Why Tiger?

Sulphor - Sanctuary

So, not long started my Barb and got True Form. Saw the stats it gives. The mspd is nice for travellin', and the hp is a bonus, but the damage drop is horrendous. I've decided already that I don't plan on usin' it to grind unless somethin' changes later, but for now kills are slow enough as it is w/o a 20% damage loss, and I don't go below like 80% hps, really.

I wondered what the stats would change like when the True Form was lvld. I expected the damage reduction to get lower and the hps increase to get higher, but I jus' checked and it said that the damage reduction actually gets a lot higher, and the hp increase only goes up so much. The mspd goes up a lot, but at the end of the day, how fast a tank char can move seems like a useless trait, especially in boss battles (especially after readin' repeatedly that if Barbs run, the party wipes) so mspd seems like a worthless gain, from that point of view.

I thought, though, that TrueForm added def. But it only adds hp. And only so much. 10% at lvl1, and 30% at lvl3 really isn't much, imo. 1k becomes 1,1k for me. That makes zero difference. But the damage drop is huge.
So why do people insist that it's better for bosses? Isn't a big problem w/ aggro that Barbs deal exceptionally low damage and struggle to keep up w/ the dps classes? And damage taken isn't reduced, and hp only goes up by so much...wouldn't it be better to hit 20/50% harder and guarantee aggro maintains? Or is FleshReam better at that, even w/ the huge damage drop?

I imagine this is jus' my inexperience at a new class I jus' started, I'm ju's lookin' at the numbers and what I've seen so far, and strugglin' to make sense of this. Can anyone enlighten me?

Stickygreen - Heavens Tear

damage reduction gets higher, hp gets higher, m/s gets higher.trueform adds def, and it is used for tanking.

Sulphor - Sanctuary

Yeah...I um..noticed all that. In short, I'm askin' why a relatively small hp+ is worth the relatively huge damage reduction...

Xchandra - Heavens Tear

when you 1st get true form, you do not get the other skill that ups your defence while in tiger. once you get it , you get an upgrade every 5 lvls and youll start to notice the difference. also true form scales with your soon to aquire hp buff. you will also get a buff that adds wood dmg to your wep decreasing the ammount of dmg lost to your 20% reduction.

killing as tiger will at first seem slow, it will be slower at all times compared to human form however, tiger form is utterly economical. you blow much more pots in human form at the end of the day.

as you progress youll get weapon mastery, which starts to cover up that reduction your suffering.
as you lvl it just gets better. you will , however go thru the choice of getting true form to lvl 2 which will reduce your dmg done by 35 instead of 20% of course the other 2 skills that up your dmg start to scale and cover it later as you lvl but it is up to you. you will run faster and even get more hp.

finalending

at lvl 3 its a 50% wpn reduction, runs at 7.2 mps, n 30% more hp. i'm always in tiger mode cuz of the runspeed, and the weapon reduction, it sounds alot but its not all that much.

in humanoid, my phys attack is 2095-3981, as tiger it changes to 1713-3318, so thats not so bad. human life 5800, tiger life 7592, throw in the hp buff and human goes to 7592 while tiger goes up to 9344 so with 9k life, obviously better for tanking. course like you said, ur 1k life goes to 1.1k, at low lvls theres not much to increase. the percentage bonus works better with the more it has to work with.

as for tanking, barbs dont take aggro by damage, we use skills, flesh ream, devour, roar, etc. main usage of reaming will keep bleeding on it so that'll maintain aggro so long as you keep at it. i'm a 74 barb and i've held on aggro even with a 85 wizard doing dd.

Sulphor - Sanctuary

So the skills stack up more aggro than dps, even w/ the damage reduction.
And..if thas your atk cut...well that looks to me more like a 10% drop in numbers. Is the 50% damage reduction calculatin' somethin' very different from weapon damage? o.o

'Guess that's reassurin' for later lvls, when it's advised I use it. But for now, I see no benefit in tiger form at all. The damage loss is counterproductive and the hp gain worthless; I don't pot either way. Will work human until I start boss tankin'.

Thank-you

Jeagerjaques - Lost City

Sulphor - Sanctuary wrote: »

So the skills stack up more aggro than dps, even w/ the damage reduction.
And..if thas your atk cut...well that looks to me more like a 10% drop in numbers. Is the 50% damage reduction calculatin' somethin' very different from weapon damage? o.o

'Guess that's reassurin' for later lvls, when it's advised I use it. But for now, I see no benefit in tiger form at all. The damage loss is counterproductive and the hp gain worthless; I don't pot either way. Will work human until I start boss tankin'.

Thank-you

It's 50% weapon damage reduction, not your actual attk reduction. HP gain IS definitely worth it. I have 5.4k in humanoid, 7.2k in Tiger (estimating, not on client). that 1.8k diff is a lot when it comes to bosses (it gets much higher at l8r levels). And the added defense? But when I grind, I use humanoid, faster, more exp, more drops. The movement speed is a plus also btw.

Sulphor - Sanctuary

Yeah, the movement speed is nice for travellin', I jus' didn' see any uses for a boss fight, when you're expected to more or less stay in the same area.

Good to know about the 50%- though; that's less extreme than I thought it was, in that case, and was forgettin' to take into account the def+ passive. 'Seems kinda weird that the def+ tigerform skill is seperate from the tigerform effects. Thas my bad, though.

Tawarwaith - Sanctuary

Sulphor - Sanctuary wrote: »

'Guess that's reassurin' for later lvls, when it's advised I use it. But for now, I see no benefit in tiger form at all. The damage loss is counterproductive and the hp gain worthless; I don't pot either way. Will work human until I start boss tankin'.

Just to warn you: That won't be so easy. Since lvl15 till now (lvl43), I do not have any SP to spare on any humanoide skill. And, there are several skills that are really necessary for tanking: flesh realm, alocity of the beast, trueform, shapeshift intensity. I would say those 4 must be up to date when tanking. Then you have some passive/buff skills that benefit for both humanoide and tiger (axe/hammer mastery, beastkings inspiration, ...). I think you're lucky if you'll be able to keep 1 humanoide attack up to date till about lvl50 or so. Right now, I even have to choose my tiger skills, because I can't get them all. When I reach lvl 44, I'll have another 5 skill to update b:surrender
That's the reason I hardly ever use my humanoide. 10 addon damage from stomp of the beastking really isn't worth the mana.

Sulphor - Sanctuary

By ''work human'' I jus' meant fight in human form: the extra damage means more to me than an insignificant hp+, especilly since I'll mainly solo or have a perm cleric for the quest lvls. Don't need to grab aggro too much more than jus' attackin'. Don't plan on keepin' many human skills up; I've read up and been advised against it :x

Hazardus - Heavens Tear

You'll lose aggro easily without leveling flesh ream. You wont have much HP in tigerform and not much def either without leveling beast kings inspiration, trueform and shape shifting intensity. All of these combined will make you "less desirable" in a FB. These are must to level with the limited SP you will have until lvl70+.

You cant cancel all the bosses/mobs casts until alclarity of the beast is leveled up to lvl 7 at least, and even then needs proper timing. This skill becomes invaluable at later levels when every mob is a caster. Most mobs my level hit me 120-150 physical and their magical attacks hit me 350-500. That skill is one of the main reasons I'm always tiger.

Leveling up poison fang adds upto 30% wood damage in tigerform (which does help somewhat offset the damage drop as tiger).

Also tigerform has some pretty cool, chi intensive skills like sunder and invoke you get at later levels. (invaluable at later levels when you've aggroed more than one mob).

For all above reasons I'm always in tiger. Only go human in FB's when Im not the main tank and even then dont see much difference in damage. Where I was hitting 1.2-2K as tiger, I hit 2-3K as human. Barbs aren't about dishing out damage, we about taking it.

Sulphor - Sanctuary

Thanks for that, too. Makes a difference to hear some explanation behind the empty ''Tiger is better'' rule that gets thrown everywhere.
But one thing:

Hazardus - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Where I was hitting 1.2-2K as tiger, I hit 2-3K as human. Barbs aren't about dishing out damage, we about taking it.

The only reason I considered that damage would be an issue, is that I know damage bases are what attracts aggro, so I thought if you're hittin' 2x the damage (mind, this was before it was explained that -50% doesn' mean damage literally cut in half) that you would be far better at maintainin' aggro, and especially w/ dps classes behind you, havin' your damage halved would be simply no good.

But yeah, very reassurin'. Will work my way till I can start doin' FBs and such; will be a nice change to run in Tigerform and not feel it's doin' me less good ^^;;

Tawarwaith - Sanctuary

Sulphor - Sanctuary wrote: »

The only reason I considered that damage would be an issue, is that I know damage bases are what attracts aggro,

To reassure you, my flesh realm can keep aggro with a lvl6X BM, at lvl35 or so, I could steal the aggro from a lvl6X archer. However, when in humanoide with a lvl6X BM, Krixxix wouldn't even look at me! Untill now, I haven't met a situation where fleshrealm couldn't hold/take the aggro. In fb39, with a lvl5X (her herc was tanking) when the herc couldn't keep aggro, a single flesh realm was enough to instantly get the mobs attention.

I can understand that for many players the low damage on a barb can be a the factor to choose another class, but don't worry for the aggro. Most tiger skills are meant for this. Even devour builds up more aggro.

finalending

some reasons for going tiger, mobs that cast magic will hurt you. cancel their casting w/ alacrity of the beast. if ur still worried about that the weaken attack, poison fang and devour will help out. sunder and invoke the turtle are damn handy when you're getting surrounded.

The ferenczy - Sanctuary

also no one has yet pointed out that our hp buffing is not a total percent add up ie it is not beast king 25 + true form30 = 55% buff total it is
and this is just an example
1000 hp with 25% hp buff = 1250 then + 30% = 1625 witch would be 125 more hp per 1000 hp and by lvl 59 you can have about 5k hp to start with.

The ferenczy - Sanctuary

btw i grind in human form because my skills are lower lvl and cost less mana but still do more damage than a regular attack. where as my tiger skill are all for tanking all maxed and cost alot less mp to use per attack. and my tiger skills use chi my human ones don't which lets me use my chi skills alot more and alot quicker.
currently i use slam lvl 1 billow lvl 2 and garrote lvl 3 to attack for grinding each one only costs about 50 mp to use.
but the second i jump on a mob that looks to tough or expencive to take down with regular attack i get right into tiger and rip him up.
btw i love the bleed skills garrote and fleshream but that is my opinion i could be wrong

The ferenczy - Sanctuary

i never use poison fang i know every one swears by it but it appears to only work when in tiger and only really ads damage that i can see to mobs that are weak to wood. so no go for me. i saved the sp for important stuff like lvling roar.

Hazardus - Heavens Tear

The ferenczy - Sanctuary wrote: »

also no one has yet pointed out that our hp buffing is not a total percent add up ie it is not beast king 25 + true form30 = 55% buff total it is
and this is just an example
1000 hp with 25% hp buff = 1250 then + 30% = 1625 witch would be 125 more hp per 1000 hp and by lvl 59 you can have about 5k hp to start with.

One possible explanation is because it doesn't work that way. Maxed trueform and beast king's inspiration both add 30%, but not 30% of your current HP. Its 30% of ur base HP. So if you have 5K HP. 30% is 1500.
So HP buff = 5K+1500 = 6.5K
Tigerform = 6.5K +1500 =8K HP.

The ferenczy - Sanctuary wrote: »

i never use poison fang i know every one swears by it but it appears to only work when in tiger and only really ads damage that i can see to mobs that are weak to wood. so no go for me. i saved the sp for important stuff like lvling roar.

Poison fang adds 30% wood damage to all mobs.
The indvidual mobs DR ofcourse will reduce the actual damage done, and so the real advantage only appears with earth mobs (weak against wood).
So against an earth mob if it adds 500dmg, it will only add 200 against some other element mob perhaps. None the less it is added damage and is still useful. With mine maxed it makes enough of a difference for me to be able to know when the buffs worn of without even looking at the icons.

The ferenczy - Sanctuary

ok hazardous i will take your word for it on how the mechanics of beast king work. and i will also take your word for how poison fang works. i have made mistakes before i will make them again my statements were based off of what i saw with my naked eye i am not a big big number cruncher.

btw is there a spot that breaks down the exact way in that these skill react and interact? i ask because even the gm's can anser you question about poison fang. and thier discriptios of skills ingame leaves me feeling like a lawyer going over a legal document were you have to look for key words and if you miss them you are toast

Hazardus - Heavens Tear

The ferenczy - Sanctuary wrote: »

ok hazardous i will take your word for it on how the mechanics of beast king work. and i will also take your word for how poison fang works. i have made mistakes before i will make them again my statements were based off of what i saw with my naked eye i am not a big big number cruncher.

btw is there a spot that breaks down the exact way in that these skill react and interact? i ask because even the gm's can anser you question about poison fang. and thier discriptios of skills ingame leaves me feeling like a lawyer going over a legal document were you have to look for key words and if you miss them you are toast

Unfortunately no, there isn't. I just figured that out by number crunching. Here's my test data from back then:

Base Human:4369
Base Tiger:5680
Buffed Human:5680
Buffed Tiger:6990

So we see that the 30% gain (tigerform or buff) is 5680-4369 = 1311.
When buffed tiger 5680+1311 = 6991 which is pretty much whats observed.

Poison fang was again field tested. Attacked the same mobs (earthen) in human form, once without poison fang and once with. No appreciable difference in damage noticed (the damage range makes it hard to be exact).

I'm still trying to figure out how physical defence and shape shifting intensity works. When tested with practical data, the phy def from equipments dont match and the supposed 60% physical increase is actually only 40%.

The ferenczy - Sanctuary

yeah i know what you mean btw i hope no offence was resived when i said i would take your word for it. i simply meant that i bow to your knowledge
and the way the skill are worded leave alot to be desired for example does base hp cover the hp shards and does the hp buffing effect stack as in does tiger form buff and extra 30 percent on top of the beast king or does it infact work off of the same set of hp stats that beast king buffed from?
and being that the axes do from 200-600 damage i have never even begun to think about trying to see how well damage buffs work.