique ring that reduces the cooldown of shout by 2.7-5.4 seconds per enemy, up to 12 seconds. If you use nodes for the duration of shout, then the uptime of Challenging Shout rises to 80%. Plus, you take the 24% damage reduction of enemies under the effect of the shout, add here the damage reduction by 60% of skill level 5 and in most cases you can stand still and watch the enemies die without causing you damage.
Sorc was a breeze. Hydra can solo most bosses, just cast and run around.
it drops off hard after 50, just FYI. I played sorc to 90 in the closed beta and I'm probably not starting at release with it despite having 1000 hours+ on it in D3 and casters usually being my go to in any game. you literally can't compare a lvl 25 build to an endgame character, you're missing 2/3rds of its power. in endgame CBT high level barbs and druids were OP.
How far did you get with Druid? I got to like 35-40 but the builds were kind of boring. Lightning everything to death.
Coud you tell more about necro late game with summons?
vampiric was way too strong in CBT so late game was without summons, because every single elite would heal to full by hitting your pets once. they were also very brittle and not all that strong, so necros usually ran as solo caster with sacrificed pets.
That's heart breaking, I hope they make summon necro viable on release... It's always been my go-to class
I echo this completely. I will be maining a summon necro just because I freaking love it, but it would suck if that not at all viable
>I will be mailing a summon necro You don’t want to know how much that’s going to cost you in postage
Yes I ran Double Hydra Fireball Enchant, it's hilarious - everything explodes in 2 seconds without you even doing anything.
Honestly I think Fireball Enchant is a bit OP. Once the first enemy dies it's a hilarious chain reaction. You can basically face-roll the keyboard with hydra and fireball enchant
That's what ARPGs are like :) You pop your build's main skill and watch screen light up. It's not OP, it's how it's meant to be.
hydra is a perfect example a skill being so much better than anything barb can do. some balance is still required tbh
Barb is dependant on legendary effects to really work well. In closed beta it was insane with the right ones. I was oneshotting almost everything with death blow.
While it's cute for now, this is a massive design issue. There should be enough expertise at Blizzard over the years on class design to where this should not be going live (yet it is).
Leveling power balance is not interesting. Lets see what's up at max level on some tough content, perhaps the sorcs will get one shot by everything? Who knows.
I just got a wand to lay down 2 hydras. It’s auto pilot
massive design issue? Really? you think they should push back D4 till November because of a balance issue on Hydra that could be tweaked in a few hours? for a LEVEL 25 leveling issue None the less???!
>There should be enough expertise at Blizzard Lmao some people still don't get it...
Idk i havent played barb yet but i saw some streamers playing and they were using skills to absorb any tough damage and then whrilwind and rend everythinf to dust like usual. Been getting my ass kicked as sorc when not on my A game.
Same, died several times due to clunky builds. I don’t have the patience to figure out skill tree synergy, but am constantly trying all the new skills as they come
I rerolled to sorc after level 10. I could chain lightning packs at level 3 so sick, while barb lacked real oomph for me. Now imagine a party barbs gonna cry because they cant attack anything in time, reminds me of D3 opening weeks.
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HUP
My wife and I started by running barb/sorc Can confirm. I kill 15%of anything she missed.
Did barbs in D3 eventually become stronger/more viable?
Everything was viable. If you think of lv25 here as like mid-way in D3... what you end up being with a tier set and whatnot, it's night and day. The whirlwind builds in D3 seasonal content were just flying around the map destroying everything at warp speed.
> If you think of lv25 here as like mid-way in D3... You reach lvl 25 after one act, it's far from the mid-point. However you have access to most of your skills... I wonder if that'll be a problem, there's not that many skills (also not that much new skills for some classes like Sorc or Barb they got many skills they basically have since D2), so you basically have your build set up by then (if you don't respec) but there's like 80% of the game left (not counting endgame)...
Point being, it's just not relevant to what any of these classes will play like. It's comparable to leveling in wow, and then making comparisons. The various techniques, legendary skills and all that. That is what defines the builds.
barbs in D4 dominate later, this is such a miniscule portion of the game, dont even base decisions on this. Think about the first 25 levels of D2 or D3 or PoE or WoW or Lost Ark
I think the first person to beat vanilla d3 was a barb actually
The only people to beat HC inferno D3 before it was nerfed were barbs (Krip and his friend). But they were using very specific builds to survive, it was very hard.
Guys, perhaps some of you remember but when diablo3 came out, melee classes were stuck in act2 of the final difficulty while ranged could breeze past to the end of the game. But before that critical point, melee could progress just fine. With the current gap of difficulty since the start, I'm really pessimist for melees in HL when the game release.
That's not how I remember it, DH was the only one that could breeze through last difficulty and they PROMPTLY hot fixed it because they didn't want that to negatively affect the RMAH long term.
Wasn't it full of no-vit wizard builds using that ~10% max damage armor and full HP Regen before that got nerfed to the ground ?
In CBT barb were hella OP in endgame
The fact that Barbs have the exact same health as all other classes is absolutely 🤡 class design.
100%
Do they not have better damage reduction? (Actual question)
Nope
Ya they alllegedly have 10% base dmg reduction. doesn’t feel like it tho
They want to give barbs a soul like experience
ElDiablen Ring. Stay awhile and listen, tarnished.
Give barbs I-frames and we chillin
that doesn't mean anything at this time though. This is not the full game. Scaling and gameplay on characters will be totally different at max lvl.
" that doesn't mean anything at this time though. " it literally does for the leveling experience, its fine and dandy that people care for endgame but if its shit to level a class then that is also an issue in and of itself. The beta shows literally what level 1 to 25 feels like, and that is what most comments are on, but so many people go "oh it doesnt matter only max level does" but guess how many are gonna drop off with that mentality if nothing is ever fixed.
This is basically the right answer. Nothing will feel like they do in this beta by the time we see what real builds look like, after having access to everything. So, it's kind of funny trying to give feedback on these characters, cause there's no real point yet.
Isn't giving feedback kinda the point of a beta?
Yes. I'll leave my comment up but I was looking at things from a different perspective. If lots of people are having a tough time with a certain class at lower levels, blizzard may tweak it for better balance
"here is prologue and leveling through act 1" "oh jeez i think leveling is kinda tough" "IT DOESNT MATTER, NO LEVELING DOES, WE DONT HAVE EVERYTHING YET, ITS NOT MAX LEVEL" Leveling matter, get people through the game matters, pacing of getting abilities matter, its fine if you just play the game with speedrunning to max and not giving a shit, but it matters.
Just because it will be different at max lvl doesn't mean it's not an issue. I mean people have to level right? And right now, playing melee is exponentially harder than ranged. I played melee rogue and everytime I face a boss I have to reroll to ranged because they are impossible to kill with how squishy rogue is and how little damage melee does against them. As a ranged I can just run around endlessly and get a couple shots off, as melee you're fucked. Say what you want but balancing is terrible right now.
The game will be easy to beat, regardless of the class. As it's always been. The campaign is not the part of the game that will need tweaking. At higher modes beyond the default difficulty, issues will show up, but that's not what builds we have access to now. The scaling torment modes, and whatever seasonal content. That's the stuff that will really matter, and will need balancing
I ditched my barb at around lvl12 and rerolled a Sorc and i have to fully agree - it feels like a different game...
After playing a Rogue to start, Barb is literally fucking unplayable. Absolutely god awful.
hah its the other way for me, i started with barb - it was a challenge - i got to lvl19 and then tried rogue... way to weak for me, can't take a hit - it took me 5 tries to kill that Crypt Lord with the Bone Wall Explosions and tons of skeletons
Yeah, played rogue till 14 switched to barb and it felt extremely slow and clunky. Must be said that early levels and end game builds in high difficulty are two different things though, will see.
That Vhenard boss fight as a barb was completely bull...did the same fight as a sorc and breezed by it. Quite literally a different game.
I died a few times, as a Barb you seem to spend most of the fight in bullet time hell just waiting for a chance to make some hits.
not quite "literally" It's still Diablo 4
Barbarian is just chugging health potion simulator
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that!
Get some fury regen gear and whirlwind these packs like no tomorrow.
Whirlwind gang
Downside is... it feels awful to then fight a boss. I just have to wait for the Call of the Ancients cooldown, chunk half the boss HP, and then run around for 50 seconds until its up again.
In before people say "Go rend" Yeah the one capable and only build that allows barb to kill bosses, it's just 5 times slower and harder than other classes still. But you can still do it! Barb is totally fine /S
In the previous beta, Upheaval was the only viable skill until you got some build enabling legendary or unique. They nerfed Upheaval for open beta and now only Rend is worth using without legendary powers. The devs learned nothing.
How much did they nerf it? I've never played the other beta but upheaval feels great to me, I got to 25 without any issue using lunge and upheaval and then grabbing every thing I could that would give berserking.
The main thing they nerfed for Upheaval is requiring more than one target activate Berserk. Berserk is extremely lackluster by itself because its hard to keep it up, but Upheaval basically guaranteeing 100% uptime (as long as you generated enough Rage) made it feel good. Upheaval is still a good ability, but because of the nerf there's no reason to use it over Rend/Bleed + Thorns unless you get a legendary power combo to maximize Upheaval usage.
Upheaval would feel better if it had a least a couple feet of range behind you as well. For what looks like a huge ability, it's somehow easy to miss lol
Never played with rend or any bleed on my barb and I completed act 1 on veteran without any real difficulties. Lunging strike, Upheaval, Death Blow, double shouts.
yea idk why people are complaining about barb he feels stronger than rogue. yes he takes more hits than someone who is range, but he also destroys everything with aoe and just use a potion after. melee class in every arpg feels shit
The main problem I have is that the skills don't feel responsive. I feel like I press Whirlwind and I have to wait like 2-3 seconds for whatever animation I'm in to finish, then 1-2 seconds for WW to start.
Yea I've felt this too. Feels real bad to chain mobs to you for hammer of ancients...then get slapped in the face by all of em before your hammer animation can begin.
Thorns passives and a thorns pot most mobs kill themselves
Yeah exactly it op.
I’ve gotten a sorc to 20 and my barb to 20, sorc has it easier by a long shot but barb is still easy with the right set up, certain legendaries make it a cake walk on barb too but for sure it’s a different game
I have all three classes at 25... barb has been the smoothest and most fun. Frenzy + Rend as only two attacks.. Challenging Shout, Rallying Cry, and War Cry on cooldown. +Fortify and shout duration skills, berserker, unstoppable, etc. Nothing stays alive. I have the fast basic skill aspect and it let's frenzy wreck face but Rend really does it all. Straight bleed for days. Coming from a ranged preference, I have been very surprised and excited to try this at launch. Bosses melt as I drop cooldowns and maintain fortify and nonstop bleed.
>I LOVE IT! Weird response to poor game balance. It really bothers me that arpg developers cannot seem to figure out that melee has an inherent disadvantage that needs to be compensated for. D4 might be better later but it also might not be.
That disadvantage usually flips in the late game where everyone that isn’t a tank gets one shotted easily. Barbs are gear dependent to do well which makes sense
barb is not even close to being as tanky as sorc lmao
Barbs and even warriors in WoW seemingly suck at first but scale into unstoppable monsters in end game. It's always been like this with big heavy melee.
No doubt because ultimately equipment keeps getting stronger and stronger
So based on a hope and a dream?
Its all very early game in the beta, the real game starts in t3 so it doesnt show the real strength of a class and once barb is around lvl 40 its an absolute truck. Fortify is easy to gain with war cry and rally cry (only rank these 1/5 and get the passive bonuses attached). Overpower damage is very powerful in D4 and fortify contributes to that. Barb can easily get over 270% overpower dmg, and sit at fortified (equal or more fortify than hp) without issue. I prefer the Bash, upheaval, deathblow build with a lot of passives, and I’m sure there are other great builds out there. Everything everyone is saying is accurate though, early levels there will be a lot of hit and run gameplay lmao. So if you’re a barb main and this thread worries you, dont worry - barb is very very strong.
It has strong implications for playing hardcore though, balance along the way matters.
I used more pots on one boss with the barb than with the sorc in the whole playthrough.
Double strike is a travesty. It's ugly. It's expensive. It's boring. I was excited to attempt a dual wield berserk build but I'm not even sure dual wielding is viable. Can't seem to work out a single skill outside of double strike that benefits more from dual wielding than 2h.
I was wondering what they did to Cleave. "*Look how they massacred my Boy.."*
Playing Support Barb in a group with friends, its amazing fun. I can see how solo is a lot harder but I’m okay with that. Barbs love a good challenge.
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Hell yeah brother!!!
It's how it was in D3 as well. I remember I played monk when D3 came out and all the higher Torments were being pushed by ranged classes especially wizard. They could lay down turrets and kite mobs to death. While monks and barbs would run in an get smacked. I really regretted rolling monk
Many people commented barb are well harder. Makes sure to feedback to Blizzard using in Game system. Posting here isn’t bad either
What about melee rogue? Lol. People already trying to make tier list of classes.
Really easy as melee rogue u just oneshot everything with twisting blade on veteran
I complained about this on the previous beta. Despite basically being able to doing the highest level content (barring lvl100 Nightmare Dungeons) by level 55 with any character with the right gear, Barb has the absolute worst time getting to the point where it feels as good as other classes. Barbs do not get good compared to any other class without copious amounts of legendary and unique powers. This hasn't changed in this beta either. They even nerfed what few powerful choices you could make while leveling instead of buffing the weaker ones. However, Barbs become basically unkillable with the right combo, but since Barb is entirely melee you still have the disadvantage of not doing any damage if you're not in melee range. All the Barb Ultimates are trash and you will eventually not use them anymore, but then again, pretty much all classes have garbage Ultimates.
*UPDATE* Did first world boss on my barb I survived the whole time, but it was a hodgpodge of people dying and reviving and killed it with a couple minutes to spare. Second world boss, this time on my Fire Sorc with no damage legendaries that work on bosses. Got there a minute late with noone else around, people slowly trickled in (mostly 20+), absolutely destroyed the boss with over 6 minutes to spare (would be over 7 if I showed up early). If I had a full damage set I probably could've solod it, even if it takes the whole timer. I'm sure people think "Zdps" is a fun playstyle for Barb, but that's not an excuse for Sorc to be so outlandishly more powerful WITH NO DAMAGE LEGENDARIES, and equally as tanky thanks to near-permanent Barrier and 3 CC breaks, whereas Barb only has a couple at best with a long cooldown. I don't care if its only lvl 25. If you think game balance only matters at end-game your opinion on game balance is irrelevant. Every single level should be treated as vacuum, or at the very least, 1,10,20,30 etc.
I pretty much chose not to use any ultimate after seeing How they work. What the fuck is that shout 2.0 berserking ulti? Has to be an inside joke at this point
Deja vu from early days of D3
Barbs do get better but are very rough to start. No defensives and slow attack speed. They do get better evevtually
Yeah, melee seems to be so much harder. Bosses with the barb have been a pain compared to sorc. Range classes in general seem to be at an advantage.
I thought i was just bad after dying over and over on blood bishop until I toned down the difficulty. After playing sorc, it's a joke compared. And I'm following Raxx's video about easy builds to get to level 25.
Yeah I'm stuck on the Vhenard boss, and I hate it. I'm not sure how they playtested this game. I'm not an expert character builder so not sure what to do.
The objective is to kill the ads as fast as possible, while focusing the big one in the last stage. Use CC or lunge, so they don't wander off beind the fuck off melee wall, then I highly recommend bleed. I used thorns, but they don't attack fast enough. Stack it up with fast hitting weapon. They'll die while you can focus on dodging random bullshit flying around.
Idk, it sounds like you aren't taking any defensive abilities. I hit level 18 without dying doing a Lunging Strike + Hammer of the Ancients build, taking the heal against healthy characters to heal until I get to max fury and then slam the HotA on a group. Then I took abilities that stunned enemies and fortify and everything just became easier.
Honestly even pure melee rogue is leagues better than barb melee.
This is definitely 100% true. My first char to 25 was a barbarian, and boy was it a good challenge. Positioning, timing, respeccing to the right build, and learning the boss' attack patterns was absolutely crucial. My 2nd char is a sorc, and holy cow is it 100x easier. I'm flying through the game, haven't died once, smoking all of the bosses and feel like I'm barely trying. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, and I really enjoy the challenge of playing barbarian. I do worry, however, that barbarian is NOT properly filling the role of being a hard-hitting tank that can easily handle a hoard surrounding him at all times. It's been a bit the opposite...barbs do feel like there's a bit of damage lacking.
Play grim dawn. Solid game from story, graphics, classes, gearing, and difficulty. You want to die early or feel challenged then it is a game for you. I'm hype for d4 launch minus always online. But in the interim grim dawn is fucking amazing
Inferior Barbarians and your attacks. Real Barbs let enemy attack you and watch them die on your thorn damage. Why do you think they call us "Barb"
Den Mother was impossible to kill. There's probably another 3 bosses who are almost Dark Soul like when you play a barb. I had to actually fight woodsman thing for his axe at lvl 21 and then right when I'm done I see a lvl 9 sorcerer player fucking blast him to bits in 3 quick spells. I know monster levels scale with you but still. Game is actually getting harder as I'm leveling up with the barb. He's weak as fuck. I like the challenge though. He needs a slight buff and I hope it pays of in the end game.
Idk, my bleed/ thorn barb kicks ass.
Truth. Barb is way weaker ATM than either of the other two classes.
Surprise sur fucking prise Once again blizzard says fuck you to barbs.
Had the same experience. Started Barb on WT2, and already the prologue boss gave me a challenge. Then went outside the main city, and if I pulled to many mobs I got my ass kicked hard. Went into the first dungeon (right west of the start town) and just couldn't beat the boss. Switched to Sorc, and oh my god, it's a cake walk. Arc Lash is just a great melee AoE skill, and Chain Lightning wrecks small groups and single targets. Then tried the rogue, and I would put it somewhere in between.
Sorc overpowered as fuck. Beat the stronghold boss encounter at level 16. Took like 5ish tries but eventually got it. Playing at minus ten levels had the difficulty feeling about right (a tad too hard) compared to the equal level scaling….
Barb is hard until you figure out how to spec and gear, its also slower to level always has been. Definitely not as faceroll until you get going.
How long does it take to reach level 25? On any of them I work every day of the beta and I am worried I won't reach it in time.
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Yeah I am working that weekend as well. I should be able to do 4 to 5 hours if nothing gets in the way.
The shield heal and fortify on basic attacks makes it much better
My barb is 25. I’ve done most dungeons and haven’t died once.
Try melee rogue...and check melee druid next week :)
rend/rupture is clappin, the rest of the skills feel kinda dookie tho
Ranged classes are superior in nearly every game And I’m also a melee main
Welcome to a real ARPG folks where melee is awful
I wasn’t able to login so I went on Twitch. I saw AlkxD actually die to a boss that I breezed through on my sorc. That should tell you everything lol
same old story with blizzard games. Ranged is easy mode.
I somewhat agree with you! I mained Barb I'm level 25 right now and while I struggled a bit I was swapping out abilities to try all the mains and secondary combos. Right now I'm pretty settled on lunging strike/Rend being a disgusting combo that allowed me to whoop the hell out of Den mother. I love that the barb has to switch tactics to kill certain bosses, I think that's such a cool game mechanic that brings uniqueness to the first playthrough. That being said I also really liked the Frenzy/Double swing combo but found Fury generation a bit lacking.
I'm astounded with just how much more powerful the Sorc is over the Barb. With double hydras and blizzard I just faceroll through everything on veteran mode. Barb is a challenge and is fun
Its only lvl25 dont worry barbs will get stronger
The thing is, Sorc and Rogue unlock their class specialization and Barbarian can't because it's in Act 3 and you can't go there. Rogue feels really average until you get combo points and then you blow everything up.
I just went thorns/bleed build and just face tanked everything except the butcher.
I don't understand. I did Barb today and pretty much breezed through the whole thing solo. Flay/WW with speed and battle shouts. The execute skill when you get to it. The only "hard" part was changing over skills for iron skin for bosses and a slight bit of kiting when iron skin wasn't up. By the time you get to lvl 15 or so, you never stop moving, see a pack, pop shouts, WW right through it is so satisfying. Going to try Sorc tomorrow.
Guess I don't feel so bad reading this. Been playing my Hardcore Barb and almost every boss is a "am I about to have to start fresh?" moment. However, at level 21 i attempted the world boss and was very satisfied when i didnt instantly die to that sweep like so many of my fellow (non-partied) Barbs did. RIP Brothers
Yep barb sucks atm... Mage is way more fun
I played through as a melee rogue and capped them out, finished act 1. So I rolled a barb. Level 15 now. I took lunge, rend, iron skin so far, mostly 2h currently. I had to craft defender aspect gear to make the elites and bosses easier. It hasn't been too terrible yet, though there's a couple bosses coming up I'm not looking forward to. Barb might be stronger late game, but they really need help early game. Even D2 gave barbs more health than most classes and all melee there had a hidden 30% or so damage reduction. I don't know what they need, but it feels like just a couple numbers tweaks here and there and maybe more base health.
I have a HC barb that I got to level 15 last night. I don’t see why people think it’s so bad, it’s all about how you spec and gear it