Calling all Barbarians

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Atom
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Calling all Barbarians

Post by Atom »

What penalties have other players encountered while zerking on a barb?? I have encountered 2, a loss of defense and a loss of offense.... Before you think im crazy let me explain. When I have an out of control round my barb hits less often and for less dammage per swing. This is very apparant now that many creatures are hard to hit. A test I performed, after noticing that I hit better and harder per swing with charge than using arg for the ooc round, was against a player 50 rounds using charge 50 rounds using arg for the ooc round. Using +7 Ch GS in both tests. This was purely to see dammage. Its more than apparant that i hit less often using arg.

Charge : AVG : 555.36 and 14/50 prones = 28%
Arg : AVG: 346.5 and 23/97 prones = 23.4%

Now if a barbs only ability, zerking up and going ooc, makes him hit less often and for less dammage per swing, I think something needs to be changed. A berzerk swing should have higher %% chance to hit than a normal swing, and each swing that connects should do more damage. PLEASE PLEASE respond with your thoughts if you have a better test post here.

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Frozboz
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Post by Frozboz »

Before someone pipes in with "BUT YOU GET GK2 OMG LOLZ!!111!", no class should ever be balanced around a weapon or item. Barbs in NL, and specifically decaying (which is where this problem is most evident), are really just poor punching bags right now. It makes no sense that their one ability makes them weaker. If this is intentional it really needs adjusting - and if it's a bug, then it needs to be fixed. Either way, a change should be in order.

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Volcom
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Post by Volcom »

When i hunt DL i notice that zerk is for the most part pointless other than a few str adds. When im hunting areas for the most part i end up using simple charge for the fact that with zerk and arg i cant hit on ooc...I feel something has to be fixxed, changed, completely gotten rid of and re done, whatever it may be i feel its time for something to be done...barbs are suppose to be good hitters and mostly power houses, not a lame punching bag as Frozboz puts.
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Doro
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Post by Doro »

What? Un-nerf the barb, it'll never happen.
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Drez
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Post by Drez »

Us little barbs don't get gk2
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Post by Virag »

Charge : AVG : 555.36 and 14/50 prones = 28%
Arg : AVG: 346.5 and 23/97 prones = 23.4%

So in this test when you went OOC 50 rounds you connected 97 times? How many swings did you have total? Your results are interesting, I just want to see the whole picture. As a side note, I don't think you can simply overlook the 50% more healable hps that barbs get when zerked as I find that to be perhaps the most impressive bonus.

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Post by Atom »

AVG PER ROUND: 679.22
97 hits avg around 1.9 a round
rounds are lost rezerking every tenth round to keep frothed
50% hp only effects pre 50 hps 34 a lvl goes into zerked hps post 50 was 39 pre 50

(edit)

not trying to say everything about zerk is broken, just seems wrong that the barbs only ability to hit more than 1 x a round, going ooc, has negative effects on his stats, what is even the point of having +6 attacks and +4 str
Last edited by Atom on Fri Jan 30, 2004 4:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Drewstr »

Finally, someone aggrees with what i have been complaining about in NL for months now!

And i aggree, saying we get gk2 has nothing to do with a barb.

And before someone jumps in here saying its not fair for MA's RP to not hit as accurate as their other attacks, bah! RP is designed that way, last i heard, zerk was designed to increase our to hit prob, decrease defense, give more hp, and incrase our stats. Thus making us hit hard very accuratly, and get hit for massive ammts of damage every round in NL. <G>

I have not tested this personally, but i trust atom knows what he's talking about.

So, Brad, how about a looksy?
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Atom
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Post by Atom »

Against a mace npc in Decaying land i attacked him 50 times with charge unzerked. I connected on 13 hits. Next i zerked up and attacked the npc for 50 ooc rounds, i connected on 7 hits.

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Post by Elessar »

I just hope things are balanced, change or no change.

The way I see it, the 3 sticks in nameless are being split into 3 distinct roles. Barbarians are the hp blobs. They are unkillable in lairs if there is a good healer present. Pallys are the defense crits. They are virtually immune to melee if parried in top gear. MAs seem to be sliding into the offense role. With boosted JS, NL discs, the ability to be hasted, they can outdamage the other 2 stick classes (even though RP is being phased out as we progress).

So balance has to be kept at the front of the decision making process. If the one significant weakness of the barb is that fury rounds are not as strong offensively as jumpstrike and maxstrike, and we buff barbs to make them more equal, do we take away zerked hits? or give MA's a shield-of-parry and pallys a +500 hp bracer? Or make nameless lairs not hit for 2000+?

If barbs are virtually equal offensively to the other stick classes, then what is the point of MA's and pallys at that point? Why choose a class that can be one shot over an equally powerful class that cant?

I expect some barbs will disagree, but that's how I see it when I try to look at the big picture.

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Post by Crusher »

As stupid as it sounds. It actually does decrease damage and chance of hit. In UD5, I can hit a rada around 75% while zerked. When not zerked, I hit 100%. In situations where proning is needed, zerking is good. On non-prone hunts, its almost better to not zerk. You can get 1400 damage per fury that is chanced, or you can get 1100 damage per round that is not chanced when using haste. I think this is a bug. Why should a barb zerk if they are weakened by what they do, in strength and accuracy. I can understand accuracy dropping because they are wildly swinging about, but damage should increase drastically because they are full of rage.
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Ravaillac
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Post by Ravaillac »

I agree, of course, that classes should be balanced.

However, the role of the different classes shouldn't change on us more than 10 years into our decision of which class we want to play!

IMHO, the roles roughly work out to:

Barb - Most Powerful Offensive Fighter
MA - Most Powerful Defensive Fighter
Paladin - Somewhere between Barb and MA.

Berzerk is an offensive modifier - barbs use it to inflict more damage, at the cost of defense. Therefore, barbarian ability to hit should not suffer while zerked. Instead, barb DEFENSE and self-preservation instincts should be the only things to suffer. A berserk attack should hit at least as often as a regular attack, and should do dramatically more damage. This is simply common sense.

IMHO the possibility of any other fighter out-damaging a BERSERKER is ludicrous. Right now, the special abilities allow MAs and Paladins to outdamage Barbarians. This needs to change, and I expect that as we move into advanced scenarios, it will.

It would be VERY NICE if Brad would enlighten us with some ideas of where he sees the class roles going in the advanced scenarios...

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Post by Dragonslayer »

in my opinion, the top-end MA and pally attacks SHOULD be able to outdamage zerk, but at a higher cost. Why i think that? i think that skilled and precisely placed blows can do more damage then wild flings in a general direction
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Post by Elessar »

Originally posted by Ravaillac
IMHO the possibility of any other fighter out-damaging a BERSERKER is ludicrous. Right now, the special abilities allow MAs and Paladins to outdamage Barbarians. This needs to change, and I expect that as we move into advanced scenarios, it will.
This is where we'll have to agree to disagree. Isn't one Cobrahn enough?

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Post by Crusher »

Elessar, I think he was meaning to say. Barbs shouldn't be the opposite of what they are suppose to be. When you think of a barbarian, what do you see? The barb trainer? What do you think of when you imagine a paladin? A martial artist?

A barb is suppose to be braindead, strong, and swift with weapons. Imagine Hulk.
A paladin is suppose to be a holy warrior. Imagine the Musketeers.
A MA is suppose to be very agile and have the ability to block/miss almost any attack. Imagine Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, or Jet Li.

Go beyond what a normal person would be and put it to the extremes.
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Post by Elessar »

What they are SUPPOSED to be is a much bigger can of worms. To get the classes to be that would be to redesign them virtually from the ground up, because the classes as crusher and rav have described them are almost completely opposite the classes that actually exist. If thats done, and everything stays balanced, then ok... but it seems unlikely to me.

What is actually being suggested as a change in this thread is not that. What is being suggested is for barbs to be pumped up offensively. Some are even saying they should be made the best hitting, hardest hitting, best offensive class. Barbs are already the highest hp class.

You put those things together and what do you have? You have one class that dominates party lair hunts... you have cobrahn.

But this is much much worse than cobrahn. Nameless is a land BASED on party lair hunts! What I am seeing here is basically a request for nameless lairs (and therefore, growth and progress in the game) to require barbs and healers, and almost nothing else. Put the pallys and MAs out to pasture.. the key to good gear and finishing quests will be how many furys and pwh's you can put together.

Is that the direction the game should go? IMO, no. Is that the direction that the game seems to be going in NL? Again, IMO, no.

The MA advanced abilities that I have seen so far are purely offensive. The paladin advanceds that I have seen so far are purely defensive. So my suggestion for how the roles seem to be being defined was based on what is actually being done, not what should be done.

It should not be the barbs destiny to dominate lairs by being the best hitting, hardest hitting, immortal lair monsters. If the ability to progress in terms of exp level, disciplines, and gear, is being designed around lairs, it simply cannot be this way.
Last edited by Elessar on Sat Jan 31, 2004 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Demonaic
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Post by Demonaic »

Gs is just a horrible weapon, nork/NL barb should LongSword, and cob barb should be hally. that simple. maybe you should quit whining about Nork weapons sucking in NL and utilize the features that NL has for offense.
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Frozboz
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Post by Frozboz »

So Elessar, do you think an unzerked barb should hit harder and more accurately than a zerked one?

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Post by Elessar »

I can understand why it would be that way, since a zerked barb swings more often and has the benefits of hps, stun immunity, ab etc.

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Post by Ravaillac »

The way I see it, Barbs are the Offense class, MAs defense, and paladins in between.

That being said, of course i think the berserkers should do the most damage. Does that mean they should also have the highest HP? Not necesasrily.

I think no way in heck should a MA or Paladin outdamage a berserking barbarian.

That doesn't have to mean that barbarians should be ABLE to berserk everywhere or berzerk without consequences.

Nor should it mean that barbs should own eveyr lair - no class should! Pllenty about lairs can be based on defense, a balance of offense and defense, or the strategic use of psionics.

The classes need to be balanced - that means zerking should have its time and place - and not a monopoly on lairs. By the same token, MAs and Paladins shouldn't have a monopoly on defense, and MAs shouldn't be able to be the only class that gets to survive solo everywhere.

I'd like to hear brad's ideas on the roles of the classes. If my characters aren't meant to play the roles that I perceive them to be good for, then I'll switch to something else! But I'd like to know that first!

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Post by Volcom »

Gs is just a horrible weapon, nork/NL barb should LongSword, and cob barb should be hally. that simple. maybe you should quit whining about Nork weapons sucking in NL and utilize the features that NL has for offense.

this topic has nothing to do with a weapon choice of a barb...isn't the point of this at all....but since ur talking about that IMHO i think you are nuts
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Post by Frozboz »

Demonaic, he wasn't complaining about his weapon choice - that's a whole different topic <g>. He was comparing zerk vs. non-zerk with the SAME weapon. Apples and oranges bud. You want to start another topic on weapon choices, go right ahead. That's not even remotely what this thread is about. A hally barb has the same problems.

To those that use the higher HP and other "features" of zerking as an offset to poor offense, here's something we tested today with a very high-level hally barb with the best gear available in an advanced section of NL:

this *Hally* barbarian:
- was hit 15% more often while at full zerk
- was hit 42% harder in full zerk
- hit 26% of the time non-zerked
- hit 14% zerked

So what you're saying is barbs should zerk to get hit more, get hit harder and hit less often for less damage just so they can be immune to scare/stun, have the ability to AB, gain more AGI (pointless if they get hit more), gain more STR (pointless if they hit weaker), and have more HP? What am I missing? Are we now to believe that after years of barbs relying on zerk they now should use it situationally?

[edit: inaccurate figures]
Last edited by Frozboz on Sat Jan 31, 2004 5:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Acaciam »

One thing I might add,

I have never played a big barb, big pally, only a MA, but the reason you are seeing such a "barb nerf" in NL is because of this..

In cob, everything is about gear, the combat adds on gear are insane..8/8 rings 6/6 bracers, 0/5 beetle helm, 0/5 ud robe, 0/5 mummy boots, GK gear is even more insane...

So in cob you hit incredibly often and block incredibly often, its all based on your awesome gear..

But when in NL you don't have awesome gear with awesome combat adds (not near what cob has anyway) so you are seeing a huge deficiency in your char. Your weapon and skill come into play a lot more in NL than cob. I don't think anything has been changed with your char at all, but you are in a whole different scenario now and things are far different than they used to be.

I agree with what Ele said that things are becoming more balanced and team oriented, not just barbs pounding everything while others watch. As for the barbs, you are getting a feel of what it is like to not be invincible and what its like to play another class where you can't do everything.
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Post by Jester »

hmmmm... Ok, this is coming from a barb too...

in that zerking doesn't age you (so you don't have to scrounge youth pots) but gives chance to double swing, vamp heal when ya hit, etc, that we loose so much defence and that it may not hit as often or for as much damage seems a reasonable price to pay. Frankly, since the upper end pally and ma attacks age them so fast, I tend to think that they should hit harder than a zerked fury round. Maybe that's just me, but anything that keeps me from having to go on yp hunts every other day is just dandy with me.

Sure, I would love to be the hardest hitting class, but not at the cost the pallies and ma's have to pay in youth pots...

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Post by Crusher »

I'm fine with the keeping balance part, but as a zerked barb in nameless, should I have to run around and kill stuff with little to no abilities?
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