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Post by manuka on Aug 9, 2016 23:04:08 GMT
I know lots of people have suggested this, a buffrod. This would be a item you can pickup from town and it will have character level flame weapon, shock weapon, caustic weapon and cold weapon. Defending clang and div weapon could also be on the buffrod but as they are more unique ill leave them up for discussion. The reason for the buff rod is simple, let mele toons be more independant. This would in no ways make caster classes less useful, but give tanks a better life and chance to form runs without all the cores and still do damage. Onto shapestrong. Barbs first come across as op with massive crits and very tanky, the more I play mine the more useless I realise barbs are. Often a meles job is to take out the strong hard to kill monsters that cant be insta killed by casters. An example is a pit fiend. Now when that pit fiend becomes a paragon aspirant of the eight and starts to heal on fire you need to swap wepons as is the case for alot of monsters. Im not talking about swaping weapons to maximize damage but to simple be able to hit the target without healing it. Now a barb takes 3 rounds to swap a weapon. Yes by this time your party has finished the fight. So you can either take 3 rounds to swap weapons and hope the fight isnt over or attack some useless barbazu to make your damage look better. In the abyss it gets even worse with many monster healing on different damages in a single mob. My suggestion would be to make shapestrong an instant ability like pickpocket, so you can change weapons right away(would that work?) Other suggestions welcome!
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2016 23:21:29 GMT
Self-buffs for tanks has been suggested before and I agree that there should be a *weaker* self-buff option available; IMO better to make them individual items (for trade value/rarity) with ~3/day uses each. Perhaps Sets which cast 2-dice elemental buffs could be found in the harder and under-run Level 60 runs (Abyss/Elysium/Aboleths), and 3-dice variants could drop in Paragon areas. Leave the 4-dice buffs to the true casters so there is still an incentive/advantage when you get the real deal. I also think that there should be no exotic self-buff option, again we should leave those to the true casters (Paladin/Pariah/Ranger/Shadowdancer) to let them keep their niche.
As for Shapestrong, yes the clunky weapon swapping is a gigantic turn-off and is the reason why many top-tier players see Barbarian as an inferior tank. However, no one is forcing Barbarians to use a large weapon/Shapestrong - they get an arguably unfair 20% '2H bonus' despite not actually using a 2H weapon, with the cost being the clunky weapon swapping.
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Post by hackenslay on Aug 10, 2016 2:06:05 GMT
iirc some of the components that drop in fey/elemental planes can be crafted by the alchemist into potions of sufflation(?) which give elemental damage to weapons.
I made an Acid Sufflation potion for my dex RDD to use with his level 50 Acid/Pos Bastard Sword
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Post by manuka on Aug 10, 2016 3:01:57 GMT
Yeah finding use day buff items sounds good,but I was also thinking about lower levels as well and that option wouldn't really help pre immo toons.I think going for the full 4dice at level 60 or w.e lvl u get 4 dice would be better as it is very annoying asking for buffs 5 times and still not getting them, not fun for tank or caster having to buff 3 weapons for each tank
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Post by woqued on Aug 10, 2016 3:09:48 GMT
Solution: buff rod (with weaker capacity?). Spellcasters get the "autobuff" function with lesser spellslot consumption; i.e buff every weapon with 1 buff and consumes a set amount of spellslots (1 per player?), or some similar way to execute it. Currently the autobuffer is drained entirely if a tank has a... Sufficient weapon collection in his/her person, going through every weapon the party has in their inventories and draining all spellslots the caster has, sometimes even from a Sorc - not to mention Clerics and Druids.
Shapestrong is annoying and as Poli pointed out in some regards OP (but not as OP as divine tanks). Either way, if paragon levels get high, you could take PWA in another weapon that would spare you the trouble of Shapestrong use; i.e use a correct size weapon with PWA at least for some problem mobs if you need a quickswap and do the shapestrong boogaloo after fight, or just stick to either 0% like other shield users or 40% like other 2h users, not the somewhat gimmicky and clunky 20% with shield. Though to be honest, if Shapestrong was instant I'd be fine with that. More button pressing for a tank isn't too bad, and would make them plenty more enjoyable to play.
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Post by chirality on Aug 10, 2016 4:32:17 GMT
Now when that pit fiend becomes a paragon aspirant of the eight and starts to heal on fire you need to swap wepons as is the case for alot of monsters. Im not talking about swaping weapons to maximize damage but to simple be able to hit the target without healing it. Now a barb takes 3 rounds to swap a weapon. Yes by this time your party has finished the fight. So you can either take 3 rounds to swap weapons and hope the fight isnt over or attack some useless barbazu to make your damage look better. In the abyss it gets even worse with many monster healing on different damages in a single mob. I'm not saying that shapestrong doesn't pose a difficulty, but after all people have been playing barbs in high-demi groups in hells and abyss for many many years and managed to deal with it (even brag about their damage outputs); the only thing that's changed was thundering rage damage was nerfed and 2h% made other 2hers deal more damage. Before those changes, and still now, barb remains popular enough (else you wouldn't have made one) amongst many players due to still retaining higher dmg (20% might not be 40 but it's still 20 more than 0) than a 1her without shapestrong; but of course there's a reason you don't see many barbs in some circles, which of course is partly due to shapestrong (and of course partly due to 20% less 2h bonus, but until PLs, many other 2h builds that dominate now simply weren't viable. But while barb becomes less attractive as your skill and power level increases, it remains solid and attractive for those with less wealth/demis who simply cannot replicate 2h builds such as divine tanks that require better gear and iterations to create, so overall I don't see anything that needs to be changed, it's just an option for one type of players while 2hers lacking shapestrong presents an option for another type of player) You shouldn't have a fire weapon out in the first place if you know there's PFs in next spawn. As for randoms, it's true that you suffer a longer delay than a tank merely swapping weapons when a random healer presents itself, but considering how OP parties are for L60 content, this is really more of an ego issue (not doing as much damage as we want/as much as other guy) than a "problem". Other tank is delaying 1 round anyway before bringing the proper weapon to bear, and if the sup PF is brought down in the time it takes you to swap weapons thru shapestrong, it's surely indicating 2 things: 1) the party didn't need you anyway to kill it, so why bother swapping in the first place since rest of party's damage output far exceeds mob difficulty (par for course with current power creep in areas predating PLs, and in this case you shouldn't let ego be bruised by being lower log dmg, but rather count your blessings that it's an ez run with a strong party, as opposed to they wiped because you're the main damage source and you took too long to swap weapons and kill the paragon baddie) and 2) you should indeed just focus another target, but not the useless barbazu, instead something else, since there's almost always at least 2 attractive targets for high-damage str tank to hit
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Post by woqued on Aug 10, 2016 4:50:49 GMT
Now when that pit fiend becomes a paragon aspirant of the eight and starts to heal on fire you need to swap wepons as is the case for alot of monsters. Im not talking about swaping weapons to maximize damage but to simple be able to hit the target without healing it. Now a barb takes 3 rounds to swap a weapon. Yes by this time your party has finished the fight. So you can either take 3 rounds to swap weapons and hope the fight isnt over or attack some useless barbazu to make your damage look better. In the abyss it gets even worse with many monster healing on different damages in a single mob. I'm not saying that shapestrong doesn't pose a difficulty, but after all people have been playing barbs in high-demi groups in hells and abyss for many many years and managed to deal with it (even brag about their damage outputs); the only thing that's changed was thundering rage damage was nerfed and 2h% made other 2hers deal more damage. Before those changes, and still now, barb remains popular enough (else you wouldn't have made one) amongst many players due to still retaining higher dmg (20% might not be 40 but it's still 20 more than 0) than a 1her without shapestrong; but of course there's a reason you don't see many barbs in some circles, which of course is partly due to shapestrong (and of course partly due to 20% less 2h bonus, but until PLs, many other 2h builds that dominate now simply weren't viable. But while barb becomes less attractive as your skill and power level increases, it remains solid and attractive for those with less wealth/demis who simply cannot replicate 2h builds such as divine tanks that require better gear and iterations to create, so overall I don't see anything that needs to be changed, it's just an option for one type of players while 2hers lacking shapestrong presents an option for another type of player) You shouldn't have a fire weapon out in the first place if you know there's PFs in next spawn. As for randoms, it's true that you suffer a longer delay than a tank merely swapping weapons when a random healer presents itself, but considering how OP parties are for L60 content, this is really more of an ego issue (not doing as much damage as we want/as much as other guy) than a "problem". Other tank is delaying 1 round anyway before bringing the proper weapon to bear, and if the sup PF is brought down in the time it takes you to swap weapons thru shapestrong, it's surely indicating 2 things: 1) the party didn't need you anyway to kill it, so why bother swapping in the first place since rest of party's damage output far exceeds mob difficulty (par for course with current power creep in areas predating PLs, and in this case you shouldn't let ego be bruised by being lower log dmg, but rather count your blessings that it's an ez run with a strong party, as opposed to they wiped because you're the main damage source and you took too long to swap weapons and kill the paragon baddie) and 2) you should indeed just focus another target, but not the useless barbazu, instead something else, since there's almost always at least 2 attractive targets for high-damage str tank to hit While the initial argument was somewhat flawed by going with "mob is dead before im done swapping" it is still true that the playing experience is simply awful, and barbs are super cool and fun and amazing... Except they're dreadful to play the way you'd want to. If there is room to upgrade user experience without breaking balance (would it break balance if it wasn't clunky? I'm not sure, I don't think so) - might as well throw it out there, or open discussion. Looking at it again, the addition of the feat PWA has somewhat lowered this issue for barbs. They can do the 40%, 0% route like every other tank - use 40% when you need damage with a 2h and 0% when you need tankability. They just also have a 20% alternative thanks to Shapestrong. Perhaps we (me included) are too spoiled taking the 20% extra dmg for granted with a shield; and should just go back to behaving like any other tank, with the barb perks; and let shapestrong be the potential to use a cool unorthodox weapon instead of a clunkmachine.
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Post by chirality on Aug 10, 2016 5:49:20 GMT
delete 2h% and #make hg great again
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Post by Raj on Aug 10, 2016 11:14:22 GMT
Now when that pit fiend becomes a paragon aspirant of the eight and starts to heal on fire you need to swap wepons as is the case for alot of monsters. Im not talking about swaping weapons to maximize damage but to simple be able to hit the target without healing it. Now a barb takes 3 rounds to swap a weapon. Yes by this time your party has finished the fight. So you can either take 3 rounds to swap weapons and hope the fight isnt over or attack some useless barbazu to make your damage look better. In the abyss it gets even worse with many monster healing on different damages in a single mob. You shouldn't have a fire weapon out in the first place if you know there's PFs in next spawn. This. You use the time before spawning to switch, and generally speaking you use a crafted weapon to deal the best damage against the most troublesome possible enemy of the layer. The best damages are also not going to heal the paragon versions. Barbarians are newbie friendly toons. Once you're demigod and party with demigods, spawning paragons or visiting abyss, you're supposed to not be a newbie anymore so barb becomes a weaker tank option; you can still forget about shapestrong and play them as a more glass-cannon 2hander getting full 40% bonus over 20%, and no switching weapon issues as woku said. Giving up defence for better dmg options, especially against healers, is what stronger logwhores played by richboys (due to the gear needed to play some 115-120 ac 'tanks', or the very high level/demi required to pull out godly hybrid meleers) are all about, and a barb has that choice as well. Or you keep enjoying good ac. Choices! Edit: More about topic proposal, it all boils down to techical feasibility. I'm sure a smoother solution would have been implemented already if possible, but messing with size and equipped items has always been clunky on nwn. Buffrods: they'd be very welcome. Keep the full 4 dices buff available only from true casters (or limbo/ee loot) but put a 2-dices buffs as LL loot and 3-dices buffs as hell/abyss loot; that wouldn't change end-game balance but make tank players happier in off peak timezones when you can't gather a full party.
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Post by condude on Aug 11, 2016 4:21:13 GMT
Just as a note, raging barbarians have a harder time switching weapons out in combat also fits with flavour. The barbarian is in a frenzy, and is more thinking "SMASH THE DEVIL!" than "That devil is a pit fiend, which I shouldn't hit with this weapon, let's rummage through my backpack for another weapon."
As for actual balance, I agree that a clunky weapon switching in exchange for +20% damage (or increased tankiness) is still reasonable.
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Post by Lil' Mikey (Msowby2) on Aug 11, 2016 18:00:04 GMT
Barbarians have huge survivability as well (hps, natural damage resist) so swapping to another weapon for a specific mob(s) and suffering no shield ac for several rounds is doable. I played Barb to x4 before reincarning it to pariah and the only notable issue I had swapping weapons was in abyss (but that might have something to do with having acid on all my weapons ). Having access to full crit immunity virtually the entire time you're fighting makes it, like stated above, one of the best tanks a newbie can come across. I think giving the pros and cons the shapestrong is fine the way it is. -Making sense- wise I would suggest allowing large creatures to go to one size category higher when using the item (Merc Gsword+sheild would be funny). Not that anyone makes large catergory barbs- but nevertheless funny and would likely add some sort of value to HUGE weapons. P.S.S. Like the idea of buff rods in the frequency that Raj suggested
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