I copied my 18k GWF from live, set him up, went to dread ring and took me triple time to kill mobs (most of the times with below 50%hp) than I do with a 7k GWF toon at the live server (who has not companion at all). I feel determination is filling up very slowly and most of encounters are useless (mighty leap/punishing charge/not so fast (or whatever its name) ) with low damage output and no utility.
My suggestions (for dps paragon): - add a feat or feature to the dps paragon that makes barbarian invulnerable to damage for a few seconds when below 30%hp, where he has increased damage and a chance to restore some hp. This would be in line with the way barbarians operate in traditional dnd, where they get more effective and tough when they are close to death. - add a feat that makes barbarian attacks have a chance for stun (or damage dealt debuff to bosses), which will make the class more useful as controller, more effective to survive solo content and can also benefit from trample the fallen feature. Also encounters need a boost to this direction. - restoring strike needs a huge boost (its heal is almost zero). - avalanche daily in dps paragon is worthless. Switch it with slam which will have a chance to knockdown enemies. - reaping strike shouldn't have a charge time to cast. It should have a chance to stun or slow upon its cast to make it useful. - sure strike's 3rd and 4th hit should get a boost. (no need for the 2nd one). 4th hit should have a chance to restore health or boost dps for a short time. - unstoppable should have a chance to restore hp when is active.
Overall, I think barbarian need more options to restore hp, to control mobs (stun, knockdown or debuff), more boost at his at-wills (dps and utility) and more damage output at low hp in a similar way to how traditional class operates.
Also we need to know how much % damage resistance ignored and critical chance we have at preview server from ratings page. I really can't tell why my toon has so low dps output if I don;t know where it stands on these important stats.
OK so we'll start with one of the basics ... Almost all powers are based on live rank 1 ... including damage (all damage need to be increased from the BASE), %increase (example wrathful determination is 2.5% while on live it's 12.5%) ... they should all be based on rank 4 in order to be relevant ... Now there are a lot of feats granting FLAT numbers ... Not only they aren't even relevant numbers (they're worth less than a companion equip bonus) but they're also prone to be useless in the future when the power creep will increase ... At this point either make them % based (increase CA by x%) or completely change them ...
I will edit this and make more feedbacks when i'm less depressed about the class becoming so bad and unresolved
Many stats work differently than they did in the past, so for instance, providing a 10% increased change to crit is identical to providing 5000 crit rating in every way. We are currently discuss how to display these values (as ratings or percentages) expect a consistent display across player powers for all classes in the next few weeks.
The Barbarian needs a serious boost to (base-) damage, because this is awful.
When the main purpose is to deal damage and not much else, going live with these numbers will cause a mass exodus of Barbarians.
Thanks for the feedback. One large scale change that has happened across all classes is that at-wills, encounters and dailies have been re-balanced relative to one another. At-wills are weaker, encounters are stronger, and dailies are much stronger. Without any class mechanics or feats involved, your DPS should be broken up into 1/5th at-wills, 1/5th for each of your 3 dailies, and 1/5th daily.
So, if you're just using your at-wills, things will definitely feel slower, but encounters and dailies should feel very impactful. With that said, I would like to say that Barbarian is one of the classes most in need of further adjustments right now, and it will be getting a number of changes over the next 2 weeks to make sure it is on par with other classes.
If you are fighting in campaign zones, keep in mind that those zones are now scaled, and we're still working on how that scaling affects you. Try playing in the new leveling zones. Also, if you have any other classes, try playing them in the scaled and leveling zones as well and see how they stack up. Barbarian shouldn't be significantly lower than other classes right now, but I there will be changes coming.
Specifically, coming out of the previous modules, Barbarian had a lot of table setting; setting up buffs and debuffs, in order to deal respectable damage. We're generally moving towards, but especially for Barabrian, dealing more significant damage directly. Not only does doing a lot of table setting feel strange as a Barbarian, it felt weird even when the class was great weapon fighter, you're all about swinging a huge weapon after all.
OK so we'll start with one of the basics ... Almost all powers are based on live rank 1 ... including damage (all damage need to be increased from the BASE), %increase (example wrathful determination is 2.5% while on live it's 12.5%) ... they should all be based on rank 4 in order to be relevant ... Now there are a lot of feats granting FLAT numbers ... Not only they aren't even relevant numbers (they're worth less than a companion equip bonus) but they're also prone to be useless in the future when the power creep will increase ... At this point either make them % based (increase CA by x%) or completely change them ...
I will edit this and make more feedbacks when i'm less depressed about the class becoming so bad and unresolved
Many stats work differently than they did in the past, so for instance, providing a 10% increased change to crit is identical to providing 5000 crit rating in every way. We are currently discuss how to display these values (as ratings or percentages) expect a consistent display across player powers for all classes in the next few weeks.
The Barbarian needs a serious boost to (base-) damage, because this is awful.
When the main purpose is to deal damage and not much else, going live with these numbers will cause a mass exodus of Barbarians.
Thanks for the feedback. One large scale change that has happened across all classes is that at-wills, encounters and dailies have been re-balanced relative to one another. At-wills are weaker, encounters are stronger, and dailies are much stronger. Without any class mechanics or feats involved, your DPS should be broken up into 1/5th at-wills, 1/5th for each of your 3 dailies, and 1/5th daily.
So, if you're just using your at-wills, things will definitely feel slower, but encounters and dailies should feel very impactful. With that said, I would like to say that Barbarian is one of the classes most in need of further adjustments right now, and it will be getting a number of changes over the next 2 weeks to make sure it is on par with other classes.
If you are fighting in campaign zones, keep in mind that those zones are now scaled, and we're still working on how that scaling affects you. Try playing in the new leveling zones. Also, if you have any other classes, try playing them in the scaled and leveling zones as well and see how they stack up. Barbarian shouldn't be significantly lower than other classes right now, but I there will be changes coming.
Specifically, coming out of the previous modules, Barbarian had a lot of table setting; setting up buffs and debuffs, in order to deal respectable damage. We're generally moving towards, but especially for Barabrian, dealing more significant damage directly. Not only does doing a lot of table setting feel strange as a Barbarian, it felt weird even when the class was great weapon fighter, you're all about swinging a huge weapon after all.
One of the stated goals of Mod16 was to make at-wills more relevant though. Right now...they're not. At all. They're not worth even clicking the mouse for they do so little damage.
Barbarian dailies are weak as hell. Spinning Strike is hitting for even less than our at-wills are (800-900 per tick). Compared to Live, Barbarian encounters are doing 1/10th or less of what they were. Barbarians basically took a 90-95% damage nerf ACROSS THE BOARD. My main was a 16.5k GWF, BIS weapons (exalted bronzewood +1 at legendary). In solo content absolutely every attack he had would hit for 100k+, Hidden Daggers routinely broke 500k. Now I don't have a single attack, including dailies, that will do more than 60k damage on a crit against the trash mobs in Undermountain. At-wills sometimes aren't even breaking 1000 damage and never hit more than 5000 damage.
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kieranmtornMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 382Arc User
Reaping Strike: as implemented the only way to use it optimally is with a keyboard/mouse macro, so that the timing is executed correctly (no wasted time, optimal damage output). This skill has sucked since beta, and still sucks.
Overall, Barbie is terrible. Cant hold aggro with tank spec, cant do dps with dps spec.
It is the single weakest class, and my 5k hours are ending here. My other class is OP. not playing that either. Shame, was gonna put in a few bucks, to finish my r14s.
Did you not see all posts that GWF dps and tanking will be seriously readjusted in next weeks? If you think that some of the skills are too weak then just post feedback here.
This needs more than a readjustment, it needs a total and complete overhaul.
The ONLY power Barbarian has that's even remotely workable at the moment is Sure Strike, and even it's broken (3rd and 4th hits not getting the damage bonus they're supposed to). ALL of the encounter powers are either simply not viable by design or are ludicrously underpowered. ALL of the daily powers are either simply not viable by design or are ludicrously underpowered. The only viable reasonably-repeatable AoE is level-locked at 80, and it too is ludicrously underpowered. They're simply NOT going to be able to bring it to where it needs to be by tweaking numbers on the back-end, it needs a total redesign and they need to take a hard look at which powers they kept and which they deleted, because it feels like they went "hmmm which abilities have always been completely useless? Keep those and only those!"
There's no excuse for Reaping Strike to still be around, much less for it to be even worse now than it is on Live.
Also another note Challenger's Strike on the Tank side does next to no dmg, nice that there is a AoE At-will, sadly only for Tanky poo atm but due to its dmg output I'd rather ignore it for now. ^-^
Feedback: I've already posted my thoughts on Fighter in that thread. I think you'll find similar complaints on Barbarian, primarily because Barbarian and Fighter suffer from the same core issues.
General
Buff At-will damage so you aren't just left waiting 20 seconds to feel like you're taking decent sized chunks of damage off enemies. Possibly tweak some Encounter powers' base damage too...
See my Fighter post for the reasoning. Most of the Barbarian Encounter power damage seem fine if you adjusted At-will damage, though some powers could use some slight improvements (ex: Grand Fissure to 400 magnitude).
Otherwise, there are some things on Barbarian in general that needs reworking on the DPS Side.
At-Wills
Reaping Strike needs to go. Replace it with Wicked Strike or Threatening Rush.
Reaping Strike has been universally garbage.I have found only one forum post that liked it (and I am sure they confused Weapon Master's Strike with Reaping Strike). This is not a fun AoE power to use, especially considering the long chargeup and pathetic damage of At-wills in general.
Wicked Strike being a universal At-will is more so we can stop using Reaping Strike on AoE as soon as possible . If you keep it on the tank side, then make it unlocked earlier so tanks don't need to rely on Reaping Strike to aggro mobs, maybe also give Wicked Strike a small heal component like current Crushing Surge to give it some utility on tanking.
As for Rush, well, Threatening Rush is for having mobility on the DPS side too. I'll admit my bias on the faster paced Iron Manguard master race and I think having a faster pace is sorely needed for this mod.
If you move Reaping to the tank side, it needs more utility besides "gain extra Determination and more damage". Perhaps increase aggro generation + debuff mobs after a full charge?
Daily Attacks
Exchange Slam with Avalanche of Steel.
Avalanche of Steel seems to be more thematically consistent with the tanking side (being able to safely jump in and stun enemies to establish an aggro theshhold) while Slam seems more thematically appropriate to the DPS path (aside from being a "turn on and forget" daily that allows you to focus on your At-wills and encounters, it serves as the "run in and scare the living daylights out of the enemies because the big bad quaking barbie is coming after you" daily).
Swap Indomitable Strength with Crescendo.
I think this one might have a bit of outrage, but I think that Crescendo makes more sense on the tank path and Indomitable Strength on the damage path.
With Crescendo, it locks down and stuns and opponent for its duration, which seems consistent with tanking (ie, hold this enemy in place and give your team time to smack them). While I get that IS knocks people away in a way consistent to the tank path (ie, get away from my teammate), I think it actually serves better on the DPS path due to being able to quickly cancel it while keeping the damage (ie, keeping line with the DPS path having a faster pace)
Class Features
Bring back Focused Destroyer or allow Destroyer to build stacks by simply attacking.
I know this is more feat than class feature related, but If you take way Focused Destroyer from GWF right now, Destroyer is not all that great. This way, players need to make a choice between getting the more powerful Destroyer in all situations or sticking with the mediocre Steel Blitz and getting something else in return.
Or just give Destroyer the passive chance to randomly activate and call it a day, same difference for making Destroyer non near worthless.
Trample needs to be able to work on bosses. Rework to give a damage buff (yes, buff, not debuff like Daggers) when you use a CC power.
Nobody used Trample on live because you couldn't use it on bosses. Nobody is going to use Trample now unless you adjust it to work outside of certain situations.
Wrathful Determination and Steel Blitz need buffs.
Both of them need drastic buffs; their bonuses may as well not exist in terms of damage.
I had thoughts on the tank path, but seeing the length of this post for many things on the DPS side, I'll split it here.
I read quite a few of the existing posts and it's good to hear most everyone is in the same boat with a Barbarian (formerly GWF). However, it was even better to hear that the devs are aware of the situation and will be addressing it over the next few weeks. I like many of the changes in Mod 16 and think they'll simplify life. Perhaps it's a little over-simplified at the moment, but... whatcha gonna do? The Barbarian Powers/Feats is, I feel, over-simplified currently and probably other classes as well. I have only looked at the Barbarian so far because that's my main character. My GWF is something of a mix in Mod 15 and prior Mods. I began as a solo only player and built my toon with plenty of Lifesteal so I could survive and plenty of DPS to draw it from. Most of my Sure Strikes dealt 150-250K damage and I rarely lost more than 20% of my HP before filling it up again, except in higher level content like T-Rex that could one-shot me when I wasn't careful or mobs in FBI that took me down faster than I could handle. My rotation was always; Slam, Battle Fury, Daring Shout, Hidden Daggers x 3 followed by Sure Strike for singles or small mobs and Weapon Master's Strike for larger mobs as fast as I could click. Then rinse and repeat. That let me solo all leveling dungeons and skirmishes pretty easily and quickly. My build concentrated on Power, Crit, Armor Pen with some Lifesteal and a little Regen. In randoms I was generally 1 or 2 for kills and Damage, I almost never fell and sometimes was 1 or 2 in Healing and Damage Taken.
In Mod 16 at level 71 I soloed the Pirate King's Retreat and fell once despite using 6 Stones of health and had to work like I was level 40 again and it took over 1/2 an hour to finish it. OMG! My DPS is about 1/10th or less of what it was before at lvl 70 in Mod 15 and all my gear was ilvl 700+ which is about like ilvl 500+ before. No Lifesteal is murder, but the DPS nerf is far worse. That dungeon should have been a stroll in the park for me and taken about a quarter as long. My fingers were cramping by the time I finished and I wouldn't dare try anything higher right now. I still can't believe I fell in that dungeon! I think my Velociraptor did more damage than I did and made more kills which made me feel pretty pathetic. LOL! She usually doesn't get a chance to make any kills! But, she showed me up this time! WOW!
Anyway, here are a couple of things I noticed that may be bugs.
1. I cannot refine anything. The button is always grayed out. 2. When I fell in the Pirate King's Retreat solo, it lead me back to the entrance and I had to set a flag on the map to get to the end. 3. I cannot activate Battle Fury during battle like I could before. I actually have to pause hit the key and then continue which allows my enemies to draw down my HP excessively. 4. I cannot Sprint and Jump at a mob anymore which is one of my favorite tactics.
Thanks for all your efforts and any attention you pay to my notes!
I have no aggro due to poor damage and nonexistent aggro multipliers. If you're going to keep the damage low, you need to drastically increase the aggro multipliers.
Otherwise, surviving seems fine (loving the parry animation) and the powers all have distinct roles, such as Daring Shout refilling your Stamina or Come and Get it being the equivalent to the Fighter's Iron Warrior (ie, "I need to take less damage or I die" power).
There is a tweak here and there I'd do with powers:
Grand Fissure should go on the tank spec, maybe swap with Takedown.
I think the tank path sorely needs a ranged Aggro option so my only option isn't "run in screaming and hope it works"(even if it is consistent with the Barbarian stereotype, I don't think it'd work well for gameplay and I would hope the class doesn't reward me for poor play).
Additionally, if you guys decide to take my suggestion to move Avalanche to Sentinel, make it so all damaged enemies also place you at the top of the aggro list, making for a decent reset button if things are going FUBAR.
Class Features:
All of the ones available to Sentinel feel too weak or don't make sense, they all need overhauls.
Bravery's 2500 Deflect is pathetic, needs some more oomph. Additionally, a slightly faster run speed would be appreciated
Weapon Master has almost no use on Sentinel (why do I need Crit on tanking?), I have no clue why it's a universal class feature.
Steadfast Determination takes way too long to generate Determination.
Enduring Warrior makes little sense if I'm not supposed to deal damage on the tank path, needs a huge overhaul.
Warrior's Courage stat bonus is near useless when HP is so dominant and won't be the thing that saves you in a close call. Also, the activation of HP % is a bit poor: if I have low HP, I have a poor healer, or everything has gone wrong and I'm out of Stamina and will not survive the next hits.
Steel Defense's duration is too small especially comparative to the casting animation of most daily attacks. Additionally, considering we aren't spamming daily attacks 24/7, a 2 second duration might as well not exist. A duration of 5 seconds or more sounds appropriate so I can actually see the difference.
Ferocious Reaction: 3 minute cooldown is way too long and not practical, possibly lower to a minute or even something like 40 seconds so it sees use outside of being a noob trap. Also, I think the numbers need to be overhauled to make more sense, like activating at 30% of max HP and regaining 30% of HP.
The class barbarian as a whole is very weak right now when compared to the other classes. The thing to know is that most of the encounters for a barbarian are small range or single target outside of hidden blades. With the increases to the recharge speed the encounters are on the weak end of the classes I have tested. My GWF is 18k and my DC I have tested are both 18k right now and both have been respeced with dps healing for the cleric and tank dps for the GWF (4 copies of toons setup in each different respec). The dps and tank side of the GWF right now is weaker than the heals side of the cleric. My cleric will vastly out dps my GWF in the healer setup which I think is a bit absurd right now. By far the weakest of the classes I have tested is the GWF. They will need some love and would say they need about 3x more damage in tweaks to match a healer class in damage. If this goes live like this the GWF class will be left out of all content and expect them to be excluded from most everything.
Both have full boons completed and added as well as all rank 14 enchants. Encounters seem to needing some love. The advantage that other classes I noticed have on the gwf encounters is that they are AoE and those seem to have a vast advantage in the game right now. Either adding more AoE to the gwf will improve his situation or lowering cooldowns on the class by half or more will allow to even out the issues in abilities. Not going to tell you what to do but something is very off right now with this class.
FYI, many coin bank heist and the mobs in the stronghold are all so powerful that they need some nerfs to them. I can't solo an small heroic encounter (unless I use my artifact or combat mount ability) in the stronghold. The many coin mobs can kill the bank in about 10 seconds. The group also dies to them when they split up without a healer so all of the skirmishes will need a healer with them in it. If nothing is done the new meta will be multi healers in content.
Guild Leader: Under the Influence Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
If nothing is done the new meta will be multi healers in content.
Ironic. They became the thing they so hard tried to vanquish.
"We want our tanks to be tanks". Fighters are tanks, they still do more damage than GWFs, which are supposed to be DPS. Fighters are also tanks, as in, they can actually tank compared to GWF.
The DPS class that is Barbarian blademaster is currently doing less damage than a healer class. Barbie is not only completely useless, but this is ridiculous. As an 18k gwf, on live I can more or less murder the dummies in Protectors Enclave by just holding left click and going to sleep. Because they're lvl9 training dummies. Right now I do less damage with a fully buffed daily compared to a completely unbuffed encounter on live.
Think of it this way. The entirety of GWF damage came from 3, arguably 4 things: 1) Destroyers purpose 50% DPS buff 2) Destroyer, w/ Focused destroyer 46.5% DPS buff 3) Daggers, 40% DPS buff 4) wild card - mark/battle fury/executioner's style, although all can be replaced with something less relevant and GWF could still do decent-ish damage.
All of those were taken away, or severely nerfed. I played GWF to be a DPS, not to be an extra slot filler. Now, GWF actually hits about as hard as a Barbie, and I ain't referrin' to drugs. That might be the only solution for me tho, after this goes on live.
After getting to 80 on my testing character here's my thoughts:
Sure Strike and BMS(consider a namechange for this one) as the classes universal at-wills.
*There's quite a bit of downtime between encounters, I'd recommend a general increase of dmg for the At-wills, im fine with encounters having long cooldowns if their dmg is decent(still lacking in that front), and what im using in between em(At-wills) shouldn't be poor dmg.
*Maybe in the future consider combo attacks so if you use two ST At-wills or two AoE instead of one ST n' AoE, it'll be stronger for the respected type.
*Currently the only At-will worth using in preview is Sure Strike not because it's strong, just because the AoE one's don't pack enough punch to justify their use, they should be a bit weaker than ST At-wills maybe around 75% of ST attack since AoE animations are quite a bit clunky too
Blademaster's At-wills
Blademaster should have one unique ST At-will, one AoE.
*BMS suffers the Animation bug more than the old WMS did causing its dmg potential to drop quite a bit.(used to be caused when sprint casting it)
ST
Sure Strike n’ Brash Strike should be ST(BS is currently AoE even though it’s animation looks more like a single target attack) since Brash is a slower attack its damage should likely be greater than SS once changed to ST.
AoE While BMS (replacement of WMS is a ST yet animation is WMS which is AoE like attack) and ________ (Hopefully a new Power is introduced here to replace Reaping) for AoE.
Sentinel's At-wills Sentinel should have one unique ST At-will, one AoE, with healing side effect/reduced dmg/with a decent bit of aggro for the start of fights prior to higher threat gaining powers.
ST
Sure Strike n’ Threatening Rush should be ST(Sure Strike universal if a player wants to deal some damage and not switch loadouts, and Threatening for Bosses maybe as a way to force the gwf to top priority for aggro, maybe more if needed(Wouldn't mind a bit more range on it either)) AoE BMS and Challenger's Strike (BMS universal for Damage purposes same case as stated in ST, as for CS along with its aggro maybe consider a healing component like Rjc said.)
Side effects of this:
Allows for AoE(or ST see case at the end) dps spec to take advantage of Destroyer Class feat, currently not efficient for any spec to slot (maybe reduced the class feat to if more then one target is hit you gain a stack to make it a bit easier, wouldn't recommend making it like focused destroyer like in the past then it'd be practically a mandatory class feature, limiting the point of the other options to a single slot.(Or on the contrary and have it be more ST focused so if only one enemy is hit you gain a stack)
Update: I continued testing barbarian and copied also my gf (only 14.5k il on live, with r13 bondings, no legendary mount) and chose the dps paragon on him. I went to dread ring like I did on barbarian (18k on live, r14 bondings, tyr legendary mount) and things were smooth dps-wise with great survival (fighter's recovery, no more comments here). The barbarian on the other hand had difficult time to stay alive and to clear mobs. I needed 50% more time to clear mob groups than on gf. This is so ridiculous!
Barbarian needs a lot of attention if you want to make him a viable dps class. He needs more magnitude to his aoe skills (hidden daggers - blademaster at-will - not so fast - spinning strike). Also: - mighty leap should have enemy target, not area target (like gf's bull charge or lurging strike). It is very useless as it is. - spinning strike should mitigate incoming damage/a part of it. - punishing charge should be totally reworked with cc effect + a dps boost or it will never ever be used. - roar seems to be the new daring shout to gain determination but it needs to be more easy to use, like a 360* effect than a cone arc. It is a roar after all, it should be able to be heard around you, not only in front of you. - there must be a way to add combat advantage to enemies now that we don't have the mark from daring shout (on dps paragon). For example, weapon master feature can provide for 5 seconds combat advantage on enemies after landing a critical strike (and not to give critical chance which can be earned from gear).
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lazaroth666Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,332Arc User
Based on my experience about each new module since the first one and how the feedback is handled, I know that the changes can't be very drastic but I consider that it is really necessary to make several adjustments to the class in order for the gameplay to be fluid because unfortunately it doesn't feel very comfortable in certain mechanics and synergies with the different feats.
I would like to focus my feedback on the DPS version of the barbarian. The magnitude of each encounter and at-will powers is very low, regardless of current or future damage bonuses. Another strong problem is that the gameplay doesn't feel fluid and there is a big difference between going AoE and Single Target DPS. It requires a true AoE At-will such as Challenger's Slash (Wicked Strike). Reaping Strike is not going to be used by anyone, it's bad, a loss of DPS is all it offers. It might be more useful for the tank version with an added effect like damage reduction and so the DPS version gets Wicked Strike.
Class Features offer nothing special, are very simple or have a very minimal impact on gameplay. The chance to proc Steel Blitz is very low, it could be more useful if it could be activated with each critical hit instead. Steadfast Determination could reduce the consumption of Determination by effectively making it last longer, as generating it progressively during combat isn't necessary. Destroyer doesn't work if you're vs. just one enemy, it would be better if it directly increased your damage regardless of the number of enemies hit. Wrathful Determination offers a very low damage bonus, it would be more useful if it were a constant base damage bonus and additionally a damage bonus that fluctuates according to the amount of determination, for example always 5% base and that goes up to 10% according to the determination. Steel Resolve is not usable in any way, it would be useful to have a way to generate combat advantage. I understand that every Class Feature doesn't have to be powerful but right now we are looking to use the least bad because none is really useful.
As for feats, it is nothing useful to have feats that require hitting several enemies at once. Rampage has good potential but I would lower the stacks to 3 instead of 5 without modifying the damage bonus. Unending Fury, it would be better to lose 1 stack every 1-2 seconds after finishing the Battlerage effect which will be lost gradually if you are no longer in combat.
Finally, in relation to the daily powers, it would be nice if you could bring back Slam for the Blademaster, it has very good potential to be used in conjunction with Trample the Fallen. Avalanche of Steel is much better for the Sentinel as it is an excellent ability to start a fight and it serves as a 'oh ****' button if necessary.
- As a lot of players said before me (but well, i were saying this since Mod4): Reaping Strike is an useless at-will due it's charging time and the allowance of mobs to CC the (now) Barbarian while charging it. It's right that while on unstop, the power gets a boost to hit harder and the non-CC-able thing from it... but that means that the Barb is stuck with one at will until he or she gets enough determination to pop Unsto... but it's still non relevant after a Barb opens Blademaster's strike (??? why the change of name? Y_Y) . So it's either remove it from the game or not allow mobs to CC the barb while charging it and make it charge-able faster... BTW, the fact that Reaping Strike deals almost half damage than Sure Strike and Blademaster's Strike means that Reaping Strike will not fill the Determination Bar as fast as those two, this should be fixed ASAP. Also, it's interesting the "Reaping Strike cancel" thing.... it's that a new feat or just a bug?
This is the first important thing i noticed on my playtime on test. Also, i noticed other stuff, but on that sense, i will not make any other judments as i were doing my tests on a level 70-71 char, not with a level 80 one, that's why i will wait to re-do the tests i made right now after i hit that level.
the second most important thing i found out is that Blademaster's strike and IBS (for example) usually don't hit multiple targets. It's this change for both powers correct?? or a kind of bug? would be nice if we get an answer here...
Cheers!
EDIT: I forgot to tell you that i have ACTs and Videos about my tests, but i will just show you the one regarding Reaping Strike as i find it the most "annoying" one for the sake of "leveling" (not thought 70 to 80, but through until a Barb opens Blademaster's strike.
EDIT 2: It's a bad move to bring up the new mod during an event... will we, 2nd wave of testers, be rewarded for doing so?
Some powers have simply been renamed to better fit the new paragon path and class names, some have been renamed because their effects have changed dramatically.
I will absolutely be adjusting determination gain, and which powers feature AoE components and ensuring that those components are clear and match the art. I have heard the feedback on reaping strike and it will see some changes as well.
IBS by the way, is intended to be a single target attack, but is currently hitting up to 3 targets in a very small area. If the tooltip says "Deals damage to target enemy" it is meant to be single target. If says "deals damage to enemies in a line/cone before you," or "deals damage to nearby enemies" it is an AoE.
However we also plan to make some adjustments to the information in the top right corner of each power to make this more clear. Some background: a lot of single target powers for melee classes actually have a specific hit box, and then they hit the closest enemy in that hitbox. So you'll see something like Range Melee Arc 45 for what is actually a single target attack, and that's very confusing—so we're going to be removing arc/radius information for single target attacks. (I am sure there are some of you who want it to stay, but trust me, you really only need the range, because your character will automatically turn to face the target when you swing.)
Technically this was just as bad before Module 16, and you'd see bizarre stuff about "Burst 10'" etc that was highly misleading, but the tooltips were so poorly constructed before... that there were much more glaring problems to be concerned with.
I copied my 18k GWF from live, set him up, went to dread ring and took me triple time to kill mobs (most of the times with below 50%hp) than I do with a 7k GWF toon at the live server (who has not companion at all). I feel determination is filling up very slowly and most of encounters are useless (mighty leap/punishing charge/not so fast (or whatever its name) ) with low damage output and no utility.
My suggestions (for dps paragon): - add a feat or feature to the dps paragon that makes barbarian invulnerable to damage for a few seconds when below 30%hp, where he has increased damage and a chance to restore some hp. This would be in line with the way barbarians operate in traditional dnd, where they get more effective and tough when they are close to death. - add a feat that makes barbarian attacks have a chance for stun (or damage dealt debuff to bosses), which will make the class more useful as controller, more effective to survive solo content and can also benefit from trample the fallen feature. Also encounters need a boost to this direction. - restoring strike needs a huge boost (its heal is almost zero). - avalanche daily in dps paragon is worthless. Switch it with slam which will have a chance to knockdown enemies. - reaping strike shouldn't have a charge time to cast. It should have a chance to stun or slow upon its cast to make it useful. - sure strike's 3rd and 4th hit should get a boost. (no need for the 2nd one). 4th hit should have a chance to restore health or boost dps for a short time. - unstoppable should have a chance to restore hp when is active.
Overall, I think barbarian need more options to restore hp, to control mobs (stun, knockdown or debuff), more boost at his at-wills (dps and utility) and more damage output at low hp in a similar way to how traditional class operates.
Also we need to know how much % damage resistance ignored and critical chance we have at preview server from ratings page. I really can't tell why my toon has so low dps output if I don;t know where it stands on these important stats.
Thanks for the feedback! On the topic of more ways to restore hit points: ultimately, we have intentionally removed most non-healers ability to restore their own hit points, however, there are spikes in difficulty that make this markedly unpleasant. Ideally, when fighting enemies at the right difficulty as a DPS, you should be able to defeat them and end the fight in the 20-60% HP range depending on how well you played and how difficult they were. Add in some potions and you should have no trouble.
That being said, I did do some work on Barbarian today, and will be doing more work this week—I have made improvements to restoring strike for now. In the next update it will be renamed "Bloodletter," it will feature adjusted art, a slightly longer cooldown, 100 magnitude less damage, but will restore 100% of the damage dealt. (For those concerned about the damage reduction, plenty of other powers are getting adjustments as well, and some damage is going up. Also, none of these adjustments are final, so please give it a shot after the changes.)
Feedback: I've already posted my thoughts on Fighter in that thread. I think you'll find similar complaints on Barbarian, primarily because Barbarian and Fighter suffer from the same core issues.
General
Buff At-will damage so you aren't just left waiting 20 seconds to feel like you're taking decent sized chunks of damage off enemies. Possibly tweak some Encounter powers' base damage too...
See my Fighter post for the reasoning. Most of the Barbarian Encounter power damage seem fine if you adjusted At-will damage, though some powers could use some slight improvements (ex: Grand Fissure to 400 magnitude).
Otherwise, there are some things on Barbarian in general that needs reworking on the DPS Side.
At-Wills
Reaping Strike needs to go. Replace it with Wicked Strike or Threatening Rush.
Reaping Strike has been universally garbage.I have found only one forum post that liked it (and I am sure they confused Weapon Master's Strike with Reaping Strike). This is not a fun AoE power to use, especially considering the long chargeup and pathetic damage of At-wills in general.
Wicked Strike being a universal At-will is more so we can stop using Reaping Strike on AoE as soon as possible . If you keep it on the tank side, then make it unlocked earlier so tanks don't need to rely on Reaping Strike to aggro mobs, maybe also give Wicked Strike a small heal component like current Crushing Surge to give it some utility on tanking.
As for Rush, well, Threatening Rush is for having mobility on the DPS side too. I'll admit my bias on the faster paced Iron Manguard master race and I think having a faster pace is sorely needed for this mod.
If you move Reaping to the tank side, it needs more utility besides "gain extra Determination and more damage". Perhaps increase aggro generation + debuff mobs after a full charge?
Daily Attacks
Exchange Slam with Avalanche of Steel.
Avalanche of Steel seems to be more thematically consistent with the tanking side (being able to safely jump in and stun enemies to establish an aggro theshhold) while Slam seems more thematically appropriate to the DPS path (aside from being a "turn on and forget" daily that allows you to focus on your At-wills and encounters, it serves as the "run in and scare the living daylights out of the enemies because the big bad quaking barbie is coming after you" daily).
Swap Indomitable Strength with Crescendo.
I think this one might have a bit of outrage, but I think that Crescendo makes more sense on the tank path and Indomitable Strength on the damage path.
With Crescendo, it locks down and stuns and opponent for its duration, which seems consistent with tanking (ie, hold this enemy in place and give your team time to smack them). While I get that IS knocks people away in a way consistent to the tank path (ie, get away from my teammate), I think it actually serves better on the DPS path due to being able to quickly cancel it while keeping the damage (ie, keeping line with the DPS path having a faster pace)
Class Features
Bring back Focused Destroyer or allow Destroyer to build stacks by simply attacking.
I know this is more feat than class feature related, but If you take way Focused Destroyer from GWF right now, Destroyer is not all that great. This way, players need to make a choice between getting the more powerful Destroyer in all situations or sticking with the mediocre Steel Blitz and getting something else in return.
Or just give Destroyer the passive chance to randomly activate and call it a day, same difference for making Destroyer non near worthless.
Trample needs to be able to work on bosses. Rework to give a damage buff (yes, buff, not debuff like Daggers) when you use a CC power.
Nobody used Trample on live because you couldn't use it on bosses. Nobody is going to use Trample now unless you adjust it to work outside of certain situations.
Wrathful Determination and Steel Blitz need buffs.
Both of them need drastic buffs; their bonuses may as well not exist in terms of damage.
I had thoughts on the tank path, but seeing the length of this post for many things on the DPS side, I'll split it here.
As always I greatly appreciate the feedback. I've read it all, but I'm not planning to respond to anything specific because I will be changing a lot of things soon, so a lot of your feedback should be addressed in those passes. Or in cases like reaping strike, I've already indicated I plan to make changes.
After getting to 80 on my testing character here's my thoughts:
Sure Strike and BMS(consider a namechange for this one) as the classes universal at-wills.
*There's quite a bit of downtime between encounters, I'd recommend a general increase of dmg for the At-wills, im fine with encounters having long cooldowns if their dmg is decent(still lacking in that front), and what im using in between em(At-wills) shouldn't be poor dmg.
*Maybe in the future consider combo attacks so if you use two ST At-wills or two AoE instead of one ST n' AoE, it'll be stronger for the respected type.
*Currently the only At-will worth using in preview is Sure Strike not because it's strong, just because the AoE one's don't pack enough punch to justify their use, they should be a bit weaker than ST At-wills maybe around 75% of ST attack since AoE animations are quite a bit clunky too
Blademaster's At-wills
Blademaster should have one unique ST At-will, one AoE.
*BMS suffers the Animation bug more than the old WMS did causing its dmg potential to drop quite a bit.(used to be caused when sprint casting it)
ST
Sure Strike n’ Brash Strike should be ST(BS is currently AoE even though it’s animation looks more like a single target attack) since Brash is a slower attack its damage should likely be greater than SS once changed to ST.
AoE While BMS (replacement of WMS is a ST yet animation is WMS which is AoE like attack) and ________ (Hopefully a new Power is introduced here to replace Reaping) for AoE.
Sentinel's At-wills Sentinel should have one unique ST At-will, one AoE, with healing side effect/reduced dmg/with a decent bit of aggro for the start of fights prior to higher threat gaining powers.
ST
Sure Strike n’ Threatening Rush should be ST(Sure Strike universal if a player wants to deal some damage and not switch loadouts, and Threatening for Bosses maybe as a way to force the gwf to top priority for aggro, maybe more if needed(Wouldn't mind a bit more range on it either)) AoE BMS and Challenger's Strike (BMS universal for Damage purposes same case as stated in ST, as for CS along with its aggro maybe consider a healing component like Rjc said.)
Side effects of this:
Allows for AoE(or ST see case at the end) dps spec to take advantage of Destroyer Class feat, currently not efficient for any spec to slot (maybe reduced the class feat to if more then one target is hit you gain a stack to make it a bit easier, wouldn't recommend making it like focused destroyer like in the past then it'd be practically a mandatory class feature, limiting the point of the other options to a single slot.(Or on the contrary and have it be more ST focused so if only one enemy is hit you gain a stack)
Thank you for the excellent feedback, and thank you for taking the time to level to 80 on preview! I will definitely be making adjustments to at-wills, so please look forward to those changes and check them out when they hit preview.
Based on my experience about each new module since the first one and how the feedback is handled, I know that the changes can't be very drastic but I consider that it is really necessary to make several adjustments to the class in order for the gameplay to be fluid because unfortunately it doesn't feel very comfortable in certain mechanics and synergies with the different feats.
We did come to preview earlier than usual so we can make larger changes. I'm aware that Barbarian is in a bad place as it stands right now on preview, so expect some updates soon. I truly appreciate the feedback.
Bug: So one of the biggest contributors to DPS for GWF was the bonus damage and crit chance from STR and DEX. These stats would still be the best for Barbarian, except for the fact that STR is contributing no physical damage bonus to DPS. Despite having a STR at 32 at one point, before changing gear, the tooltip for strength was still saying 0% contributed to physical damage.
Hey, i havent had a chance to do the preview but forwarding opinions from my friends. Im glad tonsee that the barbarian is high on your priority list for a boost as in its current stat it is unpalatable. The gwf had several builds but mainly dps as threat generation wasnt reliable. That being said people only took a gelwf for its pure dps as they knew it didnt offer much in the way of buffs. The problem i forsee is that if u "balance" inline with other dps then we will be left out infavour of others. By this i mean, as a tank we will be left out because gf and pallies just do it better, they are better suited and have buffs for the team. As a dps if we do saimilar dps to the other dps classes we will get left out because the others also offer buffs that help the team and we barely do.
If im way off the mark feel free to delete my comment but thats the current concerns of many i have spoken to.
First of all, i gotta say I do play multiple toons, however i do consider "barbie" to be my main. That being said, changes are definitely massive for all classes (playing DC/OP/GWF/GF), and knowing that you've said that Barbarians are currently in a really bad state, i'd have to agree.
However I've also seen in the multiple thread's (for different classes) that you've requested to know which mobs seem to be out liers, which kinda had me confused with barbarian i have to say. For example, I've done the "starting 2-3 quests" with my toons, didnt have any problems with OP, with DC, however, barbie (on the side of being basically dysfunctional at this time) seems to be getting one-shotted by quite a lot of things. Have in mind, its an 18k copied from live with roughly 200k HP and latest gear from live. - DPS spec
Now I'd understand if that was to happen in other zones (campaign zones or dungeons) where the so called "outliers" are, but its actually happening in the "new quests", starting from the starting few enemies in introduction to further down the line. Example being those mobs on 2nd or 3rd quest where you gotta pull the chains to "open" the doors (new campaign), a single mob simply one-shotted me about 4 times ) (using scrolls of life) and the only way i got around to actually killing it was hitting avalanche of steel... Most of the times, the fights seem to go normal, i'll maybe lose 5-10% of my HP pool (if even that) but for the rest of the time, we're at the situation of basically either being full or at 0, and we're talking regular, small mobs from the new campaign.
I didnt have such experiences with the other 2 classes (DC is 18.1k, OP is 17k on live), which leads me to believe that that must be some sort of an error, so please do look into it for the sake of barbies! (otherwise, we'll literally start wearing pink skirts :P )
On a completely different note, but not to spam the forums, i'd like to ask @asterdahl - i've seen in other threads that there was talk of having the option of exchanging enchantments to other ones, double stat to double stat (which i can see on preview) but there was also mention of enchantments to runestones or gear/gear, would it be possible to get any info on that? At least on the ench->runestones? Simply because, being limited to having only runestones on our companions seriously limits us and all the investments we've made so far into those enchants, and knowing that we'll be able to exchange enchants we have in them now for some runestones that we could use would be quite a relief.
Hey, i havent had a chance to do the preview but forwarding opinions from my friends. Im glad tonsee that the barbarian is high on your priority list for a boost as in its current stat it is unpalatable. The gwf had several builds but mainly dps as threat generation wasnt reliable. That being said people only took a gelwf for its pure dps as they knew it didnt offer much in the way of buffs. The problem i forsee is that if u "balance" inline with other dps then we will be left out infavour of others. By this i mean, as a tank we will be left out because gf and pallies just do it better, they are better suited and have buffs for the team. As a dps if we do saimilar dps to the other dps classes we will get left out because the others also offer buffs that help the team and we barely do.
If im way off the mark feel free to delete my comment but thats the current concerns of many i have spoken to.
Things have changed dramatically from live, things like power sharing don't exist anymore, so you don't need to worry about the other classes bringing more utility than you. We will be aiming for both the DPS and tank path Barbarian to be 100% as viable as other classes at that role.
First of all, i gotta say I do play multiple toons, however i do consider "barbie" to be my main. That being said, changes are definitely massive for all classes (playing DC/OP/GWF/GF), and knowing that you've said that Barbarians are currently in a really bad state, i'd have to agree.
However I've also seen in the multiple thread's (for different classes) that you've requested to know which mobs seem to be out liers, which kinda had me confused with barbarian i have to say. For example, I've done the "starting 2-3 quests" with my toons, didnt have any problems with OP, with DC, however, barbie (on the side of being basically dysfunctional at this time) seems to be getting one-shotted by quite a lot of things. Have in mind, its an 18k copied from live with roughly 200k HP and latest gear from live. - DPS spec
Now I'd understand if that was to happen in other zones (campaign zones or dungeons) where the so called "outliers" are, but its actually happening in the "new quests", starting from the starting few enemies in introduction to further down the line. Example being those mobs on 2nd or 3rd quest where you gotta pull the chains to "open" the doors (new campaign), a single mob simply one-shotted me about 4 times ) (using scrolls of life) and the only way i got around to actually killing it was hitting avalanche of steel... Most of the times, the fights seem to go normal, i'll maybe lose 5-10% of my HP pool (if even that) but for the rest of the time, we're at the situation of basically either being full or at 0, and we're talking regular, small mobs from the new campaign.
I didnt have such experiences with the other 2 classes (DC is 18.1k, OP is 17k on live), which leads me to believe that that must be some sort of an error, so please do look into it for the sake of barbies! (otherwise, we'll literally start wearing pink skirts :P )
On a completely different note, but not to spam the forums, i'd like to ask @asterdahl - i've seen in other threads that there was talk of having the option of exchanging enchantments to other ones, double stat to double stat (which i can see on preview) but there was also mention of enchantments to runestones or gear/gear, would it be possible to get any info on that? At least on the ench->runestones? Simply because, being limited to having only runestones on our companions seriously limits us and all the investments we've made so far into those enchants, and knowing that we'll be able to exchange enchants we have in them now for some runestones that we could use would be quite a relief.
Thanks in advance
Hello! Thanks for taking the time to post on the forums!
In regards to having a much harder time on BBN than CLR/PAL/FTR, it sounds like you were mostly doing okay and then would get crushed randomly. I do believe there may be a few outlier enemies even in the new zones. I've heard there are some issues with some of the spider enemies, is there a chance you encountered an enemy you didn't encounter on other classes? We'll definitely be taking a look.
In terms of exchanges—please re-post that feedback on the general feedback thread, so Noworries can respond to it. That being said, I don't think we'll be providing any standard equipment exchanges. For a few reasons: first, there's a nearly impossible amount of equipment that exchange would have to cover. And second, you're going to be growing out of it very quickly. That being said, if you're feeling like your old equipment can't even get you through the leveling zones, let us know, because we're definitely not aiming fo that to be the case.
@asterdahl Thank you for your response, I'll make sure to post the question there, the gear part i can understand but it was mentioned so i wanted to ask, however ench->runes, given that we're suddenly being limited to only runes on pets should be an option imho.
As for the encountering enemies with BBN that i havent with other classes, while as that might be the case with the quests further down the line (more people in the same area etc), i think that the 1st introductory quest (when you just get to the beach) is someone that everyone has to pass, it could be that i've perhaps dodged/blocked the attack from the certain mob in that first part or something of the sort, but im quite sure that being 1-shotted shouldnt be the case.
Once again, ty for the reply, i'll ask for the exchanges in the general thread.
I know all powers need their damage to be hard buffed, but
punishing charge sucks.
Barbarian has more than enough tools to increase its mobility, therefore making the concept of having charges on punishing charge very clunky and in the end more annoying than anything since you spend a bunch of time repositioning.
Make it one charge, more than quadruple its damage and add an effect to it (a control such as make them fly in the air) and make the animation feel more impactful as a result
Mighty Leap cannot work as a damage only tool. Needs an effect such as Combat Advantage.
I have almost no idea how to make Reaping Strike useful, besides making its damage very fat to compensate the charge time and add a pull effect towards the barbarian when charging.
Steadfast Determination : Determination is extremely easy to build by itself in combat therefore making it useless. There are two ways to make it better without reworking it completely : either grant determination generation out of combat or reduce the determination lost when using unstoppable by a big margin.
Steel Resolve : useless. Just looking at the numbers it's useless. And has nothing to do with blademaster. The only way to make a control based power would be the power to increase the duration of the barbarian's controls. And not a small 10% increase, something in the likes of 80%.
Trample the Fallen : needs to work against immune bosses, and value way too low.
Steel Blitz/ Daring Shout / Roar / Weapon Master / Bravery / Wrathful Determination see post above agree with barbie same ideas.
For Steel Blitz crit got capped and a lot of companion have similar effects for even same damage. I recommand buffing the damage AND the frequency.
Enduring Warrior heal increase healing and heal are weak by themselves and could get some value increase. And it needs to be reworked so that you get healed when an enemy is killed nearby (so even by an ally) and NOT WHEN THE TANK KILLS IT, it's COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE.
Steel Defense : duration way too low to begin with. Steel Defense is also rarely actived so the feat would only be useful in pvp. An idea would be to add a minor effect to it.
Warrior's Courage : useless, the goal of a tank is to stay at max HP by being tanky and not dying therefore it's COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE. Needs rework. For example : grants up to X defense and Y deflect the more your life decreases (be proportional or exponential increase, but make it feel impactful).
Ferocious Reaction : cooldown way too long. At 15% you're already dead, the value is way too low. Something in the likes of 30% would be much better. Even increase the heal to 30/35%.
By the way (edit : artifact) class features / artifact offhand are still a thing and have not been touched. Did you intend to let them be ?
Since the amount of buffs and self buffs has been cut down severely, and with a class that heavily relies on them - you should at least allow the class to have a high uptime. If the class doesn't have huge self buffs, allow the class to have those buffs with 100% uptime. If the class does have a really big buff, make it last for a short amount of time.
Comments
My suggestions (for dps paragon):
- add a feat or feature to the dps paragon that makes barbarian invulnerable to damage for a few seconds when below 30%hp, where he has increased damage and a chance to restore some hp. This would be in line with the way barbarians operate in traditional dnd, where they get more effective and tough when they are close to death.
- add a feat that makes barbarian attacks have a chance for stun (or damage dealt debuff to bosses), which will make the class more useful as controller, more effective to survive solo content and can also benefit from trample the fallen feature. Also encounters need a boost to this direction.
- restoring strike needs a huge boost (its heal is almost zero).
- avalanche daily in dps paragon is worthless. Switch it with slam which will have a chance to knockdown enemies.
- reaping strike shouldn't have a charge time to cast. It should have a chance to stun or slow upon its cast to make it useful.
- sure strike's 3rd and 4th hit should get a boost. (no need for the 2nd one). 4th hit should have a chance to restore health or boost dps for a short time.
- unstoppable should have a chance to restore hp when is active.
Overall, I think barbarian need more options to restore hp, to control mobs (stun, knockdown or debuff), more boost at his at-wills (dps and utility) and more damage output at low hp in a similar way to how traditional class operates.
Also we need to know how much % damage resistance ignored and critical chance we have at preview server from ratings page. I really can't tell why my toon has so low dps output if I don;t know where it stands on these important stats.
Barbarian dailies are weak as hell. Spinning Strike is hitting for even less than our at-wills are (800-900 per tick). Compared to Live, Barbarian encounters are doing 1/10th or less of what they were. Barbarians basically took a 90-95% damage nerf ACROSS THE BOARD. My main was a 16.5k GWF, BIS weapons (exalted bronzewood +1 at legendary). In solo content absolutely every attack he had would hit for 100k+, Hidden Daggers routinely broke 500k. Now I don't have a single attack, including dailies, that will do more than 60k damage on a crit against the trash mobs in Undermountain. At-wills sometimes aren't even breaking 1000 damage and never hit more than 5000 damage.
The ONLY power Barbarian has that's even remotely workable at the moment is Sure Strike, and even it's broken (3rd and 4th hits not getting the damage bonus they're supposed to). ALL of the encounter powers are either simply not viable by design or are ludicrously underpowered. ALL of the daily powers are either simply not viable by design or are ludicrously underpowered. The only viable reasonably-repeatable AoE is level-locked at 80, and it too is ludicrously underpowered. They're simply NOT going to be able to bring it to where it needs to be by tweaking numbers on the back-end, it needs a total redesign and they need to take a hard look at which powers they kept and which they deleted, because it feels like they went "hmmm which abilities have always been completely useless? Keep those and only those!"
There's no excuse for Reaping Strike to still be around, much less for it to be even worse now than it is on Live.
Feedback:
I've already posted my thoughts on Fighter in that thread. I think you'll find similar complaints on Barbarian, primarily because Barbarian and Fighter suffer from the same core issues.
General
Buff At-will damage so you aren't just left waiting 20 seconds to feel like you're taking decent sized chunks of damage off enemies. Possibly tweak some Encounter powers' base damage too...
See my Fighter post for the reasoning. Most of the Barbarian Encounter power damage seem fine if you adjusted At-will damage, though some powers could use some slight improvements (ex: Grand Fissure to 400 magnitude).
Otherwise, there are some things on Barbarian in general that needs reworking on the DPS Side.
At-Wills
Reaping Strike needs to go. Replace it with Wicked Strike or Threatening Rush.
Reaping Strike has been universally garbage.I have found only one forum post that liked it (and I am sure they confused Weapon Master's Strike with Reaping Strike). This is not a fun AoE power to use, especially considering the long chargeup and pathetic damage of At-wills in general.
Wicked Strike being a universal At-will is more so we can stop using Reaping Strike on AoE as soon as possible . If you keep it on the tank side, then make it unlocked earlier so tanks don't need to rely on Reaping Strike to aggro mobs, maybe also give Wicked Strike a small heal component like current Crushing Surge to give it some utility on tanking.
As for Rush, well, Threatening Rush is for having mobility on the DPS side too. I'll admit my bias on the faster paced Iron Manguard master race and I think having a faster pace is sorely needed for this mod.
If you move Reaping to the tank side, it needs more utility besides "gain extra Determination and more damage".
Perhaps increase aggro generation + debuff mobs after a full charge?
Daily Attacks
Exchange Slam with Avalanche of Steel.
Avalanche of Steel seems to be more thematically consistent with the tanking side (being able to safely jump in and stun enemies to establish an aggro theshhold) while Slam seems more thematically appropriate to the DPS path (aside from being a "turn on and forget" daily that allows you to focus on your At-wills and encounters, it serves as the "run in and scare the living daylights out of the enemies because the big bad quaking barbie is coming after you" daily).
Swap Indomitable Strength with Crescendo.
I think this one might have a bit of outrage, but I think that Crescendo makes more sense on the tank path and Indomitable Strength on the damage path.
With Crescendo, it locks down and stuns and opponent for its duration, which seems consistent with tanking (ie, hold this enemy in place and give your team time to smack them). While I get that IS knocks people away in a way consistent to the tank path (ie, get away from my teammate), I think it actually serves better on the DPS path due to being able to quickly cancel it while keeping the damage (ie, keeping line with the DPS path having a faster pace)
Class Features
Bring back Focused Destroyer or allow Destroyer to build stacks by simply attacking.
I know this is more feat than class feature related, but If you take way Focused Destroyer from GWF right now, Destroyer is not all that great. This way, players need to make a choice between getting the more powerful Destroyer in all situations or sticking with the mediocre Steel Blitz and getting something else in return.
Or just give Destroyer the passive chance to randomly activate and call it a day, same difference for making Destroyer non near worthless.
Trample needs to be able to work on bosses. Rework to give a damage buff (yes, buff, not debuff like Daggers) when you use a CC power.
Nobody used Trample on live because you couldn't use it on bosses. Nobody is going to use Trample now unless you adjust it to work outside of certain situations.
Wrathful Determination and Steel Blitz need buffs.
Both of them need drastic buffs; their bonuses may as well not exist in terms of damage.
I had thoughts on the tank path, but seeing the length of this post for many things on the DPS side, I'll split it here.
In Mod 16 at level 71 I soloed the Pirate King's Retreat and fell once despite using 6 Stones of health and had to work like I was level 40 again and it took over 1/2 an hour to finish it. OMG! My DPS is about 1/10th or less of what it was before at lvl 70 in Mod 15 and all my gear was ilvl 700+ which is about like ilvl 500+ before. No Lifesteal is murder, but the DPS nerf is far worse. That dungeon should have been a stroll in the park for me and taken about a quarter as long. My fingers were cramping by the time I finished and I wouldn't dare try anything higher right now. I still can't believe I fell in that dungeon! I think my Velociraptor did more damage than I did and made more kills which made me feel pretty pathetic. LOL! She usually doesn't get a chance to make any kills! But, she showed me up this time! WOW!
Anyway, here are a couple of things I noticed that may be bugs.
1. I cannot refine anything. The button is always grayed out.
2. When I fell in the Pirate King's Retreat solo, it lead me back to the entrance and I had to set a flag on the map to get to the end.
3. I cannot activate Battle Fury during battle like I could before. I actually have to pause hit the key and then continue which allows my enemies to draw down my HP excessively.
4. I cannot Sprint and Jump at a mob anymore which is one of my favorite tactics.
Thanks for all your efforts and any attention you pay to my notes!
General:
I have no aggro due to poor damage and nonexistent aggro multipliers. If you're going to keep the damage low, you need to drastically increase the aggro multipliers.
Otherwise, surviving seems fine (loving the parry animation) and the powers all have distinct roles, such as Daring Shout refilling your Stamina or Come and Get it being the equivalent to the Fighter's Iron Warrior (ie, "I need to take less damage or I die" power).
There is a tweak here and there I'd do with powers:
Grand Fissure should go on the tank spec, maybe swap with Takedown.
I think the tank path sorely needs a ranged Aggro option so my only option isn't "run in screaming and hope it works"(even if it
is consistent with the Barbarian stereotype, I don't think it'd work well for gameplay and I would hope the class doesn't reward me for poor play).
Additionally, if you guys decide to take my suggestion to move Avalanche to Sentinel, make it so all damaged enemies also place you at the top of the aggro list, making for a decent reset button if things are going FUBAR.
Class Features:
All of the ones available to Sentinel feel too weak or don't make sense, they all need overhauls.
Bravery's 2500 Deflect is pathetic, needs some more oomph. Additionally, a slightly faster run speed would be appreciated
Weapon Master has almost no use on Sentinel (why do I need Crit on tanking?), I have no clue why it's a universal class feature.
Steadfast Determination takes way too long to generate Determination.
Enduring Warrior makes little sense if I'm not supposed to deal damage on the tank path, needs a huge overhaul.
Warrior's Courage stat bonus is near useless when HP is so dominant and won't be the thing that saves you in a close call. Also, the activation of HP % is a bit poor: if I have low HP, I have a poor healer, or everything has gone wrong and I'm out of Stamina and will not survive the next hits.
Steel Defense's duration is too small especially comparative to the casting animation of most daily attacks. Additionally, considering we aren't spamming daily attacks 24/7, a 2 second duration might as well not exist. A duration of 5 seconds or more sounds appropriate so I can actually see the difference.
Ferocious Reaction: 3 minute cooldown is way too long and not practical, possibly lower to a minute or even something like 40 seconds so it sees use outside of being a noob trap. Also, I think the numbers need to be overhauled to make more sense, like activating at 30% of max HP and regaining 30% of HP.
Both have full boons completed and added as well as all rank 14 enchants. Encounters seem to needing some love. The advantage that other classes I noticed have on the gwf encounters is that they are AoE and those seem to have a vast advantage in the game right now. Either adding more AoE to the gwf will improve his situation or lowering cooldowns on the class by half or more will allow to even out the issues in abilities. Not going to tell you what to do but something is very off right now with this class.
FYI, many coin bank heist and the mobs in the stronghold are all so powerful that they need some nerfs to them. I can't solo an small heroic encounter (unless I use my artifact or combat mount ability) in the stronghold. The many coin mobs can kill the bank in about 10 seconds. The group also dies to them when they split up without a healer so all of the skirmishes will need a healer with them in it. If nothing is done the new meta will be multi healers in content.
Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
"We want our tanks to be tanks".
Fighters are tanks, they still do more damage than GWFs, which are supposed to be DPS.
Fighters are also tanks, as in, they can actually tank compared to GWF.
The DPS class that is Barbarian blademaster is currently doing less damage than a healer class.
Barbie is not only completely useless, but this is ridiculous. As an 18k gwf, on live I can more or less murder the dummies in Protectors Enclave by just holding left click and going to sleep. Because they're lvl9 training dummies.
Right now I do less damage with a fully buffed daily compared to a completely unbuffed encounter on live.
Think of it this way. The entirety of GWF damage came from 3, arguably 4 things:
1) Destroyers purpose 50% DPS buff
2) Destroyer, w/ Focused destroyer 46.5% DPS buff
3) Daggers, 40% DPS buff
4) wild card - mark/battle fury/executioner's style, although all can be replaced with something less relevant and GWF could still do decent-ish damage.
All of those were taken away, or severely nerfed. I played GWF to be a DPS, not to be an extra slot filler. Now, GWF actually hits about as hard as a Barbie, and I ain't referrin' to drugs. That might be the only solution for me tho, after this goes on live.
Toodles.
Sure Strike and BMS(consider a namechange for this one) as the classes universal at-wills.
*There's quite a bit of downtime between encounters, I'd recommend a general increase of dmg for the At-wills, im fine with encounters having long cooldowns if their dmg is decent(still lacking in that front), and what im using in between em(At-wills) shouldn't be poor dmg.
*Maybe in the future consider combo attacks so if you use two ST At-wills or two AoE instead of one ST n' AoE, it'll be stronger for the respected type.
*Currently the only At-will worth using in preview is Sure Strike not because it's strong, just because the AoE one's don't pack enough punch to justify their use, they should be a bit weaker than ST At-wills maybe around 75% of ST attack since AoE animations are quite a bit clunky too
Blademaster's At-wills
Blademaster should have one unique ST At-will, one AoE.
*BMS suffers the Animation bug more than the old WMS did causing its dmg potential to drop quite a bit.(used to be caused when sprint casting it)
ST
Sure Strike n’ Brash Strike should be ST(BS is currently AoE even though it’s animation looks more like a single target attack) since Brash is a slower attack its damage should likely be greater than SS once changed to ST.
AoE
While BMS (replacement of WMS is a ST yet animation is WMS which is AoE like attack) and ________ (Hopefully a new Power is introduced here to replace Reaping) for AoE.
Sentinel's At-wills
Sentinel should have one unique ST At-will, one AoE, with healing side effect/reduced dmg/with a decent bit of aggro for the start of fights prior to higher threat gaining powers.
ST
Sure Strike n’ Threatening Rush should be ST(Sure Strike universal if a player wants to deal some damage and not switch loadouts, and Threatening for Bosses maybe as a way to force the gwf to top priority for aggro, maybe more if needed(Wouldn't mind a bit more range on it either))
AoE
BMS and Challenger's Strike (BMS universal for Damage purposes same case as stated in ST, as for CS along with its aggro maybe consider a healing component like Rjc said.)
Side effects of this:
Allows for AoE(or ST see case at the end) dps spec to take advantage of Destroyer Class feat, currently not efficient for any spec to slot (maybe reduced the class feat to if more then one target is hit you gain a stack to make it a bit easier, wouldn't recommend making it like focused destroyer like in the past then it'd be practically a mandatory class feature, limiting the point of the other options to a single slot.(Or on the contrary and have it be more ST focused so if only one enemy is hit you gain a stack)
Barbarian needs a lot of attention if you want to make him a viable dps class. He needs more magnitude to his aoe skills (hidden daggers - blademaster at-will - not so fast - spinning strike). Also:
- mighty leap should have enemy target, not area target (like gf's bull charge or lurging strike). It is very useless as it is.
- spinning strike should mitigate incoming damage/a part of it.
- punishing charge should be totally reworked with cc effect + a dps boost or it will never ever be used.
- roar seems to be the new daring shout to gain determination but it needs to be more easy to use, like a 360* effect than a cone arc. It is a roar after all, it should be able to be heard around you, not only in front of you.
- there must be a way to add combat advantage to enemies now that we don't have the mark from daring shout (on dps paragon). For example, weapon master feature can provide for 5 seconds combat advantage on enemies after landing a critical strike (and not to give critical chance which can be earned from gear).
I would like to focus my feedback on the DPS version of the barbarian. The magnitude of each encounter and at-will powers is very low, regardless of current or future damage bonuses. Another strong problem is that the gameplay doesn't feel fluid and there is a big difference between going AoE and Single Target DPS. It requires a true AoE At-will such as Challenger's Slash (Wicked Strike). Reaping Strike is not going to be used by anyone, it's bad, a loss of DPS is all it offers. It might be more useful for the tank version with an added effect like damage reduction and so the DPS version gets Wicked Strike.
Class Features offer nothing special, are very simple or have a very minimal impact on gameplay. The chance to proc Steel Blitz is very low, it could be more useful if it could be activated with each critical hit instead. Steadfast Determination could reduce the consumption of Determination by effectively making it last longer, as generating it progressively during combat isn't necessary. Destroyer doesn't work if you're vs. just one enemy, it would be better if it directly increased your damage regardless of the number of enemies hit. Wrathful Determination offers a very low damage bonus, it would be more useful if it were a constant base damage bonus and additionally a damage bonus that fluctuates according to the amount of determination, for example always 5% base and that goes up to 10% according to the determination. Steel Resolve is not usable in any way, it would be useful to have a way to generate combat advantage. I understand that every Class Feature doesn't have to be powerful but right now we are looking to use the least bad because none is really useful.
As for feats, it is nothing useful to have feats that require hitting several enemies at once. Rampage has good potential but I would lower the stacks to 3 instead of 5 without modifying the damage bonus. Unending Fury, it would be better to lose 1 stack every 1-2 seconds after finishing the Battlerage effect which will be lost gradually if you are no longer in combat.
Finally, in relation to the daily powers, it would be nice if you could bring back Slam for the Blademaster, it has very good potential to be used in conjunction with Trample the Fallen. Avalanche of Steel is much better for the Sentinel as it is an excellent ability to start a fight and it serves as a 'oh ****' button if necessary.
I will absolutely be adjusting determination gain, and which powers feature AoE components and ensuring that those components are clear and match the art. I have heard the feedback on reaping strike and it will see some changes as well.
IBS by the way, is intended to be a single target attack, but is currently hitting up to 3 targets in a very small area. If the tooltip says "Deals damage to target enemy" it is meant to be single target. If says "deals damage to enemies in a line/cone before you," or "deals damage to nearby enemies" it is an AoE.
However we also plan to make some adjustments to the information in the top right corner of each power to make this more clear. Some background: a lot of single target powers for melee classes actually have a specific hit box, and then they hit the closest enemy in that hitbox. So you'll see something like Range Melee Arc 45 for what is actually a single target attack, and that's very confusing—so we're going to be removing arc/radius information for single target attacks. (I am sure there are some of you who want it to stay, but trust me, you really only need the range, because your character will automatically turn to face the target when you swing.)
Technically this was just as bad before Module 16, and you'd see bizarre stuff about "Burst 10'" etc that was highly misleading, but the tooltips were so poorly constructed before... that there were much more glaring problems to be concerned with.
Thanks for the feedback! On the topic of more ways to restore hit points: ultimately, we have intentionally removed most non-healers ability to restore their own hit points, however, there are spikes in difficulty that make this markedly unpleasant. Ideally, when fighting enemies at the right difficulty as a DPS, you should be able to defeat them and end the fight in the 20-60% HP range depending on how well you played and how difficult they were. Add in some potions and you should have no trouble.
That being said, I did do some work on Barbarian today, and will be doing more work this week—I have made improvements to restoring strike for now. In the next update it will be renamed "Bloodletter," it will feature adjusted art, a slightly longer cooldown, 100 magnitude less damage, but will restore 100% of the damage dealt. (For those concerned about the damage reduction, plenty of other powers are getting adjustments as well, and some damage is going up. Also, none of these adjustments are final, so please give it a shot after the changes.)
If im way off the mark feel free to delete my comment but thats the current concerns of many i have spoken to.
First of all, i gotta say I do play multiple toons, however i do consider "barbie" to be my main. That being said, changes are definitely massive for all classes (playing DC/OP/GWF/GF), and knowing that you've said that Barbarians are currently in a really bad state, i'd have to agree.
However I've also seen in the multiple thread's (for different classes) that you've requested to know which mobs seem to be out liers, which kinda had me confused with barbarian i have to say. For example, I've done the "starting 2-3 quests" with my toons, didnt have any problems with OP, with DC, however, barbie (on the side of being basically dysfunctional at this time) seems to be getting one-shotted by quite a lot of things. Have in mind, its an 18k copied from live with roughly 200k HP and latest gear from live. - DPS spec
Now I'd understand if that was to happen in other zones (campaign zones or dungeons) where the so called "outliers" are, but its actually happening in the "new quests", starting from the starting few enemies in introduction to further down the line.
Example being those mobs on 2nd or 3rd quest where you gotta pull the chains to "open" the doors (new campaign), a single mob simply one-shotted me about 4 times
Most of the times, the fights seem to go normal, i'll maybe lose 5-10% of my HP pool (if even that) but for the rest of the time, we're at the situation of basically either being full or at 0, and we're talking regular, small mobs from the new campaign.
I didnt have such experiences with the other 2 classes (DC is 18.1k, OP is 17k on live), which leads me to believe that that must be some sort of an error, so please do look into it for the sake of barbies! (otherwise, we'll literally start wearing pink skirts :P )
On a completely different note, but not to spam the forums, i'd like to ask @asterdahl - i've seen in other threads that there was talk of having the option of exchanging enchantments to other ones, double stat to double stat (which i can see on preview) but there was also mention of enchantments to runestones or gear/gear, would it be possible to get any info on that?
At least on the ench->runestones? Simply because, being limited to having only runestones on our companions seriously limits us and all the investments we've made so far into those enchants, and knowing that we'll be able to exchange enchants we have in them now for some runestones that we could use would be quite a relief.
Thanks in advance
In regards to having a much harder time on BBN than CLR/PAL/FTR, it sounds like you were mostly doing okay and then would get crushed randomly. I do believe there may be a few outlier enemies even in the new zones. I've heard there are some issues with some of the spider enemies, is there a chance you encountered an enemy you didn't encounter on other classes? We'll definitely be taking a look.
In terms of exchanges—please re-post that feedback on the general feedback thread, so Noworries can respond to it. That being said, I don't think we'll be providing any standard equipment exchanges. For a few reasons: first, there's a nearly impossible amount of equipment that exchange would have to cover. And second, you're going to be growing out of it very quickly. That being said, if you're feeling like your old equipment can't even get you through the leveling zones, let us know, because we're definitely not aiming fo that to be the case.
As for the encountering enemies with BBN that i havent with other classes, while as that might be the case with the quests further down the line (more people in the same area etc), i think that the 1st introductory quest (when you just get to the beach) is someone that everyone has to pass, it could be that i've perhaps dodged/blocked the attack from the certain mob in that first part or something of the sort, but im quite sure that being 1-shotted shouldnt be the case.
Once again, ty for the reply, i'll ask for the exchanges in the general thread.
Cheers
punishing charge sucks.
Barbarian has more than enough tools to increase its mobility, therefore making the concept of having charges on punishing charge very clunky and in the end more annoying than anything since you spend a bunch of time repositioning.
Make it one charge, more than quadruple its damage and add an effect to it (a control such as make them fly in the air) and make the animation feel more impactful as a result
Mighty Leap cannot work as a damage only tool. Needs an effect such as Combat Advantage.
I have almost no idea how to make Reaping Strike useful, besides making its damage very fat to compensate the charge time and add a pull effect towards the barbarian when charging.
Steadfast Determination : Determination is extremely easy to build by itself in combat therefore making it useless. There are two ways to make it better without reworking it completely : either grant determination generation out of combat or reduce the determination lost when using unstoppable by a big margin.
Steel Resolve : useless. Just looking at the numbers it's useless. And has nothing to do with blademaster. The only way to make a control based power would be the power to increase the duration of the barbarian's controls. And not a small 10% increase, something in the likes of 80%.
Trample the Fallen : needs to work against immune bosses, and value way too low.
Steel Blitz/ Daring Shout / Roar / Weapon Master / Bravery / Wrathful Determination see post above agree with barbie same ideas.
For Steel Blitz crit got capped and a lot of companion have similar effects for even same damage. I recommand buffing the damage AND the frequency.
Enduring Warrior heal increase healing and heal are weak by themselves and could get some value increase. And it needs to be reworked so that you get healed when an enemy is killed nearby (so even by an ally) and NOT WHEN THE TANK KILLS IT, it's COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE.
Steel Defense : duration way too low to begin with. Steel Defense is also rarely actived so the feat would only be useful in pvp. An idea would be to add a minor effect to it.
Warrior's Courage : useless, the goal of a tank is to stay at max HP by being tanky and not dying therefore it's COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE. Needs rework. For example : grants up to X defense and Y deflect the more your life decreases (be proportional or exponential increase, but make it feel impactful).
Ferocious Reaction : cooldown way too long. At 15% you're already dead, the value is way too low. Something in the likes of 30% would be much better. Even increase the heal to 30/35%.
By the way (edit : artifact) class features / artifact offhand are still a thing and have not been touched. Did you intend to let them be ?