Barbarians - The Follow Up Thread

[Scrabbler]

~ 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

Understandable, but that also prevents you from making some large improvements.

A suggested compromise:

Let's say that out of the 3*6 = 18 Barbarian core enhancements, there are 8 of them that are really bad. Come up with 8 new, better enhancements, and then add them on multiselectors with the old core enhancements. That way, someone who really likes the old stuff can keep using it, while the rest of us can enjoy fancy new material.

[Qhualor]

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?

there is an epic feat called Epic Speed. you have to wear medium. light or no armor to gain the benefit and your speed increases +30 feet, whatever that translates into.

however, this wouldn't make me switch from heavy armor that gives me better survivability just to reduce my survivability by wearing medium armor just to keep pace with pure monks.

[XxJFGxX]

Understandable, but that also prevents you from making some large improvements.

A suggested compromise:

Let's say that out of the 3*6 = 18 Barbarian core enhancements, there are 8 of them that are really bad. Come up with 8 new, better enhancements, and then add them on multiselectors with the old core enhancements. That way, someone who really likes the old stuff can keep using it, while the rest of us can enjoy fancy new material.

Might not be a bad idea

[XxJFGxX]

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.

~ 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.

Sev~

~Well alot of the ablilties in Ravager and some in FB is a complete waste of AP and not viable in epics. This has been mentioned before.

~How about at certain Barb levels gain prr/mrr/melee power?

~How about giving Frenzied Berserker's Hit Point bonus and Heal Amp bonus that was taken away from the core back? Also what about changing the heal amp from the cores to be a universal heal amp for positive and repair? Just a thought.

[Seikojin]

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.

That is what prr, mrr, and energy resistance does. Just give barbs inherit +5's per core on all 3.

[Seikojin]

I think barbs should get a lvl 12 core passive that does something while raging. 1 can be +1 crit range, 1 can be multiplier, and the 3rd can be attack speed.

[Sgt_Hart]

~ 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.

So Ditch the DR, and make it an absorption. I mean Consider a 2% per DR feat (Max 14), or 2% per core(Max 12) absorption mechanic to physical, independent of PRR. I strongly suspect a 10-20% absorption would both scale well, and keep the need to grab and wear plate to a minimum. One could even steal the code behind ranger evasion and make the DR work on in medium, or lower armor.

Make no mistake, there are people who would make barb tanks, and that's not a bad thing. I suspect it'd be the realm of the min-maxer's doing barb/fighter or barb/bard or the like. That'd be quite alright in my book, because it would involve a Barbarian tank who went into it with that as a goal. Rather than just experimenting, and finding themselves a tank.

[Skeen]

From reading these responses I get the feeling some people did not actually play a Barbarian with the updated enhancements. Some responses sounded like they rolled up a barb in their head and played them through level 28 while sitting on the crapper. Of course these enhancements may look so bad to some that they don't even bother to roll a toon.

18 barb, 2 thief with Ravager.
Ravager good -
Blood strength, heal amp, extra HP, Slaughter does more damage now, I like pain(when it procs)

Ravager needs improvement -
- Slaughter seems to do more damage now, 30 sec cooldown is still too long though.
- I like pain is nice when it procs, in around 10 hours of questing I think I saw it go off a couple times. It hit for around 300HP though. Needs to proc more.
- Most of the enhancements in Ravager are unwanted, Critical Rage is the prize here. These aspects in Ravager are unwanted, Stat damage, Extra hate, attacker loses 10 AC. Please change these to do something desirable.
- Dismember could be good if you didn't have to take Cruel cut and Festering wound to get it.
- Blood strength is on the right track and when used with Divine Crusader works fairly well in EE. I didn't have to use Sacred Ground too often as No Remorse and Blood Strength did a decent job healing. Blood Strength did such a good job that I ventured into Legendary Dreadnought with it. When I can cut through mobs quickly with Blitz going Blood Strength does an OK job, I had to use some SF pots here and there. During tough extended melee when I'm not killing mobs quickly I really have to chug SF pots to stay alive. If I had been running in DC I would not have had this issue. I would not want to run in LD in these situations, but taking care of trash in Deathwyrm and Fire on Thunder Peaks works well. Blood Strength seems to need a tad more powah if I want to not be baby sat by Divine Crusader. I love DC and don't have a problem using it, I'd just like it not to be a requirement. I just switch to Fury of the Wild and am going to see how Blood Strength does in there.

Ravager needs some attention in the form of better enhancements. Critical Rage and slightly Blood Strength are the only things going for Ravager right now. I wish I had 20 barb levels so I could try Visage of Terror as it looks cool. An AOE instakill that works would really help this lacking tree as it is now. It looks like EH and EE mobs would be making their save though since it's only con mod and half barb level. Seems like str mod and full barb level would be more appropriate.

[lyrecono]

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~

It is tempting for us to look at trees and want to rewrite them entirely. We are trying to avoid doing that.
strange because since 70% is so bad and use impaired, a total overhaul seems in place

We aren't going to be focusing on DR to improve barbarians.
i understand, it works ok in low to mid heroics and becomes useless in high lv heroics, buffing it to work in epics makes it dangerously overpowered in heroics unless you make it kick in at epic levels. that won't be needed due to the system of prr and mrr, wich is far stronger.

We are in the process of re-examining Epic Ward to see if it needs to be as severe as it is.
people abused the living daylight out of it and it got a blanket fix, removing/fixing it would play in the hands of people with many attacks or high attack speed, not barbs.
it needs to be severe because otherwise it would degrade the melee's back to the days of dual weilding WoP weapons playing tag, enabling them to take down a mob faster then a pure 2handed dps barb ever did.
why have those useless abilities in the barb tree anyway? get rid of it and put something that does damage in there. a simple line that does this:
tier 1 add 2 damage with 2 handed weapons and 5 melee power
tier 2 add 2 damage with a 2 handed weapon and 5 prr and mrr
tier 3 add 2 damage with a 2 handed weapon and 5 melee power
tier 4 add 2 damage with a 2 handed weapon and 5 prr and mrr
tier 5 add 2 damage with a 2 handed weapon and 20 melee power
spread the already weak mad munitions/angry arms line over this and you're done.

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.
this shows that you have put thought in it, up to a point, without actual healers in the game and many party leaders rather taking 2 paladins over a barb and a healer these buffs to heal amp fall flat.
The meager dps of the barb doesn't justify taking a barb and heal bot over 2 paladins/bards like it used to.

most raid leaders want to have their run over as smoothly as possible. in DDO this usually means hitting a meat bag until it keels over, if he needs to make a choice on who to take in the party, the paladin, swashbuckler or wolf builds all bring more dps and more alternative options to the table then a barb.

What is supposed to be the barbarians selling point here?

[RD2play]

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

~ 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.

Sev~

maybe add an Epic Feat, similar to improved sneak, but call it something like Epic RAGE, prerequisite 12barb (or grater rage) and have it add +4 str & con +2 will & +2 barbarian DR while raged. this way the barbs who want can pick up this feat and have more power in the epic levels, without making the barbarian too strong in the heroics

[nibel]

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

Unfortunately, still no response on repair options for WF barbarians.

~ 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.

Reversing the PRR/DR math would be more than enough to make DR matter again. Right now, the higher is your PRR, the less your DR matter because the DR number will be cut by the PRR reduction as well. Ie, if you have PRR 100 and DR 10/-, and take 100 damage, your DR cuts the damage to 90, then PRR cuts it to 45 (instead of 50). If you reverse the math, PRR applies first to cut the damage to 50, then DR cut the damage to 40.

Sure, this would make Shadow Armor DR 60 too powerful, but you can cut this DR by one third and no one will complain too much because heavy armor users by level 28 can easily get 200+ PRR, and it ends up more or less in the same place, while every other DR source is buffed.

~ 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.

Since reducing Constitution to zero no longer instantly kills a mob, I doubt "everyone use puncturing" will ever return. It was a big thing when the cap was 14 because Gianthold mobs had too much HP (by that time standard), and killing by con-drain was much faster than plain DPS.

Add the current epic ward as one of the possible champion buffs, and it is ok. But remove it entirely. Please.

~ 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.

Add to Greater Rage: If you are wearing medium armor while raging, you get +5 Melee Power. Mighty Rage raises this bonus to +10.

[Xaxx]

So if you dont want to raise barb pr make it perform as a seperate mit source... give every barb pr point 1/dr like it has and attach 3% per barb dr point in damage mit... so a 10 dr barb is at 30% damage mit seperate from prr... but you wanna keep people in medium and light armor.... make that dr damage mit % only work in light and medium armor.... so it gives reason to stay in medium armor and gives a better overall prr than heavy armor does...heck maybe even attach it to rage to... improves barbs high damage mit without spiking to much of the low damage your worrying about

[axel15810]

the paladin, swashbuckler or wolf builds all bring more dps and more alternative options to the table then a barb.

What is supposed to be the barbarians selling point here?

This.

Bottom line is there isn't one. There's absolutely zero reason to play a barbarian over a swashbuckler, wolf build or a paladin. Those classes do the same DPS, and are miles better at everything else - self sufficiency, survivability, casting, ect.

Barbs need a selling point. Since they are a class that sacrifices everything else for melee DPS, the glaringly obvious selling point should be an advantage in melee DPS over those other classes.

[axel15810]

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.

I agree, and I certainly don't think the trees are in need of a complete rehaul. The problem is more that the core ability of the class, rage, is still not near worth it's penalties. I think you should concentrate on buffing the core abilities of the class, not the enhancements.

~ 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.

Understandable and I agree. Perhaps consider PRR/MRR as an alternative.

~ 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.

Glad to hear. Rage for sure needs a buff considering it's penalties are more crippling than ever in this BYOH state of the game where few healing characters exist.

~ 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~

Absolutely - right now heavy armor proficiency is a must take feat for barbarians. That isn't right - I suggest some sort of DPS incentives to wear medium armor. It can work as a survivability verses DPS tradeoff. Wear medium for more DPS, wear heavy for better PRR/MRR.

[Seikojin]

It is tempting for us to look at trees and want to rewrite them entirely. We are trying to avoid doing that.
strange because since 70% is so bad and use impaired, a total overhaul seems in place

We aren't going to be focusing on DR to improve barbarians.
i understand, it works ok in low to mid heroics and becomes useless in high lv heroics, buffing it to work in epics makes it dangerously overpowered in heroics unless you make it kick in at epic levels. that won't be needed due to the system of prr and mrr, wich is far stronger.

We are in the process of re-examining Epic Ward to see if it needs to be as severe as it is.
people abused the living daylight out of it and it got a blanket fix, removing/fixing it would play in the hands of people with many attacks or high attack speed, not barbs.
it needs to be severe because otherwise it would degrade the melee's back to the days of dual weilding WoP weapons playing tag, enabling them to take down a mob faster then a pure 2handed dps barb ever did.
why have those useless abilities in the barb tree anyway? get rid of it and put something that does damage in there. a simple line that does this:
tier 1 add 2 damage with 2 handed weapons and 5 melee power
tier 2 add 2 damage with a 2 handed weapon and 5 prr and mrr
tier 3 add 2 damage with a 2 handed weapon and 5 melee power
tier 4 add 2 damage with a 2 handed weapon and 5 prr and mrr
tier 5 add 2 damage with a 2 handed weapon and 20 melee power
spread the already weak mad munitions/angry arms line over this and you're done.

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.
this shows that you have put thought in it, up to a point, without actual healers in the game and many party leaders rather taking 2 paladins over a barb and a healer these buffs to heal amp fall flat.
The meager dps of the barb doesn't justify taking a barb and heal bot over 2 paladins/bards like it used to.

most raid leaders want to have their run over as smoothly as possible. in DDO this usually means hitting a meat bag until it keels over, if he needs to make a choice on who to take in the party, the paladin, swashbuckler or wolf builds all bring more dps and more alternative options to the table then a barb.

What is supposed to be the barbarians selling point here?

I did check a barb through each level and my suggestions stem from that. They are great changes and offer a lot for pure and MC barbs. However it just doesn't bring them in line with the other powers at play for these newer enhancement updates, let alone changes for the other classes.

Leaving ranged alone and casting alone (shiradi and manyshot/10kstars).

Bards got coup, strong offense without a loss of much defense. Biggest boost comes from always critting.

Pallys got a huge leap in offense with holy sword. Now can crit harder on every crit.

TWF has yet to be fully addressed, however it is fairly strong as is. A pally twf stands to gain quite a bit with holy sword running.

Fighters are ok, but they will be addressed soonish too (nothing official, but seems logical).

The overall theme I am trying to bring up: Higher end levels provide better bonuses. 14 levels of pally gives +1 multiplier and range. 5 levels of bard and a bunch of enhancement points = crit all the time. Also Bards at lvl 3 with a stance can boost x2 weapons to x3, double threat range without a feat, etc. Barbs currently get some range increases and spikes to multipliers on 19-20. I think it is a little shortsighted on that aspect. I think their numbers need to be bumped a little like a pally. IE, change rage or the cores to offer something additional while a barb is raging. They have various rage boosts when they hit X level. Just shoehorn a threat range boost here, and a crit multiplier there.

[HatsuharuZ]

Suggestion for improving Barbarian Rage: Give barbarians 1 melee power per two barbarian class levels while under the effects of Barbarian Rage.

Of course, this is more powerful than giving them more strength, in some ways.

[poltt48]

Okay after playing barb for 2 weeks going from 1-28 again got to say still really disappointed. They still do not have survivability of other classes and there damage is subpar. I have tried all builds and this what found. Frenzied beserker has subpar damage for a damage tree with little to no survivability. Occult slayer great survivability almost as much as my pally or bard but has no damage to speak of at all. Think worst melee dps in the game for that survivability. Ravenger okay damage. Best dps for a barb witch not saying a lot. Medium survivability. One worst capstones in game though. Over all really think there damage is underwhelming for a class that you think should be great dps. Giving up on playing barb again they still suck and pretty much looks like what most people think cause no one playing them still.

[thakorian]

Ravager capstone needs to be fixed (can only use a few times per relog) and needs a severe boost in dc to be viable in end game. Raging currently poses so many restrictions that it feels stupid to even rage, maybe add more crit multi/range abilities to barbarian rages themselves. An esos pally in divine crusader gets 11-20/x4 crits, this is totally uncomparable to barbarians current state.

[poltt48]

Twitch fighting with THF is the best melee dps.

You have never done a druid/ranger wolf build if you think twitch is best dps. You take all single weapon feats while getting all 2 weapon feats from ranger and they stack. So you get the increased attack speed of single weapon fighting and 1.5x stat multiplier at same time you getting doublestike from 2 handed weapon fighting. That stacks with speed boost from wolf form. Then you go up ranger enhancement tree to make all your attacks hit 5 mobs for full damage. Then to add insult to injury you take orb for shield mastery feat line witch was suppose to be fixed this update to not include orbs but all did was lower 15% double strike to 9% doublestrike while still providing 30 PRR not to mention legendary shield mastery ED feat still works for it. Ranger/druid wolf build by far does more damage then a twitch 2hf build.

[Scrabbler]

So you get the increased attack speed of single weapon fighting and 1.5x stat multiplier at same time you getting doublestike from 2 handed weapon fighting.

I heard that Wolf doesn't get 1.5x stat mod, only the speed and meleepower from GSWF. And the "2 handed" feats don't grant any doublestrike...