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?
“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).
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’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 decent variety, but it depends on what sort of comparisons you are making. For pushing the very highest of NM-dungeons there is going to be less variety, in all classes.
There’s always one top build for solo pushing and that’s fine but on the way there I’d like to switch it up sometimes. Maybe have some unique drop and build something around that. At some point a unique 2h sword for bleed builds dropped but the skill/weapon effect is so weak and clunky that it simply isn’t worth it. Not even close. That’s what I’m trying to avoid.
Yeah but for a lot of us that isn’t the most important. But something to keep in mind for sure.
Yeah but I think that’s where the difference is. What is build diversity? Even if there are a “best build for X” (pvp, NM dungeons, open world content) - likely those will be different builds, and thus you have achieved build diversity.
So its about what perspective we take when we talk about build diversity. Is it to have several builds that can do X content at the highest level from one class? is it for builds to do several avenues of content at a high competetive level?
I am current playing HotA-barb with no shouts at all. Is it optimal? I don’t know, most likely not. Works for me though.
I actively avoid following guides etc, because it’s to easy to optimize the fun out of the game. Most likely there will always be the „best“ build, even if only mathematically. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Played ww barb at start but i found it a bit boring so i tried a bleed build and was okayish in solo. Not so much fun when i played with friends and saw how much dmg they deal. After switching back to ww it’s so much better, also i would like to experiment more without feeling completely weak.
