Barbarian - Frenzied Berserker Changes

[Takllin]

Its on the same level as saying a cleave with 1W is worth a comparison. Consideration is much better... the differences matter but its not a "huge advantage".


This is an example of what Im saying. Huge advantage? Compared to what? Is rage a huge advantage for barbarian dps because it offers 8 str and permits frenzy? You just make a blanket statement, no context, no backup. Oh okay, smites are a huge advantage, its fact now. Obviously Im using hyperbole here, but as Ive said: context is everything. This post has none.


Okay so its not "free feats". Its that on a specific race comparing two specific enhancement trees you can leverage 2 feats into a large increase in survivability... one that you feel outweighs the dps LOSS of basically taking LD off the table. That is a WHOLE LOT different than just saying "kotc > fb, free feats". You can see that right? That theyre two entirely different ways of saying something? Its not even a dps advantage, just a "better" build. Why is this even in a dps comparison conversation then?


So, barbarians dont do enough dps because a paladin will outlive them and keep dpsing when they are dead? I totally agree barbs have a survivability issue. Feel free to read my posts in all 3 barb threads, Im not shy about that. But choosing 1 class out of the other 12 to single out, then compare barbs to, then use that one comparison as a justification for doing anything.... that doesnt really make sense.

Instead, what you are saying is "barbarians need to do more dps, enough more dps to shorten fights such that the lack of survivability becomes less of a liability". That has nothing to do with paladin, and everything to do with barbarians vs environment balance. Why are you even bringing paladin up?


Lol. So you think nerfing paladins is a solution? A boring and unfun one, but one that would solve your issues?

So its not "barbarians need to do more dps, enough more dps to shorten fights such that the lack of survivability becomes less of a liability"... it really is "barbarians should be better than paladin, at dps, by enough dps that you dont need paladin survivability, so that theres no reason to use paladin, because more dps".

Glad we could clear that up. You need to stop worrying about how good you look standing next to someone else and start actually looking at balance. Actual, overall, relative balance. Not "A vs B in a vacuum" balance. Not "only on bladeforged" balance. And if you dont, you need to at least put "kotc > fb... on bladeforged... in overall sense". See, theres that context. Context, you needs it.

Kinda done posting on this, I could point out lack of context all day. While your very specific points might be accurate for whatever exacting example you have, your presentation and representation in your posts is not due to lacking huge amounts of disclosure about what that exact example is. "Huge advantage" implies a reality very different from the actual "practical play" one. Just show your work, the whole picture, and maybe even I will find some things to take seriously.

Clearly with the amount of effort and time you've put into this you take it seriously...

[Thar]

I think once Paladin loses an extra +1[W] and runs out of Smites the Barbarian will pull ahead both because of the extra cleave abilities and because they will be ahead by 10 Melee Power.

The best solution, however, is DPS checks and dungeon runs on Lamannia to compare the top builds.

Sev~

WHY IN THE WORLD ARE YOU MESSING WITH PALADIN????!?!?! It is finally up to a level of dps of other toons although you need 14 levels to get there. NO NERFS.... Make Barbarians better. They are behind fighters, bards, rogues, pallys etc. in dps not because pally is good. Their enhancement trees stink. cooldowns are too long or two little dps boost in the tree. NO damage mitigation in the trees except a little dodge. what happened to barbarians being the tough guy who can take a hit and pound bad guy into goo...

[Qhualor]

Ah cmon, i love almost all classes in ddo /beside bard, been bard hater since 2009 and im happy they are ok now, maybe a bit to strong/, just to get this out of the way.
I loved palie for a long time and the lack of dps really killed any real reason for me to play it.
I loved my pyrene life for the sufficiency part but hated the dps part.
Now i do agree the old palies needed a dps boost.
But what we got is way to much.
Noone, not a single person can argue with me that holy sword on its own is not overpowered and beyond rationality strong.
ITs just 1 spell that on its own can handle comparison vs any other class.

ITs like this, you compare holy sword vs 42 ap spent into berserker tree, and holy sword can still pull ahead.
Its 1 spell, that comes free with the class.
Is it to strong?
Any person who looks at palie and classes as something that requires balance and isnt in hate/love argument will say that its to strong.
I mean i dont need to argue that +2 enchantment crit multi crit range and w isnt to strong.
Palie will be quite ok and still good even after nerf.
They should not be top dps and top survival.
Top survival with good dps yes.

rage is free to barbs and only increases at certain levels. you can also spend low tier AP boosting the duration, number of rages and boosting damage. FOTW also has a bunch of abilities that increase damage only while raged.

Holy Sword should be a powerful spell for Paladins, but how much investment is there to boost it more in the trees? how much more can Holy Sword in general be boosted?

[Takllin]

rage is free to barbs and only increases at certain levels. you can also spend low tier AP boosting the duration, number of rages and boosting damage. FOTW also has a bunch of abilities that increase damage only while raged.

Holy Sword should be a powerful spell for Paladins, but how much investment is there to boost it more in the trees? how much more can Holy Sword in general be boosted?

+3 attack, +3 intimidate, +3 will saves, 1d12 damage per hit.

-5 AC, -10% Fortification.

[Monkey-Boy]

you have no clue who I run with.

Apparently they aren't good enough to build good paladins, and considering that's slightly harder of a task than tying your shoes how good could they be?

[Cetus]

Its on the same level as saying a cleave with 1W is worth a comparison. Consideration is much better... the differences matter but its not a "huge advantage".

Huh?

This is an example of what Im saying. Huge advantage? Compared to what? Is rage a huge advantage for barbarian dps because it offers 8 str and permits frenzy? You just make a blanket statement, no context, no backup. Oh okay, smites are a huge advantage, its fact now. Obviously Im using hyperbole here, but as Ive said: context is everything. This post has none.

To say that something is advantageous isn't a relative statement. To say that something is **more advantageous** is a relative statement.

Letting exalted smite cycle into your twitch would be a huge advantage for paladins. Now, they can cycle in a +2 multiplier/threat attack with a paladin level based bonus to damage that can doublestrike.

To say it is a huge advantage simply means that paladins become better front line melee than they previously were. Are you that butthurt about these semantics? Geez

Okay so its not "free feats". Its that on a specific race comparing two specific enhancement trees you can leverage 2 feats into a large increase in survivability... one that you feel outweighs the dps LOSS of basically taking LD off the table. That is a WHOLE LOT different than just saying "kotc > fb, free feats". You can see that right? That theyre two entirely different ways of saying something? Its not even a dps advantage, just a "better" build. Why is this even in a dps comparison conversation then?

You just don't read. I didn't lay LD off the table, I run in LD permanently right now. I just happen to have had the tree set before TR'ing into pally and momentum swing still works despite my lack of a cleave FEAT, but having the cleave ENHANCEMENT. I have LD for crying out loud.

They are free feats. Yes they are leveraged well on a particular race. But, guess what? Tough stuff. This combination exists, and barbs have to have a combination that competes with that - otherwise changing them is useless. So, pally's get the feat potential to make a sick BF combo. Barbs don't. Pally > Barb no matter how you slice this. Give barbs some synergy with, I don't know, halforcs. And we'll have some interesting stuff.

So, barbarians dont do enough dps because a paladin will outlive them and keep dpsing when they are dead? I totally agree barbs have a survivability issue. Feel free to read my posts in all 3 barb threads,

No thanks, I think I've read plenty.

Im not shy about that. But choosing 1 class out of the other 12 to single out, then compare barbs to, then use that one comparison as a justification for doing anything.... that doesnt really make sense.

What else would you compare barbarians DPS to, if not the highest DPS class in the game right now? Again, a total refusal to invoke any of your critical faculties.

Instead, what you are saying is "barbarians need to do more dps, enough more dps to shorten fights such that the lack of survivability becomes less of a liability". That has nothing to do with paladin, and everything to do with barbarians vs environment balance. Why are you even bringing paladin up?

Man you almost had it. You bring paladin up in order to compare their performance in endgame with that of the new barb changes. Since you know, paladins are the most powerful mix of offense and defense in the game right now, as far as I see it.

Lol. So you think nerfing paladins is a solution? A boring and unfun one, but one that would solve your issues?

Nope. I said I don't want pally's nerfed. Again, and again, and again, and again. But you just keep sticking your fingers in your waxy ears and yell "LALALALALALALA".

I don't want pally's nerfed.

So its not "barbarians need to do more dps, enough more dps to shorten fights such that the lack of survivability becomes less of a liability"... it really is "barbarians should be better than paladin, at dps, by enough dps that you dont need paladin survivability, so that theres no reason to use paladin, because more dps".

Huh. Those that like the survivability could play pally. Those that like to tear apart mobs can play barb. Right now pally does both and barb does neither.

Glad we could clear that up. You need to stop worrying about how good you look standing next to someone else and start actually looking at balance. Actual, overall, relative balance. Not "A vs B in a vacuum" balance. Not "only on bladeforged" balance. And if you dont, you need to at least put "kotc > fb... on bladeforged... in overall sense". See, theres that context. Context, you needs it.

I always look good. Have you seen my armor skin lately?

Kinda done posting on this,

thank you!

[SilkofDrasnia]

Ah cmon, i love almost all classes in ddo /beside bard, been bard hater since 2009 and im happy they are ok now, maybe a bit to strong/, just to get this out of the way.
I loved palie for a long time and the lack of dps really killed any real reason for me to play it.
I loved my pyrene life for the sufficiency part but hated the dps part.
Now i do agree the old palies needed a dps boost.
But what we got is way to much.
Noone, not a single person can argue with me that holy sword on its own is not overpowered and beyond rationality strong.
ITs just 1 spell that on its own can handle comparison vs any other class.

ITs like this, you compare holy sword vs 42 ap spent into berserker tree, and holy sword can still pull ahead.
Its 1 spell, that comes free with the class.
Is it to strong?
Any person who looks at palie and classes as something that requires balance and isnt in hate/love argument will say that its to strong.
I mean i dont need to argue that +2 enchantment crit multi crit range and w isnt to strong.
Palie will be quite ok and still good even after nerf.
They should not be top dps and top survival.

No I remember I played pally for a long long time and my guildies always loved to take the "manure" out of me and ask when I would play a "real" class other than my kotc pally. I remember I used to think aww they are not top dog but they are not that bad since I used to run epics every night when I was off timer but then one day as me and another were waiting for the pug to fill up (yes I used to love to pug epics when my down under guildies were not around) some guy joined and started talking with the other guy in party with me.

Paraphrasing but went something like this,

New guy, "why do I never get accepted in groups when on my pally"...other guy, "because pallies suck and we want dps". New guy, "why do you have Cal in party then? He's a pure pally.", other guy, " because he is know in "epic circles" and here on khyber there are like 3 pallies worth adding to a group that can play them and not be a waste of space." New guy, "Oh... :/"

I remember this quite clearly because it was like the first time I realized how much pallies were looked down upon even though I had been playing them for so long as well as being the first underhanded compliment as a paladin.

The problem is most classes now have more than adequate self healing which is a outright nerf to what made pallies unique so I no longer agree with the reasoning that pallies shouldn't have competitive dps because self healing yada yada.

Want to fix the problem make Holy Sword a level 20 pally only thing, seems to me it is only such a problem because they have made multi classing so strong.

[Qhualor]

Apparently they aren't good enough to build goof paladins, and considering that's slightly harder of a task than tying your shoes how good could they be?

I never said there weren't any good paladins. I said I haven't seen any of these uber paladins that people on the forums claim to exist. I don't doubt there are some top notch paladins out there, but im seeing Swashbucklers out dps any paladin ive seen and I group with a wide variety of players. look up Cetus video of him soloing EE Vol. I said in that thread my past life paladin was doing dps 1 tier down from his.

[Cetus]

I never said there weren't any good paladins. I said I haven't seen any of these uber paladins that people on the forums claim to exist. I don't doubt there are some top notch paladins out there, but im seeing Swashbucklers out dps any paladin ive seen and I group with a wide variety of players. look up Cetus video of him soloing EE Vol. I said in that thread my past life paladin was doing dps 1 tier down from his.

But..but...did you see the NEW one?

=D

[Blackheartox]

No I remember I played pally for a long long time and my guildies always loved to take the "manure" out of me and ask when I would play a "real" class other than my kotc pally. I remember I used to think aww they are not top dog but they are not that bad since I used to run epics every night when I was off timer but then one day as me and another were waiting for the pug to fill up (yes I used to love to pug epics when my down under guildies were not around) some guy joined and started talking with the other guy in party with me.

Paraphrasing but went something like this,

New guy, "why do I never get accepted in groups when on my pally"...other guy, "because pallies suck and we want dps". New guy, "why do you have Cal in party then? He's a pure pally.", other guy, " because he is know in "epic circles" and here on khyber there are like 3 pallies worth adding to a group that can play them and not be a waste of space." New guy, "Oh... :/"

I remember this quite clearly because it was like the first time I realized how much pallies were looked down upon even though I had been playing them for so long as well as being the first underhanded compliment as a paladin.

The problem is most classes now have more than adequate self healing which is a outright nerf to what made pallies unique so I no longer agree with the reasoning that pallies shouldn't have competitive dps because self healing yada yada.

Want to fix the problem make Holy Sword a level 20 pally only thing, seems to me it is only such a problem because they have made multi classing so strong.

As i remember a dual kopesh palie was quite ok back then.
BUt issues is how to get to thos 2 kopeshes or 2 epic chaosblades.
You really needed to do it in a different life or in a guild.
My former guildmaster pre motu pre lob, had a fully geared barb /back then that was epic claw emari esos litany 3 set ab knost and shintao, a fully geared cleric /dont remember that gear never played cleric then, a full geared sorc and a full geared palie.
He hated his palie.
He said, when i swap from barb to palie i feel like a mosquito.

I mean, those times were really bad for palie and esp when you went ac route where a pure fighter could get more ac as well.
Palie was bad, and only fun things you could back then do with them was for example solar phoenix and some odd ranger 2 weapon fight splashing.
But currently it went from super weak to super sturdy saves selfheal and dps.
Palie is not a survial master, or a jack off all trades master of none.
Palie is master of dps survival and saves.
ITs a master of a bit to many thing in my honest opinion.

Barb should outdps palie in any case, and in any scenario beside the one where barb is dead and palie is alive.
And that should be counted into dps as well, ammount of effective dps you can dish out before you are dead.

[Blackheartox]

+3 attack, +3 intimidate, +3 will saves, 1d12 damage per hit.

-5 AC, -10% Fortification.

All which are also available to palie if you swap out of stance use rage or primal then back to stance

/in case someone would want to run in fury or twist those minimal dps things in

[SilkofDrasnia]

As i remember a dual kopesh palie was quite ok back then.
BUt issues is how to get to thos 2 kopeshes or 2 epic chaosblades.
You really needed to do it in a different life or in a guild.
My former guildmaster pre motu pre lob, had a fully geared barb /back then that was epic claw emari esos litany 3 set ab knost and shintao, a fully geared cleric /dont remember that gear never played cleric then, a full geared sorc and a full geared palie.
He hated his palie.
He said, when i swap from barb to palie i feel like a mosquito.

I mean, those times were really bad for palie and esp when you went ac route where a pure fighter could get more ac as well.
Palie was bad, and only fun things you could back then do with them was for example solar phoenix and some odd ranger 2 weapon fight splashing.
But currently it went from super weak to super sturdy saves selfheal and dps.
Palie is not a survial master, or a jack off all trades master of none.
Palie is master of dps survival and saves.
ITs a master of a bit to many thing in my honest opinion.

Barb should outdps palie in any case, and in any scenario beside the one where barb is dead and palie is alive.
And that should be counted into dps as well, ammount of effective dps you can dish out before you are dead.

Yes I was a twf khops kotc using 2x lits and yes I had a litany and marichain and eclaw and shintao set and tharnes goggles and 300sp booties. Point is was bad times for pallie but the reasoning was high survibility, when groups went kaput I tended to be the last man standing and sometimes I could pull a save out my arse sometimes I couldn't.

Since the rise of self healing the role of pallies needed to change and we need to drop this but they self heal bla bla reasoning. Other classes like barb need to change too and not by nerfing pallies but by making them better to reflect this rise of self healing, they need this change the same way bards needed it.

Sure barb need to out dps pallies, and I think some of the penalties they get when raging should be dropped and other crit oriented dps should be increased, that last line of amount of dps before you die well...

My thought is this, same situation pally walks in kills but takes a little longer than a barb but can survive it because better survivability and can make a few more mistakes cause "survivability" and that is okay becuase his dps is not as high as a barbs.

Barb walks in same situation kills things faster but needs to because can't survive as long as pally and can't make as many mistakes because not as much survivability BUT that's okay because he has higher dps when he is hitting.

[BDog77]

Bdog. 1/5 of their current hp? You should look at what eh health is---since its higher than that---and you're calling it boring, lol

I did not pull this number out of thin air, this is what running in the old Master's Blitz essentially did to MOBs HP, made them 1/5 of what they were (or toons did 5 times more damage, same difference), since it could be "always on".

Since running in full time, all out Master's Blitz was the only way to make EE doable in a reasonable amount of time for a melee, I'm just asking for them to drop the MOBs HP if they are going to nerf melee DPS, especially since we can now NOT run with the old Master's Blitz running all the time. Simple.

I am not at all worried about EH since all toons could complete them in a reasonable amount of time, with or without the old Masters Blitz.

[davmuzl]

this right here is what always worries me with game changes. there are players like Cetus and than there are players like me and than there are players like Jimmy. its good to look at changes and how it will impact the min/maxxers, but there are a lot more players like me than there are players like Cetus. than theres a lot of players like Jimmy that will ask in game or right here if someone will be kind enough to direct them to a barb build because they like to smash things and people will link Cetus. they will either invest the time, energy and money into getting a build just like Cetus or they will quickly re-roll by level 10. just some food for thought as changes impact those below the min/maxxers a lot more.

apologies to Cetus.

Why does it always have to be either min-max or flavor?
In the end the characters that I enjoy the most and the only characters I ever invested resources into were those who had both. I rolled a few bladeforged but only one of them made it to lvl 28 and I still don't really like playing him and he still doesn't have very good gear. At the same time I have my barbarian which I really like because of the idea of playing a "ranger with an anger problem", but playing him can be very frustrating (1.I can't play him as reckless as I would like to 2.Melees are often enough kited around by their own party members 3. Barbarians right now just don't have the top DPS I would like them to have). And it is very hard to imrpove my barbarians gear.
But that's what the balancing should do- making sure that every classes and races have situations they shine in and situations where they have to step back and let someone else shine.

[Sublimemind]

gimp pallys again.. leave tornadoes in the game.. just like turbine

I think once Paladin loses an extra +1[W] and runs out of Smites the Barbarian will pull ahead both because of the extra cleave abilities and because they will be ahead by 10 Melee Power.

The best solution, however, is DPS checks and dungeon runs on Lamannia to compare the top builds.

Sev~

[Qhualor]

Why does it always have to be either min-max or flavor?
In the end the characters that I enjoy the most and the only characters I ever invested resources into were those who had both. I rolled a few bladeforged but only one of them made it to lvl 28 and I still don't really like playing him and he still doesn't have very good gear. At the same time I have my barbarian which I really like because of the idea of playing a "ranger with an anger problem", but playing him can be very frustrating (1.I can't play him as reckless as I would like to 2.Melees are often enough kited around by their own party members 3. Barbarians right now just don't have the top DPS I would like them to have). And it is very hard to imrpove my barbarians gear.
But that's what the balancing should do- making sure that every classes and races have situations they shine in and situations where they have to step back and let someone else shine.

it doesn't have to be either/or. all of my characters are classes that I want to play for the flavor, but I crave power and strive to be a better player than I am. I don't min/max my builds at the sacrifice of flavor and im not a lemming. I take my flavor builds and make them work better despite what the forums say is weak.

[BDog77]

Going to have to strongly disagree here. Paladin got a lot, most of which has been overshadowed by Holy Sword

Um, ok, I put up a list of what KoTC Paladins got (all of which were either nerfed or broken on release).

Please, enlighten me. What did they get that wasn't nerfed or broken?

[Munkenmo]

The amount of DPS barb just gained PALES in comparison to the sheer amount of DPS pallies gain by virtue of their nearly unkillable state. Barbs will be splattered across the floor most of the time in comparison, and ***MY POINT** is that they need huge DPS boosts to compensate for their crappy self sufficiency.

By huge I mean - 30-50% better than pally, all of this talk is about whether or not they are better - which already shows something wrong.

The discussion should be by how much are they better, not if they are better at all to begin with. They need much more DPS than they currently have - because nerfing pally to oblivion is a boring and unfun solution.

I'm astounded the devs don't understand this.

[SilkofDrasnia]

You act like I didn't play one before this enhancement pass. I played one since cap was 20, all the way through EE GH, and dropped it once Centered Kensai became a thing, on my quest to get completionist and then epic completionist. I went back to it before the enhancement pass, played it after the enhancement pass.

If being competitive is better than every other melee, then sure, I agree

There is also an aspect of game balance and power creep here.

Per the second comment, I agree with that poster, and I don't consider Paladin to be a waste of a party slot.

I played them when cap was 20 too lol.

1. there is power creep we all need to live with it, devs have decided to make all classes strong and be able to self heal decently with "recent" changes
2. because of point 1 how classes play and are balanced needs to change, case example bards.
3. Pally is no longer a waste of slot now I agree lets keep it that way.
4. If other classes need balancing because of recent changes do not undo the recent changes rather fix those other classes.


5. and I said this in an earlier post if pally supposed OPness is due to holy sword make two versions of it, the nerfed version you get access to at 14 levels of pally and the unnerfed version you get with 20 levels of pally. Why? Cause I would bet the claims of OPness are due to multiclassing.

[Scrabbler]

The best solution, however, is DPS checks and dungeon runs on Lamannia to compare the top builds.

Um, no. That's weak scientific procedure... trying to prove a negative. With a small number of self-selected non-objective participants. In a multivariate experiment. Without nearly a full range of inputs.