Barbarian - Ravager Changes

[Severlin]

Greetings,

Here are the proposed changes for the Barbarian's Ravager tree. The Ravager has been updated to focus on blood rage, and as such the tree gives blood related abilities including the top ability to heal as the Ravager attacks foes. We've also moved some of the bonus damage to be bane since there was no clear explanation or understanding of what creatures were affected by alignment based damage.


(If you see "---" that means text was removed; likely a penalty or condition.)


Core abilities

Furious Rage: (1 AP, Level 1) When you are raging and miss your attack by rolling 1, you gain Fury for 6 seconds. Fury: +1 Rage bonus to attack and damage. This effect stacks up to 6 times and one stack fades every 6 seconds.

Pain Touch: (1 AP, Level 3) Your melee attacks deal 1d6 extra damage. --- This damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: You gain +10 healing amplification.

Demoralizing Success: (1 AP, Level 6) When you score a vorpal hit in melee, you inflict Crushing Despair on nearby enemies for 30 seconds on a failed DC 20 Will saving throw. You then inflict Vulnerable Will for 15 seconds, regardless of the Crushing Despair saving throw. Passive: You gain +30 hit points and +10 healing amplification.

Pain Touch: (1 AP, Level 12) Upgrades Pain Touch so your melee attacks deal 2d6 extra damage. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: You gain +60 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

Subsiding Fury: (1 AP, Level 18) When you use Barbarian Rage, you gain 3 stacks of Fury. Passive: You gain +100 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize all enemies around you, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.


Tier One

Ritual Scarring: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Intimidate, Haggle and Physical Resistance.

Hate: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +(1/2/3)[W] damage and generate extra threat. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)

Do You Like Pain?: (1/1/1 AP) When you are hit: [20/40/60]% chance attacker loses 10 AC.

Barbarian Power Attack: (1/1/1 AP, Requires Power Attack) Your Power Attack feat does 1/2/3 additional point of bonus damage ---.

Hardy Rage: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Constitution when raging.


Tier Two (Requires Barbarian Level 2, 5 APs spent in tree)

Fear me!: (2 AP, Requires: Ritual Scarring) When you intimidate, affected enemies are Shaken for 6 seconds. DC 10 + Strength Modifier + Barbarian Level (Note that the DC is currently 13)

Mutilate: (1/1/1 AP, Requires Hate) Hate additionally deals 1d4/1d6/1d8 Charisma damage and 1d4/1d6/1d8 bane damage. The bane damage scales with 200% Melee Power.

I Like Pain: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Do You Like Pain?) When you are hit: Small chance to gain 50/100/150 Temporary HP. The gain scales with 100% melee power.

Cruel Cut: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals 1d6/2d6/3d6 extra constitution damage as long as you damage your target. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Action Boost: Melee Power: (1/1/1 AP) Activate this ability to receive a +[10/20/30] Action Boost bonus to Melee Power for 20 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)


Tier Three (Requires Barbarian Level 3, 10 APs spent in tree)

Aura of Fear: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Fear Me!) Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to Strength and Charisma.
~ Rank 2: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to Strength, Charisma, Dexterity and Wisdom.
~ Rank 3: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to all ability scores.

Slaughter: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +(5/7.5/10)[W] damage. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Festering Wound: (1/1/1 AP Requires: Cruel Cut) Cruel Cut additionally inflicts 1/2/3 5-seconds stacks of 1d6 Poison damage every 2 seconds and the target loses -50% healing amplification for 5/10/15 seconds. This poison damage scales with 200% Melee Power. Damage stacks fade one at a time.

Constitution/Strength: (2 AP) +1 Constitution or Strength


Tier Four (Requires Barbarian Level 4, 20 APs spent in tree)

Laughter: (2 AP, Requires: Slaughter) For many Ravagers, there's no Laughter without Slaughter.
When Slaughter damages an enemy, you gain 3 Fury. When Slaughter scores a critical hit on an enemy, you gain an additional 3 Fury and 10 Melee Power for 15 seconds.

I Hit Back!: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Like Pain) When you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 bane damage to attacker. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power.

Dismember: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Festering Wound) Cruel Cut increases Melee Power by 5 for 10 seconds. Cruel Cut additionalyl slows enemy movement speed, or slows attack speed, or deals 2d4/2d6/2d8 bane damage, or deals 6d4/6d6/6d8 bane damage. This bane damage scales with 200% Melee Power.

Constitution/Strength: (2 AP) +1 Constitution or Strength


Tier Five (Requires Barbarian Level 5, Character Level 12, 30 APs spent in tree)

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you are healed for 1d4 hit points. Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 1d20 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

Bully: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Hit back!) You deal +[5/10/15]% damage to helpless enemies.
Requires: I Hit back!

Critical Fury: (2 AP) While raging, each hit also grants 1 stack of Fury.

Critical Rage: (2/2 AP) Increases your critical threat range by 1/2 when raging.


(Note that Critical Rage no longer requires the Cruel Cut line.)


~Sev

[btolson]

...This damage triggers at most once per second....

Can you explain why limitations like this are used?

[Zurrander]

Please, don't put heals in the Barb Trees... Switch them out to temporary Hit points (So that we can keep the feel of a Barbarian). You could even increase the timer for Temp HP by a min or two.

[Grosbeak07]

Please, don't put heals in the Barb Trees... Switch them out to temporary spell points (So that we can keep the feel of a Barbarian)

What?

This is not pen and paper, the game has long ago left that station. Without heals, Barbarians are a dead class in this game. Temporary Spell points? What about when raging?

[btolson]

Critical Rage: (2 AP) Increases your critical threat range by 1/2 when raging.


Can't tell if this was supposed to change in some way or not. You only have a single cost listed (2 instead of 2/2) but the threat range still states a 1/2 bonus.

[silisav]

Are the core abilities cumulative? Hit points for example.

[Zurrander]

What?

This is not pen and paper, the game has long ago left that station. Without heals, Barbarians are a dead class in this game. Temporary Spell points? What about when raging?

I meant Temporary Hit Points (not spell points)... barbs are one of the few none healing Classes in the game (along with Fighters/Rogues/and fleshy arcanes "excluding pale masters") and that's one of the things that makes them special. I'm not saying they should be left without any way to survive, just that they shouldn't be a "Self Healing" class. If these new sources of healing were made into Temp HP instead the only loss would be the lack of boost form healing amp, and for that you could just make Temp HP scale higher with Melee Power. Its not as though Giving them stacking Temp HP instead of Heals (on a refreshing timer) would make them any weaker than Heals, it would simply let them stay "Barbarians".

[edrein]

Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize an enemy, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.

~Sev

Can we please see the rage cost removed? Or atleast make the ability an AoE effect like the old Wail of the Banshee, otherwise this capstone is still kind of a waste.

[ddorimble]

Visage of Terror seems like a very bad capstone. I don't think there are enough rages available to use that more than a couple times per shrine (you have 10 maybe?), and no good way to get them to recharge that I know of. DC doesn't seem like it would get into a usable range anyways. It seems extremely sad compared to the somewhat similar Coup de Grace, particularly since it is a capstone.

[Scrabbler]

Furious Rage: (1 AP, Level 1) When you are raging and miss your attack by rolling 1, you gain Fury for 6 seconds. Fury: +1 Rage bonus to attack and damage. This effect stacks up to 6 times and one stack fades every 6 seconds.
For the record, that stack size of 6 had always been there, just not in the description.

[brzytki]

I'm against giving barbs HAMP at each core (except for 1) in every tree. If you are a pure barb, you get 100 Hamp from one tree, then you can get additional 60 more from two other trees. That's huge. If you couple it with some Hamp gear, your barb can easily get over 200 Hamp. Then adding something like Blood Strenght, you get healed for 1d4 when you hit an enemy and 1d20 for a kill, which even scales with MP, means they'll be easily one of the most self-sufficient classes. Not to mention all those Temp HP you can get for being hit and so on. That just seems wrong.

[Monkey-Boy]

I'm against giving barbs HAMP at each core (except for 1) in every tree. If you are a pure barb, you get 100 Hamp from one tree, then you can get additional 60 more from two other trees. That's huge. If you couple it with some Hamp gear, your barb can easily get over 200 Hamp. Then adding something like Blood Strenght, you get healed for 1d4 when you hit an enemy and 1d20 for a kill, which even scales with MP, means they'll be easily one of the most self-sufficient classes. That just seems wrong.

have no fear, rogue is next on their list.

Has somebody crunched the number on this? How feasible would it be to stay alive on a capped barbarian with CSW pots?

[Scrabbler]

Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize an enemy, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.
1. It is kinda boring that the passives for Ravager capstone are the same as Frenzied Berserker. I suggest giving something else instead of heal amp, and changing the +4 con to +2 str +2 con +4 cha.

2. Last time I tried, the paralyze part of Ravager capstone didn't work. (Although I haven't been pure Barb in a long while)

3. Rages are important; running out of Rages is really bad. It's not often a good idea to spend 1 Rage for a chance to kill/stun a non-boss enemy. But it's a fun concept that a Ravager can sometimes scare an enemy to death just by yelling at him! Therefore, I suggest changing Visage of Terror to have 0 rage cost, 60 second cooldown, extremely fast casting time, and two saving throws (Fort+Will like Phantasmal Killer).

4. It would be natural that someone who knows how to scare enemies to death would have Fear Immunity himself. Maybe also Pain Immunity.

[Rautis]

Fear me!: (2 AP, Requires: Ritual Scarring) When you intimidate, affected enemies are Shaken for 6 seconds. DC 10 + Strength Modifier + Barbarian Level (Note that the DC is currently 13)
Before enhancement pass the shaken effect was applied to all(non immune) foes you succeeded to intimidate. It would be simple and nice if it worked that way instead of two different checks.


(Note that Critical Rage no longer requires the Cruel Cut line.) This is very nice considering how current epic mechanics reduce value of stat damage attacks.


Critical Fury: (2 AP) While raging, each hit also grants 1 stack of Fury.Max stack of 6 fury seems kind of low with things like this. It was possible to reach it with just the tier 1 Furious Rage. I could see either cores or higher level enhancements increasing the cap. +1 damage and to hit per stack from level 1 core without cap would definately overperform but +6 damage in epic play is not that big deal considering how much enhancement points you can spend on abilities that increase your fury gain. Ofcourse, this tier 5 makes reaching the max stack trivial no matter what it is. Mechanic would probably be more interesting to play with if it wasn't so easy to cap but could go higher I think. It shouldn't be incredibly hard either but now it's done with just 1 critically hit Slaughter or 6 hits while raging with Critical Fury.


The tree improvements make Ravager much more dangerous. I'm interested in trying Ravager just for the Blood Strength which seems to be strongest of the tier 5 self heal abilities at first glance.

[Scrabbler]

[COLOR=#ff0000]Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you are healed for 1d4 hit points. Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 1d20 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.
I really think this auto passive self-healing goes overboard when combined with the large Barbarian healing amp.

In fact, I suspect that the Barbarian healing amp goes overboard on its own, and that this feature here would be overboard even if there was no heal amp in the trees. Even if it didn't scale with melee power, gaining 2.5 hp per swing is extremely strong!

I mean, even though Barbs don't have as many speed boosts as some classes, I commonly hit 3+ times per second. That would be 460 hp per minute, before heal amp.

[Monkey-Boy]

I mean, even though Barbs don't have as many speed boosts as some classes, I commonly hit 3+ times per second. That would be 460 hp per minute, before heal amp.

Interesting.

Can somebody who believes in math tell me what Cacoon's average is?

[Shadow2024]

In the cores, you add MRR. I think it should be PRR instead and keep Occult Slayer being the anti-magic barbarian =)

Just a suggestion

[Scrabbler]

Critical Fury: (2 AP) While raging, each hit also grants 1 stack of Fury.
I presume that this Critical Fury text is an error, and it means to say each critical hit grants 1 Fury.

But it doesn't really matter either way: once you gain this Critical Fury feature, you will essentially have a permanent passive +6 hit/damage, except for the very beginning of every fight. Even a Barbarian with low swing speed will average 2+ criticals per 6 seconds, so you'll quickly hit the cap and stay there.

In fact, even under the current system a high speed Barb build (like TWF Helf or multiclass Ranger) can expect natural 1s at more than once per 6 seconds, so they also peg out at the cap. One clear problem is that because Ravager barbs stay at the Fury cap easily, other enhancements that boost your Fury (Laughter and Subsiding Fury) are pretty meaningless.


Let's step back and talk about Ravager Fury: Ravager Fury is a bad design because a character's Fury level will be strongly attracted to either 0 or 6, with hardly anyone in between. That is to say, if your attack rate is normal (and you don't have Critical Fury yet) then you'll go more than 6 seconds between natural 1s, so your Fury count will usually be 0 or 1, rarely increasing to 2 if you had a string of bad luck. But if your attack rate is high, then you tend to get at least one nat1 per 6 seconds, so your Fury increases to 6 after a short time fighting and then stays there.

Instead of that uninteresting and less-fun situation, it should work so that players' Fury will usually be between the limits, not attracted to the very top or the very bottom. For example, the duration of Fury could be less the more you have. Start with a 9 second duration, then each additional stack lasts 1 less second. In addition, effects like Laughter could add Fury above the cap (with a minimum of 1 sec duration)

[Scrabbler]

Can somebody who believes in math tell me what Cacoon's average is?
Can someone tell me what level you get Cocoon, and whether it locks out other sources of healing?

[PsychoBlonde]

Pain Touch is lame. Once per second? WHY?! It's not multiplied by crits, let them HAVE their DAMAGE.

Crushing Despair is still weaksauce. Oooo on a vorpal attack, IF they fail an INSANELY low saving throw--I can inflict the equivalent of what a Favored Soul gets just by STANDING NEAR YOU.

The active effect on Visage of Terror is weak. Who cares about MAYBE killing or paralyzing ONE enemy? Make it an AOE despair type of effect like the druid wolf spell Howl of Terror or something like that. Make it a 20-30 second cooldown MAX. MUCH better. Make it use Intimidate skill instead of con modifier--this would maybe get it up to "decent" territory with, oh, say, BARD abilities.

---

For tier one abilities:

Nobody cares if your enemies lose some AC. Make them lose something useful like fortification or saving throws. Also, specify with Barbarian Power attack that this extra 1/2/3 is DOUBLED with a two-hander.

---

Tier two abilities:

Shaken for 6 seconds on an intimidate? Bleh. And shouldn't the DC be equal to your intimidate skill, especially since you have to USE intimidate to kick this off?

Force damage is a bad idea. You couldn't just make it "bane" damage? Also the Cha damage on mutilate is pointless--by the time the 15 second cooldown is over, most enemies will have regenerated it. It's not like reducing enemy charisma actually DOES anything to them unless you can actually get it so low that they go helpless.

I like pain--how small is "small". Give us a number not a vague description.

Extra con damage as long as you damage your target? What does that mean? Does this stop the first time you roll a 1 and miss? It should be more like "places a mark up on the target so that for the next 15 seconds, every melee attack you make against them deals an additional 1d6/2d6/3d6 constitution damage".

---
Tier three:
-2 to all ability scores is, AT BEST, a -1 to a few rolls. Make it more pertinent to what a barbarian wants to do, make it a penalty to Balance checks, Fort Saves, Will Saves, and attacks. And have it go -2/-3-/-4.

Cooldown on slaughter is too long unless you make it a cleave attack. 10[w] sounds like a lot, but it's not, particularly since you're not putting stuff with base weapon damage like [2d12] in the game any more.

Festering Wound is goofy. 1d6 poison damage? I don't care if it stacks with 3000% melee power, top end TRASH MOBS in this game have FIFTEEN THOUSAND HP. And healing amp on mobs is a non-factor in the game. Make them completely IMMUNE to ALL healing (neg energy, repair, positive energy) and you might have something. Although this might break ogre mage mobs because I'm not sure how their vanish-and-regen act is coded. Really, barbarians don't need extra silly dribbles of side damage. They need a solid CORE.

--

Tier Four abilities

Laughter seems okay.

I hit back--guards tend to be kind of lame. Should be bane damage. Also make sure this is a TOGGLE because barbarians have enough trouble controlling their DPS and there ARE times in this game when you want to NOT kill things.

Dismember seems okay.
--

Tier five abilities

Is that Blood Strength healing positive energy or repair or what?

Bully is cool. Don't like tying it to a guard though, esp. since you guys aren't great about making guards into toggles that can be turned off.

--

It seems like later abilities should increase max stacks on Fury. 6 seconds per stack just seems low to me.

[brzytki]

Interesting.

Can somebody who believes in math tell me what Cacoon's average is?

With 182% Hamp and around 270 Spell Power i get hit on average for 118 HP.
1,82*3,7*5*3,5=118

But it's for everyone, costs SP, has a cooldown, is inerruptable if no quicken, goes away if you lose your Temp HP and available from lvl 20+.

[Severlin]

Are the core abilities cumulative? Hit points for example.

Yes.

Sev~

[Severlin]

Can you explain why limitations like this are used?

The internal cooldown will be gone. OP is updated.

Sev~

[Severlin]

Can't tell if this was supposed to change in some way or not. You only have a single cost listed (2 instead of 2/2) but the threat range still states a 1/2 bonus.

Fixed.

Sev~

[Severlin]

2. Last time I tried, the paralyze part of Ravager capstone didn't work. (Although I haven't been pure Barb in a long while)


We will look into this. If the capstone doesn't have an auto paralyze (works even if the save is made against death) then it is too weak.

Sev~

[bbqzor]

Here are the proposed changes for the Barbarian's Ravager tree. The Ravager has been updated to focus on blood rage, and as such the tree gives blood related abilities including the top ability to heal as the Ravager attacks foes. We've also moved some of the bonus damage to be force since there was no clear explanation or understanding of what creatures were affected by alignment based damage.

Hm. Thats new, will see how it plays out. As this was the weakest tree before (imo) a tightening of the focus to be on something is probably good, and moving away from conditional damage is also needed.


Core abilities
Still nothing to see here. Pain Touch is (100 melee power assumption) only 7 dps, barely noticeable even at level 3 when you can get this (and you certainly wont have 100 melee power at that point) and 14 dps at lv12. The will penalty from demoralize helps exactly one barbarian ability: the capstone, which doesnt arrive for 14 more levels (sigh). Having the lv18 core give you 3 stacks of a buff youve had since lv1 is seriously little reason to take 18 levels here. As for the capstone, where to begin. It eats rages, which is extremely costly for a barb, along with having a very poor DC (even at con 100 the dc is only 65... basically no way to ever land this beyond easy content/difficulties). I mean the healing amp is good, but thats been added to all barb trees so wont comment on it. These cores just plain need a rework. The levels the abilities arrive at makes no sense, the values are too small to matter, and the capstone is essentially a trap, spending a rage to maybe take out 1 mob is just not wise.


Tier One
Nothing here but old complaints. Inflicting AC penalties on mobs when they hit you isnt generally a strategy that encourages players to pursue it. The idea is to hit them without them hitting you.. this is like the inverse of that where you certainly get hit to maybe have a better chance to hit them. Its just counter intuitive and generally lowers your survivability. Maybe Do You Like Pain could be reworked to inflicting Vulnerability on the mobs (as in, they like pain, so they take more). Then you might actually want to use Hate to get hit, in order to amp your damage up. Thematic and not useless.


Tier Two (Requires Barbarian Level 2, 5 APs spent in tree)
Change to Fear Me is still weak, prior to this version it had no save at all (and also lasted longer). When the enhancement pass was done it was changed to the DC 13 save. Its already limited to an uptime of 6s every 15s due to the Intim cd. Pull the save entirely, at least that way you could use it to guarantee a -2 sv debuff in conjunction with other things (perhaps vulnerability as suggested in T1) to try and form some kind of combo. Its how it was for years before U18, and other situations already exist for no-save shaken (BF being the most common).

Mutilate is still useless due to stat damage, as many many mobs are immune to it. Change it from Damage to a Penalty or something, so that it can work on Epic mobs and things like Undead which you might want to do force damage to but cant land cha on.

I Like Pain needs a higher chance from whatever it is. Ive gone whole days of playing a barb (like 4-8 hrs) and seen in proc maybe twice. List the chance in the ability, no reason to make players guess, and make it something actually good. Like 5% might work. Every 20th hit you get 150 hp, thats workable and helps with the classes "need" to get hit for many of its enhancements.

Again, Cruel Cut.. this ability basically does nothing once you hit epic, and in whole chunks of content prior. As its the base for a chain of abilities, thats really lame. Any chance of getting this reworked to something like just +damage and -fort save? That can work on anything?


Tier Three (Requires Barbarian Level 3, 10 APs spent in tree)

Note, Aura of Fear is a penalty, as opposed to damage, which is why it doesnt get the comments above about mobs being immune to damage and this the ability.

Festering Wound again suffers from immunity issues. Anything immune to poison is immune to the effect, meaning the healing amp debuff lands on precious few things. Can you code those to be 2 different effects so they can land independently?


Tier Four (Requires Barbarian Level 4, 20 APs spent in tree)

Laughter.. hm. Its like +5 melee power if you can land crits, which in something like Fury is pretty easy to line up. Interesting, bit specific but at least a playable combo.

I Hit Back is too weak still. Even with (100 melee power assumption) thats 20% chance for 12d8 or ~11 dmg per hit. And 11 dmg guard for 3 AP isnt all that great. Why not make this ability as the name of it actually sounds? Add a chance for the barb to actually hit as if they had swung their weapon. Or maybe have it proc a buff "I Hit Back" which gives you 5% doublestrike for 20s or something, so when you get hit you hit more back. Just tired of seeing guards all over enhancement trees lately... they never keep pace with the game and rarely contribute meaningful damage.

Dismember is too random. Instead of all those random effects, make it a trigger-able Limb Chopping effect. Thats what the name implies, and thats the most desirable part of the ability. Even a top roll at 100 melee power is only ~5 dps (6d8=48, 200% of 100 melee power= x3, 144dmg/30s cd= 4.8 dps). Yea, 5 melee power for 1/3rd uptime is nice I guess, but no ones going to take an entire chain of AP to get 1.6 melee power avg. But a Limb Chop click is not only awesome thematically but helps a lot with what barbs struggle with: avoiding hits when they need to, and it lets this tree maybe take some early hits from a mob early on to trigger some abilities, and then slow them down to avoid drawing too much heat if they get low.


Tier Five (Requires Barbarian Level 5, Character Level 12, 30 APs spent in tree)

Eh, its a nice T5. But sinking 30 into the tree to get here hurts so bad. Blood Strength is what FB should have had, to actually address its problems. This class should get Accelerated Metabolism, so that it can heal over time as it chooses when to generate Hate to trigger abilities and then not to recover, healing between. Can we get those swapped? It makes basically no sense as is right now.

Critical Fury is good, sure. But it basically nullifies the lv18 core, and a large part of Laughter. It just makes spending points in the tree before here even more painful. I mean sure, self inflicted pain is the Ravager tree right... but theres no reason the PLAYER should feel it =p.

.....

Overall wow, what a trip. The "focus on blood rage" isnt there. You never cache your rage in to do stuff. You just get limited to 6 stacks, then like 50 ways to make sure you get all 6 stacks super fast, each of which kind of overrides the one before. The abilities still suffer from the HUGE limitation of stat damage being universally ignored, and thus ignoring those abilities. The Pain Touch dps and Force dps is so low when averaged out, that it just doesnt hold up at all. The capstone is still a total trap.

I think this tree needs another pass. And I hope some of the ideas and abilities can be shuffled a bit with the other trees. Blood Strength and Accelerated Metabolism need to swap. This tree needs to cop the "bond trade in" idea from OS, and offer some ways to "trade in" fury, rather than a ton of ways to ensure it sits at 6 stacks 24/7. The effects need to land more, from Shaken going back to no-save all the way to the Capstone costing a rage necessitating a more or less "no fail" dc (or better yet, remove the rage cost and make it cost fury, ya dig?). And finally, the uptime ratios need to be looked at. Barbs should burn bright, so bright they consume whatever theyre beating, but at some risk. This class burns for like 5s out of every 30s... too short to manage well given latency and related issues, and the brightness isnt there with such small things as 5 melee power or something as random as an attack with 4 possible effects or a guard with a 20% chance to do some small damage. You dont have the ac/prr/hp to sit there and take 100 swings for things to even out like a tank... you need consistency. Not like "the guard is on all the time" consistency, but maybe more like "spend 1 fury, for the next 20s you have a nice force guard with 100% proc, 1 min cd" so it can actually have a useful dmg value.

Hopefully the feedback helps. Unlike FB which I think went the wrong direction, and OS which went the right direction, this tree kind of went no direction. Its a better version of what was there, but it has no focus, is random, and the abilities overwrite one another. It could be cool but it needs work. Fury is the key. Fury to turn your guard on. Fury to use capstone. Even Fury to gain seeker, since this is the only tree with +threat instead of +multiplier. Why is there no "spend 1 fury, gain 6 seeker for 10s" or something. Potential is there, but this version isnt it. Cheers.

[bbqzor]

Adding responses to responses while I was posting my first response... )


The internal cooldown will be gone. OP is updated.
This does help with the cores, certainly. Still have issues as described in the other post but at least some dps is there now.


We will look into this. If the capstone doesn't have an auto paralyze (works even if the save is made against death) then it is too weak.
Even with it, its too weak. So what if you can auto paralyze ~10 mobs per shrine. You then have almost no minutes of rage, which after 20 barbarian (a requirement for this, dont forget) means you have almost nothing. You can get the same effect by twisting in Daunting Presence and just hitting it every 2 min, hoping 1 mob out of a pack fails, and killing that. And counting twists here is completely reasonable... you cant get this until 20, meaning as soon as it arrives so does epic. Oh sure, with the capstone you can pick single mobs out, ok great. So can any class with power word stun, or monks, or bards, or any number of other things. Its just not a capstone regardless.

Rest of my thoughts on it are in the other post... I just wanted to comment that the paralyze portion doesnt suddenly make it capstone good. Theres a whole lot of ways to get that at 20+ which dont consume the classes core mechanic, the one the rest of its abilities rest on. I mean Extra Rage isnt even in this tree... you realize that ya?

Maybe swap Extra Rage to here, Hardy Rage to OS, and Extended Rage to FB. Make Extended Rage extend Frenzy. Then all three make sense with the trees they are in (less clicky maintenance for FB, more Con for OS, more Rages to use with Ravager). When U18 hit Barb, their abilities definitely got put in a blender as far as what went where. A little moving probably wouldnt go unwelcome... case in point here.

[Scrabbler]

Critical Rage: (2/2 AP) Increases your critical threat range by 1/2 when raging.
If it is intentional that the +2 critical threat bonus is not multiplied by Imp Crit, that should be mentioned in the description. Every other ability giving +X crit threat is multiplied by the feat.


PS. I'd really prefer if all +crit range bonuses are changed to not multiply with Imp Crit, and then the designers can manually double the value if they really want it to that powerful.

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

Action Boost: Melee Power: (1/1/1 AP) Activate this ability to receive a +[10/20/30] Action Boost bonus to Melee Power for 20 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)
~Sev

I know barbarians are supposed to be melee but I stress that if you make everything a melee power boost then archers will not only fall behind, they will die. I currently have a throwing barbarian, I throw everything from shuriken (not often) to throwing axes. Barbarians can and should be able to throw things or shoot things and still use there Damage Boost. Please make the melee power boost a Melee/Ranged Power Action Boost at 10/20/30%.

[Severlin]

I know barbarians are supposed to be melee but I stress that if you make everything a melee power boost then archers will not only fall behind, they will die. I currently have a throwing barbarian, I throw everything from shuriken (not often) to throwing axes. Barbarians can and should be able to throw things or shoot things and still use there Damage Boost. Please make the melee power boost a Melee/Ranged Power Action Boost at 10/20/30%.

I will bring this up with the team.

Sev~

[Scrabbler]

Demoralizing Success: (1 AP, Level 6) When you score a vorpal hit in melee, you inflict Crushing Despair on nearby enemies for 30 seconds on a failed DC 20 Will saving throw.
It seems like the save DC should add level/2 and Charisma mod. Just to follow the pattern of most saves, and to have a chance to keep working at high level.



Fear me!:
Aura of Fear:
With multiple Fear debuffs in the Ravager tree, it would be good if Fear immunity was removed from generic bosses. They only need immunity to Crowd-Control or Instakill style Fear effects (like the actual "Fear" spell), and not mere -2 penalties.



Dismember: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Festering Wound) Cruel Cut increases Melee Power by 5 for 10 seconds. Cruel Cut additionalyl slows enemy movement speed, or slows attack speed, or deals 2d4/2d6/2d8 force damage, or deals 6d4/6d6/6d8 force damage. This force damage scales with 200% Melee Power.
It would be much nicer if Dismember required Cruel Cut instead of Festering Wound, and then Festering Wound was upgraded to be useful on its own. That is, it would be good if players felt Festering Wound was a fun option if they want healing reduction and poison damage, not just an obligation to get Meleepower from Dismember.

[Severlin]

We understand that there are encounters where ability damage is less useful but we didn't feel comfortable removing these abilities from the tree for players who combo them with items or other attribute abilities.

Sev~

[ddorimble]

We understand that there are encounters where ability damage is less useful but we didn't feel comfortable removing these abilities from the tree for players who combo them with items or other attribute abilities.

Big problem is they become literally worthless the second you hit 20. Remove Epic Ward ability drain resistance.

I DID combo class abilities like this to make an ability drain character...Wraith Form Swashbuckler with huge crit range WoP weapon...as much as 2d6+1 Con damage on a crit (14-20 I think?), so was capable of WAY more ability drain than these poor little 30 second clicky enhancements...it was LITERALLY unplayable that way the moment I hit 20 and stepped into an Epic quest.

Any ability drain enhancements should be dropped the moment you hit 20. If they are a requirement for something useful, they are wasted.

[bbqzor]

We understand that there are encounters where ability damage is less useful but we didn't feel comfortable removing these abilities from the tree for players who combo them with items or other attribute abilities.

If by encounters you mean "All Epic Content lv20+" then yes. Ill repeat my suggestion from before: make them ability PENALTIES not ability DAMAGE. Problem solved.

[bbqzor]

I will bring this up with the team.

(quoted in reference to barbarian throwing being an avenue to support)

You know, it never would have occurred to me to make that request (barb thrower stuff) but I gotta admit, I agree. Swash had a light "throwing splash" support. Barb should too.

Making the boost to melee and ranged is a good call. Its impossible to combo monk and barb, so the 10k stars concern is out. Yea, you could combo it with ranger and fury shot... but so what? An archery build with barb levels has its own trade offs, and frankly a "primal" style character using two primal classes in a primal tree should work together. Plus, whenever that ranged power pass happens, Im sure there will be ranged power around anyhow so heres just one place it wont have to be added at that time. No harm, no foul, just an early adopter at worst and leading to new themed builds at best.

Nice touch for an addition, I hope it makes it in.

[Scrabbler]

About ability damage:

Epic monsters should be changed to have a percentage change to ignore each instance of incoming ability damage, instead of extra-rapid healing.


We've also moved some of the bonus damage to be force since there was no clear explanation or understanding of what creatures were affected by alignment based damage.
Force damage has a thematic connection to arcane magic, so it's a poor fit for Barbarians (except OS). Instead of Force, it'd be nicer to have Bleed, Bane, Slashing, or just untyped.



Subsiding Fury: (1 AP, Level 18) When you use Barbarian Rage, you gain 3 stacks of Fury. Passive: You gain +100 hit points and +20 healing amplification.
Rather silly to get Subsiding Fury at level 18, when you've probably had Critical Fury since level 12, which makes all other sources of Fury irrelevant. (This gets back into why the whole rate of Fury expiring should be redone).

[bbqzor]

Force damage is a bad idea. You couldn't just make it "bane" damage?

Had time to read the thread and yes I agree. Bane damage is the way to go here, not force. Force has other interaction issues (mobs immune, mobs heal, etc) and makes little sense with ravager/barbarian. Leave Force in OS. Use Bane here. Works the same, wont ever heal mobs or deal with immunities, and fits the idea of the ravager causing more damage to anything at any time because ravagerness.

[Severlin]

Force damage has a thematic connection to arcane magic, so it's a poor fit for Barbarians (except OS). Instead of Force, it'd be nicer to have Bleed, Bane, Slashing, or just untyped.


Slashing would be reduced by certain abilities and thus be a nerf. We don't want to do untyped. The problem with Bane is the same problem as alignment damage; players don't understand what is affected by it. For players, bane refers to damage that affects a specific creature type so I don't know if we want to use it for more universal damage like this.

I would personally like to make it bleed damage but I'd have to look at Bleed damage to make sure that's an actual damage type and see what reduces it.



Rather silly to get Subsiding Fury at level 18, when you've probably had Critical Fury since level 12, which makes all other sources of Fury irrelevant. (This gets back into why the whole rate of Fury expiring should be redone).

We'll look into Fury again. Critical Fury got changed late in the process.

Sev~

[Qhualor]

core abilities

nothing negative to say

Tier 1

Do You Like Pain?- waste of AP. attacker losing AC wont matter, but you need it for I Like Pain.

Tier 3

Aura Of fear- -2 to mob stats is ok in heroics, but in epics its not noticeable.

Festering Wound- always wondered why you can decrease a mobs heal amp. I never noticed that they even did have any, but it looks like some of them could actually use heal amp or epic giants use something better than CLW on themselves.

Tier 5

Blood Strength- I need math on that. it looks like a must have enhancement if its at least decent.

overall, looks like Ravager is pretty stacked. really not much here I can rage against :)

[Qhualor]

Slashing would be reduced by certain abilities and thus be a nerf. We don't want to do untyped. The problem with Bane is the same problem as alignment damage; players don't understand what is affected by it. For players, bane refers to damage that affects a specific creature type so I don't know if we want to use it for more universal damage like this.

I would personally like to make it bleed damage but I'd have to look at Bleed damage to make sure that's an actual damage type and see what reduces it.

Sev~

sonic damage. its more thematical.

edit: bleed would probably be more fitting for a FB.

[Qhualor]

Had time to read the thread and yes I agree. Bane damage is the way to go here, not force. Force has other interaction issues (mobs immune, mobs heal, etc) and makes little sense with ravager/barbarian. Leave Force in OS. Use Bane here. Works the same, wont ever heal mobs or deal with immunities, and fits the idea of the ravager causing more damage to anything at any time because ravagerness.

OS is the anti magic tree. force doesn't belong there.

[Scrabbler]

Slashing would be reduced by certain abilities and thus be a nerf.
Hmm, my Blade Barrier spell does Slashing damage, and I haven't noticed any creatures reducing it. Also look at the Ring of the Ravager from Tower of Despair...

[bbqzor]

We don't want to do untyped.
Uh, thats a sad face.


I would personally like to make it bleed damage but I'd have to look at Bleed damage to make sure that's an actual damage type and see what reduces it.

Unless this is some kind of magical happy bleed damage which works on undead, no thanks. Like 90% of the epic content is undead right now (ok, some hyperbole, but seriously FoT, Fire Peaks, Deathwyrm, Mark of Death, all of Epic Orchard, Thunderholm, Haunted Halls, all the Drow Necromancer/Zombie fights, all the Netherese related shadow/umbral mobs... basically any epic content except the GH quests and Druid line have a ton of undead). Undead dont bleed (normally).

Itd be basically unplayable at 20+ if you did that. I mean if you take out all the (currently force dmg) effects due to bleed immunity, and the remainder due to stat dmg immunity, and whats left. Yea... thats not good.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Slashing would be reduced by certain abilities and thus be a nerf. We don't want to do untyped. The problem with Bane is the same problem as alignment damage; players don't understand what is affected by it. For players, bane refers to damage that affects a specific creature type so I don't know if we want to use it for more universal damage like this.

I would personally like to make it bleed damage but I'd have to look at Bleed damage to make sure that's an actual damage type and see what reduces it.



We'll look into Fury again. Critical Fury got changed late in the process.

Sev~


IIRC bleed is a damage type -

[Scrabbler]

Festering Wound: (1/1/1 AP Requires: Cruel Cut) Cruel Cut additionally inflicts 1/2/3 5-seconds stacks of 1d6 Poison damage every 2 seconds and the target loses -50% healing amplification for 5/10/15 seconds. This poison damage scales with 200% Melee Power. Damage stacks fade one at a time.
An easy, low-importance suggestion: give the Festering Wound poison DOT an additional effect of 5% Poison vulnerability, copied from the similar enhancement in Ninja Spy. That would give Festering Wound a bit of synergy with Poison weapons you might be wielding, or with Rogue / Monk / Drow characters in your party.



Pain Touch: (1 AP, Level 3) Your melee attacks deal 1d6 extra damage. --- This damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: You gain +10 healing amplification.
...
Pain Touch: (1 AP, Level 12) Upgrades Pain Touch so your melee attacks deal 2d6 extra damage. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: You gain +60 hit points and +20 healing amplification.
Ok, here's just a fun silly suggestion to add some character variety options:

Change the two Pain Touch core enhancements into multiselectors where instead of Pain Touch, you can instead pick an alternate combat style (appropriate to the crude life of a Ravager): Pain Touch + Pain Touch: 2d6 damage on each hit.
Club Mastery + Greater Club Mastery: When attacking with a Club or Greatclub you have +2 damage, +2 critical threat, and +8% Doublestrike.
Shred Master + Greater Shread Mastery: You gain Kama proficiency, and when attacking with a Sickle or Kama you have +1 crit mult. When attacking with a Sickle, Kama, or Handaxe you have +1 crit range and +10% offhand proc.
Reaping Mauler + Greater Reaping Mauler: When attacking unarmed you do 1d8/1d12 damage and have a faster animation. (Doesn't stack with Monk or GMOF unarmed animation).

[Faltout]

Core abilities

Furious Rage: (1 AP, Level 1) When you are raging and miss your attack by rolling 1, you gain Fury for 6 seconds. Fury: +1 Rage bonus to attack and damage. This effect stacks up to 6 times and one stack fades every 6 seconds.
Ok, I like this ability very much and I see it a lot when I'm raging. Cleaves, glancing blows, haste make rolling 1s easy to come by in 6 seconds. Thus when raging this ability is always stuck at 6.


Pain Touch: (1 AP, Level 12) Upgrades Pain Touch so your melee attacks deal 2d6 extra damage. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: You gain +60 hit points and +20 healing amplification.
For an ability that you get at level 3 to get upgraded at level 12 to do an extra 1d6 damage is laughable. Seems like you only wanted this to stay so you could add the hit points and healamp.


Subsiding Fury: (1 AP, Level 18) When you use Barbarian Rage, you gain 3 stacks of Fury. Passive: You gain +100 hit points and +20 healing amplification.
What good is starting from 3 stacks of Fury when I can get to 6 stacks in about 6 seconds? Not to mention that I will probably activate rage before the fight, so by the time I hit a monster the stacks will be gone. May I suggest you raise the Fury cap instead? After all, it's a level 18 ability. A +6 to damage (if the cap goes up to 12) is not overpowered if not still underpowered. Power Attack gives +10 damage at level 1.


Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize an enemy, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.
The cost of 1 Rage to maybe kill one mob is ridiculous. And it should not work on bosses so a normal mob does not deserve the cost of 1 rage. Especially since you want to base the tree on rage. Removing the cost of rage and making it NOT WORK on bosses (you don't wanna do that...) would make a nice capstone. Don't forget it's a capstone and not a T5 ability (which I will address later).


Tier One

Ritual Scarring: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Intimidate, Haggle and Physical Resistance.

Hate: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +(1/2/3)[W] damage and generate extra threat. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)

Do You Like Pain?: (1/1/1 AP) When you are hit: [20/40/60]% chance attacker loses 10 AC.

Barbarian Power Attack: (1/1/1 AP, Requires Power Attack) Your Power Attack feat does 1/2/3 additional point of bonus damage ---.

Hardy Rage: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Constitution when raging.
Ok, all in all some good tier 1 abilities. Not powerful, just what a barbarian needs at low levels. I suggest remaking that "Do You Like Pain" to have always a 20% chance (not up to 60%) and make that 10 AC to be 3 + 1/3 barbarian levels/6 + 1/2 barbarian levels/9 + barbarian levels. 10 AC at low levels is really powerful. But 10 AC at higher levels is nothing. 29 AC is still not too much but it's a tier 1 ability. And passive.



I Like Pain: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Do You Like Pain?) When you are hit: Small chance to gain 50/100/150 Temporary HP. The gain scales with 100% melee power.
Ok, what's that small chance? We're still at Tier 2 and those are a lot of HP * melee power. I guess it won't matter much on EE where hits are not many but really hurt, so it's not worth waiting for that chance to kick in for 250 HP. How about lowering the amount of HP but making that chance something considerable. Either way it's going to be mostly useless in EE and rightly so cause it's a tier 2 ability. Just don't make it overpowered for lower levels.


Tier Three (Requires Barbarian Level 3, 10 APs spent in tree)

Aura of Fear: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Fear Me!) Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to Strength and Charisma.
~ Rank 2: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to Strength, Charisma, Dexterity and Wisdom.
~ Rank 3: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to all ability scores.
lol. I mean, yeah. That monster with that 30 STR will be harmless now that this is reduced to 28... for the 6 seconds it's going to be alive. Also, that boss will be harmless now that he has a -2 penalty to his ability scores. Ability scores are only reduced meaningfully by weapon abilities, repeated attacks, spells. A static -2 is not going to do any damage. This ability needs to be changed to something meaningful.


Festering Wound: (1/1/1 AP Requires: Cruel Cut) Cruel Cut additionally inflicts 1/2/3 5-seconds stacks of 1d6 Poison damage every 2 seconds and the target loses -50% healing amplification for 5/10/15 seconds. This poison damage scales with 200% Melee Power. Damage stacks fade one at a time.

Constitution/Strength: (2 AP) +1 Constitution or Strength



Tier Four (Requires Barbarian Level 4, 20 APs spent in tree)

Laughter: (2 AP, Requires: Slaughter) For many Ravagers, there's no Laughter without Slaughter.
When Slaughter damages an enemy, you gain 3 Fury. When Slaughter scores a critical hit on an enemy, you gain an additional 3 Fury and 10 Melee Power for 15 seconds.
stacks of Fury again??? But those were already topped. Maybe give that melee power every time slaughter hits and reduce the duration to 10 or 6 seconds? After all, this is a tier 4 ability and needs to be meaningful at high levels.

I Hit Back!: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Like Pain) When you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 force damage to attacker. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power.


Tier Five (Requires Barbarian Level 5, Character Level 12, 30 APs spent in tree)

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you are healed for 1d4 hit points. Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 1d20 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

NO!!!!! ABSOLUTELY NOT! A barbarian lands about 10 hits a second and he's going to get healed for 1d4 * melee power * healing amp for each hit? This is one of THE most overpowered abilities in the game. And it's not even a capstone. It's a tier 5 ability for god's sake. Anyone can get it with 32 AP in the tree. Barbarian just became the most self sufficient build the game? Is that what the devs want?
First, make this trigger only a fixed number of times per second so that barbarians can have a bit of healing in their tree.
Second, remove that killing heal.
Third, if adding some damage is not compatible with the lore of the ability (what, and using blood to heal many times a second is within reason?) then make a more powerful version of Demoralizing Success. The monsters watching you feed from the blood of their companions are terrorized. Make something that will also work on epic monsters.


Critical Fury: (2 AP) While raging, each hit also grants 1 stack of Fury.
riiight... cause a barbarian can't land 6 hits within 6 seconds. I say again to instead raise the Fury cap (since that raise is in addition to the proposed raise in the core abilities make the raises stack no matter which ability comes first - like raise the max fury stack by +12)


~Sev
Overall, this healing amp is good but basically you just went over the barb tree adding goodies, leaving most previous abilities intact. That created an overpowered ability and many trash abilities. I hope you will consider that the barbarian can welcome the healing amp so healers and potions can heal him well enough, but he does not need a constant healing of about 10 HP per hit? First of all, the client screen would fill with +10s every time a cleave is performed.
Barbarian also needs some more DPS directly linked to his rage. Currently this tree ties rage mostly with Fury and that's it. Why not replace aura of fear (that is pointless) with some new ability for damage when raging? (and preferably not a flat + to damage when raging)

Thanks.

[Vellrad]

In the cores, you add MRR. I think it should be PRR instead and keep Occult Slayer being the anti-magic barbarian =)

Just a suggestion

I agree with that.

[Cetus]

Demoralizing Success: (1 AP, Level 6) When you score a vorpal hit in melee, you inflict Crushing Despair on nearby enemies for 30 seconds on a failed DC 20 Will saving throw. You then inflict Vulnerable Will for 15 seconds, regardless of the Crushing Despair saving throw. Passive: You gain +30 hit points and +10 healing amplification.

The DC should be based off something. A flat DC 20 is meaningless.





Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize an enemy, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.

Without regenerating rages, this is not a good ability. Why would anyone want to instakill a trash mob by wasting a limited rage? Not a good capstone.



Tier One

Ritual Scarring: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Intimidate, Haggle and Physical Resistance.

Hate: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +(1/2/3)[W] damage and generate extra threat. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)

Do You Like Pain?: (1/1/1 AP) When you are hit: [20/40/60]% chance attacker loses 10 AC.

Barbarian Power Attack: (1/1/1 AP, Requires Power Attack) Your Power Attack feat does 1/2/3 additional point of bonus damage ---.

Hardy Rage: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Constitution when raging.

Pretty straightforward, no real problems with tier 1 abilities. Of course, everyone will grab tier 3 PA and then throw a point in either hardy rage or PRR and move to the next tier.

Hate is too weak. Between all the other melee attacks, 3W with an enormous 15 second cooldown is an AP trap. Give this some kind of utility, maybe let it power up your next attack with 3W, so that we can hit it and then use another attack that would benefit from it (much like the adrenaline mechanic).




Tier Two (Requires Barbarian Level 2, 5 APs spent in tree)

Fear me!: (2 AP, Requires: Ritual Scarring) When you intimidate, affected enemies are Shaken for 6 seconds. DC 10 + Strength Modifier + Barbarian Level (Note that the DC is currently 13)

I don't know who uses intimidate anymore, but make this a stacking -2 saves penalty. We already have shaken from other sources like bladeforged. If someone makes an intimibarb, this should stack.




Mutilate: (1/1/1 AP, Requires Hate) Hate additionally deals 1d4/1d6/1d8 Charisma damage and 1d4/1d6/1d8 force damage. The force damage scales with 200% Melee Power.

This is terrible as is. Every 15 seconds hate would deal a pointless amount of cha damage and a trivial amount of force damage. With my previous suggestion, let mutilate let hate also empower your next attack to deal 1 point of force damage per character level, scaling with 200% melee power. Now hate makes your next attack deal +3W and 28 points of force damage at cap, which scales with 200% melee power.



I Like Pain: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Do You Like Pain?) When you are hit: Small chance to gain 50/100/150 Temporary HP. The gain scales with 100% melee power.

Cruel Cut: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals 1d6/2d6/3d6 extra constitution damage as long as you damage your target. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Action Boost: Melee Power: (1/1/1 AP) Activate this ability to receive a +[10/20/30] Action Boost bonus to Melee Power for 20 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

These are just boring AP sinks. Make some of these more interesting, small chance of temp HP and 30 sec cooldown con damage don't make me interested in the least. Melee power boost is standard, so whatever.



Tier Three (Requires Barbarian Level 3, 10 APs spent in tree)

Aura of Fear: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Fear Me!) Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to Strength and Charisma.
~ Rank 2: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to Strength, Charisma, Dexterity and Wisdom.
~ Rank 3: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to all ability scores.

Nobody cares. -2 stat penalty is the equivalent of leaving this empty.


Slaughter: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +(5/7.5/10)[W] damage. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

This is not terrible, but the 30 second cooldown is atrocious. We have monk fists of iron and ranger core attack that each have 3 second cooldowns. We have pally smites and divine sacrifice, which are ALL more powerful than this with significantly shorter cooldowns. Make this like 6 seconds at most then we have a good ability.



Festering Wound: (1/1/1 AP Requires: Cruel Cut) Cruel Cut additionally inflicts 1/2/3 5-seconds stacks of 1d6 Poison damage every 2 seconds and the target loses -50% healing amplification for 5/10/15 seconds. This poison damage scales with 200% Melee Power. Damage stacks fade one at a time.

Again, this is weak. Even when maxed out 3d6 poison damage every 2 seconds that scales with 200% melee power is not good damage, let alone have a prerequisite. Inflict 20 of these stacks for 20d6 points of damage that scales with 200% melee power for spending 6 action points on this. Then it might be useful.




Tier Four (Requires Barbarian Level 4, 20 APs spent in tree)

Laughter: (2 AP, Requires: Slaughter) For many Ravagers, there's no Laughter without Slaughter.
When Slaughter damages an enemy, you gain 3 Fury. When Slaughter scores a critical hit on an enemy, you gain an additional 3 Fury and 10 Melee Power for 15 seconds.

If slaughter's cooldown gets lowered substantially, then we have some substance now.




I Hit Back!: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Like Pain) When you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 force damage to attacker. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power.

Incredibly weak. After spending 3 AP, I get the chance of applying an average of ~50-60 points of damage with 100 melee power 20% of the time?

No thanks, make it 1d4/1d6/1d8 AoE per character level scales with 100% melee power, if its 20% of the time.




Dismember: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Festering Wound) Cruel Cut increases Melee Power by 5 for 10 seconds. Cruel Cut additionalyl slows enemy movement speed, or slows attack speed, or deals 2d4/2d6/2d8 force damage, or deals 6d4/6d6/6d8 force damage. This force damage scales with 200% Melee Power.

Constitution/Strength: (2 AP) +1 Constitution or Strength

I find this pretty good.



Tier Five (Requires Barbarian Level 5, Character Level 12, 30 APs spent in tree)

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you are healed for 1d4 hit points. Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 1d20 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

Not bad, with high heal amp and melee power this might be a pretty good survivability boost - gotta play with it when it goes on lamaland.



Bully: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Hit back!) You deal +[5/10/15]% damage to helpless enemies.
Requires: I Hit back!

I'll take it



Critical Fury: (2 AP) While raging, each hit also grants 1 stack of Fury.

Increase the stack size, this is meaningless if I'm already maxed out. While raging, your fury limit doubles to 12.


Critical Rage: (2/2 AP) Increases your critical threat range by 1/2 when raging.


(Note that Critical Rage no longer requires the Cruel Cut line.)


These are nice!

[Scrabbler]

A note about Cruel Cut and Mutilate:

For a TWF guy, Cruel Cut typically does 21 Constitution damage, which possibly incaps the mob, or at least gives it a -10 Fortitude against your next Stunning Blow. Similarly, Mutilate is typically 9 Charisma damage, or frequently 12, and many monsters have under 11 Charisma. Of course, ability damage does need two important fixes: removing epic insta-healing, and ensuring that enemy spell DCs are lowered when their charisma goes down.


Too many active attacks:

It might be nicer if instead of Ravager having 3 different active attacks, each on its own cooldown, some of them were shared charges, or linked to each other. For example, hitting with Mutilate could have a 30% chance to refresh Slaughter (or whatever).


About Laughter:

Currently Laughter means you have +10 Meleepower for 50% of the time, assuming you push the button every 30 seconds. And it's a bit better than that because you can make sure to use your active attacks during the period of higher damage. However, maybe some players would prefer not to need to push that button during every 30 seconds of melee, forever... it is kinda a boring task. So here's a suggestion for those people: put Laughter on a multiselector where you can instead choose to get half as much meleepower as a passive benefit.

By the same token, maybe some people would prefer to the option to pick a passive version of Hate + Mutilate which has a lower effect, but procs passively on every Vorpal.

[G_Lich]

Godlike Con Mod - 40, +10 + 14 (+1 later) - 64 will save? Seems fair, but not at the cost of a limited rage ( even if you have 15 these will run out quick )

Capstone forces those who want this into dwarf con build only, unless you build a con-to-hit and con-to-dmg into the core and add something to boost it close to where strength can get. It's not far off, I'm just saying that the capstone DC Ability (typically all or nothing) is very race-restrictive since dwarves are the only melee that can go all out con, and not find themselves lacking damage.

[Dagolar]

Slaughter: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +(5/7.5/10)[W] damage. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Please tell me Slaughter will finally actually WORK.



Slaughter: Melee Attack: Deals +(5/7.5/10)[W] damage. (Cooldown: 2 minutes)

Currently bugged, not giving +10[W]


I last tested it on my barbarian about a month ago, and it still wasn't working.

Meaning, it hasn't been working the entire time it has existed.

Whether this is an erratic or absolute issue, I can't tell you;

Just that I've been trying to get it to work since the start and it never has.

It simply doesn't add any [W] whatsoever to an attack. [and 10W on a THF, KINDA noticeable.]

Thanks :)


Edit: Also, barbarian stat damaging abilities [eg, Cruel Cut] don't work on most* Epic mobs unless you have high fort piercing [or an ally with Assassin's Trick].
Whether this part is intentional or not, dunno; but more importantly, none of the upgrades to Cruel Cut function unless the stat damage procs- meaning the entire ability is useless unless you spec to get it to work.

Just, something I thought I'd note for your feedback on intent.


* (Been a while since I tested it; I recall it works in wildernesses and EN quests, I can't remember EH, and certainly does not function in EE)

[CaptainSpacePony]

We will look into this. If the capstone doesn't have an auto paralyze (works even if the save is made against death) then it is too weak.

Sev~

I think it maybe too weak even then as it burns a rage. I haven't played a barb in years though, so I could be wrong. I'm not sure how many rages Epic barbs have to spare.

Btw, I think a DC in the low 50s is about the best a con build could do so it really is mostly "paralyze a mob for 1 rage"

[CaptainSpacePony]

I am afraid my feedback is pretty weak because I found the whole tree to so uninteresting that I haven't given it much thought other than "why bother?"

In spite of that, my few thoughts are

You said you wanted to focus on blood rage? I must have missed how you did that. Basically I start w/0 stacks and quickly get to 6. From there it does nothing interesting. I expected the cores to increase the max stacks and either active abilities either strip stacks for effects or passive abilities that activated once I got enough stacks.

Regarding Stat Drain attacks with cool downs > 3 seconds? Are epic mobs still 90% resistant and recover 1/pt every 2 or 3 seconds? If so, what's the point?

Slaughter looks like it could be worth the painful cool down if paired w/Fury of the Wild if you are skilled enough to use it with adrenaline.

[HatsuharuZ]

Question:

Could the DC-based abilities in this tree be changed to use the player's "Intimidate" skill modifier? Would that be a buff? These abilities might scale better that way.

[CaptainSpacePony]

We understand that there are encounters where ability damage is less useful but we didn't feel comfortable removing these abilities from the tree for players who combo them with items or other attribute abilities.

Sev~

I completely agree that ability damage should remain with the disclaimer that the whole stat damage system needs a serious update. Talk about a mechanic that doesn't scale well--sheesh!

If you're not already doing it, it's time to kick around options to move stat damage back out of the "joke" category.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

Slashing would be reduced by certain abilities and thus be a nerf. We don't want to do untyped. The problem with Bane is the same problem as alignment damage; players don't understand what is affected by it. For players, bane refers to damage that affects a specific creature type so I don't know if we want to use it for more universal damage like this.

I would personally like to make it bleed damage but I'd have to look at Bleed damage to make sure that's an actual damage type and see what reduces it.



We'll look into Fury again. Critical Fury got changed late in the process.

Sev~

Pretty sure you have a few other things that do general "bane" damage, but I can't think of them off-hand. I believe Bleed is considered slashing, and undead and constructs (possibly not WF, but all others) are immune to it. If you don't want to do untyped for whatever reason - and honestly, there's not that much immune to Force so Untyped would really just mean it now works against Arach's Knight - then I would suggest doing some special damage type. Make it thematic and call it Rage Damage, or Pain Damage or something.


sonic damage. its more thematical.

edit: bleed would probably be more fitting for a FB.

I could live with sonic.


OS is the anti magic tree. force doesn't belong there.

Fight fire with fire, I'm fine with Force being in OS *g*




By the same token, maybe some people would prefer to the option to pick a passive version of Hate + Mutilate which has a lower effect, but procs passively on every Vorpal.[/indent]

I'm ALWAYS for an option of a passive that's not as good vs. an active that I have to click every few seconds. Always. Yes, please.

[PermaBanned]

Slashing would be reduced by certain abilities and thus be a nerf. We don't want to do untyped. The problem with Bane is the same problem as alignment damage; players don't understand what is affected by it. For players, bane refers to damage that affects a specific creature type so I don't know if we want to use it for more universal damage like this.

I would personally like to make it bleed damage but I'd have to look at Bleed damage to make sure that's an actual damage type and see what reduces it.Ruin does Bane damage, and Vicious does Bane damage to ones self; players seem able to figure those out just fine ;) It's perfect here: it's unresistable and has it's own damage type icon that shows in the floating/scrolling numbers on the screen so players would always be able to see that it's working.

Bleed Damage is pretty steightforward: if the mob doesn't bleed, the ability doesn't work. This would be useless against Undead, Elementals, most Constructs & all objects, Ooozes... maybe even a thing or two I'm forgetting here...

Make it Bane please.

[moo_cow]

I Hit Back!: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Like Pain) When you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 force damage to attacker. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power.

Guards like this are not useful for anyone. Anyone who cares will be walking around with 50% displacement and a bit of dodge. So basically every 10 swings an enemy makes they will take like 40 force damage, this is no good, even scaled with melee power.

Every single enhancement should at least be useful even if it is only a low tier, there is so many enhancements in this game that no one would touch with a 10 foot pole. Please avoid this, these enhancements are just filler and no one will ever take them.

[Qhualor]

I Hit Back!: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Like Pain) When you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 force damage to attacker. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power.

Guards like this are not useful for anyone. Anyone who cares will be walking around with 50% displacement and a bit of dodge. So basically every 10 swings an enemy makes they will take like 40 force damage, this is no good, even scaled with melee power.

Every single enhancement should at least be useful even if it is only a low tier, there is so many enhancements in this game that no one would touch with a 10 foot pole. Please avoid this, these enhancements are just filler and no one will ever take them.

normally barbs would be raging so they would have to dismiss rage every 30 seconds to cast displace or what? every 1 1/2 minutes from a GS clicky? and that's if they invest in umd.

[Qhualor]

after more thought, sonic damage is more FB. bleed actually makes more sense with Ravager. theres a lot of stat damage enhancements in the tree so bleeding enemies makes sense.

[Monkey-Boy]

What good is all this stat-damage stuff with Epic ward stoping almost all of it?

[Dagolar]

I Hit Back!: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Like Pain) When you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 force damage to attacker. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power.

Guards like this are not useful for anyone. Anyone who cares will be walking around with 50% displacement and a bit of dodge. So basically every 10 swings an enemy makes they will take like 40 force damage, this is no good, even scaled with melee power.

Every single enhancement should at least be useful even if it is only a low tier, there is so many enhancements in this game that no one would touch with a 10 foot pole. Please avoid this, these enhancements are just filler and no one will ever take them.

I sort of agree. The only way to make guard procs viable is to.. well, make them viable.
Which basically means, have them scale notably more than 100% with Melee Power.

In terms of removing guard enhancements altogether, I can't agree.

If they actually ever make guard effects viable, they could be interesting additions. And I like the assumption that all tanky builds have access to displacement. That's.. quite the opinion.

You're right that guard effects don't have the oomph to be useful, but that just means they should have that oomph added, not that they should be removed from the game.

[Scrabbler]

I sort of agree. The only way to make guard procs viable is to.. well, make them viable.
Which basically means, have them scale notably more than 100% with Melee Power.
Or you can make guard procs scale with the enemy's melee power. The more damage the enemy is doing, the bigger the backlash hitting him.

[Dagolar]

OS is the anti magic tree. force doesn't belong there.

In pnp, Occult Slayers essentially get a 1d6 damage Favored Enemy: Spellcasters effect, and the ability to deal double damage with a readied action against a caster who tries to cast a spell.

A Favored Enemy: Spellcasters (if that could even be implemented in the game) would be awesome, and make splashing ranger or harper agent interesting.

A +50% damage increase to any attack made on a caster while they're casting a spell could be pretty potent.


Back to Ravagers- in source, they deal 'pain' damage. Which, is like, the least well explained damage type in all the books. What can it affect? What can it not? WHO KNOWS.

But if we look at creatures that can reasonably be affected by pain, they sync fairly well to those that can be forced to bleed.

It's not a perfect overlap, but in terms of creating a simple DDO version of ravager damage, bleed definitely seems to be the most appropriate choice- especially since their pain touch comes from the God of Slaughter, and if you're slaughtering things without causing bleeding, you're either hunting constructs, using implosion, or doing it wrong.

What would also be cool, would be a capstone or tier 5 ability that adds 20% effectiveness to all bleed effects. This'd not only work with the bleed damage bonuses, but with bleed effects like slicing blow, and items with bleed, lacerating, etc.

Definitely add a strong thematic element to Ravager.

[Dagolar]

Or you can make guard procs scale with the enemy's melee power. The more damage the enemy is doing, the bigger the backlash hitting him.

Good idea on principle, but at that point, you might as well just make it a % damage reflection effect, no?

[HatsuharuZ]

What good is all this stat-damage stuff with Epic ward stoping almost all of it?

I'd like to know this, too.

[MangLord]

This looks to be easily the best tree out of the bunch. Great job.

[MangLord]

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you are healed for 1d4 hit points. Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 1d20 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


For some reason, the name bothers me. Might I suggest....

Live for Battle
Bloodlust
Feast of Foes

This is the best ability in all the trees, by the way.

[MangLord]

As an easter egg homage to the original fantasy barbarian, may I suggest the "Do you like pain" section to be renamed...

Crush Your Enemies
See Them Driven Before You
Lamentations of the Women

[MangLord]

Back to Ravagers- in source, they deal 'pain' damage. Which, is like, the least well explained damage type in all the books. What can it affect? What can it not? WHO KNOWS.

But if we look at creatures that can reasonably be affected by pain, they sync fairly well to those that can be forced to bleed.

What would also be cool, would be a capstone or tier 5 ability that adds 20% effectiveness to all bleed effects. This'd not only work with the bleed damage bonuses, but with bleed effects like slicing blow, and items with bleed, lacerating, etc.

Definitely add a strong thematic element to Ravager.

I like the idea, and it's awesome for flavor, but bleeding damage becomes trivial very early on, with the inflated enemy HP in the game. The only way I could see it being useful is if it scaled immensely with melee power. I don't think a 20% bonus to tiny bleeding ticks would make much difference at all.

Would shadar-kai be healed by pain damage? Would you be able to apply bleed stacks with a maul or greatclub?

[kmoustakas]

Amazing changes. To all trees. Just woke up and this makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Talk about hp bags that's how it should be!

[Scrabbler]

If there was no such thing as Bladeforged, I'd be disappointed that Barbarian trees give you a ton of Healing amp but no corresponding Repair amp options.

But since Bladeforged have a broken Reconstruct effect, it's for the best Barbs aren't easier to repair.

[mezzorco]

Now that the 1 second cd on pain touch has gone, and that it scales with melee power, ravager is TWF friendly at last.
I'm eager to build a dwaxe dual wielding dwarf!

[Axeyu]

Now that the 1 second cd on pain touch has gone, and that it scales with melee power, ravager is TWF friendly at last.
I'm eager to build a dwaxe dual wielding dwarf!

It adds about 1-2% DPS, not that great.

[Thar]

These changes are good but on whole not enough for epic.

extra hp - always good. Heroic, enough to survive a fight. Epic - two hits tops.

extra heal amp. - a pot is still only going to sure so much and the regen is nice but its not going to make a difference when things hit for 200 a pop.

Barbs need some increase in DR. Their inate DR isn't useful end game and doesn't stack with other types. I would bet a whole revamp of dr isn't in order. Could there be an enhancement or part of the core tree that adds 1x barbarian dr to prr/mrr, next core tier 2x barbarian dr to prr/mrr, etc etc. Barbs are supposed to shrug off a hit and not care.

changing to bleed damage would be a nerf for constructs, oozes, etc that don't bleed. force is fine. or it needs to be untyped.

[Qhualor]

If there was no such thing as Bladeforged, I'd be disappointed that Barbarian trees give you a ton of Healing amp but no corresponding Repair amp options.

But since Bladeforged have a broken Reconstruct effect, it's for the best Barbs aren't easier to repair.

I don't see any reason why repair amp cant be included in the barb trees. it could say " or if you are a BF/WF you get blah blah bonus to repairs". actual melee forges need serious love. I don't understand why its intentionally not included.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

furious rage and subsiding rage are literally worthless as core enhancements. pure filler ap right there. also in light of raging fury as well as the actives that increase fury (which have senseless and uselessly long cds), it shouldnt be capped at 6 stacks. if you dont change the cap, then raging fury is just another waste of dev time.

is critical rage going to provide double expanded crit range like say, keen edge pulverizer and holy sword? is it going to have a type bonus? my preference would be to remove it and add crit multipliers, second choice be to make a single rank that provides double expanded range, third choice leave it in limbo.

[theRolf]

An easy, low-importance suggestion: give the Festering Wound poison DOT an additional effect of 5% Poison vulnerability, copied from the similar enhancement in Ninja Spy. That would give Festering Wound a bit of synergy with Poison weapons you might be wielding, or with Rogue / Monk / Drow characters in your party.



Ok, here's just a fun silly suggestion to add some character variety options:

Change the two Pain Touch core enhancements into multiselectors where instead of Pain Touch, you can instead pick an alternate combat style (appropriate to the crude life of a Ravager):

Pain Touch + Pain Touch: 2d6 damage on each hit.
Club Mastery + Greater Club Mastery: When attacking with a Club or Greatclub you have +2 damage, +2 critical threat, and +8% Doublestrike.
Shred Master + Greater Shread Mastery: You gain Kama proficiency, and when attacking with a Sickle or Kama you have +1 crit mult. When attacking with a Sickle, Kama, or Handaxe you have +1 crit range and +10% offhand proc.
Reaping Mauler + Greater Reaping Mauler: When attacking unarmed you do 1d8/1d12 damage and have a faster animation. (Doesn't stack with Monk or GMOF unarmed animation).



Nice suggestion here. Weapon choices are fun.

[theRolf]

I am afraid my feedback is pretty weak because I found the whole tree to so uninteresting that I haven't given it much thought other than "why bother?"

....

Agreed, as is mine. The lack of imagination in this pass is incredibly boring. Making unimaginative and weak enhancements more powerful doesn't make them more
interesting.

Devs - with all due respect for your efforts, just cancel the barb class and work on something else. The 1st enhancement pass got it so wrong that it can't be fixed with polish. It needs new. Silver told you and so am I. Put up or stay home.

[theRolf]

I Hit Back!: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Like Pain) When you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 force damage to attacker. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power.

Guards like this are not useful for anyone. Anyone who cares will be walking around with 50% displacement and a bit of dodge. So basically every 10 swings an enemy makes they will take like 40 force damage, this is no good, even scaled with melee power.

Every single enhancement should at least be useful even if it is only a low tier, there is so many enhancements in this game that no one would touch with a 10 foot pole. Please avoid this, these enhancements are just filler and no one will ever take them.

Yep, we need new ones. Nice ones that make us decide and choose and maybe even have enough thought put into them that they are fun.

[axel15810]

I will follow up with a more detailed response later, but as for now I have to say I am disappointed with the direction you're taking this tree. That self healing in Tier 5 is way too much. Barbs should not be so self sufficient.

I liked the direction you took frenzied berserker by giving them a slow regen. But this healing on every hit and kill combined with the big healing amp is WAY too much. It departs too much from what barbs have been in the past...a class that gives up all self-healing for the best melee DPS.

Barbs should need outside healing as a drawback to having such good melee DPS. In fact, the self-healing this barbarian tree gets is way better than Warpriest which makes no sense. And it probably beats all others except radiant servant!

Barbs should survive through big HP, DR, PRR, dodge, ect. but NOT through self-healing. I'm all for giving them a slow regen so they don't need outside combat babysitting, but they should need healing assistance when in combat.

We already have a wealth of self-healing melee options. Barbs should be different - a class that will actually be worth healing. Please reconsider the self-healing in tier 5. If you want to let them heal a very small amount per hit as an alternative to frenzied berserker's slow regen, OK. But those values are too much. At the minimum take out the massive 1d20 heal on a kill.

[Qhualor]

I will follow up with a more detailed response later, but as for now I have to say I am disappointed with the direction you're taking this tree. That self healing in Tier 5 is way too much. Barbs should not be so self sufficient.

I liked the direction you took frenzied berserker by giving them a slow regen. But this healing on every hit and kill combined with the big healing amp is WAY too much. It departs too much from what barbs have been in the past...a class that gives up all self-healing for the best melee DPS.

Barbs should need outside healing as a drawback to having such good melee DPS. In fact, the self-healing this barbarian tree gets is way better than Warpriest which makes no sense. And it probably beats all others except radiant servant!

Barbs should survive through big HP, DR, PRR, dodge, ect. but NOT through self-healing. I'm all for giving them a slow regen so they don't need outside combat babysitting, but they should need healing assistance when in combat.

We already have a wealth of self-healing melee options. Barbs should be different - a class that will actually be worth healing. Please reconsider the self-healing in tier 5. If you want to let them heal a very small amount per hit as an alternative to frenzied berserker's slow regen, OK. But those values are too much. At the minimum take out the massive 1d20 heal on a kill.

I agree that there needs to be more focus on defense, but I wouldn't say barbs have a wealth of healing options. Currently its CSW pots and SF penalty pots. No exactly great options. They do need a boost in self healing to justify the front line damage they will be taking on. Relying on other party members to help out is not one that barbs should put much stock into. Barbs are still strapped to potions, unless you give up DPS to not rage or mix the class with like fvs.

[Rautis]

It departs too much from what barbs have been in the past...a class that gives up all self-healing for the best melee DPS.
Not all 3 trees can be the best melee DPS at the same time. Ravager isn't very big on DPS thanks to critical rage being +6 critical profile on picks and +4 critical profile on your typical greataxe. Changes to Fury mechanic could make this respectable DPS tree but currently any Barb can benefit from that +6 damage by picking level 1 core and using Cleaves. Only Barb tree with worse critical profile boost is Occult Slayer which doesn't need to rage to benefit from Oath of Retribution and gets Metalline on any weapon he uses. For example Paladin Holy Sword can be +10 critical profile on falchion and Bard Swashbuckling +6 Critical profile on rapier(highest bonus is like +10 on sickle). Both of these classes get very respectable self heal options.


Barbs should need outside healing as a drawback to having such good melee DPS. In fact, the self-healing this barbarian tree gets is way better than Warpriest which makes no sense. And it probably beats all others except radiant servant!

Warpriests are likely to also get healing spells and metas/spell power to make ED heals effective. Far superior burst healing potential.

[Scrabbler]

Not all 3 trees can be the best melee DPS at the same time.
But none of the 3 trees is the best melee DPS.


Ravager isn't very big on DPS thanks to critical rage being +6 critical profile on picks and +4 critical profile on your typical greataxe. Changes to Fury mechanic could make this respectable DPS tree but currently any Barb can benefit from that +6 damage by picking level 1 core and using Cleaves. Only Barb tree with worse critical profile boost is Occult Slayer
It looks like you're saying that Frenzied Berserker has better crits than Ravager. That isn't the case; Ravager is the best, followed by FB and then OS.


Ravager t5 adds +2 net crit range (+4 CP axe, +6 CP pick)
Frenzied Berserker t5 adds +1 crit mult on 19-20. (+2 CP)
Frenzied Berserker core18 adds +1 crit mult on 19-20. (+2 CP)
Occult Slayer t5 adds +1 crit mult on 19-20 (+2 CP)

Staying just within 1 tree, Ravager is either the best (pick) or tied for best (axe). But someone with Ravager t5 can also decide to get FB core18, reaching the best Barbarian criticals. None of them have CP that's impressive compared to a Paladin or Bard.

Another thing to remember when considering Ravager vs FB is weapon effects like Heartseeking, which add a lot of damage to every critical. For those weapons, +2 range is more valuable than +1 mult on 19-20, even if your weapon is only 2x.

[Rautis]

I also agree with suggestions to make Demoralizing Success have a scaling DC.

And I agree with doing something about Epic Ward stat damage regen and shield. Epic ward is one of the reasons I end up playing Heroic content very often while it is rather easy. All those abilities that simply stop doing anything in epics just make me sad. Builds become very one dimensional and that's boring. Ravager attacks work great in heroics.

Maybe I Hit Back could be changed to typical retributive effect that can proc on both hits and misses. Barbarians get Improved Uncanny Dodge which alone decreases effectiveness of this ability by 50% when on.


But none of the 3 trees is the best melee DPS. I'm not sure. People might be underestimating the potential of Storm's Eye. +25 damage before any melee power or criticals can change lots of things if people learn to keep it active.

It looks like you're saying that Frenzied Berserker has better crits than Ravager. That isn't the case; Ravager is the best, followed by FB and then OS. Afaik the tier 5 ability in FB has 2 tiers each giving x1 on 19-20 for a total of x2 on 19-20 from there. Then we add the level 18 core which doesn't say anything about being limited to 19-20 only meaning that FB can have up to 10 crit profile boost when using falchion. However, I haven't played a barb with full FB spec. But FB Crit profile boost is atleast +6.

But someone with Ravager t5 can also decide to get FB core18, reaching the best Barbarian criticals. None of them have CP that's impressive compared to a Paladin or Bard.

Another thing to remember when considering Ravager vs FB is weapon effects like Heartseeking, which add a lot of damage to every critical. For those weapons, +2 range is more valuable than +1 mult on 19-20, even if your weapon is only 2x. This I agree with. Probably a Barb with FB capstone and Ravager T5 is the most Barb DPS. Not being able to invest much in Occult Slayer might be rather crippling though.

[Faltout]

I agree that there needs to be more focus on defense, but I wouldn't say barbs have a wealth of healing options. Currently its CSW pots and SF penalty pots. No exactly great options. They do need a boost in self healing to justify the front line damage they will be taking on. Relying on other party members to help out is not one that barbs should put much stock into. Barbs are still strapped to potions, unless you give up DPS to not rage or mix the class with like fvs.
They do need a boost of healing besides pots. But not so big a boost that they are better at self healing than every other class in the game except a healer specced cleric (which has high heals, but not as fast as the ravager).

Is this what you are suggesting for the barbs? 75 healing per second? And this can get much more higher with larger groups of mobs and higher healamp.
In fact:
2.5 (1d4) * 170/100 (melee power) = 4.25 per heal
4.25 * 400/100 (healamp) = 17 healed
17 * 20 (hits a second) = 340 healing per second
with 7 mobs that take cleaves, glancing blows at 1, 3 and 4 parts of the animation and speed boost from haste and haste boost. Also, imagine that this barb is jumping around avoiding a ton of hits from the monsters and is NOT raging so he can cast displacement clickies, scrolls, etc.

We are not suggesting the healing should go away, but there should be a limit to how many times it can activate like on the frenzied berserker.

[Scrabbler]

Then we add the level 18 core which doesn't say anything about being limited to 19-20 only meaning that FB can have up to 10 crit profile boost when using falchion.
No. The core18 Death Frenzy says "You increase your crit multiplier by an additional 1 when raging". That means it adds +1 to the +0 crit mult you get on rolls of 19-20 while using regular Frenzy in core6.

That text writeup does not make sense, but that's what it is. In an earlier version of the design, Frenzy gave +1 mult on 19-20 and then Death Frenzy boosted it by an additional +1. Later the designers removed the +1 mult from Frenzy and deleted it from the text, but didn't edit the Death Frenzy blurb to mention the 19-20 limitation.

The 19-20 limitation is intentional, to ensure that the critical bonus doesn't favor one kind of weapon over another (Rapier vs Battleaxe)

[FestusHood]

No. The core18 Death Frenzy says "You increase your crit multiplier by an additional 1 when raging". That means it adds +1 to the +0 crit mult you get on rolls of 19-20 while using regular Frenzy in core6.

That text writeup does not make sense, but that's what it is. In an earlier version of the design, Frenzy gave +1 mult on 19-20 and then Death Frenzy boosted it by an additional +1. Later the designers removed the +1 mult from Frenzy and deleted it from the text, but didn't edit the Death Frenzy blurb to mention the 19-20 limitation.

The 19-20 limitation is intentional, to ensure that the critical bonus doesn't favor one kind of weapon over another (Rapier vs Battleaxe)

It's unfortunate if, after letting swashbucklers and paladins have outrageous crit profiles, they decide to overly limit what barbs can get. I think this would be a good opportunity to actually let death frenzy add +1 multi on all crits. That makes it different than keen edge. Yes, it could be stacked with critical rage from ravager, but so what? That takes an enormous investment of ap, and it STILL wouldn't be as good as holy sword.

[droid327]

For many Ravagers, there's no Laughter without Slaughter.


This always bothered me. Its backwards. It should read "there's no Slaughter without Laughter". Laughter is a part of Slaughter, not vice versa.

[Scrabbler]

It's unfortunate if, after letting swashbucklers and paladins have outrageous crit profiles, they decide to overly limit what barbs can get. I think this would be a good opportunity to actually let death frenzy add +1 multi on all crits.
If they feel like Death Frenzy should give better crits (which I don't recommend), then they can simply change the +1 multiplier on 19-20 to a +2 or +3 multiplier on 19-20s. There's no need to add a bonus whose value depends on the existing critical range of your weapon; other classes already have that.

Instead of more crit, I'd like other ways to give Barbs more DPS, like +10 meleepower or +0.5 str mod, or various other things. (For one specific thing, I'd like +1 Meleepower at each class level from 6 to 20)

[Rautis]

No. The core18 Death Frenzy says "You increase your crit multiplier by an additional 1 when raging". That means it adds +1 to the +0 crit mult you get on rolls of 19-20 while using regular Frenzy in core6.

That text writeup does not make sense, but that's what it is. In an earlier version of the design, Frenzy gave +1 mult on 19-20 and then Death Frenzy boosted it by an additional +1. Later the designers removed the +1 mult from Frenzy and deleted it from the text, but didn't edit the Death Frenzy blurb to mention the 19-20 limitation.

The 19-20 limitation is intentional, to ensure that the critical bonus doesn't favor one kind of weapon over another (Rapier vs Battleaxe)
Yea, I remembered FB only boosting 19-20 range before Enhancement pass and kinda surprised to read that the description had no such limitation for level 18 core. So with 2 tiers of Focused Wrath and level 18 core you get +6 critical profile which still equals pick based Ravager. Except for all abilities that proc on any critical hits. However, FB will get +6 profile with any weapon but ravager gets only +2 with Falchion for example. So they both have their own upsides and downsides.

[Rautis]

Instead of more crit, I'd like other ways to give Barbs more DPS, like +10 meleepower or +0.5 str mod, or various other things. (For one specific thing, I'd like +1 Meleepower at each class level from 6 to 20) I'd like it if means of gaining extra DPS was different for each Barb tree. 2x or 1.75x str modifier for twohanders instead of 1.5x might be workable in some tree.

Ravager could go far with just getting Fury caps increased in higher level cores and maybe getting things to spend excess fury. For example regain rage use for loss of x amount of fury if you so choose. Or get melee power action boost benefits for free for 20 secs for reaching x amount of fury. Or Bypass Cruel Cut/Slaughter/Hate cooldown for this much fury spent. It could become rather interesting minigame if fury regen rates are balanced about right.

[Qhualor]

They do need a boost of healing besides pots. But not so big a boost that they are better at self healing than every other class in the game except a healer specced cleric (which has high heals, but not as fast as the ravager).

Is this what you are suggesting for the barbs? 75 healing per second? And this can get much more higher with larger groups of mobs and higher healamp.
In fact:
2.5 (1d4) * 170/100 (melee power) = 4.25 per heal
4.25 * 400/100 (healamp) = 17 healed
17 * 20 (hits a second) = 340 healing per second
with 7 mobs that take cleaves, glancing blows at 1, 3 and 4 parts of the animation and speed boost from haste and haste boost. Also, imagine that this barb is jumping around avoiding a ton of hits from the monsters and is NOT raging so he can cast displacement clickies, scrolls, etc.

We are not suggesting the healing should go away, but there should be a limit to how many times it can activate like on the frenzied berserker.

math. all I see are numbers. honestly im an on hands kind of player. I do everything by actually testing to see what does and does not work, what is OP and what isn't.

what I do understand from that is 340 per second seems awful high.

[Scrabbler]

Request for the developers:


When doing these Barbarian trees, please ensure that Glancing Blows from THF weapons cause special effects according to the defined percentage chance for Glancing Blows to cause special effects. For example, if I have GTHF, Mad Munitions 3, and Blood Strength, then each of my Glancing Blows should have a 15% chance of healing me 1d4 points. Not a 100% chance, not 0%, not any other number but 15%.

If the designers decide that some special abilities (such as Pain Touch) should have a higher or lower chance to trigger on glancing blows, that should be mentioned in the specific description; don't make us guess.


As a related request, it would be nice to have Glancing Blow Special Rate included on the character sheet below Offhand Proc Rate and Doublestrike.

[Seikojin]

We understand that there are encounters where ability damage is less useful but we didn't feel comfortable removing these abilities from the tree for players who combo them with items or other attribute abilities.

Sev~


About ability damage:

Epic monsters should be changed to have a percentage change to ignore each instance of incoming ability damage, instead of extra-rapid healing.


Force damage has a thematic connection to arcane magic, so it's a poor fit for Barbarians (except OS). Instead of Force, it'd be nicer to have Bleed, Bane, Slashing, or just untyped.



Rather silly to get Subsiding Fury at level 18, when you've probably had Critical Fury since level 12, which makes all other sources of Fury irrelevant. (This gets back into why the whole rate of Fury expiring should be redone).

I like the ability damage as is for now, and think it would be nice if it got bigger as you leveled (additional -2/4/6 @ barb levels 5/10/15).

I like most of the changes, and think all the melee power stuff is nice. However it would be better if the melee power stuff was bumped up while raging. Like 100% melee power effects boosted to 150% melee power while raging.

[HatsuharuZ]

I will follow up with a more detailed response later, but as for now I have to say I am disappointed with the direction you're taking this tree. That self healing in Tier 5 is way too much. Barbs should not be so self sufficient.

I liked the direction you took frenzied berserker by giving them a slow regen. But this healing on every hit and kill combined with the big healing amp is WAY too much. It departs too much from what barbs have been in the past...a class that gives up all self-healing for the best melee DPS.

Barbs should need outside healing as a drawback to having such good melee DPS. In fact, the self-healing this barbarian tree gets is way better than Warpriest which makes no sense. And it probably beats all others except radiant servant!

Barbs should survive through big HP, DR, PRR, dodge, ect. but NOT through self-healing. I'm all for giving them a slow regen so they don't need outside combat babysitting, but they should need healing assistance when in combat.

We already have a wealth of self-healing melee options. Barbs should be different - a class that will actually be worth healing. Please reconsider the self-healing in tier 5. If you want to let them heal a very small amount per hit as an alternative to frenzied berserker's slow regen, OK. But those values are too much. At the minimum take out the massive 1d20 heal on a kill.

Personally, I think the barbarian's tendency to run in and kill things at close range makes it a perfect candidate for getting some self-healing.

Also, none of their enhancements let barbarians heal entire groups, so I think you're exaggerating a bit too much.

[Scrabbler]

Few small suggestions for Ravager: DC for Demoralizing Success adds Cha mod and level/2. Or just delete that enhancement.


Make the Fury bonuses from Subsiding Fury and Laughter apply to all nearby allies, even if not Barbs, and let those sources increase Fury to above the normal cap (6). (This is to give some lower-value effects a bit of power, and also make the Barb a little more fun for his party)


Change t5 Blood Strength to be a toggle. You can have either 1d4 healing on each hit, or a chance to apply a poison stack (like the Ninja Spy enhancement). (This is so the player faces a tradeoff about getting healing. If he feels the situation is safe enough that healing isn't needed, he can switch the toggle to get more DPS)


Change t5 Blood Strength to scale with Barb class level. At level 5 it gives 1d1 healing, increasing to 1d2, 1d3, and 1d4 at levels 9, 14, and 19. (This is to make taking more than 5 Barb levels more valuable, and to help the healing provided scale more like other heal sources do, such as Cleric spells. Otherwise the effect can be especially overpowered at lower levels)

[Tilomere]

Critical Rage is confusing on live. On thrown attacks, it gives 4 crit profile after IC:Thrown. In melee, it provides 3 crit profile after IC:Bludgeoning (druid or unarmed) or 3 crit profile for all other melee weapons. I think bug fixing it to 4 crit all styles would be less confusing.

Critical Rage/Death frenzy combo is especially confusing, since Death Frenzy provides 19-20 1 crit profile, instead of 1 crit multiplier as stated and as working for SB or Holy Sword.

Also, since two out of the three trees deals with critical hits, but barbarians can't rage in precision stance, barbs have the lowest actual crit rates in the game for melees due to high average mob fortification. I think fort bypass should be added to barbs somehow. Barbs can already heal with ameliorating strikes, potions, and divine crusader heals twisted into any ED. The one thing they can't do well is crit. which is sort of odd on a class with crit in all three enhancement trees, and a crit based ED.

I like the healing and HAMP/HP in the Ravager tree. I think it will flow very will in my multiclass druid builds. Combined with PRR/MRR changes and Melee Power, I'm foreseeing Druid/barb/cleric in Divine Crusader to be very powerful.

[Qhualor]

Critical Rage is confusing on live. On thrown attacks, it gives 4 crit profile after IC:Thrown. In melee, it provides 3 crit profile after IC:Bludgeoning (druid or unarmed) or 3 crit profile for all other melee weapons. I think bug fixing it to 4 crit all styles would be less confusing.

Critical Rage/Death frenzy combo is especially confusing, since Death Frenzy provides 19-20 1 crit profile, instead of 1 crit multiplier as stated and as working for SB or Holy Sword.

Also, since two out of the three trees deals with critical hits, but barbarians can't rage in precision stance, barbs have the lowest actual crit rates in the game for melees due to high average mob fortification. I think fort bypass should be added to barbs somehow. Barbs can already heal with ameliorating strikes, potions, and divine crusader heals twisted into any ED. The one thing they can't do well is crit. which is sort of odd on a class with crit in all three enhancement trees, and a crit based ED.

I like the healing and HAMP/HP in the Ravager tree. I think it will flow very will in my multiclass druid builds. Combined with PRR/MRR changes and Melee Power, I'm foreseeing Druid/barb/cleric in Divine Crusader to be very powerful.

umm.. no. barbs should be critting, critting for high numbers and be critting a lot if you are built for dps. ive never had an issue with crits on my barbs.

[redoubt]

Assassinate: Stealth Melee Assassinate Attack: On Sneak Attack: Kills a living target instantly if the target fails a Fortitude save (DC 10 + Rogue Level + Int Modifier). Even on a successful save, the target takes 10d6 additional sneak attack damage from this attack.

Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize an enemy, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.

I have concerns over Visage of Terror. Maybe the devs could further explain how it will work.
I see the cooldown is longer than assassinate and Visage of Terror only gets half barb level which might be enough of a cut to level the DC with an INT rogue.
The cooldown might be enough to balance the fact that the barb does not have to sneak, can have agro, move at full speed, can stay in the fight... but I'm not sure.
Sounds like once every 30 seconds an insta-kill goes off with a rage boosted CON score.

I get that this is a capstone... but wow. Am I over estimating this? Someone else was commenting on the position of a rogue assassin being eliminated by proxy...

Anyway, I'd like to hear how the devs expect this to be used in practice.

[redoubt]

Assassinate: Stealth Melee Assassinate Attack: On Sneak Attack: Kills a living target instantly if the target fails a Fortitude save (DC 10 + Rogue Level + Int Modifier). Even on a successful save, the target takes 10d6 additional sneak attack damage from this attack.

Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize an enemy, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.

I have concerns over Visage of Terror. Maybe the devs could further explain how it will work.
I see the cooldown is longer than assassinate and Visage of Terror only gets half barb level which might be enough of a cut to level the DC with an INT rogue.
The cooldown might be enough to balance the fact that the barb does not have to sneak, can have agro, move at full speed, can stay in the fight... but I'm not sure.
Sounds like once every 30 seconds an insta-kill goes off with a rage boosted CON score.

I get that this is a capstone... but wow. Am I over estimating this? Someone else was commenting on the position of a rogue assassin being eliminated by proxy...

Anyway, I'd like to hear how the devs expect this to be used in practice.

I think I sorted it out. I've read some comments about the rage cost. I'm thinking that the rage cost is the balancing factor I was missing.

I know that both turns and lay on hands have methods of regenerating them; is there not a similar function available for barb rage? If not, how much will this limit this ability?

(Wish I could edit my posts. Don't know why I cannot, it just hangs when I try.)

[Faltout]

math. all I see are numbers. honestly im an on hands kind of player. I do everything by actually testing to see what does and does not work, what is OP and what isn't.

what I do understand from that is 340 per second seems awful high.
Since the changes are still not developed but only exist on paper, all I can provide is some numbers. The amount of hits scored per second comes from my pure occult slayer/ravager on live. On live, Ravager has that Fury system that procs every time you score a 1. I manage to get Fury up to 6 in about 6-10 seconds. Since I score a 1 roughly 1/20 of the times I hit, I must be landing about 15-20 hits a second.
Since I'm not cleaving all the time and I'm not that fast of a swinger, those hits can't be actual hits. Some of them need to be glancing blows. Therefore, I assume that the devs will take each glancing blow and each hit from the cleave as a hit, which would mean 15-20 hits per second indeed.
I took 1d4 as 2.5, I provided 70 melee power which I guess can be acquired, and 300 healamp where 150 at least will come from barb enhancement trees and 150 healamp from items/other enhancements. Some people claim to have reached much higher scores, so 300 healamp is not unreasonable. As you can see, my numbers are not in the least fictional or extreme. And if the devs go ahead with it exactly as it is now, you will see those numbers by yourself only then it will be too late to apply a good fix.

[Rautis]

Since the changes are still not developed but only exist on paper, all I can provide is some numbers. The amount of hits scored per second comes from my pure occult slayer/ravager on live. On live, Ravager has that Fury system that procs every time you score a 1. I manage to get Fury up to 6 in about 6-10 seconds. Since I score a 1 roughly 1/20 of the times I hit, I must be landing about 15-20 hits a second.
Since I'm not cleaving all the time and I'm not that fast of a swinger, those hits can't be actual hits. Some of them need to be glancing blows. Therefore, I assume that the devs will take each glancing blow and each hit from the cleave as a hit, which would mean 15-20 hits per second indeed.
I took 1d4 as 2.5, I provided 70 melee power which I guess can be acquired, and 300 healamp where 150 at least will come from barb enhancement trees and 150 healamp from items/other enhancements. Some people claim to have reached much higher scores, so 300 healamp is not unreasonable. As you can see, my numbers are not in the least fictional or extreme. And if the devs go ahead with it exactly as it is now, you will see those numbers by yourself only then it will be too late to apply a good fix.

It is indeed possible that these abilities are OP. However there's much you can't know for sure such as procs on glancing blows. Some abilities proc on every glancing blow but some only when it would be appropriate depending on your chance to proc effects on glancing blows. Maybe the OP here is the insane heal amp from cores and not the particular tier 5 healing abilities. I haven't heard cries of OP about fists of light and that's only 1 hp on average less. Ofcourse this one can proc on multiple mobs on cleaves and such but so can Vampirism on weapons which is only 0.5 points behind this and I haven't even heard anyone even mention this ability in long time.

In my opinion numbers in tier 5 healing abilities are somewhat ok. And a bit early to comment on as you can't know interaction with glancing blows for sure. Barb having like two times as much enhancement based healing amplification when compared to anything else is the real issue here.

When it comes to counting glances as attacks for Fury is I believe because also they roll a d20 to see if they hit. And as a result glancing blow to hit roll can be a 1 resulting in a stack of Fury. You can't draw conclusions about other Barbarian abilities functioning on glancing blows from that. I would think Blood Strenght counts either as typical attack that procs on proper hits and has a small chance to proc on glances depending on THF feats and enhancements you got. Or it procs on all glances like certain abilities in some trees. But you can't know yet.

[Rautis]

Since the changes are still not developed but only exist on paper, all I can provide is some numbers. The amount of hits scored per second comes from my pure occult slayer/ravager on live. On live, Ravager has that Fury system that procs every time you score a 1. I manage to get Fury up to 6 in about 6-10 seconds. Since I score a 1 roughly 1/20 of the times I hit, I must be landing about 15-20 hits a second.
Since I'm not cleaving all the time and I'm not that fast of a swinger, those hits can't be actual hits. Some of them need to be glancing blows. Therefore, I assume that the devs will take each glancing blow and each hit from the cleave as a hit, which would mean 15-20 hits per second indeed.
I took 1d4 as 2.5, I provided 70 melee power which I guess can be acquired, and 300 healamp where 150 at least will come from barb enhancement trees and 150 healamp from items/other enhancements. Some people claim to have reached much higher scores, so 300 healamp is not unreasonable. As you can see, my numbers are not in the least fictional or extreme. And if the devs go ahead with it exactly as it is now, you will see those numbers by yourself only then it will be too late to apply a good fix.

When it comes to numbers you can pretty much slash them in half(not quite) if you use less optimistic glancing blow interaction for this ability. You also have to compare this ability to your typical healing abilities that now are subject to greatly increased heal amp numbers from Barbarian.

I believe the discussion of possible over powered ability should be mostly about the amp, not about tier 5s.

[Faltout]

It is indeed possible that these abilities are OP. However there's much you can't know for sure such as procs on glancing blows. Some abilities proc on every glancing blow but some only when it would be appropriate depending on your chance to proc effects on glancing blows. Maybe the OP here is the insane heal amp from cores and not the particular tier 5 healing abilities. I haven't heard cries of OP about fists of light and that's only 1 hp on average less. Ofcourse this one can proc on multiple mobs on cleaves and such but so can Vampirism on weapons which is only 0.5 points behind this and I haven't even heard anyone even mention this ability in long time.

In my opinion numbers in tier 5 healing abilities are somewhat ok. And a bit early to comment on as you can't know interaction with glancing blows for sure. Barb having like two times as much enhancement based healing amplification when compared to anything else is the real issue here.

When it comes to counting glances as attacks for Fury is I believe because also they roll a d20 to see if they hit. And as a result glancing blow to hit roll can be a 1 resulting in a stack of Fury. You can't draw conclusions about other Barbarian abilities functioning on glancing blows from that. I would think Blood Strenght counts either as typical attack that procs on proper hits and has a small chance to proc on glances depending on THF feats and enhancements you got. Or it procs on all glances like certain abilities in some trees. But you can't know yet.
Replying to all your posts in the 2 threads.
After extensive search in Butcher's Path and Kobold Assault I realized that Weapon Bond indeed does not proc on glancing blows (my main attack missed and glancing blows did not - was tough to manage to see it). Of course it still does on Cleaves.
Fury on the other hand procs on glancing blows, regular attacks and cleaves.

While this lessens the healing per second from 20 hits per second to "4 attacks and 1 cleave" per 3 seconds, whether the tier 5 ability of ravager procs on glancing blows or not is unclear (as unclear as it was that bond does not proc, while Fury does). What my first post in both threads was about is to keep a limit to how many times a second those healing abilities can proc. And obviously I only knew about Fury.

That healing amplification I used in my calculations was average. Severlin managed 470 healing amp in his post (without the current barb trees). Although the barb trees exclude any healamp that comes from monk and paladin, they provide that healamp on their own. So, a human (60 healamp) + paladin past lives (30) + Guild (20) + Barbarian (100+) is already 210 healamp.

Now that I see Bonds don't build on grazing hits, my calculations are way off. Still I think that when that healing is tested, it's going to be too good for a barb. Also think about a barb using some dummy weapons to hit monsters when he doesn't need healing to charge them. Then when fighting the tough fight with the main weapon, he instantly switches the dummy weapon, clicks a full heal, back to the main weapon.

[Psiandron]

Well, I'm not seeing this one either.

First off you're going to want to raise your strength to get the most dps, but then your ultimate core ability, Visage, relies on your CON. That has always seemed more than a little wonky to me. Ofc, rage does give twice to con what it does to strength. /shrug

The biggest issue that I see is why would you guys go to all the trouble to anything to this PRE if you know that everyone is going to dump it once they get to epic levels? Are you guys are going to change how stat damage is handled in epics?

[Scrabbler]

Now that I see Bonds don't build on grazing hits, my calculations are way off. Still I think that when that healing is tested, it's going to be too good for a barb.
Yes, I also suspect the self-healing might be too good. The goal for the cheap, cost-free self-healing should be that it helps you take the edge off incoming damage... not fully cover your needs.


Also think about a barb using some dummy weapons to hit monsters when he doesn't need healing to charge them. Then when fighting the tough fight with the main weapon, he instantly switches the dummy weapon, clicks a full heal, back to the main weapon.
That's a concern that also showed up sometime with Monks and their FOL self-healing: when the designers let players refill their hp by hitting monsters, it's sometimes desirable to intentionally do less damage to an enemy so you can recharge more. That's a perverse incentive; anytime hitting a monster gives players a benefit aside from "progress towards killing the monster", undesirable results can occur. And occasionally the Monk will trip a weak enemy and punch it for low damage to recharge, then a teammate comes along and "helps" kill it, denying him the Ki and hitpoints.

Another oddity is that in any quest where you need to destroy some big crystal, pillar, portal, or other large non-fighting enemy object, a Barbarian who self-heals by hitting will be nearly invulnerable. Think of the Mindsunderer room at the end of Inspiration Quarter: instead of fighting the endless stream of monsters, you can ignore them and simply slash the crystal.

Developers can attempt to address those problems by making the self-healing or recharge dependent on the amount of damage you did (so that using weaker weapons doesn't provide more points), but that can make other complications.

[Dramentia]

greetings,

here are the proposed changes for the barbarian's ravager tree. The ravager has been updated to focus on blood rage, and as such the tree gives blood related abilities including the top ability to heal as the ravager attacks foes. We've also moved some of the bonus damage to be force since there was no clear explanation or understanding of what creatures were affected by alignment based damage.


(if you see "---" that means text was removed; likely a penalty or condition.)


core abilities

furious rage: (1 ap, level 1) when you are raging and miss your attack by rolling 1, you gain fury for 6 seconds. Fury: +1 rage bonus to attack and damage. this effect stacks up to 6 times and one stack fades every 6 seconds.

Pain touch: (1 ap, level 3) your melee attacks deal 1d6 extra damage. --- this damage scales with 100% melee power. Passive: You gain +10 healing amplification.

demoralizing success: (1 ap, level 6) when you score a vorpal hit in melee, you inflict crushing despair on nearby enemies for 30 seconds on a failed dc 20 will saving throw. You then inflict vulnerable will for 15 seconds, regardless of the crushing despair saving throw. passive: You gain +30 hit points and +10 healing amplification.

pain touch: (1 ap, level 12) upgrades pain touch so your melee attacks deal 2d6 extra damage. This damage scales with 100% melee power. passive: You gain +60 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

subsiding fury: (1 ap, level 18) when you use barbarian rage, you gain 3 stacks of fury. passive: You gain +100 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

visage of terror: (1 ap, level 20) terrorize an enemy, killing them with fear if they fail a will save vs 10 + constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (cost 1 rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. passive: You gain +4 constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.


tier one

ritual scarring: (1/1/1 ap) +[1/2/3] intimidate, haggle and physical resistance.

Hate: (1/1/1 ap) melee attack: Deals +(1/2/3)[w] damage and generate extra threat. (cooldown: 15 seconds)

do you like pain?: (1/1/1 ap) when you are hit: [20/40/60]% chance attacker loses 10 ac.

Barbarian power attack: (1/1/1 ap, requires power attack) your power attack feat does 1/2/3 additional point of bonus damage ---.

Hardy rage: (1/1/1 ap) +[1/2/3] constitution when raging.


tier two (requires barbarian level 2, 5 aps spent in tree)

fear me!: (2 ap, requires: Ritual scarring) when you intimidate, affected enemies are shaken for 6 seconds. dc 10 + strength modifier + barbarian level (note that the dc is currently 13)

mutilate: (1/1/1 ap, requires hate) hate additionally deals 1d4/1d6/1d8 charisma damage and 1d4/1d6/1d8 force damage. the force damage scales with 200% melee power.

i like pain: (1/1/1 ap, requires: Do you like pain?) when you are hit: Small chance to gain 50/100/150 temporary hp. the gain scales with 100% melee power.

cruel cut: (1/1/1 ap) melee attack: Deals 1d6/2d6/3d6 extra constitution damage as long as you damage your target. (cooldown: 30 seconds)

action boost: melee power: (1/1/1 ap) activate this ability to receive a +[10/20/30] action boost bonus to melee power for 20 seconds. (cooldown: 30 seconds)


tier three (requires barbarian level 3, 10 aps spent in tree)

aura of fear: (1/1/1 ap, requires: Fear me!) nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to strength and charisma.
~ rank 2: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to strength, charisma, dexterity and wisdom.
~ rank 3: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to all ability scores.

Slaughter: (1/1/1 ap) melee attack: Deals +(5/7.5/10)[w] damage. (cooldown: 30 seconds)

festering wound: (1/1/1 ap requires: Cruel cut) cruel cut additionally inflicts 1/2/3 5-seconds stacks of 1d6 poison damage every 2 seconds and the target loses -50% healing amplification for 5/10/15 seconds. this poison damage scales with 200% melee power. damage stacks fade one at a time.

Constitution/strength: (2 ap) +1 constitution or strength


tier four (requires barbarian level 4, 20 aps spent in tree)

laughter: (2 ap, requires: Slaughter) for many ravagers, there's no laughter without slaughter.
When slaughter damages an enemy, you gain 3 fury. When slaughter scores a critical hit on an enemy, you gain an additional 3 fury and 10 melee power for 15 seconds.

i hit back!: (1/1/1 ap, requires: I like pain) when you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 force damage to attacker. this damage scales with 100% melee power.

dismember: (1/1/1 ap, requires: Festering wound) cruel cut increases melee power by 5 for 10 seconds. cruel cut additionalyl slows enemy movement speed, or slows attack speed, or deals 2d4/2d6/2d8 force damage, or deals 6d4/6d6/6d8 force damage. this force damage scales with 200% melee power.

constitution/strength: (2 ap) +1 constitution or strength


tier five (requires barbarian level 5, character level 12, 30 aps spent in tree)

blood strength: (2 ap) each time you land a hit you are healed for 1d4 hit points. Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 1d20 hit points. This healing scales with 100% melee power.

bully: (1/1/1 ap, requires: I hit back!) you deal +[5/10/15]% damage to helpless enemies.
Requires: I hit back!

critical fury: (2 ap) while raging, each hit also grants 1 stack of fury.

critical rage: (2/2 ap) increases your critical threat range by 1/2 when raging.


(note that critical rage no longer requires the cruel cut line.)


~sev
in my opinion give barbs way more hp and more damage and no self healing. I shouldn't have to stand there and swing five times at a generic mob. I should be the one clearing mobs why the others take down the boss. Giant swings of a great axe or sword. Just destroying mobs. Maybe increase the prr while raged so you take less damage from the mobs. Because you are shrugging it off kinda thing. But at a penalty to mrr. Dps,hp, speed, is what the barbarian needs!

[Rautis]

Now that I see Bonds don't build on grazing hits, my calculations are way off. Still I think that when that healing is tested, it's going to be too good for a barb. Also think about a barb using some dummy weapons to hit monsters when he doesn't need healing to charge them. Then when fighting the tough fight with the main weapon, he instantly switches the dummy weapon, clicks a full heal, back to the main weapon. It depends on if Weapon Bond is weapon or character specific. They both have their own issues. Weapon specific might allow you to store Weapon Bond on weapons you keep just for activating heal. Character specific allows you to keep the Weapon Bond benefits no matter which weapon you use. However, now very few things are Bond specific so character specific Weapon Bond would be far less exploitable. I'd have to check how things currently works to know what to expect(can't connect to servers atm). I suspect Weapon Bond is currently an effect on character and not the weapon but I might be wrong.

[Severlin]

Great feedback so far. Still dissecting all of it. Some notes:

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played.

~ Of all the abilities in the barbarian trees we expect Blood Strength to take the most tweaking to get right. To players that are concerned it will be overpowered we hear you and will be doing internal playtests with it soon. Lamannia feedback will be particularly telling in this regard.

~ We will be discussing the damage type and the capstone balance.

Sev~

[Zurrander]

Considering the number of players that have spoken out against Barbs getting self healing, would it be possible for you to give us some alternatives (or at least run a few by the other Devs?) Some of the popular changes I've seen suggested are...

1. Turn the new sources of Healing into Temporary Hit Points. (how about a % of your Hit Points instead of a flat amount? That way they could scale into epics)
2. Give Barbs bigger Hit Point/PRR bonuses when raging.
3. Add more damage! Barbs should be out damaging any none caster 70% of the time...
4. Re-balance the Healing formulas so that Barbs can "Take some of the Edge off" without becoming completely self sufficient.

I think some mixture of 1 & 3 would be perfect. Also consider giving Barbs a way to regenerate Rage (especially if one of their abilities is going to eat Rages).This is your chance to make temp hp relevant again, as both a way to make barbs more survivable and a way to revive some of those old Temp HP spells (so that they will be used past Lv 10).

Edit: "I didn't see your post until now, can you tell us if Temp HP is on the table for barbs as an alternative to Self Healing?"

[Scrabbler]

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency.
No classes without self-sufficiency? So what about Human Fighter, Rogue, and Ranger? Sure Rogue can throw a scroll, but UMD only counts as self-sufficiency because of an NPC vendor that exists. Ranger has its own healing spells, but they're vanishingly insignificant compared to easy stuff like these Barb enhancements.

If you want every class to have some healing self-sufficiency, there's the easy way to do that: Create a vendor-sold consumable that takes a few noncombat seconds to use and which restores more than 25 hitpoints per plat spent. (That's less than half the hp per plat of a Cleric hireling). Boom! Now every class has self-sufficiency, without having to edit each one in turn.


~ Of all the abilities in the barbarian trees we expect Blood Strength to take the most tweaking to get right.
Here's a fun Blood Strength adjustment: the healing is greater when your hp is low, and less when your hp is high. When your hp is almost full it does no healing, and instead slightly raises DPS.


~ We will be discussing the damage type and the capstone balance.
The damage type is of low importance, but consider the same damage type used by Vorpal weapons (for their non-kill effect). The Ravager "Dismember" enhancement is literally Vorpal-like behavior.

[Blackheartox]

No matter what you plan to do with barbs, giving them selfhealing on hit and kill and massive hp pools is not what should be done.

Trust me, if you made them get the highest crit multiplifer like x6 or 7 or more from tree alone without adding anything to survival, we the player base would figure out a way to play them.

But why dont you in the first place, try not to add more power creep?

Suggestion from the top of my head, add to lv 18 core or capstone following
/with regard to power creep what would allow casuals to enjoy barbs/:

Raging master:
While under effect of rage you ignore all negative effects of potions.

With that change, allow silver flame potions to stack to 100 and make them cheaper.
With this you would give barbs more boost then anyone.
Can something like that be done?
Just add that simple change + increased multiplifers that barbs straight out outdamage all melles by at least 40%

[Severlin]

No classes without self-sufficiency? So what about Human Fighter, Rogue, and Ranger? Sure Rogue can buy a scroll, but that's a bought item. Ranger has its own healing spells, but they're vanishingly insignificant compared to easy stuff like these Barb enhancements.


None of these classes are cut off from activating self healing abilities by a major class feature.

Sev~

[davmuzl]

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played.


I don't understant why anyone would expect a barbarian to be a glass cannon unless it only refers to the fact that barbarians can't heal. Any barbarian should be able to take a lot of hits.

What about finally making healers and repair kits useful? They could be used to activate a healing over time effect like the monks wholeness of body. That way the barbarian and really any class would only have to worry about getting past the fight and could heal between fights. The drawback for the barbarian would be that he is forced toend is his rage and it might take some time so stuff like blitz charges might be lost.

[Scrabbler]

None of these classes are cut off from activating self healing abilities by a major class feature.
I was kinda afraid someone would look at it that way...

If the problem is that Cocoon is blocked by Rage, the easy solution is to edit Cocoon's description to say it can be used during Rage. (Do the same to Primal Scream while you're at it)

If the problem is that UMD scrolls are blocked by Rage, then stop and consider if UMD scrolls is really what you'd recommend for Fighters and Rangers to heal themselves.

[Uska]

None of these classes are cut off from activating self healing abilities by a major class feature.

Sev~

and non have anything nearly as overpowered or non-fitting to the class origins this is the worst twisting and overpowering of dnd I have ever seen including the horribly overpowered splat books put out for PnP please turn back before its to late. I am serious I regret spending all I did recently in the store and reupping my sub if I had known about this and the paladin changes I wouldn't have.

[Yellowmace]

Start over, this is terribly broken. Take the input of Barbarian players who have been playing for 8 years, and years before that. They are a valuable resource and paying customers.

[Thud]

Giving them 1 melee power per barb level will give them almost as much DPS as the revamped pali, 2 melee power per level would make them top tier DPS, which is what they SHOULD be.

[Wulverine]

None of these classes are cut off from activating self healing abilities by a major class feature.


There is no way you can add enough selfhealing to the Barbarian class to compete with the paladin/bladeforged melee's. On top of that barbarians are looking to be much less dps than paladins.

Fine with me if you go through with this: makes it easier for me to autodecline any and all barbarian that i see, because they will be gimp by default. It'll be reduced to a flavor class.

And doubting you will revisit the barbarians in a major way in a future update after the next, they'll be gimp for a long long while.

[Cetus]

Great feedback so far. Still dissecting all of it. Some notes:

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played.

~ Of all the abilities in the barbarian trees we expect Blood Strength to take the most tweaking to get right. To players that are concerned it will be overpowered we hear you and will be doing internal playtests with it soon. Lamannia feedback will be particularly telling in this regard.

~ We will be discussing the damage type and the capstone balance.

Sev~

Lol

I just...don't know what else to say. Barbs should be DPS kings. Period.

[bbqzor]

We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played.
To truly address self sufficiency and avoid glass cannon, spamming max hp and amp as additives wont suffice. Those are hallmarks of glass cannon type design... they do nothing but inflate hp yoyo. I hope part of this decision plays out by actually acknowledging that the class mechanic of DR needs to fit well with how ddo is currently played, meaning prr. And that a single T5 heal in each tree (which may or may not actually, partially, or wholly cover a barbarians ability to be at all self sufficient with regards to healing) does nothing to address the huge loss of epic destiny abilities, items, and so on that rage also prevents.

My point is, and I agree with the thought that the current state of the game weighs heavy here, that to get from where barbs are, to wherever they are going to go with this new design, you cant just add max hp, amp, and one maybe-viable self healing T5 ability and call it a day. The game has become very broad in the sense that classes bring multiple abilities from many avenues together to hang in the upper end. Barbs, by their nature, get a very limited pool to draw from... and that likely cannot change for ddo (youd have to add something for casting while raged, which I doubt will/should ever happen thought it does exist in multiple places in pnp). Dont lose track of that in your balance work.


Of all the abilities in the barbarian trees we expect Blood Strength to take the most tweaking to get right. To players that are concerned it will be overpowered we hear you and will be doing internal playtests with it soon. Lamannia feedback will be particularly telling in this regard.
As has been mentioned by me and others, dont disregard temp hp as part of the solution (here, and in FB or OS etc). FB, especially, may be better served by a constant temp hp stream to mitigate frenzy, which is then easier to balance around since it cannot be shifted around by opting to turn frenzy off to heal "faster" than intended. Not that vampiric bond would work better there, only that some kind of "inured to pain" proc could make sense and work well, with less risk of balance while more directly focusing on the problem.

Barbarian trees are VERY in need of some potential shuffling. There was a great deal of outcry when they were designed citing poor ability placement and lack of logic... the prevailing design at the time was "we want it to be integrated to encourage people to spend in all trees". The paradigm has shifted now, to "we want each tree to stand alone and all be independently appealing, creating hard choices for spending AP". Extra rage into Ravager to work with the capstone in T1, as one example, though there are more all the way up all trees. This, too, should be part of the solution. Leaving barbarians in a state where they really *need* to put 10-15 pts in all the trees to grab "critical" features is less than ideal, relative to the standing of most everyone else, and is also compounding hurt on the class.


We will be discussing the damage type and the capstone balance.
Good... I hope this includes reevaluating the ability damage portions, the poison damage portions, the linking of those abilities and effects, and related stacking concerns as well. As Ive said previously, abilities which have poison components that render the whole ability blocked vs poison immune mobs can be helped a great deal by making sure the two parts land independently. Ability damage can become penalties. Damage can (and here, probably should) go untyped, its not like rogues where barbarians have a way to enable it to land; with no forethought those abilities become binary pass/fail and that leaves the class in a poor state to approach an ever changing landscape of content from.

All the trees need another look with the idea to ensure its not just "barely passable" now, but actually viable into the future. Barbarians need PRR and Melee Power to maintain the relevence of their core class abilities. They need a way to mitigate their self-damage and/or lack/limited ability to self heal, so that they can retain playability under normal healing conditions (rather than needing a heal every 3s resulting in babysitter syndrome). I understand you dont want to take their dps over the top... but I shouldnt be looking at Harper and FB and wondering which one is more dps. Or worse, which one is the only choice for dps since one option is too dangerous to actually play.

OS is more or less nice, and the others have some neat looking individual abilities or changes... but this "we are going to reevaluate" type post is good to see. It is definitely needed. I know this was a first draft and look forward to the second. I hope it has some larger changes now that there is a clarified direction to go, and that the changes are more conducive to making each tree stand on its own, with a unique flavor of barbarian in each, and all of them be legitimately viable in todays game. This probably means less "blanket hp/amp" and more "new/tuned abilities, and tree shuffling". I know thats more work, and I hope you find the time, because this class cant be helped by the paladin quick fix of new coat of paint and a few tweaks; which is where it is now. Hopefully helpful, cheers.

[Ovrad]

Nobody is asking for glass cannons, we are asking for barbs to be able to soak up the damage, with PRR/MRR, DR, temp hp, and a high hp pool, while dishing high DPS. Low self healing doesn't mean they are glass cannons.

Basically: slow to kill, slow to heal.

[Scrabbler]

I'll evaluate every enhancement, trying to give one line of critique and then one line of suggestion. Focusing more on the problems.

Cores in general:
Bad that the most specific effects are outweighed by hp + healamp (lacking choice variety).
Bad that the hp + healamp are same for all Barb trees.
Sug- Either move hp + healamp into Barb levels, or remove hp+healamp from some trees (for example, OS could get Dodge, Max Dex, Reflex, and Reflex%Reduce instead, lowering need to be healed)

cores
Furious Rage: Bad that it tends to be either close to 0 or close to max (6), but hardly in between.
Sug- Stack 1 is a bit longer, but each higher stack has less duration.

Pain Touch: Slightly bad when damage works on pain-immune creatures. Might be better to give stronger benefit to non-TWF builds?

Demoralizing Success: Non-scaling non-stat DC is bad.

Subsiding Fury: Very minor benefit, and obsoleted by t5 enhancement.
Sug- Also get +2 Fury cap and duration. When below 50% hp, Fury adds to PRR.

Visage of Terror: Spending Rage on an instant non-boss attack is bad. DC is too low.
Sug- Raise DC to 10+HD/2+Con, 0 Rage cost, 2x cooldown, dual Will+Fort saves. Add Fear+Pain Immunity, +Charisma.

t1
Ritual Scarring: PRR is always good. But it's weak compared to Bard's Rough and Ready.

Hate: On its own, boring nonfun. Aggro meaningless.
Sug- Attach to resource management alongside other Ravager attacks.

Do You Like Pain: Some people don't care about AC debuffs, but with a big penalty and passive proc it has value.

Barb Power Attack: Funny to see the -hit finally gone after all these years, whatever. AC tables are confusing, so fine to cut it out.

Hardy Rage:

t2
Fear Me: Does anyone use Intimidate? It'd be simpler to work off that same DC. Bosses are improperly immune to Shaken debuff.
Sug- Remove Shaken immunity from bosses (unless provided by creature type)

Mutilate: Anything doing stat damage is broken in epic.
Sug- lessen stat regen of epic monsters. Scale Mutilate's stat damage by your level (starting lower, eventually getting higher)

I Like Pain: Proc rate isn't listed in description.

Cruel Cut: Like Mutilate, stat damage is broken in epic.
Sug- fix epic stat dmg, scale Con dmg by level. Maybe less effect from offhand?

Action Boost Melee Power: Awkward name.

t3
Aura of Fear: Bosses improperly immune to the debuff. Debuff is pretty weak at high level.
Sug- Remove boss immunity, raise debuff by 1 per 5 more class levels. Ensure that monsters lower DC when stats go down.

Slaughter: Alright, a bit boring.
Sug- Double cooldown, give +1 range +1 mult, and Hate has a % chance to reset Slaughter cd.

Festering Wound: Damage pretty weak, healing debuff almost never useful.
Sug- Add poison vuln to stacks. You do 1dX poison damage when hitting someone under Festering Wound.

Con/Str: Adding Str is an interesting buff, compared to the other trees. Oh wait, FB gets Str too, nevermind.

t4
Laughter: Aside from meleepower, the +Fury is obsoleted by t5.
Sug- Fury gain also goes to nearby allies.

I Hit Back: Damage from a guard proc is minor at low lev and undetectable later.
Sug- Guard damage scales with your level. On proc, you get +5 damage/doublestrike on next single attack.

Dismember: Not exactly fun to click icon every 30s to keep a buff on, particularly since epic mobs are immune to Cruel Cut damage.
Sug- fix Cruel Cut (and change this damage type to the same used by Vorpal weapons)

Blood Strength: Debatable if Barbs deserve easy healing. Meleepower scaling questionable (offensive boosts become defensive too, Epic chars have much more meleepower- compare to eg Ranger healing)
Sug- Lower the healing below 1d4 if your Barb level is less than 18-20ish.
Sug- Double healing if your hp under 30%, half healing when over 60%. Over 90%, you do no healing and 1d4 Poison dmg to enemy.

Bully: Honestly, the +helpless damage effects are a bit overpowered, especially about tripping.
Sug- Change +helpless damage to rating.

Critical Fury: It makes Fury income trivial; may as well set Fury at 6 permanently.
Sug- You instead gain Fury on attack rolls of 1 or 20, and your Fury is added to critical damage (as well as to damage).

Critical Rage: Description is weird about how much range it actually gives.

[Qhualor]

Great feedback so far. Still dissecting all of it. Some notes:

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played.

~ Of all the abilities in the barbarian trees we expect Blood Strength to take the most tweaking to get right. To players that are concerned it will be overpowered we hear you and will be doing internal playtests with it soon. Lamannia feedback will be particularly telling in this regard.

~ We will be discussing the damage type and the capstone balance.

Sev~

~ Agree, but FB than Ravager should have the highest sustainable DPS of all melee classes. With that plus decent self sufficiency would put them back on the map.

~ I kinda see why Blood Strength would be in Ravager, but it seems more fitting in FB.

~ Figure a barb is probably going to have as many as 9 rages. That's enough to get from shrine to shrine, but if its going to cost me 1 rage to maybe insta kill a mob, I might spend up to 3 rages. It all depends on the quest, how many shrines, the pace of the group, dying a lot, dismissing rages to raise or use clickies, etc. I'm going to use Visage of Terror most likely sparingly.

[dunklezhan]

None of these classes are cut off from activating self healing abilities by a major class feature.

Sev~


OK Ok I get that.

Why not just make all the extra 'survivability' effects only work while raging? The class feature no longer cuts them off completely when it is used. If you can't keep rage going all the time.... better find a shrine, a big stack of pots or make friends with a healer, sharpish. Would that not work?

Also, apologies if this has been directly addressed, I haven't had time to go through all the dev posts yet - I would also suggest as others have that the 'healing' be temp hit points of some kind. If the above suggestion was also used, then I'd go further and say they should last until used or until rage wears off.*

*Mostly I admit, this is because I am amused by the idea of a queue of soon to be very unhealthy-looking barbarians all hanging around the cleric at regular intervals because their temp HP won't carry through...

[Violith]

OK Ok I get that.

Why not just make all the extra 'survivability' effects only work while raging? Baboom, class feature no longer cuts them off completely when it is used. If you can't keep rage going all the time.... better find a shrine, a big stack of pots or make friends with a healer, sharpish.

Also, apologies if this has been directly addressed, I haven't had time to go through all the dev posts yet - I would also suggest as others have that the 'healing' be temp hit points of some kind.

problem with that is temp HP from the same sorce doesnt stack, and if it did, you'd be able to go get a weak weapon and attack a mob to gain thousands of temp HP before a boss, and be virtually indestructable, which while it could eventually wear it away, there could be some cases where your gain of temp hp Could far outclass the bosses total damage for the entire battle. not to mention that wouldnt solve the barbs problem of needing a babysitter. since the temp hp would have to outlast the DPS of the quests mobs to be sufficient for self suvival.

[dunklezhan]

problem with that is temp HP from the same sorce doesnt stack, and if it did, you'd be able to go get a weak weapon and attack a mob to gain thousands of temp HP before a boss, and be virtually indestructable, which while it could eventually wear it away, there could be some cases where your gain of temp hp Could far outclass the bosses total damage for the entire battle. not to mention that wouldnt solve the barbs problem of needing a babysitter. since the temp hp would have to outlast the DPS of the quests mobs to be sufficient for self suvival.

Are you sure they can't be made to stack? I thought it was just a question of putting a reasonable ceiling and proc rate on it. If not, then sure, I can see why that wouldn't work (and nor would my 'only last till rage wears off' thought either).

[Uska]

There is no way you can add enough selfhealing to the Barbarian class to compete with the paladin/bladeforged melee's. On top of that barbarians are looking to be much less dps than paladins.

Fine with me if you go through with this: makes it easier for me to autodecline any and all barbarian that i see, because they will be gimp by default. It'll be reduced to a flavor class.

And doubting you will revisit the barbarians in a major way in a future update after the next, they'll be gimp for a long long while.

Are you kidding barbs are going to be healing better than anyone else.

[Wulverine]

Are you kidding barbs are going to be healing better than anyone else.

With what exactly? CSW pots? Silver Flame pots?

The selfhealing through hitting mobs is part of the Ravager tree. If people go go that route, they'd be extremely hampering their dps.


Biggest issue right now in these trees, is that their dps sucks.

Sure, I'd prefer it if they would drop selfhealing and go more of an increased DR/PRR route.
But that's not happening because this game is a casual game now where every class you can play should have rediculous selfhealing to entertain the casuals playing their eTR cycle.. That's apparantly where the money is, sho i guess we should accept that. :/

[Qhualor]

Are you kidding barbs are going to be healing better than anyone else.

What Wulverine said plus a FB will still be chain chugging pots inflicting constant pain on himself.

[Uska]

With what exactly? CSW pots? Silver Flame pots?

The selfhealing through hitting mobs is part of the Ravager tree. If people go go that route, they'd be extremely hampering their dps.


Biggest issue right now in these trees, is that their dps sucks.

Sure, I'd prefer it if they would drop selfhealing and go more of an increased DR/PRR route.
But that's not happening because this game is a casual game now where every class you can play should have rediculous selfhealing to entertain the casuals playing their eTR cycle..

Heal per hit heal per kill baloney healing amp I am auto declining barbs starting now out of protest the entire idea needs scraping and starting over

[Uska]

What Wulverine said plus a FB will still be chain chugging pots inflicting constant pain on himself.

The trees are baloney and nothing to do with the origins of barbs. For me barbs no longer exist!

[CaptainSpacePony]

I was kinda afraid someone would look at it that way...

If the problem is that Cocoon is blocked by Rage, the easy solution is to edit Cocoon's description to say it can be used during Rage. (Do the same to Primal Scream while you're at it)

If the problem is that UMD scrolls are blocked by Rage, then stop and consider if UMD scrolls is really what you'd recommend for Fighters and Rangers to heal themselves.

I LOVE the idea that someone overwhelmed with a consuming rage that makes them most unreasoning. I mean how mad would you have to be to get +14STR? That is 7 sevent times as strong! You go from bench pressing 100Kg to 700Kg! That kind of adrenaline surge doesn't beget many activated abilities (and why barbs used to not even be able to drink potions).

I do recognize this is a HUGE liability, and the only toon I currently play with any barb lvls never rages.

I want to see more PRR and other forms of damage mitigation. I'm much less interested in self heals.

[Wulverine]

The trees are baloney and nothing to do with the origins of barbs. For me barbs no longer exist!

I agree with you Uska. :)

But reading what the Devs are posting, there's no chance to change their minds.

[Wulverine]

The way things are going now, all the classes and most popular builds will have avg dps, with avg selfhealing. No more roles, just every man for himself, grinding xp. There'll be less and less actual diversity between the classes, just in flavor.

That's where the last bit of money is. Apparantly.

[Uska]

I agree with you Uska. :)

But reading what the Devs are posting, there's no chance to change their minds.

If we scream loud enough and don't allow barbs in our groups maybe they will change them to something that makes sense both play and flavor wise.

[Monkey-Boy]

On top of that barbarians are looking to be much less dps than paladins.

That's the biggest issue. I've seen the numbers crunched on the guild forum and barbs are looking like a big bucket of weaksauce.

Less DPS than paladins is just plain dumb.

[PermaBanned]

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played."Glass cannon?" That term should not at all be descriptive of Barbarians. Barb self sufficiency should be achieved more through "less need for healing" than "turning cure pots into heal pots" via Hamp. They should kill things through raw DPS before things can kill them, and they should be able to take a pounding like nobody else - because they're that dang tough, not because potions are more effective for them than anyone else.

Barbarians need a "Rocky Balboa" enhancement: the more you hit them, the more & harder they'll hit you. Ferocity & mitigation is the direction Barbs need to go in.

[Tilomere]

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played.


Sev~

And you are right. If you make barbs "glass cannon" the player base will suddenly find existing ways of healing and keeping a barb alive acceptable, and you will only create the highest dps self-healing-tanky-dps in the game. I've played through a half dozen raged heroic and epic lives, and dps was never an issue. Mob fort and staying alive were.

[J-mann]

Great feedback so far. Still dissecting all of it. Some notes:

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played.

~ Of all the abilities in the barbarian trees we expect Blood Strength to take the most tweaking to get right. To players that are concerned it will be overpowered we hear you and will be doing internal playtests with it soon. Lamannia feedback will be particularly telling in this regard.

~ We will be discussing the damage type and the capstone balance.

Sev~

1. Sev barbs should not be glass cannons no. NOR should they be self healing machines that you are trying to make them. I dont know how many here have played, or looked at the mechanics of, EVE, but in EVE there is basically 3 methods of tanking on your ships. One is the active tank where abilities refill you hp bar, in ddo that would be healing. One is the passive shield tank, this would be like the fast healing mechanic, which I am fine with for barbs so long as it doesnt get crazy. The third, which is non existant in this game and what barbs should be is the buffer tank. Buffer tanks had HUGE hp and HUGE resists, but no way to replenish them themselves (or little way), and trust me they were in NO way a glass cannon. I did a battleship in that format and stood up to 20 players shooting at me for 60 seconds with NO healing. THIS is the type of defense barbs should have, crazy high prr/mrr and dr with next to NOTHING in healing.

2. Barbs should not be getting this crazy amount of heal amp. Barbs should not HAVE more heal amp than stacked pally/monks. Further blood strength is definately broken op, and is a HUGE slap in the face to light monks. Why in the heck would a barb get more on hit heals than a light monk AND do more damage? please explain how this enhancement makes any sense whatsoever.

3. This is much less important than getting the class style correct. Barbs should be massive buffer tanks (think of this as effective hp), with very little ways to replenish it, and do Great dps. Not 70% more than every other melee like some of the crazies on here want, but 15% would be acceptable, so long as Barbs have little way to heal.

[theRolf]

Considering the number of players that have spoken out against Barbs getting self healing, would it be possible for you to give us some alternatives (or at least run a few by the other Devs?) Some of the popular changes I've seen suggested are...

1. Turn the new sources of Healing into Temporary Hit Points. (how about a % of your Hit Points instead of a flat amount? That way they could scale into epics)
2. Give Barbs bigger Hit Point/PRR bonuses when raging.
3. Add more damage! Barbs should be out damaging any none caster 70% of the time...
4. Re-balance the Healing formulas so that Barbs can "Take some of the Edge off" without becoming completely self sufficient.

I think some mixture of 1 & 3 would be perfect. Also consider giving Barbs a way to regenerate Rage (especially if one of their abilities is going to eat Rages).This is your chance to make temp hp relevant again, as both a way to make barbs more survivable and a way to revive some of those old Temp HP spells (so that they will be used past Lv 10).

Edit: "I didn't see your post until now, can you tell us if Temp HP is on the table for barbs as an alternative to Self Healing?"

Once again, please explain why temp HP is better. Please. All I am asking for is for somebody to put it clearly. Otherwise, I feel like temp HP = something that makes another class better - which has nothing to do with a barb.

[Rautis]

None of these classes are cut off from activating self healing abilities by a major class feature.

Sev~
I've pondered these Barbarian tree changes and discussion it has resulted in. I'm certain that a major reason for insufficient self healing of Raging Barbarians is healing consumable itemization. Change to itemization would result in equal positive change to all class/race combinations that are lacking in inherent self healing.

Currently it is easy to create a Sorcerer that is doomed to fail because of huge difference in WF versus fleshy healing if you can't reach the UMD. Same thing with non Bladeforged Fighters, Barbarians and some Monks. Non WF Artificers can have hard time healing themselves on new characters. Also getting sufficient UMD as rogue is hard if you're new. I don't think stronger potions would even prove to be a balance issue as top builds can already have all kinds of rather strong next to free self heals. And hireling contracts are very cheap so usually soloing with a hire is doable. It is full groups without dedicated healer where you get punished. Or raids.


With potions that scale sufficiently through levelrange you could make variety of currently unviable build combinations not so complete failures. Self healing classes would still have advantage because of saving both inventory space and platinum. Cost balancing would be important factor however. There are already very strong potions around but they're either not very available thanks to being collectible turn in or being store bought. Maybe having plat option would even get more people hooked on potions and increase store sales when people run out of potions mid quest. Or just out of platinum.

Another thing that would be cool to have are healing consumables that use Heal/Repair skill to determine their effectiveness.


With classes like Barbarian using consumables for their self healing needs you guys could focus developing Barbarians more into direction most people would associate with Barbarian. DPS, damage soaking, mage hunting, run speed etc.


Your current plan is to increase healing amplification so Barbarians could benefit more from potions. What about other classes that are typically forced to use potions for self heals like vanilla Fighters?

[Severlin]

Your current plan is to increase healing amplification so Barbarians could benefit more from potions. What about other classes that are typically forced to use potions for self heals like vanilla Fighters?

Fighters can splash into other sources of healing or use abilities like cocoon to grab some healing. Fighters also use heavy armor and have tanking trees that focus on PRR so they will be taking less damage. In others words, while the barbarians have big hit points and get a big effect from healing, fighters have more mitigation and aren't locked out of alternate healing sources.

Sev~

[Monkey-Boy]

Fighters can splash into other sources of healing or use abilities like cocoon to grab some healing. Fighters also use heavy armor and have tanking trees that focus on PRR so they will be taking less damage. In others words, while the barbarians have big hit points and get a big effect from healing, fighters have more mitigation and aren't locked out of alternate healing sources.

Sev~

This is a GOOD thing teh_Sev.

But the DPS output on paper is lacking, paladins are looking to still be ahead on any plausible build. Barbs still need more oomph.

[theRolf]

What Wulverine said plus a FB will still be chain chugging pots inflicting constant pain on himself.


1. Sev barbs should not be glass cannons no. NOR should they be self healing machines that you are trying to make them. I dont know how many here have played, or looked at the mechanics of, EVE, but in EVE there is basically 3 methods of tanking on your ships. One is the active tank where abilities refill you hp bar, in ddo that would be healing. One is the passive shield tank, this would be like the fast healing mechanic, which I am fine with for barbs so long as it doesnt get crazy. The third, which is non existant in this game and what barbs should be is the buffer tank. Buffer tanks had HUGE hp and HUGE resists, but no way to replenish them themselves (or little way), and trust me they were in NO way a glass cannon. I did a battleship in that format and stood up to 20 players shooting at me for 60 seconds with NO healing. THIS is the type of defense barbs should have, crazy high prr/mrr and dr with next to NOTHING in healing.

2. Barbs should not be getting this crazy amount of heal amp. Barbs should not HAVE more heal amp than stacked pally/monks. Further blood strength is definately broken op, and is a HUGE slap in the face to light monks. Why in the heck would a barb get more on hit heals than a light monk AND do more damage? please explain how this enhancement makes any sense whatsoever.

3. This is much less important than getting the class style correct. Barbs should be massive buffer tanks (think of this as effective hp), with very little ways to replenish it, and do Great dps. Not 70% more than every other melee like some of the crazies on here want, but 15% would be acceptable, so long as Barbs have little way to heal.

Once again the argument goes wayyy out of bounds. No need to elaborate i hope.

[Scrabbler]

Fighters can splash into other sources of healing or use abilities like cocoon to grab some healing.
The substantial healing sources you can get by splash classes, like Cleric's Ameliorating Smite, are also allowed during Barbarian Rage. Things like a Cure Light Wounds spell are prevented by Rage, but they're insignificant healing anyhow. Cocoon is a "Primal" ability and Barbarians are Primal people, so it's thematically defensible to simply edit Cocoon to work during Rage.


Fighters also use heavy armor and have tanking trees that focus on PRR so they will be taking less damage. In others words, while the barbarians have big hit points and get a big effect from healing, fighters have more mitigation and aren't locked out of alternate healing sources.
It's not only about Fighters, but also Rangers, Rogues, ecetera. To "not be locked out" from other sources of healing is only a benefit if some other sources exist, and all I can really list is Cocoon, Bladeforge, and UMD, which were covered above.

[Violith]

That's the biggest issue. I've seen the numbers crunched on the guild forum and barbs are looking like a big bucket of weaksauce.

Less DPS than paladins is just plain dumb.

thats the problem with crunching theretical numbers, Some people dont look at the whole picture and some just dont add right. Until this is on lamma, and tested, such 'crunching' is useless. I will admit that ravanger alone looks rather weak,

ravanger could be made stronger by simply making each core add to Pain touch (6d6@100mp at cap), also, to help them pull ahead more, I would suggest making Subsiding Fury add to the number of stacks possible of fury rather then just adding fury, as by then they'd already be able to keep it on constantly with the T5. so instead of merely gaining 3 fury, have it add 4(total of 10) or maybe 4 extra stacks for Subsiding Fury, and 5 for the capstone (as while an instant kill is nice, it probably wont land often due to the cost)

[Zurrander]

Sorry J-mann... when i said 70% i meant that they should be out damaging other Melees 70% of the time (not by 70%)... And that other melees should only be able to catch up or pass them through Burst DPS (and only about 30% of the time)... I'm satisfied with barbs doing as little as 5-10% more damage then the next best Heroic damage dealer. And as for your buffer tank, that's exactly what i would call Temp HP.


The Rolf... Temp HP isn't outright Better from a survival perspective (aside form not gimping war-forged if the Healing was Positive energy). Its simply more Barbarian like. Barbarians don't heal (its simply not their thing) they instead absorb damage through giant Hit Point pools. Notice that at present the Barb trees don't have a single healing mechanics, but they do have several Temp Hit Point mechanics... That's because Temp Hp is the barbs way to heal (without becoming a lesser divine). So to answer your question the advantages of Temp HP are
1. Allows barbs to ignore damage instead of healing (Keeping the Flavor of the class by continuing the Shrug off punishment & Rage running themes of the Barb)
2. Allows war-forged & fleshies to gain equal benefit form "Healing" (instead of gimping war-forged)
3. Gives the Devs a chance to rework a once important game mechanic that has been left behind (Possibly by changing it to a % of your health, or having it scale some other way)
4. Lets Barbs stay Barbs (ties into no.1)

There is simply no excuse for giving Barb Trees more self healing then the actual Divine Enhancement trees (Shinato/Sacred Defender/War Priest), its Lore breaking and simply doesn't fit with what a Barbarian is supposed to be. That being said, giving them Temporary Hit Points (using the same or similar numbers) would increase there survivability just as much without losing what makes the class special. So Now let me ask you, what would Barbs lose (that couldn't be rectified in seconds, like adding melee power scaling to make up for Hamp not affecting Temp HP) from making it Temp HP instead of healing?

[theRolf]

The substantial healing sources you can get by splash classes, like Cleric's Ameliorating Smite, are also allowed during Barbarian Rage. Things like a Cure Light Wounds spell are prevented by Rage, but they're insignificant healing anyhow. Cocoon is a "Primal" ability and Barbarians are Primal people, so it's thematically defensible to simply edit Cocoon to work during Rage.


It's not only about Fighters, but also Rangers, Rogues, ecetera. To "not be locked out" from other sources of healing is only a benefit if some other sources exist, and all I can really list is Cocoon, Bladeforge, and UMD, which were covered above.

Strike, not Smite. And been there done that - it is too weak. And this is only about Barb - and nothing else.

Thanks for understanding

[bbqzor]

Fighters can splash into other sources of healing or use abilities like cocoon to grab some healing. Fighters also use heavy armor and have tanking trees that focus on PRR so they will be taking less damage. In others words, while the barbarians have big hit points and get a big effect from healing, fighters have more mitigation and aren't locked out of alternate healing sources.

Big hit points and big effect from healing isnt a defense. Thats the part you seem to be glossing over repeatedly.

Big hp only protects from spikes, and amp only helps if the heals already cannot match your hp pool. Barbs will not have more hp than tanks due to stances etc. Barbs will have more healing amp, by a large margin.

In other words, healing will be "over healing" on barbs. But they will still need heals way too often because they take damage way too rapidly. This is what needs to be addressed, not hp/amp, but spacing out how often healing has to occur (not by turning barbs into tanks, but by slowing them down from babysit dmg intake closer to regular dmg intake).

Why dont they have anything to meaningfully extend the time between heals?

[Zurrander]

Big hit points and big effect from healing isnt a defense. Thats the part you seem to be glossing over repeatedly.

Big hp only protects from spikes, and amp only helps if the heals already cannot match your hp pool. Barbs will not have more hp than tanks due to stances etc. Barbs will have more healing amp, by a large margin.

In other words, healing will be "over healing" on barbs. But they will still need heals way too often because they take damage way too rapidly. This is what needs to be addressed, not hp/amp, but spacing out how often healing has to occur (not by turning barbs into tanks, but by slowing them down from babysit dmg intake closer to regular dmg intake).

Why dont they have anything to meaningfully extend the time between heals?


Larger amounts of Temp Hp could Extend the time between Heals pretty meaningfully... Imagine a barb the can "Blood Tribute" for 30-40% of his HP... now he has a viable way to stay up in-between heals without self healing, Combine that with "I Like Pain" occasionally hitting for a (Stacking with everything but itself) 20% Hp and he's solo quest with noting but pots (to heal up in between fights). This not only gives Barbs a viable way to "Shrug off punishment" but also gives them a unique to barbs defensive mechanic, Increasing the diversity between classes and making them "Special" again. I can't be the only person that wants barbs to stay unique in the process of this buff, instead of becoming another same old same old self healing nightmare. (Its true that self healing is the only way to stay relevant on live, but this is our chance to change that!)

[theRolf]

Sorry J-mann... when i said 70% i meant that they should be out damaging other Melees 70% of the time (not by 70%)... And that other melees should only be able to catch up or pass them through Burst DPS (and only about 30% of the time)... I'm satisfied with barbs doing as little as 5-10% more damage then the next best Heroic damage dealer. And as for your buffer tank, that's exactly what i would call Temp HP.


The Rolf... Temp HP isn't outright Better from a survival perspective (aside form not gimping war-forged if the Healing was Positive energy). Its simply more Barbarian like. Barbarians don't heal (its simply not their thing) they instead absorb damage through giant Hit Point pools. Notice that at present the Barb trees don't have a single healing mechanics, but they do have several Temp Hit Point mechanics... That's because Temp Hp is the barbs way to heal (without becoming a lesser divine). So to answer you question the advantages of Temp HP are
1. Allows barbs to ignore damage instead of healing (Keeping the Flavor of the class by continuing the Shrug off punishment & Rage running themes of the Barb)
2. Allows war-forged & fleshies to gain equal benefit form "Healing" (instead of gimping war-forged)
3. Gives the Devs a chance to rework a once important game mechanic that has been left behind (Possibly by changing it to a % of your health, or having it scale some other way)
4. Lets Barbs stay Barbs (ties into no.1)

There is simply no excuse for giving Barb Trees more self healing then the actual Divine Enhancement trees (Shinato/Sacred Defender/War Priest), its Lore breaking and simply doesn't fit with what a Barbarian is supposed to be. That being said, giving them Temporary Hit Points (using the same or similar numbers) would increase there survivability just as much without taking what makes the class special. So Now let me ask you, what would Barbs lose (that couldn't be rectified in seconds, like adding melee power scaling to make up for Hamp not affecting Temp HP) from making it Temp HP instead of healing?

Hey Z - thank you for the considerate response - much appreciated!

Now let me ask you, what would Barbs lose (that couldn't be rectified in seconds, like adding melee power scaling to make up for Hamp not affecting Temp HP) from making it Temp HP instead of healing?

They would lose the security that healing provides - i.e. no need to shrine or get healed before my "temporary" effect wears off. Barbs would still be "an almost good" class. I just don't get this temporary ****. Feels like I am getting shortchanged, which means I probably am.

[J-mann]

Sorry J-mann... when i said 70% i meant that they should be out damaging other Melees 70% of the time (not by 70%)... And that other melees should only be able to catch up or pass them through Burst DPS (and only about 30% of the time)... I'm satisfied with barbs doing as little as 5-10% more damage then the next best Heroic damage dealer. And as for your buffer tank, that's exactly what i would call Temp HP.


The Rolf... Temp HP isn't outright Better from a survival perspective (aside form not gimping war-forged if the Healing was Positive energy). Its simply more Barbarian like. Barbarians don't heal (its simply not their thing) they instead absorb damage through giant Hit Point pools. Notice that at present the Barb trees don't have a single healing mechanics, but they do have several Temp Hit Point mechanics... That's because Temp Hp is the barbs way to heal (without becoming a lesser divine). So to answer your question the advantages of Temp HP are
1. Allows barbs to ignore damage instead of healing (Keeping the Flavor of the class by continuing the Shrug off punishment & Rage running themes of the Barb)
2. Allows war-forged & fleshies to gain equal benefit form "Healing" (instead of gimping war-forged)
3. Gives the Devs a chance to rework a once important game mechanic that has been left behind (Possibly by changing it to a % of your health, or having it scale some other way)
4. Lets Barbs stay Barbs (ties into no.1)

There is simply no excuse for giving Barb Trees more self healing then the actual Divine Enhancement trees (Shinato/Sacred Defender/War Priest), its Lore breaking and simply doesn't fit with what a Barbarian is supposed to be. That being said, giving them Temporary Hit Points (using the same or similar numbers) would increase there survivability just as much without losing what makes the class special. So Now let me ask you, what would Barbs lose (that couldn't be rectified in seconds, like adding melee power scaling to make up for Hamp not affecting Temp HP) from making it Temp HP instead of healing?

Wasnt nessicarily refering to you Zurrander, Ive seen it ALL over the place from various people that Barbs NEED to be 20-100% better than any other melee which is ludicrous. I kind a like the idea of temp hp It present an interesting mechanic, but there definitely needs to be a cap to it. Its very similar to a buffer tank but a little different and definitely has more variability to survival time.

Sev, Another thing to note is how the way you are going about barbs is going to affect bards... at current proposal I think you would be crazy as a bard to not splash barb for the hp and heal amp, and maybe even take the t5 in ravager for that insane heal on strike. Combine that with the passive heals on dc and I dont think you will EVER need to toss a heal.

[Qhualor]

If we scream loud enough and don't allow barbs in our groups maybe they will change them to something that makes sense both play and flavor wise.

wow. really? while you are at it, decline every other class too including yourself. your artificer shouldn't have so many scrolls in his bag. its not like that in PnP. I want to see you ranting like this in every other class discussion because none of them are still in their roots or close to it.

[bbqzor]

Larger amounts of Temp Hp could Extend the time between Heals pretty meaningfully
Yes, thats why myself and others have mentioned temp hp as a mechanic that got somewhat overlooked here which should probably get a second glance.


Imagine a barb the can "Blood Tribute" for 30-40% of his HP... now he has a viable way to stay up in-between heals without self healing
Wishful thinking. Trading 1 con for even 1000 hp means an epic pure barb is likely going to lose that 1 con every 10-30s on ee, faster on a FB. They cant sustain that. What youve said is the intention of how they want it to work. But barbs lose hp too fast for it to ever actually work out in the end.


Combine that with "I Like Pain" occasionally hitting for a (Stacking with everything but itself) 20% Hp
Again, wishful thinking. Unless the devs come out and say "we made this thing fire a ton at percents X, Y, and Z", Im going to assume its still at the incredibly low rate of like 1%, maybe 2% tops. If youre a 2k barb and get 400 hp from this, every 50th hit, thats not really doing anything for your survivability. Its just too little too rarely.


This not only gives Barbs a viable way to "Shrug off punishment" but also gives them a unique to barbs defensive mechanic, Increasing the diversity between classes and making them "Special" again. I can't be the only person that wants barbs to stay unique in the process
Ideally, they would do something like change the healing mechanics in T5 into temp hp, go a bit overboard, and create the kind of situation you describe. Where they can generate a lot of mitigation by beating things in the face to keep a temp hp shield rolling to buy them time to catch a regular paced healing output from someone else. It would be awesome and unique. And much perferred to having ravagars cop healing fists off monks, occult slayers cop loh from paladins, and frenzied cop fast healing from epics. But, unless they go in and change a lot of stuff (new effects, or heavily modify existing effects) it wont happen.

Nice to see other people looking for a better solution. Im just far bleaker (and I would say more realistic) about the reality of using those specific enhancements in higher end content. Guess Im a glass half empty kind of poster =p

[theRolf]

Yes, thats why myself and others have mentioned temp hp as a mechanic that got somewhat overlooked here which should probably get a second glance.


Wishful thinking. Trading 1 con for even 1000 hp means an epic pure barb is likely going to lose that 1 con every 10-30s on ee, faster on a FB. They cant sustain that. What youve said is the intention of how they want it to work. But barbs lose hp too fast for it to ever actually work out in the end.


Again, wishful thinking. Unless the devs come out and say "we made this thing fire a ton at percents X, Y, and Z", Im going to assume its still at the incredibly low rate of like 1%, maybe 2% tops. If youre a 2k barb and get 400 hp from this, every 50th hit, thats not really doing anything for your survivability. Its just too little too rarely.


Ideally, they would do something like change the healing mechanics in T5 into temp hp, go a bit overboard, and create the kind of situation you describe. Where they can generate a lot of mitigation by beating things in the face to keep a temp hp shield rolling to buy them time to catch a regular paced healing output from someone else. It would be awesome and unique. And much perferred to having ravagars cop healing fists off monks, occult slayers cop loh from paladins, and frenzied cop fast healing from epics. But, unless they go in and change a lot of stuff (new effects, or heavily modify existing effects) it wont happen.

Nice to see other people looking for a better solution. Im just far bleaker (and I would say more realistic) about the reality of using those specific enhancements in higher end content. Guess Im a glass half empty kind of poster =p


Temporary hit points are boring. Kill faster. Justify your fixation with temp HP please

[Qhualor]

Temporary hit points are boring. Kill faster. Justify your fixation with temp HP please

well, if you look up barbs on DnD sites you will see a lot of abilities proc temporary hp. it is one of the bigger sources of damage mitigation in PnP. I personally don't like temporary hp in DDO because they don't scale well. they would have to proc a lot and often to be worth it.

[Severlin]

Some initial changes based on player feedback:

~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.

~ We are looking to change the force damage to bane damage.

Sev~

[edrein]

Some initial changes based on player feedback:

~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.

~ We are looking to change the force damage to bane damage.

Sev~

So like my suggestion but a paralyze effect? I'd much rather see it work like an old Wail of the Banshee with a fear effect on the mobs that save.

[Qhualor]

Some initial changes based on player feedback:

~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.

~ We are looking to change the force damage to bane damage.

Sev~

I don't have any issues with this.

[UurlockYgmeov]

So like my suggestion but a paralyze effect? I'd much rather see it work like an old Wail of the Banshee with a fear effect on the mobs that save.

I don't know about you - but I don't want to make the mob I am cleaving to death run away in fear making me run after them. :P

[Zurrander]

I can understand how you could feel a bit shortchanged by the Temp Hp mechanic theRolf... but if the devs make it scale properly and give you enough ways to keep refreshing it then it just becomes a matter of balancing the up keep. Similar to how a low level paladin can handle quest using "Divine Righteousness" & "Virtue" without ever having to heal (until they hit about level 10). That to me is the ideal way to play a barb (the way it was intended at the launch of the game). I freely admit that the numbers would have to be tweaked very specifically (so that it remains viable without protecting your permanent HP completely). But my point remains that allowing Barbs to use Temp HP instead of Positive energy Heals would be exactly as effective with the potential for some innovation. For example

1. Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you gain 10 temporary hit points (stacks up to ten times). Each time you kill an opponent you gain 50 temporary hit points (stacks up to 10 times). These Hit Points last 1min*barbarian level & scale with 200% Melee Power - "This would allow you to keep up a running 600 temp Hp (not counting Melee power) that would refresh every hit/kill...

2. I Like Pain: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Do You Like Pain?) When you are hit: Small chance to gain 100/150/200 Temporary HP. The gain scales with 200% melee power "make it hit 5% of the time or change it to a HP percentage...)

3. Blood Tribute: (1/1/1 AP) Gain +100/+150/+200 Temporary Health for one minute. This scales with 400% Melee Power. You have a stacking -1 penalty to constitution until you rest or die. (Cooldown: 3 seconds)

4. Accelerated Metabolism: (2 AP) While raging you no longer take damage from Frenzy/Death Frenzy/Storm’s Eye & you regenerate 1 constitution penalty every 180 seconds (even con damage form Blood Tribute)

Then just give Frenzied Berserker cores melee power instead of HP&Hamp, Give Reaver cores the +HP, and Occult Slayer cores the Hamp...

Change the numbers around however you deem necessary and you may just have yourself a viable Barb. Frenied Berserkers get the damage boost the barbs desperately need, Reavers get tons of temp HP, and Occult slayers get to keep the new Self Healing so that you have something for everyone!

[bbqzor]

Some initial changes based on player feedback:

~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.

~ We are looking to change the force damage to bane damage.


1) Maybe. Depends on how many targets affected, size of ae radius, animation delay, etc. Gathering a big group of mobs to use this, only to kill 2-3 while the rest beat on your for an animation to fire... totally different than gathering up a lot of guys and taking out 10 of them. Keep in mind it now competes against wail, circle of death, turn undead, and similar effects. With the same limitations as those effects (only mobs subject to pk, limit of 4 mobs) it stays weak, without them it turns into a spammable Daunting Presence. Have to play it on lama to see.

2) This is what the players said initially so good... might be helpful if you can tell us why you changed your views on it so quickly. Was it feedback we submitted in the right format, or did you look at it and realize it was necessary, or what? Curious what we as posters can learn to aid in "showing" our point of view in the future.

[PermaBanned]

~ We are looking to change the force damage to bane damage.
Excellent choice! We're making progress here!


~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.This is - while cool sounding - just going to make it an even cooler ability that rarely gets used, because Barbarians who invest AP have 9 Rages, and some will need to be kept on-hand for actually being Raged. How often do all y'all actually anticipate this being used?

Songs regenerate.
Smites regenerate.
Turns regenerate.
Coup de Grace, Assassinate and Quivering Palm are unlimited uses with cooldowns.

Giving Barbs an istakill/CC effect that gobbles a finite resource is... *shakes head in bewilderment* ...I'm at a loss for words on how to describe this...

[ddorimble]

Giving Barbs an istakill/CC effect that gobbles a finite resource is... *shakes head in bewilderment* ...I'm at a loss for words on how to describe this...

...at level 20...

Level 20 abilities should be your first Epic power (congratulations on going pure class)...not a final Heroic ability that will never get any use.

[Cetus]

Fighters can splash into other sources of healing or use abilities like cocoon to grab some healing. Fighters also use heavy armor and have tanking trees that focus on PRR so they will be taking less damage. In others words, while the barbarians have big hit points and get a big effect from healing, fighters have more mitigation and aren't locked out of alternate healing sources.

Sev~

Barb can splash 1 fighter and get heavy armor proficiency. As it is, pure barb is worthless anyway.

[Severlin]

Giving Barbs an istakill/CC effect that gobbles a finite resource is... *shakes head in bewilderment* ...I'm at a loss for words on how to describe this...

One of our design goals is when an ability is already in game we don't like to change its basic functionality unless it's something trivial. Chances are some players like it, even for flavor, so we don't remove existing abilities or drastically change existing abilities if we can help it. We would instead improve them if needed without changing the basic functionality.

Sev~

[ddorimble]

One of our design goals is when an ability is already in game we don't like to change its basic functionality unless it's something trivial. Chances are some players like it, even for flavor, so we don't remove existing abilities or drastically change existing abilities if we can help it. We would instead improve them if needed without changing the basic functionality.

Would be interesting if you could run some reports on that or something. Of the few 20 Barbarians that I can imagine there are, it would be interesting to know their Capstone choice distribution.

[Severlin]

Barb can splash 1 fighter and get heavy armor proficiency. As it is, pure barb is worthless anyway.

We are looking at the capstones as we speak.

Sev~

[PermaBanned]

One of our design goals is when an ability is already in game we don't like to change its basic functionality unless it's something trivial. Chances are some players like it, even for flavor, so we don't remove existing abilities or drastically change existing abilities if we can help it. We would instead improve them if needed without changing the basic functionality.

Sev~

Well, moving the Regenerating Rages from the tree that isn't really likely to run out anyway to the one that can expend them on something besides Raging would be a great move - IMO ofc.

Edit: or at least drop it to an accessible tier/core...

[Severlin]

Well, moving the Regenerating Rages from the tree that already offers extra Rages (and isn't really likely to run out anyway...) to the one that can expend them on something besides Raging would be a great move - IMO ofc.

I see what you are saying about having the rage regeneration in the tree with extra rages.

I think coupling it with visage would be over powered. The visage not only has a chance to kill outright; it paralyzes with no save which then boosts the damage of all melee tremendously.

Sev~

[painkiller3]

...

Tier Five (Requires Barbarian Level 5, Character Level 12, 30 APs spent in tree)

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you are healed for 1d4 hit points. Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 1d20 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

...



does healing amp and devotion affect this as well?

[PermaBanned]

I see what you are saying about having the rage regeneration in the tree with extra rages.

I think coupling it with visage would be over powered. The visage not only has a chance to kill outright; it paralyzes with no save which then boosts the damage of all melee tremendously.

Sev~

I agree that it should neither be spammable nor a "full quest tactic" of drag all the mobs you can, Visage/Cleave/kill/repeat.

How about making the Regenerating Rages a lvl 18 core (like Regenerating Bard Songs are) rather than a Capstone - thus making it accessible at a steep cost, and keep visage as a single target ability?

[Qhualor]

I see what you are saying about having the rage regeneration in the tree with extra rages.

I think coupling it with visage would be over powered. The visage not only has a chance to kill outright; it paralyzes with no save which then boosts the damage of all melee tremendously.

Sev~

adjust the cooldown if its too powerful.

edit: if you read the rest of what I said, disregard

[Nascoe]

I am not really invested in any build or way to go. But I must say that I agree with the ideas to make more of a difference between the trees than in the current proposal. Why not give one tree a lot of H-amp, another a decent amount of temporary HP (and maybe more PRR and MRR) and the third just better melee power to make it a DPS animal?

Currently you also have different flavour of boosting your rages seperated per tree, and its been noted by most that a barbarian is likely to take things from all 3 trees already because of that. So why not make us pick what flavour of HP/self healing/killing faster than you get killed is our preference?
Sure, by all accounts keep some of it in all trees (wouldn't want it gimp because of staying almost pure one tree), but giving choices is almost always more interesting than giving just the option to add more of the same by picking more cores.

[Scrabbler]

One of our design goals is when an ability is already in game we don't like to change its basic functionality unless it's something trivial. Chances are some players like it, even for flavor, so we don't remove existing abilities or drastically change existing abilities
That's an unfortunate rule, and only really defensible if your resources are low (which I guess they are). Just because some previous designer did something long ago doesn't automatically mean it's good to keep today... or that it was even good in the first place.

I mean, I don't suppose you saw the original design process of the Barbarian trees. I watched it... and there was almost no game design happening. No iteration, no tuning, almost nothing. It's undesirable to arbitrarily stick yourself to the old ways, regardless of the quality of the old stuff.



I think coupling it with visage would be over powered. The visage not only has a chance to kill outright; it paralyzes with no save which then boosts the damage of all melee tremendously.
Restricting the introduction of a Rage regen feature because of what it might do to Visage of Fear would be a priority inversion. The current plan for Visage is not important to keep just the same. You can simply fix Visage to its own resource, or its own long cooldown, or totally change Visage, or even delete it entirely. It's not as if any player has enjoyed Visage so far, so you wouldn't be taking anything away that they had before.

I'd like to keep a Visage of Fear feature just because it's the only famous Ravager feature from the D&D rules, but that's the only reason. Since spell-like instakill is so different from the usual Barbarian gameplay from level 1-19, it's safer to make it not the biggest feature of the capstone... give other good stuff instead.


~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.
Historical note: When Ravager was under initial development I explained to the devs that the capstone was excessively weak, and they told me it was really an AOE death effect, and that both the current behavior and description were mistakes / leftovers.

[Failedlegend]

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played.


I have no issue with giving Barbs some self sufficiency but I'd like to see some of their abilities become passive instead of clickies with fighters getting less passives and more clickies so they have more varied play styles.

[Failedlegend]

So like my suggestion but a paralyze effect? I'd much rather see it work like an old Wail of the Banshee with a fear effect on the mobs that save.

Fear is actually a really annoying effect, paralyze is MUCH better.

[Tilomere]

U24 Solo Build - Ravager

Elf 6 Barb 9 Druid 5 Rogue

Feats would be PA (1) TWF (3) ITWF (6) > IC:B (9), Dragonmark (12) TWF#3 (15), Cleave (18), GCleave (21) >

Extend (24) > ED Feat PTWF > Haste or IC:B > Forced Escape/Tactician

Enhancements
Ravager critical Rage/Bully/20 HAMP/Bloodrage 39
FB Rage/Supreme Cleave/20 HAMP 14
OS Ear Smash/20 HAMP 11
Elf Dragonmark 11
4 ? (DPS variant takes DM here from cleric instead of rogue, and stunning blow instead of IC:B and uses impact weapon)

ED: LD
Twists Balanced Attacks/Sense Weakness

HAMP total: 40% HAMP EH Wall of Wood + 60% HAMP PDK Gloves + 60% enhancement + 20% Augment = 200%

Hits/second ~5

Melee Power ~100%

Total healing = 1d4 per hit x (1+ Melee Power) x 5 hits/sec x (1 +HAMP total) = 75/second from hits

--------------------------------
Side note for those worried about barb powered damage: (Balanced attacks + Ear Smash + Anvil of Thunder + Stunning Blow) x (150% base helpless + Bully + Combat brute+Sense Weakness) x (solid barb hits) x (solid druid attack speed) x (solid barb crit profile) x (solid total melee power) = large #.

I made an all purpose tanking/trapping/healing/dps build and not a max dps or exploit build to show general usage.
--------------------------------


*************
75/second is enough to run any EE in the game on a armored/shielded/displaced character with multiple stuns. For tanking, that # could be doubled with twisting consecrate/sacred ground.

The healing numbers are actually a bit too low for any other ED (other than DC which has consecrate-sacred ground) and for barbs without shields facing elemental damage. I would make it 1d6, since druid in LD is the extreme case.


Cutting the healing by ~40% for THF, plus another ~40% due to being outside of LD, plus another 15% due to a lack of a Wall of Wood means THF barbs in say FoTW will heal for 35 per second, which is not going to be enough to stay alive even on a barb/elf/caster with extended displacement dragonmarks.

*************

It would normalize healing by limiting it to a flat amount once every ~.8 seconds equal to mob CR. I don't know if normalized healing is what you wanted though, or if you wanted to boost weaker TWF with more healing/procs and make it a more viable choice.

[Scrabbler]

Feats would be PA (1) TWF (3) ITWF (6) > IC:B (9), Dragonmark (12) TWF#3 (15), Dragonmark2 (18), Dragonmark3 (21) >
How is it possible to train more than one Dragonmark feat?

[Tilomere]

How is it possible to train more than one Dragonmark feat?


I adjusted the build. Took out no mercy and extra dragonmark feats, added cleave feats, supreme cleave, elf displacement and more HAMP. Now the build has decent AoE with 75 hp/sec self-healing, stuns, trapping, displacement, and solid armor/prr/mrr/hp.

Based on my experience playing in EE, this will definitely handle EE. It may not be the most uber build in the game, but that's not something healthy to compare to.

The big gain I see, is that barbs won't be tied to ED healing like twisting consecrate-sacred ground which is only available to nearly maxed ED characters (barbs start in primal sphere), or to healing from other classes like ameliorating strikes. So the prior build will work in any ED, or even without one. This is far friendlier to newer players.

[HatsuharuZ]

Some initial changes based on player feedback:

~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.

~ We are looking to change the force damage to bane damage.

Sev~

I like these changes.

Not sure about the "regenerating rage uses", though. Perhaps the length of time that "Barbarian Rage" lasts could be extended instead?

I'd suggest doing something similar to what was done with low level buffing spells a while back. Give it a larger "minimum duration" than BR currently has. That would make Visage of Terror less costly indirectly, and buff barbarians as well.

[Singular]

Slashing would be reduced by certain abilities and thus be a nerf. We don't want to do untyped. The problem with Bane is the same problem as alignment damage; players don't understand what is affected by it. For players, bane refers to damage that affects a specific creature type so I don't know if we want to use it for more universal damage like this.

I would personally like to make it bleed damage but I'd have to look at Bleed damage to make sure that's an actual damage type and see what reduces it.



We'll look into Fury again. Critical Fury got changed late in the process.

Sev~

If you honestly believe players are clueless to the game systems, you could add in a short descriptor after the word "bane" wherever "bane" appears. That would probably clear up naive player's understandings.

I would tend to think players are concerned about lore - in that case, bleed, slashing and untyped make sense, with the latter being the raw force the barb produces.

[brzytki]

The visage not only has a chance to kill outright; it paralyzes with no save which then boosts the damage of all melee tremendously.

Sev~

Unless you code it as rendering mobs helpless, it will do nothing to boost the damage. Cause regular paralyze =/= helplessness.

[btolson]

Would be interesting if you could run some reports on that or something. Of the few 20 Barbarians that I can imagine there are, it would be interesting to know their Capstone choice distribution.

I have a 20 barb on Khyber that I don't play much anymore. My capstone choice is nothing. It's not a con-centric build and the other two caps are trash regardless.

[flaggson]

No.. I'm sorry but no... barbs are supposed to be the melee dps king... and be slow to die ---- lots of mitigation... not lots of healing ... this reminds me of the old phoenix builds.. sure kinda fun... but not the build you take out when your playing for real.

[Lauf]

I see what you are saying about having the rage regeneration in the tree with extra rages.

Sev~

here's a thought, move the extra rages to the ravager tree
also, move the extended rage from OS (as it's supposed to be the "no rage" tree) to the ravager.
move improved PA from ravager to OS.

now suddenly the trees make sense.... one has regenerating rages (FB), another has more rages that last longer (ravager), and the third has the "no rage" damage bonuses (OS).

[Scrabbler]

Unless you code it as rendering mobs helpless, it will do nothing to boost the damage. Cause regular paralyze =/= helplessness.
What's an example of a Paralyze that doesn't include Helpless?

[Grailhawk]

What's an example of a Paralyze that doesn't include Helpless?

Paralyze Weapon effect do not make targets helpless. At least they didn't last time i used them which was probably 2010.

[Scrabbler]

Paralyze Weapon effect do not make targets helpless. At least they didn't last time i used them which was probably 2010.
What's the name of a weapon with a Paralyze effect on it? All the ones I've heard of were changed to Daze, specifically to account for not causing Helplessness like real Paralyze does.

[Grailhawk]

What's the name of a weapon with a Paralyze effect on it? All the ones I've heard of were changed to Daze, specifically to account for not causing Helplessness like real Paralyze does.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Elemental_Khopesh_of_Water_(Level_12)

[maddong]

As it is in ravager people will get 2.5 avg x 4 hamp (100 capstone + 40 other barb trees + 60 human/pdk + 100 from a prior 20 & 30 item for 300 total hamp) x 2 (assuming around 100 mp blitzing) = 20 healing per hit.

On a dual wield build that would attack about 2.7 times per second so 54 hp back a second. When you take into account prr/mrr it will trivialize most content.

A little less esoteric than tilomeres calcs....

[Scrabbler]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Elemental_Khopesh_of_Water_(Level_12)
Clicking on the link states that that the item causes a Daze, and that actual Paralyze includes Helplessness.

[Scrabbler]

It's a mistake to use a Meleepower stat to boost healing and defensive effects. If you want those effects to scale up with advancement, then scale them by level instead of Meleepower.

Doing them by Meleepower causes problems because (1) Meleepower increases much faster during epic levels, (2) temporary offensive-themed boosts also get a lot of defense, (3) FOTW bonus MP which is meant for 1 attack can be applied repeatedly to non-attack effects.


Someone might reply: "It's good that meleepower increases healing through epic levels, because epic monsters cause way more damage than heroic, and you'll need the healing". Well that is true on its own... but other forms of healing from heroic-tier character features don't get extra-fast progression during epic levels. They tend to scale by spellpower, which progresses more smoothly from heroic to epic.

[Grailhawk]

Clicking on the link states that that the item causes a Daze, and that actual Paralyze includes Helplessness.

Please quot where on the page the word dazed is used.

Description on the weapon clearly stats ".. DC 17 Will save or be paralyzed" hell searching the webpage for the word "daze" comes up with 0 matches. If the in game description has been changed cool they need to get better at clarifying what makes things helpless and what does not but last I know there are many things that were inconsistent in that regard.

[btolson]

I'd like to suggest an idea for reworking the entire way in which Fury stacks currently work. Given that Ravager is thematically modeled around spending as much time as possible in combat, racing from one fight to the next, rarely slowing down and never stopping, I think it would be much more appropriate and flavorful if a Ravager gains power and speed for being in constant combat, and loses it quickly whenever he pauses to rest.

The following idea behind Ravaging Fury allows stacks to build up pretty quickly (and almost passively) while in combat, and fall off quite quickly (multiple stacks at a time) if you stop fighting. Blood Strength was also adapted to derive its power from Ravaging Fury -- a Ravager lives to fight and fights to live!


Core 1 | Ravaging Fury: Whenever you strike an enemy, you gain a stack of Ravaging (internal cooldown of 2 seconds). Ravaging lasts for 3 seconds, can stack up to 8 times, and if not refreshed will fade 3 stacks at a time. For every 5 stacks of Ravaging that you have, you gain +1 damage and +2% movement speed*.

Core 3: Ravaging stacks to 13

Core 6: Ravaging stacks to 18

Core 12: Ravaging stacks to 25

Core 18: Ravaging stacks to 35. When you use Barbarian Rage, you gain 5 stacks of Ravaging

Capstone: Ravaging stacks to 50

Laughter: (t4) When Slaughter damages an enemy, you gain a stack of Ravaging. When Slaughter scores a critical hit on an enemy, you gain an additional 2 stacks of Ravaging and 10 Melee Power for 15 seconds.

Critical Fury (t5): When you score a critical hit, you gain a stack of Ravaging (this might need to be a % proc on crit or else have a cooldown; Ravaging stacks should still largely build based on time spent in combat)

Blood Strength (t5): Whenever you strike an enemy, you have a chance equal to your number of Ravaging stacks to be healed for 1d6 positive/repair energy (e.g., 50% chance at 50 stacks). Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 1d20 hit points. This healing does not scale with Melee Power.



*In terms of implementation, since I fairly doubt you can directly grant +1 damage and +2% movement for every 5 stacks of Ravaging, I expect Ravaging stacks will serve as meta-stacks for Fury stacks (which will grant the actual bonuses and can be invisible to the player if desired). Which is to say, whenever stacks of Ravaging increment above a multiple of 5, or decrement below a multiple of 5, (or, more lazily, whenever your Ravaging stacks change at all) your Fury stacks will be cleared and set equal to [Current Ravaging Stacks]/5. The Ravaging stacks just offer a nice degree of granularity with which to smoothly manipulate the bonuses.

[Scrabbler]

Please quot where on the page the word dazed is used.
Sure, I can click the link for you if you need:
Paralyzing

Paralyzing.PNG
Prefix
Base price modifier: +5
Effect: Any creature struck by this weapon must succeed on a DC 17 Will save or be paralyzed. The target may attempt a new save to end the effect every several seconds; otherwise the paralysis lasts for 1 minute. Certain creatures, such as the Undead and Constructs, cannot be paralyzed.
Note: (Long ago, this caused the normal paralyzed status which included the expected helplessness and auto-crits. It was changed for balance reasons, and now is Daze-like in effect, as it prevents any action from the afflicted monster but does not render a creature helpless.)

[brzytki]

Clicking on the link states that that the item causes a Daze, and that actual Paralyze includes Helplessness.

??

How can you read it that way? From wiki entry on the effect "Paralyzing (http://ddowiki.com/page/Paralyzing)":

Note: (Long ago, this caused the normal paralyzed status which included the expected helplessness and auto-crits. It was changed for balance reasons, and now is Daze-like in effect, as it prevents any action from the afflicted monster but does not render a creature helpless.)

And one from the Paralyzed (http://ddowiki.com/page/Paralyzed)state:

Paralyzed creatures are unable to move or take actions of any kind. Afflicted targets are considered prone, but not helpless.

[Scrabbler]

How can you read it that way?
It's not complicated: Someone complains that the Ravager capstone is too weak.
He thinks it's too weak because it does Paralyzed.
He thinks Paralyzed is too weak because it's not Helpless.
He thinks Paralyzed isn't Helpless because he used a Paralyzing weapon.
Clicking on the wiki entry for a Paralyzing weapon states that real Paralyzed includes Helplessness, and that this weapon is a special version that only acts like Dazed.
Therefore, the complaint that Ravager capstone Paralyzed doesn't include Helplessness is unfounded.

[Severlin]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

[brzytki]

It's not complicated: Someone complains that the Ravager capstone is too weak.
He thinks it's too weak because it does Paralyzed.
He thinks Paralyzed is too weak because it's not Helpless.
He thinks Paralyzed isn't Helpless because he used a Paralyzing weapon.
Clicking on the wiki entry for a Paralyzing weapon states that real Paralyzed includes Helplessness, and that this weapon is a special version that only acts like Dazed.
Therefore, the complaint that Ravager capstone Paralyzed doesn't include Helplessness is unfounded.

Ok, and what about enties "Paralyzed" and "Helpless"?
The ONLY thing that paralyzes and makes the target helpless i could find on wiki is Ghoul's Touch. The other that i'm not sure about is Nerve Venom but since it doesn't say in the discription that the creature is rendered helpless i'd guess it's not.

I don't have time to sift through all Release Notes since June 2013, cause that's when the wiki entries of Paralyzing and Paralyzed were last modified, but i don't recall any change to it.

Anyway, as there clearly are two options of paralyze, one with helplessness and one without, so yes, my complaint is pretty well founded. Turbine is well known for letting bugs and mistakes slip into live servers so reminding them to code it appropriately seems reasonable.

[Zurrander]

So your dead set on giving every Barb tree self healing... despite how badly it breaks barb flavor, and with no comments about Temp Hp/Dr/Prr/Dodge as an alternative. Okay, I'll just have to get over it (like I did when changes were set in stone for pallys and bards). But i have to say that I'm very disappointed in the way that vital player feedback has been ignored. Instead of keeping the classes/enhancements unique there seems to be a general trend toward blandness. I'm happy that you're still looking at the trees, and I like the latest changes to Reaver & Frenzied (except for making the on kill healing equal to the on hit healing). But i do wish that you would concentrate on the more important aspects of this update... Like given the Three barb trees there own niches (Occult = magic slaying "should have Mrr in cores"/ Reaver = Hp tank "should have Prr in cores"/Frenzied = Crazy Damage "should have Melee power in cores")

At this point I'm not sure what the players would have to do to convince you that making all/most Barbs inflated Hamp self healers is a bad thing. I'm even fine with giving Occult slayer self healing (so that barb self healing is possible) but giving it to all three trees goes against everything a barb is. There hasn't even been any word on what kind of healing they will be getting (positive, Lay on hands type "so war forged don't get gimped")? Making lore friendly upgrades to barbs wouldn't even be that hard...

Give Frenzies Melee power in the core and a way to stop self damage from Frenzy/Death Frenzy (instead of accelerated metabolism)
Give Occult Slayer Heal amp or Mrr in the cores along with a lesser (tier 2) HOT ability that uses weapon bond, in addition to the healing they are already getting.
Give Reaver Prr in the cores and a way to stay up with Temp Hp (instead of self healing)

and for Gods sake make the Two toughness cores that Frenzied Berserkers get count for something (the way every core 3 an up will in this change)

[Qhualor]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

Have to think more on it, but we do need more abilities based on class levels and less on character levels. It cuts down on craving low hanging fruit and power creep.

[Grailhawk]

Ok, and what about enties "Paralyzed" and "Helpless"?
The ONLY thing that paralyzes and makes the target helpless i could find on wiki is Ghoul's Touch. The other that i'm not sure about is Nerve Venom but since it doesn't say in the discription that the creature is rendered helpless i'd guess it's not..

Nerve Venom does make induce helplessness. I agree they need to be more clear as to what does and does not make a target helpless, but if it says Paralyze there's at least a 50/50 chance it will make the target helpless.

[Cetus]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

yea, I don't care about this.

Still waiting for the DPS. We're talking about barbarians here, stop with the heals.

[Severlin]

despite how badly it breaks barb flavor,


Barbarians in pen and paper have always been about more hit points so we decided to go in that direction precisely because that's traditionally their survival advantage. We could have also used DR, but DR is a bad mechanism to boost higher in the game; at higher values it's either too powerful (lots of smaller creatures) or not good enough (against a heavy hitting boss.) Hit Points (and appropriately scaled healing) works well in either case.

If we are boosting barbarian hit points the only way to balance healing with that advantage is by boosting healing. (As an aside, Barbarians are often viewed as a Primal class and abilities that make it easier to recover are common within the sphere.)



and with no comments about Temp Hp/Dr/Prr/Dodge as an alternative.


None of these solutions fulfilled our goals for the class.

~ PRR just homogenizes Barbarians with the Defender trees and we didn't want that. By going with hit points we also blunt the hit point costs of some abilities as barbarians scale into epic levels. PRR and MRR wouldn't do that.

~ Temp Hit Points don't work well with either healing potions, nor do they promote teamwork. This solution will make it more likely that the barbarian would be ignored by other characters who, even if they tried to help out, would likely waste healing unless they happened to hit that small window where the barbarian was taking actual damage. Temp hit points don't really fit the flavor well; they tend to be used in pen and paper to represent either necromantic effects or magical vitality boosts. (In addition, when we've used temporary hit points in the past players have been generally unexcited and uninterested in that mechanic so we tend to avoid adding large systems that use it.)

~ DR scales poorly and high values tend to either break content or become useless against big bosses. It's fine in small doses but we wouldn't want to increase it much.

~ If you want a dodge based build you have tons of options for that already.



vital player feedback has been ignored.


We do read flavor arguments which is why we changed the force damage to bane after we read the player feedback.

On the other hand if we implement a system based on specific design goals then changing passive bonuses that work the way we want them to just for the sake of being different can really hamper our ability to fix the game.

As an aside, the argument of "this looks mechanically sound but this isn't the direction I would have taken" is a tough one to respond to. Everyone is going to have a strong vision of what they would have done with barbarians and we can't implement all of them.



Instead of keeping the classes/enhancements unique there seems to be a general trend toward blandness.


We spent our time giving the various forms of healing a distinct flavor and function in each tree and added support for the tree's distinct mechanic. We honestly don't think the flavor you are looking for will show by changing the passive bonuses in the cores. On the other hand but it will break the ability to mitigate damage and sustain themselves.

Barbarians are often viewed as a Primal class rather than a Martial class and that's the direction we decided to go with the flavor of these changes. We hope this help Barbarians feel distinct from fighters.

Sev~

[Severlin]

yea, I don't care about this.

Still waiting for the DPS. We're talking about barbarians here, stop with the heals.

Our design goals don't include making Ravager (or Occult Slayer) into a glass cannon type builds. If you want that kind of game play you can go with Frenzied Berserker and forego the heal for the damage enhancement.

Sev~

[Scrabbler]

Our design goals don't include making Ravager (or Occult Slayer) into a glass cannon type builds.
Right, not glass cannon. But is the the goal that against a single non-evil boss monster, any of the 3 Barbarian trees will have less DPS than a Paladin?


If you want that kind of game play you can go with Frenzied Berserker and forego the heal for the damage enhancement.
Can you tell us what the damage behavior of existing enhancements will be?

The descriptions for the critical effects of FB Death Frenzy and Ravager Critical Rage are incomplete/incorrect. If we know exactly what they will do in the future, we can better estimate Barbarian class damage. Some people have been assuming Death Frenzy will get a giant buff... I don't think that will happen, but it'd be nice to know.

And while I'm asking questions: Is it going to work so that Epic FOTW Adrenalin will give large boosts to Accelerated Metabolism, Blood Tribute, and Ancestral Bond for a lengthy duration?


(In addition, when we've used temporary hit points in the past players have been generally unexcited and uninterested in that mechanic so we tend to avoid adding large systems that use it.)
For the record, passive effects that give a chance for temp hp when you get hit were always popular (back when they came out, such as when Laliat raid and Lich mode were first added).

Other sources of temp hp were often disliked because they didn't scale with caster level or spellpower. Seeing that you made Blood Tribute scale with meleepower, I'm hoping spells like False Life will be updated to use spellpower.

[Severlin]

Right, not glass cannon. But is the the goal that against a single non-evil boss monster, any of the 3 Barbarian trees will have less DPS than a Paladin?


The design goal is that DPS should be comparable if both are built for DPS. Frenzied Berserker would probably have a slight edge in AoE.

The design goal is also that Barbarian DR should eventually negate the damage for Vicious, but I would have to check if that's working based on player concerns about them.



Can you tell us what the damage behavior of existing enhancements will be?

The descriptions for the critical effects of FB Death Frenzy and Ravager Critical Rage are incomplete/incorrect. If we know exactly what they will do in the future, we can better estimate Barbarian class damage. Some people have been assuming Death Frenzy will get a giant buff... I don't think that will happen, but it'd be nice to know.

If we haven't outlined changes things will work as they do on live. On the other hand, if live is bugged we will fix it.

Sev~

[Grailhawk]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~


Blood Strength
52 MP
260 HAmp
2.00 APS
109 HP per Tick 20 * 1.52 * 3.60 = 109
0.4 Ticks Per Second 2*0.2 = 0.4
43.6 HP per Second 109*0.4 = 43.6

Ranger CSW
31.5 Avg Heal per Cast Base (3d6+21)
350.0 Devotion (included Maximize Spell and other Sources)
210.0 HAmp (60 Human + 60 Gloves + 40 Ring + 20 Guild + 30 Paladin PL)
439.4 Avg Heal per Cast
73.23 Hp per Second 439.4/6 = 73.23

IMO its still to strong. At a kill rate of 1 per second you would be healing more then top end Rangers with CSW, and I'm not even taking into account that Blood Strength has no DPS loss unlike stopping to cast a CSW.

[Severlin]

Blood Strength
52 MP
260 HAmp
2.00 APS
109 HP per Tick 20 * 1.52 * 3.60 = 109
0.4 Ticks Per Second 2*0.2 = 0.4
43.6 HP per Second 109*0.4 = 43.6

Ranger CSW
31.5 Avg Heal per Cast Base (3d6+21)
350.0 Devotion (included Maximize Spell and other Sources)
210.0 HAmp (60 Human + 60 Gloves + 40 Ring + 20 Guild + 30 Paladin PL)
439.4 Avg Heal per Cast
73.23 Hp per Second 439.4/6 = 73.23

IMO its still to strong. At a kill rate of 1 per second you would be healing more then top end Rangers with CSW, and I'm not even taking into account that Blood Strength has no DPS loss unlike stopping to cast a CSW.


CSW allows Rangers to recover between fights and enter a fight fresh. If a Ravager ends a fight down on health they will have to find another way to recover or enter the next battle damaged.

Sev~

[Monkey-Boy]

CSW allows Rangers to recover between fights and enter a fight fresh. If a Ravager ends a fight down on health they will have to find another way to recover or enter the next battle damaged.

Sev~

Wait . . . what? In EE this is no recovering during fights, you need that heal while the fight is going on.

[Grailhawk]

If we haven't outlined changes things will work as they do on live. On the other hand, if live is bugged we will fix it.

Sev~

Death Frenzy says it gives a +1 to Crit Multiplier on live it gives a +1 to Crit Multiplier on a 19-20. The description is ambiguous compared to other +1 Cirt Multipliers on 19-20. IMO either the description is bad and could use adjustment or the functionality is is bugged and should be fixed.

Can you address this specific case?

[Grailhawk]

CSW allows Rangers to recover between fights and enter a fight fresh. If a Ravager ends a fight down on health they will have to find another way to recover or enter the next battle damaged.

Sev~

When will it be on Lamannia any time frame? Math to me seems to indicate its too strong but I'm willing to wait and see how it plays.

[Scrabbler]

~ PRR just homogenizes Barbarians with the Defender trees and we didn't want that.
Using heal amp and hitpoints in all 3 Barb trees homogenizes Berserkers with Ravagers and Occult Slayers and we don't want that.

For example, there could be one Barb tree with PRR, one with heal amp, and one with Dodge (both passive, and in the form of improved duration/cooldown on Uncanny Dodge buff).



~ Temp Hit Points don't work well with either healing potions, nor do they promote teamwork.
Temp hp promotes teamwork more than self-only real healing does (like Blood Strength, Ancestral Bond, Acc Metabolism). With either temp hp or real healing, the hp the Barb gives him self are hp he doesn't need to get from other people. But with temp hp effects, although he can create a shield against future hp damage, he can't refill himself from 250 hp back to 1000 hp.

I understand that there are reasons you don't want Barbarians to depend on other players for healing; but literally that would mean "promoting teamwork".


~ If you want a dodge based build you have tons of options for that already.
Note that in D&D 3.5, the two base classes with Dodge features are Rogue and Barbarian.

[btolson]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

This is considerably more powerful than described in the OP, with an average healing value of 4 per hit at L20. Consider 20% chance of 1d[level] or [level/2] instead. Do not drop the % to 10, as we have already seen from blitz changes how annoying and unfun that is.

Or, see my earlier idea about tying Blood Strength to a reworked Fury; something more distinctive and noticeable, with an appreciable build phase, rather than an either nearly always-off (at levels 1-11) or instantly always-full (level 12+) straight damage bonus. As it stands, Ravager has no meaningful class identity.

[Zurrander]

~ Temp Hit Points don't work well with either healing potions, nor do they promote teamwork. - Sev

Self Healing doesn't promote teamwork either... and barbs are already being ignored by healers (as anything but a soul stone) in favor of kiting enemies through AOE's. Assuming that the Temp HP is done so that it adds to survivablity without making the barb immortal there should still be plenty of opportunities for them to catch a heal. If working better with Healing potions is the issue then why don't you add "Potion's are 10% more effective" to Wilderness Lore (Barb Exclusive), That way a level 20 barb would get 200% effectiveness out of his pots. But if you say Temp HP simply isn't a popular mechanic then i can't really argue, I just though that it could be an interesting change that's consistent with the classes flavor considering that barbs already use Temp HP. And something like a Temp HP overhaul could eventually trickle down to healers allowing them to put there currently useless Temp HP spells to work (and possible bring about the revival of the DDO healer). As of now, this game has far to many useless effect... On a happy note, I love your idea about using DR to cancel out self damage! (I hope that works out!!!!!)

[Scrabbler]

The design goal is that DPS should be comparable if both are built for DPS.
With how enhancements work right now, a Paladin swings a Falchion 10% faster than a Barbarian and crits 13-20x3, while a Barbarian FB crits 15-18x2 19-20x5. The Barb has a few more meleepower from the new tree, but only a few.


The design goal is also that Barbarian DR should eventually negate the damage for Vicious
Really, odd. It was explicitly announced that DR should not block Vicious self-damage back when Frenzied Berserker was launched. The Vicious damage is not physical bludgeon, slash, or pierce; DR doesn't block it outgoing to enemies, so it would be strange for DR to apply incoming to you. If you wanted Barbarians to passively negate Vicious damage, may as well have 0 self-damage in the first place.


If we haven't outlined changes things will work as they do on live. On the other hand, if live is bugged we will fix it.
We can't read the bug database, but the situation is: Death Frenzy says "an additional +1 crit mult". It had originally been intentionally limited to 19-20 rolls, but the text doesn't say that anymore.
Critical Rage says I get +2 crit range. When I use Swashbuckler to get +2 crit range on my Keen Handaxe, it goes to 15-20x3. Critical Rage does not make it 15-20x3.


Do not drop the % to 10, as we have already seen from blitz changes how annoying and unfun that is.
The only reason a 10% chance bothers people on Blitz is because it makes it likely the duration will run out before being refreshed (which is intentional). Since Blood Strength has no duration, lowering the percentage makes no important difference (aside from scaling your rate of healing)

[Qhualor]

Blood Strength
52 MP
260 HAmp
2.00 APS
109 HP per Tick 20 * 1.52 * 3.60 = 109
0.4 Ticks Per Second 2*0.2 = 0.4
43.6 HP per Second 109*0.4 = 43.6

Ranger CSW
31.5 Avg Heal per Cast Base (3d6+21)
350.0 Devotion (included Maximize Spell and other Sources)
210.0 HAmp (60 Human + 60 Gloves + 40 Ring + 20 Guild + 30 Paladin PL)
439.4 Avg Heal per Cast
73.23 Hp per Second 439.4/6 = 73.23

IMO its still to strong. At a kill rate of 1 per second you would be healing more then top end Rangers with CSW, and I'm not even taking into account that Blood Strength has no DPS loss unlike stopping to cast a CSW.

the faster and more damage a barb kills, the less hp he gets back. a ranger is not under a to-hit effect to heal. in one button push a ranger can get at least most of his hp back even while taking damage. mobs in EE are hitting much harder than 44 hp per hit so you wouldn't be seeing a barbs hp rising while he is getting beat on. if anything and depending on the damage from both mob and barb and the speed of the kill, the barb would actually be gradually losing hp instead of gaining. barbs are not getting a defense boost so they will still be the glass cannons just like currently in game. this doesn't even take into account more than 1 mob that typically are fighting you, including caster damage, the fact that a ranger will/should have more than 1 way to refill at least most of his hp back up while a barb in trouble would still have to lose dps by swilling penalty SF pots or CSW pots or rely on team play.

[Uska]

Have to think more on it, but we do need more abilities based on class levels and less on character levels. It cuts down on craving low hanging fruit and power creep.

yes

[Uska]

CSW allows Rangers to recover between fights and enter a fight fresh. If a Ravager ends a fight down on health they will have to find another way to recover or enter the next battle damaged.

Sev~

and that's going to keep the ranger up during the fight? super barb healing before /during or after a fight is wrong wrong wrong especially since they can get it without actually taking very many bar level min should be 12 or more.

[Qhualor]

~ Temp Hit Points don't work well with either healing potions, nor do they promote teamwork. - Sev

Self Healing doesn't promote teamwork either... and barbs are already being ignored by healers (as anything but a soul stone) in favor of kiting enemies through AOE's. Assuming that the Temp HP is done so that it adds to survivablity without making the barb immortal there should still be plenty of opportunities for them to catch a heal. If working better with Healing potions is the issue then why don't you add "Potion's are 10% more effective" to Wilderness Lore (Barb Exclusive), That way a level 20 barb would get 200% effectiveness out of his pots. But if you say Temp HP simply isn't a popular mechanic then i can't really argue, I just though that it could be an interesting change that's consistent with the classes flavor considering that barbs already use Temp HP. And something like a Temp HP overhaul could eventually trickle down to healers allowing them to put there currently useless Temp HP spells to work (and possible bring about the revival of the DDO healer). As of now, this game has far to many useless effect... On a happy note, I love your idea about using DR to cancel out self damage! (I hope that works out!!!!!)

I hate temporary hp only because it doesn't scale well in the game and in epics those temporary hp lasts for maybe 1-3 hits depending. temporary hp is definitely part of the flavor in PnP and I wouldn't have a problem with that in DDO, but it would have to proc a lot and for a high amount to be anywhere near beneficial. it would be one thing though if barbs had a better defense.

I do like your idea a lot about tying potion effectiveness to Wilderness Lore, but that would also include all classes with the same lore unless the devs were able to code it differently. increasing potion effectiveness has been brought up before by some of us, but its a tricky situation because you have to be careful not making it too powerful for other classes.

[Scrabbler]

CSW allows Rangers to recover between fights and enter a fight fresh.
That Ranger example was using some pretty expensive build choices to boost his CSW, and still got mediocre results. For any mostly-Barb character, the healing costs just 2 AP... they don't even get the option to not pump up heal amp!


If a Ravager ends a fight down on health they will have to find another way to recover or enter the next battle damaged.
That's why there should be a vendor selling Magic Bandages which can heal you outside combat at a rate of maybe 30 hp per plat. It would relieve the designers from having to give a self-healing feature to every single kind of character tree.

[btolson]

The only reason a 10% chance bothers people on Blitz is because it makes it likely the duration will run out before being refreshed (which is intentional). Since Blood Strength has no duration, lowering the percentage makes no important difference (aside from scaling your rate of healing)

While not explicitly a fixed duration, the time in which Blood Strength must proc in order to keep you alive can be expressed as your mean time before death in any encounter. If I know that I can only go toe-to-toe with enemy X for 20 seconds before I will be dead, then Blood Strength must proc in that time frame or be worthless. A reasonable amount of reliability is required if this is truly intended to make barbs consistently more survivable, or you will still ding every time rng decides to starve you.

[Qhualor]

The design goal is that DPS should be comparable if both are built for DPS. Frenzied Berserker would probably have a slight edge in AoE.

The design goal is also that Barbarian DR should eventually negate the damage for Vicious, but I would have to check if that's working based on player concerns about them.



If we haven't outlined changes things will work as they do on live. On the other hand, if live is bugged we will fix it.

Sev~

imo, FB should be the obvious best dps melee. if its just going to be comparable to a paladin than people will prefer to play paladin for easier and better self sufficiency. even if dps is slightly less, its not going to be an issue deciding which one to play.

I don't like that vicious damage would be negated by barb DR. that, to me, feels like a fix because people don't like playing a class that damages themselves for more dps. its taking the flavor away from the DDO class. there are 2 other barb trees to choose from or they can just choose not to Frenzy if they don't like the vicious damage. ill take the self damage and rather have barb DR work the way it should scaled properly to negate all damage.

did you see my post about not being able to use Primal Scream while raged and the inconsistencies with PS, Rage and Madstone?

[bbqzor]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.

There is nothing nice about 20% chances. It just creates room to get a bad string of numbers and have a poor reasoned death. Changing it to work on levels (in some format, not necessarily the one mentioned) is completely fine. Id prefer it to reward more barbarian rather than minimal barbarian splashing. But get rid of "chances". If you want to tune it better, just tune it better. The math isnt hard to crunch out, animation speeds are well known (by us, probably even better by you). Hp/sec coming in should be easy to parse against dps the mobs put out, you have all their stats too. Using "chances" is just a way for players to get frustrated over unlucky RNG occurrences; a problem frequently exacerbated by latency (creating imprecise displays of where you and mobs are to even generate those chances).


Hit Points (and appropriately scaled healing) works well in either case.
No, it does not. Their survival issue is time between needing heals. Scalar hp does not affect that situation. You have not logged enough hours playing barbarians to understand this maybe? If I have 1200 hp or 1600 hp, and 60% amp or 160% amp, thats all kind of the same thing. There is nothing slowing down how fast dps comes in to remove those hp. They are lost, frequently faster than any other class in the game. Thus they need constant healing from an outside source since they cannot cast while raging. Healing 1k or 2k hp per cast isnt a healer efficiency problem, the amp changes alone address this. And 400 extra hp isnt enough to meaningfully space out those constantly needed heals. It just doesnt address the problem. Whatever metric you are using NEEDS to be explained to us, so we can attempt to approach this topic by your standards. As it stands, you seem to continually ignore the playability side of the issue, instead focusing on perceived change this will cause on paper. It doesnt matter if a CLW tops the barb off, it matters if they need that CLW every 2s or every 20s or every 200s. See the difference?


PRR just homogenizes Barbarians with the Defender trees and we didn't want that.
No, by going with PRR you do the job DR was supposed to do in pnp (and did for awhile in ddo before mudflation caught up to it). No one is asking for 100s of PRR like tanks get. They want enough to parallel the feel of the advantage DR should be.


Temp Hit Points don't work well with either healing potions, nor do they promote teamwork. This solution will make it more likely that the barbarian would be ignored by other characters who, even if they tried to help out, would likely waste healing unless they happened to hit that small window where the barbarian was taking actual damage.
Hyperbole based on assumed values. If they got 2 temp hp per hit and the mobs hit for 100, it would do little to create "a small window where the barbarian was taking actual damage"... theyd take actual damage all the time. This situation depends ENTIRELY on the temp hp values used, and the frequency they proc. You know this.


when we've used temporary hit points in the past players have been generally unexcited and uninterested in that mechanic so we tend to avoid adding large systems that use it.
Well, look at the previous temp hp systems... they are all generally really rare procs. 1% chance for I like pain? Need to roll a 20 for Lifedrinker? 10% chance for 15 hp on Lifeshield? Notice a trend? If you put one in that was (random example) 50% chance for 50 hp, people would likely respond better. Again, this is rather self evident, not sure why we are having to elaborate here.


DR scales poorly and high values tend to either break content or become useless against big bosses. It's fine in small doses but we wouldn't want to increase it much.
Which is why everyone looks at barbarian DR and most everyone immediately sees the parallel to PRR and goes... why no prr.


Barbarians are often viewed as a Primal class rather than a Martial class and that's the direction we decided to go with the flavor of these changes. We hope this help Barbarians feel distinct from fighters.
This is fine, and some difference is good. I think realizing that all three Primal destinies offer PRR (fury/primal) or DR (shiradi) is also a clue. Thats as much in the wheelhouse as anything else. No reason that barbarian enhancements cant continue that trend. Maybe the PRR is a guard only when they get hit, similar to primal destiny or bladeforged. Maybe the temp hp is a large proc every 10s in the flavor of healing springs heals (but temp hp instead). Maybe healing spring DR can be made to stack with Barbarian DR, by adding a "if this is a barbarian the dr 2/cold iron becomes dr 2/- and stacks" line to it.

Giving barbs viable epic advancement for those class abilities is just as worthwhile as putting them in enhancement trees. If you cant do one, consider the other then. As it stands barbs hit 20 and kind of have nowhere to go, in terms of ability extension or progression. They cant even Primal Scream while raged... maybe that could be fixed. As it stands, rage, DR, etc all cap at 20 and then sit. No other class runs into that quite as hard (except perhaps artificers with rune arms kind of just stopping).


The design goal is also that Barbarian DR should eventually negate the damage for Vicious, but I would have to check if that's working based on player concerns about them. If we haven't outlined changes things will work as they do on live. On the other hand, if live is bugged we will fix it.

Wait, WHAT? This is NOT how live works. Not at all. If barb class based DR blocked Frenzy well, yes, that would go a LONG way towards fixing things. This was specfically NOT the intention when frenzy was added years ago, devs specifically wanted it to NOT get blocked by dr so that it wouldnt be avoidable. You are now saying the intention is a 180 degree change of face that we are just finding out about now???

Seriously, this last one is CRITICAL news if thats whats actually happening. Before you post anything further, please ensure you are not getting our hopes up for nothing. Because yea... big deal stuff here.

(Related, this is the kind of thing that shows up within oh I dont know 2 seconds of rolling one up and hitting something... so like did that not happen before designing this stuff? Or it did happen and the huge memo about "oh yea those 100s of damage you are taking wont be there" got lost and we forgot to tell you).

[Seikojin]

I believe the concessions so far have been good. I say we get a Lama build BVT'd and pushed for public test.

[Seikojin]

Wait . . . what? In EE this is no recovering during fights, you need that heal while the fight is going on.

Between fights is when not being damaged. Not when enemies are dead. Just ask Cetus.

[PermaBanned]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

I'll let the math peeps deal with over/under/appropriately powered, but wanted to say I like the concept of ability value determined by Barb class levels - more of this please!

[Munkenmo]

~ DR scales poorly and high values tend to either break content or become useless against big bosses. It's fine in small doses but we wouldn't want to increase it much.

That's largely because PRR is applied After DR. If you change the order of operations, DR will become much more relevant.

Currently its DR > PRR > Final Damage
Initial damage of 300 -15 points of DR = 285 damage, then - 40% from PRR = 171 points of damage taken.

IF the order of operations gswapped to PRR > DR > Final Damage
Initial damage of 300 - 40% from prr = 180 points of damage, - 15 points from DR = 165 damage taken.

Just by changing the order DR has been made a more effective mechanic with room for growth.

[Violith]

imo, FB should be the obvious best dps melee. if its just going to be comparable to a paladin than people will prefer to play paladin for easier and better self sufficiency. even if dps is slightly less, its not going to be an issue deciding which one to play.

I don't like that vicious damage would be negated by barb DR. that, to me, feels like a fix because people don't like playing a class that damages themselves for more dps. its taking the flavor away from the DDO class. there are 2 other barb trees to choose from or they can just choose not to Frenzy if they don't like the vicious damage. ill take the self damage and rather have barb DR work the way it should scaled properly to negate all damage.

did you see my post about not being able to use Primal Scream while raged and the inconsistencies with PS, Rage and Madstone?


to increases FB into the best dPS, making the frenzy and death frenzy vicious scale with melee power would work,

also, since vicious damage to self would probably also increase, by having only the barbarians innate DR negate the damage to self would help make a pure barb more viable.

[Mindos]

On the other hand if we implement a system based on specific design goals then changing passive bonuses that work the way we want them to just for the sake of being different can really hamper our ability to fix the game.

Sev~


two Questions:

1. Is the game broke? or...
2. Do you really not want the game to reproduce?

[Severlin]

Death Frenzy says it gives a +1 to Crit Multiplier on live it gives a +1 to Crit Multiplier on a 19-20. The description is ambiguous compared to other +1 Cirt Multipliers on 19-20. IMO either the description is bad and could use adjustment or the functionality is is bugged and should be fixed.

Can you address this specific case?

It is supposed to be 19-20. We can update the description.

Sev~

[Standal]

CSW allows Rangers to recover between fights and enter a fight fresh. If a Ravager ends a fight down on health they will have to find another way to recover or enter the next battle damaged.

Sev~

Please tell us that you just got in a hurry while posting this and that you aren't actually making decisions about the future of the game based on logic like this.

[Takllin]

It is supposed to be 19-20. We can update the description.

Sev~

Then why is Holy Sword +1 critical multiplier to all critical attacks? Where is the consistency? Do you know how much more DPS Holy Sword gives because of that?

Holy Sword is just stupidly over powered, and I honestly fail to understand the premise behind all the changes that were made to it.

Please, for the sake of balance, either make Death Frenzy and Earth Stance +1 critical multiplier to all critical attacks, or nerf Holy Sword to only give +1 critical multiplier to 19-20...

I am really starting to lose faith...

Paladin has always been my favorite class, but by making it this god mode, overpowered, new easy button class, you have almost killed the excitement and draw to the class for me. There is not much of a challenge anymore. It has the best DPS, Defense and Self Sufficiency. Leaps and bounds above everything else overall.

[axel15810]

The design goal is that DPS should be comparable if both are built for DPS.

Wait...what? I don't understand. How can barbs possibly be a class that is competitive with paladins if they only do comparable DPS? Could someone clarify for me? Shouldn't they do MORE DPS to make up for all the penalties they take?

Yeah the new barb trees offer some nice stuff like regen healing, HP and healing amp. But they also of course have the huge penalty of no casting ability, the inability to splash pally or monk, no heavy armor proficiency, ect.

Surely the goodies the barb class has doesn't come close to what pallies have: the best saves in game, inherent healing spells (ability to use bladeforged reconstruct SLA), useful buffs like deathward, ect.

If I'm building a melee why would I pick barb over pally? If both have comparable DPS, but pallies are way more survivable - how in the world are barbs a competitive class? I think we need to make barbs the undisputed best melee DPS in order to make the class worth playing....especially in Epic Elite where they'll be taking lots of damage and needing help from other characters.

If Barbs are going to require some outside healing help (unlike other melees), they need to do better DPS in order to make up for it. In other words, they need to be worth healing.

Let's consider a scenario where a group of 6 is running in epic elite. If the barb is doing the same DPS as the pally in the party - yet the favored soul is losing 50% of his DPS because he's having to stop and heal the barb constantly, then the barb is a drain on the party. However, if the barb is doing 150% the DPS of the pally it will roughly even out with the 50% loss of DPS by the favored soul.

And surely the inherent barb healing won't keep up with Epic Elite damage (if it did it would definitely be overpowered) - so barbs are going to need outside healing assistance in Epic Elite for sure. And as long as they need outside healing assistance they need to make up for the DPS lost by the character having to heal him.

So again, how will barbs be a competitive class if they only do "comparable" DPS to that of a survivable, self-sufficient paladin? I just don't see it - barbs need to have the best melee DPS in order for all the inherent self-sufficiency/survivability problems of barbarians to be worth putting up with. This goes for both the player and the party.

This is coming from someone who has played clerics almost exclusively in DDO for about 5 years. I have lots and lots of experience healing and enjoy serving as the party healer (and would love to heal barbs in future epic elite runs, I just want them to be worth healing is all).

I know you've stated that you don't want to go with the "glass cannon" approach because you don't think it fits how the game is played currently. I think based on the feedback you should reconsider. The reason it looks like players don't play the game that way is because there are no builds in DDO currently where it makes any sense not to fit in self-healing - there's little to nothing to gain in exchange for giving it up. If could gain top DPS in the game by sacrificing self-healing a lot of players would jump all over it - because melee players love seeing big numbers.

That's why teamwork in DDO has disintegrated. Barbs could finally give players a reason to give up self-healing. And in the process introduce a viable reason to use teamwork in a party again.

[brzytki]

It is supposed to be 19-20. We can update the description.

Sev~

Ah, the sound of crushed hopes and dreams...

[btolson]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

OK, I've got a new and possibly better idea.

Base the % chance off how pure a barb the character is. Fluffwise, the more primal/barbaric your nature, the easier it is for you to benefit from the strength in others' blood. Splashing other classes dilutes this ability.

Consider a base of 100% multiplied by your barb level, divided by your total class levels (heroic only, of course) to receive 1dX healing.

A level 5 character with all 5 barb levels has the full 100% chance.

A level 20 character with all 20 barb levels has the full 100% chance.

A level 10 character with 5 barb levels and 5 bard levels has a 100*5/10 = 50% chance.

A level 20 character with 5 barb levels and 15 paladin levels has a 100*5/20 = 25% chance.


This way, the amount you get healed can be whatever die is appropriate (1d4, 1d3, 1d2, whatever) for a full-fledged barb to get 100% of the time, while seriously hampering the benefit received by multiclasses.


It is a similar concept to sorc/fvs purity and bonus spell points, which everybody understands, right?

[maddong]

To improve barbs I would:
1. Give death frenzy the +1 crit on all rolls (18 barb)

2. Give all level 20 barbs a feat called endless rage that you click to activate rage without expending one. That way rage consuming powers are still limited.

3. Give all level 20 barbs Perfect Two Fisted Fighting - when thf you gain double str to dam; when dual wielding you gain full offhand str to dam (even if you don't choose a capstone)

4. The self healing abilities no longer scale with melee power

Without a change the current proposed ravager heal while dual wielding would average 20 x .2 x 4 hamp x 2 mp x 2.7 (assuming a slow 90 swings per minute x 1.8 attacks per swing) = 86.4 hp healed per second.... That number drops to 43 if you give up the mp scaling.

[Thar]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

Garbage... 20% isn't consistent enough to be reliable. If it's not a contant then you can't depend on it, and it's like masters blitz. luck of the draw.

[Tesrali]

It is supposed to be 19-20. We can update the description.

Sev~

Right O,

Guildies and I have been havin long discussions about Barbarian vs Paladin dps and we all agree that Paladins will be ahead. We're really hopeful that either holy sword will be nerfed or barbarian given better criticals. From a balance perspective, barbarians should have the best dps in the game, or at the very least be ahead of paladins.

Grail did some awesome number crunching in a thread I think I linked elsewhere,
... https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/450793-Barbarian-vs-Paladin-DPS

The update will create some really interesting toons, and am definitely looking forward to it. Thanks for giving it the attention and detail needed.

- love, tes

[MeliCat]

Temporary hp from a barbarian rage are very different from item effects. They are larger and you can heal up to that hp level again. So they were a totally different system. They were part of the point of rage. I don't think I'm following why that comment was made :/

[Tesrali]

Wait...what? I don't understand. How can barbs possibly be a class that is competitive with paladins if they only do comparable DPS? Could someone clarify for me? Shouldn't they do MORE DPS to make up for all the penalties they take?

Yeah the new barb trees offer some nice stuff like regen healing, HP and healing amp. But they also of course have the huge penalty of no casting ability, the inability to splash pally or monk, no heavy armor proficiency, ect.

Surely the goodies the barb class has doesn't come close to what pallies have: the best saves in game, inherent healing spells (ability to use bladeforged reconstruct SLA), useful buffs like deathward, ect.

If I'm building a melee why would I pick barb over pally? If both have comparable DPS, but pallies are way more survivable - how in the world are barbs a competitive class? I think we need to make barbs the undisputed best melee DPS in order to make the class worth playing....especially in Epic Elite where they'll be taking lots of damage and needing help from other characters.

If Barbs are going to require some outside healing help (unlike other melees), they need to do better DPS in order to make up for it. In other words, they need to be worth healing.

Let's consider a scenario where a group of 6 is running in epic elite. If the barb is doing the same DPS as the pally in the party - yet the favored soul is losing 50% of his DPS because he's having to stop and heal the barb constantly, then the barb is a drain on the party. However, if the barb is doing 150% the DPS of the pally it will roughly even out with the 50% loss of DPS by the favored soul.

And surely the inherent barb healing won't keep up with Epic Elite damage (if it did it would definitely be overpowered) - so barbs are going to need outside healing assistance in Epic Elite for sure. And as long as they need outside healing assistance they need to make up for the DPS lost by the character having to heal him.

So again, how will barbs be a competitive class if they only do "comparable" DPS to that of a survivable, self-sufficient paladin? I just don't see it - barbs need to have the best melee DPS in order for all the inherent self-sufficiency/survivability problems of barbarians to be worth putting up with. This goes for both the player and the party.

This is coming from someone who has played clerics almost exclusively in DDO for about 5 years. I have lots and lots of experience healing and enjoy serving as the party healer (and would love to heal barbs in future epic elite runs, I just want them to be worth healing is all).

I know you've stated that you don't want to go with the "glass cannon" approach because you don't think it fits how the game is played currently. I think based on the feedback you should reconsider. The reason it looks like players don't play the game that way is because there are no builds in DDO currently where it makes any sense not to fit in self-healing - there's little to nothing to gain in exchange for giving it up. If could gain top DPS in the game by sacrificing self-healing a lot of players would jump all over it - because melee players love seeing big numbers.

That's why teamwork in DDO has disintegrated. Barbs could finally give players a reason to give up self-healing. And in the process introduce a viable reason to use teamwork in a party again.

Signed. Awesome response.

[axel15810]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

Sev, you can't base such an essential ability on a low proc chance. The unreliability in itself is a HUGE weakness. Barbs will sometimes get 5 procs in a row, but will sometimes go 20 hits without a single proc and die because of it. This is the problem with masters blitz currently. Players hate it. It's a much better design to do away with the variance. If you want to go down this route I'd strongly recommend this instead -

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you are healed for a number of points equal to (0.2*your total Barbarian level). Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for a number of points equal to your total barbarian level. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

This will give the same amount of healing overall as your proposal, but do away with all the unreliability. It will be just as easy to adjust as the percentage you proposed since you can make the per hit healing multiplier slightly higher or lower until you hit the right balance.

And as a general thought on this ability, a per hit healing mechanic is going to have a lot of the same problems the old masters blitz did. Barbs in the party are going to be furstrated at times when they can't get their heals because all the ranged/caster characters are killing most of the monsters before the barb can get his hits in to heal himself. It's an anti-party mechanic that discourages grouping and encourages soloing - because when soloing a barb can get all the hits. This is a major downfall of a per hit design, please consider it carefully.

[Qhualor]

to increases FB into the best dPS, making the frenzy and death frenzy vicious scale with melee power would work,

also, since vicious damage to self would probably also increase, by having only the barbarians innate DR negate the damage to self would help make a pure barb more viable.

hmmm... didn't consider self damage would scale with melee power. as it is now on Live, the self damage is plenty enough. if it could stay as is than I would still want to keep the flavor. if not, than I guess it depends on how much self damage it would be. I would assume that Accelerated Metabolism would negate the self damage though. either way, I still don't like self damage absorbed by barb DR. it just doesn't make any sense.

[maddong]

hmmm... didn't consider self damage would scale with melee power. as it is now on Live, the self damage is plenty enough. if it could stay as is than I would still want to keep the flavor. if not, than I guess it depends on how much self damage it would be. I would assume that Accelerated Metabolism would negate the self damage though. either way, I still don't like self damage absorbed by barb DR. it just doesn't make any sense.

The self damage is nothing if you are using blood rage.

[GWolfe]

Wait...what? I don't understand. How can barbs possibly be a class that is competitive with paladins if they only do comparable DPS? Could someone clarify for me? Shouldn't they do MORE DPS to make up for all the penalties they take?

Yeah the new barb trees offer some nice stuff like regen healing, HP and healing amp. But they also of course have the huge penalty of no casting ability, the inability to splash pally or monk, no heavy armor proficiency, ect.

Surely the goodies the barb class has doesn't come close to what pallies have: the best saves in game, inherent healing spells (ability to use bladeforged reconstruct SLA), useful buffs like deathward, ect.

If I'm building a melee why would I pick barb over pally? If both have comparable DPS, but pallies are way more survivable - how in the world are barbs a competitive class? I think we need to make barbs the undisputed best melee DPS in order to make the class worth playing....especially in Epic Elite where they'll be taking lots of damage and needing help from other characters.

If Barbs are going to require some outside healing help (unlike other melees), they need to do better DPS in order to make up for it. In other words, they need to be worth healing.

Let's consider a scenario where a group of 6 is running in epic elite. If the barb is doing the same DPS as the pally in the party - yet the favored soul is losing 50% of his DPS because he's having to stop and heal the barb constantly, then the barb is a drain on the party. However, if the barb is doing 150% the DPS of the pally it will roughly even out with the 50% loss of DPS by the favored soul.

And surely the inherent barb healing won't keep up with Epic Elite damage (if it did it would definitely be overpowered) - so barbs are going to need outside healing assistance in Epic Elite for sure. And as long as they need outside healing assistance they need to make up for the DPS lost by the character having to heal him.

So again, how will barbs be a competitive class if they only do "comparable" DPS to that of a survivable, self-sufficient paladin? I just don't see it - barbs need to have the best melee DPS in order for all the inherent self-sufficiency/survivability problems of barbarians to be worth putting up with. This goes for both the player and the party.

This is coming from someone who has played clerics almost exclusively in DDO for about 5 years. I have lots and lots of experience healing and enjoy serving as the party healer (and would love to heal barbs in future epic elite runs, I just want them to be worth healing is all).

I know you've stated that you don't want to go with the "glass cannon" approach because you don't think it fits how the game is played currently. I think based on the feedback you should reconsider. The reason it looks like players don't play the game that way is because there are no builds in DDO currently where it makes any sense not to fit in self-healing - there's little to nothing to gain in exchange for giving it up. If could gain top DPS in the game by sacrificing self-healing a lot of players would jump all over it - because melee players love seeing big numbers.

That's why teamwork in DDO has disintegrated. Barbs could finally give players a reason to give up self-healing. And in the process introduce a viable reason to use teamwork in a party again.


+1. Well said.

[Zurrander]

Signed. Awesome response.

Signed Again. All but one of my toons are healers (or backup healers). I only started my Main (Pally-Backup Healer) because healing alone doesn't get you very far in a game where everyone is a self healer. If barbs started bringing enough DPS (the only thing they have) to the table to justify me throwing heals every 10s instead of killing the mobs myself i would gladly heal them.

[DagazUlf]

But, we cannot let barbarian be the "king of dps" because they have never been the king of damage. Their place at the top must be carefully constrained so that it occurs in specific situations (when raging) and comes with sufficient risk (too little defenses and self healing) that players struggle to decide which character class to play because the choices are evenly matched after all the pros and cons are considered.

This is very, very accurate and I'm not seeing how these changes actually affect the core of what a barbarian should be. Everything I'm seeing with these enhancements is just far away from Barbarian and off in some kind of DDO-dreamland. Frankly, I find it disgusting to see this kind of crud bandied about on a class that is dear to many folks. This is just turning it into some kind of weird MMO character that is NOT a barbarian.