Not longer after Blizzard spectacularly pummelled Diablo 3’s legendary items into shape, the devs are now detailing upcoming changes to the Barbarian class, due to arrive in patch 1.0.4. “We’re taking a good look at some of the most unpopular skills for each class,” writes senior designer Wyatt Cheng, “figuring out why they aren’t being used in your builds, and then seeing how we can make them better — either by redesigning how they work or just buffing the hell out of them.” Patch 1.0.4, folks, it’s the update that makes everything hit harder.
Read the hugely detailed patch preview here, it’s potentially only of interest to you if you actually play as a barb. Key things to look out for: Bash and Cleave are being hella-buffed to turn them back into viable Fury Generators, and the base damage of Fury Spenders like Hammer of the Ancients, Seismic Slam and Rend and being hella-increased. Here’s just one of the changes being made to Rend, to give you a flavour of just how serious these buffs are: “Weapon damage increased from 210% over 3 seconds to 700% over 5 seconds”. That’s huge. Doubled, in fact. Lucky barbs.
Blizzard will be previewing changes to the remaining classes in the days leading up to patch 1.0.4’s release date later this month.