Sorry if this is offensive, but...

Barbarians are still main tanks and pullers in a lot of situations from what I see (I'm sorry, not a barbarian myself), but there is also other classes that are able to tank and pull as well, depend if they are decent geared of course, and more or less know what they are doing lol. However, the instance "Flowsilver" the toad boss will 1-shot anyone that isn't a barbarian, no matter HP and defense. (There is of course ways to time immunity to do it without barb, but one single error can cause squad wipe, and therefore most still prefer barbarians in this case)
What goes for build there is no must. I know pure str barbarians, pure vit, those that are mix, and aps barbarians. It is depend on what people prefer and how they like to play.
The new rebirth system made a lot players try out new builds (for free as all stats are resetted, aka you wont have to buy any reset notes) to check out if they liked another build or not.

Buff **** >:|

howdydow wrote: »

just wondering if a) vit barbs are in demand for late-/end-game in the tanky/punching-bag role, b) claw or other dps barbs are in demand, or c) the tanking role has shifted to another class?

a) Barbs have always been in demand. The issue are the players that think since they play the "tank class" they have to be the tank. If another class is more suited for it (say a well geared sin who holds aggro better as well as gets 8k hp every second from paint heals) then a stubborn barb is worse than no barb.

However, pwi has combated aps in many ways. First, they nerfed aps damage by 5% as well as made a forced miss 20% of the time. With power creep it didn't make a huge difference since your standard vit barbs dps is still around 40k and an aps toon is 200k+ but it made the whiners feel better.

Second, the recent bosses have almost all been [?] bosses so damage it reduced 75%. They also added an anti-melee buff to bosses so only ranged attacks and skills do full damage, auto attacks will only do about 1/6 their damage. On these bosses aps toons will do about 1/24th their dps, so many sins either use their bow or skills spam. New primal skills for sins are really hard hitting and spammable/macroable and pretty much permasparkable, though.

Third, they made most the new bosses have huge physical damage special attacks, even at range. This means that sins/casters that engage either need to be very endgame (NW gear+r9t3 with 15k+ hp) or burn apoths/genie to start the bosses.

Last, caster dps is higher than ever. They only need 100 stats per damage multiplier, while everyone else needs 150. So with rebirthing and engravings many casters have 800-1000 stat points meaning their dph (8-10 multiplers) is almost as high as aps dps (4 or 5 damage multipliers). They also have better base weapon damage growth, so endgame has been very good to them. Casters love a barb that can hold aggro or even just share aggro.

As Test mentioned, there is one boss in FSP that most squads will not attempt without a barb.

Other than that, the situation is as its always been. No one needs a barb, but runs often go faster and smoother with a tanky barb and with barb buffs. Often times your squishier tanks are fine tanking, but feel much more confident tanking with barb buffs and will insist on a barb in squad just for that reason. One thing people realized years ago is barbs might not be the best tanks for bosses but they're still one of the best pullers. People can load their squads full of aps toons but people are finally realizing most of a time spent in an instance is getting to the boss while the boss takes just a few seconds. A barb that can do large pulls, group mobs well, and hold aggro to move through an instance quickly is still very valuable.

b) I will always prefer a claw barb over a vit barb. There just isn't any reason why a barb should cut their damage and chi growth down so poorly for 8-10% more hp, except possibly for pvp. There just isn't anything a vit barb can do that a claw barb can't do better, although sometimes it takes a little more skill to do it with slightly less def/hp.

That being said, a good barb is a good barb. The 'holy trinity' of RPGs is tank, dd, and healer. With a 6 person squad you have a tank, a healer, and 4 DDs and with a 10 person squad you have 8 DDs. It really doesn't both me if a vit barb isn't contributing as much DD to the squad as I'd expect an aps barb to, because I have 4-8 more DDs also. I just want someone to pull, buff, maybe engage bosses, and to rescue us if things go wrong. For that you don't really need claws.

c) The pve content of this game was designed around tt90-tt99. Some of the instances have been updated to hit harder but there still is very little challenge in the pve of this game. For that reason anyone that wants to tank can tank. Its more about who you have in squad than what class, and communication is always your best option.

Atropah - Sanctuary wrote: »

The issue are the players that think since they play the "tank class" they have to be the tank. If another class is more suited for it (say a well geared sin who holds aggro better as well as gets 8k hp every second from paint heals) then a stubborn barb is worse than no barb.

This is very true. As a high-geared mystic I *will* have agro. I just do too much damage. And I have the defenses to tank, so let me tank. Barbs that insist on being the tank keep resetting the agro, causing the boss to Ping-Pong back and forth. This confuses the clerics and messes with the melee DDs who have to keep running around. There are plenty of other things barbs can be doing to help the squad like Devour and Frighten then going all-out to try and hold agro.

SilverMayhem - Archosaur wrote: »

Obviously we are talking about a Melee boss. So Why are you ranged anyways?

Probabily because bosses will start using magic when they're being attacked by a ranged attacker lots of the times once you get to high level instances, and this is an AA. /obvious Same concept of why archers can tank a couple bosses in warsong.
And if that's not the particular case with this boss... well, mystics can tank well. They just can, and it's amazing. It's not like anyone ever sources that they 'know about mystics' well enough to say they can't, either. *amused sputter*
AAs should obviousily tank magic bosses, though, in relevance to the 'no bard in their right mind should let another class tank' comment. Come on. If not this is like BH59 failure all over again.

Atropah - Sanctuary wrote: »

b) I will always prefer a claw barb over a vit barb. There just isn't any reason why a barb should cut their damage and chi growth down so poorly for 8-10% more hp, except possibly for pvp. There just isn't anything a vit barb can do that a claw barb can't do better, although sometimes it takes a little more skill to do it with slightly less def/hp.

That being said, a good barb is a good barb. The 'holy trinity' of RPGs is tank, dd, and healer. With a 6 person squad you have a tank, a healer, and 4 DDs and with a 10 person squad you have 8 DDs. It really doesn't both me if a vit barb isn't contributing as much DD to the squad as I'd expect an aps barb to, because I have 4-8 more DDs also. I just want someone to pull, buff, maybe engage bosses, and to rescue us if things go wrong. For that you don't really need claws.

I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but there is another build besides "cata-barb" and "claw barb". A STR build is perfectly viable, useful, does damage standing or in cat form. Same buffs, same tanking ability, and when you DD with lots of STR and axes, you get the benefit of axe and hammer mastery to do pretty good damage.

Just because you *prefer* claw barb over other builds doesn't mean you have to denegrate (or completely ignore) the other standard builds.