Barbarians - The Follow Up Thread

[Tesrali]

We have a unanimous player response that barb-dps is not king, and should be. We agree on a simple solution.




Using a barbarian rage grants the user +1 critical threat range, given the opportunity cost of rage. No spells has always put it in an awkward place behind other classes. This has always justified them being top dps.

They aren't and this change would see Barbarians become a kingly form of damage.

Details...

Sev mentioned this earlier: +1 threat (as opposed to multiplier) enhances high multiplier weapons that are appropriate to them in the lore (axes, hammers, picks, etc).

What about multi-classing...
Let it apply at level 1...
Rage is not used on hybrids and this expands the game's absolutely charming character customization that is unrivaled by other MMOs (really!). The opportunity cost has always outweighed the benefits of rage. Let's change that. =)

Every raging barb should feel powerful, but not every barb does, we're really missing this.

[maddong]

I think barbarians are viable in heroic content after the changes. I think T5 ravager > fb/os. I think for the 20 capstone fb (dps) >> os (the only option being SR on a con build) > ravager (I don't want to waste my rages).

I think any change to increase their healing to levels to handle EE will make EH utterly trivial for a 20 barbarian frenzied berserker.

I agree with a lot of the suggestions:
1. Change frenzy and death frenzy to an on/off toggle.
2. Add more DPS to give people a reason to babysit the barbs. Perhaps +1 crit on 19-20 at level 18 and +2 crit on 19-20 at level 20 or +10 melee power at 18 and +20 melee power at 20 (regardless of which capstone you choose).
3. Allow occult slayers to heal without spending their whole weapon bond (similar to spending ki or mana).
4. For level 18+ barbarians the PRR/MRR is applied before the DR/resists instead of after.
5. Let level 17 barbarians rage an unlimited number of times thru tireless rage after they run out of rages (uses a rage if you have at least 1 otherwise no rage is used).

[IronClan]

Only four pages over a couple days... Am I being self serving when I interpret that as people throwing their hands up and going back to other melee classes? Heck maybe they did better than people expect and people are just too busy playing barb... I'm going to stick with mine til 28 mostly because I've naught else to do in the game than roll alts and see how they do (which in itself is not a bad mini game, I just don't know how many more ED's I can stand to level, or +5 or 6 tomes I'll feel like buying for them, so they will always be less than optimal)

[lyrecono]

How is it useless? When attacking a single target, you get glancing blows against that target.

the point most dev's are missing is the meaning of Damage Per Second, faster attacks outweigh heavy attacks tht hit realy slow.

most people feel that the champions go down faster whille swf and that the extra damage around them attract mobs faster, in EE thats a bad idea

[Tesrali]

most people feel that the champions go down faster whille swf and that the extra damage around them attract mobs faster, in EE thats a bad idea

single target vs multi target attacking is a characteristic of a class.
ear smash gives you more than enough to destroy a champion.

nuff said

[EllisDee37]

the point most dev's are missing is the meaning of Damage Per Second, faster attacks outweigh heavy attacks tht hit realy slow.

But how is increasing your dps against a boss useless for killing that boss?

I'm pretty sure the person I was responding to thought that glancing blows don't do anything against single targets. They do.

[CThruTheEgo]

I think any change to increase their healing to levels to handle EE will make EH utterly trivial for a 20 barbarian frenzied berserker.

Except that EH is already utterly trivial for nearly any class/build. What's the point in revamping an entire class that isn't inherently capable of performing in a good portion of the game? Sure you can twist consecration and sacred ground, but that's a lame way to expect an entire class to be self sufficient when self sufficiency is essentially a requirement in DDO today.

[Scrabbler]

Except that EH is already utterly trivial for nearly any class/build.

Are you sure that nearly all builds can actually walk up to two EH monsters, then let the player stand up from the computer and make coffee for 3 minutes, and wind up with more hitpoints than when he started?

[lyrecono]

bosses and i guess champions too benefit from focussed dps.
now that combat dc's are being restored (if not already, they gave your level as a bonus) a lot of melee trick might not work.

[MeliCat]

I get a bit exasperated reading about HA because that is after the fact. DR is much more meaningful to me thinking 'logically' about what rage should mean.

Probably too late now but I'll say it anyway: extra HA is stupid if you take so much damage that you die. You can't heal a soulstone.


In playing my barb I do feel like I have more DR than before but I should analyze this a bit more.

Reading this thread makes me want to start that pally I've been putting off. Hmm.

[Severlin]

Some good feedback. I wanted to follow up so players got some dev response before the holidays.

~ It is tempting for us to look at trees and want to rewrite them entirely. We are trying to avoid doing that. We typically change as little as possible while still meeting our goals so players don't feel that the rug has been pulled out from under them if they are using those trees. This means that when we improve upon a tree we try not to change the overall feel and flow of the enhancements. When we take the "only change what we need to" approach it means that we are not going through and buffing all enhancements for the sake of buffing them.

~ We aren't going to be focusing on DR to improve barbarians. We discussed it and we don't want to exaggerate the effect since it would be too powerful against lots of little damage sources and not good enough against hard hitting bosses. I apologize to the players who like the the ability thematically. We decided to focus on the Barbarian's superior hit points as a mechanic instead, and that required us to make healing more effective to match hit points.

~ We understand that attribute damage is virtually negated by Epic Ward. We are discussing changes to allow more attribute damage through Epic Ward. There has to be a happy medium between "Everyone use puncturing" and "Attribute damage doesn't do anything past level 20." We are in the process of re-examining Epic Ward to see if it needs to be as severe as it is.

~ Now that the "heal on kill" works for Ravager it is looking better, but we are watching the performance for epic. Occult Slayer's heal is fairly good but I will bring up the cost with the team. We agree that Frenzied Berserker's heal has fallen behind when we reduced that tree's healing amp and that will probably see a buff.

~ We did add more Strength for rage in the last pass to the base barbarian abilities, but we will be discussing buffing rage based on player feedback.

~ We will look into the Occult Slayer capstone to find whatever bug is causing it to fail. I am not sure about the reported issue with Visage of Terror though; could someone elaborate?

~ We agree that a barbarian might need more reason to stick to medium armor and will discuss what we can do about that in our time constraints.

Sev~

[CThruTheEgo]

We decided to focus on the Barbarian's superior hit points as a mechanic instead, and that required us to make healing more effective to match hit points.

In response to this, see the quote below.

extra HA is stupid if you take so much damage that you die. You can't heal a soulstone.

A bunch of hit points with a bunch of heal amp does not provide enough defenses to handle the amount of damage a front line melee takes in EE. Period. This is not a viable option for defenses.

If you don't want to give barbs DR, that's fine. Use the new mechanics you have already introduced - give them PRR/MRR, more than what the trees currently provide, which isn't nearly enough.

[btolson]

~ We aren't going to be focusing on DR to improve barbarians. We discussed it and we don't want to exaggerate the effect since it would be too powerful against lots of little damage sources and not good enough against hard hitting bosses. I apologize to the players who like the the ability thematically. We decided to focus on the Barbarian's superior hit points as a mechanic instead, and that required us to make healing more effective to match hit points.

It doesn't really have to be DR. Barbs in D&D are designed to be pretty easy to hit, but better at shrugging off damage than anybody else. PRR (but likely not MRR) is a perfectly valid way to achieve this.

~ Now that the "heal on kill" works for Ravager it is looking better, but we are watching the performance for epic. Occult Slayer's heal is fairly good but I will bring up the cost with the team. We agree that Frenzied Berserker's heal has fallen behind when we reduced that tree's healing amp and that will probably see a buff.

"Heal on kill" affects easy difficulties very disproportionately compared to hard difficulties, so it isn't going to make much difference where it's needed. On EH, you might only be taking 5 normal swings to kill something, and get your heal. On EE you're going to need way more swings to get something dead, and you're going to be taking 10x the damage while you're doing it. It's really sort of an inverse-balance mechanic, making easy content super easier while doing little on harder content.

[Qhualor]

Some good feedback. I wanted to follow up so players got some dev response before the holidays.

~ It is tempting for us to look at trees and want to rewrite them entirely. We are trying to avoid doing that. We typically change as little as possible while still meeting our goals so players don't feel that the rug has been pulled out from under them if they are using those trees. This means that when we improve upon a tree we try not to change the overall feel and flow of the enhancements. When we take the "only change what we need to" approach it means that we are not going through and buffing all enhancements for the sake of buffing them.

~ We aren't going to be focusing on DR to improve barbarians. We discussed it and we don't want to exaggerate the effect since it would be too powerful against lots of little damage sources and not good enough against hard hitting bosses. I apologize to the players who like the the ability thematically. We decided to focus on the Barbarian's superior hit points as a mechanic instead, and that required us to make healing more effective to match hit points.

~ We understand that attribute damage is virtually negated by Epic Ward. We are discussing changes to allow more attribute damage through Epic Ward. There has to be a happy medium between "Everyone use puncturing" and "Attribute damage doesn't do anything past level 20." We are in the process of re-examining Epic Ward to see if it needs to be as severe as it is.

~ Now that the "heal on kill" works for Ravager it is looking better, but we are watching the performance for epic. Occult Slayer's heal is fairly good but I will bring up the cost with the team. We agree that Frenzied Berserker's heal has fallen behind when we reduced that tree's healing amp and that will probably see a buff.

~ We did add more Strength for rage in the last pass to the base barbarian abilities, but we will be discussing buffing rage based on player feedback.

~ We will look into the Occult Slayer capstone to find whatever bug is causing it to fail. I am not sure about the reported issue with Visage of Terror though; could someone elaborate?

~ We agree that a barbarian might need more reason to stick to medium armor and will discuss what we can do about that in our time constraints.

Sev~

1. I don't think you have to worry about rugs. I would rather see a rewrite to the trees than trying to buff up the current enhancements just to increase the power by throwing things in it like melee power or (W)s.

2. this is probably the biggest disappointment to me. barb DR is supposed to be thematically one of their biggest defenses and unique from other classes. there is something that a barb can get to shrug of or ignore or absorb damage. I couldn't really find it, but I know I mentioned it in Silverleafons thread.

3. this is good news. this would go a long way, not only for barbs, but for other classes. epic ward itself is a whole different discussion on its own, but I hope there will be improvements to mob AI, limited spell list and limited tactics list.

4. still cant comment on the Live T5 healing, but is there any thought of a dependable secondary potion healing specifically for barbs beside the SF pots? maybe something to include in the enhancements to boost healing from potions or something similar to lesser SF potions without penalty? barbs are not being played thematically because there is no reliable source like that and nobody like using SF pots. does the team really envision barbs to be played with a blue bar using Cocoon and Consecrated Ground? this should cause to look at the easy access to FVS Ameliorating Strike and low hanging fruit in the EDs. IMO, it shouldn't be this easy for any class to heal outside of what their class has/should have access to.

5. I think I might be seeing what players are talking about with rage. maybe their is something that can proc while only raged that would be worth raging or boosted the more barb levels? maybe something from PnP like

Devastating Critical - a fortitude check or enemy instantly dies
Incite Rage - a buffed up normal barb rage that is auto granted in higher levels.
Terrifying Rage - enemies become panicked if they fail a will save check.
Thundering Rage - any weapon you wield is treated as thundering.

6. dunno

7. this is an issue that extends to all classes. maybe we need to look into PRR and MRR. maybe need to add bonuses to classes that stick to their "intended" armor type like for barbs there is a PnP feat called Armor Skin. maybe need to penalize players a little more for going "outside the box".

[Thar]

Some good feedback. I wanted to follow up so players got some dev response before the holidays.

~ It is tempting for us to look at trees and want to rewrite them entirely. We are trying to avoid doing that. We typically change as little as possible while still meeting our goals so players don't feel that the rug has been pulled out from under them if they are using those trees. This means that when we improve upon a tree we try not to change the overall feel and flow of the enhancements. When we take the "only change what we need to" approach it means that we are not going through and buffing all enhancements for the sake of buffing them.

~ We aren't going to be focusing on DR to improve barbarians. We discussed it and we don't want to exaggerate the effect since it would be too powerful against lots of little damage sources and not good enough against hard hitting bosses. I apologize to the players who like the the ability thematically. We decided to focus on the Barbarian's superior hit points as a mechanic instead, and that required us to make healing more effective to match hit points.

~ We understand that attribute damage is virtually negated by Epic Ward. We are discussing changes to allow more attribute damage through Epic Ward. There has to be a happy medium between "Everyone use puncturing" and "Attribute damage doesn't do anything past level 20." We are in the process of re-examining Epic Ward to see if it needs to be as severe as it is.

~ Now that the "heal on kill" works for Ravager it is looking better, but we are watching the performance for epic. Occult Slayer's heal is fairly good but I will bring up the cost with the team. We agree that Frenzied Berserker's heal has fallen behind when we reduced that tree's healing amp and that will probably see a buff.

~ We did add more Strength for rage in the last pass to the base barbarian abilities, but we will be discussing buffing rage based on player feedback.

~ We will look into the Occult Slayer capstone to find whatever bug is causing it to fail. I am not sure about the reported issue with Visage of Terror though; could someone elaborate?

~ We agree that a barbarian might need more reason to stick to medium armor and will discuss what we can do about that in our time constraints.

Sev~

even if you double or triple the barbarians base Dr it isn't going to do much against "little damage" in epics. hit for 70-100 and subtract dr. It's a mechanic that you should either buff or change to inate prr. Yes that probably tied in ancient code and could be bad but it really needs to do something. if there was no other dr in the game, then barbarian dr would be a plus. I understand you believe the extra hp and amp, but it's one of the base abilities of the class that the game has passed by and you give up fighter feats for as a melee. Rage is another that you are addressing. Please try to make this somehow useful for the class. it's not useful if you slap on s 10 dr cloak and barb base dr is only 7 as it doesn't stack.

Medium armor is more dodge if there was more ways to get it out of the trees it may be of some use. Otherwise the only way to want to get people to wear light/medium armor is to make good versions that have synergy with barbarian abillities or what people want. The shadowforge armor is only good for heavy armor users. some sneak attack or etc doesn't compare to the 30 DR. (again back to damage reduction... are you sensing a theme...) The same with light armor. Light armor + evasion is useless on ee acompared to the heavy 30dr shadow armor. you can do the datamining. what have people made... i'm sure it is highly used verse the other options. What other melee armor is out there? black scale in gh? maybe white if you foolishly think ac matters?

[Uska]

Remove the amp and other healing it doesn't belong never did and never will!!!!


Up the DPS a lot and the damage reduction mitigation a lot

[MeliCat]

~ We aren't going to be focusing on DR to improve barbarians. We discussed it and we don't want to exaggerate the effect since it would be too powerful against lots of little damage sources and not good enough against hard hitting bosses. I apologize to the players who like the the ability thematically. We decided to focus on the Barbarian's superior hit points as a mechanic instead, and that required us to make healing more effective to match hit points.

Sev~

That's interesting. So DR is an absolute thing on Armour etc. But why can't you do proportional for damage received? So just % rather than absolute. You do that sort of conversion all the time for other systems.

[Scrabbler]

~ We aren't going to be focusing on DR to improve barbarians.

A reasonable thing you can do is edit every place a Barbarian level or enhancement grants 1 DR and also give it 1 PRR. That would add up to only a small benefit overall (less PR than given by the Wizard class!), but it'd be nice as a symbol at least.

We discussed it and we don't want to exaggerate the effect since it would be too powerful against lots of little damage sources and not good enough against hard hitting bosses.

If it's really a bad thing for players to have a lot of DR, then I'm afraid there's a named item you need to delete. Shadow Dragonplate armor has DR 60.

Alternatively, if you decide that it's OK for players to have DR 60 from an item, then you can also allow Barbarians to have DR 40 from levels + enhancements. Naturally it would depend on both class and epic levels to get that high, and maybe that benefit might not work in Heavy Armor... details would need to be handled.

~ We understand that attribute damage is virtually negated by Epic Ward. We are discussing changes to allow more attribute damage through Epic Ward.

One of the many approaches you could try is for Epic Ward to change stat damage into diminishing returns. For example, for each 1 point of damage a creature currently has to a stat, there is a 5% chance that each additional damage to that stat will be negated. And whenever stat damage is negated in that way, it causes XYZ amount of hitpoint damage instead.

We agree that Frenzied Berserker's heal has fallen behind when we reduced that tree's healing amp and that will probably see a buff.

The key problem with FB healing is that it doesn't scale up as you gain additional Barb levels. (The Ravager one does scale with level). Probably scaling should be by Barb + Epic levels, maybe with FOTW cores added on top of that.

~ We did add more Strength for rage in the last pass to the base barbarian abilities, but we will be discussing buffing rage based on player feedback.

A simple sensible improvement to Barb Rage would be meleepower, such as equal to 100% or 50% of the str bonus. For more complexity, it could give meleepower when you're over 50% hp and PRR when you're under.

I am not sure about the reported issue with Visage of Terror though; could someone elaborate?

People say that after a while, the paralyze portion of VOT stops happening.

[HatsuharuZ]

~ It is tempting for us to look at trees and want to rewrite them entirely. We are trying to avoid doing that. We typically change as little as possible while still meeting our goals so players don't feel that the rug has been pulled out from under them if they are using those trees. This means that when we improve upon a tree we try not to change the overall feel and flow of the enhancements. When we take the "only change what we need to" approach it means that we are not going through and buffing all enhancements for the sake of buffing them.

None of the barbarian trees need to be redone. Eldritch Knight might need this treatment, but for the barbarian trees you just need to tweak some numbers and, in the case of Ravager, add one or two abilities which utilize currently available abilities.

Suggestion: Add a DC-based on-hit weapon effect as a passive ability in the Ravager tree. That way the barbarian can make better use of all of those save-reducing abilities more easily.

~ We aren't going to be focusing on DR to improve barbarians. We discussed it and we don't want to exaggerate the effect since it would be too powerful against lots of little damage sources and not good enough against hard hitting bosses. I apologize to the players who like the the ability thematically. We decided to focus on the Barbarian's superior hit points as a mechanic instead, and that required us to make healing more effective to match hit points.

My own problem with the current amount of barbarian DR is that you've put DR on epic items in quantities that are greater than what a barbarian gets from 20 class levels. I'm not saying you should give barbarians 30 DR/- like on certain shadow dragon armors, but it would nice if you could make it so that barbarian DR matters in epic levels.

Suggestion: Change the DR stacking rules in the case of barbarian DR so that it can stack with item-based sources of DR that are not DR/-.

Suggestion 2: Increase the amount of DR/- gained from barbarian class levels, then wait and see how powerful barbarians become when you do so. Then you can later reverse the change if you deem it to be OP.

~ We understand that attribute damage is virtually negated by Epic Ward. We are discussing changes to allow more attribute damage through Epic Ward. There has to be a happy medium between "Everyone use puncturing" and "Attribute damage doesn't do anything past level 20." We are in the process of re-examining Epic Ward to see if it needs to be as severe as it is.

Good to know!

~ Now that the "heal on kill" works for Ravager it is looking better, but we are watching the performance for epic. Occult Slayer's heal is fairly good but I will bring up the cost with the team. We agree that Frenzied Berserker's heal has fallen behind when we reduced that tree's healing amp and that will probably see a buff.

Yay!

~ We did add more Strength for rage in the last pass to the base barbarian abilities, but we will be discussing buffing rage based on player feedback.

I don't think more strength is necessary if you increase DR and/or self-healing ability.

~ We agree that a barbarian might need more reason to stick to medium armor and will discuss what we can do about that in our time constraints.

Suggestion: Make it so that barbarians gain extra run speed when wearing medium armor or less. Perhaps up to an extra 10% in addition to what they have already?

[Holymunchkin]

~ We did add more Strength for rage in the last pass to the base barbarian abilities, but we will be discussing buffing rage based on player feedback.

I really agree with Tes about the +1 threat range idea. Nice touch. I feel like this would be a level way to increase barb damage, without being overly complicated. ^^

Thanks for the attention as always Sev, lots of crabby people roamin about. =p =p =p haha
good work