Barbarian Playtest Experiences

[Thordain]

Our epic game is soon to have a Barbarian / Iron Vanguard. He's looking at combining regen, temp hp, and resistance to become practically immune to hit point damage. I'll be sure to post how it works out when it happens (in a couple of weeks).

I'm playing in a paragon game with a warforged barbarian. It was very difficult for me to choose between iron vanguard and warforged juggernaut for PPs. I eventually went juggernaut, and got a horned helm and a bloodclaw weapon. The feats I chose were:

1. chainmail prof
2. warforged tactics
3. mordenkrad prof
4. scale prof
6. student of the sword
5. weapon focus
7. hammer rhythm

He's doing an awesome +4d6 damage on charges (+2d6 from howling strike, +1d6 from horned helm, +1d6 from charging strike).

I think Iron Vanguard may actually be stronger as a PP but the charging around is a lot of fun -- so much so that I'm just doing that instead of using encounter powers!

 

[James McMurray]

Heh, I'm going to do the same with my guy. Does he have any of the Armor Proficiency feats? I'm thinking I might retrain them in the paragon tier, but so far, it's been necessary to survive heroic.

He probably will. At epic the difference between Light and Heavy armor can be 9 AC. The player's one goal when making characters seems to be maximizing damage output and negation, so he'll almost certainly spend at least one or two feats on armor.

 

[icarusfallz]

I am playing a lvl 3 Earthsoul Genasi Barbarian with a +1 Battlecrazed Fullblade. (I also took Warrior of the wild) Most fun I've had in a LONG time. If I crit with my Avalance strike against a character that is my Quarry, I do in the neighborhood of 60 points of damage.

 

[Gort]

In one of my campaigns, a 2nd level warlock managed to hover at the edge of combat slowly stacking up temporary hp, eventually hitting 70. It was pretty insane. A careful reading of the PHB and a discussion with the good people here at ENWorld straightened me out.

Heh, that's one of the reasons I love this forum. 90% of the time when something happens ingame that I think, "Bloody hell, that's totally overpowered!" but can't find a rule to disallow it, there's someone on ENworld who has an answer for it.

Of course, the other 10% it's stuff like Rain of Blows that's just overpowered by the RAW, but it's nice to be sure about these things.

 

[Skornn2k7]

Does anyone know if the Final Playtest Barbarian is the same as the original copy ? I know sometimes they update the final copy when they put out the compiled Dragon format. I was wondering if anyone noticed if the playtest was same, or has been updated in the compiled version. I want to print out a copy, but thought I would wait to see if they made any changes.

thanks in advance for info,

Skornn

 

[Celtavian]

Do the increased hit points and At Will power that grants temporary hit points not make up for this any? It seems like simply increasing their AC would put them too far ahead of the curve in other ways.

It's hard to tell at low level. Monsters hit pretty easy and there are a huge number of Aoe attacks and auras that eat right through temp hit points. It might make up for it at low level, but the very low AC might hurt at higher level. I can't be sure yet.

I did notice the added mobility from pressing strikes allowed me to move around the battlefield and draw the guys hitting me to the defenders. So that was nice. I just ran around hacking tons of different people rather than focus on one like most strikers do. I ran the guys trying to hit me right by the defenders. It was enteraining to say the least.

 

[Celtavian]

Use Howling Strike -> no OA! (Provided you're raging of course).

I got use out of this ability about 75% of encounters.

The only battle I scored a couple of crits on killed the guys I was fighting wit no one nearby. It just happened to be a spread out battle. I'm sure it will be better in closer quarters.

That's one reason I like Swift Panther much more than Bloodhunt. Even if you always got the extra damage, though, I'd still prefer Swift Panther. I think Bloodhunt would be fine without the requirement.

I was torn too. I took Bloodhunt, but maybe I'll switch to Swift Panther.

Spears and axes are melee proficiency, not ranged! You can use them just fine.

Ahh, good know. I forgot that things aren't separated like before. Heavy thrown weapons are included in melee. Cool. I was thinking I needed simple ranged to use spears and thrown weapons. My bad.

 

[James McMurray]

Does anyone know if the Final Playtest Barbarian is the same as the original copy ? I know sometimes they update the final copy when they put out the compiled Dragon format. I was wondering if anyone noticed if the playtest was same, or has been updated in the compiled version. I want to print out a copy, but thought I would wait to see if they made any changes.

thanks in advance for info,

Skornn

I cut and pasted both of them into text files and diffed them against one another. Apart from some formatting changes, they're identical.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

In terms of the OP: Pretty much agree with the OP minus the over-complexity thing. It was pretty simplistic for me. This is coming from having switched from a Wizard, which seemed to have a lot more complexity (having extra dailies you pick from, tracking rituals, things of that nature). I agree that the at-wills are definitely very nice. Heavy armor definitely seems important, though the survivability benefits of the class are offset by the generally crappy will/ref saves; defender-level HP keeps this from being overwhelming, though. Plus, the "zomg AC from armor feats" option really isn't just a Barbarian thing, it just seems more obvious given the class and STR/CON focus. The "no 1/round tacked on damage mechanic" is a huge plus also, I wasn't really a fan of the system in the first place (it's just one more thing to have to keep track of).

General comments:
Played some more barbarian today. I had one question: with a rage effect such as the bonus damage from Bloodhunt Rage, does the bonus-damage-while-self-or-target-is-bloodied add to the power's damage itself or no? I'm assuming no, but I wasn't sure.

In either case, I crit on usage of Bloodhunt Rage and got an 11 on the high crit roll (<3 greataxes!) giving something like 51dmg. Unfortunately, there was nothing adjacent to me to hit with rampage (given that I obliterated the thing in front of me), and I missed on the swift charge I took, but it was still epic. ("You hit for FIFTY-ONE DAMAGE!?"). Crits are a beautiful thing as a barbarian.

Shift back 1 + charge something w/howling strike saw pretty much constant use in combat. Really I pretty much used Howling Strike constantly with the occasional use of Pressing Strike when I need a better position.

Compared to the ranger in my party I was averaging a bit more damage, but I was also rolling really well and am more experienced when it comes to min/maxing and powergaming in D&D terms. I also survived longer in combat but the ranger was getting focused on much more - though this had more to do with his choice of positioning than class balance. My Will and Ref saves are pretty terri-bad, but my AC and Fort are high. Still too early to make any balancing calls but it's definitely not screaming "omg! overpowered!" (or the reverse) to me.

 

[amysrevenge]

I found mine to be incredibly delicate. 14 Dex, so with Hide he's only 1 AC behind Chainmail. I was a yo-yo, flipping between unconcious and unbloodied as fast as the cleric and warlord could heal me. Did some nice damage though. Was fun, and a change of pace from the cleric and warlock I normally play.