You know, I wonder what the actual ratio of monster attacks that target non-AC defenses is? From the experience I get playing, it seems pretty low. Like 10% low.
Primal Power Discussion
- Thread starter Mustrum_Ridcully
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You know, I wonder what the actual ratio of monster attacks that target non-AC defenses is? From the experience I get playing, it seems pretty low. Like 10% low.
I think it must be more than that. We run into at least one non-AC attacker per fight, and generally speaking, I'd say upwards of 60% of Artillery and probably 75-80% of Controller monsters have non AC targeting attacks. It may be more apparent/more of a weakness at higher tiers, though: In a 3-shot weekend paragon game I played in earlier this summer, our Rageblood was constantly getting hit on his Reflex and Will (the latter often lead to some nasty domination effects).
WalterKovacs
First Post
It's not that low. Also, the people targetting AC are also the ones dying very quickly as the Barbarian chops them to pieces because they are silly enough to want to be close to him
The guy hitting on 2 because he is targetting the Barbarians will or reflex is trying to make it hard for the barbarian to hit him ... say by targetting his will or reflex to daze, slow, immobilize, restrain, etc ...
When the Barbarian Playtest was first released, people noted that while Barbarians were supposed to wear hide armor, neither their primary nor their secondary stats helped keep their AC on par at higher levels. That's why the designers came up with Barbarian Agility, that was supposed to make up for the 6 bumps to dex or int they missed over the course of 30 levels ( +3 AC in light armor, +3 Reflex defense).
However, with this feat, you get the best of both worlds: when you bump Con, your AC increases, and you still gain the bonus from Barbarian Agility.
This means thatm assuming he takes Hide Expertise and focuses on Str and Con, a Barb's AC will be 1, 2 and 3 points higher than expected in heroic, paragon and epic tier respectively. In addition, Con increases his HP, his Healing Surge value and the number of his healing surges.
Add Second Skin to the mix, and his AC at higher levels is higher than that of your average 25th-30th level shield and board fighter.
So, while the feat is nothing to write home about in heroic, by the time you're into Epic Levels it's probably worth 6/7 points of AC.
Basically, if it wasn't for Barbarian Agility, the feat would probably be fine.
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Inyssius
First Post
Word of God: It's supposed to be "+2 to attack foes who marked you", like the table says. Errata no doubt coming very soon on that one.
Man, they could make that feat +5 to attack rolls and I don't know if I take it. How often do players get marked by monsters?
It really depends. A campaign more focused on fighting non-monster enemies, with lots of NPC foes... it might be worth it. Amongst standard monsters, I've generally seen a marking enemy typically every other session - but the chances of running into them, and being the PC who gets marked, for enough rounds to make the feat worth it...
I think it is worth having due to the fact that it will be more useful in certain campaigns. And that +2 to attacks is pretty big, so having it a rare circumstance isn't unreasonable. Not a top tier feat by any means - but I'd say it is less unacceptably underpowered than the current version of the feat is unacceptably overpowered.
