Barbarians - The Follow Up Thread

[FlaviusMaximus]

...with this there is even less reason to go pure barb, cutting of at 12 or 18 at best...

Occult Slayer has border line immunity to spells at the level 20 core. If anyone bothers putting more than a couple points into that tree, it's to get that ability.

Frenzied Berserker gets +10 melee power at 18 and +10 melee power, big damage on vorpals, Storm's Eye, and +4 con at 20.

There isn't a splash that gets near equaling the kind of power those capstones give for barbarians.

[MeliCat]

Storm's eye is one of those abilities that push you to rework your build to give maximum benefits for maximum investments, in this case, it's players who though out their builds and pay them well to benefit from that. If you nerf storm's eye i believe you will just show that you don't appreciate player's ingenuity and base your nerfing ideas on 5 players accross the game who know how to maximise their builds to push the envelope. And it's just make pally dps outshine everything else again in which case i don't see anyone playing anything else ever. period.

tl;dr

stupid decision nerfing storm's eye because of 5 players who know how to use it wo max efficiency

Found out that there is something proccing a healing effect constantly (not wai). Really hoping then that design decisions are not being made on these completions.

[Cetus]

I agree that fighters need work on Kensei, but fighters are limited on fighting styles by what you choose feat wise. right now I say chill some, cause you will get you buff in time. there are other classes that need to get fixed/brought up to even the " fighters, who quite frankly, are suffering at the bottom right now." Of course you can do what I do and use game knowledge and skill to play non-meta classes.

I'm not exactly making a huge protest here for fighters. Simply stating that a particular class, that one happens to care about, isn't faring well, is rather benign. I suspect they will get their pass eventually, if the devs acknowledge that work is needed in the first place. I haven't seen a dev communicate anything on that front as of yet.

[Ayseifn]

Found out that there is something proccing a healing effect constantly (not wai). Really hoping then that design decisions are not being made on these completions.

So the issue is Golems Hearts proc off of supreme cleave AKA self damage?

If that's the case then yeah, fix that and Divine Sacrifice if it's happening there too, as well as every other self damage thing that might cause it then look at Storms Eye again.

Also if this change is because of those EE Breaking the Ranks runs there's a few other things going on there that make barb vs pally DPS comparisons less than ideal. For one barbarians are the lowest on the dungeon scaling list with paladins being somewhere in the middle(unless this was changed at some point) and in harder quests and/or in groups Storms Eye will be much harder to keep up(especially if you fix Golems Hearts).

If it's those Vol runs or Demonweb ones in the speed records thread that's probably got a fair bit to do with sprint boost on top of those other things. Also Champions were supposed to make the game harder but if you look at any of these speed runs they do almost nothing, putting the pre nerf Champs back in would help making Storms Eye much harder to keep up.

So:
1) Do away with dungeon scaling by class if you haven't already, it just gets in the way of proper class balance.
2) Fix Golems Hearts.
3) Bring on the real Champions.
4) Sprint Boost is really good for speed runs, the time saved from using it should be factored in when doing adjustments.
5) Once all that is done, adjust Storms Eye if it's still needed.

[maddong]

1) Do away with dungeon scaling by class if you haven't already, it just gets in the way of proper class balance.
2) Fix Golems Hearts.
3) Bring on the real Champions.
4) Sprint Boost is really good for speed runs, the time saved from using it should be factored in when doing adjustments.
5) Once all that is done, adjust Storms Eye if it's still needed.

I like that. Making all classes scale the same is probably needed for comparing builds.
You could also go back to no scaling on EE similar to how originally there was no scaling in epics.

That would make it significantly harder to solo EE.

Maybe FB nerfs could be put on hold for bug fix and scaling change.

[ValariusK]

Is the ravager T5 crit rage going to be fixed? Presently it is the only crit range enhancement that does NOT stack with improved crit. So if you have say a maul with 19-20/3x crit without crit rage it is 17-20 with it, whereas it should be 15-20/3x.

[MeliCat]

It doesn't sound like you are interested in changing those timers for the short FB rages. Therefore for the first time ever I am going to attempt to macro something while I play. Should be interesting. Good to have an incentive to actually bother with macros I guess.

[Tilomere]

Btw from my own example, champions can take Storm's Eye away with a single hit easily even with the Golem's Heart bug, because they simply take it with 1 hit/shot (and I have 1700+ hp).

If champions were hitting for 850 through 100+ PRR/MRR then the game would be unplayable, and your and other videos showing Storm's Eye through the entire quest would not be possible. Last time I solod EE breaking the ranks, champions topped out around 350.

And even if this were true, it would only support reducing the power of Storms Eye and putting it into something that doesn't go away inconsistently, like rage to have a better play experience for all barbarians, not only level 28 barbarians that can keep Storms Eye running due to DR 60. Do you want to be able to play a viable barbarian, that switches enhancements around for fun and is viable with any build 1-28, or do you want min-max level 28 T5 Ravager/Core 6 FB plate/DR 60 to be the only good build and remain OP preventing them from buffing and balancing barbarians generally so all other builds don't play or level as intended?

[Stinging_Bee]

If champions were hitting for 850 through 100+ PRR/MRR then the game would be unplayable, and your and other videos showing Storm's Eye through the entire quest would not be possible. Last time I solod EE breaking the ranks, champions topped out around 350.

And even if this were true, it would only support reducing the power of Storms Eye and putting it into something that doesn't go away inconsistently, like rage to have a better play experience for all barbarians, not only level 28 barbarians that can keep Storms Eye running due to DR 60. Do you want to be able to play a viable barbarian, that switches enhancements around for fun and is viable with any build 1-28, or do you want min-max level 28 T5 Ravager/Core 6 FB plate/DR 60 to be the only good build and remain OP preventing them from buffing and balancing barbarians generally so all other builds don't play or level as intended?

It's pretty easy to keep storms eye running on normal and hard settings so everyone can experience that reliably from 1 to 28.
On EE of course you need to be lvl 28 to be able to keep it for long time cause and you will need the best defensive gear really.
Again IMHO a change to storm eye barbarians now is just bipolar and it is against the barbarian revamp and will make people feel barbs useless again

[Zoda]

If champions were hitting for 850 through 100+ PRR/MRR then the game would be unplayable, and your and other videos showing Storm's Eye through the entire quest would not be possible. Last time I solod EE breaking the ranks, champions topped out around 350.

And even if this were true, it would only support reducing the power of Storms Eye and putting it into something that doesn't go away inconsistently, like rage to have a better play experience for all barbarians, not only level 28 barbarians that can keep Storms Eye running due to DR 60. Do you want to be able to play a viable barbarian, that switches enhancements around for fun and is viable with any build 1-28, or do you want min-max level 28 T5 Ravager/Core 6 FB plate/DR 60 to be the only good build and remain OP preventing them from buffing and balancing barbarians generally so all other builds don't play or level as intended?

Just lol. If you haven't seen champions hitting for more than 350 you need to play more ee content. (go into mask of deception, I actually got 1 shotted by champion sorcs there from max hp more than once)

Also, there are plenty of ee solo capable barb builds on this forum, why don't we go ahead and nerf them all? If you just simply play any kind of barb in crusader you are already golden, no remorse pretty much does the job by itself without blood strength (check out the redsonja build for example, or look at those dwrofs soloing stuff with no fail SR, or the 18/1/1 builds with DM). The only advantage my build has over them is that it can run in blitz instead of crusader to max dps, and the difference in dps before you think of anything else comes from the no cooldown action boosts (and no cooldown sprint boost helps in speedruns in general). Just remember the shiradi casters splashing barb for sprint boost to own speed records...

You don't even know how dr works.... which is sad (hint: you get that 60 dr if you assume 0 prr, which is pretty hard considering that you already need heavy armor for that effect, it's more like 20 effective dr after prr assuming that I'm under 75% hp).

If you think that mine is the only viable barb build, you need to get a clue.

There will always be an optimized min/maxed build, no matter what you nerf, will you cry about next incarnation too?

[Zerkul]

.. as per title. Please DEVs have a look. PM if you want a quicker answer.

[zwiebelring]

Well well... so many ee completios posted. Can we have something NOT being buggy to make Barbarians worthwile?

[Tilomere]

Stuffs

What you think I know or will do is irrelevant to a discussion on barb abilities. I didn't come crying about having to rebuild my max power character 4 times. SR does fail, even when the capstone itself doesn't bug out, since caster level = CR. And it doesn't work on everything such as tactical detonation or a simple trip. And having a lot of power in a core ability that works in plate/DR 60 at 28 and in EH seems sorta silly in a barb tree. I never said nerf, I said redistribute. When everything is redistributed, who knows if your build will even be weaker than it is now? If some of the power goes into level 11 rage and other lower level abilities, your build will certainly play smoother and be buffed while leveling 1-27, and may not even be significantly weaker at 28. Plus many other builds would be better as well.

Also polar ray against a druid/barb that does 3k base damage, -50% fire shield (twist, spell, or cloak of fire, or prismatic cloak), -50% block energy twist + block energy past life, - 35% from MRR fighting with shield equipped, ends up hitting for 500. So uh, yea I don't know what you are talking about when you say polar ray 1 shots you. And even if it does, it still supports not having a core ability based on being over 50% health being so necessary and prominent in a barb build, especially the only barb capstone that currently isn't bugged.

[Zoda]

What you think I know or will do is irrelevant to a discussion on barb abilities. I didn't come crying about having to rebuild my max power character 4 times. SR does fail, even when the capstone itself doesn't bug out, since caster level = CR. And it doesn't work on everything such as tactical detonation or a simple trip. And having a lot of power in a core ability that works in plate/DR 60 at 28 and in EH seems sorta silly in a barb tree. I never said nerf, I said redistribute. When everything is redistributed, who knows if your build will even be weaker than it is now? If some of the power goes into level 11 rage and other lower level abilities, your build will certainly play smoother and be buffed while leveling 1-27, and may not even be significantly weaker at 28. Plus many other builds would be better as well.

Also polar ray against a druid/barb that does 3k base damage, -50% fire shield (twist, spell, or cloak of fire, or prismatic cloak), -50% block energy twist + block energy past life, - 66% from MRR fighting with shield equipped, ends up only hitting for 250. So uh, yea I don't know what you are talking about when you say polar ray 1 shots you. And even if it does, it still supports not having a core ability based on being over 50% health being so necessary and prominent in a barb build, especially the only barb capstone that currently isn't bugged.

I don't know what's this 1-27 nonsense. You get the ability at lvl 20, and it works just fine from 20 to 28, and you massively overrate the DR upgraded shadowscale, the build does just as fine with a black dragon set (and I will replace it with the Black Dragon set for far superior dps once I find a good way replace Mythic Emerald gaze). Also if you have problem from 1 to 20, I don't even know what to say... We used to do those quests before the enhancements pass blindfolded (and lets just say that the old enhancements were not in the same level in terms of power level). You get Blood Strength on lvl 5 and the on kill proc is already 20 base there, which is pretty handy when you kill 8 bugbers with a single cleave.

Never said a single word about about polar ray friend. In my exact example I said champ sorcs in mask of deception. They use Dragon Breath (the draconic ED spell), and they use all 4 elements, good luck guessing which of the 4 elements is next to pack absorbtion abainst. But any champion can have the light damage on hit proc, which - with my character's mmr hits for around 600 (not sure if it scales with more party members, I usually solo), some come with the ultimate fort bypass perk and just crit you for a million and the list could go on. Also who the hell cares about E/H and talks about balancing and stuff? Maybe stop playing it and get in on EE and you'll have a better picture (E/E carnival doesn't count).

[Zoda]

Well well... so many ee completios posted. Can we have something NOT being buggy to make Barbarians worthwile?

My first vids were posted without the bug, coz I had no mats to upgrade enough necro gear with 2nd slot. Noticed the golem heart bug after I upgraded a few more and got space for it. Without it I had to drop rage/displace and consecrate.

[Bladebolt]

The new core enhancements are good and I use them from all 3 trees for bulk. It is kindof fun being super tanky.

Blood Tribute surpasses all healing requirements for heroics so far (lvl 16), so I didn't get any of the T5 healing abilities, or any of the T5 abilities period. Just low tier and core abilities from each tree. Works fine and I enjoy never needing to heal.

My solo Druid/Barb/Rogue build under the old 1d6 healing on hit Blood Strength would have healed 75 hp/sec in combat for a non-exploit extreme build. New build using core healing AMP without any T5 healing will heal 225 hp/sec instead using a blue bar. So you sorta shoved barb into far more powerful ED healing, but it is also less popular and less available blue-bar barb healing.

I guess the point is that you nerfed something that is completely outclassed and made irrelevant by Blood Tribute in Heroics, and that wasn't strong enough to be relevant in the first place in EE for all but a few very strange builds.

The level up bonuses to barb rage should all be doubled every patch until the question "Is it worthwhile to rage?" answers yes.

I don't mean to doubt you but... 225 HP/SEC??????
Can you teach me how you do that?
Do you min 225/min?

[Tilomere]

Zoda, again, what you think I know or do is irrelevant to a discussion on barb abilities. If champions and spell damage are a concern to barbs for you, why don't you give feedback about it in this thread. Dragon's breath has a reflex save, so a shield should effectively triple your MRR, was that not enough?

My first vids were posted without the bug, coz I had no mats to upgrade enough necro gear with 2nd slot. Noticed the golem heart bug after I upgraded a few more and got space for it. Without it I had to drop rage/displace and consecrate.

That is great feedback on what you had to do to get a barb ability to work. It also makes me doubt most barbs will get this to work, especially since you were doing all this and using DR60/plate.

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The problem I have with the capstone is it isn't risk versus reward in a risk versus reward tree, on a risk versus reward class.

Risk versus reward to me is: gain 1 damage for every 2% missing life, Active: Berserker Assault: Pay 10% of maximum life to Supreme Cleave with a damage bonus equal to life lost. This shares the same cool down with Supreme Cleave. Req: Supreme Cleave. (Risky Barb gameplay).

Reward for no risk is: gain damage for playing and building in a way you never come close to dying or even go below half life. (Safe Paladin Gameplay)

I'm pretty certain barb players and paladin/paladin multiclass converts to barb players will have two different preferences here.

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Look up how anyone tanks everything in EE FoT at once and healing will become clear. They bug fixed the nerfed Blood Strength so it works on kill now so blue bar and ED healing is less but still necessary.

[Bladebolt]

the failure isn't the recent armor /prr/mrr changes but the inabillety to ballance the game for melee for the last 2 years.
I and with me some other barb lovers want to keep playing with friends, we have lost enough people as it is, we want to particepate, contribute, it is no more then natural to grab a plate mail.
getting evasion is pointless, not enough suport for a decent ref safe, the goal would be improved evasion and eat half damage all the time, platemail does better, EE's are hard enough as it is.
Don't fix the thing that isn't broken, with turbines trackrecord we're bound to end up with something else broken and blancket fixes that make things worse.

as for hotbars, i use a seperate bar for buffs because between 2 barb tree's, 3 or more combat feats, ed and 4 twists i have a full bar with combat clickies i have to cycle though, all bound to 1 to 12 on the side of my naga mouse, i already switch stunning blow for something else on the hotbar in undead heavy quests or raids

LOL!
I can totally relate to that!
I had my mic open on an Epic Elite run and a guildy asked me "What the f*** are you doing there? Playing the piano? "

[Zoda]

Zoda, again, what you think I know or do is irrelevant to a discussion on barb abilities. If champions and spell damage are a concern to barbs for you, why don't you give feedback about it in this thread. Dragon's breath has a reflex save, so a shield should effectively triple your MRR, was that not enough?



That is great feedback on what you had to do to get a barb ability to work. It also makes me doubt most barbs will get this to work, especially since you were doing all this and using DR60/plate.

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The problem I have with the capstone is it isn't risk versus reward in a risk versus reward tree, on a risk versus reward class.

Risk versus reward to me is: gain 1 damage for every 2% missing life, Active: Berserker Assault: Pay 10% of maximum life to Supreme Cleave with a damage bonus equal to life lost. This shares the same cool down with Supreme Cleave. Req: Supreme Cleave. (Risky Barb gameplay).

Reward for no risk is: gain damage for playing and building in a way you never come close to dying or even go below half life. (Safe Paladin Gameplay)

I'm pretty certain barb players and paladin/paladin multiclass converts to barb players will have two different preferences here.

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Look up how anyone tanks everything in EE FoT at once and healing will become clear. They bug fixed the nerfed Blood Strength so it works on kill now so blue bar and ED healing is less but still necessary.

What you know and I think you know is very relevant to the discussion if you provide (in my opinion) incorrect information, and I will keep calling you out on it.

Again, the DR/60 only takes effect AFTER prr, which means that at 170ish prr (my prr on this build) it's about 20 damage reduction per hit, if I'm already below 75% health. Now, noone said anything about stoneskin's 10 DR being OP when the the level cap was 20, and I'm pretty sure the incomming physical damage got way more than doubled over the years. You massively overrate the relevancs of that armor, the difference is barely noticable in quests like e/e stormhorns when I'm running them below 28 (on eTRs). It may seem like the best thing for ppl who are not using displacement clickies though, I may accept that, but I do, and the vast majority of endgame players do. Actually with the next patch where you get 10 prr in medium armor, it might worth dropping it because you can get better dodge in medium armor with just about the same prr and you free up a feat (and get 3% ds).

Also I think the current Storm's Eye fits's just fine with the risk/reward thing you talking about (but if we are already there, I wonder why noone has a problem with paladin's having 0 risk). If you want to play your character to the max, you WILL play more aggressively to get more value out of your dps, which makes it more risky (diving into more mobs etc), and if you don't, then you have no place in a balancing min/maxing discussion to begin with, like I'm pretty sure that no casual will ever notice the difference.

The major difference between paladin and barb selfheal, is the burst healing potential that paladin has. If for example an E/E lich avanger (be it champ or not) decides to nuke you off the plane, a pala easily burst heals through, while barbs only have essentially heal over time effects (or store pots, but I have to swallow my ego every time I'm forced to drink one - or SF pots that cripple you for 30 sec and often result in drinking more and more), which in the highest end content is way riskier than having a strong recon/cure/LOH.

The only problem is the Golem's Heart BUG, not the capstone, and I find it unacceptable that devs are rushing to nerf stuff before fixing relevant, major bugs, and then get a clear picture.

[Tilomere]

The only problem is the Golem's Heart BUG, not the capstone, and I find it unacceptable that devs are rushing to nerf stuff before fixing relevant, major bugs, and then get a clear picture.

It might not be a nerf though. If they buff rage and all barbs in other ways, but reduce a single capstone, all barbs without that capstone are buffed, and barbs with that capstone may still end up buffed or neutral depending on how much they reduce the capstone and how much barbs are buffed in other ways. The overall game play 1-28 may end up being more enjoyable for all builds, and allow better build balance.

They said they were making changes based on internal tests, which means they are testing without exploiting bugs. Golem's heart is also a relatively minor, isolated bug, limited to a few abilities and level 28 characters with a rare augment. Play a druid or thrower if you want to see major bugs. Now which mule has that augment? Kidding I jest.