Barbarian - Ravager Changes

[Severlin]

Greetings,

Here are the proposed changes for the Barbarian's Ravager tree. The Ravager has been updated to focus on blood rage, and as such the tree gives blood related abilities including the top ability to heal as the Ravager attacks foes. We've also moved some of the bonus damage to be bane since there was no clear explanation or understanding of what creatures were affected by alignment based damage.


(If you see "---" that means text was removed; likely a penalty or condition.)


Core abilities

Furious Rage: (1 AP, Level 1) When you are raging and miss your attack by rolling 1, you gain Fury for 6 seconds. Fury: +1 Rage bonus to attack and damage. This effect stacks up to 6 times and one stack fades every 6 seconds.

Pain Touch: (1 AP, Level 3) Your melee attacks deal 1d6 extra damage. --- This damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: You gain +10 healing amplification.

Demoralizing Success: (1 AP, Level 6) When you score a vorpal hit in melee, you inflict Crushing Despair on nearby enemies for 30 seconds on a failed DC 20 Will saving throw. You then inflict Vulnerable Will for 15 seconds, regardless of the Crushing Despair saving throw. Passive: You gain +30 hit points and +10 healing amplification.

Pain Touch: (1 AP, Level 12) Upgrades Pain Touch so your melee attacks deal 2d6 extra damage. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power. Passive: You gain +60 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

Subsiding Fury: (1 AP, Level 18) When you use Barbarian Rage, you gain 3 stacks of Fury. Passive: You gain +100 hit points and +20 healing amplification.

Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize all enemies around you, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.


Tier One

Ritual Scarring: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Intimidate, Haggle and Physical Resistance.

Hate: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +(1/2/3)[W] damage and generate extra threat. (Cooldown: 15 seconds)

Do You Like Pain?: (1/1/1 AP) When you are hit: [20/40/60]% chance attacker loses 10 AC.

Barbarian Power Attack: (1/1/1 AP, Requires Power Attack) Your Power Attack feat does 1/2/3 additional point of bonus damage ---.

Hardy Rage: (1/1/1 AP) +[1/2/3] Constitution when raging.


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

Fear me!: (2 AP, Requires: Ritual Scarring) When you intimidate, affected enemies are Shaken for 6 seconds. DC 10 + Strength Modifier + Barbarian Level (Note that the DC is currently 13)

Mutilate: (1/1/1 AP, Requires Hate) Hate additionally deals 1d4/1d6/1d8 Charisma damage and 1d4/1d6/1d8 bane damage. The bane damage scales with 200% Melee Power.

I Like Pain: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Do You Like Pain?) When you are hit: Small chance to gain 50/100/150 Temporary HP. The gain scales with 100% melee power.

Cruel Cut: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals 1d6/2d6/3d6 extra constitution damage as long as you damage your target. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Action Boost: Melee Power: (1/1/1 AP) Activate this ability to receive a +[10/20/30] Action Boost bonus to Melee Power for 20 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)


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

Aura of Fear: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Fear Me!) Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to Strength and Charisma.
~ Rank 2: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to Strength, Charisma, Dexterity and Wisdom.
~ Rank 3: Nearby enemies receive a -2 penalty to all ability scores.

Slaughter: (1/1/1 AP) Melee Attack: Deals +(5/7.5/10)[W] damage. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)

Festering Wound: (1/1/1 AP Requires: Cruel Cut) Cruel Cut additionally inflicts 1/2/3 5-seconds stacks of 1d6 Poison damage every 2 seconds and the target loses -50% healing amplification for 5/10/15 seconds. This poison damage scales with 200% Melee Power. Damage stacks fade one at a time.

Constitution/Strength: (2 AP) +1 Constitution or Strength


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

Laughter: (2 AP, Requires: Slaughter) For many Ravagers, there's no Laughter without Slaughter.
When Slaughter damages an enemy, you gain 3 Fury. When Slaughter scores a critical hit on an enemy, you gain an additional 3 Fury and 10 Melee Power for 15 seconds.

I Hit Back!: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Like Pain) When you are hit: 20% chance to deal 2d8/4d8/6d8 bane damage to attacker. This damage scales with 100% Melee Power.

Dismember: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: Festering Wound) Cruel Cut increases Melee Power by 5 for 10 seconds. Cruel Cut additionalyl slows enemy movement speed, or slows attack speed, or deals 2d4/2d6/2d8 bane damage, or deals 6d4/6d6/6d8 bane damage. This bane damage scales with 200% Melee Power.

Constitution/Strength: (2 AP) +1 Constitution or Strength


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.

Bully: (1/1/1 AP, Requires: I Hit back!) You deal +[5/10/15]% damage to helpless enemies.
Requires: I Hit back!

Critical Fury: (2 AP) While raging, each hit also grants 1 stack of Fury.

Critical Rage: (2/2 AP) Increases your critical threat range by 1/2 when raging.


(Note that Critical Rage no longer requires the Cruel Cut line.)


~Sev

[btolson]

...This damage triggers at most once per second....

Can you explain why limitations like this are used?

[Zurrander]

Please, don't put heals in the Barb Trees... Switch them out to temporary Hit points (So that we can keep the feel of a Barbarian). You could even increase the timer for Temp HP by a min or two.

[Grosbeak07]

Please, don't put heals in the Barb Trees... Switch them out to temporary spell points (So that we can keep the feel of a Barbarian)

What?

This is not pen and paper, the game has long ago left that station. Without heals, Barbarians are a dead class in this game. Temporary Spell points? What about when raging?

[btolson]

Critical Rage: (2 AP) Increases your critical threat range by 1/2 when raging.

Can't tell if this was supposed to change in some way or not. You only have a single cost listed (2 instead of 2/2) but the threat range still states a 1/2 bonus.

[silisav]

Are the core abilities cumulative? Hit points for example.

[Zurrander]

What?

This is not pen and paper, the game has long ago left that station. Without heals, Barbarians are a dead class in this game. Temporary Spell points? What about when raging?

I meant Temporary Hit Points (not spell points)... barbs are one of the few none healing Classes in the game (along with Fighters/Rogues/and fleshy arcanes "excluding pale masters") and that's one of the things that makes them special. I'm not saying they should be left without any way to survive, just that they shouldn't be a "Self Healing" class. If these new sources of healing were made into Temp HP instead the only loss would be the lack of boost form healing amp, and for that you could just make Temp HP scale higher with Melee Power. Its not as though Giving them stacking Temp HP instead of Heals (on a refreshing timer) would make them any weaker than Heals, it would simply let them stay "Barbarians".

[edrein]

Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize an enemy, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.

~Sev

Can we please see the rage cost removed? Or atleast make the ability an AoE effect like the old Wail of the Banshee, otherwise this capstone is still kind of a waste.

[ddorimble]

Visage of Terror seems like a very bad capstone. I don't think there are enough rages available to use that more than a couple times per shrine (you have 10 maybe?), and no good way to get them to recharge that I know of. DC doesn't seem like it would get into a usable range anyways. It seems extremely sad compared to the somewhat similar Coup de Grace, particularly since it is a capstone.

[Scrabbler]

Furious Rage: (1 AP, Level 1) When you are raging and miss your attack by rolling 1, you gain Fury for 6 seconds. Fury: +1 Rage bonus to attack and damage. This effect stacks up to 6 times and one stack fades every 6 seconds.

For the record, that stack size of 6 had always been there, just not in the description.

[brzytki]

I'm against giving barbs HAMP at each core (except for 1) in every tree. If you are a pure barb, you get 100 Hamp from one tree, then you can get additional 60 more from two other trees. That's huge. If you couple it with some Hamp gear, your barb can easily get over 200 Hamp. Then adding something like Blood Strenght, you get healed for 1d4 when you hit an enemy and 1d20 for a kill, which even scales with MP, means they'll be easily one of the most self-sufficient classes. Not to mention all those Temp HP you can get for being hit and so on. That just seems wrong.

[Monkey-Boy]

I'm against giving barbs HAMP at each core (except for 1) in every tree. If you are a pure barb, you get 100 Hamp from one tree, then you can get additional 60 more from two other trees. That's huge. If you couple it with some Hamp gear, your barb can easily get over 200 Hamp. Then adding something like Blood Strenght, you get healed for 1d4 when you hit an enemy and 1d20 for a kill, which even scales with MP, means they'll be easily one of the most self-sufficient classes. That just seems wrong.

have no fear, rogue is next on their list.

Has somebody crunched the number on this? How feasible would it be to stay alive on a capped barbarian with CSW pots?

[Scrabbler]

Visage of Terror: (1 AP, Level 20) Terrorize an enemy, killing them with fear if they fail a Will save vs 10 + Constitution modifier + half barbarian level. Enemies who make their saving throw are briefly paralyzed with fear instead. (Cost 1 Rage. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Passive: You gain +4 Constitution, +150 hit points and +40 healing amplification.

1. It is kinda boring that the passives for Ravager capstone are the same as Frenzied Berserker. I suggest giving something else instead of heal amp, and changing the +4 con to +2 str +2 con +4 cha.

2. Last time I tried, the paralyze part of Ravager capstone didn't work. (Although I haven't been pure Barb in a long while)

3. Rages are important; running out of Rages is really bad. It's not often a good idea to spend 1 Rage for a chance to kill/stun a non-boss enemy. But it's a fun concept that a Ravager can sometimes scare an enemy to death just by yelling at him! Therefore, I suggest changing Visage of Terror to have 0 rage cost, 60 second cooldown, extremely fast casting time, and two saving throws (Fort+Will like Phantasmal Killer).

4. It would be natural that someone who knows how to scare enemies to death would have Fear Immunity himself. Maybe also Pain Immunity.

[Rautis]

Fear me!: (2 AP, Requires: Ritual Scarring) When you intimidate, affected enemies are Shaken for 6 seconds. DC 10 + Strength Modifier + Barbarian Level (Note that the DC is currently 13)

Before enhancement pass the shaken effect was applied to all(non immune) foes you succeeded to intimidate. It would be simple and nice if it worked that way instead of two different checks.

(Note that Critical Rage no longer requires the Cruel Cut line.)

This is very nice considering how current epic mechanics reduce value of stat damage attacks.

Critical Fury: (2 AP) While raging, each hit also grants 1 stack of Fury.

Max stack of 6 fury seems kind of low with things like this. It was possible to reach it with just the tier 1 Furious Rage. I could see either cores or higher level enhancements increasing the cap. +1 damage and to hit per stack from level 1 core without cap would definately overperform but +6 damage in epic play is not that big deal considering how much enhancement points you can spend on abilities that increase your fury gain. Ofcourse, this tier 5 makes reaching the max stack trivial no matter what it is. Mechanic would probably be more interesting to play with if it wasn't so easy to cap but could go higher I think. It shouldn't be incredibly hard either but now it's done with just 1 critically hit Slaughter or 6 hits while raging with Critical Fury.


The tree improvements make Ravager much more dangerous. I'm interested in trying Ravager just for the Blood Strength which seems to be strongest of the tier 5 self heal abilities at first glance.

[Scrabbler]

[COLOR=#ff0000]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.

I really think this auto passive self-healing goes overboard when combined with the large Barbarian healing amp.

In fact, I suspect that the Barbarian healing amp goes overboard on its own, and that this feature here would be overboard even if there was no heal amp in the trees. Even if it didn't scale with melee power, gaining 2.5 hp per swing is extremely strong!

I mean, even though Barbs don't have as many speed boosts as some classes, I commonly hit 3+ times per second. That would be 460 hp per minute, before heal amp.

[Monkey-Boy]

I mean, even though Barbs don't have as many speed boosts as some classes, I commonly hit 3+ times per second. That would be 460 hp per minute, before heal amp.

Interesting.

Can somebody who believes in math tell me what Cacoon's average is?

[Shadow2024]

In the cores, you add MRR. I think it should be PRR instead and keep Occult Slayer being the anti-magic barbarian =)

Just a suggestion

[Scrabbler]

Critical Fury: (2 AP) While raging, each hit also grants 1 stack of Fury.

I presume that this Critical Fury text is an error, and it means to say each critical hit grants 1 Fury.

But it doesn't really matter either way: once you gain this Critical Fury feature, you will essentially have a permanent passive +6 hit/damage, except for the very beginning of every fight. Even a Barbarian with low swing speed will average 2+ criticals per 6 seconds, so you'll quickly hit the cap and stay there.

In fact, even under the current system a high speed Barb build (like TWF Helf or multiclass Ranger) can expect natural 1s at more than once per 6 seconds, so they also peg out at the cap. One clear problem is that because Ravager barbs stay at the Fury cap easily, other enhancements that boost your Fury (Laughter and Subsiding Fury) are pretty meaningless.


Let's step back and talk about Ravager Fury: Ravager Fury is a bad design because a character's Fury level will be strongly attracted to either 0 or 6, with hardly anyone in between. That is to say, if your attack rate is normal (and you don't have Critical Fury yet) then you'll go more than 6 seconds between natural 1s, so your Fury count will usually be 0 or 1, rarely increasing to 2 if you had a string of bad luck. But if your attack rate is high, then you tend to get at least one nat1 per 6 seconds, so your Fury increases to 6 after a short time fighting and then stays there.

Instead of that uninteresting and less-fun situation, it should work so that players' Fury will usually be between the limits, not attracted to the very top or the very bottom. For example, the duration of Fury could be less the more you have. Start with a 9 second duration, then each additional stack lasts 1 less second. In addition, effects like Laughter could add Fury above the cap (with a minimum of 1 sec duration)

[Scrabbler]

Can somebody who believes in math tell me what Cacoon's average is?

Can someone tell me what level you get Cocoon, and whether it locks out other sources of healing?

[PsychoBlonde]

Pain Touch is lame. Once per second? WHY?! It's not multiplied by crits, let them HAVE their DAMAGE.

Crushing Despair is still weaksauce. Oooo on a vorpal attack, IF they fail an INSANELY low saving throw--I can inflict the equivalent of what a Favored Soul gets just by STANDING NEAR YOU.

The active effect on Visage of Terror is weak. Who cares about MAYBE killing or paralyzing ONE enemy? Make it an AOE despair type of effect like the druid wolf spell Howl of Terror or something like that. Make it a 20-30 second cooldown MAX. MUCH better. Make it use Intimidate skill instead of con modifier--this would maybe get it up to "decent" territory with, oh, say, BARD abilities.

---

For tier one abilities:

Nobody cares if your enemies lose some AC. Make them lose something useful like fortification or saving throws. Also, specify with Barbarian Power attack that this extra 1/2/3 is DOUBLED with a two-hander.

---

Tier two abilities:

Shaken for 6 seconds on an intimidate? Bleh. And shouldn't the DC be equal to your intimidate skill, especially since you have to USE intimidate to kick this off?

Force damage is a bad idea. You couldn't just make it "bane" damage? Also the Cha damage on mutilate is pointless--by the time the 15 second cooldown is over, most enemies will have regenerated it. It's not like reducing enemy charisma actually DOES anything to them unless you can actually get it so low that they go helpless.

I like pain--how small is "small". Give us a number not a vague description.

Extra con damage as long as you damage your target? What does that mean? Does this stop the first time you roll a 1 and miss? It should be more like "places a mark up on the target so that for the next 15 seconds, every melee attack you make against them deals an additional 1d6/2d6/3d6 constitution damage".

---
Tier three:
-2 to all ability scores is, AT BEST, a -1 to a few rolls. Make it more pertinent to what a barbarian wants to do, make it a penalty to Balance checks, Fort Saves, Will Saves, and attacks. And have it go -2/-3-/-4.

Cooldown on slaughter is too long unless you make it a cleave attack. 10[w] sounds like a lot, but it's not, particularly since you're not putting stuff with base weapon damage like [2d12] in the game any more.

Festering Wound is goofy. 1d6 poison damage? I don't care if it stacks with 3000% melee power, top end TRASH MOBS in this game have FIFTEEN THOUSAND HP. And healing amp on mobs is a non-factor in the game. Make them completely IMMUNE to ALL healing (neg energy, repair, positive energy) and you might have something. Although this might break ogre mage mobs because I'm not sure how their vanish-and-regen act is coded. Really, barbarians don't need extra silly dribbles of side damage. They need a solid CORE.

--

Tier Four abilities

Laughter seems okay.

I hit back--guards tend to be kind of lame. Should be bane damage. Also make sure this is a TOGGLE because barbarians have enough trouble controlling their DPS and there ARE times in this game when you want to NOT kill things.

Dismember seems okay.
--

Tier five abilities

Is that Blood Strength healing positive energy or repair or what?

Bully is cool. Don't like tying it to a guard though, esp. since you guys aren't great about making guards into toggles that can be turned off.

--

It seems like later abilities should increase max stacks on Fury. 6 seconds per stack just seems low to me.