Supreme Cleave Change

[B0ltdrag0n]

That don't make no sense anymore.

Under the new system, barbarians can easily get something like 10-15% physical damage resistance on top of their base 7 DR just by wearing heavy armor. They have the same level of healing amp that they do on live... which translates into 150-200+% for geared fleshies and 100+% for WF. They have the default 5% AC "roll of 1" chance for attacks to miss them on top of a 5+% passive Dodge chance. Add Blur/Displacement for an additional 20-50% chance to avoid damage and another 10% Incorporeal chance from the easy-to-get Stalker Ring. Finally there's Improved Uncanny Dodge, which temporarily raises the Dodge chance to 50% every 1.5 minutes. We also have access to the Dread's 25% damage resistance action boost AND a 60-90+ HP boost from EDs and feats.

So with all those ways of avoiding damage, you STILL want to make the argument that barbarians are too hard to keep up? Or maybe the truth here is that you're afraid to play a healer the way they're meant to be played: you know... to HEAL other classes.

It was the OP that made comment of Healers needing to be on their A game. Not the person you quoted.

The average player really can't manage 3 keys. I know... I PuG more than most people. Your average player will forget to buff or rebuff Haste and Rage if others don't remind them. Now they are asking them to manage 3 more keys on top of all the temporary buffs that barbs have to keep an eye on. It's insane.

That is not true. The average player manages many more hot keys than you give credit to. Forgetting to buff/rebuff isn't not managing hot keys it could be attributed to many things from a memory lapse, to not watching timers to not wanting to waste sp on the guy zerging off in the distance who wont come back for buffs when you call it.

[psteen1]

The average player really can't manage 3 keys. I know... I PuG more than most people. Your average player will forget to buff or rebuff Haste and Rage if others don't remind them. Now they are asking them to manage 3 more keys on top of all the temporary buffs that barbs have to keep an eye on. It's insane.

In what world is managing this stuff hard? 3 keys? This argument doesn't make any sense.

[Thrudh]

That don't make no sense anymore.

Under the new system, barbarians can easily get something like 10-15% physical damage resistance on top of their base 7 DR just by wearing heavy armor. They have the same level of healing amp that they do on live... which translates into 150-200+% for geared fleshies and 100+% for WF. They have the default 5% AC "roll of 1" chance for attacks to miss them on top of a 5+% passive Dodge chance. Add Blur/Displacement for an additional 20-50% chance to avoid damage and another 10% Incorporeal chance from the easy-to-get Stalker Ring. Finally there's Improved Uncanny Dodge, which temporarily raises the Dodge chance to 50% every 1.5 minutes. We also have access to the Dread's 25% damage resistance action boost AND a 60-90+ HP boost from EDs and feats.

So with all those ways of avoiding damage, you STILL want to make the argument that barbarians are too hard to keep up? Or maybe the truth here is that you're afraid to play a healer the way they're meant to be played: you know... to HEAL other classes.

Even on live that argument doesn't hold up anywhere outside of Lord of Blades. Healing Amp, high HP, 7-9 DR, and the WASD keys are enough to keep barbarians up in almost all content. I demonstrated it when I soloed ETK and Sins elite at lvl 18.

I ran my character on both Monk and Kensai TRs and I STILL pulled more aggro than everyone else in my groups. So your argument that barbs pull too much aggro is silly. Any well-build melee is going to be dishing out a lot of damage and will pull multiple monster aggro towards them.

The average player really can't manage 3 keys. I know... I PuG more than most people. Your average player will forget to buff or rebuff Haste and Rage if others don't remind them. Now they are asking them to manage 3 more keys on top of all the temporary buffs that barbs have to keep an eye on. It's insane.

Wait, aren't you disagreeing with Shade? His argument is that Supreme Cleave is balanced because a barb takes so much damage from feat itself, plus Frenzies, plus all the aggro he generates.

Sounds like you agree more with me that barbs have solid damage mitigation, and do NOT need a cleric on his "A" game to stay alive when using Supreme Cleave.

[Der_Incubo]

durn, i quit playing for a while, came back and could spam my cleaves with utter joy. Now i wont be able to, this makes me sad, as i will no longer be a movable blade barrier

Owell.. my barb will be a fvs before this goes live anyway, but **** me i love cleave spammin!

[Shade]

In what world is managing this stuff hard? 3 keys? This argument doesn't make any sense.

In the world of the vast majority of players.

Most of which dont post on the forums.

DDO is very hard for a lot of bbn players where they only have 9 hotkey to manage:
1. rage
2. frenzy
3. death frenzy
4. uncanny dodge
5. damage boost
6. haste boost (common 18/2 bbn/ftr build)
7. Trip
8. Stunning blow
9. Supreme cleave

As someone who often leads pug raids and analysyys what causes us to win or lose carefully, I often inspect other players buffs during battle. I can safely say over 75% forget to even use frenzy, let alone boosts and cleaves. Most can at least manag to remember to re-rage, tho it can them upwards of 30 seconds of being unraged to notice.

A few players i actaully asked to use frenzy and cleaves, flat out told me they would not as he believed the hitpoint cost was too high.

Not everyone is a game master. Adding more complexity to the game doesnt always make it more fun.

[dubyprime]

I dont believe you have a bbn. Give us a myddo link.

If you feel supreme cleave is FREE. I dont think anyone would trust you play a bbn.

when I perform a supreme cleave on pack of monsters, I generally lose about 30-40 hitpoints. That is FREE?

... last reply to you ever.

http://my.ddo.com/character/khyber/quatravius/

I probably logged out with Terror equipped.

Supremecleave is granted for free as part of FB2. FB2 gives you +1 crit multiplier. There is no lost opportunity by taking supreme cleave as there is for cleave/great cleave/whirlwind/ other feats.
There is no other PRE for barbarians to take. Without Supreme Cleave exisiting a barbarian would still take Frenzied Berseker. That is what I meant by free. I apologize if my words did not properly convey that. I only lose 10-12Hp from Supreme cleave... not sure what you are calculating... I presume you are counting the multiple strikes and double frenzy.

I will point out however that if you can quantify the amount of damage you take from supreme cleaving foes you must be able to quantify the amount of additional damage you deal. Again this is a two way street and you claim that one side is "unquantifiable"

Lets take your assumption 35 damage per cleave(average). 10 from the cleave itself the next 25 damage come from frenzy/death frenzy. That means 6 attacks land. So you have increased your damage output by 500%. You can continue to do so ad nauseam as long as trash monster present themselves. From your own description that sounds over powered to me. No other class has a situational boost of 500% DPS. Oh, and Heystack (the hireling) can heal through this so it does not require an 'A' game healer.

Lastly, I see no reason for the childish behavior. I am simply doing what you have asked multiple times. I am trying to have an open discussion with rational arguments about the game. According to several posts of yours the devs will listen if you provide a sound argument. I am trying to provide sound arguments that Supreme Cleave needed the nerf while disproving your arguments. I disagree with you. It is not my intention to offend you. I actually enjoy grouping with you the several times I have, whether on a barbarian, wiz, cleric, or rogue.

[dubyprime]

here are some threads of people concerned about the DPS boost of supreme cleave.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=330952

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=316321

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=349448


Thwarting the argument that players did not complain.

[paintedman]

I've always been curious about the whole rage thing.

As it pertains to the initial argument
1. Would you accept A) Additional Damage for the no cool down, B)No damage at all for some cool down, or C)Unwilling to see it any other way than you think.

2. After seeing some video's and reading your post, I see a trend to think that barbarians should be able to solo any quest, is this true, or have I misunderstood? I only state that because you take a completely different class and rate it against the barbarian, they should not be equal.

As it does not pertain to the argument
3. Should Rage and all its incarnations stack?
4. Should barbarians be able to maitain an infinite state of rage?
5. Should a healer be permanently assigned to "bring the A game" to sustaining a raging barbarian?

Comparing underwater sea monkeys to small flightless birds is not a strong argument, I think in general (and this might get me in trouble) that allowing items to regen spell points has minimalized the issue of spell conservation a key mechanic in all adventuring, which has brought these balance issues in to light. You are fighting for grains of sand, when you really should step back and check out the tsunami.

In the world of the vast majority of players.

Most of which dont post on the forums.

DDO is very hard for a lot of bbn players where they only have 9 hotkey to manage:
1. rage
2. frenzy
3. death frenzy
4. uncanny dodge
5. damage boost
6. haste boost (common 18/2 bbn/ftr build)
7. Trip
8. Stunning blow
9. Supreme cleave

As someone who often leads pug raids and analysyys what causes us to win or lose carefully, I often inspect other players buffs during battle. I can safely say over 75% forget to even use frenzy, let alone boosts and cleaves. Most can at least manag to remember to re-rage, tho it can them upwards of 30 seconds of being unraged to notice.

A few players i actaully asked to use frenzy and cleaves, flat out told me they would not as he believed the hitpoint cost was too high.

Not everyone is a game master. Adding more complexity to the game doesnt always make it more fun.

I thank you,

-paint

[dubyprime]

I
DDO is very hard for a lot of bbn players where they only have 9 hotkey to manage:
1. rage
2. frenzy
3. death frenzy
4. uncanny dodge
5. damage boost
6. haste boost (common 18/2 bbn/ftr build)
7. Trip
8. Stunning blow
9. Supreme cleave


A few players i actaully asked to use frenzy and cleaves, flat out told me they would not as he believed the hitpoint cost was too high.

Not everyone is a game master. Adding more complexity to the game doesnt always make it more fun.

You forgot, Cleave (must have it for Supreme cleave), Intimidate, Madstone swap, and Sunder/improved. This still pales in comparison to other classes but yes the hot buttons/bars of DDO can get complicated just like every MMO.

That being said this does little to the hot bar management of barbarians. It only adds great cleave if you choose to pick up the feat. If you can't handle the extra hot bar don't take the feat. I don't see how that's hard. Sure, Epic Destinies will increase the complexity of Hot Bars, but this won't.

Also, your proposed change does next to nothing to address this hot bar issue. One button is not going to make or break a hot bar.

[Wraith_Sarevok]

Isn't this (rather true) argument totally counter productive to the overall argument? You are saying "barbs have great survivability, great aggro pulling". If that is the case, then why give them great DPS as well? In that case, we should put supreme cleave back to the 6 second time to get things better balanced.

Wait, aren't you disagreeing with Shade? His argument is that Supreme Cleave is balanced because a barb takes so much damage from feat itself, plus Frenzies, plus all the aggro he generates.

Sounds like you agree more with me that barbs have solid damage mitigation, and do NOT need a cleric on his "A" game to stay alive when using Supreme Cleave.

No, the guy I quoted said that barbarians are "difficult to keep up." To me, that means you can't keep them up... on their feet... alive... not dead. Which is of course not true. My barbarian hardly dies at all. In fact the only times I've seen him die recently were either:

1.) When a raid wipes.

or

2.) In the Lord of Blades.

Oh well maybe he meant that barbarians are difficult to keep up to full HP. But that's also not true because any decently geared lvl 20 barb has SOME healing amp, and even without it, any decently geared lvl 20 healer class should be able to full-heal the barb with just 1 Heal spell. I know that healers can keep my barb healed with just Mass Cure Critical Wounds, Panacea, and Positive Energy Burst so this isn't unrealistic.

Barbs DON'T have solid damage mitigation on LIVE.

They have more of it now on the beta. And it requires a modest amount of gear to reach that point. But yeah in my opinion, under the new system barbs are much more easily able to tank epic Lord of Blades... even better than a stalwart can! Because the stalwart can't contribute anywhere near the same level of DPS and hate generation.

But Supreme Cleave does do a lot of self-damage. I use it all the time now for the 4th glancing blow and after about 20 seconds of constant use, I've lost 100 HP. Either the healer or I have to keep an eye on my HP because it drains like a fast-acting poison. It's a great way to balance the 0s cooldown.

What's changed is this: New content monsters have a LOT more HP and deal a LOT more damage than old content monsters. Barbarians are designed to be the go-to sustained damage-dealing class in this game right? The hot knife through goblin butter... the ultimate spear... gatling gun... machine gun... mini gun... The Terminator... etc. From what I can tell there are two types of enemies in this game:

Old or Low-Level Content. These types of monsters generally have poor HP and deal less damage than equivalent-level new content. My barbarian typically just mows into them and cuts them down in a few hits because their HP is so low. He takes damage and can basically solo most of the quest himself with just self-healing. Quest bosses of this type have low HP/damage, are easy to solo, and he doesn't need much help with them. Recently, many of the old raid bosses (Abbot, Reaver, Arraetrikos) have had their HP boosted to match new content, but their damage is still more or less at the old level.

New Content. These types of monsters have massive amounts of HP and deal significantly more damage than the older stuff. For example, Servants of the Overlord. This is insanely difficult to solo on a barbarian yet it's only a lvl 18 quest. Most of this is due to the Khyber Reavers, which have tons of HP and deal lots of damage with their meteor projectiles. Sins of Attrition elite, a lvl 21 quest, is MUCH easier by comparison. Raid bosses of this type are just devastating. Epic Lord of Blades does something like 200+ damage per swing and has more HP than elite suulomades in VoD! It's actually preferred to use a specialized damage resistance or AC tank against him instead of a barbarian, although this will change with the new defense system. But something like elite Horoth? Pff... easy on a barbarian.

Now what hasn't changed? Melee damage. Static +STR and +damage items scale poorly with the massive amounts of HP that new monsters have. +2d6 and +4d6 elemental damage scales poorly. Glancing Blows scale very poorly behind the new x8 crits that we can dish out. They don't even get the +50% boost against helpless monsters. The sneak attack mechanic is unreliable in most content because it requires the monster NOT be aggroed towards you or to be helpless. It's absolutely worthless when you're the tank. +[W] damage does NOT solve any of these problems!

Spellcasters are leading this game. Anyone with eyes can see that. My barb can't keep up with a geared PM instakilling 6 monsters at a time. Every time I'm close to landing the finishing blow, the caster wipes the monster with a FoD. It's one of the reasons I specced my barb for dealing damage to raid bosses. Because raids are just about the only place where I feel my barb is contributing something. In most quests he feels completely useless and the blue-bar classes can just solo the whole thing.

Barbarians really do need more damage to keep up with new monsters. They need it to keep up with spellcasters. Nerfing them isn't the solution, buffing them is!

[Voldomar]

Every time I'm close to landing the finishing blow, the caster wipes the monster with a FoD.

Get used to it. After the xpac it will work like that by design... thanks to arguments like yours.

[Postumus]

Every time I'm close to landing the finishing blow, the caster wipes the monster with a FoD.

You just described the new tactics for hard/elite epics: caster hold monster, melee beat down mob to 50%, caster cast wail, next.

Go teamwork!

[Jubbers]

[QUOTE=dubyprime;4506032]Most people believe Terror is an overpowered weapon, but you don't see repetitive posts discussing it. QUOTE]

After they nerfed vorpal weapons in the game Terror became the "vorpal" weapon. These use to be common till the devlopers screwed all the TWF people from using vorpals and gave the vorpal effect to a single weapon in the game.

OP... BS, I still miss the insta-kill mechanics, have broke down all my old vorpal weapons (lvl 5 evil ess) cuse they don't work.

If there is something in the game that is being used, it's becuse it works well for the task at hand. More options are always prefered over a heavy handed DM that makes you play the game how he wants you to.

[nayozz]

@shade

probably if developers manage to balance the barbarian class, you will no longer **** everybody off with your

"omg quest is too easy, plz devs make it utterly frustrating /beg /beg" attitude


forcing people to either skip a quest, or complete on casual...


(quests like in the flesh, acute delirium, etc)

[MRMechMan]

That don't make no sense anymore.

Barbs are easy to keep up now. Mobs in elite epics might be another story when you supreme agro 5-10 of them.

Honestly, it sucks that your signature ability got nerfed but other builds got the shaft so much harder that it's not even comparable.

Supreme cleave or no, a barb is more useful in beta than on live.

[Wraith_Sarevok]

Barbs are easy to keep up now. Mobs in elite epics might be another story when you supreme agro 5-10 of them.

Honestly, it sucks that your signature ability got nerfed but other builds got the shaft so much harder that it's not even comparable.

Supreme cleave or no, a barb is more useful in beta than on live.

Like which builds?

The only people I've seen complaining are maxed-out AC builds because diminishing returns basically ruined them. But that's like <5% of the builds out there.

Wizards and Sorcs apparently got buffed. Rangers got buffed from what I saw in the Shiradai ED. All melees benefit from Dreadnought. Favored Souls are still overpowered. Bards and Artis get buffed from the spell DC enhancements. Druids are looking good. Maybe I haven't heard any news on Clerics, but then again they're the primary heal class and not big on offense.

What, you're comparing the Kensai losing a couple of stacking STR points from his Power Surge to this massive nerf?

[dubyprime]

Err isnt Improved Precise Shot AOE DPS Duby ?

Doesnt the SP changes nerf Sorcs by capping dot damage somewhat ?. I'm just going by the amount of ''toy lobbing'' going on atm. Plenty of Sorcs moaning but team instakill is feeling worst done by as we speak.

However talking with ''casters'' in the same echelons you group with Shade most of them were expecting a Nerf.

Casters have been top of the tree for over a year. Mass instakill, Massive DPS, LFM's for top end Raids for ''Blue Bars Only''. Reams of OP caster stuff right here some penned by your ''Axeryness'' himself

IPS is AOE damage. I was referencing melee's and hadn't considered your point, which is valid.
IPS is also very powerful situationally, but it cannot be used to increase single target DPS which supreme cleave can.
It is also harder to get mobs lined up than it is to intimidate them in to a mass surrounding you though that is somewhat insignificant.
What is notable is that any class can take IPS. Only barbarians get a no cooldown cleave.

While there are some differences between IPS and Supreme Cleave the similarities make it valid for comparison.

So to counter the point I will, as I have been, rely on the assumptions of the OP and take them as valid.
Bow damage is far inferior to Great axe/ESOS barbarians. IPS serves merely as increase to make inferior DPS situationally relevant.

[BacardiSpecialist]

But everything has cool downs on this game. Everything. Why were barbs the exception? It didn't make sense. This nerf was overdue.

Actually i was just running around with my Druid and Cold Breath doesnt have a cooldown and it deals 1000+ damage to multiple targets.

But there is no harm there because they are a class you have to pay for and with buying SP pots Turbine makes money...

Casters vs Melees anyone?

[MeliCat]

Bummer. Loved me my mix-master mode. The only limit really was the healers sp. Whenever I was on my healer and saw a barb *not* in mix-master mode I would be asking why.

Oh well. I knew it was too good to be true. Particularly when I used to totally beat my guildies in eDA in the kill count.

I mean if *I* can win the kill count then something must be wrong ...

Now I will count as if I'm doing resuscitation and my regular swings and back to that cleric aura's gentle heal to fill me up....

SC
1 1000
2 1000
3 1000
SC
1 1000
2 1000
3 1000
SC!

[Ivan_Milic]

give every class an awesome ability with no cool down and I would agree with Shade.

But everything has cool downs on this game. Everything. Why were barbs the exception? It didn't make sense. This nerf was overdue.

Make stunning blow and trip no cooldown. Make smites and divine sacrifice no cooldown. Make assassinate no cooldown. Then maybe Shade would have good point.

Because it costs 10 hp.
What other abilities cost hp beside barbs ones?
Guess we should nerf clerics aura,its free,has no cd,doesnt cost anything,fvs clw,free.