Greetings, I just want to go over some thoughts I have so far with the Barb rewrite. It's a big change for us so it'll definitely take some time to get used to. I will admit that I am sometimes overwhelmed by everything (I'm constantly checking to see what each ability does) but that is a GOOD thing. I'm super excited about it. Kodius did an amazing job and I'm looking forward to seeing this released in Prime. I'm going to break this down bit by bit.

General observations: I admit I am greedy and want more slots but for a 150th Barb ability slots appears to be fairly balanced for us. I am able to get most abilities from every path while having 20 slots leftover for maneuvers/styles and such. I imagine for lower circled Barbarians these paths will be a lot more 'integrated' into them, since they will really have to make tough decisions on the direction they want to go.

Again, I'd like to stress how huge of a change this is for us. Barbs are so stuck into the old system that it will take some time to get used to. I think being able to preset commands to activate multiple abilities at once will be important in helping us to adapt (at least for forms + berserks, since this probably wouldn't work well for meditations). There are soooo many different combinations we could use in many situations that I'd rather be able to preset ourselves, instead of having a GM give us preset combinations if that makes any sense.

Augmentation learning is great, but this is coming from a 150th Barb with 320 in the skill. Stacking abilities will guarantee mindlocking it over a course of time. I seem to be keeping my Inner Magic skill mindlocked but it doesn't show up in my experience window.

I haven't yet been able to learn the Debilitation skill well at all. I know Kodius mentioned that learning was based off the individual roar versus the difficulty of the target. With hunting options being limited at the higher end I was not able to really test it. It appears to be terrible learning but I'll take Kodius word for it before testing. :P

I do think perhaps something could be changed with our Inner Fire. Being stuck at 25% makes it a lot harder for us to use our abilities at max potential. I just went and killed a bunch of musk hogs and didn't notice my inner fire rising much, and with combat 3.0 making it harder to kill creatures I don't think the current Inner Fire setup is best. At the very least, I think it would be fitting if the Inner Magic skill increased the base amount of inner fire we'd have without killing. So as a rough example, maybe 500 ranks in Inner Magic would make it so our base Inner Fire is at 50%? 800 Inner Magic ranks 75%? Either way, I'd like for us to be able to maintain more inner fire without being forced to go kill all the time, either by a simple change or us directly influencing it from Inner Magic ranks. I haven't been able to use the Bat form for some reason even after learning it, so maybe that would go a long way in helping us reach higher levels of inner fire.

1. Forms - I love the messaging and versatility with forms. There isn't much to say about forms because they're so awesome. They seem to last a long time which is great. Looking forward to shelling up in my tactical Turtle form to cause panic amongst many mages. I'd like to see Eagle Form also boost thrown weapons, since it doesn't seem to do so. Or a new ability that does this for us. If we didn't have any abilities that bonused thrown weapons I would be a very very sad camper. :( Other than that, forms get an A+ in my book.

2. Berserks - These are simply amazing IMO. I didn't test these as much as I'd have liked but wow. I need to snatch Traim in at some point to try Flashflood (antistun) against his MB/dazzle. Cyclone is AMAZING for roaring and I would not change one thing about it. And I mean that in a 'extremely well-designed' way, not an 'OP' way. It would sorely be needed for debilitation learning since roaring kills our voice and it would suck if we had to roar our voices away in order to learn debilitation well. Obviously I'd love to see how Volcano and Earthquake is, so I can't wait until those are working. From messaging to usefulness, I'm loving how berserks are right now. If they could last just a FEW minutes longer (I know they're supposed to be short durations) I'd say they are perfect so far. Tornado seemed to last 6-7 minutes for me so maybe I'm just being greedy with that request. :D

3. Roars - I just laughed thinking how awesome these are. Being able to single-target, AoE, and AoE engaged goes a looooong way into improvement. Mage Lash is HOT. So is Death's Shriek. Roaring entire rooms seem to be a bit broken, in the sense that it is very very difficult to successfully land them against mobs. For example (without psychic shield), I was able to roar Traim when I targeted him. But when I roared the entire room (with about 2 other people in it) I failed miserably against him. I don't know if having people in your group still bonuses roars (and roaring rooms of people weakens them), but if so I'd like to see this completely eliminated. When I roar an entire room, I want my roar to contest them individually instead of as a whole. I'd be happy with this, even though it would mean Barbs would get no bonus to roaring for having people grouped. Barbarians always seemed to be solitary fighters so I never thought the group aspect of roaring made much sense anyway.

With that said, roaring is a lot better now. Some different contests would help tremendously, and I know Kodius mentioned this before. Having Traim throw up a Pyschic Shield and completely kill every single roar I have sucks. I'd like to test his Stamina too! :D

4. Meditations - Each time I review an ability I think of how it is the best. Meditations are possibly the best thing about Barbs 3.0. The messaging and application is just epic. I like Dispel a lot. Contemplation wasn't working before but it seems to be working now. Can't wait to be able to use Serenity, Sacrifice, and Prediction. I really really hope Serenity turns out nicely. Reading some of the anti-magic abilities Clerics will have kind of makes me jealous lol. So yes, I'll be trying to learn exactly how anti-magic for Clerics will function and hopefully our abilities (as magic-hating Barbarians) can at least match them, pound for pound. All in all, I have to say meditations are probably my favorite part of the Barb rewrite (that is until we see styles/maneuvers).

I think that is all for now. We have so many possible combinations that I love. I really want preset commands. I can see a nice combination of abilities that would work well against War Mages (Toad, Bastion, etc..), so I want my War Mage button! Big thanks to Kodius and all that helped with this. Hopefully I can get a lot more testing done, and I'll try to put up more messaging bugs and so forth.

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Individuals, families, countries, continents are destroyed at the heavy hand of Vinjince.

-GM Abasha

thanks for posting. As I was a bit discouraged not to be able to get some things to work well, mainly because the body i'm using there is my 52nd barb from prime that I haven't played since the first rewrite of reqs years and years ago. <my 50th plat barb is trained alot better than my primeside, and I haven't been able to find someone to copy her skills over>. But just going through the skills bonused and what the various abilities do, I'm glad I had a chance to try them out, as I was surprised to find that I liked some of the abilities in one path better than the one that I had thought I'd pick originally.

Although I'm STILL trying to work on my barb <10 more circles to go!> so that I at least get a chance to "learn" the original dragon. Because the new one doesnt seem to have as much "ooomph". Again though, haven't tried it with my more skilled person, that will probably make a big difference. <right now she mainly fights baby & fledgling gryphs for at-level training, and mostly dances badger, although if she gets into difficulty she relies on berserk stone>.

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Oh and last one, DR at any given time has a population of weenies that will criticize at the drop of a hat, don't take things personally it happens to everyone.
Leucius

<<The original Dragon Dance is an unholy monument to cap breaking insanity. >>

Hence, why I'd like to do it at least once, before everything changes. :-)



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Oh and last one, DR at any given time has a population of weenies that will criticize at the drop of a hat, don't take things personally it happens to everyone.
Leucius