Barbarian - Frenzied Berserker Changes

[nibel]

Any chances to change Death Frenzy to be what it is on PnP? Ie: A huge, massive, and tremendous bonus to melee attacks, and you never die OR go unconscious while the frenzy is active. Once the frenzy ends, if you are below 1 HP, you go unconscious or die. (If too powerful for DF, maybe the capstone)

This could be paired with a stacking Vicious effect that grows with melee power bonus. Let's say, 1d3 to self, 2d6 to enemy per stack. Both scales with 100% MP. Death Frenzy (or Storm's Eye) lasts for one minute and you also get 10 melee power per stack. You get a new stack every six seconds automatically.

[MangLord]

Some of my thoughts.....

Barbarians, and berserkers in specific need to deal more damage, period. If you're happy with their current damage levels, I'd suggest you make a Lammania test build and try to play around in Thunderholme wilderness with a hireling cleric backing you up. You will die so fast because the cleric just won't be able to heal you quickly enough. Those skeletons will tear through all the HP the tree is currently offering, and that's just a simple wilderness area. Barbarians are ok for damage as the game currently stands, but I'd guess a swashbuckler or paladin vanguard puts out a higher DPS level with attack speed, doublestrike, etc, and that's being done with a one handed weapon. The big numbers may not be as big, but they show up early and often. THF is no longer as great as it once was. I was hoping for changes in the Barbarian trees to augment it, given that paladins and bards can both self heal. With all the penalties you guys seem to insist upon for barbarians, I would expect them to be able to put on an epic beating at epic levels.

Die Hard: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 1). You gain the Die Hard feat, and automatically stabilize when incapacitated.
This is total garbage. Enemies don't wander away when you're incapacitated. If you have their aggro, they will swing at you until you turn into a stone. I have never benefited from this feat once in all my years of DDO.

Vicious effects are tremendously annoying and detrimental. I'd much rather get +1 damage instead. Raging barbarians are tough enough to keep alive without hurting themselves in the process. Mobs do the job just fine. I also hate the fact that Berserkers have to hurt themselves to active basically every decent ability. The bonus HP is nice, but I worry that it won't be enough to offset the costs. Enemies do just fine hurting barbarians without your character being an enemy to themselves.

Barbarians do not need attack boosts or AC destruction. It's completely useless. Barbarians get +1 BAB every level, so they're unlikely to ever miss except on a 1. What they do need is Fort Bypass to deal with all the undead and constructs populating the end game. I don't feel like Destruction and Imp Destruction are enough. A standard trash enemy is dead in a few seconds, so a couple points of fort bypass will rarely let you enjoy a critical on a skeleton or iron defender. A flat 5/10/15% would be nice enough. Criticals make the game fun.

Storms Eye is not going to work in the current configuration. Without an ability to monitor and maintain your own health, Storms Eye will probably end after each and every HE or EH mob, especially having to sacrifice HP to activate it. No cleric is ever going to waste heals on a friend above 25% health or more. Even hirelings wait until you're nearly dead. I'd suggest it work like a heroic blitz, building up stacks with a 10% chance. If it can be stacked with regular blitz, then Berserkers might look really interesting.

Berserker seems to be the one tree that doesn't have a decent self healing option, so I'd suggest making it the undisputed king of damage if you choose to take tier 5 enhancements here. I've always thought that barbarians should be the hardest hitting melee characters on the battlefield, and from what I see, it looks like some effort is being made to shore up survivability without adding any additional damage to put them over the top of swashbucklers, kensei and vanguards.
No one wants to just survive with their favorite class, we want to be able to excel with a well thought out character. I'm just not seeing it with Berserker, so I expect the other two trees are what people are actually going to use.

[noinfo]

Epic destiny abilities such as cacoon (particularly primal) should not be blocked by barbarian rage. The epic abilities should transcend this.

[theRolf]

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.

Only part way through this thread but I had to respond to this as I feel much the same way.

a barbarian should be king of dps or don't bother.

There was a feeling to playing a barb that needs to be recaptured. Power and respect, but not invulnerability. I loved it, and it was challenging to play.

[Cetus]

because you still need a reliable source of healing. being able to do 25% more damage doesn't matter if your options are CSW pots and SF penalty pots.

It matters if your damage output can cause enough of an impetus for people to start playing healers. Who cares if they have self healing right now, when you can just play a pally or even a bladeforged centered kensei and do just as much damage without worrying about any self healing?

The distinguishing factor for a barbarian should be massive damage at the expense of survivability.

[theRolf]

So let's change the flavor to something that doesn't taste so bad. I generally like flavor, to me flavor = cool (in most cases). I just don't want my character flavored with poison

Agreed. And the poison flavor got worse with the enhancement pass of yore. Yeah - we lived to tell about it but let us not drink poison lemonade today.

[thebeast1985]

What if Vicious attack (tbh i hate this skill) become a flat % so it will never become useless even in epics or the capstone (wich sounds even better, so you have actually to get to lvl 20 barb to get it) gives you the mortal fear ability like tf weaps? So 5% to deal 50% actual health and against rednamed just a 5% (and i think it's already huge)

[theRolf]

Barbarians cannot compete, and should not compete with classes like the Paladin or a Ranger, for instance. They really should be the king of melee DPS. And that should come with some downsides, in this case severely reduced selfhealing. That is what separates them, and what makes them unique to play.

As these tree's stand now, the DPS gain is not enough compared to Paladin (and probably Fighter/Rogue's when they get their pass).



You can turn this around as well. I don't play my healer because he doesn't contribute much in a quest where everyone is a self healing dps class (which you apparently want to turn a barbarian into as well). If the barbarian's dps was so good, that it would warrant bringing a support class as well, this would be good for the grouping aspect of the game and would maybe see more people playing their support characters again.

Yeah right - so maybe people will want to group with you - just maybe. How's that for a fine incentive to play?

[DrawingGuy]

when you were talking about the damage they take. Did you ever consider heal amp? do you understand how it really works? if you have enough amp that small stack with hit you a lot more then a few points. why do you think people liked vampirism or light monks. with amp those 2 abilities turn into great healing for a person. my main with amp and scroll/wand mastery can use a scroll of heal and hit myself for 600+. they normally hit people for like a 100. so now think how amp would apply to these abilities.

Actually, yes... and for those that don't understand, there's the wiki. You go crazy enough, you can make vamp and FoL go into the double digits... currently. Though there's a reason they're listing so much hamp: They're changing how it's working. No more base multiplier increase with Pally PLs or fingers. Following their new standard (100+stat)/100, it's now a diminishing return curve. But this ISN'T a Monk, so you have no FoL or Ivy Wraps that you can use end game. While I'm sure a SWF build with Nightmare or something might be a pretty solid counter to Vicious... but that is a forced extremely narrow weapon set that gives up powerful options like Thunderforged. Sans vampiric weapons, the proposed regen would NOT keep up, especially if you plan on doing more than single target damage.

You take 1d3 frenzy + 1d3 death frenzy for 2d3. It's another 2d3 if you get a double strike. And another 2d3 on a glancing blow. So you're taking up to 6d3 for every mob you touch. If you're cleaving (which is the token of the Frenzied Barbarian), especially in the dense mob fests that is anything U19+, you can easily find yourself swallowing around 30d6 damage a swing. Even if you somehow get 500% heal amp and 100 melee power, your regen would only hit for either 12d6 or 20d6 (depends how the melee power and heal amp factor into the math) every 4 seconds. That's not enough to counter a single cleave, let alone counter their own self damage.

Additionally you're neglecting the fact that, as a Barbarian, the key and token of your damage is raging. Raging blocks out scrolls and wands, and if you dismiss rage every time you need to heal, you'll find yourself rageless in short order. Cocoon and Renewal don't work while raged... leaving you potions and/or running Divine Crusader/taking a two-twist dive for healing consecration (at 30+ SP a pop). So while you can get a CSW pot to hit you for over 100, unless you plan on sucking a pot every three seconds, your only real option is store potions or SF pots. I don't consider pots that cost $$$ as an option to consider balance, and SF has a heavy penalty.

So this brings it back to my original argument: Barbarians either need to be the best DPS by a large enough margin to justify the required support, or become like every other class: self-sufficient. I personally prefer the former.

[theRolf]

I agree the Barb class should provide little in the way of self heals, and what self heals office get should be flavorful like the Druid's pet enhancement where it recovers HP by feeding on it's victims - I'd love that (or something similar) on a Barb!

Where Barbs really run into trouble is unlike EVERY OTHER CLASS they really have very few options to multiclass for self healing - most of it is mana based/SLA kinds of things Raging Barbs (and thus basically all Barbs) can't use.

I'm not thrilled with the solo centric self sufficient turn the game took years ago, but it did. Most groups are self sufficient, and Barbs need an option to effectively be played in that environment.

Right, so enough of the "make barbs appealing to team play" nonsense!

[theRolf]

Love love love the proposal devs.

I'm not going to go into tons of detail but I will say that I am extremely relieved that you are keeping barbarians true to their class and not giving them a easy button self-healing option. I really like the idea of giving barbs a slow regen. That will allow them to not need out of combat healing, but they will still need support from others while in combat - a fair trade off considering this tree will be heads above all others in melee DPS.

Allowing rage to continue to prevent healing will ensure barbs stay unique as a class and not become too similar to fighters. Barbs at their core has been a class which is high DPS, low survivability class and it should stay that way. Awesome jobs devs.

As someone who plays clerics almost exclusive, I'm relieved that healing a barb will be WORTH IT again! Glad to see we'll finally have an alternative playstyle to BYOH in DDO again.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this argument, as I believe it is a distraction designed to protect a build that feels threatened. And I will not go into tons of detail either.

[Alternative]

so a 6 level barb is going to have more heal amp than a monk or paladin? or are the kotc/shintao values getting doubled?

agree with other people btw, the cure pots are the weaksauce, you should fix those instead of giving barbs a truckload of healing amp

hint: some people run around with unlimited sovereign heal pots, goooo barbs!

[Axeyu]

This is not good enough. How are they supposed to compete with paladins or even bards?

Focused Wrath should not be only on 19/20 rolls, it's quite meh. Why would you ever take it over tier 5 ravager even? Make it +1/2 crit multiplier on all rolls.
Throw some melee power into the cores aswell.

Blood Tribute is amazing though, I like it.

[Axeyu]

Love love love the proposal devs.

I'm not going to go into tons of detail but I will say that I am extremely relieved that you are keeping barbarians true to their class and not giving them a easy button self-healing option. I really like the idea of giving barbs a slow regen. That will allow them to not need out of combat healing, but they will still need support from others while in combat - a fair trade off considering this tree will be heads above all others in melee DPS.

Allowing rage to continue to prevent healing will ensure barbs stay unique as a class and not become too similar to fighters. Barbs at their core has been a class which is high DPS, low survivability class and it should stay that way. Awesome jobs devs.

As someone who plays clerics almost exclusive, I'm relieved that healing a barb will be WORTH IT again! Glad to see we'll finally have an alternative playstyle to BYOH in DDO again.

I'm sorry to say, but you are wrong.
Blood Tribute from FB and Blood Strength from Ravager gives them outstanding self healing. How exactly do you figure this tree will be above all other melee in DPS? Maybe I'm missing something, but this tree looks like garbage DPS to me.

[theRolf]

Why?

I'd rather see the (pure, or mostly pure) Barbarian class only played by a small minority who would enjoy it for the unique gameplay style that it offers and have the opportunity to run in groups where that playstyle would shine, than see it being turned into another selfhealing class, that will be less powerful overall compared to a paladin anyway, just to appease the masses and promote solo playstyles even more.

Keep in mind you can already make selfhealing barbarians using for instance Ameliorating Strikes, so there are options to effectively play in the environment you're referring to.

I've tried, that AS build was promising but would not cut it with the "fun" builds that the rest of my guild was running. That meant I needed to move on from barb. Sucked.

[kmoustakas]

No! Now I can no longer claim I'm a better player than everybody else because I'm playing a pure gimp barbie!

Er, amazing changes way to go!!!

[MangLord]

I was really hoping for a line of serious damage boosts with two handers, and some tier 5 crit range and crit multiplier boosts. It seemed logical, but this tree is kind of a mess the more I look at it. You'd expect that a Frenzied Berserker would have the best melee damage in the game, what with all the self-destructive aspects, but I don't see this tree pulling ahead of a centered kensei, THF paladin or even a swashbuckler at all. This tree is definitely looking like the one to ignore, which is a shame because I see a raging Frenzied Berserker as the most prototypical barbarian type.

Basically everyone is ok with the self-mutilation aspect, but the cost outweighs the benefit in my opinion. The vast majority of players are willing to deal with the incoming damage, but the tree damage output needs to be above and beyond that of other trees and classes in order to make the class attractive again. If the dev team just moves the food around the plate with this tree, that doesn't mean we as players are getting any more to eat. Maybe it would be best to dump the U19 Berserker tree entirely and start from scratch. With all the drawbacks of a barbarian berserker, I'm not sure if turning the DPS up to 11 will be enough. I don't think that 15k hits with adrenaline strikes would be unreasonable for epic Gianthold and up, especially considering the steep price it will come at.

[theRolf]

It matters if your damage output can cause enough of an impetus for people to start playing healers. Who cares if they have self healing right now, when you can just play a pally or even a bladeforged centered kensei and do just as much damage without worrying about any self healing?

The distinguishing factor for a barbarian should be massive damage at the expense of survivability.

Yes. This cuts to the heart of it. That was the old flavor and the trade-off in a nutshell. And you are correct, it would change the game and it needs changing.

[Axeyu]

Yes. This cuts to the heart of it. That was the old flavor and the trade-off in a nutshell. And you are correct, it would change the game and it needs changing.

It would be so easy to achive while still keeping the new self healing for those who prefer it. They can just add massive damage to one tier 5 and self healing to another, then you can't get both. Right now Ravager has both the best self healing and best DPS in it's tier 5.

[Axeyu]

A pure paladin with kotc is about 15% ahead of a barb in DPS with 40+ points in FB and 30+ points in Ravager (tier 5 in ravager, capstone from FB), and that's with 25 damage from Eye of the storm.