One design that I admit to not fond of is the barbarian as a defender. It's been assumed that the
WotC version will also go this route (I guess we'll find out for sure on Monday), so I think that choosing a different direction would have made a 3rd party "savage warrior" stand out more.
(personally I think the barbarian concept would work best as a 2H weapon striker that is adept at surviving attacks rather than avoiding them, as the ranger and the rogue are)
As it is, the savage warrior is an unusual defender. Its AC is very poor (light armor, no real reason for Dex or Int other than AC, and the class build advice assigns a low priority to Dex), but to an extent the class
wants to get hit to activate the Fury ability. And the Fury ability feels strange - better crits (good), bonus to hit (good), higher AC (...?). I'm guessing the rationale is that the class isn't supposed to be harder to hit (with weapons only) but rather harder to hurt; it works out in a way but looks odd at first sight vs some kind of "resist all" mechanic.
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