Blizzard is making adjustments to the classes of Diablo 4 with Season 5, distributing a multitude of buffs as well as some nerfs. Among the nerfed is the Barbarian, but they remain unfazed. One of their strongest builds is even getting stronger – despite a heavy nerf.
This is the nerf:
- Currently, Season 5 is on the PTR and includes numerous changes, including to the recipes for hardening items. You can find the complete patch notes for the PTR here.
- The hardening recipe for Bash, the most important stat for Bash Barbarians, has been hit hard – one of the best builds in the tier list from Season 4 overall.
- Whereas previously up to +105% extra damage was possible, with Season 5 only +20% is left. Still, the build becomes even stronger, as explained by two experts.
Here you can find all info about the release and content of Season 5.
Why is the build now even stronger? Wudijo and Rob are among the top experts in Diablo, with Rob being one of the best Barbarians in the world. Both have tested the new “Bash-Barb” on the PTR.
Their conclusion is that the build is now even stronger than before. During the test, Rob demonstrates that he hits the training dummy alone for several billion with each attack. Among hundreds of millions, barely any hit is recorded (via YouTube). He states:
The Bash-Barb is alive, guys. We had a huge nerf in Season 5, where damage was divided by 5. But there’s a new setup that hits for billions upon billions with direct damage. No bleeding, even more than [before Season 5] I think.
Rob
The unexpected buff is due to some of the new unique items from Season 5:
- The sword “Splitter Verathiels” increases the damage of base skills by 100-300%, but adds a resource cost of 25 of your primary resource.
- The helm “Crown of Lucion” reduces resource costs by 75%. Whenever you spend resources, your damage increases by 5-25%, but the resource costs also increase by 25% up to 5 times.
- The amulet “Locrans Talisman” increases critical hit chance per available primary resource by 0.1-0.5% and each resource point over 100 gives additional critical hit damage.
Together with the Uber Unique ring of the starless heavens, which further reduces your resource costs, you still have a net gain of fury and can “bash” endlessly with increasing damage.
After Season 5, the first expansion of Diablo 4, Vessel of Hatred is already coming:
“Every build with base attacks will get stronger”
Wudijo calculates a bit more precisely how this combination can be so strong despite some cuts. Although you miss the famous Shako, the new crown provides an enormous damage boost. In the end, he arrives at about 150% of the damage you could achieve with the ideal build before Season 5 (via YouTube).
According to Wudijo, the Bash Barbarian is not even the build that benefits the most from this. The Rend build will be significantly stronger, and other classes will benefit even more from the combination of the new items.
The expert explains that Druids or Sorceresses using base spells and at least the Splitter Verathiels will cause much more damage. Fireball, for example, is a skill that is predestined for this:
Many other builds will also use the Splitter Verathiels. There will be many base skill builds that suddenly become much stronger because they are not affected by the Bash nerf. […] Heartseeker Hunters, Stormclaw Druids, Fireball Sorceresses – basically anyone using a build with base attacks will become stronger and even stronger than the Bash Barb.
Wudijo
At the moment, Season 5 is still in the testing phase and Blizzard will likely implement a lot of feedback by the release in August. Whether it will remain a buff and how much the other classes will benefit remains to be seen. Currently, it does not seem that all classes can keep up with Barbarians: Blizzard buffs all classes in Diablo 4 with Season 5, but one will become even weaker: “40% less damage”
