I know it’s early but I’m very disappointed in the build variety of barbarians so far. It’s shout builds only because anything else is too weak to compete. Even found the unique chain pull axe but giving up a shout on the bar is simply not worth it. Anyway with the start of the first season I’d like a class with some variety to play around with different builds. Any recommendations?
This is my hesitation with barb too. HotA is solid, leapquake is fun, and Fatal Blow is satisfying, but upheaval looks dumb and I don’t like ww or bleeds.
Compared to the sheet build variety of druid, that’s not a lot of variety, though to be fair a lot of the high performing builds rely on 2+ uniques (tempest, crone, waxing gibbous, vasily’s) to really function.
I have the same issue with my Sorc. All of the viable builds are the same with one or two details changed
Do you want to take all the defensive skills and ice shards? Or all the defensive skills and blizzard? :P
“Shout builds” aren’t a thing, since all shouts are support skills. There isn’t anything like the Singer/War Cry Barbarian from D2.
You’re right that the skill system in D4 tends to homogenize builds due to powerful cooldown skills though. Sorc has the same exact issue, where you keep the same 4 cooldown defensive skills in every build.
The class with the most skill diversity overall is Rogue I think, although there are still several skills with next to no use at the moment. Rogue at least has lots of options for Core skill/spender, and a variety of play styles (melee, ranged, traps).
I’ve played around with rogue and sorc so far. The two do feel different to one another, but within them - feels like you have “defensive melee sorc” and “squishy sorc” and both play almost identically. Rogue is either melee zip zap or mid range zip zap. Both play heavily around maintaining cc.
It feels like there’s a whole skill slot missing. Or some skills/passives need a bigger buff to allow for more utility options. Basic skills being kinda meaningless, you can either have one to press to feel like you are doing something or you run around for 2 seconds not pressing anything if you take an actual skill instead.
Like sure, you can take combo points and auto attack three times… Which feels bad because the skill itself does basically nothing.
Druid has the most viable builds.
