A suggestion to help Barbarians be more self-sufficient

[Vestriel]

I like the enhancement idea. Whether it boosts the healing amount or reduces the cooldown, either approach could work.

More options is a good thing, it makes the game more interesting. The main concern most people have with this is that it would be too powerful. Perhaps the % boost should be lower, the Fort penalty higher, or the AP cost high; whatever it takes to balance this out and make it a non-trivial decision to take it or not.

[spartin]

I was suggesting an enhancement for barbarians that increases the efficacy of healing potions at the cost of fortitude saves. What are you talking about?

With that kind of boost to pots i could be healing 100+ with cure serious, and 1000+ with silver flame.

If barb/fighter self healing comes close to that of paladins and rangers, than the DPS better be equivalent as well.

i guess i am saying different classes get different abilities, and that's one of the draw of the game.
Lots of options are already in game to increase your self healing and survivability.

[Thrudh]

More details please? Your post is extremely unhelpful to those of us struggling to make our barbarians better able to take care of ourselves. It's like telling a student to "write better" for a better grade without going over the essay they turned in to point out what they missed.

Early levels:

• use the DR boost enhancement... it's quite effective in big fights

Later on:

• Don't fight too many mobs at once
• Use positioning - Don't fight in the middle of a room, fight in chokepoints so only one monster can hit you at once, or keep moving in an open area to keep one monster between you and the others.
• Use terrain to your advantage... Walk into a room, see 8 mobs, two of them casters? Back up around the corner out of line-of-sight of the casters, deal with the others as they come around the corner one-by-one.
• Use trip and stunning blow as much as possible.
• Paralyzing weapons
• Displacement clickables (have to dismiss rage, then re-rage to do this, but well worth it)
• Silver flame potions

There's some ideas. Stunning blow and trip make a huge difference. Trip one, stun another, move to keep the stunned one between you and the other mobs, repeat.

[Qhualor]

With that kind of boost to pots i could be healing 100+ with cure serious, and 1000+ with silver flame.

If barb/fighter self healing comes close to that of paladins and rangers, than the DPS better be equivalent as well.

i guess i am saying different classes get different abilities, and that's one of the draw of the game.
Lots of options are already in game to increase your self healing and survivability.

Paladins and rangers have to spend feats, wear gear, use clickys/drink enhancing pots and spend AP to boost their healing from spells. There is no wand/scroll mastery to take. There is cleric dilly if they went helf too.

Barbs only have heal amp gear and enhancements to enhance healing. Thats it. Unless they actually invest in UMD.

Never understood why paladins, rangers and barbs would have to be on the same level for dps if barbs had better ways, or more options to self heal easier. I play a ranger and my barb is on her 3rd pally life. Dps and self healing has never been an issue for them.

[Thrudh]

I was suggesting an enhancement for barbarians that increases the efficacy of healing potions at the cost of fortitude saves. What are you talking about?

Barb's lack of self-healing is one of their weaknesses...

Rangers get more self-healing, but give up some DPS compared to a barb...

If you want to give barb's 45% more healing for -3 to fort saves, then let's also add an enhancement that gives rangers 45% more DPS for -3 to reflex saves.

I'd love to see the community response to that one.

[Thrudh]

Never understood why paladins, rangers and barbs would have to be on the same level for dps if barbs had better ways, or more options to self heal easier. I play a ranger and my barb is on her 3rd pally life. Dps and self healing has never been an issue for them.

Why would one play a ranger or a paladin if you could do more DPS and heal just as well on a barbarian? Pretty much all their spells can be replicated now with gear or clickables, so they don't have any advantages there.

[Qhualor]

Why would one play a ranger or a paladin if you could do more DPS and heal just as well on a barbarian? Pretty much all their spells can be replicated now with gear or clickables, so they don't have any advantages there.

Good point, but what ive always been behind is reduction in penalty for SF pots and adding CCW pots to in game vendors. I dont think barbs need heal boost enhancements. I find pots, hires and healers to be enough until epic levels. From there, barbs can twist healing spring or whatever, which should be enough. There are a lot of other things that players can do to reduce healing, like damage mitigating gear and smart play. Barb inherent dr i think, although helpful, kinda poor by mid levels with the amount of damage received.

My ranger will never out dps my barb, even with the best gear in the game, but his dps is actually very good. The way some talk about their dps, i dont see it. If i thought my rangers dps was lacking, i would not play one. The easy access to healing survivability is a big bonus to go along with it.

My barb playing as a paladin is so fun and awesom to play. Her dps and self sufficiency is just crazy stupid. I just dont see how their dps is so lacking too. Only complaint i have is the pally spell list. Its about as weak as the ranger spell list, if not, worse.

[Ungood]

Enhancement Name: Hard Drinker
Description: Your long experience at quaffing beverages has made you more succeptible to their effects. Thus, you gain 15/30/45 percent more benefit from healing/repair potions. However, some of your internal organs have been damaged by your potion habit, and you have a -1 penalty to fortitude saves per rank taken in this enhancement line.

Looks like a fun idea, and would be helpful too.

Oh look, the same people who hate every idea that is directed at helping the barb class be more self sufficient have chimed in to announce their hate of this as well.. is anyone surprised.

[Kennyburns]

Amping Sf pots > Amping Scrolls (Conc Checks, Weapon swap, item swap lag..., pure base amount)
Sf pots are already enough to keep a toon alive
/Not Agree With Idea

[danzig138]

That's not how alcoholism works at all.

[bruener]

A-

B-

You know in B you contradicted your statement in A and supported the OP, right?

Umm nope. Its just to build the uber dps barb that ppl seem to be drawn to u need a nanny to follow u around. I can't sacrafice my uberness for staying alive. I in no way agree with the op.

[CaptainSpacePony]

OP, the suggestion sounds kind of cool and was well written, but no thanks. I feel barbarians are already one of the most powerful classes. While the are not the most self sufficent, I see no reason for them to made more so.

Play skill and style can increase survivability a lot (as others have pointed out abovce) if survivability is what you're after. Barabarians already have a large HP pool and several means of damage mitigation (not the least of which is the ability to eliminate a lot stuff before it can get in a swing).

Furthermore, heal amp is OP as it is (and needs a system overhaul IMO). Barbarians looking for heal amp from their enhancements can already get it... they just need to choose "human" or "half elf" during creation.

[blerkington]

More details please? Your post is extremely unhelpful to those of us struggling to make our barbarians better able to take care of ourselves. It's like telling a student to "write better" for a better grade without going over the essay they turned in to point out what they missed.

Hi,

Take a look at Thrudh's post. It's good advice, but it should be obvious to anyone who has played any melee class, or has much experience of playing this game at all.

It's not that different to being a ranger, or a sorcerer, or a rogue. It comes down to aggro management and not biting off more than you can chew. The tools you are using are different, but those basic considerations are the same.

The times I see barbarians taking lots of damage in a party setting is when their playstyle is berserk. Running into groups of mobs, taking their aggro, and trying to dps their way out of trouble. If your party is tolerant of that style, fine, but it is not a good approach if you want to reduce incoming damage.

I think barbarians are a good class, but I wouldn't play one myself. I also think that these calls from top notch dps classes for better survivability are a bit much too. If you want top notch melee dps be a barbarian, but accept the weaknesses of the class along with it too.

Thanks.

[Kennyburns]

Everyone make rogues?
Big DPS + scroll mastery =
No more heal problems for those who can't get sf pots!

[KilzCasualKillers]

What if, rather than an enhancement line bumping the effectiveness of pots, they just made pots multi-usable. They could eliminate the cooldown on pots and set it so you use a number of pots at once. It would address the problem of having to sit around for 5-10 minutes chugging pots on a barb while soloing without decreasing the actual cost of healing. Alternately, you could introduce higher level potions that would be purchasable from the guild vendors and rework silverflame pots to make them better than a basic heal potion (maybe they could eliminate the debuff and apply a combat buff like reconstruct).

As it stands pots are ridiculously inefficient. In most circumstances you're better off just grabbing a hireling, parking them out of range of mobs, and running back to them as needed (even with this strategy the hirelings will still find some way to die and cost you 5% xp on whatever you're running).

[Kennyburns]

What if, rather than an enhancement line bumping the effectiveness of pots, they just made pots multi-usable. They could eliminate the cooldown on pots and set it so you use a number of pots at once. It would address the problem of having to sit around for 5-10 minutes chugging pots on a barb while soloing without decreasing the actual cost of healing. Alternately, you could introduce higher level potions that would be purchasable from the guild vendors and rework silverflame pots to make them better than a basic heal potion (maybe they could eliminate the debuff and apply a combat buff like reconstruct).

As it stands pots are ridiculously inefficient. In most circumstances you're better off just grabbing a hireling, parking them out of range of mobs, and running back to them as needed (even with this strategy the hirelings will still find some way to die and cost you 5% xp on whatever you're running).

Every toon would be invincible if we could chug 100 Cure Serious Pots in 1 pot animation
For that reason, No

[KilzCasualKillers]

Every toon would be invincible if we could chug 100 Cure Serious Pots in 1 pot animation
For that reason, No

Except that chugging an entire stack of pots in one go would mean you don't have that stack of pots anymore. To spam it you'd basically have to fill your inventory with pots.

[Kennyburns]

Except that chugging an entire stack of pots in one go would mean you don't have that stack of pots anymore. To spam it you'd basically have to fill your inventory with pots.

People already do that with 10 stacks of SF pots just they face the penalties of them -10 stats, Slow + Lag
so now we just get the same thing without penalies
Bad idea

[Vellrad]

I like the ideas, I don't like the numbers.
1d4/2d6/3d8 more HP from pots and/or
-25%/-50%/-75% drinking animation and cooldown and/or
2/3/4 pots drunk at once.