Barbarians - The Follow Up Thread

[Severlin]

Greetings,

We wanted to create a follow up thread to see how players are doing with their barbarians. We wanted to get impressions of the tree changes now that people have had time to play with them on live for a bit. Game balance and quality is an ongoing process. We don't want players to feel that changes we make will never be revisited.

We are looking specifically for feedback on how the three barbarian trees are working for you. We are looking for your thoughts on Occult Slayer, Frenzied Berserker, and Ravager. Are they fun? Do the trees seem effective? How do you feel barbarian compares to other classes?

Sev~

[minimomo]

Greetings,

We wanted to create a follow up thread to see how players are doing with their barbarians. We wanted to get impressions of the tree changes now that people have had time to play with them on live for a bit. Game balance and quality is an ongoing process. We don't want players to feel that changes we make will never be revisited.

We are looking specifically for feedback on how the three barbarian trees are working for you. We are looking for your thoughts on Occult Slayer, Frenzied Berserker, and Ravager. Are they fun? Do the trees seem effective? How do you feel barbarian compares to other classes?

Sev~

thf sucks so barbarian sucks too.

%50 glancing blow is completely useless against champion ee bosses. completely. but how can i forget?! there is also %9 chance to trigger 1d8 acid. yeah that is completely useless too.

swf on the other hand %30 attack speed very useful against ee champion bosses.

on top of that swf has ridiculously low requirements

on top of that swf has perfect form at lv 26.

on top of that rapiers even can cleave handwraps even can cleave. magic i guess....

and now you gave barbarians some heal amp and stuff and asking if we liked it?

lol.

LOL.

[ToastyFred]

Occult Slayer spell resistance is still borked. Need to un-equip and re-equip a CON item for it to show back up on the Character Sheet. No, this is NOT a display issue. You actually lose ALL Spell Resistance until you go through the procedure with a CON item as previously mentioned.

Please fix it.

[Grailhawk]

The Frenzied Berserker capstone, is too strong it limits your multiclass options to none, which is not really good design (hard choices and all that jazz, this one isn't a hard choice).

My barbarian is not EE ready but he was flying through the EH quests I ran this weekend before the champion nerf with very little resource usage, Blood Strength from Ravager was enough to get him through most of the quest.

[Connman]

Occult Slayer spell resistance is still borked. Need to un-equip and re-equip a CON item for it to show back up on the Character Sheet. No, this is NOT a display issue. You actually lose ALL Spell Resistance until you go through the procedure with a CON item as previously mentioned.

Please fix it.

rage -> dismiss rage works as well

/signed

[Qezuzu]

thf sucks so barbarian sucks too.

%50 glancing blow is completely useless against champion ee bosses. completely. but how can i forget?! there is also %9 chance to trigger 1d8 acid. yeah that is completely useless too.

swf on the other hand %30 attack speed very useful against ee champion bosses.

on top of that swf has ridiculously low requirements

on top of that swf has perfect form at lv 26.

on top of that rapiers even can cleave handwraps even can cleave. magic i guess....

and now you gave barbarians some heal amp and stuff and asking if we liked it?

lol.

LOL.

Twitching with THF is the highest DPS, what are you even talking about.

[Connman]

My wife who plays a 20/8 Barbarian Occult slayer would like me to thank you guys for changing weapon bond. Having the stacks not reset on weapon change is huge. It greatly reduced the time it took her to kill the marut in von 3, being able to change to an appropriate weapon without losing the stacks. It makes having more than one weapon viable again.

The only other noticeable change was she went from 1400 hp to 1800.

She would like to suggest that "One spirit" be changed to be like Masters blitz. When you take it it would be nice if you had the choice between a toggle for "sacrifice all stacks" and a toggle for "sacrifice 20 stacks". She says as it is now it is only useful in an emergency, which means she won't remember it until she is dead. Sacrificing 20 stacks would be acceptable for an emergency in between cocoon / pot heal. as it is now it is just too big of a sacrifice to use on a regular basis. By having a choice it would allow people that like it as it is no inconvenience and make it useful to her at the same time.

Thanks and have a great day!

[Skeen]

Frenzied good -
Heal amp, frenzy/death frenzy not killing you when you attack, increased HP, extra rage, wade in, tantrum (kind of), Crazy Strike, a little better DPS.

Frenzied needs improvement -
Healing or Hurt should be Healing & Hurt. I took hurt and it was meh. The +1W damage doesn't show up on the weapon info either.
Cracking Attack/Body Blow is still no good, I only get it to lower the fort save on 1 mob in order to try and get Tantrum to land. Cooldown way too long.
Tantrum rarely procs, I don't think this is working correctly. Lay waste procs, ear smash procs, trip procs, tantrum almost never procs and has a ridiculous cool down. It was worthless before and is better now but I think it's busted. Not so sure about that 5W damage either, great cleave does more consistent damage. Did I mention that Outrageous cooldown.
Exhausting Blow, stat damage? How useful is stat damage? Maybe if the cooldwon wasn't absurd it might be useful.
The constitution enhancement should be strength or constitution.
Blood Tribute, sounded like it was going to be good, what happened?

Frenzied needs more DPS and/or healing.

Make Rage mean something again like when it was introduced, before it was given away to everyone else without the harmful effects. I'd say double the strength and con bonuses to get it rectified.

Since you refuse to address DR other than to say we can't make it work then give barbs the most PRR in the game. Just like when they got DR, nobody had DR except them. They don't get heavy armor so give them max PRR.

Barbarian < Bard, Paladin, monk

[Qhualor]

Greetings,

We wanted to create a follow up thread to see how players are doing with their barbarians. We wanted to get impressions of the tree changes now that people have had time to play with them on live for a bit. Game balance and quality is an ongoing process. We don't want players to feel that changes we make will never be revisited.

We are looking specifically for feedback on how the three barbarian trees are working for you. We are looking for your thoughts on Occult Slayer, Frenzied Berserker, and Ravager. Are they fun? Do the trees seem effective? How do you feel barbarian compares to other classes?

Sev~

I haven't played as a barbarian yet on Live. I will be doing the 3 trees, 1 different per life, on my ranger when its his turn for past lives. should be roughly in the next month. by that time this moment will have passed, but you will still hear my opinion at that time

from my experience and what im personally seeing in game, ive seen an uptick of barbs being played. not a lot, but im actually grouping with them a little more frequently than before. my guildies who are currently playing barbs have nothing but positive stuff to say, but I didn't directly ask them their opinion either. I see a lot of things like "sweet! im critting for 700!" at some heroic level. I am also seeing exactly what I knew would happen and really nothing changed. I see pug barbs using Consecrated Ground either twisted while in LD or in DC. this is just reactionary to trying to build for survivability and nothing to do with the class itself, but how EDs are set up with low hanging fruit and all.

I wish I could provide real feedback, but wont happen for awhile still. all im going to say is that I still think barbs need...

improvements to barb DR. possibly would need to look at the entire DR system

something better than SF pots because even with the T5 self healing you still need another source of dependable healing and those pots are too penalizing. this is another reason why people who play barbs gravitate to something easier like Consecrated Ground. this does not fit the theme of a barb and would give anything to make this abomination to stop.

barbarian dps must be the highest dps of any melee class. their weaknesses right now is enough of a trade off.

now that both of my barbs are rogues for the past lives, I have no idea if Primal Scream still cant be used while raged. last I knew you still couldn't and its completely useless beyond a buff at the start of a quest or something that others classes benefit from more as a twist due to not having any rage penalties.

[Connman]

...something better than SF pots because even with the T5 self healing you still need another source of dependable healing and those pots are too penalizing.

At this stage in the game I think we either need a potion vendor that sells potions of HEAL, because silver flame pots are too restrictive to use and to get; or at least some solid answer why this would be overpowered from the Dev's. The level cap is 28 now you know right?

Thanks and have a great day!

[Qhualor]

At this stage in the game I think we either need a potion vendor that sells potions of HEAL, because silver flame pots are too restrictive to use and to get; or at least some solid answer why this would be overpowered from the Dev's. The level cap is 28 now you know right?

Thanks and have a great day!

im pretty sure it was Sev that said it, you make it so that all classes are able to buy from a vendor or through favor potions like Heal or something powerful like that and it trivializes healing/cure spells. if there was a potion that healed for just as much as SF pots or even close to it, why would a ranger, paladin, bard, etc even slot their own healing spells and take the feats and enhancements to boost their own healing spells?

[axel15810]

Greetings,

We wanted to create a follow up thread to see how players are doing with their barbarians. We wanted to get impressions of the tree changes now that people have had time to play with them on live for a bit. Game balance and quality is an ongoing process. We don't want players to feel that changes we make will never be revisited.

We are looking specifically for feedback on how the three barbarian trees are working for you. We are looking for your thoughts on Occult Slayer, Frenzied Berserker, and Ravager. Are they fun? Do the trees seem effective? How do you feel barbarian compares to other classes?

Sev~

These changes gave barbarians a boost, but they're still lagging well behind other melee classes. Bottom line is -

Barbarians are about the same in DPS as other classes, yet they are miles behind in survivability because of rage penalties. Until you make the core feature of the class, rage, worth its crippling penalties (or remove the penalties) the class will never be able to compete.

The only 2 ways to fix the class are:

1. Give them a solid, substantial lead in melee DPS over other melee classes. Not just comparable. That way players are getting something out of sacrificing their survivability.

2. Give them self healing options comparable to other melee classes or let them use cocoon/bladeforged reconstruct while raged (I think this is bad for flavor and variety, I'm very much against this option).

Sadly, in my view barbarians remain a flavor class at this time. They need more DPS.

[depositbox]

Greetings,

We wanted to create a follow up thread to see how players are doing with their barbarians. We wanted to get impressions of the tree changes now that people have had time to play with them on live for a bit. Game balance and quality is an ongoing process. We don't want players to feel that changes we make will never be revisited.

We are looking specifically for feedback on how the three barbarian trees are working for you. We are looking for your thoughts on Occult Slayer, Frenzied Berserker, and Ravager. Are they fun? Do the trees seem effective? How do you feel barbarian compares to other classes?

Sev~

Most of it is fine. The Spell Resistance bug is annoying(but this is limited to exactly two niche builds). The PRR in Heavy Armor is there, huge hamp%, lot of HPs, DPS is good. Better than they were pre U24. Although not in a better place still exactly. The inherent restrictiveness of playing the class compares unfavorably to other melee builds that have better healing options and utility. The damage output of a barb is not that so far ahead that other classes cannot make up for it.

I would suggest more ways to heal while raged and through combat. Such as various temporary hp boosts on attacks, and other on kill procs like Autumn Harvest and No Regret. These would have been great at tier 1 and 2 in the enhancement trees. One Spirit works well when Blitzing or on Zeal of Righteous where 20 stacks of Bond heals for a nice chunk to keep the hp bar up. Instead of revising the trees there could be adjustments to the values of certain abilities like Vampirism, temp hp, and on kill procs.

[Scrabbler]

We are looking for your thoughts on Occult Slayer, Frenzied Berserker, and Ravager. Are they fun? Do the trees seem effective? How do you feel barbarian compares to other classes?

I made a lot of feedback before, which almost all still applies, so I won't repeat it now.


Instead, here a few key imbalanced decision points: where two things should be difficult to pick between, but instead the better one is too obvious:

• FB t5 Hurting versus Healing. Your multiselector choice is between an auto-ticking self healing that barely scales at all past level 12 (only with meleepower and hamp), versus +1W and +5 meleepower. Cmon is that even a choice? The healing is only adequate for heroic Normal or some Hard; meaning situations that were safe enough to not need healing anyhow.
  
  
• Occult Slayer t5 row vs any other t5 (Barb or non-Barb). The t5 row is poor and bad. If you build Occult Slayer, it's all about the capstone (and about the Dwarf), not the t5. Look at how little plain combat power OS gets in t5: maybe 1/3rd as much as FB gets in core18 alone! Need to fix the Weapon Bond economy...
  
  
• Ravager core18+capstone vs other core/capstone OR other class levels. The good part of the core18 and capstone in Ravager are the hp + hamp, which are identical in Occult Slayer; but Occult Slayer also gets spell resistance. Having Ravager capstone makes you think: "I should probably have a couple Rogue or Bard levels instead"
  
  
• OS Seeker Strike vs (Driving Force or One Spirit). There are 3 ways an Occult Slayer can spend Weapon Bond points: Driving Force for damage, One Spirit for healing, or Seeker Strike for ... less damage at more cost? In theory, using Seeker Strike in addition to Driving Force could be occasionally useful when you want even more damage and are willing to waste Bond to get it... but nah, it's not enough, especially not when Seeker Strike costs AP too.
  
  
• Barb with non-TWF vs TWF. Supreme Cleave and related effects are too important for Barbarians for them to use a weapon style that improperly gains 40% less damage from a Cleave action.
  
  
• Ravager Cruel Cut vs EH / EE. I know, right?
  
  
• Harper vs non-Harper. The devs should figure out a way to put Meleepower into enhancements that doesn't necessarily stack with every other enhancement that also gives meleepower. That's on the same reasoning that most +critical range enhancements don't stack with each other... so they can add more enhancments with meleepower, without it becoming obligatory to grab them all. Ideally the Harper thing would only be undeniably compelling for melee characters who already had some other reason to have high Intelligence.

Last I looked, there were 2 ways to make a Barb: either Frenzied Berserker cleave-machine or Dwarf Occult Slayer CC-ignorer (who is also a cleave machine). But I didn't try the new improved Ravager self-healing, so maybe that helps a 3rd variant...

[minimomo]

Twitching with THF is the highest DPS, what are you even talking about.

i dont know what dream world you are living in...twitching... lol.

[depositbox]

i dont know what dream world you are living in...twitching... lol.

Twitch fighting with THF is the best melee dps.

[axel15810]

im pretty sure it was Sev that said it, you make it so that all classes are able to buy from a vendor or through favor potions like Heal or something powerful like that and it trivializes healing/cure spells. if there was a potion that healed for just as much as SF pots or even close to it, why would a ranger, paladin, bard, etc even slot their own healing spells and take the feats and enhancements to boost their own healing spells?

Yep, I think this pretty much spells it out. Heal pots would make way too many class abilities obsolete. I think for the same reason taking the penalties off silver flame pots is a bad idea. The game would suddenly be nothing but pot chuggers. All casters would chug heal pots to save spell points. Not good for flavor. Not to mention it would put even more self-healing into the game...and we have too much of it already.

[Spoonwelder]

I am runnning up a Barb/rogue/fighter - totally forgoing the capstones....but I have an LR20 in the bank to fix that if this build seems meh ish.

This isn't a totally built out plan as I am wavering between 17/2/1, 15/3/2 and 12/6/2 (all Barb/Rogue/Fighter). The lynch pin will be how well I think the T5 of acrobat compares to the tier 5 of Ravager. I can't test yet as I am only L11 (8/2/1 so far) but the fact that it is competitive with another tree and I can't outright say at a glance that one is better than the other .....that is a good thing.

Now within the Barb trees.....and this is all my opinion - Tier 5 - Ravager > Frenzy > Occult. On the other hand the cores have FB > Ravager > Occult.

I concur with others though - even if I am a multiclass - I don't find my DPS to be stupendously far ahead of others I group with but my HP is definitely above par for everything other than Stalwarts I run into.

Overall it made me happy enough to play a barbarian again.

[Ayseifn]

im pretty sure it was Sev that said it, you make it so that all classes are able to buy from a vendor or through favor potions like Heal or something powerful like that and it trivializes healing/cure spells. if there was a potion that healed for just as much as SF pots or even close to it, why would a ranger, paladin, bard, etc even slot their own healing spells and take the feats and enhancements to boost their own healing spells?

Put the lesser SF pots in the 150 favour tier, change the penalty to something barbs are immune to somewhere around level 12-16(maybe keep the stat pen) and stack them higher than 10.

[edrein]

Greetings,

We wanted to create a follow up thread to see how players are doing with their barbarians. We wanted to get impressions of the tree changes now that people have had time to play with them on live for a bit. Game balance and quality is an ongoing process. We don't want players to feel that changes we make will never be revisited.

We are looking specifically for feedback on how the three barbarian trees are working for you. We are looking for your thoughts on Occult Slayer, Frenzied Berserker, and Ravager. Are they fun? Do the trees seem effective? How do you feel barbarian compares to other classes?

Sev~

What about the healing options I addressed on Lamania and never got a response to. I'd love to see barbarians getting actual healing from their T5 abilities as undead and warforged (not sure if Warforged get repair instead of positive energy). Undead builds have to rely on auras which taper off in epic levels. I know I for one would like to see all new self-healing systems to better include all options, especially given that the wording for Frenzied Berserker doesn't state that the healing is indeed positive energy.

I'd love to be able to make an actual vampire thematic build that functions properly as I doubt we'll ever see an update to Improved Shrouding to include melee power and an actually sustainable lifesteal amount for Vampires.