Barbarian - Ravager Changes

[Thar]

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~

Garbage... 20% isn't consistent enough to be reliable. If it's not a contant then you can't depend on it, and it's like masters blitz. luck of the draw.

[Tesrali]

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

Sev~

Right O,

Guildies and I have been havin long discussions about Barbarian vs Paladin dps and we all agree that Paladins will be ahead. We're really hopeful that either holy sword will be nerfed or barbarian given better criticals. From a balance perspective, barbarians should have the best dps in the game, or at the very least be ahead of paladins.

Grail did some awesome number crunching in a thread I think I linked elsewhere,
... https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...vs-Paladin-DPS

The update will create some really interesting toons, and am definitely looking forward to it. Thanks for giving it the attention and detail needed.

- love, tes

[MeliCat]

Temporary hp from a barbarian rage are very different from item effects. They are larger and you can heal up to that hp level again. So they were a totally different system. They were part of the point of rage. I don't think I'm following why that comment was made :/

[Tesrali]

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.

Signed. Awesome response.

[axel15810]

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~

Sev, you can't base such an essential ability on a low proc chance. The unreliability in itself is a HUGE weakness. Barbs will sometimes get 5 procs in a row, but will sometimes go 20 hits without a single proc and die because of it. This is the problem with masters blitz currently. Players hate it. It's a much better design to do away with the variance. If you want to go down this route I'd strongly recommend this instead -

Blood Strength: (2 AP) Each time you land a hit you are healed for a number of points equal to (0.2*your total Barbarian level). Each time you kill an opponent you are healed for a number of points equal to your total barbarian level. This healing scales with 100% Melee Power.

This will give the same amount of healing overall as your proposal, but do away with all the unreliability. It will be just as easy to adjust as the percentage you proposed since you can make the per hit healing multiplier slightly higher or lower until you hit the right balance.

And as a general thought on this ability, a per hit healing mechanic is going to have a lot of the same problems the old masters blitz did. Barbs in the party are going to be furstrated at times when they can't get their heals because all the ranged/caster characters are killing most of the monsters before the barb can get his hits in to heal himself. It's an anti-party mechanic that discourages grouping and encourages soloing - because when soloing a barb can get all the hits. This is a major downfall of a per hit design, please consider it carefully.

[Qhualor]

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.

hmmm... didn't consider self damage would scale with melee power. as it is now on Live, the self damage is plenty enough. if it could stay as is than I would still want to keep the flavor. if not, than I guess it depends on how much self damage it would be. I would assume that Accelerated Metabolism would negate the self damage though. either way, I still don't like self damage absorbed by barb DR. it just doesn't make any sense.

[maddong]

hmmm... didn't consider self damage would scale with melee power. as it is now on Live, the self damage is plenty enough. if it could stay as is than I would still want to keep the flavor. if not, than I guess it depends on how much self damage it would be. I would assume that Accelerated Metabolism would negate the self damage though. either way, I still don't like self damage absorbed by barb DR. it just doesn't make any sense.

The self damage is nothing if you are using blood rage.

[GWolfe]

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.

+1. Well said.

[Zurrander]

Signed. Awesome response.

Signed Again. All but one of my toons are healers (or backup healers). I only started my Main (Pally-Backup Healer) because healing alone doesn't get you very far in a game where everyone is a self healer. If barbs started bringing enough DPS (the only thing they have) to the table to justify me throwing heals every 10s instead of killing the mobs myself i would gladly heal them.

[DagazUlf]

But, we cannot let barbarian be the "king of dps" because they have never been the king of damage. Their place at the top must be carefully constrained so that it occurs in specific situations (when raging) and comes with sufficient risk (too little defenses and self healing) that players struggle to decide which character class to play because the choices are evenly matched after all the pros and cons are considered.

This is very, very accurate and I'm not seeing how these changes actually affect the core of what a barbarian should be. Everything I'm seeing with these enhancements is just far away from Barbarian and off in some kind of DDO-dreamland. Frankly, I find it disgusting to see this kind of crud bandied about on a class that is dear to many folks. This is just turning it into some kind of weird MMO character that is NOT a barbarian.

[Scrabbler]

hmmm... didn't consider self damage would scale with melee power.

They should not make Vicious self-damage scale with meleepower, anymore than the spellpoint cost of Wall of Fire scales with spellpower.

[Qhualor]

The self damage is nothing if you are using blood rage.

you mean Blood Tribute? that's if you are taking less damage overall from mobs. in EE, you wont be. the temporary hp will disappear pretty quickly and you have to wait for the timer to be over. that means also keeping 3 buttons constantly active and keeping watch for the timer every minute before starting your dps. basically, unless you have a healer on you, a FB will always have Accelerated Metabolism going to help slow the damage down.

edit: forgot about the 3 second cooldown. in that case, it would be a constant button to mash.

[btolson]

~ 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.

An idea for reworking DR into something usable:

• Dynamically scale DR by the dungeon scaling percentage, to make it impossible to break easier difficulties (because DR gets reduced by the same % as incoming damage)
  
  • Make this effect obvious in the character sheet (e.g. if I am in EN and dungeon scaling is set to 20%, then my 10 DR/- would be displayed as " 2/- (10/- before scaling) "
• Have DR take effect after PRR, so that even after heavy scaling it can still be useful

This will give you the room you need to make DR function in a useful fashion, and allow barbarians to once again have a useful class feature (hint: an increase to the DR they can acquire is necessary).

[maddong]

I updated my previous suggestion to read

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.

Based on the idea in the other thread.

[CaptainSpacePony]

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.
Sev~

Soooo If I build for DPS I can go barb and have a "slight edge in AoE"... That comes with:
-Heal amp and HP in the cores
-Medium armor prof
-AC penalties
-Inability to use many activated items/spells etc as a key feature of the class
-More skill points!
-Faster base run speed---wait, nvm, paladin can get that too... because that's what heavy armor's all about
-Nonstacking DR
-Ability to multiclass w/bard

Or I could go get "comparable" DPS from a paladin but forego the "slight edge in AoE" but what will I get in return for losing that slight edge?
-Best saves in the game
-Heavy armor prof (and the PRR that comes with it)
-Reliable burst healing
-Disease immunity
-Fear immunity
-A small selection of spells
-Bonuss PRR
-Ability to multiclass w/monk
-Access to bladeforged without a stack of expensive LR hearts and an alignment change

Yep! That sure looks fair!
/end sarcasm

Perhaps it is apparent why so many of us are not satisfied with you're going with this. Many of us Firmly believe you are starting with a faulty assumption that barbs are cool because they have stat drain, or can't use clickies for fun and profit. Barbarians are cool in DDO because they smash. Shade's classic post of how to play a barbarian captured the essence of it perfectly. (Sorry I can't find the link since it was pre-our wonderful new forums).

Emphasizing these other "neat things" about barbs is fine, but not at the expense of their core competency.

I feel like you're trying to design a car around the seats and steering wheel.

Ok, I know I said I was probably done commenting, but I'm strongly in the Cetus camp on this one. Nothing else matters for barbarians until you get the DPS right.

[CaptainSpacePony]

I updated my previous suggestion to read

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.

Based on the idea in the other thread.

Kind of interesting but completely invalidates extended rage enhancements and dampens extra rages.

[FlaviusMaximus]

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 feel this goes too far in the direction of discouraging multi-classing.

I thought the original Blood Strength proposal was great because the core abilities contained all of the healing amp, which gave players a difficult decision to make; forego healing amp, which greatly changes the effectiveness of Blood Strength, or go deep into Barbarian and sacrifice splash or multiclass options. I also think vampirism is a lot more fun than sporadic healing.

With the healing amp built into the Barbarian cores, healing abilities are already dependent on how many Barbarian levels are taken. Making Blood Strength even more dependent on the number of Barbarian levels just discourages multiclassing.

The Vanguard trees were pretty extreme when it came to discouraging multiclassing because they put all the attack speed in the cores and stacked it with double strike at the cap. I personally wouldn't consider making a Vanguard with less than 18 or 20 levels in a single class (honestly I probably wouldn't even consider doing it with less than 20 levels in a single class), which is fine, because multiclassing has been the rage for a bit and the pendulum needed to swing back in the other direction some. Not every tree needs to work like Vanguard, however. Those who favor playing single class characters should have their voices heard, but not so much so that every new or altered tree is one where all of the power of the class is put in the cores, especially the high cores, or where all of the Tier 5 abilities become overly dependent on the core abilities.

[sollor]

~ 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.


Sev~

Make an effect like if you take x or more damage you gain y dr for that damage.
{Flavor taxes: you have become beater at taking heavy hit and can batter deal with them.}

(key x = 100< and Y = 10)
So lite say you take 150 damage from an atk so with this you take 140 instead,
Or you take 90 damage from an atk so with this you still take 90 .
This can also be a def ageist crt low lvl to and it is easy to scale to.

[CrackedIce]

I feel this goes too far in the direction of discouraging multi-classing.

I thought the original Blood Strength proposal was great because the core abilities contained all of the healing amp, which gave players a difficult decision to make; forego healing amp, which greatly changes the effectiveness of Blood Strength, or go deep into Barbarian and sacrifice splash or multiclass options. I also think vampirism is a lot more fun than sporadic healing.

With the healing amp built into the Barbarian cores, their healing abilities are already dependent on how many Barbarian levels they take. Making it even more dependent on them just discourages multiclassing.

Not every tree needs to work like Vanguard, however. Those who favor playing single class characters should have their voices heard, but not so much so that every new or altered tree is one where all of the power of the class is put in the cores, especially the high cores, or all of the Tier 5 abilities become overly dependent on the core abilities.

Agreed

[Scrabbler]

Suggestion:
Change the Ravager core3 so the 1d6 damage increases to 2d4, 3d4, 4d4 at Barb levels 6, 12, and 18. But limit the damage to living enemies only. Then for the core12 version, Pain Touch works on unliving things too, you have +2 Stun / Sunder DC, and are immune to pain.


Explanation:
I was playing a Wizard just now, and I noticed that in the level 3 EK core I could get 1d6 per-hit damage that automatically increased to 4d4 as I leveled, without needing to spend anymore points in EK. It seemed silly that a directly comparable Barbarian core enhancement was so much weaker than a Wizard thing.