Barbarian - Occult Slayer Changes

[Severlin]

Greetings,

Here are the proposed changes for the Barbarian's Occult Slayer tree for Update 24. The Occult Slayer is designed to mitigate magical damage while at the same time shutting down and eliminating foes that use magic against you. We've made the weapon bond easier to use; stacks are no longer removed when you switch weapons and they build much faster since the 1 second cooldown was removed. This faster stack building allows the Occult Slayer to spend these charges to heal or make big attacks.





Core abilities


Bonded Weapons: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 1). You build a psychic bond with your weapons. You strengthen this bond by damaging enemies with attacks. Each attack adds 1 to your weapon bond, up to a maximum of 200. Dying resets your weapon bond. Activate: Exhaust 1 Weapon Bond: Gain a +5 Insight bonus to Attack for 12 seconds. (Cooldown: 2 minutes)


Note: Changing weapons no longer resets your weapon bond.

Resistance: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 3) +1 to all saving throws. Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. You gain +10 hit points and +10 healing amplification.


Elemental Defense: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 6) When enemy spells deal elemental damage to you, there's a 25% chance you'll gain 25 temporary hit points for 30 seconds. This gain scales with 100% Melee Power. This can trigger up to once every 12 seconds. (Elemental Damage includes Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire, Sonic.) Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. Passive: You gain +30 hit points and +10 healing amplification.


Blank Thoughts: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 12) You gain the Slippery Mind feat and improve your barbarian damage reduction. Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. Passive: You gain +5 Magical Resistance Rating, +60 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

Force Ward: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 18) You gain immunity to magic missiles and +5% Competence bonus to entirely avoid incoming Force damage. Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. Passive: You gain +5 Magical Resistance Rating, +100 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

Mind Over Magic: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 20) You gain a bonus to your Spell Resistance equal to your Constitution score. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution. You gain +10 Magical Resistance Rating, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.




Tier One


Extend Rage: (1/1/1 AP) Your barbarian rage lasts [25/50/75]% longer.

Ear Smash: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +0.5/+1/+1.5[W] damage. Damaged enemies can't cast spells for 2/4/6 seconds. (Cooldown: 12 seconds)

Parrying Bond: (1/1/1 AP) If Weapon Bond is 10+: +[2/4/6] Competence bonus to AC and +[1/2/3] to Magical Resistance Rating.

Uncanny Dodger: (1/1/1 AP) You gain +[1/2/3]% Dodge.

Awareness: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Listen, Search and Spot. Rank 3: +1 Reflex Saving Throw



Tier Two (Requires Barbarian Level 2, 5 APs spent in tree)


Willpower Rage: (1/1/1 AP) You gain +[1/2/3] to Will saving throws while raged.

Knockout: (1 AP) Ear Smash puts enemies to sleep for 6/12/18 seconds. On Vorpal, enemies are stunned instead.

Guarding Bond: (1/1/1 AP) If weapon bond is 60+: Gain +4 Physical and Magical Resistance Rating. Rank 2: If weapon bond is 120+: Ratings increase to +8. Rank 3: If weapon bond is 180+: Ratings increase to +12.

Lessons of Travel: (1/1/1 AP) +[2/4/6] energy resistance against Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire and Sonic damage.

Antimagic Boost: (1/1/1 AP) Action Boost: +[2/4/6] Action Boost bonus to saving throws vs. magic (Cooldown: 30 seconds)



Tier Three (Requires Barbarian Level 3, 10 APs spent in tree)


Oath of Retribution: (2 AP) (Removed bond requirement) While you are below 50% health you gain +1 critical damage multiplier on attack rolls of 19-20.

Lessons of Nature: (1/1/1 AP) You gain +[2/4/6] to save vs. both disease and poison. Rank 3: You don't fail disease or poison saving throws on a roll of 1.

Arcane Encumbrance: (1/1/1 AP) When enemies damage you with spells, there's a [10/20/30]% chance they'll be knocked down. (Does not affect bosses.)

Kinetic Bond: (1/1/1 AP) If weapon bond is 20+: Your attacks deal 1d20 force damage that scales with 200% Melee Power. This damage can trigger up to once every 3/2/1 seconds.

Constitution/Wisdom: (2 AP) Multi-selector: +1 Constitution or +1 Wisdom



Tier Four (Requires Barbarian Level 4, 20 APs spent in tree)

Hated Enemies: (2 AP) Expend 30 weapon bond to gain 10 Melee Power for 10 seconds.

Viscious Strike: Melee Attack: Deals +1/+2/+3[W] damage and inflicts Feedback on the enemy for 6/12/18 seconds. (Cooldown: 12 seconds) Feedback - On Spellcast: Caster suffers 6-60 force damage. This damage is increased by the target's Spell Power.

Constitution/Wisdom: (2 AP) Multi-selector: +1 Constitution or +1 Wisdom



Tier Five (Requires Barbarian Level 5, Character Level 12, 30 APs spent in tree)


Oath of Destruction: (2 AP) Your Oath of Retribution doesn't have a health requirement.

Vampiric Bond: (1 AP) If weapon bond is 150+: Your weapon provides you 20 temporary hit points when you damage an enemy. These temporary hit points scale with 200% Melee Power. This can trigger at most once every 12/9/6 seconds.

Metalline Bond: (1 AP) Your equipped weapon gains the Metalline property. It bypasses Adamantine, Alchemical Silver, Byeshk, Cold Iron and Mithral damage reduction.

Ancestral Bond: (1/1/1 AP) Expend all stacks of weapon bond. For each stack expended you are healed for 2 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power. Cooldown: 60/20/10 seconds. Passive: +10/+20/+30 HP and +4/+8/+12 Magical Resistance Rating.

Seeker's Strike: (1 AP, 3 Ranks) (Active) Expend 50 stacks of weapon bond: Make a melee weapon attack for +1/3/5 (W) damage. This attack has a +1 critical threat range and a +1 critical multiplier. Cooldown: 5/4/3 seconds.


Sev~

[kmankowski]

I'm thinking I can't wait until my next barbarian life. I enjoyed my first time through barbarian, but the next one looks like a lot of fun.

Might want to rename this one:

Bond of Retribution: (2 AP) (Removed bond requirement) While you are below 50% health you gain +1 critical damage multiplier on attack rolls of 19-20.

[Severlin]

I'm thinking I can't wait until my next barbarian life. I enjoyed my first time through barbarian, but the next one looks like a lot of fun.

Might want to rename this one:

Bond of Retribution: (2 AP) (Removed bond requirement) While you are below 50% health you gain +1 critical damage multiplier on attack rolls of 19-20.

Good call. I'll change the OP.

Sev~

[ValariusK]

So Occult slayer barbarian as cleric's best friend? +100% (actually more because of the multiplicative nature of healing amp) HA at 20th level?

[kmankowski]

So Occult slayer barbarian as cleric's best friend? +100% (actually more because of the multiplicative nature of healing amp) HA at 20th level?

I'm guessing he is wording it in the new way healing amp will work (not going to find the post), but it is possibly being change to work more like PRR.

[Uska]

So Occult slayer barbarian as cleric's best friend? +100% (actually more because of the multiplicative nature of healing amp) HA at 20th level?

Healing amp wont be multiplicative any more it will be additive

[painkiller3]

i like, particularly the spending of weapon bond, the non-clearing of weapon bond when you switch weapons (like say to UMD a scroll or grab a shuriken to hit a target) and particularly the panic heal of ancestral bond. i think thiis just made my dwarven occult slayer more powerful

[Zurrander]

Oath of Destruction is going to make this a hard tree to pass up. But the Healing still bothers me... Please consider making it Temp HP....

[ArcaneArcher52689]

Core abilities


Bonded Weapons: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 1). You build a psychic bond with your weapons. You strengthen this bond by damaging enemies with attacks. Each attack adds 1 to your weapon bond, up to a maximum of 200. Dying resets your weapon bond. Activate: Exhaust 1 Weapon Bond: Gain a +5 Insight bonus to Attack for 12 seconds. (Cooldown: 2 minutes)


Note: Changing weapons no longer resets your weapon bond.

Resistance: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 3) +1 to all saving throws. Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. You gain +10 hit points and +10 healing amplification.


Elemental Defense: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 6) When enemy spells deal elemental damage to you, there's a 25% chance you'll gain 25 temporary hit points for 30 seconds. This gain scales with 100% Melee Power. This can trigger up to once every 12 seconds. (Elemental Damage includes Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire, Sonic.) Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. Passive: You gain +30 hit points and +10 healing amplification.


Blank Thoughts: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 12) You gain the Slippery Mind feat and improve your barbarian damage reduction. Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. Passive: You gain +5 Magical Resistance Rating, +60 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

Force Ward: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 18) You gain immunity to magic missiles and +5% Competence bonus to entirely avoid incoming Force damage. Improve your barbarian damage reduction by +1. Passive: You gain +5 Magical Resistance Rating, +100 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

Mind Over Magic: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 20) You gain a bonus to your Spell Resistance equal to your Constitution score. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution. You gain +10 Magical Resistance Rating, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.

So, my first question here is are these bonuses cumulative or do the larger bonuses replace the smaller bonuses? Because otherwise a 20 Barbarian gets 350 health(which seems like a bit much), 100 Heal Amp(in new system, equivalent of 200%), and 20 MRR. 20 MRR is fine, if a bit low for an occult slayer. They are the anti-magic tree. 100 Healing amp seems high. A paladin only gets 60 heal amp in the new system. So, this seems like a problem to me. And 350 health is a LOT of health. One other thing, now that there is a way to expend weapon bond, can we increase the cap past 200?

Tier One


Extend Rage: (1/1/1 AP) Your barbarian rage lasts [25/50/75]% longer.

Ear Smash: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +0.5/+1/+1.5[W] damage. Damaged enemies can't cast spells for 2/4/6 seconds. (Cooldown: 12 seconds)

Parrying Bond: (1/1/1 AP) If Weapon Bond is 10+: +[2/4/6] Competence bonus to AC and +[1/2/3] to Magical Resistance Rating.

Uncanny Dodger: (1/1/1 AP) You gain +[1/2/3]% Dodge.

Awareness: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Listen, Search and Spot. Rank 3: +1 Reflex Saving Throw

Glad to see more MRR. These all seem fine.

Tier Two (Requires Barbarian Level 2, 5 APs spent in tree)


Willpower Rage: (1/1/1 AP) You gain +[1/2/3] to Will saving throws while raged.

Knockout: (1 AP) Ear Smash puts enemies to sleep for 6/12/18 seconds. On Vorpal, enemies are stunned instead.

Guarding Bond: (1/1/1 AP) If weapon bond is 60+: Gain +4 Physical and Magical Resistance Rating. Rank 2: If weapon bond is 120+: Ratings increase to +8. Rank 3: If weapon bond is 180+: Ratings increase to +12.

Lessons of Travel: (1/1/1 AP) +[2/4/6] energy resistance against Acid, Cold, Electric, Fire and Sonic damage.

Antimagic Boost: (1/1/1 AP) Action Boost: +[2/4/6] Action Boost bonus to saving throws vs. magic (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

More PRR/MRR-good. Lessons of travel is better at 1AP/rank, but still not likely to be taken

Tier Three (Requires Barbarian Level 3, 10 APs spent in tree)


Oath of Retribution: (2 AP) (Removed bond requirement) While you are below 50% health you gain +1 critical damage multiplier on attack rolls of 19-20.

Lessons of Nature: (1/1/1 AP) You gain +[2/4/6] to save vs. both disease and poison. Rank 3: You don't fail disease or poison saving throws on a roll of 1.

Arcane Encumbrance: (1/1/1 AP) When enemies damage you with spells, there's a [10/20/30]% chance they'll be knocked down. (Does not affect bosses.)

Kinetic Bond: (1/1/1 AP) If weapon bond is 20+: Your attacks deal 1d20 force damage that scales with 200% Melee Power. This damage can trigger up to once every 3/2/1 seconds.

Constitution/Wisdom: (2 AP) Multi-selector: +1 Constitution or +1 Wisdom

Wisdom as an attribute seems odd to me, but whatever floats your boat. Rest of this seems fine.

Tier Four (Requires Barbarian Level 4, 20 APs spent in tree)

Hated Enemies: (2 AP) Expend 30 weapon bond to gain 10 Melee Power for 10 seconds.

Viscious Strike: Melee Attack: Deals +1/+2/+3[W] damage and inflicts Feedback on the enemy for 6/12/18 seconds. (Cooldown: 12 seconds) Feedback - On Spellcast: Caster suffers 6-60 force damage. This damage is increased by the target's Spell Power.

Constitution/Wisdom: (2 AP) Multi-selector: +1 Constitution or +1 Wisdom

30 bond=10MP, seems good.
Other than that, there's just a lot of unused space at t4

Tier Five (Requires Barbarian Level 5, Character Level 12, 30 APs spent in tree)


Oath of Destruction: (2 AP) Your Oath of Retribution doesn't have a health requirement.

Vampiric Bond: (1 AP) If weapon bond is 150+: Your weapon provides you 20 temporary hit points when you damage an enemy. These temporary hit points scale with 200% Melee Power. This can trigger at most once every 12/9/6 seconds.

Metalline Bond: (1 AP) Your equipped weapon gains the Metalline property. It bypasses Adamantine, Alchemical Silver, Byeshk, Cold Iron and Mithral damage reduction.

Toughness: +10/+20/+30 HP and +4/+8/+12 Magical Resistance Rating.

Ancestral Bond: (2 AP) Expend all stacks of weapon bond. For each stack expended you are healed for 2 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power. Cooldown: 10 seconds.

Slayer Bond: (1 AP, 3 Ranks) Expend 50 stacks of weapon bond: Make a melee weapon attack for +1/3/5 (W) damage. This attack has a +1 critical threat range and a +1 critical multiplier. Cooldown: 3 seconds.


Sev~

toughness-seems great. 30HP, 12MRR
Ancestral bond- barbarian heal. I'm happy. Expect it to heal around 800 on average(40 MP, 200HA)
Slayer bond? name seems odd, since you're reducing your bond. As i said earlier, this may need reduced cost or an increase in maximum bond.

[Kawai]

im rating barb changes 2 woots out of 2

[Shadow2024]

This seem like good changes. Was already my favorite tree from barb buts its even kooler!

One question, how do you plan to fit 6 tiers 5 in the tree (usually 5 columns)?

I hope the bounds grow fast enough to allow to use skill AND be able to heal enough =)
Good job!

[LeoLionxxx]

One question, how do you plan to fit 6 tiers 5 in the tree (usually 5 columns)?

Good job!

Hm. good catch. Perhaps the toughness up there should be either moved down a row, or cut.

[bbqzor]

Here are the proposed changes for the Barbarian's Occult Slayer tree for Update 24. The Occult Slayer is designed to mitigate magical damage while at the same time shutting down and eliminating foes that use magic against you. We've made the weapon bond easier to use; stacks are no longer removed when you switch weapons and they build much faster since the 1 second cooldown was removed. This faster stack building allows the Occult Slayer to spend these charges to heal or make big attacks.

Good to read. Unlike the FB tree this actually sounds like the right direction.

Core abilities

Nothing but good changes here. I would say something Ive said before which is, 2 min cd on the 12s +5 insight attack is kind of excessively long. Id go 1 minute for 10s. Like a mini attack action boost with double the cooldown and half the duration. Once every 2 mins is just too rare, imo.

Also, changing weapon bond to not strip on weapon swap: Thank You! Huge QoL change 4tw.

Tier One

Change to Ear Smash cost is great, it was always pretty expensive. Change to 3 MRR over 6 PRR... probably fine. Would probably make more sense to drop the AC and do 6 PRR and 3 MRR both, as most barbs wont have any kind of AC so to speak. But fair change, given the tree focus.

Tier Two (Requires Barbarian Level 2, 5 APs spent in tree)

More good changes. Making Lessons of Travel affordable, adding MRR to guarding bond (no red text?), and increasing the saves boost to compare to other saves boosts, all wise decisions. Nice.

Tier Three (Requires Barbarian Level 3, 10 APs spent in tree)

Hat trick, three tiers of good changes. Taking the bond requirement off Oath so it stops bugging is great. Adding 200% melee power to Kinetic Bond (again no red text?) is nice, not sure its enough to make it matter but its nice (even at 100 melee power, it will do 3d20 or ~15 dmg/s, pretty low in barbarian land really).

Tier Four (Requires Barbarian Level 4, 20 APs spent in tree)

Hated Enemies is fantastic to see! Finally a great barbarian themed ability which works with class mechanics. +1 Internets on that one. 10s is a bit short, but this doesnt list a cd. Will we be able to like "cache in" say 90 bond to run this for 30s continuously? Or is it one of those forced 30s cd kinds of things? If we can burn a stock of bond to run a short stint of buff (without a poor animation eating half the duration up) that would be pretty neat indeed. If it has some long forced cd, that definitely takes some shine away... as the avg boost comes out to be really small then. Barbarians work best burning bright when needed, so I hope its the former. Consistent dps over time is a job for other classes, barbs are about pressure where and when you need it, in short bursts. (at least, imo, from both pnp and ddo).

Tier Five (Requires Barbarian Level 5, Character Level 12, 30 APs spent in tree)

Wow again! A T5 which reads like a T5. About time! The melee power to vampiric bonud (again, no red text?) is nice. That will hold up a bit better high end now. The additions to toughness for mrr make it actually belong this high up a tree. As for Ancestral and Slayer bond hm... Ancestral is *very* expensive in terms of opportunity cost. Even at full stacks and the "100 melee power" assumption this is roughly 800 hp (with the core 100 amp). Definitely nice, but high cost attached. Slayer bond is a bit more "playable" in the sense that you might press it somewhat regularly without temporarily disabling half your other enhancements, but it only affects one swing. Also, are they on a selector or something? Six T5 enhancements, and the window is only 5 wide?

......

Overall much better job here than FB. This takes the good that was there, pulls out the plethora of poor QoL issues, and amplifies the trees direction. Great job. THIS is something Id dust a barb off for. Not necessarily a huge power gain, but a huge fun gain, and infinitely more practically playable than the current version. What else is there to say. Other than some adjustments to the T5 (maybe drop the slayer cost to 20 or 30, or have slayer also proc Feedback or something), and other tidbits like changing the core to 10s/1m cd this looks great. Not much else to say. The issues got resolved, and what was added makes sense and is functionally useful. Cheers.

[Scrabbler]

Bonded Weapons: (1 AP, Barbarian Level 1). You build a psychic bond with your weapons. You strengthen this bond by damaging enemies with attacks. Each attack adds 1 to your weapon bond, up to a maximum of 200.

Has the internal cooldown on gaining Weapon Bond been removed? If I attack 190 times in 1 minute, will I have 190 Weapon Bond?

Activate: Exhaust 1 Weapon Bond: Gain a +5 Insight bonus to Attack for 12 seconds. (Cooldown: 2 minutes)

A 2 minute cooldown on getting a +5 attack bonus is silly and pointless. +5 attack is already low value to Barbarians, but having it on a 2 minute timer means it's a waste of space putting the icon on a bar.

[PsychoBlonde]

You might as well get rid of the spell resistance bonus on Mind over Magic entirely. There are vanishingly few circumstances in which that is going to do you any good.

[Severlin]

Fixed the tier 5 abilities.

Sev~

[Severlin]

Has the internal cooldown on gaining Weapon Bond been removed? If I attack 190 times in 1 minute, will I have 190 Weapon Bond?

Yes, the internal cooldown is gone.

Sev~

[Kawai]

Devvy Sevvy
when will the Ranged Pass come?
just curious as it was supposed to b next.

can wait, just wondering.

[Rautis]

I'll post this in Occult Slayer as this tree gains bonus Damage Reduction from its cores. I was hoping for atleast one of these trees to make barbarian Damage Reduction relevant again as it is a major part of Barb flavor in DnD. Ofcourse, it would require some huge boosts to numbers or changes to Damage Reduction Mechanics. Something like level 18 core doubling and capstone then tripling the amount would be required. Or making Barbarian Damage Reduction a special case that is subtracted from damage after PRR is applied. Or having it stack on top of any sort of damage reduction.

[nat_1]

Kinetic Bond: (1/1/1 AP) If weapon bond is 20+: Your attacks deal 1d20 force damage that scales with 200% Melee Power. This damage can trigger up to once every 3/2/1 seconds.

Get rid of the cooldown. It's out of place with KoTC and even older enhancements.

I don't have a polite way to say that dumping a bunch of hamp on barbs seems lazy to me. Sorry for being blunt but there it is.

Regarding all the changes to the trees:

Find a way to retain the risk/reward dynamic. Something that will let a barb build up a head of steam that will allow it to stand in a bunch of mobs and not die immediately as long as they're successfully doing what they should do best. That's mashing things into paste, by the way. Hamp overload and trickling heals on hits isn't the way. Stacking, building mitigation as long as you're killing stuff, stack size scaled with level so it isn't OP in Korthos and worthless in Stormhorns. Not temporary hp. Didn't you guys just put some newfangled damage mitigation mechanics in?