Barbarian - Occult Slayer Changes

[theRolf]

Sev, barbs shouldnt be getting that much heal amp in the first place. How can you justify them having more than shinto monks and pallies? How can you justify the on hit healing that makes light monks want to cry at their ineptness? Barbs should be effective hp tanks and therefor require MUCH less healing and as such their lack of being able to cast spells is less an issue. A barbs 1000 hp should actually be an effective hp of 10000, and their encounters should be about killing others first and then healing after. Barbs getting healing on par, or even better than other classes is a joke. This is what most of us are trying to get across, your going about it in the wrong way, barbs should be about dodge, prr and dr. Please reconsider.

Further, have you even considered what a swash barb splash is going to be like? I think you just boosted that combo into insanity.

Once again, a frivolous class vs. class argument. How does making barbs better hurt anybody?

[Uska]

Once again, a frivolous class vs. class argument. How does making barbs better hurt anybody?

Its the power creep issue they will boost this class than people cry about another class and it gets boosted then the mobs so there is at least a semblance of a challenge and besides some of us would like at least a pale shadow of D&D to remain and there isn't much left.

[Uska]

Instead of Barbarian. People are claiming they will splash 6 levels of barbarian for the healing amplification and hit points. If a Swashbuckler is going to splash 6 levels of something I doubt the new barbarian trees are the biggest bang for the buck if you are going to try to get healing amplification from the cores.

Sev~

I thought I hated the paladin changes until this came out and now I can say by comparison I only dislike the paladin changes.

[J-mann]

Instead of Barbarian. People are claiming they will splash 6 levels of barbarian for the healing amplification and hit points. If a Swashbuckler is going to splash 6 levels of something I doubt the new barbarian trees are the biggest bang for the buck if you are going to try to get healing amplification from the cores.

Sev~

Spend in ravager till you get the heal on hit, get what you need from swash, spend remaining wherever. Cast extended displacement, rage, hit things with daxe/bsword and lol as you vastly outheal everything and do tremendous damage. I dont see how hard that is to see, you will have displacement, max dodge, swash goodies, rage, ridiculous healing from a ridiculous enhancement, great hp, and pretty good hamp. Put it in dc and get even more crazy..... the passive healing on that build will make cocoon look like a sick joke.

[FestusHood]

I've already answered this point but here you go:

Rage already improves with barbarian class levels automatically. You get more of them, and they add more bonuses as you gain levels.

Improving them further with enhancements is exactly the same as every other class, which improves their innate abilities through enhancements.

[Archangel666]

How can you justify the on hit healing that makes light monks want to cry at their ineptness?

This is kinda how I feel at the moment. I've been working on Pally Past Lives on my Monk so that I can get more out of Fists of Light, I've been working on it for a few years now.

In a single stroke Turbine are basically making all that time and effort feel basically like a fools errand.


When I heard there was a Barb pass, for some reason I thought Turbine might do something like "While Raging gain x PRR and x MRR"(To represent the thematic "so angry they can shrug off damage" thing). Which would have made Barbs much more survivable, and since Rages are finite (per shrine) would have meant that they could even have been boosted significantly.

Silly me. What was I thinking?

[theRolf]

I thought I hated the paladin changes until this came out and now I can say by comparison I only dislike the paladin changes.

Please explain yourself.

Thank you

[J-mann]

Once again, a frivolous class vs. class argument. How does making barbs better hurt anybody?

Because class comparisons matter? I dont even run monk, but I know some people worked hard to get a light monk to work, and a ravager barb becomes infinitely better overnight with no invesment? Further barbs are treading into other classes territories and shouldnt be. Barbs should not be getting anywhere near the healing devs are proposing, they should be getting better buffer defenses, temp hp, drr, prr, mrr and dodge. Class vs class matters, and I am trying to get the devs to try and justify why barbs are getting better self sufficiency than classes that supposedly trade dps to get it? Barbs should get more damage and buffer defenses (which makes each point of healing more valueable and makes them need it less) but next to no healing.

If devs want to make potions better on barbs heres an enhancement for them:

Potion concentration:

Your years of drinking potions and other drinks have given you a greater ability to consume them. Your potions are 2/3/5 times more concentrated than normal producing more healing. Further at tier three you have gotten so resistance to the pains produced by the healing effects that the negative effects of silver flame potions are halved and have had their durations haved.

[Thar]

How are you getting +80 healing amp? A level 6 Barbarian would get +0/+10/+10 healing amplification from the first three cores of a tree and that would require 11 APs minimum. To get +60 you'd have to spend 33 of your APs in three different trees and those points would only be spent in lower tier enhancements. That's a large cost for +60 healing amplification and I doubt it's worth using 33 APs in this manner. If you can make a workable build and feel the +60 is worth 33 APs and 6 levels of barbarian then great, though you'd probably be better off just taking 5 levels of cleric or favored soul and using spells to heal.

Sev~

Agreed, the cost would be too high for this minimal benefit.

[theRolf]

Spend in ravager till you get the heal on hit, get what you need from swash, spend remaining wherever. Cast extended displacement, rage, hit things with daxe/bsword and lol as you vastly outheal everything and do tremendous damage. I dont see how hard that is to see, you will have displacement, max dodge, swash goodies, rage, ridiculous healing from a ridiculous enhancement, great hp, and pretty good hamp. Put it in dc and get even more crazy..... the passive healing on that build will make cocoon look like a sick joke.

"bout time... doubt it will happen but even if it does "YEAY" The swash will still be awesome

[Thar]

I'm kinda with you here so far, that loading up on low-level enhancements to stack the Amp would be self-gimping. But then you said:

...and I nearly spewed coffee all over my monitor. So a Barb splashes 5 levels of Divine and uses (some very small) spells to heal when raged... How exactly?

well a lvl 5 barb's rage lasts about how long? 2 min? then heal.

in any case it would be a waste of splash and ap unless coupled with some prr/damage mitigation. losing the ability to self heal with rage is a huge hurdle for the class. a little heal amp and hp aren't going to make a difference at endgame. Be nice in heroic i guess.

[Failedlegend]

It's unlocks the entire tree, and the +5 attack is meaningful effect for a single AP, though we realize many players don't highly value to-hit. Being an activated ability lets you see how much Weapon Bond you have for all the other abilities in the tree, in a place that doesn't move (wherever on your hotbars you decide to put it, even if you decide to never push it). This is different from making it an effect, which is harder to track.

The problem isn't so much that to-hit isn't valued/needed, it's that if you do need to rely on a temporary boost to hit things than whe n its on cooldown or otherwise unavailible you won't be hitting anything thus making it pretty much useless unless your useless w/o it which is a TERRIBLE build choice. Same reason Dwarf, Arty, Elf, etc. weapon specialization lines are WAY to expensive.

[PermaBanned]

Instead of Barbarian. People are claiming they will splash 6 levels of barbarian for the healing amplification and hit points. If a Swashbuckler is going to splash 6 levels of something I doubt the new barbarian trees are the biggest bang for the buck if you are going to try to get healing amplification from the cores.

Sev~

Ah, gotcha' now ^^

[Scrabbler]

Instead of Barbarian. People are claiming they will splash 6 levels of barbarian for the healing amplification and hit points. If a Swashbuckler is going to splash 6 levels of something

By the current plans, it looks like it will be very attractive to use Barb5/Bard3/Whatever12 in order to get strong passive healing and huge crit bonuses (plus a nice bit of Dodge, Doublestrike, and UMD).

Although there's nothing wrong about allowing Bard/Barb combo classes, I recommend making sure it isn't too attractive by taking both these steps:

• Ravager self-healing depends on Barb levels, and will not function at full power with only 5 class levels.
• Barbarian enhancements or class features are improved to the point where a Barb19 has DPS similar to (or better than) a Bard19, assuming both are GSWF with the same weapon.

[PermaBanned]

This is kinda how I feel at the moment. I've been working on Pally Past Lives on my Monk so that I can get more out of Fists of Light, I've been working on it for a few years now.

In a single stroke Turbine are basically making all that time and effort feel basically like a fools errand.

I also have a Monk, Completionist done and going back for 2 more Pally. I in no way see how this Barb business effects the value of those Pally Hamp PLs to my monk, why does it effect yours?

When I heard there was a Barb pass, for some reason I thought Turbine might do something like "While Raging gain x PRR and x MRR"(To represent the thematic "so angry they can shrug off damage" thing). Which would have made Barbs much more survivable, and since Rages are finite (per shrine) would have meant that they could even have been boosted significantly.

Silly me. What was I thinking?

Here however I couldn't possibly agree more. HAmping the **** out of Barbs to maximize the effects of Potions (self healing) and making them "more healable" for the (elusive) healers of the game was just simply the wrong way to go.

Self-healing should've been addressed by simply reducing the need for it via increased mitigation - isn't this why Barbs had innate DR and nobody else did? Now everyone has PRR - meaning the Barbs have no "special to their class" physical mitigation. Well... except for the woefully, laughably, inadequate and antiquated "class feature" of DR/-

• Why was DR/- not addressed at all in this Barb pass?
How about giving the innate Barb DR/- a multiplier based on Barb class levels?

[Synthetic]

The oath of retribution and oath of destruction seem kind of expensive at 4 AP for a 19-20 +1 Crit multiplier maybe change it to 1 per enhancement.

I like the healing amp and addition of hit points. The ancestral heal seems a bit over the top, but with warpriest having ameliorating strike there's not really much to talk about. You need some sort of big heal to make barb back into a class that can be run pure, and this is the tanky barbarian version, and the other Tier 5 abilities are kind of meh.

Over all good changes numbers probably need to be worked on a bit, but I think live testing is more appropriate then theory threads.

[Rinnaldo]

This may be too simple, but, why not just have the enhancements be: click to spend x weapon bond, for the same x DR (or PRR, who's counting?), and then increasingly improve the ratio? I agree that the feel of a Barbarian should be that they shrug off damage - not that they can magically heal more easily. Reducing incoming damage mitigates the need for Healing Amp, which, as has been repeatedly stated, can be obtained through the other two trees already. Again, different prestige trees should each have a different feel. This one is about fighting mages. Heck, maybe it should give MRR only, and one of the other trees give PRR similarly. That way, the theme still makes sense.

And, this is going to be unpopular, but I like that the weapon bond goes away when changing weapons. It really gives me the sense that my character is bonded to that one weapon, because changing them has a cost. It makes me more choosey about what I'm wielding. I think that's fun. What is not fun is trying to use a wand or scroll and having the stack go away. If weapon bond - or a 2nd or 3rd tier enhancement of it - would additionally give that particular weapon a constant, passive boost - and the stack would not go away when using scrolls and wands, but still dropped to 0 if you switched to another weapon, I'd be all for it. It would give it even more flavor if you sacrificed something - say 20 hp - for some additional damage that added to your ritually bonded weapon.

[Uska]

Please explain yourself.

Thank you

Two words power creep

Three more words

Fit class flavor

These don't fit the history of the class but the bard stuff didn't either nor did the paladin this really isn't D&D any more

[Qhualor]

• Why was DR/- not addressed at all in this Barb pass?
How about giving the innate Barb DR/- a multiplier based on Barb class levels?

ive asked this several times already and no response. ive even suggested lowering the heal amp in the cores for an improved barb DR system. too bad I thought some of us came up with some really good suggestions.

[Uska]

ive asked this several times already and no response. ive even suggested lowering the heal amp in the cores for an improved barb DR system. too bad I thought some of us came up with some really good suggestions.

Yes more DR and PRR and less amp for sure but it looks like they have made up their mind on what's what already