Barbarian Bugs and effects on balance

stof

Posting here to give more visibility. Bugs list collected by Sekosek

Bugs List:

• Battlerage(DPS version) and Unstoppable(Tank version): The durations are fixed on a timer, not on the remaining Rage amount. Battlerage/Unstoppable should simply just look at how much Rage is remaining. On DPS path during Battlerage, Rage-increasing things such as Roar and Brutal Critical will increase the Rage amount visually on the Rage bar, but it does not actually increase the duration of BattleRage. Battlerage will end based on its timer, depleting the extra Rage you built with these powers/feats. On the Tank path during Unstoppable, when you use Primal Fury(without Blood Fury feat selected), Encounter removes 40 Rage visually on the Rage bar. But it does not actually decrease the duration of the Unstoppable. Unstoppable will remain active for its remaining timer with 0 Rage.
  
• Mightier Leap: Is 780 magnitude instead of the stated 600 magnitude.
  
• Indomitable Rage: Indomitable Rage feat says it will add 300 magnitude with full Rage to Indomitable Battle Strike Encounter. It reduces the base damage by 100 making it 650 instead of 750. But it goes up to 1050 with full Rage, adding 400 magnitude.
  
• Steel Slam: Steel Slam feat is not 250 magnitude as it shows on tooltip, its actually 325. Also, the tooltip is misleading. It's not 325 magnitude total for 12 seconds; it's actually 325 magnitudes per tick. And it ticks 5 times every 3 seconds for 12 seconds. Making it a total of 1625 magnitude.
  
• Hidden Daggers: Hidden daggers "Surprise Attack" doesn't get procced by Crescendo.
  
• Adamantine Stike: Adamantine Stike magnitude is not 1200, it was something like 1121.5 magnitude. 5% Debuff does not work
  
• Overpenetration: Only increases damage of At-will, Encounter and Dailies. Does not increase other sources of damage like Band of Air procs, Mount Combat Powers, Artifacts, Neverwinter Hawk, Bilethorn procs, etc.
  
• Rage: Dailies give 1 Rage on use, while At-wills give 2 and Encounters give 12.5 without Relentless Battlerage feat selected. Not sure if Dailies giving 1 Rage is intended or not. Would expect Dailies to give more Rage than At-wills and Encounters.
  
• Steady Rage: Gives 1 Rage per second. With the Relentless Battlerage feat selected, this does not get doubled and still gives 1 Rage per second. It also does not give any Rage during Battlerage/Unstoppable.
  
• Impatience: Impatience class feature Gives up to 5 Rage per second in combat if you do not attack. With the Relentless Battlerage feat selected, this does not get doubled. It also does not give any Rage during Battlerage. The upscaling Rage effect gets reset after using Battlerage, even if you do not attack any enemy. The upscaling Rage effect only resets when you attack with an At-will; attacking with an Encounter etc., does not reset this effect.
  
• Artifact modification bonus Enchanced Relentless Slash: Main hand artifact modification bonus Enchanced Relentless Slash only works for the 2nd part of the Relentless Slash At-will, it does not boost first hit.
  
• Block If you die while holding up block you cannot use scrolls to revive
  

These bugs have serious consequences, mainly because it not possible to utilize the Rage mechanic to full extend. Basically, the only way to get Rage is if you are outside of Battlerage and use Encounter/At-Wills. Which means that any source of additional rage gain has reduced effectiveness.
This is extremely important relating to Features, since 3 of the 8 are related to rage regen, 2 are related to increased defense. Meaning there are only 3 other choices to be made. By fixing and allowing to gain rage during the Battlerage the following Feats/Features increase in desirability without any other change:

Features:

• Steady Rage.
  
• Raging Strikes.
  
• Impatience.
  

Feats:

• Brutal Critical.
  
• Escalating Rage.
  

However Barbarian have some other problematic feats/features too that would need to be looked (since their alternative is rage related and therefore have zero effect)

• Trample of Fallen: As one of the remaming feats not affect by rage it requires the use a power that control the enemies (eg. Punishing charge) to gain 5% damage increase, additionally if the enemy is controled you gain another 10%. However Bosses cannot be controled, which means that is basicly a 5% damage increase that forces the player to use a specfic skill to get the bonus.
  
• Barbed Strikes: 2.5% critical severity for other classes would correspond to less than 1% damage increase. However in the Blademaster case the, the critical severity since we are capped mostly of time, due to bonus from Battlerage, Forte, Dexterity. Which means any increase in critical severity is actually a 0% damage increase.
  
• Overpenetration: Due to the other feat option being Brutal Critical (which currently does almost nothing), Blademaster are kinda forced to pick this feat. Consequently they are also force to cap the rating on both power and accuracy, which limit the build diversity.
  
• Escalating Rage. Due to the way rage is generated (mainly from encounters), by selecting this feat the following rotation is create: Encounter > Battlerage (4s) > 3~4 at-wills > Repeat . This means that 1 in every 2~3 rotations will get the feat benefit. However since the battlerage and rampage will be out sync, The battlerage duration will be longer than the remaning duration Rampage, and therefore leading to unavoidable self-stun. If a player combines with Brutal critical feat, it will sometimes lead to comical situations where you still have half of the rage bar left and get will get self-stunned
  

Maybe @rgutscheradev could look into it, after the wizard changes are finalized, since fixing these bugs will afffect the balance.