That was some very constructive feedback. Feel free to IM me anytime. Squantodr.

"Brace yourselves, Squanto is going to bleh blah fart fart bleh.." -the player of the character formerly known as Pureblade

And I agree with the gyst - indeed, it's a drum I think a lot of us have been beating for some time! My only point was that some of what you're comparing isn't an equivalent, and thus isn't entirely a fair comparison.

For example, while you very rightfully remind everyone that Barbarians are super duper limited in what abilities they can run simultaneously before picking up Powermonger, you also wrote -

>Bard at Circle 20 (6 spells, 1 cyclic, 2 inherent abilities): Emergency defense (Scream defiance), Instant Single Target knockdown, +Wisdom, +Mojo, +Bardic Lore, +Attune, +Attune regen, +Accuracy (all), +Agility, Barrier vs. Will attacks, AOE stun and knockdown, Cyclical debuff to agil, str, reflex, and sleeps primary target. Additional Single Target damage from Targeted Magic.

Which somewhat ignores the fact that +Attune/AttuneRegen is BotF, a cyclic, that can't be used alongside DALU, which is the cyclic debuff to agil/str/refl + sleep.

So, seriously, I wholly agree with the gyst of your post, and I'm glad more people are posting data points for this issue in more circle ranges. I'm just pointing out that you made some nonequivalent comparisons.

Only one infusion (Words of Wind) is available at level 20. It's the one I included.

You're right about Blessing of the Fae though, my bad! Can't have that running with DALU.

>Bard at Circle 20 (6 spells, 1 cyclic, 2 inherent abilities): Emergency defense (Scream defiance), Instant Single Target knockdown, +Wisdom, +Mojo, +Bardic Lore, +Attune, +Attune regen, +Accuracy (all), +Agility, Barrier vs. Will attacks, AOE stun and knockdown, Cyclical debuff to agil, str, reflex, and sleeps primary target. Additional Single Target damage from Targeted Magic.

I'm kind of late to the party, but (unless something has changed) defiance isn't available until the 30s, havoc (knowdown) isn't available until the 40s. Concussive is pointless other than a training tool at low levels. And, since you're out of combat working weapons so often, the +bardic lore/mojo is also worthless. You're also forgetting spell choices that are required to learn skills at low levels, and you're ignoring feats that every mage should get. Cyclic feats are like power monger for barbarians. Also, you have the bard getting a glut of abilities at 20. It looks like half their slots are saved for the 20th circle due to level reqs. That's doable, but it's going to hurt their ability to cast the spells.

So your real list combat should be as follows, at 20:
* Save vs Fear (more or less pointless at that level)
* +to hit on all weapons
* Basic TM spell
* +Agility
* Option of -TM Magic accuracy OR health/spirit/fatigue regen OR +Attunement/mana regen OR AOE,-Reflex/Agil/STR
* I'd replace DMRS with misdirection, personally. Stealth is more of a problem for low levels, and once you get behind, it's always behind.

That's not crazy. I absolutely agree that barbarians should be treated like the rest of the magic terts in the number of abilities they can keep up, but bards aren't magical gods at low levels. They grow into that later.

> Bards get scream havoc and concussive at level 1 now. I think defiance still requires level 30.

Good to know. With how weak concussive is, havoc is a much better choice for bards.

> since you're out of combat working weapons so often,

That should have said performance.

>So your real list combat should be as follows, at 20:
>* Save vs Fear (more or less pointless at that level)
>* +to hit on all weapons
>* Basic TM spell
>* +Agility
>* Option of -TM Magic accuracy OR health/spirit/fatigue regen OR +Attunement/mana regen OR AOE,-Reflex/Agil/STR
>* I'd replace DMRS with misdirection, personally. Stealth is more of a problem for low levels, and once you get behind, it's always behind.

If only the things you had listed above were in effect, they'd still be more than my 20 Barb has in his toolkit, and it feels like the potency of all the above abilities is significantly greater. However, you're missing a few things in the Bard's Arsenal:

* +Wisdom, +Mojo regen, +Bardic lore buff.
* Instant knockdown with Scream havoc independent of spell casting
* An extra spell from a Scroll (I chose Ease Burden, but might switch to Manifest Force for the extra protection)
* Some non-combat related bonuses, like Faenella's Grace which will eventually double the effectiveness of teaching. Eillie's Cry which makes training instruments much easier. +Lockpicking buff from Drums of the Snake. Some fun little roleplay bonuses like PLAYACT, RECALL, and SLIP... Barb's just don't have any of that. We even have to spend a spell slot just to accurately see what our inner fire levels are and what active buffs we have.

* And then, as if all of that wasn't enough, most of those bard buffs can effect a group of people, whereas my Barbarian abilities are solo only!

Again, I can't help but feel penalized for playing a Barbarian. I chose the guild (twice) because I thought it was king of combat, but I don't feel that at all. I feel like a guy with a sword, swinging away tediously, slowly widdling away my enemies, whereas my Bard or Warrior Mage feel like miniature gods in comparison.

Maybe things get a lot better at higher levels? Sadly, I don't think I'll make it to higher levels with the play experience I'm having now. Also, looking forward, I don't really see how Barbarian's catch up.

Using the Bard example, as time goes on I only see better abilities on the horizon whereas the Barbarian's supreme abilities to look forward to are fairly generic passive buffs, the pinnacle of which unlocks the ability to use more than 1-2 forms and a berserk at once which just means they're on equal footing with what Warmies and Bards get naturally.

Furthermore, if you consider the shape of the spell trees, as a Bard I'll be able to get all of their high level spells that interest me regardless of which book the spell is in whenever I pass the necessary level gate. By level 94, I can have every Bard ability under Magic 3.1. With Magic 3.2, I'll be able to get all of the spells by Circle 76 and the rest of my spell slots can be dedicated to feats, the new Heavy TM spell, or permanently learning spell scrolls.

Whereas Barb's trees are built to be so deep that it'll take 100+ circles to get the stronger abilities from more than one tree, you'll be forced to choose abilities you may not want from a tree just to climb to the ones you want, and even then, 1/3rd of their abilities will never be available even at Circle 150.

You can also compare the cost of Barbarian abilities. 4 slots for Strike the Shadows, which pulls something out of hiding. Sanctuary on the Bard's list goes several steps further, and prevents hiding, scry, or invisibility for 2 slots. Wail of Torment is 3 slots and immobilizes the target, Anther's Call does this for 1 slot with some differences in the mechanics like terrain limitations. I just don't see any parity at all.

But anyway, I don't have any experience playing a Barbarian at high level. Maybe dual shot and whirlwind are super awesome for instance, and more than make up for any perceived disparity I'm seeing on paper. All I can comment on is my current play experience, and I can't help but feel disappointed in the Barbarian Guild. It makes me kinda sad because the concept of the Guild is so cool, but just doesn't deliver on that fantasy. Of course, it feels even worse when I play another Guild and perceive the grass to in fact be significantly greener over there...

Anyhow, I hope this post is taken as constructive rather than whining. The Barbarian Guild is very cool in concept, and I think it could be very cool in practice with a little TLC.

Ha. Tell you what, if you want to feel better about Barbarians, try a thief.

Level 70 and I can run 3 khri at once.

If you're only going to read one thing in this post, then just read this section.

I think barbarians have some room for improvement, and I'm not disagreeing with your primary point. Barbarians should have more abilities up at once. Here's what I'd propose as constructive criticism from someone who doesn't play a barbarian (but probably would if this went into effect):

* Make dances use concentration rather than inner fire. This would give barbarians a secondary resource stream and allow them to manage multiple dances independently of berserks and roars. This would also mean more abilities on at once, but a different way of managing those abilities. More interesting combat.

* Create barbarian dance, rage, and khri scrolls that let them learn abilities without knowing the pre-reqs. The cost is if they die they lose them. Create a mastery feat to allow two scrolls at once. Add a few thief abilities that act like dances, and allow thieves to learn some of the barbarian dances (same magical domain:physical). Add a few generic scrolls to the system which are a physical version of Ease, GAF, MAF, or LW.

* Make powermonger baseline - 0 slot ability that you can learn at some number of ranks, or just move masteries out of the trees and instead require minimum magical ranks + a single slot to learn them.

* Create a natural drift to a middle ground for inner fire, based off attunement ranks, that acts like paladin soul states. It makes it easier to run a lot of abilities, but it makes it harder to maintain max values.

---

Now for the rest of my comments (skip if you want - we're not at odds here about anything other than our view of looking at the cherry-picked negatives without also considering the positives).

> they'd still be more than my 20 Barb has in his toolkit,

I'm not disagreeing with this. See the bottom of my post. I think barbarians should be brought in line with other magic terts in what they can do with their magic system. That may mean that some of their slot costs change, potency changes, or breadth changes (barbarians get spells to do pretty much anything). I'm not a GM. I don't know; however, it does feel like they and other NMUs (really, only traders qualify now) have been shafted on how many of their abilities they can use at once. Unlike other NMUs (or even magical guilds) they do have a strong list of options that they can buff.

I don't think comparing to a bard is right though. I think you should compare to a paladin, ranger,

> However, you're missing a few things in the Bard's Arsenal

> +Wisdom, +Mojo regen, +Bardic lore buff

I said mojo was effectively useless since you're already keeping it up via instruments. Buffing it does nothing for combat. I also recommended not getting words of the wind, since there are better options (see the stealth buff from misdirection). It doesn't negate your point, but it does change the volume of "buffs".

> Some non-combat related bonuses...

I wouldn't mind seeing this option for more scholarly barbarians. I'm not sure it's the guild focus, but it would be interesting.

> ...Some fun little roleplay

I always love fun roleplay options added to guilds. Barbarians do have their "destroy magic items" niche and you could say the unique brawling moves may count as Barbarian RP, but I do love cantrip like abilities.

> whereas my Bard or Warrior Mage feel like miniature gods in comparison

Honestly, Bards and Warrior mages are Gods of PVE killing at relatively low levels. Most classes are good at this, but bards and warrior mages have a definitive edge. Barbarians, on the other hand, will climb the critter latter MUCH faster than either of those classes due to skillset placement. So a barbarian will kill high reward mobs while a bard/warrior mage will kill many low-reward mobs.

> equal footing with what Warmies and Bards get naturally.

If you want barbarians to essentially be magic users then here's what I think would need to change:

1. Masteries (Feats) should be taken out of the trees. Make them 1 slot costs (like MUs) available after you reach certain benchmarks (like 100 in scholarship + 100 in primary magic - just like MUs).

2. Barbarian abilities should have a time cost for startups (prep) as MUs. That's 15-20 seconds where you begin a berserk before it takes effect.

3. Trying to feed too much inner fire into an ability could result in nerve damage.

4. Dance and rage (berserk) scrolls added to the system. You can use these to temporarily or permanently learn an ability you otherwise don't know. Barbarians gets one slot, but can spend a spell slot to learn one more.

5. Expertise move that lets barbarians use offhand abilities (maybe thrown only, with timer) with a one-second RT. The off-hand ability will contest and teach targeted magic, and it will drain a little bit of inner fire. It will have a "charge" time.

6. [Potentially] Barbarians would have an ebb and flow on inner fire rates. Maybe tie it to the life magic in an area (boosts them) or something like lunar magic. Some days/rooms would be really bad mana. Others, not so much. Some, would have great inner fire. If this happened, and the room/flow flooded the barbarian with "mana", then they would lose the kill= mana gain without spending slots for it.

7. Buffs can no longer stack (not sure if they do), but magic warding would take the strongest and ignore the rest.

8. Some out of combat buffs (like the athletics buff they have today) as seems right.

9. Barbarian "sorcery" that let's them try to use their inner fire to charge spells. There's a hit to inner fire regen, and they could blow off bits of their arms, but why not?

Again, I haven't played a barbarian in 3.0, so take this with a grain of salt. I also think barbarians and thieves do have an advantage over most magic users outside of cherry picked examples, and I think they have a few disadvantages. It's a kit. I'd assume that it could be changed, but I think this would cost them some unique identity. In the end, I'm not even sure it would be a net gain. Just something to keep in mind as you push for parity.

Everything @DERIUM wrote scares the crap out of me. Not one single thing is something I'd want for the Barbarian guild. I don't want to be a magic guild and I don't want to share either my abilities with others or others' abilities with us.

Hey, it was an interesting and well thought out post, I just don't want any of it.

Rhadyn da Dwarb - Blood for fire!

Barbarian Guild Suggestions
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h4L5hAxR1-VLDegDNZBIhGdo5bMgnCtm84Icm2E0utU/edit#gid=0

> Everything @DERIUM wrote scares the crap out of me. Not one single thing is something I'd want for the Barbarian guild. I don't want to be a magic guild and I don't want to share either my abilities with others or others' abilities with us.

That's fair. I tried to caveat this by saying that I'm an outside observer. While that gives me a vantage point that sometimes is lost by those closest to the problem (such as seeing the brown spots in the grass over the fence), it also means that I'm not an expert in the systems that barbs use today. I don't know the nuance.

With that in mind, is there a reason you wouldn't want half of your abilities powered by concentration, or to share "scrolls" with thieves? (Seriously asking, not trolling).

> At level 22, I have 80 weapons ranks on my Warrior Mage. I move over to fight silver bears now. I debuff the bears with electrostatic eddy and frostbite. They rarely hit me, and I absolutely crush them with my weapons due to their de-buffed status. I fire off some fireballs which only increase my killing speed further. If things get tough (a dire bear shows up) I can use arc light to take it down. Alternatively, I could fight the same silver bears at level 18 but it would be a challenge and require me to use my debuffs to survive. But since I can train extremely well at level 22 on the bears, there's no reason to do that unless I just want to take some risks. So while I'm 4 levels higher than my Barbarian, but if I come back at level 22 on my Barbarian my killing speed will still be only a fraction of the Warrior Mage and I'll learn very slowly as I'm nearly capped on what they teach.

Coming from someone that just leveled a warmie through this tier, I don't think eddie does that much. It only slightly helps with that initial ladder bump, and I'd expect the barbarian's improved shield, defending, parry, and stance points would be worth more defensively (even without buffs). Of course, if you're saying the warrior mage spends 100 hours draining tert skills to get to that point, and the barbarian only spent 50 hours then I think it's fair for the warrior mage to have slightly better survivability on a given rung of the ladder. TDPs/Stats from the additional time would probably have a greater impact, honestly.

Still though, educate me. Can't you use Death's Shriek instead of frost byte to stay alive, especially with Tornado? Kuniyo's Strike instead of arc light to stun? Death's Embrace instead of Eddy to debuff their offenses (btw, I don't see a huge benefit to eddy beyond that initial ladder jump). Or is this mainly about inner fire, and powermonger being so mandatory that everyone drives towards that at the expense of early playability?

So what would you change? More inner fire? More progression options? Expertise?

>Death's Shriek costs 4 spell slots and requires at least other 7 abilities from the Flame tree. Let's say you go Flame, Power, Famine, Monkey, Contemplation, Bear, Serenity, and Death's Shriek. That's 14 slots or circle 26 if you beeline straight there. If you wanted to pickup Tornado first then that's another 4 spell slots (Everild's -> Tornado) so it takes you until circle 34 to get Shriek.

Death's Shriek is also an expert level roar, I don't know if a Barb at level 34 could possibly use it effectively?

Compare this to DMRS which I got at level 8 on my Bard, which is an AOE stun and knock down. The duration last longer than it takes me to prepare the spell again. It costs 5 mana to cast, takes 12 seconds to prepare (I can cast it after about 8 if I want to) and it last longer than the casting time. Arc Light prepares even faster, but it's single target, and stuns for about the same amount of time. And Frostbite tends to take two casts to AOE incapacitate things, but it lasts quite a while as the creatures have to regain fatigue naturally. Having never used Death's Shriek or Kuniyo's strike, I cannot speak to their relative potency.

Everyone knows its mage realms right now. Take heart young grasshoppers this has a way of changing over the years. Do what you like and it will all work out, then it won't, then it will again.

---

Don't forget to vote for dragonrealms:

http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-DragonRealms.html

>With that in mind, is there a reason you wouldn't want half of your abilities powered by concentration, or to share "scrolls" with thieves? (Seriously asking, not trolling).

Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't believe you are trolling at all. Like I said you presented a well thought out and good post...it just scares me. Why do I not want half my abilities powered by concentration? Well primarily because right now they are powered by five already; Voice pool, Inner Fire, Augmentation, Debilitation and Warding. If you add in that I need to worry about my concentration then that doesn't fix anything but exacerbates the problem. Now I have to worry about draining IF, Voice AND Concentration. Voice pool is static over the life of a Barb and doesn't grow with stats or circle. IF is pretty static even though it does grow with IF skill but it's a tert skill so doesn't grow that much, rather, the amount of fire used diminishes with skill progression. Concentration only grows with stat increase. It's already been said that Barbs enter the hunting ladder with lower stats than other guilds so that means a hampering of the ability to use Forms (not Dances btw) if they are tied to Concentration. Additionally, I'd rather see development of the guild focused on other things than switch us over to Barbariteefs. Up our damage output. Give us an alpha strike, allow us to use our IF more efficiently and effectively at lower circles, etc.

Finally, combining the problems thieves have with barbarians in this mage realms sugar coats the problem faced by NMU guilds. I like the non-magic part of being a barbarian. That's why I joined the guild 20 years ago. It's why I always come home to playing it. It's a challenge. I love that about the guild! I wouldn't mind it if it was on par with other guilds in combat but I'm happy and...

>Everyone knows its mage realms right now. Take heart young grasshoppers this has a way of changing over the years. Do what you like and it will all work out, then it won't, then it will again.

^This

Rhadyn da Dwarb - Blood for fire!

Barbarian Guild Suggestions
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h4L5hAxR1-VLDegDNZBIhGdo5bMgnCtm84Icm2E0utU/edit#gid=0

>Move all the Mastery abilities to be spread throughout the tree. For instance, one at 4, one at 6, and one at 8. I'd also reduce the Mastery costs to 3 instead of 4.

I think this is a great idea, but honestly, given how borked some of these Masteries are, I'd just make them normally acquired once you've attained x trainings in a given tree. It's like if MUs had a feat that could only be unlocked at 40+th circle that unlocked the other half of their Attunement bar, or that quintipled Attunement regen. It's not as much 'an ability' as it is 'finally gaining functionality'.

>Change up most of the Barbarian Combos that use Expertise to act as hit location based weapon attacks instead of short term buffs.

This is a neat ability I'd like to see in addition to the current Expertise suite. I'd like the Expertise suite to get some attention too, since the order and the abilities have some issues. I think Barbs need more Expertise options to make up for the lack of AoE and the lack of 'passive damage sources'.

>As the player of a Cleric that routinely gets stomped by Barbs in PvP... Yeah, no.

That's primarily due to BMR, which is still a thing despite what some say. If you can land your spells, Cleric is still a top [advanced] PvP guild. (Frankly, I'm not crazy about binary pass/fail MR in the same way I'm not crazy about MAF for whatever that's worth, but I think it's a separate issue.)

I think the complaint is primarily that abilities aren't as robust (or as fun?) as magic and that's a fair complaint. There are absolutely benefits to having non-dispellable instant-on abilities in place of spells but you're at a significant disadvantage when those abilities don't play by the same abstract rules. For example, you can't have an ability whose primary purpose is dealing damage whereas TM is a big thing (and growing). Further, khri and forms may be functionally similar, but you can't make a sweeping change to ability source regen, for example, so changes to barb or thief abilities is less valuable out the gate than changes to magic by measure of how many people it impacts.

As far as damage goes, special attacks like dual load even the playing field some but they receive less dev time than magic likely because of that value issue. That's probably why backstab was poop for a long time before it was overbuffed, smite is still poop, and dual load still electricities stuff.

Barbs are fine or much better then they were before. However, the only thing they are missing and really detracts from the guild's value at large is a single "Wowser!" ability that is unique to the guild. Something that may put second thoughts (at least briefly) into the minds of a warmage or a cleric. Currently, all the skills or abilities of a Barb are just "plus x to y stat or skill" or some lackluster maneuver that really doesn't play any critical role in a fight.

Unfortunately,in DR's never ending quest for "balance" the developers completely neutered many of the abilities that brought that sheepish grin to my once teenaged face. It's a video game not the FY 2016 budget for the US government, you want that "Zzzaaapp!" "Cool!!" ability in there somewhere because, you know, even though sex is a joke now it's still really really fun.

Agreed!

I hereby vote for Gorteous to replace Agonar as the Crossing Guild Leader. All in favor say "Aye". Opposed? Hope you have plenty of favors.

Rhadyn da Dwarb - Blood for fire!

Barbarian Guild Suggestions
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h4L5hAxR1-VLDegDNZBIhGdo5bMgnCtm84Icm2E0utU/edit#gid=0