'The rule of cool' is Blizzard's solution to Diablo 4's barbarian problem and it's going to 'juice up the other classes' to compensate
It doesn't take a Diablo 4 expert to look at all the weapons barbarians carry around and wonder what the other classes are doing only using one or two. Barbarians are Diablo 4's strongest class by far and it mostly comes down to the fact that, in a game about powerful items, they get to have four of the strongest ones at all times.
Despite what some players think, Blizzard is very aware of barbarians' inherent advantage and is going to try to lift every other class up to their level, starting in season 4.
For context: Diablo 4 classes gain the majority of their power from weapons. All your skills deal damage based on the strength of your weapons. And each weapon can have the strongest Legendary powers, or aspects, in the game on them, like a passive that causes skills to deal up to 40 times more damage than normal.
So let me reiterate the problem: Barbarians get four weapons.
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In an interview last week, I asked lead class designer Adam Jackson how you balance a class with such a massive advantage over the others, especially with the introduction of season 4's new Tempering crafting system that lets you stack even more powerful stats onto your items.
Understandably, Jackson looked like he aged a thousand years as he reflected on the difficulties of trying to wrangle this class in: «The fantasy is really cool. And we like the fantasy. We also think that it feels really awesome that you have access to more weapons and you get a little more Legendary power flexibility and things like that.»
«Minion necromancer should feel crazy good.»
The answer to this problem, he explained, could be «something really kind of lame,» like only activating Legendary powers for weapons the barbarian is actively swinging or changing how they work for barbarians only.
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