Barbarian - Ravager Changes

[Uska]

Have to think more on it, but we do need more abilities based on class levels and less on character levels. It cuts down on craving low hanging fruit and power creep.

yes

[Uska]

CSW allows Rangers to recover between fights and enter a fight fresh. If a Ravager ends a fight down on health they will have to find another way to recover or enter the next battle damaged.

Sev~

and that's going to keep the ranger up during the fight? super barb healing before /during or after a fight is wrong wrong wrong especially since they can get it without actually taking very many bar level min should be 12 or more.

[Qhualor]

~ Temp Hit Points don't work well with either healing potions, nor do they promote teamwork. - Sev

Self Healing doesn't promote teamwork either... and barbs are already being ignored by healers (as anything but a soul stone) in favor of kiting enemies through AOE's. Assuming that the Temp HP is done so that it adds to survivablity without making the barb immortal there should still be plenty of opportunities for them to catch a heal. If working better with Healing potions is the issue then why don't you add "Potion's are 10% more effective" to Wilderness Lore (Barb Exclusive), That way a level 20 barb would get 200% effectiveness out of his pots. But if you say Temp HP simply isn't a popular mechanic then i can't really argue, I just though that it could be an interesting change that's consistent with the classes flavor considering that barbs already use Temp HP. And something like a Temp HP overhaul could eventually trickle down to healers allowing them to put there currently useless Temp HP spells to work (and possible bring about the revival of the DDO healer). As of now, this game has far to many useless effect... On a happy note, I love your idea about using DR to cancel out self damage! (I hope that works out!!!!!)

I hate temporary hp only because it doesn't scale well in the game and in epics those temporary hp lasts for maybe 1-3 hits depending. temporary hp is definitely part of the flavor in PnP and I wouldn't have a problem with that in DDO, but it would have to proc a lot and for a high amount to be anywhere near beneficial. it would be one thing though if barbs had a better defense.

I do like your idea a lot about tying potion effectiveness to Wilderness Lore, but that would also include all classes with the same lore unless the devs were able to code it differently. increasing potion effectiveness has been brought up before by some of us, but its a tricky situation because you have to be careful not making it too powerful for other classes.

[Scrabbler]

CSW allows Rangers to recover between fights and enter a fight fresh.

That Ranger example was using some pretty expensive build choices to boost his CSW, and still got mediocre results. For any mostly-Barb character, the healing costs just 2 AP... they don't even get the option to not pump up heal amp!

If a Ravager ends a fight down on health they will have to find another way to recover or enter the next battle damaged.

That's why there should be a vendor selling Magic Bandages which can heal you outside combat at a rate of maybe 30 hp per plat. It would relieve the designers from having to give a self-healing feature to every single kind of character tree.

[btolson]

The only reason a 10% chance bothers people on Blitz is because it makes it likely the duration will run out before being refreshed (which is intentional). Since Blood Strength has no duration, lowering the percentage makes no important difference (aside from scaling your rate of healing)

While not explicitly a fixed duration, the time in which Blood Strength must proc in order to keep you alive can be expressed as your mean time before death in any encounter. If I know that I can only go toe-to-toe with enemy X for 20 seconds before I will be dead, then Blood Strength must proc in that time frame or be worthless. A reasonable amount of reliability is required if this is truly intended to make barbs consistently more survivable, or you will still ding every time rng decides to starve you.

[Qhualor]

The design goal is that DPS should be comparable if both are built for DPS. Frenzied Berserker would probably have a slight edge in AoE.

The design goal is also that Barbarian DR should eventually negate the damage for Vicious, but I would have to check if that's working based on player concerns about them.



If we haven't outlined changes things will work as they do on live. On the other hand, if live is bugged we will fix it.

Sev~

imo, FB should be the obvious best dps melee. if its just going to be comparable to a paladin than people will prefer to play paladin for easier and better self sufficiency. even if dps is slightly less, its not going to be an issue deciding which one to play.

I don't like that vicious damage would be negated by barb DR. that, to me, feels like a fix because people don't like playing a class that damages themselves for more dps. its taking the flavor away from the DDO class. there are 2 other barb trees to choose from or they can just choose not to Frenzy if they don't like the vicious damage. ill take the self damage and rather have barb DR work the way it should scaled properly to negate all damage.

did you see my post about not being able to use Primal Scream while raged and the inconsistencies with PS, Rage and Madstone?

[bbqzor]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.

There is nothing nice about 20% chances. It just creates room to get a bad string of numbers and have a poor reasoned death. Changing it to work on levels (in some format, not necessarily the one mentioned) is completely fine. Id prefer it to reward more barbarian rather than minimal barbarian splashing. But get rid of "chances". If you want to tune it better, just tune it better. The math isnt hard to crunch out, animation speeds are well known (by us, probably even better by you). Hp/sec coming in should be easy to parse against dps the mobs put out, you have all their stats too. Using "chances" is just a way for players to get frustrated over unlucky RNG occurrences; a problem frequently exacerbated by latency (creating imprecise displays of where you and mobs are to even generate those chances).

Hit Points (and appropriately scaled healing) works well in either case.

No, it does not. Their survival issue is time between needing heals. Scalar hp does not affect that situation. You have not logged enough hours playing barbarians to understand this maybe? If I have 1200 hp or 1600 hp, and 60% amp or 160% amp, thats all kind of the same thing. There is nothing slowing down how fast dps comes in to remove those hp. They are lost, frequently faster than any other class in the game. Thus they need constant healing from an outside source since they cannot cast while raging. Healing 1k or 2k hp per cast isnt a healer efficiency problem, the amp changes alone address this. And 400 extra hp isnt enough to meaningfully space out those constantly needed heals. It just doesnt address the problem. Whatever metric you are using NEEDS to be explained to us, so we can attempt to approach this topic by your standards. As it stands, you seem to continually ignore the playability side of the issue, instead focusing on perceived change this will cause on paper. It doesnt matter if a CLW tops the barb off, it matters if they need that CLW every 2s or every 20s or every 200s. See the difference?

PRR just homogenizes Barbarians with the Defender trees and we didn't want that.

No, by going with PRR you do the job DR was supposed to do in pnp (and did for awhile in ddo before mudflation caught up to it). No one is asking for 100s of PRR like tanks get. They want enough to parallel the feel of the advantage DR should be.

Temp Hit Points don't work well with either healing potions, nor do they promote teamwork. This solution will make it more likely that the barbarian would be ignored by other characters who, even if they tried to help out, would likely waste healing unless they happened to hit that small window where the barbarian was taking actual damage.

Hyperbole based on assumed values. If they got 2 temp hp per hit and the mobs hit for 100, it would do little to create "a small window where the barbarian was taking actual damage"... theyd take actual damage all the time. This situation depends ENTIRELY on the temp hp values used, and the frequency they proc. You know this.

when we've used temporary hit points in the past players have been generally unexcited and uninterested in that mechanic so we tend to avoid adding large systems that use it.

Well, look at the previous temp hp systems... they are all generally really rare procs. 1% chance for I like pain? Need to roll a 20 for Lifedrinker? 10% chance for 15 hp on Lifeshield? Notice a trend? If you put one in that was (random example) 50% chance for 50 hp, people would likely respond better. Again, this is rather self evident, not sure why we are having to elaborate here.

DR scales poorly and high values tend to either break content or become useless against big bosses. It's fine in small doses but we wouldn't want to increase it much.

Which is why everyone looks at barbarian DR and most everyone immediately sees the parallel to PRR and goes... why no prr.

Barbarians are often viewed as a Primal class rather than a Martial class and that's the direction we decided to go with the flavor of these changes. We hope this help Barbarians feel distinct from fighters.

This is fine, and some difference is good. I think realizing that all three Primal destinies offer PRR (fury/primal) or DR (shiradi) is also a clue. Thats as much in the wheelhouse as anything else. No reason that barbarian enhancements cant continue that trend. Maybe the PRR is a guard only when they get hit, similar to primal destiny or bladeforged. Maybe the temp hp is a large proc every 10s in the flavor of healing springs heals (but temp hp instead). Maybe healing spring DR can be made to stack with Barbarian DR, by adding a "if this is a barbarian the dr 2/cold iron becomes dr 2/- and stacks" line to it.

Giving barbs viable epic advancement for those class abilities is just as worthwhile as putting them in enhancement trees. If you cant do one, consider the other then. As it stands barbs hit 20 and kind of have nowhere to go, in terms of ability extension or progression. They cant even Primal Scream while raged... maybe that could be fixed. As it stands, rage, DR, etc all cap at 20 and then sit. No other class runs into that quite as hard (except perhaps artificers with rune arms kind of just stopping).

The design goal is also that Barbarian DR should eventually negate the damage for Vicious, but I would have to check if that's working based on player concerns about them. If we haven't outlined changes things will work as they do on live. On the other hand, if live is bugged we will fix it.

Wait, WHAT? This is NOT how live works. Not at all. If barb class based DR blocked Frenzy well, yes, that would go a LONG way towards fixing things. This was specfically NOT the intention when frenzy was added years ago, devs specifically wanted it to NOT get blocked by dr so that it wouldnt be avoidable. You are now saying the intention is a 180 degree change of face that we are just finding out about now???

Seriously, this last one is CRITICAL news if thats whats actually happening. Before you post anything further, please ensure you are not getting our hopes up for nothing. Because yea... big deal stuff here.

(Related, this is the kind of thing that shows up within oh I dont know 2 seconds of rolling one up and hitting something... so like did that not happen before designing this stuff? Or it did happen and the huge memo about "oh yea those 100s of damage you are taking wont be there" got lost and we forgot to tell you).

[Seikojin]

I believe the concessions so far have been good. I say we get a Lama build BVT'd and pushed for public test.

[Seikojin]

Wait . . . what? In EE this is no recovering during fights, you need that heal while the fight is going on.

Between fights is when not being damaged. Not when enemies are dead. Just ask Cetus.

[PermaBanned]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

I'll let the math peeps deal with over/under/appropriately powered, but wanted to say I like the concept of ability value determined by Barb class levels - more of this please!

[Munkenmo]

~ DR scales poorly and high values tend to either break content or become useless against big bosses. It's fine in small doses but we wouldn't want to increase it much.

That's largely because PRR is applied After DR. If you change the order of operations, DR will become much more relevant.

Currently its DR > PRR > Final Damage
Initial damage of 300 -15 points of DR = 285 damage, then - 40% from PRR = 171 points of damage taken.

IF the order of operations gswapped to PRR > DR > Final Damage
Initial damage of 300 - 40% from prr = 180 points of damage, - 15 points from DR = 165 damage taken.

Just by changing the order DR has been made a more effective mechanic with room for growth.

[Violith]

imo, FB should be the obvious best dps melee. if its just going to be comparable to a paladin than people will prefer to play paladin for easier and better self sufficiency. even if dps is slightly less, its not going to be an issue deciding which one to play.

I don't like that vicious damage would be negated by barb DR. that, to me, feels like a fix because people don't like playing a class that damages themselves for more dps. its taking the flavor away from the DDO class. there are 2 other barb trees to choose from or they can just choose not to Frenzy if they don't like the vicious damage. ill take the self damage and rather have barb DR work the way it should scaled properly to negate all damage.

did you see my post about not being able to use Primal Scream while raged and the inconsistencies with PS, Rage and Madstone?

to increases FB into the best dPS, making the frenzy and death frenzy vicious scale with melee power would work,

also, since vicious damage to self would probably also increase, by having only the barbarians innate DR negate the damage to self would help make a pure barb more viable.

[Mindos]

On the other hand if we implement a system based on specific design goals then changing passive bonuses that work the way we want them to just for the sake of being different can really hamper our ability to fix the game.

Sev~

two Questions:

1. Is the game broke? or...
2. Do you really not want the game to reproduce?

[Severlin]

Death Frenzy says it gives a +1 to Crit Multiplier on live it gives a +1 to Crit Multiplier on a 19-20. The description is ambiguous compared to other +1 Cirt Multipliers on 19-20. IMO either the description is bad and could use adjustment or the functionality is is bugged and should be fixed.

Can you address this specific case?

It is supposed to be 19-20. We can update the description.

Sev~

[Standal]

CSW allows Rangers to recover between fights and enter a fight fresh. If a Ravager ends a fight down on health they will have to find another way to recover or enter the next battle damaged.

Sev~

Please tell us that you just got in a hurry while posting this and that you aren't actually making decisions about the future of the game based on logic like this.

[Takllin]

It is supposed to be 19-20. We can update the description.

Sev~

Then why is Holy Sword +1 critical multiplier to all critical attacks? Where is the consistency? Do you know how much more DPS Holy Sword gives because of that?

Holy Sword is just stupidly over powered, and I honestly fail to understand the premise behind all the changes that were made to it.

Please, for the sake of balance, either make Death Frenzy and Earth Stance +1 critical multiplier to all critical attacks, or nerf Holy Sword to only give +1 critical multiplier to 19-20...

I am really starting to lose faith...

Paladin has always been my favorite class, but by making it this god mode, overpowered, new easy button class, you have almost killed the excitement and draw to the class for me. There is not much of a challenge anymore. It has the best DPS, Defense and Self Sufficiency. Leaps and bounds above everything else overall.

[axel15810]

The design goal is that DPS should be comparable if both are built for DPS.

Wait...what? I don't understand. How can barbs possibly be a class that is competitive with paladins if they only do comparable DPS? Could someone clarify for me? Shouldn't they do MORE DPS to make up for all the penalties they take?

Yeah the new barb trees offer some nice stuff like regen healing, HP and healing amp. But they also of course have the huge penalty of no casting ability, the inability to splash pally or monk, no heavy armor proficiency, ect.

Surely the goodies the barb class has doesn't come close to what pallies have: the best saves in game, inherent healing spells (ability to use bladeforged reconstruct SLA), useful buffs like deathward, ect.

If I'm building a melee why would I pick barb over pally? If both have comparable DPS, but pallies are way more survivable - how in the world are barbs a competitive class? I think we need to make barbs the undisputed best melee DPS in order to make the class worth playing....especially in Epic Elite where they'll be taking lots of damage and needing help from other characters.

If Barbs are going to require some outside healing help (unlike other melees), they need to do better DPS in order to make up for it. In other words, they need to be worth healing.

Let's consider a scenario where a group of 6 is running in epic elite. If the barb is doing the same DPS as the pally in the party - yet the favored soul is losing 50% of his DPS because he's having to stop and heal the barb constantly, then the barb is a drain on the party. However, if the barb is doing 150% the DPS of the pally it will roughly even out with the 50% loss of DPS by the favored soul.

And surely the inherent barb healing won't keep up with Epic Elite damage (if it did it would definitely be overpowered) - so barbs are going to need outside healing assistance in Epic Elite for sure. And as long as they need outside healing assistance they need to make up for the DPS lost by the character having to heal him.

So again, how will barbs be a competitive class if they only do "comparable" DPS to that of a survivable, self-sufficient paladin? I just don't see it - barbs need to have the best melee DPS in order for all the inherent self-sufficiency/survivability problems of barbarians to be worth putting up with. This goes for both the player and the party.

This is coming from someone who has played clerics almost exclusively in DDO for about 5 years. I have lots and lots of experience healing and enjoy serving as the party healer (and would love to heal barbs in future epic elite runs, I just want them to be worth healing is all).

I know you've stated that you don't want to go with the "glass cannon" approach because you don't think it fits how the game is played currently. I think based on the feedback you should reconsider. The reason it looks like players don't play the game that way is because there are no builds in DDO currently where it makes any sense not to fit in self-healing - there's little to nothing to gain in exchange for giving it up. If could gain top DPS in the game by sacrificing self-healing a lot of players would jump all over it - because melee players love seeing big numbers.

That's why teamwork in DDO has disintegrated. Barbs could finally give players a reason to give up self-healing. And in the process introduce a viable reason to use teamwork in a party again.

[brzytki]

It is supposed to be 19-20. We can update the description.

Sev~

Ah, the sound of crushed hopes and dreams...

[btolson]

We are looking at the Ravager healing ability Blood Strength and the concerns that players will splash 5 levels and have no reason to progress in barbarian levels. We are thinking about changing it to scale with Barbarian levels, but we'd have to modify it somewhat. Here's what we are thinking:

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit there is a 20% chance you are healed for a number of points equal to your Barbarian level. Each time you kill an opponent you are also healed for the same amount. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.


The nice thing about this is the 20% chance is a good way to balance the ability if it proves too strong or too weak. The previous incarnation wasn't granular enough to fine tune.


Thoughts?

Sev~

OK, I've got a new and possibly better idea.

Base the % chance off how pure a barb the character is. Fluffwise, the more primal/barbaric your nature, the easier it is for you to benefit from the strength in others' blood. Splashing other classes dilutes this ability.

Consider a base of 100% multiplied by your barb level, divided by your total class levels (heroic only, of course) to receive 1dX healing.

A level 5 character with all 5 barb levels has the full 100% chance.

A level 20 character with all 20 barb levels has the full 100% chance.

A level 10 character with 5 barb levels and 5 bard levels has a 100*5/10 = 50% chance.

A level 20 character with 5 barb levels and 15 paladin levels has a 100*5/20 = 25% chance.


This way, the amount you get healed can be whatever die is appropriate (1d4, 1d3, 1d2, whatever) for a full-fledged barb to get 100% of the time, while seriously hampering the benefit received by multiclasses.


It is a similar concept to sorc/fvs purity and bonus spell points, which everybody understands, right?

[maddong]

To improve barbs I would:
1. Give death frenzy the +1 crit on all rolls (18 barb)

2. Give all level 20 barbs a feat called endless rage that you click to activate rage without expending one. That way rage consuming powers are still limited.

3. Give all level 20 barbs Perfect Two Fisted Fighting - when thf you gain double str to dam; when dual wielding you gain full offhand str to dam (even if you don't choose a capstone)

4. The self healing abilities no longer scale with melee power

Without a change the current proposed ravager heal while dual wielding would average 20 x .2 x 4 hamp x 2 mp x 2.7 (assuming a slow 90 swings per minute x 1.8 attacks per swing) = 86.4 hp healed per second.... That number drops to 43 if you give up the mp scaling.