FIX WW. like seriously, the damm thing still suffers from missing hitchechs AND the WW animation stops and re starts so you can be charged/put into HR state btween wws.
as a barb main i would like to see meaningful changes regarding the use of 2H weaponry and needed tweaks to some skills
as a kid i grew up with conan the barbarian movies... arnie using a big 2hander hacking badies left and right set the fantasy of a barbarian to me. later on got interested in historical medieval weaponry and the dane axe was such an iconic weapon of the lower medieval age
D2 set a fantasy of a DW barbarian, most skills favor way too much DW: double swing, WW mechanics, frenzy, even berzerk gets more benefit from Dw as you can mitigate the zero defense with blocking from a shield and using an offhand 6 ist weapon for MF purposes...
NO skill at the barbarian arsenal caters to 2h over 1h DW. i would like to change that doing 3 changes:
1) merge stun and BASH: bash now stuns instead of knockback.. suficient investement into this skill lowers the mana cost to zero (as Double swing).
new skill : CLEAVE, req level 12 , requires a 2h wep: attacks in an arc infront of the barb , applies on hit effects starting at 80% weapon damage and scaling up to more added damage (ths idea is not new, carbot proposed it and i think it is in place in some mods for D2. present in D3)
2)Leap attack AOE SCALING FROM WEAPON DAMAGE AS A %: that way you can actually leap with a 2hander and gain more benefit from it than leaping with a 1h.
3) WW now doing more damage from using a 2h : +x% increased damage, also now all 2h weapons have the same WW BPS of swords: that way you can actually use more weapons other than friggin swords (i do not get the sword love from devs...in history they were SIDEARMS.. the big polearms/spears even axes were way more common on the battlefield)
forgotten skills.
increased stamina : increased stamina now grants flat HP per point. +x to life
iron skin: iron skin grants 0.5 phiscal damage reduction from hardpoints.
GENERAL CHANGES.
the dominance of vitality over all stats is way way too much. i would love a buff to "main" atributes per class. that way stre would benefit a bit more to a barbarian (currently 1% and 1.1% if using maces) so we can pump more that stre than the dreaded "enough vitality to wear your gear" moto. same can be done to dexterity for zons and even a energy based increase to spells for casters.
along that attribute change, pliz buff HEAVY ARMOR defense wise AND adding a % innate Damage reduction on those armors... ie : light armor no DR , NO movement penalty. Medium armor: 5% Damage reduction and the mov penalty. HEAVY armor: 10% DR and movement penalty. by doing so it would make some sense to invest into stre to wear the heaviest armor and not stick to the dusk shrouds and archon plates.. give me a REASON to use the heavy metal plate armor other than the looks..
i believe those changes wouldnt BREAK the game at all and in the case of my beloved barb , it would open 3 new builds at least : 2H WW, cleaver, and usefull leap attacker (current Leap attack is a 1 point wonder, it sucks as a main skill). the coolkids of the block would still be the kings: sorcs/ hammerdins/zons and every 1 would be super happy
