Enhancement questions from long time Barb player (and bug report?)

[BeldVanGuard]

Heya folks,

This will sound odd, but I have some questions regarding Barbarian Enhancements, even though I've played lots of Barbarians over the years.
I usually play a Ravager build. As the game has progressed and power creep evolved, I found Ravager going from fun build to super viable. Yet, the vast majority of Barbarian players I've spoken too, here, in game, other forums etc, all swear by Frenzied Berserker. Now since it's last "update" I hadn't really played it deep. Every time I'd read the Enhancements, I'd just go "meh" and wonder what the fuss was about.
I understand the power from an additional x2 Crit Multiplier, esp in the multiclass builds that can heavily abuse it, but for pure Barbs? I just can't see it.
So, for Racial Life reasons, and to utilize the Tail of Suulomades properly, I've said "well lets test it with the best possible weapon for it" so I'm playing a Wood Elf Frenzied Berserker Barb.

Now while I do see the overall increase in damage, I cannot say I'm impressed by it. It isn't significantly higher than my Ravager builds from what I can tell. What is very noticeable though, is my survivability has tanked dramatically. During leveling in Heroics and Epic. Now I understand the difference in playstyles, and I get the idea of being the "glass cannon" of Melee builds, but for how popular this Enhancement tree is, I just don't see it. Combine the fact that Ravager is often called a for fun or flavor build, I am even more surprised. Then there's the bugs or unlisted features of the tree, and I just get frustrated.

So some questions/bugs/confusion I have with the tree and builds if you can indulge me

Supreme Cleave: Why is this good? Why do people like this? In order to get it and it's improving skills, it is a VERY large amount of points. Yes, we all need to spend 41 points in a tree and esp in the Barb trees in general, you'll have to take some garbage to move up, but this is an astronomical amount of points!
According to the tooltip, it has no bonus W damage, and it reads like Whirlwind, but it appears to just be a Cleave. If it DOES have unlisted bonus W damage, I don't think it's more than Cleave (+1).
Now I figured maybe I could skip Cleaves to get some more Feats open (not sure what I'd take that's worth it but yaknow) and it let me try out going 2H Styles earlier and relying on Strikethrough over Cleave (which I did find worked well) but with it underperforming, and costing so many points, I still went back and got Cleave and G.Cleave.
So, lets look at buffing it.

Blood Trail: So obviously taking out the hitpoint loss is nice, and the pre-req isn't bad because everyone should have Blood Tribute anyways but it still didn't feel good. Then I saw the unlisted feature of max rank. You get 1 Temporary Hitpoint per target hit.
Why?
It isn't listed, it doesn't scale with anything, and it's useless by about level 5. Is this some left over code from an old version? Is it supposed to be doing something?

Wade In: Technically this is fine. Allows Supreme Cleave to give you a +10 to hit bonus, and while losing AC isn't great, it isn't a huge amount esp in late game. But for 3 points in a build that specifically utilizes Strength? Is the +10 to hit really needed? I suppose if you're missing Accuracy/Insight Acc items maybe. But isn't exciting and isn't making up for the lack of special to Supreme Cleave.

Lash Out: Ok, now we're in T5 upgrading Supreme Cleave. This should be what I'm looking for. But well......it doesn't apply every time (82%? So odd), the Bleed, like most Bleeds in the game, is pathetically small, even with the scaling, and as this is the biggest "Hit Hard and Fast" Build, the dot would never have time to work on anything but bosses. The AC reduction doesn't really scale into Epics, and while I know not to trust the tooltips, I didn't see it stacking properly like it says either. Can anyone confirm if the AC reduction is stacking properly?

Tantrum: I'm listing this with Supreme as it shares all the bonuses. So it's a big hit, which is nice, but with an HP cost, a tremendous cooldown, a random chance of doing what you need (the Knockdown) and they still get a Standard Save to resist it, and it gets Lash Out, Wade In, and Blood Trail bonuses. Which is still next to nothing and rarely usable.

Now the other abilities

Exhausting Blow: Nothing to discuss, another Stat damage attack that doesn't work well in the high end game, Barbs have a ton of these. Bleh

Accelerated Metabolism: So this is meant to be their T5 Sustain as all Barb trees have (Blood Strength, Vampiric Bond, One Spirit) and I understand the need to want to balance the "big effects" costing HP versus letting them just heal it off, but even outside of Reaper this was doing so little, and you have no control in any way over when the heals hit (killing with Blood Strength, clicking One Spirit as needed etc) it didn't really allow for any sort of sustain at all. On that note, the Icon of the ability reads "Heals 3d6" but the in game buff icon reads "Heals 2d6". I am not sure which is working properly. Either way, I found this unable to sustain me comparably to the other tree options. When ya factor in spending HP on Storm's Eye, Frenzy, Death Frenzy, Tantrum, and having less HP/Heal Amp than the other trees, I felt super squishy.

Storm's Eye: So the passive is great, and the scaling is very obviously working with it and feels good. The clicky effect and it's cost? Not so much. 100HP for 25 Stacks of +1 Melee Damage, losing 1 every 3 seconds, also doesn't feel great.
Also I am unsure if this is working as intended or at all. The buff bar icon stays up at 25 stacks for the duration. If you click on yourself and inspect however, THAT buff bar shows the stacks decaying as expected (maybe a little slower). However the bonus damage doesn't show up on the character sheet or weapon details, I didn't see anything in the combat log, and while I haven't used it a ton, I have not really seen a damage increase from this. Could just be dice RNG though. Can anyone confirm if this is working or how it's supposed to work?

So...is this tree really just the x2 Critical Multiplier and some small bonuses? I get that for the all in hybrid's like Swashbuckler Handaxe, but for pure Barb? Again, I'm not trying to hate, I just don't see it.

So long story short, not looking to bash the tree or others builds, or argue in any way, I legit would like folks input on the pros of this tree and the things I mentioned above. I feel like I'm missing something and I want to understand.

Thanks kindly for reading and future input!

-Phinnius

[PrinceOfAsphodel]

I'm not gonna have all the answers to this but all those enhancements you mentioned are indeed not great. Well, except for Focused Wrath. The enhancements one usually takes in this tree are cores 1-4 or 5, Cracking Attack and all its upgrades, Power Rage, Blood Tribute, Angry Arms and Munitions, Sprint Boost, Extra Action Boosts, Constitution, Focused Wrath, and Raging Blows.
I agree with your analysis of the capstone. It's good enough that you can take it and not want to vomit but also weak enough to where you can just go 18 Barbarian and fill in with a fighter and FVS level or something like that. I wouldn't take Supreme Cleave while on a THF build but I would on SWF.

[magaiti]

Supreme Cleave
Blood Trail
Wade In
Lash Out
Tantrum
Exhausting Blow
Accelerated Metabolism
Storm's Eye

No player that swears by FB uses these.
You are literally looking at the wrong side of FB.

FB is respected for:
Blood Tribute
lots of DPS in Cores (melee power, Death Frenzy) and tiers (Crazy Strike, Raging Blows)
Strikethrough bonuses (Crazy Arms, Mad Munitions, Focus Wide)


That said, it is often easier to level-up in Raveger, especially solo.
FB is mostly used at cap, party play, where Barb is defined by DPS, not self-healing ability.

[BeldVanGuard]

No player that swears by FB uses these.
You are literally looking at the wrong side of FB.

FB is respected for:
Blood Tribute
lots of DPS in Cores (melee power, Death Frenzy) and tiers (Crazy Strike, Raging Blows)
Strikethrough bonuses (Crazy Arms, Mad Munitions, Focus Wide)


That said, it is often easier to level-up in Raveger, especially solo.
FB is mostly used at cap, party play, where Barb is defined by DPS, not self-healing ability.

Appreciate the feedback. Yes, I was looking at the things I didn't understand or like, bringing up the good parts of the tree wasn't what I needed (again wasn't trying to **** on the tree)
I have heard for a long time tho that people took Supreme Cleave, hence why I focused on it, and was stunned it was as bad or worse than I thought.
Guess until I get more feedback I'll save it for end game only.

Have the bugs/oddities I pointed out been addressed before? Or do we not even know how they are intended to work?

[BeldVanGuard]

I'm not gonna have all the answers to this but all those enhancements you mentioned are indeed not great. Well, except for Focused Wrath. The enhancements one usually takes in this tree are cores 1-4 or 5, Cracking Attack and all its upgrades, Power Rage, Blood Tribute, Angry Arms and Munitions, Sprint Boost, Extra Action Boosts, Constitution, Focused Wrath, and Raging Blows.
I agree with your analysis of the capstone. It's good enough that you can take it and not want to vomit but also weak enough to where you can just go 18 Barbarian and fill in with a fighter and FVS level or something like that. I wouldn't take Supreme Cleave while on a THF build but I would on SWF.

Just to have an AoE component? Still skip the upgrades? (Probably take Blood Trail for simplicity I'm sure but)

Thanks kindly!

[dredre9987]

Appreciate the feedback. Yes, I was looking at the things I didn't understand or like, bringing up the good parts of the tree wasn't what I needed (again wasn't trying to **** on the tree)
I have heard for a long time tho that people took Supreme Cleave, hence why I focused on it, and was stunned it was as bad or worse than I thought.
Guess until I get more feedback I'll save it for end game only.

Have the bugs/oddities I pointed out been addressed before? Or do we not even know how they are intended to work?

Supreme Cleave works to reset Momentum Swing from Legendary Dreadnought


Momentum Swing: Active Ability: (Cooldown 1 min) Tactical Melee Attack Perform an attack with +5[W] damage and +[1/2/3] critical threat range. Cleave attacks have a [15/30/50]% chance to reset the cooldown of this ability (this cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds).


Tantrum does the same

[Hawkwier]

Heya folks,

This will sound odd, but I have some questions regarding Barbarian Enhancements, even though I've played lots of Barbarians over the years.
I usually play a Ravager build. As the game has progressed and power creep evolved, I found Ravager going from fun build to super viable. Yet, the vast majority of Barbarian players I've spoken too, here, in game, other forums etc, all swear by Frenzied Berserker. Now since it's last "update" I hadn't really played it deep. Every time I'd read the Enhancements, I'd just go "meh" and wonder what the fuss was about.
I understand the power from an additional x2 Crit Multiplier, esp in the multiclass builds that can heavily abuse it, but for pure Barbs? I just can't see it.
So, for Racial Life reasons, and to utilize the Tail of Suulomades properly, I've said "well lets test it with the best possible weapon for it" so I'm playing a Wood Elf Frenzied Berserker Barb.

Now while I do see the overall increase in damage, I cannot say I'm impressed by it. It isn't significantly higher than my Ravager builds from what I can tell. What is very noticeable though, is my survivability has tanked dramatically. During leveling in Heroics and Epic. Now I understand the difference in playstyles, and I get the idea of being the "glass cannon" of Melee builds, but for how popular this Enhancement tree is, I just don't see it. Combine the fact that Ravager is often called a for fun or flavor build, I am even more surprised. Then there's the bugs or unlisted features of the tree, and I just get frustrated.

So some questions/bugs/confusion I have with the tree and builds if you can indulge me

Supreme Cleave: Why is this good? Why do people like this? In order to get it and it's improving skills, it is a VERY large amount of points. Yes, we all need to spend 41 points in a tree and esp in the Barb trees in general, you'll have to take some garbage to move up, but this is an astronomical amount of points!
According to the tooltip, it has no bonus W damage, and it reads like Whirlwind, but it appears to just be a Cleave. If it DOES have unlisted bonus W damage, I don't think it's more than Cleave (+1).
Now I figured maybe I could skip Cleaves to get some more Feats open (not sure what I'd take that's worth it but yaknow) and it let me try out going 2H Styles earlier and relying on Strikethrough over Cleave (which I did find worked well) but with it underperforming, and costing so many points, I still went back and got Cleave and G.Cleave.
So, lets look at buffing it.

Blood Trail: So obviously taking out the hitpoint loss is nice, and the pre-req isn't bad because everyone should have Blood Tribute anyways but it still didn't feel good. Then I saw the unlisted feature of max rank. You get 1 Temporary Hitpoint per target hit.
Why?
It isn't listed, it doesn't scale with anything, and it's useless by about level 5. Is this some left over code from an old version? Is it supposed to be doing something?

Wade In: Technically this is fine. Allows Supreme Cleave to give you a +10 to hit bonus, and while losing AC isn't great, it isn't a huge amount esp in late game. But for 3 points in a build that specifically utilizes Strength? Is the +10 to hit really needed? I suppose if you're missing Accuracy/Insight Acc items maybe. But isn't exciting and isn't making up for the lack of special to Supreme Cleave.

Lash Out: Ok, now we're in T5 upgrading Supreme Cleave. This should be what I'm looking for. But well......it doesn't apply every time (82%? So odd), the Bleed, like most Bleeds in the game, is pathetically small, even with the scaling, and as this is the biggest "Hit Hard and Fast" Build, the dot would never have time to work on anything but bosses. The AC reduction doesn't really scale into Epics, and while I know not to trust the tooltips, I didn't see it stacking properly like it says either. Can anyone confirm if the AC reduction is stacking properly?

Tantrum: I'm listing this with Supreme as it shares all the bonuses. So it's a big hit, which is nice, but with an HP cost, a tremendous cooldown, a random chance of doing what you need (the Knockdown) and they still get a Standard Save to resist it, and it gets Lash Out, Wade In, and Blood Trail bonuses. Which is still next to nothing and rarely usable.

Now the other abilities

Exhausting Blow: Nothing to discuss, another Stat damage attack that doesn't work well in the high end game, Barbs have a ton of these. Bleh

Accelerated Metabolism: So this is meant to be their T5 Sustain as all Barb trees have (Blood Strength, Vampiric Bond, One Spirit) and I understand the need to want to balance the "big effects" costing HP versus letting them just heal it off, but even outside of Reaper this was doing so little, and you have no control in any way over when the heals hit (killing with Blood Strength, clicking One Spirit as needed etc) it didn't really allow for any sort of sustain at all. On that note, the Icon of the ability reads "Heals 3d6" but the in game buff icon reads "Heals 2d6". I am not sure which is working properly. Either way, I found this unable to sustain me comparably to the other tree options. When ya factor in spending HP on Storm's Eye, Frenzy, Death Frenzy, Tantrum, and having less HP/Heal Amp than the other trees, I felt super squishy.

Storm's Eye: So the passive is great, and the scaling is very obviously working with it and feels good. The clicky effect and it's cost? Not so much. 100HP for 25 Stacks of +1 Melee Damage, losing 1 every 3 seconds, also doesn't feel great.
Also I am unsure if this is working as intended or at all. The buff bar icon stays up at 25 stacks for the duration. If you click on yourself and inspect however, THAT buff bar shows the stacks decaying as expected (maybe a little slower). However the bonus damage doesn't show up on the character sheet or weapon details, I didn't see anything in the combat log, and while I haven't used it a ton, I have not really seen a damage increase from this. Could just be dice RNG though. Can anyone confirm if this is working or how it's supposed to work?

So...is this tree really just the x2 Critical Multiplier and some small bonuses? I get that for the all in hybrid's like Swashbuckler Handaxe, but for pure Barb? Again, I'm not trying to hate, I just don't see it.

So long story short, not looking to bash the tree or others builds, or argue in any way, I legit would like folks input on the pros of this tree and the things I mentioned above. I feel like I'm missing something and I want to understand.

Thanks kindly for reading and future input!

-Phinnius

Fellow long-time barb here, and you make some good points...

On Supreme Cleave though, I asked a similar question a while back, and was told it seems that it's actually +3W, though that's not in the description. I tried it out on the airship dummy and that seemed to be borne out, though no Dev has ever confirmed or otherwise. I have it in my rotation and find it useful even after strike-through changes.

On FB in general, YMMV, but I have 33 points in the tree, mainly to get the +X2 crits and Death Frenzy. I have 41 in Ravager for the capstone there.

I agree most of the stuff you've listed is not great and the only one I'd take would be Tantrum if I had the points to spare (similarly Raging Blows too). I take the con bonuses, strike-through and the full cracking attack line, along with stuff like Power Rage and splashes of Sprint Boost and Blood Tribute. It's not hard to spend 33 on decent enough stuff, but there is some stuff in there that isn't all that useful, and you've assessed much of that fairly well imo.

Hope this helps and good luck!

[jskinner937]

Fellow long-time barb here, and you make some good points...

On Supreme Cleave though, I asked a similar question a while back, and was told it seems that it's actually +3W, though that's not in the description. I tried it out on the airship dummy and that seemed to be borne out, though no Dev has ever confirmed or otherwise. I have it in my rotation and find it useful even after strike-through changes.

On FB in general, YMMV, but I have 33 points in the tree, mainly to get the +X2 crits and Death Frenzy. I have 41 in Ravager for the capstone there.

I agree most of the stuff you've listed is not great and the only one I'd take would be Tantrum if I had the points to spare (similarly Raging Blows too). I take the con bonuses, strike-through and the full cracking attack line, along with stuff like Power Rage and splashes of Sprint Boost and Blood Tribute. It's not hard to spend 33 on decent enough stuff, but there is some stuff in there that isn't all that useful, and you've assessed much of that fairly well imo.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Personalyy, aside from the 30% extra damage to helplesss (which is big for investment in falconry), I agree with your split. You get most out of FB that isnt made up for in Ravager with 4th core and tier 4 abilitities. And losing another 30% helpless damage isnt game breaking for high skull end game. 41 in ravager for visage is pretty huge for me. It can be the difference between a full party wipe or not, and the self healing is pretty good even in reaper.

I think the issue is that if going FB, its less lucrative to invest in ravager since most of the good stuff is pretty high up in AP spend. So by that virtue most will focus on falconry and a trance like harper instead.

[DaviMOC]

Ravager is nice for solo leveling and in some cases reaper for its self healing and helpless bonus. Blood strenght is nuts.

FB juices are Crazy strikes, focused wrath, raging blows, frenzy , death frenzy and storm's eye . Also before lvl 12 it got the best survival tool from the 3 trees. Blood tribute. It becomes bad at epics but its a must on low levels.

It is also the only tree to bump striketrought. Folks getting up to 400% to abuse CoAF and stunning blow sure are using those enhancements.

I just gave up on Supreme Cleave and Tantrum. Its ok for heroics as you may peform many AoE kills with those cleave atacks but at epics they are poor and I just use epic atacks such as boulder might.

The main trick is that they got the highest crit mult in the game combining focused wrath and death frenzy. Using this with never ending adrenaline charges that makes almost a granted critical hit makes it outpeform DPS in any other tree from the class. Still the squisher tree from the barbarian class, makes good raid dps but alot more risky and in some cases less efficient without helpless bonus to play at high reaper questing. You will see how fast the giant health of a barbarian can go down on a FB.

[Hawkwier]

Ravager is nice for solo leveling and in some cases reaper for its self healing and helpless bonus. Blood strenght is nuts.

FB juices are Crazy strikes, focused wrath, raging blows, frenzy , death frenzy and storm's eye . Also before lvl 12 it got the best survival tool from the 3 trees. Blood tribute. It becomes bad at epics but its a must on low levels.

It is also the only tree to bump striketrought. Folks getting up to 400% to abuse CoAF and stunning blow sure are using those enhancements.

I just gave up on Supreme Cleave and Tantrum. Its ok for heroics as you may peform many AoE kills with those cleave atacks but at epics they are poor and I just use epic atacks such as boulder might.

The main trick is that they got the highest crit mult in the game combining focused wrath and death frenzy. Using this with never ending adrenaline charges that makes almost a granted critical hit makes it outpeform DPS in any other tree from the class. Still the squisher tree from the barbarian class, makes good raid dps but alot more risky and in some cases less efficient without helpless bonus to play at high reaper questing. You will see how fast the giant health of a barbarian can go down on a FB.

I hate TLAs, *** is CoAF?

[magaiti]

I hate TLAs, *** is CoAF?

Confront any Foe I presume (Divine Crusader).
I heard it was amazing and later nerfed into nothingness. Not sure of it is still worth twisting in.

[magaiti]

The main trick is that they got the highest crit mult in the game combining focused wrath and death frenzy.

Death Frenzy only adds multiplier on 19-20, so it only adds to adrenalined attack if you actually roll 19-20

Everything else in your post is spot-on.

[DaviMOC]

Death Frenzy only adds multiplier on 19-20, so it only adds to adrenalined attack if you actually roll 19-20

Everything else in your post is spot-on.

Yeah. you're right. Worded it badly. Death frenzy+blood bath is your critical hit inside your critcal.

You must be right on CoAF. I've been out for a while and just came back for the EDs revamp. Still some stuff to catch up.

Talking about that, with 8s CDs on adrenaline on the new FoTW we may see FB taking the hardest hit among the barbarian trees... Or not as its getting decent sustain capabilities from FoTW.

[Hawkwier]

Confront any Foe I presume (Divine Crusader).
I heard it was amazing and later nerfed into nothingness. Not sure of it is still worth twisting in.

Ah, yes, thanks.

Yep, nerfed to bits and not worth twisting any more. Won't even be recognisable in U51 either.

"We're gonna need a bigger nerf-bat..." Dev quote of the week!