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Official M19: Barbarian Feedback
joebot
Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 15Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
Good day all! This thread is for providing bug reports and feedback on the changes made to the Barbarian in Module 19.
Along with the changes in the M18 Class Balance Adjustments thread, we continue to make adjustments to improve the performance of our classes. It is important to note that while we continue to tune the function and numbers of powers, what you see on preview can sometimes change before launch. However, you know your class best so we wanted to get your hands on these changes as soon as possible.
As always, thank you for taking the time to check things out on preview, we look forward to your feedback!
Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use CYAN. If you are replying to another user's post, asking a question, or just engaging in general discussion, please do not color your posts, general discussion is welcome and we will read all of it, regardless of color! You can use BBCode to color your text:
Examples:
Bug: Bloodspiller does not reduce the cooldown of Bloodletter.
Feedback: Come and Get It does not do enough for me to consider adding to my encounter bar.
Along with the changes in the M18 Class Balance Adjustments thread, we continue to make adjustments to improve the performance of our classes. It is important to note that while we continue to tune the function and numbers of powers, what you see on preview can sometimes change before launch. However, you know your class best so we wanted to get your hands on these changes as soon as possible.
General
Mechanics- Rage: Increased generation from at-wills and encounter powers.
- Bloodletter: Increase magnitude from 400 to 520
Blademaster
At-wills- Brash Strike: Increase magnitude from 90 to 110
- Reduced activate times to .75/.9/.9 down from .9/1.1/1.1
- Reduced Unstoppable activate times to .35/.45/.45 down from .53/.63/.63
- Reduced activate times to .75/.9/.9 down from .9/1.1/1.1
- Frenzy: Increase magnitude from 750 to 975
- Reduced cooldown from 18 seconds to 16 seconds
- Reduced cooldown from 18 seconds to 16 seconds
- Bloodspiller: Reduces the cooldown of Bloodletter by 3 seconds.
Sentinel
At-wills- Challenger's Slash: Reduced activate times to .65/.55/.8 down from .75/.65/1.05
- Reduced Unstoppable activate times to .35/.25/.45 down from .45/.35/.55
- Reduced Unstoppable activate times to .35/.25/.45 down from .45/.35/.55
- Come and Get It: Reduced cooldown from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.
- Enduring Shout: Increased the maximum hitpoints granted from 10% to 20%.
- Extended Unstoppable: Changed to Rage and Rally.
- Rage and Rally: Unstoppable increases threat generated by your attacks. When Unstoppable ends, recover stamina based on the amount of Rage consumed, up to a maximum of 40%.
As always, thank you for taking the time to check things out on preview, we look forward to your feedback!
Formatting Your Feedback and Bugs
For posting feedback and bugs, please follow the following format to ensure your feedback and bugs are seen clearly and processed in a timely manner, thank you!Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use CYAN. If you are replying to another user's post, asking a question, or just engaging in general discussion, please do not color your posts, general discussion is welcome and we will read all of it, regardless of color! You can use BBCode to color your text:
<font color=cyan>This text will display in cyan.</font>
<font color=red>This text will display in red.</font>Examples:
Bug: Bloodspiller does not reduce the cooldown of Bloodletter.
Feedback: Come and Get It does not do enough for me to consider adding to my encounter bar.
Tagged:
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Comments
Also seems like animation is way too fast for brash strike right now, I mean we cant even see the animation of first and second hit properly. During Battlerage, it feels like a totally different atwill
And if we start using brash strike right after opening battlerage, it bugs and it still attacks slowly for few hits, which makes us lose around 25% rage. We need to cast any other power or artifact right after battlerage, and then use brash strike to prevent brash strike animation bugging.
General feedback for our feats:
I think feats should be class wide effective, not for just 1 specific power. This way we are not forced to use that power. Because if we dont use the power, we basicly dont get any benefit from that feat. For example for single target, on first feat neither Not so Fast and Mighty Leap are useful. Again, on 4th feat, both dailies are not useful for single target. So we basicly have selection of 6 feats and unfortunately only 3 of them are useful right now and all of them has a negative effect on our character(Bloodletter damaging us, need extra armorpen and outgoing damage reduction, stunning us for 3 seconds.) It ends up in 0 diversity between builds, everyone walks with the same exact build. This is similar for other classes aswell, but I think we suffer the most from feats.
Instead these ideas can be generalized for all powers. For example:
Atwills having x% chance to reduce cooldown of an encounter, or reset cooldown, can happen every x seconds.
(Instead of only Not so Fast and Relentless slash, it could work for all powers, if it sounds overpowered numbers can be adjusted.)
Encounters dealing self damage with extra damage, cannot occur if you are under x% health.
(Not just for Bloodletter, but for all of them. High risk high reward, requires some tankiness, and fits barbarian role.)
Increases encounters damage by x magniture or by x% as Rage increases.
(Not just for IBS, but for all encounters, would be a better option instead of self damage for solo play, or for people who is not fully geared yet.)
Also for the last feat selection, outgoing damage reduction should just be removed from Relentless Battlerage and Escalating Rage should just be simplified something like this: Your rage lasts twice as longer. So it would be a decision between, 2x regen or 2x duration. 1 for short fights, 1 for long fights. Currenly Escalating Rage is just unnecessarily complicated and its not worth using it.
I know these may sound too much for now and it would take time to balance classes again. These are just my ideas, but i think it would be nice to see changes like this. I would prefer playing a fun and bugfree class, instead of just overpowered with boring playstyle with only 2-3 useful powers.
best would be to use the animation for sure strike (should be removed the third fold attack) and give sure strike the animation of brash strike (need 1 more fold in the attac).
2.the animation of bonding slam i aawful, usually i didn't even move, i keep jumping forward an returning in my inial stop without doing any damage. all classes have a ranged at will this is our, but the animation and the too much short range make it really hard to use if not completely useless, increase the range to at least 45' (like reave of the fighter) and do something for the animation
i can't say anithing about the magnitude, because that influence the balance of all the dps classes, but we miss meaningful aoe encounter, (i don't know, maybe relentless slash is enough as an aoe? maybe)
with a feat we can use not so fast pretty often, but it has only 100 magnitude, axestorm deal too little damage to be a useful power, hidden dagger is more of abuff tha enlse, and mighty leap usefulness is bound to an awkwad (in my opinion) feat.
battle fury has too long cool down, i mean it says that it last 10 second and has 24 seconds of C.D. , but every 2 second it loose 20% of its buff, this make it less desiderable to use.
Brash strike animation seems way too fast for right now, I mean we cant even see the animation of first and second hit properly.
If we start using brash strike right after opening battlerage, it bugs and for the first few attacks it does the slow animation, then starts speeding up, which makes us lose around 25%. We need to cast some other power right after battlerage, and then use
brash strike to make it work properly.
General feedback about feats:
I think feats should be class wide effective, not for just 1 specific power. This way we are not forced to use that power. Because if we dont use the power, we basicly dont get any benefit from that feat. For example for single target, on first feat neither Not So Fast and Mighty Leap are useful. Again, on 4th feat, both dailies are not useful for single target. So we basicly have selection of 6 feats, and unfortunately only 3 of them are useful right now and most of them has a negative effect on our character. It ends up in 0 diversity between builds, everyone walks with the same exact build. This is similar for other classes aswell, but i think we suffer the most from feats.
I think those 1 power specific feats can be reworked and generalize for all powers. For example:
- Atwills have a X% chance to reduce or reset cooldowns of encounters. It can only occur once in X seconds.
(This way its not just for Relentless Slash and Not so Fast, it can work for all of them. If it seems overpowered, numbers can be tuned.)
- Encounters deal X more magnitude or X% more damage, but they deal self damage too.
(So it could work not just for Bloodletter, but for all encounters. High risk high reward, it requires tankiness and it fits barbarian class.)
- Encounters deal X more magnitude or X% more damage as Rage goes up.
(It could work not just for IBS, but for all encounters. It would be a better option for solo play or not fully geared players compared to self damage.)
Also for the last feat, outgoing damage reduction should just be removed from Relentless Battlerage feat, and Escalating Rage should just simplified into something like this: Rage lasts twice as longer. So it would be a selection between x2 rage regen or x2 rage duration. 1 for short fights, 1 for long fights. Because right now Escalating Rage is unnecessarily complicated and its not worth using it.
I know these may sound too much, and it would require more balancing, but these are just my thoughts. I would prefer playing a fun class instead of overpowered but boring with only 2-3 useful powers. I wish we could see some deep changes on feats, eventually for all classes.
The new set of Bis weapons will be another problem for this class, this theme is already being addressed in the post of rewards, but it is worth remembering, since the improvements for smoothing out that disparity takes too long as I mentioned at the beginning.
Give threat for at will bounding slam and increase range of it, reduce cooldown from the punishing charge or give normal taunt for COME AND GET IT ( give this skill effect decrease threat from the allies )...give some class feature or daylie to protect group ... increase rage mechanics to get easier unstoppable for tank role , increase our threat ...ty
OP:
- Divine Palisade => Decrease damage 10%
- Shield of Fate => Decrease damage 5%
GF:
- Phalanx => Decrease damage 20%
They have other party buffs but these ones are from the top of my head.
Sentinel has only 3 party buffs in total and 2 of them are in conflicting feats so 2 at max in practice:
Pick 1
Disarming takedown -> target takes 10% more damage from physical attacks
On the move -> 20% movement for 4 secs
Crushing advance-> savage advance reduces target damage dealt 5% for 12s
Could we have more party damage mitigation or some other group buff (daring shout giving HP to allies too?) so I can talk myself into the new trial with my barbarian
I have not tested aggro generation yet but the list of changes suggest that it should be better.
There is no choice, feats are half useless on the boss and they, and the other half with debuffs relative to the player.
I watched the feats of the warlock, wizard or rogue - they are great for the most part and, most importantly, they work almost always!
Feats should involve class mechanics, rather than specific skills tied to keys.
Classfeats "Marathon Runner" - I would change. At the moment, this is present in fighter, barbarian and paladin. the problem with this mechanic is that it doesn't work in combat, but we make the character for combat. For example, if you go to Tower of the Mad Mage, we have a completely non-working ability throughout the adventure. Moving more quickly from one group of enemies to another is good, but it's clearly not what's needed . Most of the time we spend in battle, and much more than in the dashes between groups of enemies. Any melee player needs the speed of movement during the battle to have time to get away from the enemy's blows and come back.
At-wills: I think that once brash strike is improved then the at-wills are gonna be in OK state. Two things which should be slightly changed and have already been mentioned above are:
1) animation of brash strike under rage - it just doesnt look good atm
2) range of bounding slam - this could be great gap closing ability, but with the cast time/range considered its almost as fast to just walk to your target. As a new range i would suggest about 35 or 40.
Encounters: Looking at them as just separated category i would say they are fine but since some of them are affected by feats we have to look at them together. Im gonna write few which dont have their own feat and because of it they are not in line with the others.
1) Hidden daggers/axestorm - The cooldown-magnitude combination is not good enough when compared to Not so fast or mighty leap with their feats. So either cd should be lowered or magnitude increased. Also axestorm has really high cast time which is quite bad on the other hand you can use animation cancelling so i dont really mind.
2)Battle fury - This could be great ability for trials because of the team buff but the pace of decrease is too high and should be lowered.
Dailies: Not much I can say here there are 2 good single target and 2 good aoe abilities. Spinning strike is the only one which I would consider as useless surprisingly even tho is has own feat.
Class Features: Here I will leave out those which are shared between tank/dps path because even though some might be bad for dps they are good for a tank. That leaves us with 4 remaining, of which 3 are good and then there is Impatience....for this one i would like to see complete change as it doesnt make any sense.
Feats: The last but not least....Feats. This category is something that could be discussed for days. When mod 16 came out many of us complained that feats should not change abilities itself but rather the way you approach your playstyle in the game. Mod 19 is coming soon and I dont believe that huge changes are possible at the moment so im just gonna go by pairs and try to offer some changes which could make them comparable.
1)Relentless speed/Mightier leap: I personally find these OK but I can completly understand why others don't. People who prefer hidden daggers/axestorm basically have useless feat and obviously they don't want that. This is not fixable without the "different playstyle" approach of feats and thats why I already suggested the improvements of these abilities above. This way people are still gonna have useless feat but at least the abilities they use are not gonna be weaker than those which do have feat.
2)Bloodspiller/Indomitable rage: Without feat the bloodletter and IBS are similarly good, but once you are supposed to choose feat the Bloodletter becomes a lot better. I think the Indomitable rage feat should be improved (maybe by like 150-200 magnitude) to make IBS viable option.
3)Overpenetration/Brutal critical: Most people propably use Overpenetration but I think that Brutal critical ain't bad it just stands against the best feat we have as barbarians. I have no idea what buff would help to make this a good choice against overpen.
4)Steel slam/unstoppable spin: The feat which improves is good. The other one is really bad and should be changed completly.
5)Relentless battlerage/Escalating rage: The last pair has similar concept like Rusted Iron leggings. I personally like this idea of making us better in one area but worse at a different one, however the risk that escalating rage brings to your playstyle seems huge especially in content like TIC, ToMM where even a 1 second cc can cause you to die and have revive sickness. I would like to hear someone who uses Escalating rage how they utilize it properly and work around the stun.
If you have read it all the way here then thanks. I would like to hear your opinions on what you agree with or disagree.
Hard taunts:
for me hard taunts should only be used after dying and get aggro back from ppl how get aggro first. So do we have hard taunts? Yes we have punishing charge and come and get it. why do we have 2 hard taunts? poosible to loose aggro beetween cooldowns of 1 of these encounters so you use the other to get it back. Is that a good solution? No because if youre loosing aggro beetween that window theres a poosibility group members gonna take some big hits and die. if you wanna choose 1 of these encounters which 1 you wanna use for that? for me its definitely punishing charge. It has a very fast cast time and gets you as close as possible to the enemy.
So what to do whit come and get it? it should be used as a aggro mulitplier. it should decrease aggro from allies or increase your own threat way more than it does. now the gap between you and the 1 who took away aggro from you after using come and get is not enough and if your not hitting right after or get stuned your loosing aggro again.
damage mitigation:
our survivability is based of the increase in hp and healing powers. thats what makes sentinel different to pala and fighters tanks. on hard boss fights its still not enough so it would be nice to ad a 5 % dmg resistance on sentinel slash and challengers slash.
using rage:
the problem of using rage is that you will get some problems whit the stamina management and youre not able to have enough stamina to absorb the big hits since you can not disable rage whitout using primal fury.
thank you
This is the barbarian spirit. I did not have the opportunity to test in the group. I hope that "threat" mechanics is working properly. And I hope you won't undo your change! "Mighty Vitality" class feature is working again. This is nice too. The magnitude increase of "bloodletter" in "sentinel" and "blade master" is very positive. This was necessary for us to provide threat.
I also see improvements in sentinel's and challenger's slash animations
BUG *When i hover my mouse over "tab-battlerage" icon it says " Right click to choose new power" at bottom. which is not possible of course.
FEEDBACK *It would be great if indomitable battle strike hit more than one enemy as before. maybe you should reduce the damage. Or if it hits more than one opponent, the damage should be reduced.
FEEDBACK *Don't you think about making some adjustments on "Battle Fury"? Because it is a fun skill but it does not offer any advantage that would require it to be used right now. For example, if some stamina is renewed as before? It may not be renewed in Sentinel, but at least in blademaster?
FEEDBACK * Skills such as "hidden blades" "roar" "axestorm" are not compatible with other skills. Because the damage or functionality contribution they provide when we calculate is lower. This can be corrected even by just playing with the numbers.
FEEDBACK *Actually, I think "blademaster" feat is totally bad. Why is that? Because "blademaster" is the path of the damage dealer. And a player calculating the feats there will see that "only one way" makes sense. Because a certain path deals higher damage than any other.
FEEDBACK * Sure strike is not as impressive as relentless slash. Obviously me and a few more people made some calculations. People are using relentless slash even for individual targets such as bosses, it locks the player in place and makes it impossible to dodge reds.. Relentless slash is clearly designed for aoe...
FEEDBACK * Impatience and Steady Rage class feautures are not also in par with other CF, because of the described reasons above, also made some tests with calculations.
BUG * Raging Bladeturn Class Features +10% deflection rating is not showing up in "Ratings" table.
FEEDBACK * Bounding Slam can become a much more useful skill since it is the only gap closer at-will.
You know how important "closing gap" is, especially in groups that contain "impatient" dps. We have to arrive at the target before anyone else. And it is better if this contact makes some contribution to aggro. Current gap closing methods other than bounding slam are not at wills but encounter powers, punishing charge, or mighty leap. Although these two can be used beautifully in conjunction with "threat building" mechanics, these will not go beyond the abilities that occupy one of the 3 encounter slots for a player who can solve threat building problem with high power stats and damage . Especially for those who will choose " Rage and Rally". However, Bounding slam's use is very problematic yet because it does not activate easily and sometimes deactivates against moving targets, and player feels like as if it is a "rubberbanding" issue. If it is made lockable to the target as easily as "punishing charge", that would be very helpful.
"threat building" is the main goal of sentinel. You installed this system with Mod16 and built it on damaging foes instead of hard taunting them. You gave us some skills to increase our threat in the beginning. I think all this is positive and fun. You have brought add-ons to the Feat and Class Feature to increase our threat, strengthen our defense, or increase our damage. However if we want to boast our threat with punishing charge or mighty leap we need to slot "Challanger's Charge"(Paragon CF ) or "Leap Into Action"(Paragon Feat). This causes us to sacrifice more than the encounter power slot to gain mobility and threat at the same time. It also makes it impossible to use other interesting skills such as steady rage, furious reaction.
Thank you for your interest, I wish you good work.
OH AND ONE MORE THING. Can barbie please for the love of god get the same companion bonuses as other classes?
At-wills:
Sentinel's slash: Hold to block, release to deal dmg based on time you spent charging it. I usually use it as
at-will to proc Frustrating slash that increase all threat generated.
Challenger's slash: Aoe At-will that has increased threat generation.
I don't like the idea of this being the only good at-will for both aoe and single target if it comes to holding aggro.
Lower cast time is nice, makes the entire power less clumsy if you not using animation cancelling.
It would be nice to give sentinel some at-will that has stamina restoration effect like other tanks have
Encounter's:
Enduring shout:It's comparable to fighter's Iron warrior or Paladin's absolution.
I think the change was really good because effective hp of sentinel and vanguard when paladin shield is on them is quite similar
Ignore weakness:It's a nice power that gives stamina back but it underperforms. It's not making you be able to take bigger hits.
It's just stamina restoration. By slotting it you have to decide what power you don't want and it's either something that helps building aggro
or power mentioned above that helps with surviving.
Maybe it would be nice to merge encounter powers mentioned above or make Ignore weakness works for party too
Unstoppable:
Makes you block dmg for 100% of your hp. Because of that you want to use it when there is big hit incoming but it can punish you by giving you no stamina regen.
It would be nice to have that info in tooltip
Tooltip says stamina regeneration is lowered but in fact if sentinels would have no stamina regeneration in unstoppable it wouldn't change much.
I would appreciate making stamina regeneration there a bit higher.
Also even though you autoblocking in unstoppable some of the crowd controls effects that wouldn't move you on normal block still move you in unstoppable.
Rage and Rally:
New feat that gives back stamina regeneration after unstoppable. I feel like it's a replacement for ignore weakness it that you don't have to slot or for stamina you don't get because of crippled regeneration during unstoppable.
It's a very good feat, I like it a lot and I think that's it good to give people option between this for single target/boss fights and aoe survi option for primal fury
Dailes:
Barbarian in my opinion has only 2 viable choices for it.
Savage advance:Simple hit enemy in the face hard. Feated has 5% dmg dealt debuff that kinda underperforms if compared to other classes options to boost party ablity to take damage.
Boost the % on the feat to make it better. I think 10% would be enough
Battle high:Gives more hp. Simple and effective. Works well with unstoppable.
It's generally good i like it
Other dailes are bad in my opinion.
Primal Instinct:Negates combat advantage and crit effect on you.
First of all tanks should be always capped on crit. Second combat advantage can be negated by right postion.
Added effect of it is bad because it's not working in unstoppable. For me this daily has no use.
Maybe give it effect of stamina regeneration even in unstoppable. Feat for it is not very helpful because it doesn't block hits you would like to block with it and healers are not used to leaving people on 1 hp
Crescendo:Even though i talk about tank this daily is both paragons. It does too little to be effective. By taking a few seconds out of your life it makes your dps drop.
Increase damage of it or give some buff to apply to you after using it so it offers some advantage over savage advance
Spinning strike:Same as above. Too low dps without any advantage to use it. Like it was pre mod 16 giving guaranteed deflects.
I think this power is bad in general. It would need to have much higher dps to balance the time you spend using it
Disarming Takedown:
A feat that increase physical dmg taken by target. I feel that it's good only if your team composition allows it to work.
It would be nice to see it increasing all dmg taken by target or to add additional effect of reducing the dmg dealt by target
Indomitable Might:
Makes your damage on Indomitable battle strike higher. In my opinion it's much better than other feat that you can choose here.
But tanks aren't made to deal huge amounts of dmg and most of the times there is no place in set to put IBS on.
It would be nice to make it also with added effect of "Increased Threat" to make it similiar to for example shield throw on fighter
For a good synergy on single target use I would like to see Sure Strike integrated in the rotations having the same buff as Relentless Slash allowing us to choose in between when we play aoe or st. Animations for Sure Strike, Brash Strike, Bloodletter, IBS, Frenzy are closer providing a better visual combo in my opinion.
I am loving the ideea of throwing axes with my barbarian however I never used this encounter due to cooldown and low magnitude. I would like to have it integrated on the sentinel path aswell to work similar as Throwing Shield encounter on Fighter class. Fast casting, threat gain.
Please write the bolded part out.
I didn't realize Unstoppable did that until I read this post and tried it for myself (test below for people curious).
Also, writing it out would mean that there is no point in us asking for DR bonuses to Unstoppable since Unstoppable blocks a *large* amount of HP.
The test:
Notice my test character's HP is 42664 and the log says "your Unstoppable blocks 42664 HP" before Halaster just kills me.
I don t really like the the fact that I have 3 defense slots on my companion tab. The dps path should be treated as the ones other dps clases have. On the other way trying Zariel I have noticed that my contribution to damage mitigation received by the party members it is quite low compared with Fighters and Paladins tanks. It would be nice if we can get some improvements on our party rezistence buffs. Also compared with the other two tank classes we build less threat using our encounters and I will always have to use a hard taunt to maintain aggro.
There is the list of at-wills/encounters/dailyes I won`t use due to their functionality/casting time/damage output:
At-wills
Bounding Slam, Sure Strike
Encounters: Mighy Leap(small radius), Punishing Charge(casting time), Hidden daggers(functionality, casting time, low damage output), Battle Fury(functionality, casting time), Axestorm(low damage output, casting time)
Dailyes: For both paths: Spinning Strike(aoe)/Crescendo(st) (lower damage output compared with others)
For sentinel: Primal Instinct(functionality)
I will follow the feats/class features sugestions or feedbacks as they come because I don`t really have a world to make on since there has been always the same few good choices you can take in order to succeed.
Thank you for your time on reading my feedbacks regarding our beloved Barbarian.
Challenger's slash - I like the functionality. It is what I am using to maintain aggro. I appreciate the fact that they lowered the casting time on it and even I would like to have a 0.5sec cast time I can`t really complain about because we have Unstoppable with makes it even faster. But if they decide to lower the casting time to 5.5 out of Unstoppable I won`t mind.
I have the same opinion on Enduring Shout. I appreciate they increased the hit points received as a buff.
Regarding Ignore Weakness party buff it is quite a nice ideea.
I can agree with the fact that while Unstoppable you may get CC (mobs in Infernal Citadel as example). I can understand to get CC from bosses but it will be nice if they do something so this can work properly on mobs. Regarding the stamina regeneration you now get 40% of your stamina back after Unstoppable ends with is more than enough in my opinion. It is a natural process to not be able to get stamina while auto-blocking. The tooltip can be misinterpreted and it should be corrected.
I agree with the rest of your feedback. I have a similar opinion on.
I'd also marginally increase the magnitude of brash to 115-120-ish as the animation could prove to be buggy like what Weapon Master's strike used to be in Tiamat where it would just kinda miss due to lag.
Or fix the issues, albeit that could be hard depending on how tough this is to handle networking wise.