Let's talk about Terror Zones and the Barbarian

First of all, howdy folks! I know it's been a hot minute since I last posted here! I stepped away from D2R for a while due to life stuff but I'm back and ready for Ladder Season 2.

While I haven't looked over a list of all changes coming to patch 2.5,

Terror Zones did grab my attention. Specifically, for Barbarians and how it will affect them. So, based on what I understand about how

Terror Zones scale monster damage, life, and defense, I'd like to talk about my thoughts on this (in regard to Barbarians).

A programmer friend of mine created a Calculator that scales your characters attack rating vs the monster level of

Terror Zones and then calculates your character's chance to hit based on that. As it turns out... Barbarians are going to struggle at higher

Terror Zone levels quite a bit.

Since most Barbarian builds are melee focused, with the exception of a Singer, a majority of them will struggle to land hits on high level monsters in

Terror Zones. Using my friend's calculator, we estimated that in order for a Barbarian to hit more than 80% of the time against these high-level monsters, he would need to have over 16K attack rating. On average, most Barbarian builds have around 8-12K, unless you're using Angelic's pieces. This then becomes an issue later on, and most end game Barbarian builds don't really make use of Angelic's. You see where I'm going with this right? Caster classes, and elemental focused builds will have no problem clearing these

Terror Zones, but Barbarians are stuck as they usually are when it comes to things like this.

Now you might be wondering, is there a way around this? Possibly...

There IS one Barb build that could succeed in this instance, the Thrower (either Phys or Elemental). Though, he would strictly need to make use of the Act 1 Rogue as his merc due to

Inner Sight. Since

Inner Sight reduces monster defense substantially at higher levels, and this would make his chance to hit high level

Terror zone monsters easier, but as of right now, it's unsure by how much. The next thing he would need is something that reduces target defense.

While I like the idea of

Terror zones, I feel like my favorite class is being shafted once again simply due to his own mechanics. Melee shouldn't be punished like this; it should be on par with everything else. Maybe someday... right?

Below are images detailing what I spoke about above using the Fetish4 as an example with the player Lvl being 90. The reason for these choices are: The average player will stop leveling their character around 90-92, so that's why we chose this. Fetish4 was picked due to its average defense level, to give a better comparison.

Hit chance has always been a matter of lvling and gearing. That's not changing. If you introduce a self-imposed limit of "I'll stop lvling at 90, despite wanting to go after higher mobs", that's not a balance issue, that's a self-made problem.

You have a plethora of items to help specifically with that, some of which coincidentally are also BiS for many other reasons (e.g. Grief for ITD on normals and -25% def on others).

Mind you, I'm not saying barbarians are fine and balanced. Tbh, far from it if you compare them to many (MANY) other builds. But hit/miss chance specifically has always been a defining characteristic of the "physical attacker gameplay" (excluding the obligatory exceptions like

Smite). You can gear/stat for it to improve your hit chance (sometimes at the cost of raw dmg or life or ...) or you can prioritize other things and risk missing 15-20% of the time. That in and by itself is not a problem and has been a core part of the design since forever. Equally, not immediately capping your hit chance no questions asked against mobs higher than you while not giving up anything to gear for AR is certainly also not a problem but the natural outcome of said design.

Still having overall comparable performance (at least at the thing that your class/build is supposed to be good at) to other builds at the same gear and char lvl however...that's the real problem. That's not a matter of "make us always hit!", that's a matter of "balance out miss chance and monster block chance with dmg, speed, survivability and utility". Solving that would require blizz to actually bother with proper balancing though and to hence even establish a target baseline to then balance all builds around. So...wouldn't hold my breath.

Either way, it certainly isn't a matter of "give 'em a sunder charm so they can do 5% dmg and pretend that's helpful!".

I'm sort of with you but I still prefer playing barb to many other classes so I'm not too bothered. I find barbs very versatile, which I like, even if their clear speed is not the highest.

You can also use the act 5 2-hand merc. Or but a skill point into

Battle Cry yourself.
But your point, OP, is still valid. Barb farming won't be as efficient as with other class.

Semi-related:
Of all 7 chars, barb is the only one for whom I simply cannot figure out a clear winning build.

All others have at least one build that just works (relative to the other builds for that class) and is actually entertaining to play.

Barb, no matter what, either performs way too sub-par or is clunky af (or more commonly both). Just can't figure out what to do with him.

Note: Referring to performance-builds here, not farming builds. Trav zerking works fine, sure and horking is hard to mess up. But beyond that..something for actual entertaining P8 clearing..just can't get him up to speed.

Buddy I’m just finishing leveling up my ssf throwing barb, level 73 and doing 5k damage! 2 more levels and I can use my torch. It’s one of my fav builds for actually playing the game. I’m hoping once he gets up to 90+ he’ll be able to do some decent farming too. Otherwise I’ll respec him to my summoner barb and have even more fun (but won’t get much loot from it)

Wow and I just found a

Lo rune in

The Arcane Sanctuary from a White ghoul!!!

Level 75, players 3

That’s my first time finding a

Lo, Fun!

what the hell is a summoner barb? couldnt find on google

it's a weird abomination where you run around pretending to be a druid and a necro at the same time

scnr ^^;;

forums/presenting-the-summoner-barb-t1062172.html

Crispin isn’t wrong, haha

But yea the original poster I think has a point, if you were soloing a

Terror zone as a melee char you might need to switch to a

Blessed Aim merc. But if your doing it in a party I think there will always be a spot for a tank. Most barb builds can achieve 3k+ life fairly easily

Nate wrote: 2 years ago

forums/presenting-the-summoner-barb-t1062172.html

hehhe LOL that's hillarious..
wow..

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Semi-related:
Of all 7 chars, barb is the only one for whom I simply cannot figure out a clear winning build.

All others have at least one build that just works (relative to the other builds for that class) and is actually entertaining to play.

Barb, no matter what, either performs way too sub-par or is clunky af (or more commonly both). Just can't figure out what to do with him.

Note: Referring to performance-builds here, not farming builds. Trav zerking works fine, sure and horking is hard to mess up. But beyond that..something for actual entertaining P8 clearing..just can't get him up to speed.

Pretty sure this mostly got solved last ladder by a few of the top Barbs. General consensus when ladder starting is to

Leap/BO for a group. I got through day 1 with a trap sin and fire druid powering us through norm/nm/hell with me just jumping around like an idiot. Slamming points into

Find Item during the run and horking EVERYTHING with every last drop of MF you can get is a quick way to get a ton of gold.

In terms of transitioning to playing for yourself there are 2 options untwinked IMO: Pitzerker or Nihl Conc runner. Pit zerker is just freaking efficient at the cost of 2

Fal runes for unbending wills early. Slam pits on repeat until you find something with

Find Item mf hork on swap. Nihl Conc runner is more grindy but faster runs and VERY cost efficient start of ladder due to Dkeys always costing more the first 1-2 months. Farm dkeys and flip them for whatever trade ups you can get.

Also, the second you find a

Wolfhowl, I argue the new Wolfbarbs are one of the best classes in the game. Was my ladder starter last season focusing on trading for that immediately then using him for VERY cheap and safe uber clears. Uppd cracked rib cracker, durress, goblins,

Wolfhowl, angelics and a

Raven and he was good to start cranking out gear. Managed to flip for an EbotdAS within 48 hours and then the rest was ezpz.

Once you get to p8, you won't have the same pure mob clear as a lot of toons, but you also will literally never die, run 100 mph and have better boss sniping than almost any other toon. You can also then swap to hork on flip.

Well, in this game I'd argue that every build should 'literally never die', unless you're still running around with random day 1 gear.

I was more talking about true end-game, when you're done farming for stuff and just want a build to play for fun. Barb's the only char I simply can't figure that out for.

Frenzy would be a solid option, if the controls for it weren't so ungodly bad and clunky, making it rather unbearable to actually play (imo).

Wolfhowl I haven't really tried yet but that's mainly because to me, it kind of defeats the purpose of a barb. If I wanna be a wolf, I might as well go druid.

What about Beast & Delirium on a barb?

My level 92

Frenzy barb feels pretty solid in

Terror Zones.
Very simple to play, just put

Frenzy on a quick cast button and you can just attack move.
Weapons: Either Death

Colossus Sword or Breath of the Dying in

Colossus Blade in left slot, Grief

Phase Blade in right slot.

Verband wrote: 2 years ago

Very simple to play, just put

Frenzy on a quick cast button and you can just attack move.

Does that actually reliably work for you in terms of attack moving?
For me, attack controls in general are completely botched, sometimes locking on to targets, other times dropping targets, and other times picking random targets near the cursor for no real Rhyme or reason (only Pattern I found was that if it doesn't lock any targets, toggling items on and off and on again makes it lock until the next zone change). It's annoying enough on any melee build but

Frenzy especially is honestly just unplayable stupid with that random inconsistent behavior.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Verband wrote: 2 years ago

Very simple to play, just put

Frenzy on a quick cast button and you can just attack move.

Does that actually reliably work for you in terms of attack moving?
For me, attack controls in general are completely botched, sometimes locking on to targets, other times dropping targets, and other times picking random targets near the cursor for no real Rhyme or reason (only Pattern I found was that if it doesn't lock any targets, toggling items on and off and on again makes it lock until the next zone change). It's annoying enough on any melee build but

Frenzy especially is honestly just unplayable stupid with that random inconsistent behavior.

I do the same thing,

Frenzy saved as "1" (my potions are in f1-f4, skills are in the numbers line; 1 through to =)
Then when out attacking,
just keep clicking 1 near the mob,
i prefer just holding 1, but sometimes the hit delay caused by a random monster will stop u casting.
So just repeat clicking 1 is the more consistant way to go... atleast for me anyway

Also, it means you wont have to keep dropping aload of random items you pick up by accident when using mouse to attack...

So...yeah, unplayably stupid

Bummer, was kind of hoping that was just some random quirkiness in my controls and not a general issue. Oh well..

It works okayish. I keep the cursor close to my char and as soon as the barb acts up, I repress. Happens every few seconds...

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

So...yeah, unplayably stupid

Bummer, was kind of hoping that was just some random quirkiness in my controls and not a general issue. Oh well..

I guess it depends on your playstyle as to wether its "unplayably stupid" lol...
I play the same way on all chars, not just melee...
Skills on numbers and attack using those,
Mouse is for walking, directing skill attacks & grabbing loot

I prefer my way, But To each there own