Axe Storm actually feels like a power that should be locked by level 80, its cool visual n' amazing dmg. Good job definitely a fitting power.
Currently im not sure if the dagger change is a good one the extra damage to next attack(separate dmg proc like the old power from live no gwf used)
Currently IBS/Frenzy/Axe Storm feel nice to use together.
Brash Strike feels clunky to use in combat combined with everything.
Relentless Strike still have the fairly potent animation bug.
The new IBS (assuming it was re-worked from the ground up before you got your hands on it since you can now move as you cast it which is nice, a lil' weird to watch but nice.) But can now deal it's dmg without actually showing it's animation as your in combat transitioning to it from another power.
Weapon Master's strike only hits one target in the first swipe. I'm not sure if it's as intended as the tooltip only says "target enemy" but to be honest if that's the case the animation shouldn't be a giant swipe. It feels very un-intuitive. However, if it's multiple hits then yeah it's currently broken.
I think Weapon Master's Strike is now called Blade Master's Strike and yes, it only seems to hit a single target (even on successive sweeps). Essentially, AoE damage is more or less non-existent in the current build. Even when facing 5+ targets, Sure Strike (single target) dispatches them faster than Blade Master's Strike. Good AoE was one of the areas where a GWF (now Barby) was shining in previous mods. Please don't take that away from us.
It is also likely that the special artifact/class features on the mainhand/offhand weapon, such as +8% damage for Weapon Master's Strike don't work, contributing to the very small damage we are seeing now. The powers have obviously changed, but even the level 80 weapons that can be bought from seals or tradebars have the "old" class features on them, buffing powers that have changed or are gone completely.
I agree to most people that Barbie's are currently underwhelming in the DPS area especially since it's supposed to be a melee dps class. The Fighter's encouters hit harder and their feats just leave Barbie's encounters in the dust. I've noticed that the Feats are designed to encourage more At-Will usage which goes against the current philosophy of making encounters more meaningful and making At-Wills weaker. It also doesn't help that the one feat that has good synergy with this philosphy i.e. Offensive Recovery is locked at level 80.
In fact the current design Philosophy of MOD 16 is in essence against how Great Weapon Fighters were originally designed: HEAVY SUSTAINED DAMAGE through AT-WILL spams. That's what increased attack speed is for. Nerfing Barbarian At-Wills also nerfs Unstoppable/Berserker's Rage which overall is a double whammy.
Focus on At-wills was one of the unique mechanics of a GWF. It lead to very fast paced combat. It was one of the major things that draw me into Neverwinter, because combat was so much more fun (fluid, fast paced) than in other MMOs. In fact, other MMOs tend to excel in other areas (better story lines, better designed dungeons, better character customization with more meaningful choices, etc.) . Fast paced combat was an outstanding feature of NWO. If NWO is to attract new players, the Devs should concentrate on what makes this game good. If combat feels clunky, well the story line will not really draw anybody in. The dungeons are subpar. But fast paced combat, that's something you can experience from the start. Please don't take it away.
Bottom line: I think it would be best to have a unique flair for every class and to keep an eye on the original design philosophy, which allowed fast-paced and very fluid combat with different mechanics for each class. The current "at-will/encounter/daily - 1/3/1" philosophy might be good as a general guideline. But please don't overdo it, so that all classes are copies of each other, where combat essentially works the same (just different names to powers and slightly different animations). For the GWF (now Barb) I would suggest to aim towards a "2/2/1", maybe even "3/1/1" distribution between at-wills/encounters/dailies. In fact, if there are encounters such as Battle Fury , that buff damage (but dont do any damage itself), the main damage will "automatically" have to come from at-wills, in particular if two out three encounter powers merely buff other powers or act indirectly in some other way (for instance, building more determination).
Thank you for picking up the barbarian and trying to make sense of the pieces. Thank you also for your interaction here on the forums.
I would remove the tank designation from the barbarian and make the class a dps/dps class. Blademaster should focus on damage, with burst damage that makes the path dependent on healing and tanking. For example, the DnD barbarian has an ability called Reckless Attack. I would translate this into an Awareness penalty to offset temporary increased damage. I would approach the Sentinel path as the "hard to kill" barbarian who doesn't have the ability to do burst damage like Blademaster. Sentinel would be great for solo play, pvp and perhaps as an off-tank but without any abilities related to aggro control or threat generation.
Thank you again for all your work on the barbarian.
So I was testing somewhere under the mountain with my now lvl 72 Barbarian. He was a Blademaster and I was quite happy with his performance. Then I wanted to try sth different so I switched to Sentinel and oh my god! Sentinel deals a ton more damage than Blademaster. Could it be that tank inherent feat, the -30% dmg dealt is actually boosting the Sentinel damage instead due to a bug? Im 1shotting Umber Hulks with a crit from Restoring Strike (500 magnitude power ) and my self heals reach into the millions.. Whats up with that? Wish my Justical Paladin could do that
Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
so... everyone complains on how we are the class that deal the least damage, losing to tanks and healers, and your response is nerfing daggers even more? is this for real? you guy really gonna make us useless? why do you hate GWF so much?
Barbarian feels absolutely fantastic. Not speaking to numbers, but just overall feel and fluidity, this update has been very good for it. Being me, however, I've got thoughts.
Renaming Determination to Rage was a nice touch. Sentinel's Slash is definitely an improvement on Reaper; if anything, I'd suggest allowing some chip damage through its guard; attacking while blocking is the Fighter's schtick, and while getting some version of that is great news for making sentinel feel like a tank, it does seem that essentially rhino-hiding incoming hits during your windup shouldn't be as perfect a defense as actively parrying. If it wouldn't be too hard to code, maybe block 80-90% of incoming damage, keeping the control immunity portion?
This may be something where I just have to get the muscle memory right, but the fact that you can still "block" by holding down Shift while Unstoppable, but gain no benefit from doing so, feels a little funny. Maybe slow down the Rage drain by a little bit while holding block? /shrug
I love Bloodletter, but is it supposed to be converting all of the damage into health, or only a portion?
@asterdahl (philosophy on class design vs. paragon design, snipped for space)
Why nerf the shared powers when they can easily maintain parallel instances of them, allowing them to tune the powers differently for different paragon paths. That's basically what the "ranks" of the powers under the old system were: copy/pasted code with the numbers adjusted.
There's nothing wrong and everything right with a tank path having a few dps-boosting feature options, and a dps path having a few survivability feature options, especially if they are shared, giving a stronger sense of class identity vs. spec identity (as a WoW refugee, that's been a big part of the debate over there, where things have gotten to the point that some classes have almost no shared abilities between specs, and therefore no identity beyond what armor they wear). This allows someone who enjoys the tank playstyle to solo faster when they aren't pressured, or a dps to keep their feet a little longer in content with a lot of damage flying around.
I don't mean to denigrate the thought you put into this, and I'd enjoy discussing it with you if you are interested in doing so.
So you guys have removed our whole entire rotation and have made our class completely boring and brain dead. I dont think anyone was complaining about how GWFs dps was, why ruin something so terribly.
Currently we're just waiting on encounter cooldowns to do any type of significant damage. This makes for extremely boring gameplay.
We use to have to make sure everything we attacked was marked. Then make sure our battle fury buff was up, and make sure our hidden daggers was up every 6 secs. We also had to build destroyer stacks. This made for a pretty fun rotation (i know most people claimed it was a brain dead rotation, but it really wasent. the people who claimed it was were probably pretty bad at GWF.) which took a little bit of skill and timing. It was fun. Why ruin this?
Im open to changes, but nothing ive seen is better then what we use to have. So why bother changing it?
@asterdahl Love the changes so far. Barbarian now seems to be on the right path. The movements are more fluid, although still not like in live. I must say, I find that the Tank path seems to be out dpsing the dps path by a lot. I am cutting though the mobs like butter when I am on Sentinel. Oh and I love Axe Storm, seems like I will be using IBS, AxeStorm, and Frenzy/BloodLetter
Barbarian feels more fluid after the first patch, but I still see two general problems - AoE dps is lacking - At-Wills are too weak
I guess AoE dps is still worked upon, so I will not comment.
Why are at-wills too weak? If we have encounters (like slam, battle fury, etc.) that do not do damage itself, but merely buff damage, we are loosing a lot of dps from our encounters, when we slot these "buffing encounters". With the current philosophy for the distribution of overall damage dealt:
"at-wills/encounters/dailies = 1/3/1"
if we slot 2 "buffing encounters", we have effectively got the following distribution:
"at-wills/encounters/dailies = 1+/1+/1+" (where + means "buffed")
We have effectively 3 sources of damage, instead of 5, meaning overall damage is reduced from 5 to 3. In order to get the same damage as in the "1/3/1" meta, the buff must provide a multiplier on damage by a factor of 5/3, meaning we require a 66% buff. But the buffs are far weaker.
One can either adjust the strength of the buff, or one can increase the damage of the at-wills. Excessive buffs could lead to imbalance, so its better to increase the damage of the at-will attacks.
@asterdahl I’m really pleased to hear about the changes to Sentinel, as my big fear from the small amount of testing I did was they were going to struggle with aggro management. I’m keen to level mine up to 80 now and see how it goes compared to my Paly. As a person who is a “casual” Barby I’ve certainly enjoyed the class in the little time I’ve given it and I’m excited by the possibilities of Sentinel.
That said @barbie#2808’s big post a couple up is something that captures the struggles I’m seeing with Warlock and Paladin as well, power and feat design around everything being shared instead of starting with the lowest output for the shared mechanics and then building the unique mechanics at full strength.
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Heh, Swordmaster. Anyhoo, will we get any form of power that helps our group survive on Sentinel?
Oops, edited—the change to Blademaster was fairly recent, so I apologize for the slip up. Sentinel will be getting more defensive powers in next week's build.
Upon entering preview the things that "bugged" me was Weapon Master's strike only hits one target in the first swipe. I'm not sure if it's as intended as the tooltip only says "target enemy" but to be honest if that's the case the animation shouldn't be a giant swipe. It feels very un-intuitive. However, if it's multiple hits then yeah it's currently broken.
Other than that Vanrakdoom's power spike is way too high IMO even with the quest given gear (which has me currently at 16.3k IL). All other areas were manageable but my Barbie has been melting to Vanrakdoom's 3 shar cultists alone. It wouldn't be much a problem if I could burst them down with encounters but it takes 3 rotations of all my encounters to clear a group but by the 1st rotation I've already used my health stone and by the 3rd rotation I'm almost dead or dead, especially if my companion or I accidentally draw in other mobs.
I agree to most people that Barbie's are currently underwhelming in the DPS area especially since it's supposed to be a melee dps class. The Fighter's encouters hit harder and their feats just leave Barbie's encounters in the dust. I've noticed that the Feats are designed to encourage more At-Will usage which goes against the current philosophy of making encounters more meaningful and making At-Wills weaker. It also doesn't help that the one feat that has good synergy with this philosphy i.e. Offensive Recovery is locked at level 80.
In fact the current design Philosophy of MOD 16 is in essence against how Great Weapon Fighters were originally designed:
HEAVY SUSTAIN DAMAGE through AT-WILL spams. That's what increased attack speed is for. Nerfing Barbarian At-Wills also nerfs Unstoppable/Berserker's Rage which overall is a double whammy.
If I were to suggest you guys might have to:
buff At-Wills which goes against the current direction the game is headed or
redesign Berserker's Rage to be Encounters focused or
Replace some feats to be similar to Offensive Recovery i.e. At-Wills giving buffs to encounter powers or (what I'd like to really see)
Feedback loops between At-Wills and Encounters i.e. At-Wills building stacks for encounters and vice versa all leading up to a nuke at the final stack.
or something cool I guess.... players never really know what they want till' they get it.
Thanks for checking out the changes on preview and posting your feedback!
I just finished a total overhaul of both Barbarian paragon's feats. You'll have a chance to check them out in this coming Friday's build. In regards to at-will damage, you're right that hypothetically the at-will damage nerf would doubly affect Barbarian's damage, when compared with other classes. However, since everything is changing at once, it's not specifically the case that at-will damage is the only cause for low Barbarian damage.
That's because Barbarian's encounters and dailies are no longer any weaker than other classes, so their increased at-will damage through sheer increase volume of at-will usage, is something we are aiming to balance against other classes' unique class mechanics. As an additional note, DPS Barbarian's "Battlerage" (formerly Unstoppable) now increases damage dealt overall, so encounter and dailies can also benefit.
I hope you try out the changes this coming week and let me know what you think.
Axe Storm actually feels like a power that should be locked by level 80, its cool visual n' amazing dmg. Good job definitely a fitting power.
Currently im not sure if the dagger change is a good one the extra damage to next attack(separate dmg proc like the old power from live no gwf used)
Currently IBS/Frenzy/Axe Storm feel nice to use together.
Brash Strike feels clunky to use in combat combined with everything.
Relentless Strike still have the fairly potent animation bug.
The new IBS (assuming it was re-worked from the ground up before you got your hands on it since you can now move as you cast it which is nice, a lil' weird to watch but nice.) But can now deal it's dmg without actually showing it's animation as your in combat transitioning to it from another power.
Thanks for the report! I'm glad you are enjoying the visuals for axestorm. This week's build had some animation fixes in it, but there are still quite a few we're working through. Some of the code that handled animations was actually changed with Module 16, in order to resolve a longstanding bug with our auto attack code (that at-wills use.)
This bug caused at-wills with slower cast times to deal more damage over a period of time than faster at-wills, due to a timing issue with server tics. This has evidently been an issue with the engine since its inception, and with the new team working to bring the classes into balance from scratch, we identified the issue and resolved it. Auto attacks will now speed up slightly if tics were missed on the last swing in order to ensure they achieve the same average DPS. This causes the animations to speed up very slightly as well.
It's not noticeable when working correctly, however, there are some bugs that have cropped up as a result and we're busy working to identify and fix them ahead of launch. I apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime.
Bounding Smash animation is bug. it doesnt have animation XD
If the leap of the hidden daggers was a little shorter, it would be better. Because in codg could be mortal ...
I'm very sorry about Bounding Smash making it to preview with no animation. For a little background into what our build process is like—we take a snapshot of the code and data for the game that is in development every so often, and that is our "baseline." Until we re-baseline, any changes that need to go into a build have to be taken as "incremental" changes. We (the developers) tell the build producer to take our individual checkins that we want to make sure get into the next build. This week's build was an incremental build.
When I asked our build producer to incremental the powers change, I neglected to send a request for the animator's checkin. So I'd like to apologize personally for Bounding Smash making it to preview with no animation. The animation will be in next week's build, along with a much larger set of Barbarian changes. For those wondering what the animation will be—you leap forward, weapon overhead before slamming it down on your foe. It feels great, so I'm sad it did not make it in this week.
On the topic of hidden dagger's jump back, vis-a-vis CotDG: hidden daggers really wouldn't be a good idea for the atropal anyway, because it adds flat damage on your next attack, its best combined with an AoE like Bounding Smash or Axestorm to hit multiple targets. That being said, I think you should have no trouble using it in The Cradle as long as you started in melee range. I gave hidden dagger's the the leap back as a possible extra utility for the power, allowing you to dodge an attack while still hitting the enemy and buffing your next attack.
It feels like it has good synergy with gap closers, but the timing is a bit off for using with any gap closing encounters, so this week it will get a 50 mag increase and a 2 second cooldown increase to line up better.
I ll be honest with you, for me it's still not testable, i do like the Axe Storm (1000 Magnitude) it's a cool looking Power, and some changes overall on Frenzy (1300 Magnitude) , I liked that Sure Strike+ Bounding Smash(no animation) are the two shared powers, i like the new punishing charge and the class feature but i will be waiting for more patches that didn't got in with this week. But just to put my mind at ease can you tell me what can i expect in the next week patches for the Barbarian?
You mentioned Sentinel's getting few changes in:
Reaping strike and 2 new Dailies alongside some class feature changes
Can you confirm that Slam + Indomitable Strength will be moved to the Blademaster's Path? Cause i do not feel like Crescendo and Avalanche of Steel to be used with Blademaster's way of playin.
Also i'm not sure on what you are deciding on setting the Magnitude and Cooldown for some Powers to, would be nice to get some Insight for what is it to come with the next week patches. Thank you.
This week was just a stop-gap set of changes, a few things I managed to get in just in time for the build that was cut Tuesday night. A vast majority of the overhaul will be in this coming week's build, including a complete rework of all feats and class features, with a few of the more popular and fun concepts remaining, but a huge swathe of the boring and crappy ones thrown out and replaced.
Although I'd like to share specifics, I'd rather everyone get a chance to actually play with the changes, as opposed to forming opinions on the changes before having a chance to get a feel for them. I apologize for the wait.
I'm looking at the level 75 BladeMaster paragon class feature and gagging on it. Is there any point at all to this skill (steel resolve).
And while Sentinel's Slash looks good on paper, unfortunately it's a charged skill, which means you really need a mouse macro to use it optimally.
I decided to leave the infinite charging (until you release) so that if you need to, you can hold it a second longer to keep the block up. That being said, the damage is balanced against charge time linearly, so as long as you let go before hitting 100%, you should be doing the same DPS as if you were a robot that let go at the exact frame it was at 100%. And at that point, there is an override time on the power, so as long as you start holding down again within the next half second, you shouldn't lose any time.
That being said, if you are not finding that to be the case, let me know! I did also balance Sentinel's Slash a little high on damage given its utility, because I know it requires some precise timing to use optimally. I think with the fact that you can use it to both block and do damage, it can be worth taking.
So I was testing somewhere under the mountain with my now lvl 72 Barbarian. He was a Blademaster and I was quite happy with his performance. Then I wanted to try sth different so I switched to Sentinel and oh my god! Sentinel deals a ton more damage than Blademaster. Could it be that tank inherent feat, the -30% dmg dealt is actually boosting the Sentinel damage instead due to a bug? Im 1shotting Umber Hulks with a crit from Restoring Strike (500 magnitude power ) and my self heals reach into the millions.. Whats up with that? Wish my Justical Paladin could do that
It seems like you're encountering a bug. Did you change any of your boons, companions or insignia bonuses when you switched to Sentinel? Can you let me know what your character name is so we can take a look at it? (It's not the sentinel passive that is increasing your damage, I can tell you that with high confidence.)
@asterdahl I want to apologize for this post if i may overstep my line as a player, and tend to go over and act as a developer, i am not a developer, but i am a person that tends to see flaws in some things, and same as you i want Barbarian to be viable, i am going to go and explain how i do think that Barbarian can be viable, and i do hope that we both can have something to learn from it.
Hello! No need to apologize at all, you haven't struck a nerve. You're passionate about the class you love, and obviously put a lot of thought into your feedback.
The crux of your post seems to mostly be about the Barbarian core powers being balanced to be usable as DPS powers for the Sentinel, but with Blademaster's unique powers being significantly better for DPS. The problem with this approach is that, it creates a world where the Sentinel has twice as many powers at their disposal than the Blademaster. Admittedly, half of them are more tank focused, but as tanks generate threat by dealing damage, they're going to take some damaging powers as well.
Because we've already removed a decent number of choices, we don't want want to create a situation where a huge swathe of powers isn't worth using by an entire paragon path. After the changes this coming week, you should be able to make decent use of almost any power. There are a handful of base powers that may see a bit more use on one path than the other, but in most of these cases, those powers still have a use for soloing or PvP on the opposite path.
Hopefully you understand where I'm coming from, and why we are trying not to limit the core class powers to being useful to only a single path. I hope you check out the changes at the end of this week and have more thoughts to share afterward.
maybe you can give more damage and some Action point gain KILLING enemies during that encounter activation, creating some "slayer stacks"+half of the actual bonus. doing that, Relentless (ignoring roar that need... some special look) will make that stacks during 25% longer. (if 10secs, will be 12,5 secs) adding now extra rage by stack gain too.
improve radius of might leap/ avalanch of steel flying for only 3 secs+move speed should be great too. other thing is... is possible use the old execution animation ibs to all ibs blows, adding some damage o other effecto to that?
The issue with slayer based powers is that they are completely worthless in boss fights. That being said, I understand that they can feel totally awesome too, I am looking into some execute style effects.
On the topic of Mighty Leap and Avalanche of Steel, there will be some improvements to both powers, for those that want to use them.
So you guys have removed our whole entire rotation and have made our class completely boring and brain dead. I dont think anyone was complaining about how GWFs dps was, why ruin something so terribly.
Currently we're just waiting on encounter cooldowns to do any type of significant damage. This makes for extremely boring gameplay.
We use to have to make sure everything we attacked was marked. Then make sure our battle fury buff was up, and make sure our hidden daggers was up every 6 secs. We also had to build destroyer stacks. This made for a pretty fun rotation (i know most people claimed it was a brain dead rotation, but it really wasent. the people who claimed it was were probably pretty bad at GWF.) which took a little bit of skill and timing. It was fun. Why ruin this?
Im open to changes, but nothing ive seen is better then what we use to have. So why bother changing it?
I apologize that you're not having fun with the changes on preview. If you haven't had a chance to read my other responses in the thread yet, know that a big overhaul is coming this week, and I hope you'll take the time to check it out and let me know how you feel.
Barbarian feels absolutely fantastic. Not speaking to numbers, but just overall feel and fluidity, this update has been very good for it. Being me, however, I've got thoughts.
Renaming Determination to Rage was a nice touch. Sentinel's Slash is definitely an improvement on Reaper; if anything, I'd suggest allowing some chip damage through its guard; attacking while blocking is the Fighter's schtick, and while getting some version of that is great news for making sentinel feel like a tank, it does seem that essentially rhino-hiding incoming hits during your windup shouldn't be as perfect a defense as actively parrying. If it wouldn't be too hard to code, maybe block 80-90% of incoming damage, keeping the control immunity portion?
This may be something where I just have to get the muscle memory right, but the fact that you can still "block" by holding down Shift while Unstoppable, but gain no benefit from doing so, feels a little funny. Maybe slow down the Rage drain by a little bit while holding block? /shrug
I love Bloodletter, but is it supposed to be converting all of the damage into health, or only a portion?
It's absolutely possible to make Sentinel's Slash block less than 100% of incoming damage, and I'll certainly consider it, based on how it's performing and feedback from other Barbarians.
I agree that it feels silly to be able to block during Unstoppable, so I'll be looking at that. In regards to Bloodletter, it's supposed to heal you for 100% of the damage you deal currently, but there may be some issues with resistances, what were you seeing it heal for?
Barbarian feels more fluid after the first patch, but I still see two general problems - AoE dps is lacking - At-Wills are too weak
I guess AoE dps is still worked upon, so I will not comment.
Why are at-wills too weak? If we have encounters (like slam, battle fury, etc.) that do not do damage itself, but merely buff damage, we are loosing a lot of dps from our encounters, when we slot these "buffing encounters". With the current philosophy for the distribution of overall damage dealt:
"at-wills/encounters/dailies = 1/3/1"
if we slot 2 "buffing encounters", we have effectively got the following distribution:
"at-wills/encounters/dailies = 1+/1+/1+" (where + means "buffed")
We have effectively 3 sources of damage, instead of 5, meaning overall damage is reduced from 5 to 3. In order to get the same damage as in the "1/3/1" meta, the buff must provide a multiplier on damage by a factor of 5/3, meaning we require a 66% buff. But the buffs are far weaker.
One can either adjust the strength of the buff, or one can increase the damage of the at-wills. Excessive buffs could lead to imbalance, so its better to increase the damage of the at-will attacks.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! When it comes to buffing encounters, it depends on the encounter. Self buffs like Hidden Daggers are balanced to be just as strong as taking a pure damaging encounter. In the case of Hidden Daggers, it's balanced as an AoE attack, and when you realize that the flat added damage is on every target, and combine it with something that hits multiple enemies, you'll realize it's quite strong.
In the case of Battle Fury, which buffs your team as well, you're correct that it is definitely a DPS loss when solo. There's a threshold where it's a buff when used with your team. It will depend on the size of your team, and how much damage your other party members are doing. If you're the best geared on the team, and in a heavy DPS lead, you probably don't want to take Battle Fury. If everyone is doing respectable DPS, you might want to think about it, and if you're lagging behind, you can definitely make good use of it. That's the goal anyway, the numbers may still need some adjustment, but hopefully that gives you some insight into the targets for each power.
@asterdahl I’m really pleased to hear about the changes to Sentinel, as my big fear from the small amount of testing I did was they were going to struggle with aggro management. I’m keen to level mine up to 80 now and see how it goes compared to my Paly. As a person who is a “casual” Barby I’ve certainly enjoyed the class in the little time I’ve given it and I’m excited by the possibilities of Sentinel.
It should feel even better at the end of the week. The power that will replace Frontline Surge is a lot of fun, I don't think anyone is going to miss Frontline Surge once they get their hands on it.
Comments
Currently im not sure if the dagger change is a good one the extra damage to next attack(separate dmg proc like the old power from live no gwf used)
Currently IBS/Frenzy/Axe Storm feel nice to use together.
Brash Strike feels clunky to use in combat combined with everything.
Relentless Strike still have the fairly potent animation bug.
The new IBS (assuming it was re-worked from the ground up before you got your hands on it since you can now move as you cast it which is nice, a lil' weird to watch but nice.) But can now deal it's dmg without actually showing it's animation as your in combat transitioning to it from another power.
And while Sentinel's Slash looks good on paper, unfortunately it's a charged skill, which means you really need a mouse macro to use it optimally.
It is also likely that the special artifact/class features on the mainhand/offhand weapon, such as +8% damage for Weapon Master's Strike don't work, contributing to the very small damage we are seeing now. The powers have obviously changed, but even the level 80 weapons that can be bought from seals or tradebars have the "old" class features on them, buffing powers that have changed or are gone completely. Focus on At-wills was one of the unique mechanics of a GWF. It lead to very fast paced combat. It was one of the major things that draw me into Neverwinter, because combat was so much more fun (fluid, fast paced) than in other MMOs. In fact, other MMOs tend to excel in other areas (better story lines, better designed dungeons, better character customization with more meaningful choices, etc.) . Fast paced combat was an outstanding feature of NWO. If NWO is to attract new players, the Devs should concentrate on what makes this game good. If combat feels clunky, well the story line will not really draw anybody in. The dungeons are subpar. But fast paced combat, that's something you can experience from the start. Please don't take it away.
Bottom line: I think it would be best to have a unique flair for every class and to keep an eye on the original design philosophy, which allowed fast-paced and very fluid combat with different mechanics for each class. The current "at-will/encounter/daily - 1/3/1" philosophy might be good as a general guideline. But please don't overdo it, so that all classes are copies of each other, where combat essentially works the same (just different names to powers and slightly different animations). For the GWF (now Barb) I would suggest to aim towards a "2/2/1", maybe even "3/1/1" distribution between at-wills/encounters/dailies. In fact, if there are encounters such as Battle Fury , that buff damage (but dont do any damage itself), the main damage will "automatically" have to come from at-wills, in particular if two out three encounter powers merely buff other powers or act indirectly in some other way (for instance, building more determination).
I would remove the tank designation from the barbarian and make the class a dps/dps class. Blademaster should focus on damage, with burst damage that makes the path dependent on healing and tanking. For example, the DnD barbarian has an ability called Reckless Attack. I would translate this into an Awareness penalty to offset temporary increased damage. I would approach the Sentinel path as the "hard to kill" barbarian who doesn't have the ability to do burst damage like Blademaster. Sentinel would be great for solo play, pvp and perhaps as an off-tank but without any abilities related to aggro control or threat generation.
Thank you again for all your work on the barbarian.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
Barbarian feels absolutely fantastic. Not speaking to numbers, but just overall feel and fluidity, this update has been very good for it.
Being me, however, I've got thoughts.
Renaming Determination to Rage was a nice touch.
Sentinel's Slash is definitely an improvement on Reaper; if anything, I'd suggest allowing some chip damage through its guard; attacking while blocking is the Fighter's schtick, and while getting some version of that is great news for making sentinel feel like a tank, it does seem that essentially rhino-hiding incoming hits during your windup shouldn't be as perfect a defense as actively parrying. If it wouldn't be too hard to code, maybe block 80-90% of incoming damage, keeping the control immunity portion?
This may be something where I just have to get the muscle memory right, but the fact that you can still "block" by holding down Shift while Unstoppable, but gain no benefit from doing so, feels a little funny. Maybe slow down the Rage drain by a little bit while holding block? /shrug
I love Bloodletter, but is it supposed to be converting all of the damage into health, or only a portion?
There's nothing wrong and everything right with a tank path having a few dps-boosting feature options, and a dps path having a few survivability feature options, especially if they are shared, giving a stronger sense of class identity vs. spec identity (as a WoW refugee, that's been a big part of the debate over there, where things have gotten to the point that some classes have almost no shared abilities between specs, and therefore no identity beyond what armor they wear). This allows someone who enjoys the tank playstyle to solo faster when they aren't pressured, or a dps to keep their feet a little longer in content with a lot of damage flying around.
I don't mean to denigrate the thought you put into this, and I'd enjoy discussing it with you if you are interested in doing so.
Currently we're just waiting on encounter cooldowns to do any type of significant damage. This makes for extremely boring gameplay.
We use to have to make sure everything we attacked was marked. Then make sure our battle fury buff was up, and make sure our hidden daggers was up every 6 secs. We also had to build destroyer stacks. This made for a pretty fun rotation (i know most people claimed it was a brain dead rotation, but it really wasent. the people who claimed it was were probably pretty bad at GWF.) which took a little bit of skill and timing. It was fun. Why ruin this?
Im open to changes, but nothing ive seen is better then what we use to have. So why bother changing it?
- AoE dps is lacking
- At-Wills are too weak
I guess AoE dps is still worked upon, so I will not comment.
Why are at-wills too weak? If we have encounters (like slam, battle fury, etc.) that do not do damage itself, but merely buff damage, we are loosing a lot of dps from our encounters, when we slot these "buffing encounters". With the current philosophy for the distribution of overall damage dealt:
"at-wills/encounters/dailies = 1/3/1"
if we slot 2 "buffing encounters", we have effectively got the following distribution:
"at-wills/encounters/dailies = 1+/1+/1+" (where + means "buffed")
We have effectively 3 sources of damage, instead of 5, meaning overall damage is reduced from 5 to 3. In order to get the same damage as in the "1/3/1" meta, the buff must provide a multiplier on damage by a factor of 5/3, meaning we require a 66% buff. But the buffs are far weaker.
One can either adjust the strength of the buff, or one can increase the damage of the at-wills. Excessive buffs could lead to imbalance, so its better to increase the damage of the at-will attacks.
That said @barbie#2808’s big post a couple up is something that captures the struggles I’m seeing with Warlock and Paladin as well, power and feat design around everything being shared instead of starting with the lowest output for the shared mechanics and then building the unique mechanics at full strength.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Thanks for checking out the changes on preview and posting your feedback!
I just finished a total overhaul of both Barbarian paragon's feats. You'll have a chance to check them out in this coming Friday's build. In regards to at-will damage, you're right that hypothetically the at-will damage nerf would doubly affect Barbarian's damage, when compared with other classes. However, since everything is changing at once, it's not specifically the case that at-will damage is the only cause for low Barbarian damage.
That's because Barbarian's encounters and dailies are no longer any weaker than other classes, so their increased at-will damage through sheer increase volume of at-will usage, is something we are aiming to balance against other classes' unique class mechanics. As an additional note, DPS Barbarian's "Battlerage" (formerly Unstoppable) now increases damage dealt overall, so encounter and dailies can also benefit.
I hope you try out the changes this coming week and let me know what you think.
This bug caused at-wills with slower cast times to deal more damage over a period of time than faster at-wills, due to a timing issue with server tics. This has evidently been an issue with the engine since its inception, and with the new team working to bring the classes into balance from scratch, we identified the issue and resolved it. Auto attacks will now speed up slightly if tics were missed on the last swing in order to ensure they achieve the same average DPS. This causes the animations to speed up very slightly as well.
It's not noticeable when working correctly, however, there are some bugs that have cropped up as a result and we're busy working to identify and fix them ahead of launch. I apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime.
When I asked our build producer to incremental the powers change, I neglected to send a request for the animator's checkin. So I'd like to apologize personally for Bounding Smash making it to preview with no animation. The animation will be in next week's build, along with a much larger set of Barbarian changes. For those wondering what the animation will be—you leap forward, weapon overhead before slamming it down on your foe. It feels great, so I'm sad it did not make it in this week.
On the topic of hidden dagger's jump back, vis-a-vis CotDG: hidden daggers really wouldn't be a good idea for the atropal anyway, because it adds flat damage on your next attack, its best combined with an AoE like Bounding Smash or Axestorm to hit multiple targets. That being said, I think you should have no trouble using it in The Cradle as long as you started in melee range. I gave hidden dagger's the the leap back as a possible extra utility for the power, allowing you to dodge an attack while still hitting the enemy and buffing your next attack.
It feels like it has good synergy with gap closers, but the timing is a bit off for using with any gap closing encounters, so this week it will get a 50 mag increase and a 2 second cooldown increase to line up better.
Although I'd like to share specifics, I'd rather everyone get a chance to actually play with the changes, as opposed to forming opinions on the changes before having a chance to get a feel for them. I apologize for the wait.
That being said, if you are not finding that to be the case, let me know! I did also balance Sentinel's Slash a little high on damage given its utility, because I know it requires some precise timing to use optimally. I think with the fact that you can use it to both block and do damage, it can be worth taking.
The crux of your post seems to mostly be about the Barbarian core powers being balanced to be usable as DPS powers for the Sentinel, but with Blademaster's unique powers being significantly better for DPS. The problem with this approach is that, it creates a world where the Sentinel has twice as many powers at their disposal than the Blademaster. Admittedly, half of them are more tank focused, but as tanks generate threat by dealing damage, they're going to take some damaging powers as well.
Because we've already removed a decent number of choices, we don't want want to create a situation where a huge swathe of powers isn't worth using by an entire paragon path. After the changes this coming week, you should be able to make decent use of almost any power. There are a handful of base powers that may see a bit more use on one path than the other, but in most of these cases, those powers still have a use for soloing or PvP on the opposite path.
Hopefully you understand where I'm coming from, and why we are trying not to limit the core class powers to being useful to only a single path. I hope you check out the changes at the end of this week and have more thoughts to share afterward.
On the topic of Mighty Leap and Avalanche of Steel, there will be some improvements to both powers, for those that want to use them.
I agree that it feels silly to be able to block during Unstoppable, so I'll be looking at that. In regards to Bloodletter, it's supposed to heal you for 100% of the damage you deal currently, but there may be some issues with resistances, what were you seeing it heal for?
In the case of Battle Fury, which buffs your team as well, you're correct that it is definitely a DPS loss when solo. There's a threshold where it's a buff when used with your team. It will depend on the size of your team, and how much damage your other party members are doing. If you're the best geared on the team, and in a heavy DPS lead, you probably don't want to take Battle Fury. If everyone is doing respectable DPS, you might want to think about it, and if you're lagging behind, you can definitely make good use of it. That's the goal anyway, the numbers may still need some adjustment, but hopefully that gives you some insight into the targets for each power.