Post 30 Skill Additions

[Acaciam]

Barbs have been buffed for the past 10 years. Its our turn now, quit crying.

[Darge]

CLEAVE TAKES YOUR ZERK AWAY.
BARBARIANS ARE BASED UPON ZERK.

Thieves are based on hide; backstab takes your hide away to deal huge damage, but can still miss.
Paladins are based on defense; foci lower blocking/AC.
Martialists (used to, at least) have great MA blocking; chi lowers blocking.

The truth is, for nearly the last half decade, Barbarian main players have been the predominant class to complain, many times because they weren't gods-in-human-form after an appropriate nerf, while other classes get ignored.

I hesitate to say it, but Brad was told already anyway. Cleave is so good, it's broken.

Why is this? Because the debuff has an apparently infinite duration.

So there, go exploit it, but stop complaining Barbarians get the short end of any stick when they have the absolute best buff/debuff tier for melee, do huge amounts of damage without needing e/e enemies/hide/reliance on party, are so simplistic that a skill 17 Thief has bucket loads more depth, AND have the broken Cleave.

[Cobra]

Barbs have always went in cycles. We're good, we're bad. When NL came out, we were beyond horrible, just like when cob came out. With quirks we were decent. When someone decided to buy riposte, we were over powered. Now with new abilities, we're 2nd rate again.

What is it barbs are supposed to be good at? Damage? go talk to MAs or ments. Defense? go to talk to pallies. Hps? how about AH on every other class and healers pwh. I ask again, what is it barbs are supposed to be good at?

These arguments between classes has been going on forever, and I hesitate to even put words here, because I know nothing ever really changes. Just part of the same cycle that's always happened.

Cobra

[Teh_Cheat]

What's wrong with being above average at everything? There really isn't ANY downside to being a Barbarian.

[Cobra]

What's wrong with being above average at everything? There really isn't ANY downside to being a Barbarian.

Not really anything bad with it, same could be said about all the other classes, except healers and theives, they need so much work it's not funny.

I don't really mind what's said about barbs, tear them down, you're just helping my other crits on account get better.

Cobra

[Haitklon]

Look at you go Darge, bringing up prime examples of other classes.
Unfortunately, they are not even remotely relative.

Thieves are based on hide; backstab takes your hide away to deal huge damage, but can still miss.

Oh they do? That's funny, when I backstab I usually don't dehide, or did you let that little fact slip your mind? As your crit grows, you grow out of your lower level limitation. Cleave however works oppositely. Who CARES about an infinite combat debuff, I highly doubt it stacks. You could have 50 thieves all poison the same target and it would take X damage per round (where X is damage of each poison times 50); the debuff is barely even noticeable.

Paladins are based on defense; foci lower blocking/AC.

Darge, you are one of the, if not the BIGGEST paladins in the game; Are you still letting yourself be fooled by that little charade? LOOK AT THE PALADIN 31-39 SKILL BONUSES. POINT OUT THE ONES THAT ARE BASED ON DEFENSE.

Martialists (used to, at least) have great MA blocking; chi lowers blocking.

I don't even need to argue this one. You said it yourself in so many words. USED TO. The game is moving in a different direction.

To all of you morons who are saying "BARBS HAVE BEEN OP FOREVER THEY DESERVE TO SUCK..."

You don't balance classes by making some imbalanced and others suck, only justified by "Well they were strong in the last scenario!"

Cleave is different than losing hide for one round. Cleave is like losing hide for five rounds, for a debuff and so little damage improvement that it could probably be compared to a three hit round.

Lastly I feel like I need to cover the comment made by John.
Above average in everything? We have impossibly low defense, almost no gear adaptation, zero differentiation in skills, and hard to control combat. Just today I had five args stacked, saw that I ran out of potions, and hit the ESC [Buffer Clear] key 3-4 times. The Command Buffer Clear popped up, but my retarded barbarian kept on swinging which ultimately led to my demise.

Ments can blast targets with a massive array of magic, dealing anywhere from 20-40k damage in a single round.
Thieves can barrage an area with dozens of daggers, slicing opponents into shreds while simultaneously poisoning and stabbing targets from the shadows.
Healers ... heal.
Martial Artists fly into combat with foot leading, striking targets with a plethora of fist attacks.
Paladins buff up for battle and charge in, swinging at targets with multiple focii.
F/M's brandish their flaming longsword while casting spells to enhance their fighting ability and damage opponents.
Barbarians mash the arg key until their opponent is dead.

[Haitklon]

Excuse me for the double post, but my last post was too long. Here is a list of tested cleaves VS fury strikes testing with a 67/30+3 Barbarian versus a 40/30 Martial Artist with par gear.

Cleave 1: -2271
Cleave 2: -2286
Cleave 3: -4955 (Excellent)
Cleave 4: -6487 (Excellent)
Cleave 5: Blocked by armor (Target was wearing Cob Leather)
Cleave 6: Blocked by armor
Cleave 7: A fatal blow showing killing graphic. Target took 0 damage. (No, we were not standing on healer hex.)
Cleave 8: Blocked by armor
Cleave 9: -3893 (Excellent)
Cleave 10: Blocked by armor

Hit Rate: 60%
Average Damage: 1989.2

Fury 1: -2702 [Hit 4]
Fury 2: -2810 [Hit 3, Blocked 1]
Fury 3: -2739 [Hit 3, Miss 1]
Fury 4: -3239 [Hit 2 (Excellent), Blocked 1] <- One swing of the fury blow was omitted. I am guessing this is because the target was killed with swing three.
Fury 5: -966 [Hit 1, Blocked 3]
Fury 6: -4182 [Hit 3, Hit 1 (Excellent]
Fury 7: -2914 [Hit 3, Blocked 1]
Fury 8: -1768 [Hit 2, Miss 1, Blocked 1]
Fury 9: -3874 [Hit 4]
Fury 10: -2302 [Hit 1, Hit 1 (Excellent, Blocked 2]

Hit Rate: 70%
Average Damage*: 2749.6

*As Furies all occur in the same round, I computed their average damage as so.

Darge is suggesting that we simply 'trust' that this debuff is good enough to make up for a thousand average damage loss in JUST THAT SWING. Remember, this is NOT COUNTING the rounds you have to rezerk.

Cleave is a pile of crap.

[Darge]

Edit: Who cares.

[Haitklon]

Look at that, you managed to add this thread into your list of hijacked topics which you change the entire intent into a, "Look at me, I'm a massive ass."

If you're trying to point out that you have a towering ego and little to no respect for any other persons thought process, congratulations; that's all I gleaned from your post anways.

These are facts relating to cleave.

Brad is using two skill bonus slots to improve the power of cleave.
While I do not believe that it is stupid, I do believe that cleave could become a much more useable ability, as I'm sure it was INTENDED, AS THE 31 SKILL BONUS IS A SHORTER DEBUFF DURATION ON THE USER.
By simply changing Cleave to also induce a OOC round to which, a debuff, extra damage, whatever you want, is induced, players will a.) cast the ability more than once per encounter (It's such a hassle to use most don't even waste the five-six rounds to use it in any other scenario besides GDH/BDC whatever), b.) reduce the monotony of the barbarian class, and c.) perhaps help bring the barbarian up to where it belongs.

These are facts relating to the 31-39 skill bonuses in general.

Two slots are for damage reduction.
Two slots are for cleave, which is underused (what im saying is it does not increase the damage output very much in general).
The rest are for increasing the duration of berserk or penetrating the defenses of other barbarians (fighting barbarians is very frustrating).

All of the other classes, even HEALERS (who are supposed to HEAL if you didn't catch that the first time around), are gaining bonuses to their damage! Barbarians are falling behind, and if the game is going to get out of this overpowered/underpowered balance cycle, just cut the crap out of the skill list and give us something VERY useful. Sure, they are SORT of useful. (This is for you Darge, you don't have to post pointless places you could use these skills) You can come up with hundreds of situations in which they would be, but they are not VERY useful. I just killed for ten hours of my day to get this skill level, I dont want a shorter zerk penalty on a skill I don't even USE. Make it worth my time, isn't that what this game is supposed to be about?
Challenge vs Reward?

[Darge]

Edit: Who cares.

[Haitklon]

EDIT: I'm not too proud to admit I've been foolish.

[Drewstr]

Actually, I coded it. One night Brad called me from a private line and said "I want you to make barbs suck." So, that's exactly what I did. Right after I hopped on my jetplane and flew to the moon.


Borrowing this page from the Seva playbook.

[wolf]

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[Teh_Cheat]

Excuse me, I should have realized your tests are much more authentic than mine, simply because they were conceived by the great Darge.

His tests are more authentic. He actually has a Barbarian with primal skill benefits. I can understand the Barbs that aren't happy with their crits that have gained the skill, and aren't happy with it. I can't understand where you're coming from though.

Perhaps it's that you just powerlevel'd your main crit and have no clue about the game beyond the Borderlands and the Decaying Lands.

[wolf]

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[Haitklon]

Ahhh. Right.
Where exactly do you suppose I grow a 50/30 crit? BDC?
I really can't think of another zone besides borderlands and decayed lands, but atleast you contributed to the conversation.

[Teh_Cheat]

It was my understanding that when you completed the primal quest, you were granted to go to the 70th experience level and the 34th skill level. You must not have read that part, right? And if you had worked on your skill at all, maybe you could contribute to the argument as well. That's just not the case though.

I have contributed to the conversation. I feel like Barbarians are a very good class. They don't have any drawbacks. I don't see the need for a change. I don't think a damage increase would hurt at all either.

My problem is that players like you who think just because they have a primal crit and a couple of friends to powerlevel them through Mormar, makes them some uber player with amazing knowledge of the end game.

[Tirith]

That picture is so hot Drew!

[Drewstr]

Yeah, shame I like dudes. =(

[wolf]

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[Haitklon]

Well John, it's obvious you have no clue what you're talking about whatsoever, as the farthest down I have killed in Mormar was M10, which lasted about ten minutes on my attempt to upgrade my killer. Thank you for sharing your .02's, unfortunately in today's economic crisis it is not worth much.

[Teh_Cheat]

Excuse me for not knowing the ins and outs of the way you grew your crit. You act and own a crit that acts like every other player who jumped on the chance to go into Mormar and cap out with having little knowledge of most of the game, I just assumed.

Last part still holds true. You can also stop messaging me to help you on all those hunts, you're welcome again though.

I feel bad for derailing the thread, I just get sick of whiners who jump on a bandwagon because they see other people doing it. Seeing someone who hasn't even played their Barbarian past DL talking as if they know the problems of these skill levels is just ignorant. If there is a problem with the Barbarian's primal skills and they need to be changed, the input needs to come from players who have experienced it.

[Drewstr]

Riddle me this: how exactly did you get to lvl 67 hunting no further than m10 and not have gotten above skill 30? That's over 21b exp from lvl 55 to 67. That is a ton of kills on those levels for that amount of exp. Furthermore, at lvl 67, I'm not even sure you would be able to gain xp on those floors.

Do us all a favor and learn a little bit about the game before you start complaining about how underpowered your class is. Get some primal skills, test what they do, and then get back to us in a year or so.

Tell ya what, I'll even offer to MT you to the forge if that's what you need. I'll do it daily, y'know, just in case you skipped over the part of the game that taught you how to use succor scrolls as well.

Have a wonderful day!

[Migam]

Who said thieves don't lose hide on backstab? If this whole argument is a comparison about large classes, skills and abilities, let's discount the lowered-skill drain/CBS in forgs or a sk35 bsing in Nork please. Keep it apples to apples and talk about a real thief attacking a real target. Non-ks bs with a highskill thief = no hide. If you don't know that, you're still killing in N7. There is no draining to chimp off crits anymore at that skill... any large thief that actually did more than leech-up knows only that new ability is our only way for a non-ks bs to keep hide and a poor option at that (should have swapped skill places with hide-at-any-hp with it). I stopped backstabbing in GDH cause it's futile. Thief discs and tiers stack? My tastes cancel out echoes and viceversa. The same goes if another thief targets my target with a similar class thief tier (Venom, Decay, Disease). If you mean poison, disease, venom then lol, that's kindergarten. And Razorblades and Dozens? NL only, 40 to 50 rounds reuse, have to skill Thrown skill cause weap-in-hand skill means jack for it and I get blocked alot (throw in that since it's physical, all damage-reflect hits back... so much for using Dozens in GDH at all). When it's 2 round reuse and no damage reflect then bitch that we were given alot.

Pallies? Yeah, better disarm... woohoo! Double-pierce, 3rd maxstrike but weaker, more damage against evil, yeah, huge damage, right? And all armor damage attacks increase so ... Armorstrike (Brad said Pierce pierces, never mentioned armor damage). Yeah, great defense parried... til I use a foci.

Healers heal but nothing wrong with them having some offense. Why relegate them to support class to the point that no one will want to play one except growing one on a 2nd acct or the new guildee forced to make one? With crap attack stats (like thief), weaps helps but how much? So grow mace, grow MA to sweep when you finally can wear pink boots. Wow.

Here's a question... there are 3 major stick classes. Pally, MA and barb. If you say MA has best offense and Pally has best defense, then how can there be another best at either category? Create one called OfftenDef and nominate barb?

I have a Primal pally and thief and a large healer so I can comment on those classes. I cannot comment on barb yet. But stick to what you know when you post... not rumors of what is thought.

*throws .02 then a buck o' nine on it*

Nice pic Drew, I laughed outloud at work.

[Drewstr]

Glad you enjoyed it.