Supreme Cleave Change

[Shade]

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.

[Wraith_Sarevok]

Guessing that this is a repost for the open beta players to see...


Anyway yes, please do this suggestion!

We don't want Barbarians to turn into Monks where we have to push the same 3 key combinations to get the full damage potential out of the class. It's just so much more logical to have a single base Cleave ability and have the advanced feats changed into passive/active enhancements to that ability. That way, Cleave and Great Cleave don't feel like they're eating up feat slots on our melee builds and we can actually get some use out of them.

Barbarians will still have access to the same 0s cooldown Supreme Cleave that they have now with a % based damage boost that actually SCALES to tough content.

Fighters, Paladins, and possibly other builds like Monks, Tempest Rangers, or Favored Souls won't feel completely ripped off by taking cleave feats anymore because they can get some AoE killing ability out of them.

I'm impressed with Shade's suggested fix and I'd really like to see it in action.

[Eme]

well, cleave was the fun part of barbarians, and felt like you were raging and out of control..
it felt great running into mass mobs and spinning like crazy

this nerf will kill all the fun and feel of being a barbarian,,,, RARRR!!!!.. hang on a few seonds while i compose myself... RARRRR!!!!!

[dubyprime]

At initial glance I disliked the change. Now I completely disagree with Shade.

Supreme Cleave is not a defining class ability for barbs. At one point in the game barbarians didn't even have supreme cleave. It is not a core barb skill or ability. It is simply a bonus granted from a PRE line.

Changing the animations of various cleaves is a horrible idea. While it will improve the activation time of Great axe and ESOS wielding barbarians like Shade, other classes/fighting styles that use cleave/great cleave will suffer.

Barbarian is probably the easiest of all my characters when it comes to hot bar management. The argument regarding hot bar/button management and barbarians is simply laughable.
Secondarily Hot bar management is a player skill issue. Dumbing down active abilities is catering to a lower skill level. Which seems contrary to the argument of smart team play.

It is not a massive reduction in barbarian performance, it is situational.

Spamming supreme cleave does swing faster than the regular animation. It is noticeable in various videos. I will however concede this argument as it is not worth my time to prove.

The devs made an honest effort by reducing the cool downs of various cleaves. I think that was a reasonable compromise here.

[Zaha]

I fully support shade here. I love using supreme cleave and for me personally it is a big DPS lose. I cant understand why in a game, where casters are superior to us in every manner, the developers decided to kick the underdog in the balls yet again, heck maybe its just way too funny to read all of our complains.

[Karavek]

I am just wondering, when we know sometime in the future we will also be seeing a major change to enhancments, and word is all classes will have thier full 3 PRE lines up to tier 3, that you think barbs wont be seeing ALOT more options and potential variations.

Now me Id love to see a variation of the Forsaker PRC for barbs. One where barbas as they properly would, use NO MAGIC items at all. Ah that would be fun.

[MRMechMan]

3 hotkeys is a lot for most playrs to manage in a 6-8 second window, and also tough to fit out on our every-increasingly busy hotbars..

We don't want Barbarians to turn into Monks where we have to push the same 3 key combinations to get the full damage potential out of the class.

really?


No...REALLY?

Shade, I stopped reading there. Sadly it was 70% of the way through your post. Wraith, shade coulda said make the cooldown 15s and you probably woulda jumped off the bridge after him anyway.

You make some good points but really....a barb is not difficult to keep up because of the frenzy/cleave damage, they are difficult to keep up because of the massive agro they generate with next to no damage mitigation.

You don't think the average player can push 3 buttons in 6-8 seconds? You don't think the average player can fit 2 extra feats on their quickbar? Oh, I get it, you two are roleplaying your class.

Carry on.

[Thrudh]

Wraith, shade coulda said make the cooldown 15s and you probably woulda jumped off the bridge after him anyway.

LOL.

Wraith really really likes Shade, that's for sure. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

[MrWizard]

I think there is more to the combat changes and this seems fine.
barbs seem to get a good bunch of stuff with the changes and should be pretty awesome.
An unbalanced character may need help, but cleave or no cleave they will still need a lot of help (and healing).

[Chai]

I dont think the average barbarian can fit 2 extra feats onto their build. The buttons are easy to push.

They need to not put this into the game. Supreme cleave is not OP because the barbarian needs to be in the middle of lots of mobs for this to be really powerful and in that case they do take lots of damage. Its certainly not more powerful than a wizard jumping into the middle of the same group of mobs, hitting ONE button ONCE, and watching them all die, taking minimal damage compared to the barbarian who has to spam the same ability over and over again while taking damage to be effective.

[Malshier]

Shade, I'd like to apologize for not having sympathy when they screwed your PRE ability over. Now that they're mucking up my PRE ability (power surge for kensai) I get it.

Nerfs suck

[CheeseMilk]

They need to not put this into the game. Supreme cleave is not OP because the barbarian needs to be in the middle of lots of mobs for this to be really powerful and in that case they do take lots of damage. Its certainly not more powerful than a wizard jumping into the middle of the same group of mobs, hitting ONE button ONCE, and watching them all die, taking minimal damage compared to the barbarian who has to spam the same ability over and over again while taking damage to be effective.

Remember that a little AC can actually matter now, and that Barbs have uncanny dodge, which got a serious boost in power. And that where AC matters less, that same caster CAN'T jump into the middle of a bunch of mobs and kill them all in one shot. They can, however, jump in after the barb has "softened them up," and do that. Teamwork!

[dubyprime]

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.

There's my quote man. Supreme Cleave either provides MASSIVE CONSTANT DPS or its balanced.
You seems to know that it is Overpowered in your posts but keep insisting that it is not too powerful.

Either its a MASSIVE DPS boost and needs the nerf or its not and the decrease is insignificant.

[Shade]

Remember that a little AC can actually matter now, and that Barbs have uncanny dodge, which got a serious boost in power. And that where AC matters less, that same caster CAN'T jump into the middle of a bunch of mobs and kill them all in one shot. They can, however, jump in after the barb has "softened them up," and do that. Teamwork!

Uncanny Dodge got nerfed in many situations actaully.

No more +6 reflex.

So what was before an excellent way to get past traps and survive casters, now has zero effect versus them.

So while it was buffed to some degree while fighting melee combatants, imo overall it was nerfed. Barbs are gona be **** at handling melee damage either way with this nerf, the insanely long 2 minute cooldown will ensure they die to melee damage regardless.

[Shade]

re: prime

A massive boost to. AOE dps only.

On a class that has next to zero aoe dps as is (glancing blows are very weak) not anywhere near the top for sngle target DPS as it is. It's was balanced.

Wheres your evidence anyone ever thought it was oveprowered in the past? You have none.

Your only purpose here is to point the finger after the fact, because you dont play the class. Thats whats clear to me.

If you really felt this in the past, youd of said so.

[BacardiSpecialist]

WARNING WALL O TEXT FROM PREVIOUS THREAD


People lets not do it another Shade vs All thread.

It doesn`t affect just Shade but an entire class.

So basically now you have to use 3 hot keys instead of spamming 1, not as bad as you make it sound.

True but in order to do the same thing you were doing before with 1 click for a cost to overall DPS and +2 feats?!(Because Barbs have so many feats to take)

Btw i dont see why would someone still use supreme anymore..+2 [W]hatever crappy damage and i still get damage everytime i use it!

While you are at it destroy all the CC/debuffing weapons you might Crafted or Farmed for in order to use with Supreme Cleave.

With the introduction of the new mechanics in Fury of the Wild Destiny a Barb now has a nice set of clickies so do your homework before you invade a thread.

(Primal scream/fast healing/rage/frenzy/death frenzy/insult/adrenaline/Damage Boost/Past life active feat,uncanny dodge,spring boost)

With at least 5 of them requiring constant spamming.


Nerf the Barb Nerf the Barb because the LD will be OP for a Barb with Supreme Cleave plzzzzzz mr Dev nerf themmmmmmm Shade has a barb nerf the whole class arguments even though are fun to watch/quote/spam are useless.Decreasing melees general Performance does affect you,your Raids and Parties.

LD Barb with the Old SC would be OP.


I dont care about another classes destiny if i could choose between Old Supreme Cleave and the option to take LD i would go for the first option(The same reason no1 is choosing the +1 STR or +1 Con options from the destinies,some time a tactical advantage is better than a +1 to hit/damage)


Still all this time i was the one forced to take the weak Cleave feat (Compared to more useful tactical feats such as Imp Sunder/Stunning blow or even slicing blow ) in order to access my one and only Pre...


How many fighters were using Cleave and Great Cleave before LD?(Plz mr Iwasusingitandlovedit you dont fool anyone)


Even Barbs hardly ever use it at leveling or at least until their HP is high enough (16ish~17ish with GS HP Item) with confidence.


So remove the only Tactical advantage a Barbarian has,make that Part of the Pre Useless and keep nerfing melees.


I laughed earlier at on F_O_S comment about devs playing the toons love them and try to make them better.....



So some dev decided that the Barb he is playing is amazing with the new changes as a Meatbag with High HP (but not as high as someone with 30 Toughness Feats),High STR(Whats the point if you cant effectively use your Tactical DCs with the modifier (Nerfed Stunning Blow anyone?)) getting hit by every single critter in the game but hey i know have one extra clicky with a chance of getting missed and OMG DR because reducing the incoming Damage from 300/sec to 293/sec makes all the difference.



Enhancement change will come at August or even later and will be broken as always,this whole change was made because the Devs forgot about Supreme Cleave while creating LD and no1 can deny it.No SC is broken/is OP/was bugged threads or talks ever made before that destiny pops.

U9 flashbacks anyone?

[Scraap]

Coulda sworn the original thread discussed both a lower timer (like 3 seconds) and a higher +[W] (Which, say what you will, at least means it's not as easy for a caster to replicate with buffs, and does apply to base damage, so crits and the like.) What happened there?

[Lonnbeimnech]

Uncanny Dodge got nerfed in many situations actaully.

No more +6 reflex.

So what was before an excellent way to get past traps and survive casters, now has zero effect versus them.

So while it was buffed to some degree while fighting melee combatants, imo overall it was nerfed. Barbs are gona be **** at handling melee damage either way with this nerf, the insanely long 2 minute cooldown will ensure they die to melee damage regardless.

If you consider that displacement is self only buff now, uncanny dodge... well I suppose it gives an edge to barbs over thf fighters, but still isn't as good as before the nerf.

[Shade]

U9 flashbacks anyone?

U5, U9, U11, etc.

What major update have the NOT nerfed barbarians lately?

[Shade]

If you consider that displacement is self only buff now, uncanny dodge... well I suppose it gives an edge to barbs over thf fighters, but still isn't as good as before the nerf.

Hardly. Fighters have so many bonus feats to fit in stuff like dodge, shield mastery, epic toughness, etc that they will get far more defense and hp, and dont take MASSIVE armor class penalties so there armor might actaully do something.

Bbns get forced into a squishy dps only class with poor dps this update.

Fighters remain flexible enough that they can decide exactly how tough they wanna be. Stalwarts will be neigh invulnerable, Kensai still have options. Barbs have none.