barbarian speed buff needs revamp

[MagnusLL]

Lol Magnus. Whining about how bad a barb is and you use specs totally gimping this classes dps as much as possible. Jerohn just right, both specs are awful bad. No wonder you have struggles in pvp.

1.first 5 points in reaver is an absolut must have. if you do not know, how much those points boost barbs dps, you know nothing about that class. And why agile mind? to much points for too much CD on this feat. its useless. Especially because barb has much survibility and does not need any anti cc. then you are not speccing reverse swing. gimping dps further (both specs btw). And then you are talking that you use the always on passive dps boost? Oo okay reverse swing isnt passive but can be always on. thats 61% wepaon damage less then easily to gain when proper speccing. 61%!!! Thats about 75 dps less with pvp sword. In both builds atrocity is missing which is kinda essential, at least 2-3 points should go there, boosting your survibility a lot. then in a complete zerker specc hammer and anvil should be a must have. boosting dps from stun to in incredibly numbers.

or in short: you are saying you are using all the dps boost and survibility the class has. But actually you are lying. you dont do that. Survibility isnt only anti cc. you cant have all. if you wanna have all anti cc you need to live with less dps. Not a single class can specc all the anti cc in general and can go for 100% dps. you gimp barb classes possibilities on purpose at it seems to give your whining some arguments. USe a viable spec, learn your class and you will notice, that barb is in the top 3 of the class ranking at the moment. its very powerful not having any dps issues nor survibility issues. It can win against any single other class in this game kinda easily. i even oneshotted (REALLY oneshotted) a pvp 9 sin in pvp gear with an upheaval critting.... 2k crits on deff soldiers with decap is regular, numbers can go up to 6k on clothie and a little luck with the dps buffs.

I see reading comprehension is scarce on these forums...

I never claimed a fair bit of statements you're attributing to me:

A) I never said I'm struggling with PvP. I'm not great by any means but I can hold my own. More importantly, all my statements are from a general point of view about the barbarian's class balance situation, not what happens to me when I use it.

B) I never said those are my two preferred builds.
The second was just a theoretic example in reply to Chaman post, also linking to previous posts in this thread, claiming you can have everything on the barb and achieve amazing unmissable burst using AtG + Decap buffed with cooldowns from reaver tree while also having amazing survivability, amazing anti-CC, amazing everything. I simply showed that just to reach the Haste buff in Reaver while keeping the anti-CC from general you'd need to drop a lot of other feats. It's certainly not a build I'd ever use.
The first was the build I was using to test post-patch changes with a full berserker build. That obviously gave me restraints, like having to spec Devastation, Eyes of Madness, Decapitation and Swarm Fighter since those are the feats who got changed (duh).

C) I also never said the first build is the maximum dps you can reach with a barb. What I said is that the build gives you *nearly* the maximum UNCONDITIONAL damage buff you can get , with the *nearly* being due to the lack of Reave which I also explicitly mentioned.
That, too, was in response to the objection that an average 2k hit on a parse is actually very high because parsing whole minis at a time will inevitably bring down the average damage. If you're so worried about averages on long term parses, then obviously flat always-on damage increases are way better than short-term cooldowns since the cooldowns, being only available comparatively rarely, will end up having a lower impact on the total parse. Even assuming you're explicitly saving them to only be used on Decap hits, stuff like Eyes of Madness or Too Many to Count would only be available once every several Decap hits, while the always-on increases improve the damage of every single Decap. Only Haste is on a short enough CD to be used on a significant percentage of Decaps, unless your "play style" is to unload all your CDs to kill a lowbie with the burst then go in hide for the next 90 seconds.

That said, there's at least one thing on which I can agree:

you cant have all. if you wanna have all anti cc you need to live with less dps

That's exactly one of the problems here: people are claiming you can have everything in one package with the barb, using some sort of super-secret build using 120 feat points. The other problem is the ridiculous numbers being bandied about, but I guess we've moving away from that since we've shifted from "Decap regularly crits for 4.5k, OP, nerf!!" to "Decap + ATG can combine for an average 4k cumulative burst, OP, nerf!", so there's at least some progress here.

If you'd bothered to read my whole previous post, you'd already know I'm fully aware of the possibility of going Reverse Swing + H&A in a berserker spec. However, once again, you're mixing stuff and claiming you can have everything where this is simply not true.

To follow your build advice, starting from the first build I linked, let's see: to get the five points you need for Reave you need to drop Lethality + Agile Mind. That results in an increase of +18% weapon damage (you gain +25% from Reave but you lose +7% from Lethality). Then I'm assuming you want to drop neither Swarm Fighter (you'd lose the +20%) nor Rampage (you'd lose the +775 CR) since you' re making a big fuss of that build being "low dps".
That leaves only one possibility: to get the 10 points you need for RS + H&A you need to drop the Unstoppable / Blood Frenzy / Welcoming Death line. Then, you also need to move 2-3 points from Devastation to Atrocity, resulting in something like this, give or take a couple points:

http://goo.gl/5MYfYN

Now let's see. We've gained a +18% fixed unconditional weapon damage bonus, which will certainly improve the average Decap burst (with or without AtG). We've also gained a conditional +36% weapon damage bonus (from RS), however this comes at a cost: we lost some anti-CC (AM), we lost some survivability (Unstoppable), but most of all we also lost another source of very significant conditional damage: Blood Frenzy (from when you're low on health) and the +45% weapon damage bonus from Welcoming Death (from when others are low on health). It's not at all clear you'd get better average Decap results from RS rather than WD since you can certainly control having WD available on your Decap burst by using Decap as the finisher blow (or, more subtly, assuming for whatever reason your current main target is not the guy at <35% health, you could do a quick white hit on the guy low on health to trigger the buff, then use Decap on your main target). There's also something to be said for having your max burst available exactly when you need it - i.e. whenever you're trying to finish off someone.

Another problem of your build, in the context of the discussion I was having, is that to max out your burst you might need to use a full SB combo before you can use Decap + AtG (depending whether the buff is up or not), otherwise you lose the +36% from RS. One of the claims to which I was replying is that one of the things which make Decap + AtG so OP is that no preparation is needed (Chaman's post, which also states that the 2.5 seconds of preparation needed for necro bursts can be problematic). Obviously that's not the case anymore with your build since you DO need preparation to achieve optimal results.

All of you here need to pick and choose a single build which supposedly makes the Decap + ATG combo OP, otherwise all you're doing is to continuosly move the goal post by piling all the various advantages from every possible build into one single unbeatable package which isn't available in reality. You also need to explain why Decap + ATG is OP *NOW* but it wasn't before the patch, given that ATG hasn't changed and the increase in Decap's damage was certainly not dramatic.

Finally, you'd also need to explain how all of this relates to AM which was the original subject of the thread.

[kalston]

Only reason to spec rampage is to get unstoppable, 775 combat rating is total waste of 5 points, CR is the poorest stat there is. Weapon damage, crit rating, crit damage, hit rating etc have way more impact.

Anyway if you wanna decap-troll minis you can use this : http://goo.gl/BUx8Qp

Yeah only one anti CC but who cares really, with AA maxed it's only a 2 minute CD. If you play smart you can rack up kills. Otherwise drop some damage and grab an extra anti CC from general, not a big deal. Like http://goo.gl/HGXb5n or something. I really like swarm fighter's healing though, when you're surrounded it's a pretty big heal.

Either way your specs without atrocity and blitz are simply not viable.

[MagnusLL]

Only reason to spec rampage is to get unstoppable, 775 combat rating is total waste of 5 points, CR is the poorest stat there is. Weapon damage, crit rating, crit damage, hit rating etc have way more impact.

Anyway if you wanna decap-troll minis you can use this : http://goo.gl/BUx8Qp

Yeah only one anti CC but who cares really, with AA maxed it's only a 2 minute CD. If you play smart you can rack up kills. Otherwise drop some damage and grab an extra anti CC from general, not a big deal. Like http://goo.gl/HGXb5n or something. I really like swarm fighter's healing though, when you're surrounded it's a pretty big heal.

Either way your specs without atrocity and blitz are simply not viable.

This is yet another goal post moving.

Assuming you're still going on about Zatochi's build, even regaining the 5 points from Rampage you still lose Welcoming Death and Blood Frenzy so my objections about how this is going to affect Decap's parse stay. I've yet to see a convincing rebuttal of my data showing an average of slightly over 2k hp for Decap hits, and the fact the main objection moved from the initial "Decap one shots people!" to the current "Decap + ATG give a 4k burst which is too easy to apply" suggests me most of you realize you can't really produce an overall parse which significantly strays from that unless you explicitly rig it.

Turning to your build, it makes a mockery of "and barb has all this amazing stuff plus lots of anti-CC!!! omg op nerf!!" claims which have been ongoing in this thread. Now all of a sudden it turns out you don't really need anti-CC. That's a significant deviation because it frees an awful lot of feat points.
So, does the barb need the anti-CC or not? I believe it does, because otherwise as soon as you get stunned or rooted or snared or feared you can't hit, you can 't run, your AM becomes useless, and you can't stack Blood Rage or Devastation anymore. More importantly, if the fact that the new anti-CC from AA is all that's really needed, this exact same statement applies equally to all classes, since all of them can bring down that cooldown to 2 minutes. So how is this supposed to be an advantage for the barb class?

Also:
- barb has "amazing survivability" so why should Atrocity be mandatory? Should be pretty easy to survive even with Blood Rage stacking a little bit more slowly.
- since AM is so ridiculously overpowered, why is a build without Blitz "simply not viable"? I mean just run to the target. AM mega-overpowered, remember? Where's the problem? you should catch up to anybody within 3 seconds. Especially given the fact you can't blitz up a cliff so if you can reach by the charge, you can reach by running.

Basically, your build advice suggests the need for the barb to be able to survive for a long time in frontline combat AND the need for him to have a fast movement tactical option, while at the same time the "consensus" of the complaints ongoing in this thread suggests there's no need for either since you can:

A) burst down people in an extremely short time on a very frequent basis
B) permanently move like Speedy Gonzales on meth

I'm pretty sure you understand how it becomes impossible to have a proper conversation about "lack of class balance" when every post makes a different claim about what exactly constitutes the imbalance, and the posts often end up contradicting each other to boot.

[Chaman-bourru]

Also:
- barb has "amazing survivability" so why should Atrocity be mandatory? Should be pretty easy to survive even with Blood Rage stacking a little bit more slowly.
- since AM is so ridiculously overpowered, why is a build without Blitz "simply not viable"? I mean just run to the target. AM mega-overpowered, remember? Where's the problem? you should catch up to anybody within 3 seconds. Especially given the fact you can't blitz up a cliff so if you can reach by the charge, you can reach by running.

- The "amazing survivability" of barb is linked to the speed of stacking Blood Rage, basicly between x10 and x15 barb is in semi-god mode. When hitting x15 you can use Blood Fury to refresh stacks and when that's on cool down you just need to reset your blood rage stacks completely so you can start stacking them again. To simplify the faster you stack BR the more you survive while taking damage. Anti-CC are nice but with 3 min CD on agile mind, it's not that necessary to take.
- A charge isn't like running. It's a CC.

I've yet to see a convincing rebuttal of my data showing an average of slightly over 2k hp for Decap hits, and the fact the main objection moved from the initial "Decap one shots people!" to the current "Decap + ATG give a 4k burst which is too easy to apply" suggests me most of you realize you can't really produce an overall parse which significantly strays from that unless you explicitly rig it.

People always exagerate to make a point yet "Decap + ATG giving a 4K average burst too easy to apply" isn't incompatible with "Decap + ATG one shots people".

[kalston]

This is yet another goal post moving.

Assuming you're still going on about Zatochi's build, even regaining the 5 points from Rampage you still lose Welcoming Death and Blood Frenzy so my objections about how this is going to affect Decap's parse stay. I've yet to see a convincing rebuttal of my data showing an average of slightly over 2k hp for Decap hits, and the fact the main objection moved from the initial "Decap one shots people!" to the current "Decap + ATG give a 4k burst which is too easy to apply" suggests me most of you realize you can't really produce an overall parse which significantly strays from that unless you explicitly rig it.

Turning to your build, it makes a mockery of "and barb has all this amazing stuff plus lots of anti-CC!!! omg op nerf!!" claims which have been ongoing in this thread. Now all of a sudden it turns out you don't really need anti-CC. That's a significant deviation because it frees an awful lot of feat points.
So, does the barb need the anti-CC or not? I believe it does, because otherwise as soon as you get stunned or rooted or snared or feared you can't hit, you can 't run, your AM becomes useless, and you can't stack Blood Rage or Devastation anymore. More importantly, if the fact that the new anti-CC from AA is all that's really needed, this exact same statement applies equally to all classes, since all of them can bring down that cooldown to 2 minutes. So how is this supposed to be an advantage for the barb class?

Also:
- barb has "amazing survivability" so why should Atrocity be mandatory? Should be pretty easy to survive even with Blood Rage stacking a little bit more slowly.
- since AM is so ridiculously overpowered, why is a build without Blitz "simply not viable"? I mean just run to the target. AM mega-overpowered, remember? Where's the problem? you should catch up to anybody within 3 seconds. Especially given the fact you can't blitz up a cliff so if you can reach by the charge, you can reach by running.

Basically, your build advice suggests the need for the barb to be able to survive for a long time in frontline combat AND the need for him to have a fast movement tactical option, while at the same time the "consensus" of the complaints ongoing in this thread suggests there's no need for either since you can:

A) burst down people in an extremely short time on a very frequent basis
B) permanently move like Speedy Gonzales on meth

I'm pretty sure you understand how it becomes impossible to have a proper conversation about "lack of class balance" when every post makes a different claim about what exactly constitutes the imbalance, and the posts often end up contradicting each other to boot.

The problem is you though. It's impossible to have a conversation with you. Your ideas are set in stone and you know everything better. You read what you want to read, mix up things and twist people's words to prove your points.

Who said barb can have everything in one spec? Of course you can't but you sure can have a LOT of things. And what about those hybrid barbs doing just fine survivability wise? Sure they have to play different since they rely on blood rage alone, not blood rage + unstoppable. But so what? Isn't it great that there are different ways of speccing and playing barb? You can definitely play decap+ATG without unstoppable, just remember you're not a zerker tank then.

I did 3 premades on Fury the other day with 3/4 barbs every game, 2xhybrid and 2xzerker, one being me. In some games zerker ones shined in others hybrid ones did.

This used to be a discussion about AM, but AM kind of defines barb so while tweaking it would be fine, an outright nerf would ruin the class for many players. On the other hand there is a general consensus that ATG+decap is retarded nowadays, because it's pretty damn hard to argue that pressing 2 buttons and practically one shotting a clothie every single time isn't completely over the top.

And sure compare it to sin's detonation which requires landing a combo with 1h range and only happens after a few seconds. Plus you see the buff on yourself and on many classes can just pop your defensive buffs before the damage actually happens and reduce it to almost nothing.

[viroku]

http://i62.tinypic.com/fx57if.jpg
Pvpv 8 barb vs pvp 8 barb, both really, really good ones.
Derled hit my pvp 7 hox for 5k decap in mini and i was full health. It is rare crits like this but with bufs and on debufed target it can really be retarded. If you use 1-2 WA and eyes you can remove all armor to other targets beside clothies.
I know, i know you need to switch weapons to use WA...

[Zatochi]

With eyes in my spec a crit between 4-5k on a clothie is quite normal. Surely not rare or uncommon.

And magnus you said barb isnt op. Barb is op.it is on pare with conq and pom. Barb was fine and really balanced before those changes and those pushes it from balanced to op. Damn i even did a 20+:0 in a js and it was not a farm mini. I do not claim to be an exceptional player so if i can do that with that class it musst be strong. Considering that i go out of nearly every mini with a kd ratio above 2 and not even using atg and only decap and upheaval this seems a little to strong in my eyes.

[Jerohn]

Well pom is pretty balanced now after nerf of insta knock and no cd fear...

[-Hyen-]

With eyes in my spec a crit between 4-5k on a clothie is quite normal. Surely not rare or uncommon.

And magnus you said barb isnt op. Barb is op.it is on pare with conq and pom. Barb was fine and really balanced before those changes and those pushes it from balanced to op. Damn i even did a 20+:0 in a js and it was not a farm mini. I do not claim to be an exceptional player so if i can do that with that class it musst be strong. Considering that i go out of nearly every mini with a kd ratio above 2 and not even using atg and only decap and upheaval this seems a little to strong in my eyes.

Decap is a simple kill stealer, thats the reason why u get your kills so easily (Im pretty sure u know it). Was saying big NO to decap tweaks on tl, nobody listened. Using decap build in minis atm, playing zerkker and get kills is much easier now :/

[Lerael]

Decap is a simple kill stealer, thats the reason why u get your kills so easily (Im pretty sure u know it). Was saying big NO to decap tweaks on tl, nobody listened. Using decap build in minis atm, playing zerkker and get kills is much easier now :/

You do know that there isn't "kill steal" on age of conan unless you are a demo/necro, right? If you are getting more kills, that means you are doing more burst damage and that, in my opinion, is the best option cuz burst damage in PvP is everything.