Barbarian - Ravager Changes

[Qhualor]

Some initial changes based on player feedback:

~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.

~ We are looking to change the force damage to bane damage.

Sev~

I don't have any issues with this.

[UurlockYgmeov]

So like my suggestion but a paralyze effect? I'd much rather see it work like an old Wail of the Banshee with a fear effect on the mobs that save.

I don't know about you - but I don't want to make the mob I am cleaving to death run away in fear making me run after them. :P

[Zurrander]

I can understand how you could feel a bit shortchanged by the Temp Hp mechanic theRolf... but if the devs make it scale properly and give you enough ways to keep refreshing it then it just becomes a matter of balancing the up keep. Similar to how a low level paladin can handle quest using "Divine Righteousness" & "Virtue" without ever having to heal (until they hit about level 10). That to me is the ideal way to play a barb (the way it was intended at the launch of the game). I freely admit that the numbers would have to be tweaked very specifically (so that it remains viable without protecting your permanent HP completely). But my point remains that allowing Barbs to use Temp HP instead of Positive energy Heals would be exactly as effective with the potential for some innovation. For example

1. Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you gain 10 temporary hit points (stacks up to ten times). Each time you kill an opponent you gain 50 temporary hit points (stacks up to 10 times). These Hit Points last 1min*barbarian level & scale with 200% Melee Power - "This would allow you to keep up a running 600 temp Hp (not counting Melee power) that would refresh every hit/kill...

2. I Like Pain: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Do You Like Pain?) When you are hit: Small chance to gain 100/150/200 Temporary HP. The gain scales with 200% melee power "make it hit 5% of the time or change it to a HP percentage...)

3. Blood Tribute: (1/1/1 AP) Gain +100/+150/+200 Temporary Health for one minute. This scales with 400% Melee Power. You have a stacking -1 penalty to constitution until you rest or die. (Cooldown: 3 seconds)

4. Accelerated Metabolism: (2 AP) While raging you no longer take damage from Frenzy/Death Frenzy/Storm’s Eye & you regenerate 1 constitution penalty every 180 seconds (even con damage form Blood Tribute)

Then just give Frenzied Berserker cores melee power instead of HP&Hamp, Give Reaver cores the +HP, and Occult Slayer cores the Hamp...

Change the numbers around however you deem necessary and you may just have yourself a viable Barb. Frenied Berserkers get the damage boost the barbs desperately need, Reavers get tons of temp HP, and Occult slayers get to keep the new Self Healing so that you have something for everyone!

[bbqzor]

Some initial changes based on player feedback:

~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.

~ We are looking to change the force damage to bane damage.

1) Maybe. Depends on how many targets affected, size of ae radius, animation delay, etc. Gathering a big group of mobs to use this, only to kill 2-3 while the rest beat on your for an animation to fire... totally different than gathering up a lot of guys and taking out 10 of them. Keep in mind it now competes against wail, circle of death, turn undead, and similar effects. With the same limitations as those effects (only mobs subject to pk, limit of 4 mobs) it stays weak, without them it turns into a spammable Daunting Presence. Have to play it on lama to see.

2) This is what the players said initially so good... might be helpful if you can tell us why you changed your views on it so quickly. Was it feedback we submitted in the right format, or did you look at it and realize it was necessary, or what? Curious what we as posters can learn to aid in "showing" our point of view in the future.

[PermaBanned]

~ We are looking to change the force damage to bane damage.

Excellent choice! We're making progress here!

~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.

This is - while cool sounding - just going to make it an even cooler ability that rarely gets used, because Barbarians who invest AP have 9 Rages, and some will need to be kept on-hand for actually being Raged. How often do all y'all actually anticipate this being used?

Songs regenerate.
Smites regenerate.
Turns regenerate.
Coup de Grace, Assassinate and Quivering Palm are unlimited uses with cooldowns.

Giving Barbs an istakill/CC effect that gobbles a finite resource is... *shakes head in bewilderment* ...I'm at a loss for words on how to describe this...

[ddorimble]

Giving Barbs an istakill/CC effect that gobbles a finite resource is... *shakes head in bewilderment* ...I'm at a loss for words on how to describe this...

...at level 20...

Level 20 abilities should be your first Epic power (congratulations on going pure class)...not a final Heroic ability that will never get any use.

[Cetus]

Fighters can splash into other sources of healing or use abilities like cocoon to grab some healing. Fighters also use heavy armor and have tanking trees that focus on PRR so they will be taking less damage. In others words, while the barbarians have big hit points and get a big effect from healing, fighters have more mitigation and aren't locked out of alternate healing sources.

Sev~

Barb can splash 1 fighter and get heavy armor proficiency. As it is, pure barb is worthless anyway.

[Severlin]

Giving Barbs an istakill/CC effect that gobbles a finite resource is... *shakes head in bewilderment* ...I'm at a loss for words on how to describe this...

One of our design goals is when an ability is already in game we don't like to change its basic functionality unless it's something trivial. Chances are some players like it, even for flavor, so we don't remove existing abilities or drastically change existing abilities if we can help it. We would instead improve them if needed without changing the basic functionality.

Sev~

[ddorimble]

One of our design goals is when an ability is already in game we don't like to change its basic functionality unless it's something trivial. Chances are some players like it, even for flavor, so we don't remove existing abilities or drastically change existing abilities if we can help it. We would instead improve them if needed without changing the basic functionality.

Would be interesting if you could run some reports on that or something. Of the few 20 Barbarians that I can imagine there are, it would be interesting to know their Capstone choice distribution.

[Severlin]

Barb can splash 1 fighter and get heavy armor proficiency. As it is, pure barb is worthless anyway.

We are looking at the capstones as we speak.

Sev~

[PermaBanned]

One of our design goals is when an ability is already in game we don't like to change its basic functionality unless it's something trivial. Chances are some players like it, even for flavor, so we don't remove existing abilities or drastically change existing abilities if we can help it. We would instead improve them if needed without changing the basic functionality.

Sev~

Well, moving the Regenerating Rages from the tree that isn't really likely to run out anyway to the one that can expend them on something besides Raging would be a great move - IMO ofc.

Edit: or at least drop it to an accessible tier/core...

[Severlin]

Well, moving the Regenerating Rages from the tree that already offers extra Rages (and isn't really likely to run out anyway...) to the one that can expend them on something besides Raging would be a great move - IMO ofc.

I see what you are saying about having the rage regeneration in the tree with extra rages.

I think coupling it with visage would be over powered. The visage not only has a chance to kill outright; it paralyzes with no save which then boosts the damage of all melee tremendously.

Sev~

[painkiller3]

...

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

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you are healed for 1d4 hit points. Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for 1d20 hit points. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

...

does healing amp and devotion affect this as well?

[PermaBanned]

I see what you are saying about having the rage regeneration in the tree with extra rages.

I think coupling it with visage would be over powered. The visage not only has a chance to kill outright; it paralyzes with no save which then boosts the damage of all melee tremendously.

Sev~

I agree that it should neither be spammable nor a "full quest tactic" of drag all the mobs you can, Visage/Cleave/kill/repeat.

How about making the Regenerating Rages a lvl 18 core (like Regenerating Bard Songs are) rather than a Capstone - thus making it accessible at a steep cost, and keep visage as a single target ability?

[Qhualor]

I see what you are saying about having the rage regeneration in the tree with extra rages.

I think coupling it with visage would be over powered. The visage not only has a chance to kill outright; it paralyzes with no save which then boosts the damage of all melee tremendously.

Sev~

adjust the cooldown if its too powerful.

edit: if you read the rest of what I said, disregard

[Nascoe]

I am not really invested in any build or way to go. But I must say that I agree with the ideas to make more of a difference between the trees than in the current proposal. Why not give one tree a lot of H-amp, another a decent amount of temporary HP (and maybe more PRR and MRR) and the third just better melee power to make it a DPS animal?

Currently you also have different flavour of boosting your rages seperated per tree, and its been noted by most that a barbarian is likely to take things from all 3 trees already because of that. So why not make us pick what flavour of HP/self healing/killing faster than you get killed is our preference?
Sure, by all accounts keep some of it in all trees (wouldn't want it gimp because of staying almost pure one tree), but giving choices is almost always more interesting than giving just the option to add more of the same by picking more cores.

[Scrabbler]

One of our design goals is when an ability is already in game we don't like to change its basic functionality unless it's something trivial. Chances are some players like it, even for flavor, so we don't remove existing abilities or drastically change existing abilities

That's an unfortunate rule, and only really defensible if your resources are low (which I guess they are). Just because some previous designer did something long ago doesn't automatically mean it's good to keep today... or that it was even good in the first place.

I mean, I don't suppose you saw the original design process of the Barbarian trees. I watched it... and there was almost no game design happening. No iteration, no tuning, almost nothing. It's undesirable to arbitrarily stick yourself to the old ways, regardless of the quality of the old stuff.

I think coupling it with visage would be over powered. The visage not only has a chance to kill outright; it paralyzes with no save which then boosts the damage of all melee tremendously.

Restricting the introduction of a Rage regen feature because of what it might do to Visage of Fear would be a priority inversion. The current plan for Visage is not important to keep just the same. You can simply fix Visage to its own resource, or its own long cooldown, or totally change Visage, or even delete it entirely. It's not as if any player has enjoyed Visage so far, so you wouldn't be taking anything away that they had before.

I'd like to keep a Visage of Fear feature just because it's the only famous Ravager feature from the D&D rules, but that's the only reason. Since spell-like instakill is so different from the usual Barbarian gameplay from level 1-19, it's safer to make it not the biggest feature of the capstone... give other good stuff instead.

~ To increase the value of the capstone we are looking at making Visage of Terror an AoE attack centered on the Barbarian. If the Paralyze isn't working we'll need to fix that.

Historical note: When Ravager was under initial development I explained to the devs that the capstone was excessively weak, and they told me it was really an AOE death effect, and that both the current behavior and description were mistakes / leftovers.

[Failedlegend]

~ We had a long discussion about whether we wanted to take the barbarian down the path of the "glass cannon" route and decided we didn't want an entire class that had no self sufficiency. We understand that some players expect a high damage glass cannon type design for barbarians but we don't feel that fits well with how DDO is currently played.

I have no issue with giving Barbs some self sufficiency but I'd like to see some of their abilities become passive instead of clickies with fighters getting less passives and more clickies so they have more varied play styles.

[Failedlegend]

So like my suggestion but a paralyze effect? I'd much rather see it work like an old Wail of the Banshee with a fear effect on the mobs that save.

Fear is actually a really annoying effect, paralyze is MUCH better.

[Tilomere]

U24 Solo Build - Ravager

Elf 6 Barb 9 Druid 5 Rogue

Feats would be PA (1) TWF (3) ITWF (6) > IC:B (9), Dragonmark (12) TWF#3 (15), Cleave (18), GCleave (21) >

Extend (24) > ED Feat PTWF > Haste or IC:B > Forced Escape/Tactician

Enhancements
Ravager critical Rage/Bully/20 HAMP/Bloodrage 39
FB Rage/Supreme Cleave/20 HAMP 14
OS Ear Smash/20 HAMP 11
Elf Dragonmark 11
4 ? (DPS variant takes DM here from cleric instead of rogue, and stunning blow instead of IC:B and uses impact weapon)

ED: LD
Twists Balanced Attacks/Sense Weakness

HAMP total: 40% HAMP EH Wall of Wood + 60% HAMP PDK Gloves + 60% enhancement + 20% Augment = 200%

Hits/second ~5

Melee Power ~100%

Total healing = 1d4 per hit x (1+ Melee Power) x 5 hits/sec x (1 +HAMP total) = 75/second from hits

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Side note for those worried about barb powered damage: (Balanced attacks + Ear Smash + Anvil of Thunder + Stunning Blow) x (150% base helpless + Bully + Combat brute+Sense Weakness) x (solid barb hits) x (solid druid attack speed) x (solid barb crit profile) x (solid total melee power) = large #.

I made an all purpose tanking/trapping/healing/dps build and not a max dps or exploit build to show general usage.
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75/second is enough to run any EE in the game on a armored/shielded/displaced character with multiple stuns. For tanking, that # could be doubled with twisting consecrate/sacred ground.

The healing numbers are actually a bit too low for any other ED (other than DC which has consecrate-sacred ground) and for barbs without shields facing elemental damage. I would make it 1d6, since druid in LD is the extreme case.


Cutting the healing by ~40% for THF, plus another ~40% due to being outside of LD, plus another 15% due to a lack of a Wall of Wood means THF barbs in say FoTW will heal for 35 per second, which is not going to be enough to stay alive even on a barb/elf/caster with extended displacement dragonmarks.

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It would normalize healing by limiting it to a flat amount once every ~.8 seconds equal to mob CR. I don't know if normalized healing is what you wanted though, or if you wanted to boost weaker TWF with more healing/procs and make it a more viable choice.