Diablo 3 Patch 1.0.4 Changes for Barbarian Class Revealed

Blizzard has revealed what the upcoming patch 1.0.4 for Diablo 3 will change in regard to the Barbarian class, showing off the major modifications made to Fury Generators and Fury Spenders, including powers like Frenzy, Bash, or Hammer of the Ancients.

Patch 1.0.4 for Diablo III promises to be one of the biggest in the history of the dungeon crawling RPG, with Blizzard making sweeping changes to all sorts of aspects.

We have already heard about the modifications to core systems and to the Legendary items, but now Blizzard has revealed how the Barbarian class will be tweaked in the new update.

First up, there are the Fury Generator powers (i.e. Frenzy, Bash, and Cleave). These will be tweaked to make them more attractive and more competitive, according to Blizzard’s Wyatt Cheng.

Check out the details below.

Fury Generators

Frenzy:
It’s easy to see why Frenzy is the most popular Fury Generator right now. It generates a solid amount of Fury, it has the highest single-target damage of any Fury generator, and it has the highest single-target healing using Life on Hit. The bonus attack speed also provides good combat mobility as well as the option to focus all your damage on a single target or distribute it between multiple targets as needed. We're going to buff Bash and Cleave to be viable alternatives to Frenzy for people who would like to try a different play style.

Bash:
From a design perspective, Bash should be the definitive choice when it comes to maximizing your Fury generation. That’s not the currently the case, and given the current state of the game, this means attacking the problem from two sides. First, we need to make Fury a more attractive resource to build up (which also means making Fury Spenders more attractive, which I talk about below). Second, we’re going to increase the amount of Fury generated by Bash from 6 to 8, as well as the amount of weapon damage done by Bash from 150% to 165%. The goal is to make Bash not only a very compelling option if you decide you want to focus on Fury generation, but also an appealing single-target alternative to Frenzy if you don’t enjoy its mechanics (like having to manage Frenzy stacks). Currently, Frenzy surpasses Bash in single-target damage as soon as you have your third stack of Frenzy, and it feels like the breakpoint should be around the fourth stack instead. These changes should help better balance the appeal of the two skills.

Cleave:
Looking at the three basic Fury Generators (Frenzy, Bash and Cleave), the role of Cleave is fairly straight-forward: it should be the clear winner when there is more than one target to hit. In a single-target situation, however, Cleave will always perform worse than Bash and Frenzy. While this is intended to a degree, the amount of single-target damage you currently have to give up feels too great to make the trade-off worthwhile. At an extreme, if Cleave did almost exactly the same damage as Bash or Frenzy, but had the ability to hit a second target when one was around, Cleave would definitely become that “clear winner.” So, to make it more appealing to some players, our goal is then to find that sweet spot between where Cleave is now and doing the same single-target as Frenzy and Bash. We’re going to increase both the damage and proc coefficient on Cleave to close the gap when fighting a single target.

Blizzard is also making some changes to the Fury Spenders (i.e. Hammer of the Ancients, Rend, or Seismic Slam) that, according to Blizzard, need to be buffed in order to make players use them.

Fury Spenders
Hammer of the Ancients:
We're increasing its base damage from 200% to 325%
We're increasing the damage for Rolling Thunder from 155% to 275%
We’re increasing the damage for Smash from 270% to 406%

Rend:
Weapon damage increased from 210% over 3 seconds to 700% over 5 seconds
Lacerate weapon damage increased from 271% over 3 seconds to 903% over 5 seconds
Bloodbath weapon damage increased from 60% over 3 seconds to 100% over 5 second

Popular abilities, like Sprint or Battle Rage, won’t be changed, meaning players who have strategies and builds based on them won’t have to change their play style.

Diablo 3 patch 1.0.4 will be released in the following weeks, according to Blizzard.

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