U24 - Ravager Update

[KookieKobold]

Post your feedback about the changes to the Ravager tree here!

[poltt48]

I actually do more damage spending all points in this tree then do on frenzied tree witch just stupid. Also why is everything con based? There is no choice for str or con anymore and all tacticals based on con. Makes half orc the worst barbs in game since they all str based. There only 1 ability in all 3 trees that gives you str now.

[mezzorco]

Also why is everything con based? Makes half orc the worst barbs in game since they all str based.

Half orcs will still have better average damage output thanks to more strength and damage focused enhancements, while dwarves/warforgeds will have an advantage on those abilities.

Going all STR for active abilities too will kill dwarven and warforged barbarians, in my opinion.

[maddong]

I think you have made Blood Strength pretty worthless with a 10% proc chance. Before it would at least top you off if you weren't at deaths door. Now it is super unreliable.

I am ok with Blood Strength doing less healing per hit than Occult Slayer gets since Ravager is more offensive.

How about every hit gives 2 base healing before healing amp/melee power but the proc chance is 4 * barbarian level.

So a 5 barbarian splash only gets a 20% proc chance but a 20 barbarian gets 80% of the healing that occult slayer gets.

I think that would be a lot more useful than the randomness that you are proposing.

But maybe I am underestimating the healing you get from every kill?

[Failedlegend]

Blood strength is cool but having it be "When you kill an enemy" instead of "When an enemy dies within 30ft" or something similar is going to cause ALOT of issues...nothing should ever rely on a specific characters getting "The last hit"

[Steelstar]

I think you have made Blood Strength pretty worthless with a 10% proc chance. Before it would at least top you off if you weren't at deaths door. Now it is super unreliable.

I am ok with Blood Strength doing less healing per hit than Occult Slayer gets since Ravager is more offensive.

How about every hit gives 2 base healing before healing amp/melee power but the proc chance is 4 * barbarian level.

So a 5 barbarian splash only gets a 20% proc chance but a 20 barbarian gets 80% of the healing that occult slayer gets.

I think that would be a lot more useful than the randomness that you are proposing.

But maybe I am underestimating the healing you get from every kill?

Interesting. Is your take on the reliability based on theory or trying it out on Lamannia?

One test we did internally involved a moderately-geared first-life 20Brb/8Epic running Epic Hard eNecro quests with no other forms of healing besides Blood Strength; she never went below 90% health. Different players' playstyles may give varying mileage, though, so I'd be interested to see what people think after giving it a test drive (especially on pure Barbs).

[btolson]

Interesting. Is your take on the reliability based on theory or trying it out on Lamannia?

One test we did internally involved a moderately-geared first-life 20Brb/8Epic running Epic Hard eNecro quests with no other forms of healing besides Blood Strength; she never went below 90% health. Different players' playstyles may give varying mileage, though, so I'd be interested to see what people think after giving it a test drive (especially on pure Barbs).

Solo EH is not a great benchmark. I haven't been able to test because Lam has been busted all weekend long, but I think I can offer a sound comparison.

Consider a comparison of a pure U24 barb against a U23 monk hamp build:
--Average Healing per Hit is the same
--The monk has more attacks per minute
--The U23 monk should have more healing amp if built correctly, due to multiplicative nature of U23 hamp

The overall result is that the U23 monk will have seriously more healing per minute, and yet, current U23 monks are not especially self-reliant in EE the way many other builds are. It is likewise guaranteed that U24 barbs are going to be even less self-reliant in EE.

I don't know how self-reliant you want barbs to be in EE, just thought I'd offer the comparison.



Additionally, I think it will be necessary to throw THF a bone for this ability, so that TWF does not become the only way to build a ravager (other features like pain touch already favor TWF as well). Perhaps check for the THF combat style feats, and give +10% healing for each (so, +30% healing if you have GTHF, +40% for PTHF).



Lastly, I'm not convinced that Blood Strength needs to scale linearly with barb level anymore. Initially everyone saw a great risk in 5-barb splash and I did too, but initially, it was going to offer 100% chance of 1d4 healing, scaled with MP, which was easily going to mean 10 healing per hit just from cores and destiny (and more like 30 with moderate building for it). Now that the MP multiplier is gone and the base healing has been cut by 60% such that it is evenly matched with a vampiric weapon which anyone can easily craft, I don't see as much risk anymore considering this is a t5 ability which will lock you out of t5's in any other tree; 0.25 base healing per hit is really punitive for a t5, even if the character is only a 5-level splash.

At a minimum, I think you can lessen the penalty to simply cut healing in half if the character's number of Barbarian levels is less than half its total class levels. Keeping proc and heal the same, then at cap this would mean a 10% chance to heal the character for 10 points if it has at least 10 barbarian levels. If it has between 5-9 barb levels at cap, then this would become 10% to heal for 5 points.

Divorcing the healing from barb level would also give you a lot of latitude/granularity to play with the healing per hit, because you can manipulate the proc and value to whatever you want, and then cut it in half if the character is less than half-barb. You can set the base rate to e.g., 50% for 1d4 healing (1.25 avg), 25% for 1d8 (1.125 avg), 30% for 1d6 (1.05 avg), etc; you can hit pretty much any average decimal healing per hit that you want, and you can do it with a proc rate that doesn't starve THF with the rng (THF doesn't like 10%, although TWF doesn't really have a problem there).

[Scrabbler]

One test we did internally involved a moderately-geared first-life 20Brb/8Epic

I haven't been able to test yet because the Lam build is badly incomplete, but one suspicion I have about 20Brb/8Epic characters is that they have too much healing because Meleepower adds to the healing. They get a lot of passive Meleepower from being epic, and then probably a ton of active Meleepower from LD (or FOTW too?).

My prediction is that Meleepower should not scale healing for that reason; other characters with healing sources from heroic enhancements don't get it boosted that much by becoming epic. They get a moderate continued increase to spellpower, and sometimes caster level, but spellpower and caster level had already been smoothly increasing throughout heroic. Unlike spellpower and level, Meleepower grows super-rapidly in epic progression.

[maddong]

Interesting. Is your take on the reliability based on theory or trying it out on Lamannia?

One test we did internally involved a moderately-geared first-life 20Brb/8Epic running Epic Hard eNecro quests with no other forms of healing besides Blood Strength; she never went below 90% health. Different players' playstyles may give varying mileage, though, so I'd be interested to see what people think after giving it a test drive (especially on pure Barbs).

I was thinking if you are running a quest where the monsters are taking out large chunks of your health when they hit you (EE).... If you are relying on the random number generator to go off a lot of the timings of the healing will be off and your healer will be forced to intervene and potentially some of the healing will go to waste (did you get lucky with your 10% chance right when you needed it or after the heal came when you were close to full and you over healed). If you are getting constant healing then it will possibly directly add time to next heal if your amp and melee power are high enough.

Eh is the new en after the melee pass, right? So a lot of things will appear more useful on the easy difficulties (ec, en, eh).

[Failedlegend]

Interesting. Is your take on the reliability based on theory or trying it out on Lamannia?

One test we did internally involved a moderately-geared first-life 20Brb/8Epic running Epic Hard eNecro quests with no other forms of healing besides Blood Strength; she never went below 90% health. Different players' playstyles may give varying mileage, though, so I'd be interested to see what people think after giving it a test drive (especially on pure Barbs).

I think trying it in a group is key since a fair amount of the healing involves getting "the last hit" and you guys know how well thsat worked with the lat ability you put that requirement on, a simple change to "within x ft" instead of "when you kill" would make all the difference.

[BigErkyKid]

Interesting. Is your take on the reliability based on theory or trying it out on Lamannia?

One test we did internally involved a moderately-geared first-life 20Brb/8Epic running Epic Hard eNecro quests with no other forms of healing besides Blood Strength; she never went below 90% health. Different players' playstyles may give varying mileage, though, so I'd be interested to see what people think after giving it a test drive (especially on pure Barbs).

Please teach me Kensei!

I always try out new builds in tharask arena EE. Healing strictly with blood strength I died before making it to the tough part of the quest.

Every proc gave me around 30 something HPs back, but it wasn't that frequent altogether. Mobs hit you every hit they land for 50-60 in that EE with over 100PRR. I used a lama geared barbarian lvl28.

So either I am very bad at it or you are setting a bad benchmark with eH necro.

All in all, the DPS is not incredibly better than that of a paladin and I find the healing extremely unreliable and insufficient for EEs.

I am very much against power creep, but given what you did to paladins and bards this barbarian pass seems very weak.

[poltt48]

Interesting. Is your take on the reliability based on theory or trying it out on Lamannia?

One test we did internally involved a moderately-geared first-life 20Brb/8Epic running Epic Hard eNecro quests with no other forms of healing besides Blood Strength; she never went below 90% health. Different players' playstyles may give varying mileage, though, so I'd be interested to see what people think after giving it a test drive (especially on pure Barbs).

I tried running a quest with blood str and I got it to work maybe 1 out of every 10 mob I killed when suppose to be 100% on killing mob and never worked on just hitting needless to say I died on EN since other procs from trees made me unable to cast at all and blood str sucked.

[Scrabbler]

Post your feedback about the changes to the Ravager tree here!

These are brief, but I could elaborate. More-important stuff first:

• Furious Rage's buff description says the duration is 12, but it's really 6. (6 is more than enough)
• We already talked about the design problems with Furious Rage duration... still there.
  
  
• Barbarian Power Attack incorrectly has an active icon. Now that there's no penalty, it should be passive. (The active icon never worked right anyhow)
  
  
• Critical Rage is powerful enough, I guess. But the description is wrong... or rather, every other enhancement that boosts crit range has an incorrect description, because they benefit from Imp Crit without saying so. This one doesn't use Imp Crit, so it needs to say so. (Unlike some earlier versions, Critical Rage isn't now giving 1+2 = 3 crit range)
  
  
• Critical Fury is a waste of AP. Your Fury will be 4-6 most of the time anyway, and getting Critical Fury essentially pegs it at 6 permanently. That's equivalent to an intermittent 0-2 attack/damage bonus, which is weak for tier5. A passive +6 damage would be mediocre for a tier5 enhancement, and Critical Fury is much weaker than that. Within tier5 you don't have much room to waste points anymore...
  
  
• Contrary to the description, Blood Strength gives only 10 healing at Barb18 (should be 18). The heal amp from cores raises that to 17. The healing doesn't trigger upon killing things.
  
  
• Despite being weaker than the description, Blood Strength is strong enough. At some level ranges it is overpowered (although that's from the viewpoint that Swashbuckler is overpowered too). For example, compare a level 15 Fighter vs Barbarian... really unfair. It's funny, but in some dungeon layouts monsters are less dangerous when they have more hitpoints: that's because the healing they provide scales linearly with their hp, but the damage they do is also restricted by cooldown and animation speed.
  
  
• Some people call Blood Strength unreliable... that's not really true. Maybe it seems that way because their expectations are very high. For a class that never had self-healing before, and which was made to intentionally prevent several sources of healing, it doesn't need to be perfectly reliable. The chance of honestly running into a streak of non-healing hits is low, but very memorable when it happens.
• It's a little surprising Blood Strength works outside of Rage.
  
  
• The passive parts of Visage of Terror are strong, but boring, while the active part is weak (even if it worked like it says, spending 1 Rage to kill 1 monster is rarely smart)
  
  
• The healing amp and hitpoints in the cores are decently powerful, although non-fun. The important parts of a tree's core enhancements shouldn't be identical between different trees in the same class. That's why they're different trees.
  
  
• A static DC 20 on Demoralizing Success is bad; may as well make it a flat 5% chance.
• The non-repetitive part of Subsiding Fury is very weak.
  
  
• Ritual Scarring looks weak compared to Warchanter tier1, which has twice the PRR (and infinitely more AC) for the same AP.
  
  
• Hate is worthless aside from using the Mutilate charisma damage to maybe cause some kinds of monsters to go incap. But even a CR 11 Duergar has more than 12 Charisma, and Animals have incorrect immunity... so it's completely worthless. (+1 passive damage would be a better use of 6 AP). It might be a little better if monsters correctly lowered their save DCs according to Charisma. The 15 sec cooldown is questionable, especially alongside Cruel Cut and Slaughter.
  
  
• Mutilate and Cruel Cut are broken in epic, obviously.
• Animals are immune to Mutilate charisma damage. That is a bug; Animals are not mindless in any sense, and have no less Wisdom and Charisma than any other creature. Vermin are also incorrectly immune, although for them you could at least make a case.
  
  
• It's bad having a 30 second cooldown for Cruel Cut and Slaughter. I don't have to explain why, right? "Resource Management".
• Here's an easy suggestion to give Ravager some RM. Change Slaughter's cooldown to 150, and it resets the Cruel Cut cooldown. Hate has a 50% chance to reset Slaughter's cooldown.
• Pushing a button every 30 sec to get 10 sec of a moderate bonus (with no situationality value) isn't usually fun.
  
  
• There's almost no incentive to put more than 1 AP into Dismember (which in turn means only 1 in Festering Wound). Since clicks 2 and 3 don't improve the Meleepower buff, they should raise the damage by much more than linearly.
  
  
• Slaughter's damage isn't negligible, but the main reason to use it is for FOTW or trying for Laughter's Meleepower. The Fury income is barely relevant.
  
  
• The poison damage from Festering Wound is almost undetectable, even at 6 stacks. It'd be nicer if it at least gave poison vulnerability (like Ninja poison does). The anti-healing effect is theoretically useful, but almost no monsters have meaningful healing. I tried fighting Taeron Rimond (who casts Heal), and although I knew technically it helped, the benefit wasn't noticeable.
  
  
• Fear Me and Aura of Fear should work on (living, thinking) bosses. Fear Me should probably have no save (as long as the Intim worked).
  
  
• Action Boost Damage is missing the yellow plus graphic over your head.
• Action Boost Damage shows the wrong name. In the window it says "Action Boost Melee Power", while as a buff it says "Action Boost Ranged / Melee Power". It should say "Action Boost Damage" in all cases.

Alright, here's a summary of the Strong, Weak, and Medium enhancements in Ravager. I'm ignoring the heal amp and hitpoints in cores.

• Strong: Action Boost Damage, Blood Strength, Bully, Critical Rage.
• Medium: Furious Rage, You Like Pain, Hardy Rage, You Like Pain, I Like Pain, Slaughter, Laughter, Dismember.
• Weak: Demoralizing Success, Subsiding Fury, Visage of Fear, Hate, Fear Me, Mutilate, Cruel Cut, Aura of Fear, Festering Wound, Hit Back, Critical Fury.

[Therrias]

Post your feedback about the changes to the Ravager tree here!

Capstone = ****. It has no DPS. Even if you take tier 5 in ravager, you are better off getting a different capstone. ADD DPS HERE, I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.
Other cores = Pain touch, HP, and Heal amp are all good, but the fury mechanic is pointless if you are going to cap it at 6.
Blood Strength = bugged. Needs to proc when it says its going to proc, and that advertised rate should probably go up.
Critical Rage = bugged. Does not improve with Improved Critical (like all other + crit range abilities do). Also does not always apply to offhand weapons.
Critical Fury = pointless because so many other abilities give fury and it caps at 6 so it's always going to be capped anyway.
I like pain = good in theory...I never actually noticed it proc, so it probably needs a higher proc rate.

Action boost, hardy rage, and barbarian power attack are good as they are. Everything else is bland filler.