Supreme Cleave Change

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In a game where the playerbase almost universally agrees melees are very far behind casters in the power curve, we get a fairly massive melee nerf. I don't get it.

But anyways I'll at least explain why this is a nerf as on paper some may not understand:

Live Supreme Cleave - Barbarians DEFINING Class ability. One of the main reasons to play a barb, and what makes it unique and different from a fighter.

Live Effects:
- Performs a greatcleave (exact same animation), except it has no cooldown and costs 4-12 hitpoints to activate (HP cost depends on dungeon scaling) (This is also not taking into account frenzy damage, which can be as much as 20-30 additional damage when hitting large groups of enemies, as the self damage is per enemy)

This is very nice not because its a great awesome animation that does lots of damage, it doesn't do increased damage, it doesn't swing faster then a regular attack and it doesnt even have a larger attack range then a regular two handed swing (except that it hits behind you like a glancing blow).

What makes it potent is the fact you can gather up lots of monsters and as long as your healer has tons of spells point and is on his A game to keep you going, you can do nearly your full melee damage to all enemies around you. So it makes Barbarians a great AOE class, much like sorcerers tho without the same AOE size and the huge disadvantage of requiring someone to heal you to fund your cleaves.

It was balanced. Powerful, but very costly in hitpoints, so it encouraged grouping and smart team play.

The beta version:
NEW: Frenzied Berserker Supreme Cleave now has a 3 second cooldown, and deals +2[W] additional damage.

So roughly a +300% cooldown (supreme had none, but took roughly 1 second to activate), but we get +2 w dmg.

Whats 2 W dmg on a Frenzy Berserker:
Well given I've lead many many raids and qualified nearly every pug player who signed up, I feel I'm well qualified to say what not only I use, but your average lvl20 bbn uses. And I'd confidently say that for the vast majority, that's a green steel Greataxe. Generally a Mineral2.

(Disclaimer: Yea my maths slightly inaccurate, but the overall result and end message is accurate.)

So GS Greataxe: 1d12 damage. Average 6.5.
+2 W = +13 damage.

Average non crit swing dmg of a 20 bbn, with pretty basic gear (no epics, shroud level stuff):
70-82 physical
42 glancing blow
6d6 frenzy ( 21 average)
3d6 bonus (holy and acidb, - 10.5 average)
= 133-144 damage per swing total

So we deal about 140 damage a swing, get over a hundred swings a minute.. In a 6 second window dealing damage in the 1300+ range is not uncommon.

So we get +26 damage every 6 seconds, ontop of our 1300 damage. EG: a 2% percent increase, plus a unquantifiable, but small increase to our AOE dps.

Versus before:
We get an unquantifiable (but generally agreed to be nice and large) increase to our CONSTANT aoe DPS.

Bottom-line:
It's a massive reduction to a barbarians performance.

Suggestions:

1. Please consider simply not putting this change live. This is something that will cause major polarization and really deserves a "Lets talk: Barbarian core ability changes" thread before it gets considered.
   
2. Otherwise I can offer a compromise, and simplification:
   

Currently, there are 3 cleaves, regular, great and supreme. 3 hotkeys isn't much to manage over a course of an entire quest if you only use them a few times, But it definitely is a lot for most players to manage in a 6-8 second window, and also tough to fit out on our every-increasingly busy hotbars (An epic barbarian will have no less then 15+ important active hotkeys/abilities they need to manage in a short time frame).. Plus its simply not fun to have to press 3 separate keys which all perform the exact same action, its monotonous. So lets simplify it and make all the feats/enhancements useful:

- Change great and supreme cleave into passive abilities. Since both require cleave, you'd still have an active one.
Proposed compromise:
Cleave:
- Performs a fast, wide arcing special melee attack that deals +10% damage (code it to use the current greatcleave animation (which is slightly faster and superior), and work like adrenaline, one hit only). Cooldown: 9 seconds.
Greatcleave:
This feat improves upon your cleave ability by reducing the cooldown by 4 seconds, and increasing the damage it deals to +10%.
Supreme Cleave (passive, toggle on off ability):
This toggle improves upon your cleave ability by reducing the cooldown by 5 seconds, and increasing the damge it deals by +5%, however it comes at the cost of costing 10 hitpoints per cleave.

So the net result would be:
Just cleave: Slightly improved as it now uses the better Gcleave animation and does a bit more dmg.
Greatcleave: Now useful to all classes, even barbarians. (This has the nice side affect of fixing the overwhelming critical prereqs, as no 100% useless feats would be required anymore)

Supreme: Still nerfed, but at least not as harshly. Net cooldown is now 4 seconds, and it deals +15% damage, which as a percentage, scales based on your power far better then the weird +[W] thing.

Get both? they stack. CD reduces to nothing (as now). and damage is increased. So bbns can keep their current power, at the cost of an additional feat.

PS: This is a continuation from the closed beta thread. The original thread had 181 replies, 90% of them opposing this nerf. Most didn't agree with my proposed comprimise either and would prefer just no nerf, tho a few did like it. The 10% or so argueing otherwise: Not a single one played a level20 bbn or had ever suggestion this ability should change in the past.

Not sure if im allowed to link the old thread or not, but its still viewable if you had access to it before.