Barbarian - Frenzied Berserker Changes

[PsychoBlonde]

I see more hamp effects, which is ok.. .. but should Barbarians have more Hamp than a Monk??.. Barbarians are about raging DPS not healing amp.
The attention a barbarian requires to keep alive vs the damage output just isn't there.
No vampirism effects to get stacking temporary hp for damaging mobs..
No offsets for reducing vicious/frenzy self damage..
No MRR PRR boosters...

Did you look at the OTHER trees? They have a lot of this stuff. And since healing amp is a unique feature of this game I don't see any reason why Barbarians shouldn't get more than ANYBODY--they need it because their self-healing comes from crappy pots and various special abilities with sharp limitations on them.

After viewing all 3 trees I have to say I think it looks pretty workable. It's not what I would do--and the damage increase seems pretty small--but the toughness increases look solid, at least.

[JOTMON]

Lol these two comments cracked me up. Tier one ability and you want it to be not only +3[W] but -30 AC as well? Do you realize that it would at least cut in half, if not reduced to 0, AC of most mobs in heroic and lower epic? Looks like it was ages since you've seen the to-hit/AC formula.

oops misread this one..
the +1/2/3 [w] is useful..

the -3 AC on hits that lasts 20 seconds for 3 AP is not of any value to any build.

When does any melee need help hitting anything.
Barbarians haven't missed hitting things .. ever... unless they were wisdom builds..
a -1/-2/-3 ac.. worthless..
barbarians are about DPS and pure Damage output

The Barbarian needs to outshine DPS and Crit DPS when matched up against all other melee builds vs regular generic mobs.

the AC bypass .. meh.. mechanic needs to be addressed .. a -1/-2/-3 loses all value in levelling content.
a % of Barbarian level would fit better.

[PermaBanned]

...but they lack mitigation and healers don't like that they take so much healing. The idea behind these changes is to make Barbarians tougher through sheer hit point bonuses, give them enough healing amplification so healing them doesn't feel like a healing sink...

This sounds like you're still operating under the assumption that there's a "healer" keeping tabs on the Barb's health. This assumption is wrong. I'm not saying that there are no "healers" in the game, but they are not common. The typical party is a group of self healing individuals. If you predicate the design decisions on there being a "healer" present, rather than an individual self healing - Barbarians will remain undesirable, and that makes me sad.

Now, on to some specific points:

Core abilities
Frenzy: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 6). Activation Cost: 10 Hit Points. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Enter a frenzy, increasing your strength by +2 and adding Vicious to your melee weapons. You gain +30 hit points and +10 healing amplification.

Death Frenzy: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 18). Activation Cost: 20 Hit Points. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Expend 20 hit points to enter a Death Frenzy for one minute. You gain 4 strength. You increase your crit multiplier by an additional 1 when raging. Your melee weapons gain 'Greater Vicious'.(+4d6 damage to your attacks while dealing 1d3 damage to yourself per attack.) Passive: You gain +100 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

Storm’s Eye: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 20). Activate: You gain +1 melee damage. --- This damage bonus gains one stack every six seconds, up to 25 stacks. This ends when you are below 50% health. Activation Cost: 100 Hit Points. Cooldown: 3 minutes. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution. You gain +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.

Still not crazy about the Vicious & Greater Vicious. The damage is nice, though iirc doesn't scale with MP so looses value as you go higher into Epics. On the other hand, the self-inflicted damage gets increasingly problematic with Attack Speed increases. Question: does the Vicious/Greater Vicious damage to self proc/have a chance to proc on/from contact with multiple opponents during Glancing Blows and Cleave attacks?

Storms Eye ends when dropped below 50% Health... Can this be brought down to 25%? 50% is just too easy to achieve - especially in higher difficulty content - between the cumulative of damage mobs are doing and the damage Barbs are doing to themselves.

Lash Out: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Slicing Blow) Supreme Cleave has a 50%/75%/82% chance to cause bleeding to damaged enemies, inflicting up to 1/2/3 stacks. This can stack up to 5 times. Your Supreme Cleave also reduces the AC of enemies by 1/2/3 for six seconds. This stacks up to five times.

Umm... There is no "Slicing Blow" in this tree, so what is actually the prerequisite here?

Accelerated Metabolism: (2 AP) While raging you heal 2d6 hit points every 4 seconds. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

Is this "Posative Energy" healing, and thus being effected by Healing Amplification? If not it's incredibly pointless - and even if it is effected by Heal Amp I'm not sure it would even keep pace with the self inflicted wounds of Vicious/Greater Vicious.

[JOTMON]

Did you look at the OTHER trees? They have a lot of this stuff. And since healing amp is a unique feature of this game I don't see any reason why Barbarians shouldn't get more than ANYBODY--they need it because their self-healing comes from crappy pots and various special abilities with sharp limitations on them.

After viewing all 3 trees I have to say I think it looks pretty workable. It's not what I would do--and the damage increase seems pretty small--but the toughness increases look solid, at least.

I am not arguing that the other trees suck, that has been the Barbarian issue.
making the tree less sucky than the other 2 trees is not an improvement.. it still sucks.

Barbarians= pure DPS and big Crits. not healing amp and self reliability..
Does any barbarian contemplate healthy living and inner peace/.. no... that's the monk thing..

Barbarians are the RARWR smash running through burning buildings with a total lack and disregard for self to attack what they area after..
Like the raging charging bull.. you don't want to be in its way because it is going to hurt.. a lot...and you are wearing a red jumpsuit.

Compare the classes in outputting pure DPS.. the Barbarian just plain sucks and does more damage to himself before killing a mob. and this is where it fails.
The Barbarian should be a lawnmower in a field of grass mobs.
Currently, the relative damage output to the Barbarian DPS is not worth the cost/benefit of lack of self healing.

Barbarians need more DPS and Crit DPS not cheesey self healing.

[brzytki]

Pft.
you think +3 to hit and -3 AC on hits that lasts 20 seconds for 3 AP is of any value to any build?

When does any melee need help hitting anything.
Barbarians haven't missed hitting things .. ever... unless they were wisdom builds..
a +1/+2/+3 to hit... is worthless a -1/-2/-3 ac.. also worthless..
barbarians are about DPS and pure Damage output

The Barbarian needs to outshine DPS and Crit DPS when matched up against all other melee builds vs regular generic mobs.
...Cracking Attack = waste of AP..

I'm not saying that it's an end game ability. I'm saying it's well balanced and similar to other tier 1 melee attacks in trees of other classes. +3[W] and - 3 AC is good for 3 AP at first tier. If your suggestion comes live, you'll have auto-hit fest since korthos with masterwork greatsword till the very endgame. Go and see how -30 AC really affects your chance to hit a mob. If it was the ONLY way to reduce AC, then maybe. But when it's stackable with everything... not so much.

[JOTMON]

Umm... There is no "Slicing Blow" in this tree, so what is actually the prerequisite here?

A frivolous feat that barbarians cant afford to take.

http://ddowiki.com/page/Slicing_Blow

Slicing Blow
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Usage: Active

Description
Using this attack, you deal 1 point of Constitution damage to your target and deal 1d4 additional damage 2 seconds later as the target bleeds. The target suffers an additional round of bleeding for every 3 character levels, up to a max of 6 at level 15. Unlike Trip and Stunning Blow, no save is made against this effect.
It has a cooldown of 15 seconds. Some creatures may be immune to the bleeding effect.

[FestusHood]

Pft.
you think +3 to hit and -3 AC on hits that lasts 20 seconds for 3 AP is of any value to any build?

When does any melee need help hitting anything.
Barbarians haven't missed hitting things .. ever... unless they were wisdom builds..
a +1/+2/+3 to hit... is worthless a -1/-2/-3 ac.. also worthless..
barbarians are about DPS and pure Damage output

The Barbarian needs to outshine DPS and Crit DPS when matched up against all other melee builds vs regular generic mobs.
...Cracking Attack = waste of AP..

Why do you and others keep this myth that nobody ever misses except on a 1 alive? Do you really pay that little attention? My last barbarian routinely grazed on 6's and below when he was in the mid teen levels. That's with all the standard strength bonuses. The -8 from improved power attack makes quite a noticeable difference.

In epic, if your hit bonus isn't in the 90's, you're grazing. I have a guy who only has a hit bonus in the 60's and i can tell you he grazes frequently on 5's. That's in epic hard.

[Qhualor]

core abilities

Frenzy- you spend 10 hp to activate and gain 20 hp (30-10) applying 1d3 damage to self per hit. so its basically a temporary 20 hp that will be gone in a couple seconds.

Death Frenzy- you spend 20 hp to activate and gain 80 hp (100-20) applying 4d6 damage to self per hit. so another temporary 80 hp that will be gone in a couple seconds.

a barbarian with both frenzies will activate them at the same time. that means 100 temporary hp while dealing 1d3 and 4d6 damage to self per hit. gone in just a few seconds. BTW, wiki says bane damage scales depending on number of party members going as high as 1d4 for vicious. is that still true?

Storms Eye- spend 100 hp to activate and gain 70 hp? (150 hp + 4 con - 100). math is hard. the draw is the +40 heal amp that you get every 3 minutes with a 30 second timer IF you activate it that often. it looks more like an oh s**t panic button or a tank button to me.

Tier 1

biggest issue I have is Athletics. barbs don't need to invest in jump or swim. really, who does invest in swim? balance is the only thing worth investing, but the biggest draw is the +30% movement speed boost. its the only reason to max out that enhancement. I would rather see 10/20/30% all by itself or along with each swim, balance, jump tier.

Tier 2

im not a fan of temporary hp. it doesn't scale well in DDO when in higher levels it acts more like Protection from Elements. one hit and its gone. I will say though that I did a lot of research on FB barbs and temporary hp is all over the place in PnP. with that said, Blood Tribute for me is only worth taking for the 400% MP. I would be spamming the **** out of that button.

Tier 3

Blood Trail- gain 2 melee power, which is a crumb compared to 400% I will be spamming every 3 seconds a tier lower. no hp loss so its a maybe if I decide to spend AP on it. already doing a bunch of vicious damage and expending hp to activate abilities so no big deal to save the AP and lose a few more hp.

Tier4

Crazy Strike- again, a crumb compared to 2 tiers lower. I took the enhancement before anyways, so im sure ill take it again. 3 MP is just gravy splash for me.

Exhausting Blow- not bad for heroics, but in epics mobs regain their stat abilities too fast to really justify using it. you would need to spam that button to keep mobs str and dex score down. the kind of damage I know my barb deals now and can foresee with these changes, might as well just straight kill the mobs instead of trying to do ability damage.

Wade In- its a waste of AP. especially for a barb, but attack hasn't been a problem since the "all or nothing" AC days.

Lash out- adding AC reduction didn't help it. again, to-hit is not a problem today.

to help improve barb defense and make something that stands out for a barb in PnP work well in DDO was boosting their DR. increasing their DR to 20 by level 20 and 1 per epic level would make a nice difference in survivability if you include all the other ways to mitigate damage such as blurry, displace, dodge. currently, barb DR is a joke and not worth spending points on. you see no difference in damage mitigation.

im not a math guy so I have no idea how well these new heal amp changes coming to the game as well as in the barb tree are going to help barb survivability and self sufficiency. currently my barb can heal for ~40 hp from a CSW pot and ~700 from a SF pot with current in game heal amp gear and 3x pally PLs. that's not including twisting anything or using every in game heal amp I can get my hands on. barbs need to be able to heal in comparison to what a Ranger or Paladin can heal for within reason from pots or in comparison to a SF pot. if not, than these changes aren't going to matter much in a self sufficiency DDO game.

[Scrabbler]

A feat that barbarians cant afford to take.

Well, maybe potentially Lash Out could make Slicing Blow worthwhile to take. Without knowing the damage from Lash Out we can't be sure, but I doubt it.

I strongly recommend that if they're going to use Slicing Blow as an enhancement requirement, they also adjust Slicing Blow to be worthwhile on its own. Fast version of how to do that:

• Slicing Blow duration is constant, instead of scaling with level. Duration is set a little longer than cooldown.
• Slicing Blow can stack 3 times.
• Slicing Blow damage is 1d4 + BAB/2 + Str/Dex mod + Tactical DC bonus + (1-10 for equipped Tendon Slice item).
• Anyone with Slicing Blow feat has +1 damage towards creatures under Slicing Blow effect.

Additionally, it's a bit unfortunate that the t5 effect which required Improved Sunder is gone. Well, sure it didn't deserve to use up a t5 slot... but what they could do is merge all 3 of the Trip, Sunder, Slicing effects into one enhancement. Maybe like this:

Lash Out: Your Supreme Cleave reduces AC by 1/2/3 (stacks 5x). If you have Imp Sunder, each stack also causes -5% Fortification and -1 Fortitude. If you have Slicing Blow, each stack also causes 1d4+str mod damage ticks. If you have Imp Trip, a critical causes an immediate Trip attempt.

[Severlin]

Some thoughts:

Frenzied Berserker barbarians have (arguably) the best melee AoE. It wasn't our goal to make substantial boosts to the DPS of this tree.

That said, we understand that some players may want a barbarian build that has even more DPS at the cost of sustainability, and this is probably the best tree for that. Our first thought is that we could make the tier 5 healing ability into a multi-selector with an ability that boosted DPS so players could forego the healing for a DPS oriented build if they wished.

Sev~

[Scrabbler]

Frenzy- you spend 10 hp to activate and gain 20 hp (30-10) applying 1d3 damage to self per hit. so its basically a temporary 20 hp that will be gone in a couple seconds.

Ok what? People are misreading the new Frenzied Berserker cores.

These cores gives you passive hitpoints and healing amp. They don't cause healing when you click the active effect.

[Severlin]

~ Some of these abilities or bonuses are left in the tree so that barbarians taking this tree don't lose anything they were using. We are unlikely to remove existing effects that provide hit bonuses or AC reductions.

~ We meant to remove gratuitous feat requirements; Slicing Blow isn't a requirement. Fixed the OP.

~ The healing amplification is not just for a healer; it also makes potions substantially better which was definitely a player request with regards to barbarians.

Sev~

[Qhualor]

I would be happy to heal a barbarian if his DPS output makes it worthwhile.
currently its better to just let him die, pickup his stone and kite the mobs through the blade barrier vs dumping a mana bar spam healing a barbarian killing himself on kobolds.

We need to see Barbarians getting big crits outdistancing every other DPS class significantly in generic situations.
I expect the rogue damage to be great as long as he is sneak attacking vulnerable mobs.
I expect the Paladin to do great DPS against Evil mobs and undead.
I expect the Fighter to do good damage to all mob types
I expect the monk to have great healing amp and do good damage , not get hit often but when they do it hurts.
I expect the Barbarian to.... Massive crits, little damage mitigation, poor self healing, but stuff dies quick..The HP sponge, but its worthit because of the DPS..

It needs to be worth someones time to heal the barbarian while he destroys stuff, otherwise its not worth having a barbarian in the party.

not sure what is going on with others who build barbs. maybe today we are expected to be self sufficient so people are trying to not make dumb dumb dps barbs as much anymore. I see barbs not even raging so they can lay down consecrate ground and Cocoon. they give up dps to be more self sufficient, while in the "old days" that I still cling to and still build the same way, people built barbs for dps. a barbarian should be king of dps or don't bother. im the only barb that ive seen in months and months that plays a FB. seems most are OS and the rest Ravager.

[Qhualor]

Ok what? People are misreading the new Frenzied Berserker cores.

These cores gives you passive hitpoints and healing amp. They don't cause healing when you click the active effect.

yeah I know.

[bbqzor]

Some thoughts:

Frenzied Berserker barbarians have (arguably) the best melee AoE. It wasn't our goal to make substantial boosts to the DPS of this tree.

That said, we understand that some players may want a barbarian build that has even more DPS at the cost of sustainability, and this is probably the best tree for that. Our first thought is that we could make the tier 5 healing ability into a multi-selector with an ability that boosted DPS so players could forego the healing for a DPS oriented build if they wished.

Sev~

AOE dps only compounds the FB healing problems. More mobs hit = more dps to self. It is entirely possible to hurt yourself more than the mobs are hurting you. And Id go so far as to say its entirely LIKELY that is the case when you are 20+ on a well played/geared FB.

The issue isnt necessarily barb dps, or barb healing. Its that to DO dps they REQUIRE healing. Lots of builds can leap into a pack and aoe dps it down. Being 5 or 10 or whatever percent better at it on a FB (cant be much more than that, unless youre using dev-numbers which dont align to anything Ive ever seen/heard/experienced on live, if so please post so we can talk discuss the example in question) doesnt justify the huge self damage difference.

A S/B fighter with cleave, great cleave, whirlwind, momentum swing, lay waste, and the two handed line can hold up really, really well with a barb and even a FB. And he doesnt take 3d3 damage (both frenzies turned on) damage every hit he lands. In a pack of 10 mobs, thats 30d3 per cleave, or 150d3 if you hit all 5 (with supreme cleave standing in for whirlwind to keep the number of abilities the same). And while yes, the FB will be up the frenzy damage (and probably have higher base hits if using a 2hd, vs the s/b guy), the s/b guy also wont take 300 damage every 10 seconds just because.

A 1k hp barb can literally kill himself inside of 30s with zero help from the mobs. Thats a level of baby sitting required to maintain which goes beyond anything else, and is frankly punitive to the human piloting it. The gain isnt worth the cost.

Thats the issue to look at. Not a T5 selector. Give them a way to slow that 30s out so they can keep up with a regular pace of healing. Thanks.

[Severlin]

AOE dps only compounds the FB healing problems. More mobs hit = more dps to self. It is entirely possible to hurt yourself more than the mobs are hurting you. And Id go so far as to say its entirely LIKELY that is the case when you are 20+ on a well played/geared FB.

The issue isnt necessarily barb dps, or barb healing. Its that to DO dps they REQUIRE healing. Lots of builds can leap into a pack and aoe dps it down. Being 5 or 10 or whatever percent better at it on a FB (cant be much more than that, unless youre using dev-numbers which dont align to anything Ive ever seen/heard/experienced on live, if so please post so we can talk discuss the example in question) doesnt justify the huge self damage difference.

A S/B fighter with cleave, great cleave, whirlwind, momentum swing, lay waste, and the two handed line can hold up really, really well with a barb and even a FB. And he doesnt take 3d3 damage (both frenzies turned on) damage every hit he lands. In a pack of 10 mobs, thats 30d3 per cleave, or 150d3 if you hit all 5 (with supreme cleave standing in for whirlwind to keep the number of abilities the same). And while yes, the FB will be up the frenzy damage (and probably have higher base hits if using a 2hd, vs the s/b guy), the s/b guy also wont take 300 damage every 10 seconds just because.

A 1k hp barb can literally kill himself inside of 30s with zero help from the mobs. Thats a level of baby sitting required to maintain which goes beyond anything else, and is frankly punitive to the human piloting it. The gain isnt worth the cost.

Thats the issue to look at. Not a T5 selector. Give them a way to slow that 30s out so they can keep up with a regular pace of healing. Thanks.

We will look into the self damage that Vicious causes. To be honest we were on the fence about it, but didn't want to remove too much flavor from the tree.

Sev~

[bbqzor]

~ The healing amplification is not just for a healer; it also makes potions substantially better which was definitely a player request with regards to barbarians.

Im not even playing around. Lets assume you made SF pots stack to 1000. And removed the cripple from the 250 ones. Why? Because it was a player request with regards to barbarians, of course!

Lets also assume you get 100 amp from FB cores. You get 40 amp from other barb cores you took because, you know, amp. You are wearing a 10, 20, and 30 amp item... which become 20/40/60 in the new formula. You have 260 amp. In the new formula that turns into 360% on heals. Your SF pot now does 900 hp. Great!

You can now drink a potion every 20-30 seconds for the rest of your barbarian life. For the low price of ~10 plat per second and -10 to your stats, you can FINALLY potion heal on your barbarian! Rejoice! Instead of watching a movie, you can play your barbarian for 2 hours. Itll cost almost 75000plat but you can do it now! Finally you wont need to bug a cleric! Hey, all your ability DCs are down by 5, but youre independent now!

Look, in all seriousness, unless youre adding some kind of cheap, vendor available, improved healing potion... potion healing just doesnt matter. It will get you through early heroic, and thats fine. This doesnt change things. The reason you devs are all so paranoid about +UMD is over Heal Scroll use. You know why thats important? Because potions get out-leveled. The players requesting this are probably ones who did it through those surveys, who are not high level, who have not seen the full progression curve. And they are unhappy their barb cant keep up. Rightly so, perhaps, but this is the wrong request to make. Its not the solution.

Dont focus on potion healing. Focus on the problem, which is you kill yourself faster than mobs kill you. I mean hey if you want to add some kind of super healing potion too by all means. But it wont be bards that get mileage out of it. It will be everyone else who doesnt need one every 25s. Just saying.

[PermaBanned]

Frenzied Berserker barbarians have (arguably) the best melee AoE. It wasn't our goal to make substantial boosts to the DPS of this tree.

OK...? I wasn't aware people thought it was lacking in DPS.

That said, we understand that some players may want a barbarian build that has even more DPS at the cost of sustainability, and this is probably the best tree for that. Our first thought is that we could make the tier 5 healing ability into a multi-selector with an ability that boosted DPS so players could forego the healing for a DPS oriented build if they wished.

Sev~

Some players, sure - the ones with Guildy/Friend healers to follow them around. The rest of us will use this as a tier 4 tree, and Ravager as the tier 5 since it's the one that offers some sustainability

[Qhualor]

~ Some of these abilities or bonuses are left in the tree so that barbarians taking this tree don't lose anything they were using. We are unlikely to remove existing effects that provide hit bonuses or AC reductions.

~ We meant to remove gratuitous feat requirements; Slicing Blow isn't a requirement. Fixed the OP.

~ The healing amplification is not just for a healer; it also makes potions substantially better which was definitely a player request with regards to barbarians.

Sev~

~ too bad, but I will say barbs are getting more and not losing anything overall so its a win in my book.

~ cool

~ yes, it was something mutually agreed. it will make some that don't mind throwing heals at others that need help more forgiving, but the biggest issue is self healing while raged. potions are what barbs have to use to stay alive, so I just hope the boost to healing in the tree is a huge improvement for them. maybe you could give a reasonable sample of what a barb could be healing himself for with a CSW pot so I could better understand? it would greatly help with providing feedback.

[Qhualor]

We will look into the self damage that Vicious causes. To be honest we were on the fence about it, but didn't want to remove too much flavor from the tree.

Sev~

please don't remove the flavor. a dps barb that uses the frenzies will not kill himself in a pack of mobs. his dps should be high enough to kill that mob quickly, however he will need to self heal after each like encounter. he still could take a lot of damage, not just from frenzies but also from mob damage. it is the life of a FB though. if its an issue, I would rather see cleave attack damage boosted instead of losing any flavor to the class.