Barbarians - The Follow Up Thread

[poltt48]

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...

Your wrong perfect 2 weapon fighting does give doublestike look at it again also you do get the 1.5 stat mod as long as your only using 1 weapon. Why most go with single weapon and orb.

[lyrecono]

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...

i assume it was a typo, the correct awnser was (edit) perfect 2 weapon fighting

All the stuff stacks
thats why i mentioned pali, swashbuckler and wolf build druids as a better option for raid/EE quest party leaders

[depositbox]

Your wrong perfect 2 weapon fighting does give doublestike look at it again also you do get the 1.5 stat mod as long as your only using 1 weapon. Why most go with single weapon and orb.

wolves do not get the 1.5 stat mod.

Ranger/druid wolf build by far does more damage then a twitch 2hf build.

On a single target, sure. THF gets glances on twitching which hits multiple mobs. They get more cleaves which also hit more mobs and glance!. Also, Tree has better dps than wolves. And wolves arent WAI. So, Trees and thf twitching still best melee dps.

[Scrabbler]

And wolves arent WAI. So, Trees and thf twitching still best melee dps.

If you exclude Wolf for not being WAI, then you must also exclude twitching as not WAI.

[depositbox]

If you exclude Wolf for not being WAI, then you must also exclude twitching as not WAI.

Twitching is WAI. it is why they allowed glances on moving.

[Qezuzu]

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.

Wolf form is broken, it's not supposed to be as good as it currently is. Until they were nerfed, "tornado-based builds" had the easiest time doing anything, this did not mean they were actually good.

If you exclude Wolf for not being WAI, then you must also exclude twitching as not WAI.

How is it not WAI? You're just using the running attack animation, which is slightly faster than standing attack animation.

Fixing Druid is a large project. Druid forms definitely need addressing, and that's a complex change that will require tech to do correctly. We will probably do a Druid revamp with a much needed third tree after we finish the third Favored Soul tree. At that time Druid forms and Druid trees will be examined.

Sev~

Please find me a quote similar to the above that covers twitch fighting, which AFAIK has been in the game since day one. They actually recently improved twich fighting by allowing glancing blows on the running attack.

[bbqzor]

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

I think this is wise as general practice, change for change's sake has been the source of MANY problems facing ddo today. But I wanted to point out that you mention "meeting your goals" as justification for change. Obviously, as a development staff, that sentiment has to be true. Otherwise, no development could occur. However, I think often, as players, this seems to go against the grain due to the *incredible* discrepancy in how many hours the respective sides have logged and under which version(s) of the game. As one example, focusing on barbarian hit points left many players scratching their heads. I think had you run a poll, few people would have cited "exceptional hit point totals" as a key defining aspect of barbarians, let alone one that the enhancements should focus on bringing to the forefront. Your goals often do not match veteran players' first instincts, leading to bizarre motivations for when to change and when not to change enhancements. (Not that veteran players' first instincts should be the only way to go either, only that often times its not eye to eye and thats troubling). I hope more opportunities for targeted dynamic change at player requests are available in the future... perhaps simply by allowing such polls (on very specific issues) early in the development process. Just taking steps to provide options for those to line up more often and more closely would help everyone, I think. And enhancements is one area where its easier to cater to those kinds of things.

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.

Again, avoiding "pulling the rug out" is very important. It HAS happened before, and never went over well. I think that, as before, its important to note that you "change only what we need to", in order to avoid "buffing for the sake of buffing". Thats another wise on the surface approach, but also leads to poor things being left in very poor condition. This happened with Paladin, and it happened again much worse with Barbarian. Bad enhancements were left bad, simply because changing them wasnt required to meet any design goal. On some level, buffing for buffings sake SHOULD happen, when the enhancements are so terrible that no one can practically use them to good effect in a gameplay environment. While narrow focus, minimal changing, and attempts to preserve existing play are paramount, and mentioned by you specifically as tenants to follow (and are sentiments I 100% agree with), I wanted to point out that *at times* you have to break from that to ensure garbage isnt left around over prolonged periods and turned into something which gets grandfathered in for every future version. It becomes a self sustaining problem. Bad enhancements remain bad now, because theyve always been bad, because of this kind of thinking. At some point, bad stuff should be tweaked for the purpose of making it not-bad, and that should be a relevant design goal.

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.

Completely fine. The effect DR is supposed to represent in pnp is effectively handled by PRR in contemporary DDO. The existing barbarian DR can readily handle what it needs to during heroic play and into early epics (when youre new and not spamming ee it can still meaningfully assist). I would like to see more PRR support for barbarian to help carry this "thematic" feel into higher end gameplay (level cap, ee, etc). Thats what the class should promote or enable or allow in a broader fashion.

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.

Well, as mentioned, this was and continues to be a mystery, but as players we have little choice but to roll with it. I will again mention that I support the idea of returning hp/amp to FB tree... they should not be the lowest hp barbs and are perhaps most in need of amp to function.

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.

Not going to comment much here as obviously the broad effect of this on every class, barbarian or not, is huge. To be frank, I see altering epic ward as a way to excuse leaving junky barbarian enhancements in as flawed logic. But knowing you guys, theres probably a dozen other things going on in the background influencing it... just dont want to see barb enhancements being the thing that motivates another "change for changes sake" situation referenced above. If there are other components to this change, bringing those up as well when its time and allowing for feedback then would be desirable.

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.

I think adding the hp/amp back to frenzy cores would be a good component as part of this adjustment. As mentioned, they really shouldnt be the low end of those, independent of their T5 heal specifics.

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.

Well, 2 strength isnt what most people had in mind I dont think. I would like to see innate PRR (scaling based on barbarian level) as one feature. Rage shouldnt be a "defensive stance" or anything, but it should let you shrug off blows "barbarian" style. I think tying PRR to this core class mechanic, which also CANNOT combine with other defensive stances, is a much safer and easier way to do it. It avoids forcing people into specific enhancements, it avoids multiclass access issues, and stops any additional tank-creep on combined prr totals for stance'd guys. One idea to consider, please.

We will look into the Occult Slayer capstone to find whatever bug is causing it to fail.

Thank you very much, it is a definite stress when trying to play and having to doublecheck manually all the time.

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.

An Enhancement which results in heavy armor level prr/mrr/etc when wearing medium armor is one idea. Or, using the Rage PRR idea above... have that portion only function in Medium Armor or less. Something like Rage adds PRR when in medium or lighter armor, as it requires the ability to roll with the punches that you cant do when restricted by heavier armors. That kind of idea. Might be a tidy way to hit two things at once without adding undue stress on peoples AP spending, and avoiding issues with WF/BF barbarians being forced into taking feats to get "medium" armor. Again, one idea to consider please.

Hopefully some additional helpful ideas in there. I hope to see more barbarian adjustments soon, and more room for malleable input from veterans in the future as well. Cheers.

[Scrabbler]

Twitching is WAI. it is why they allowed glances on moving.

Once upon a time, a developer came into the office one day and said: "Hey guys, let's adjust combat animations so that players who move their feet at precise intervals during regular attacks can have an increased swing rate, but only if they're using certain styles of weapons"

If it's true that THF twitching is intentional, then the designers are obligated to adjust the NPC text in Korthos so new players get the concept explained to them....

[depositbox]

If it's true that THF twitching is intentional, then the designers are obligated to adjust the NPC text in Korthos so new players get the concept explained to them....

no

[Qezuzu]

Once upon a time, a developer came into the office one day and said: "Hey guys, let's adjust combat animations so that players who move their feet at precise intervals during regular attacks can have an increased swing rate, but only if they're using certain styles of weapons"

Twitch fighting was not necessarily an intended feature but it's in the game anyway

Running attack animation has a higher rate of attack <- this was intentional
Any movement whatsoever triggers running attack animation <- this was intentional
Players can move backwards and forwards in rapid succession, without encountering something like animation priority <- this was intentional

These are the three components that make twitch THF what it is, and they have remained constant for years. So again, unless you can find me a dev quote that says "twitch fighting is not WAI," you can just stop now.

Why are even arguing this in the first place.

[Scrabbler]

Running attack animation has a higher rate of attack <- this was intentional
Any movement whatsoever triggers running attack animation <- this was intentional

No, those two things were not intentional. They were accidents caused by programmers and animators not paying attention to the combat implications of what they were doing- just like they accidentally gave Greataxes a 9% speed benefit over Greatsword and Falchion.

Why are even arguing this in the first place.

Why talk about twitch exploiting? Because this is a Barbarian feedback thread, and the game balance of Barbarians is deeply linked to their attack speed. If people can't even agree on what THF attack speed is like, then they can't properly evaluate Barbs. You saw on the first page: some people think THF has the lowest melee DPS, while others think it's the highest (non-Druid). It's impossible for the devs to use one design to balance Barbarians for twitch and non-twitch players at the same time.

The devs need to solve it one of two ways:

• Remove twitch attack speed from the game. No one needs to press WASD keys unless they want to move to another location. No matter how you move your feet, you can't swing faster than if you were standing still. (Optionally they can accelerate the standing attack speed to twitch-like levels, if they decide THF players need help).
• Declare that twitch attack speed is intentional, publish a web page about it, and add text to every Barbarian trainer in-game to explain the non-obvious technique to players.

[poltt48]

wolves do not get the 1.5 stat mod.



On a single target, sure. THF gets glances on twitching which hits multiple mobs. They get more cleaves which also hit more mobs and glance!. Also, Tree has better dps than wolves. And wolves arent WAI. So, Trees and thf twitching still best melee dps.

If you think tree hits harder then a wolf you have never played a wolf. Mine has 74% double strike all times 50% melee haste from just wolf form enhancements and single weapon feat. Means without a item or haste spell can get up to 80% melee haste with action boost even. Hits 5 mobs with +5W damage not just splash damage like 2hf. Plus they get sneak attack damage from wolf form. Only problem with wolf is they pull so much agro from all damage they dealing lot multiclass in fighter for some extra prr/mrr and hp.

[Ayseifn]

If you think tree hits harder then a wolf you have never played a wolf. Mine has 74% double strike all times 50% melee haste from just wolf form enhancements and single weapon feat. Means without a item or haste spell can get up to 80% melee haste with action boost even. Hits 5 mobs with +5W damage not just splash damage like 2hf. Plus they get sneak attack damage from wolf form. Only problem with wolf is they pull so much agro from all damage they dealing lot multiclass in fighter for some extra prr/mrr and hp.

Go do elite ToD in under 17 mins or so, I played a broken wolf for one life but trees look like they'd do more.

Edit: back to barb chat.

Barbs having more healing amp than paladins still feels weird. Barbs having DR that does nothing in epic is also weird, usually heroic abilities scale well into epic these days and we don't have things that become worthless as you level up.

Edit 2: One nice thing about the ship resistance shrine change is that it took a little off the top(15%) a little off the bottom(15 DR) but still kept the resistance spell relevant and resistance/absorption items. Can't something similar be done here? Like if in medium armour or lighter, get barbarian level in PRR and DR as an example or even a percentage thing that stacks with PRR like Defensive Roll, Radiant Forcefield and Arcane Barrier do. Can just turn all those abilities into an exceptional bonus if you're worried about stacking problems.

[Qezuzu]

No, those two things were not intentional. They were accidents caused by programmers and animators not paying attention to the combat implications of what they were doing- just like they accidentally gave Greataxes a 9% speed benefit over Greatsword and Falchion.

An accident that hasn't been fixed in eight years.

• Declare that twitch attack speed is intentional, publish a web page about it, and add text to every Barbarian trainer in-game to explain the non-obvious technique to players.

And while we're at it, the Rogue trainer should explain that Flaming Sphere scrolls are freaking bomb-ass and that you should get multiple Shadowscale robes, or that Bluff doesn't have any animation priority and that you can simultaneously activate Assassin's Trick and Damage+Haste boost within Bluff's animation and then prematurely end the animation with Trip.

Or maybe we can accept that the game has nuances that a new player will have to figure out or learn from other players. What exactly would that text look like, anyway? "Hello adventurer, did you know that you can increase your rate of attack if you move back and forth really quickly?" And why does it have to be two extremes, either nerf twitch fighting or advertise it everywhere so new players know about it?

The trainers don't even say anything helpful, in case you didn't notice the only options when speaking to them is Spend AP, level up and Reset Enhancements. Actually, there's an idea, have trainers give out tips.

[depositbox]

If you think tree hits harder then a wolf you have never played a wolf..

tree hits harder than anything meleeing. youre not up on trees, it would seem ;(

Hits 5 mobs with +5W damage not just splash damage like 2hf. .

every 12 seconds for alpha strike. every 15 seconds for dance of death. compared to long reach of thf and glancing mortal fear all times with higher chances to proc it. that isnt just splash dmg. and not limited to just every 15 seconds either.

[Irongutz2000]

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~

I play a 20 pure thfing barb atm , have Etred him multi times so have an honest opnion of barbs.

To make stat damage work again in epics try making it only work from enhancements and special abilities and not from items.

Would really like to see a prr bonus granted for medium armor. I take the heavy armor feat because its that much of a difference.

I also feel OS and ravenger need more dps. Sadly u don't do enough damage in EE's unless ur mostly invested into FB.

More str on raging is a good idea but the amount u would have to add would have to be 8 or higher to make a difference. Maybe just add more MP or straight damage?

That said my FB barb is a lot fun ,

[Scrabbler]

Or maybe we can accept that the game has nuances that a new player will have to figure out or learn from other players. What exactly would that text look like, anyway? "Hello adventurer, did you know that you can increase your rate of attack if you move back and forth really quickly?"

Yes, it's pretty hard to come up with a way to describe twitch-fighting in-game that doesn't sound like you're exploiting a stupid bug. That's really my point.

[Qhualor]

The devs said if twitching is going to be too OP with glancing blows while moving they will look into removing glancing blows while moving again. Twitching for some may be easy, but it takes a lag spike or fat fingers to mess up the sequence. Twitching also requires you to stand toe to toe with a mob while not moving other than using WASD. For a barb that means not taking advantage of cleaves and limiting other abilities. This also means not moving around to not get surrounded by mobs or avoid getting hit. Combat tactics are limited. Twitching works best against high HP mobs you will be hitting for more than a few seconds or a few swings. That means mainly EE. If you are twitching below that than I would be looking into how to improve your DPS.

[Qezuzu]

Yes, it's pretty hard to come up with a way to describe twitch-fighting in-game that doesn't sound like you're exploiting a stupid bug. That's really my point.

Running attack animation has faster rate of attacks. Any amount of movement causes running attack animation. There is no animation priority in movement, and attack animations do not have priority over movement. If it's a bug, not a bug like "wow ladders are so hard" but a bug that could be fixed by tweaking animations, it wouldn't have persisted as long as it has (forever.) And they certainly wouldn't have BUFFED it, like they did when running attack got glancing blows.

Oh, and in many games, bugs just become tricks over time. Wanna know a trick? Back in ye olde epics, people would form walls with their bodies and allow a caster to safely nuke/firewall enemies. Enemies wouldn't attack the wall, since they were aggroed on the caster. Now if you were a weenie you could call this an exploitation of enemy AI, but it's really an example of something called "emergent gameplay."

[TheDr0wRanger]

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.

Never stopped them when flesh sorcs couldn't heal themselves, Cocoon is completely out of character as well. Twists are fine, I like the thematic break that makes toons unique. But as I've said in other threads, any time there is a no-brainer choice in high-level abilities, there is a game design failure at work. A truly balanced tree should make every point spent a choice among viable and desirable options.

Barbs have it worse because rage ruins basically all healing options, but there's a history of leaving some classes unable to care for themselves while their immediate neighbors(wizards, rangers) have access to viable options, and damage that's as good if not better(although sorcs maintained a damage advantage).

This is kind of a key issue, they balance self sufficient classes to be high damage because its a game mostly concerned with killing things. But because of the environment and players, healing oneself is an expected part of every build, and that hasn't been accounted for. Personally I'd like to slaughter that expectation and let the original theme shine through(Ye Gods,I sound like Uska). But Uska is right, self healing across the board is probably an un-dnd solution. I simply break with him when he asserts that we can't do it because of that.

Barbs should have like 60% damage immunity to all physical damage, applied first, immune to all bypass, at endgame. They should heal fully on rest at shrines, and they should absolutely get melee power in spades. Barbs are not intended to be a nuanced class, full of unique and special abilities. They are supposed to be the biggest thug with the biggest stick and hit harder than a Mack truck. They are restricted from doing magic and skills, prevented from wearing armor that tends towards a defensive playstyle(at least in a thematic sense) and are given abilities that cater to a character that bum-rushes dragons for a living. Some of the abilities we have are just completely out of sync with what a Barb is made for. Stat damage, in anything other than fully crippling numbers(10 and up, per strike) is just too much faffing about for an illiterate tribesman.

Scaring the life out of someone with Visage? Perfect provided it worked, which it doesn't.
How about it instantly kills 5-15 people below Orange Name level without DC, and you get 5 per rest independent of rage? Thats awesome, and once balanced should not ruin the difficulty curve.

How about making improved stunning blow that jumps the dc like Improved Trip but requires rage. That's a sane thing for a big dumb oaf to be doing.

How about really working on tailoring rage per-tree? Berserker gets a good idea of this with frenzy, how about in Occult Slayer we do a cold-rage thing and give them stacking DC improvements that make them more and more able to cripple their enemies, or stacking rebound ability that returns portions of damage from spells directed at them? Give Ravager a bloodlust thing that improves their healing in rage or perhaps a few blood-magic kind of things that are more powerful the more advanced their state of rage. I feel like this hits two birds with one stone, you improve the function of rage, you make more advanced rage desirable over less advanced rage(so as to balance between splashes and pure), you can offer discernible differences among the trees without filling them with silly clickies that do things Barbarians fundamentally don't do, and for crying out lout you make them feel barbaric and furious.

Just throwing ideas out, probably not terribly coherent either.