Huh, alright, fair point about the zombies. My mistake. I thought Whirlwind had more oomph, guess not!

I'd like to complain that barbarians need a better way to generate damage.

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>>I'd like to complain that barbarians need a better way to generate damage.

As the other half of the Mad'uuwl clan.. I'd like to agree.

Also, I am going to go ahead and say it cause I can. I would like to see barbs finished and the things 'on the to do list' finished before magic 3.9484838383 if that's ok with you guys???

I don't give a damn about anything other than this..

We have waited.. we have been patient and it seems we are being pushed aside while magic users are getting all the love and NMUs are the red headed (no offense Uri) step child of DR.

No. Everyone assured me that barbarians are overpowered and need to be down tweaked in the other thread.

> It seems the new TM tools and magic 3.2 release allows mages to punch through our barriers better and easier, I'd like to complain that our barriers are now to weak against magic since the 3.2 release.

I don't think that's right. Right now the mages are up in arms because the mana regen "buff" turns out to be a big nerf. It seems most people were playing in the 20-30% range of mana which meant they were regenning far more than the GMs wanted, and that's not including the serious nerf to mana regen mechanics such as POM or BOTF (which is better, but still not near where it was). If anything, I think we'll see a little less casting or best a wash once things settle down.

>>No. Everyone assured me that barbarians are overpowered and need to be down tweaked in the other

What other thread?! Sir you are making my head hurt. Barbs are the same as they have been.. in limbo waiting for the list to get done. There's a list!!!

> These numbers were JUST tweaked up again (pool size and regen), and mana regen/pool size is not half what it was, for certain. Mana cost per power output on a lot of the spells IS half what it was.

That's only half the story. Previously, a mage could rapid cast spells at the low end of a pool to burn through barriers. If they do that now, they'll burn out and be without casting for several seconds. Per your own words, regen isn't at the 50% point and TM spells are 50% to cast, so that is overall a nerf. We're just arguing about the size of the nerf.

>>It's not. I'm just pointing out that all of the doom and gloom because of magic 3.2 is a little too chicken little. <<

Then what were you trying to say exactly? I simply wanted to post that our barriers are not as effective as they were prior to the release of 3.2. In fact, they seem very under powered and under whelming all of a sudden. I don't want to make this a GvG thing. I just want our barriers looked at and possibly tweaked to become more powerful.

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>>regen isn't at the 50% point

No, regen was normalized to a constant rate throughout the pool which I believe they stated was above the rate you got at the high end of your mana pool formerly, as well as mana pool sizes being increased. PoM was buggy in 3.1 and took probably the biggest decrease in effectiveness. As someone who shelved his barbarian and is actively playing a magic prime right now, who happens to be a cleric with PoM, I can distinctly say it is not the situation you make it out to be, at all.


Furthermore, I resign to Buuwl's wisdom here-

>>I simply wanted to post that our barriers are not as effective as they were prior to the release of 3.2. In fact, they seem very under powered and under whelming all of a sudden.

This is what is important, here.

>>I also think you guys are looking at this from the wrong place.

No. You are looking at it from our guilds complaint folder and tramped right in to argue something that wasnt being argued. Let me dumb this down for you.


OUR BARRIERS SEEM WEAK.

also.. OUR GUILD ISNT FINISHED SINCE THE FIRST MAGIC REWRITE...SEND HALP....thanks.

> No, regen was normalized to a constant rate throughout the pool which I believe they stated was above the rate you got at the high end of your mana pool formerly

Which it turns out that no one was at. If I receive 1% at the top end and 10% at the bottom end, and I'm constantly in the bottom then I'm effectively at 10% regen. To normalize that to 1.5% feels good, but it's effectively a nerf now that I can't stay at the bottom + harn/charge for improved regen. That's all I'm saying. Mages were nerfed.

My understanding of the barrier complaint is that mages have to cast more to tear down barriers more quickly, but the point is that if they tore it down then they're waiting much longer for the mana to come back up to a point that they can cast spells again.

Derium, if you truly are trying to be helpful/constructive/informed, read all our folders over the past 4 or so years before going further with your posts. I think it's poor form to post in folders that you are clearly not informed in.

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

We've been through this for years, even at times with numerous MUs clearly agreeing with us on issues and providing tremendous amounts of data/proof with nothing getting done on our end to improve discrepancies. The frustration you are reading is pent up from years of what seems like being stuck in quicksand for the guild. Similar suggestions you are bringing up that seem kinda duh to you have been suggested time and time again in one form or another. That is why I suggest if you are in all sincerity trying to be beneficial to the guild and the discussions at hand, read up on a lot of our past.

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

Annwyl in 3...2...1...


But no I agree. These conversations have been going on far too long. Adding entirely new systems, at some point, should stop taking precedence over balancing/finishing already existing ones. When is the last time we got an official comment on anything Barbarian? Anyone brave enough to dig through and find it?

>>I am doing the job I am being required to do. : shrug :

Well, there you go.

>>Once things settle down I hope to get back to you with some updates.

a.

>>hope

lol.

b.

>>some updates

I think this was the last time we got some 'updates' on potential dev. I could be wrong, maybe missed something, but I don't think so-


http://www.tinyheroes.com/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Barbarians/General%20Discussions%20-%20Barbarians/thread/1689606


17 months ago.

Heh, Raesh put that better than I did.

In any case yes, we work on many different projects. As I have posted previously - it doesn't make sense for me to go making adjustments to the Guild until the full effects of 3.2 are realized. Otherwise it just becomes a reactionary game.

And 17 months have not passed since I've provided an update :chuckle: I posted a number of times this year discussing possible improvements and commenting on your discussions. There were plans for improvements once I had Tinkering out, but they are delayed a bit.

We've been having some other discussions on future Guild abilities and we will be able to comment on it soon. The real problem right now is resources and figuring out who has the time to do this work. I oversee combat, crafting, barbarians and events. There just isn't enough of me to go around!

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
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Incoming lost post about mana regeneration and spell costs to aid everyone with being on the same page about what the changes actually did with respect to these.

Mana regen:
The current fixed mana regen rate is the same as what it used to be when you were around 60-70% full depending on guild before the changes. Attunement pool size has generally increased now meaning the actual amount of attunement returned by a percent is different, but it's not that large of an increase so a ballpark of 60-70% is still a good comparison.

This means that if a mage had kept their attunement levels high previous to 3.2 then the change will seem to be a buff to mana regen for them since they would have only been getting a 1 to 2% regen before compared to 2.5% now. Although, this would also likely not affect a mage's perception of how much mana they have available at a given time when comparing before and after much, since they were never low on mana to begin with.

For a mage that kept their attunement levels below 60-70% then this will be a nerf to mana regen, the farther under 60% they kept it the more of a loss of regen it is. Under the old system it was possible to get up to 5% regen if your mana was low enough. Most mages ran at approximately 30% mana which was around a 4% regen, so having it now be 2.5% is quite a significant loss even considering the reduction in costs of certain spells.

I can't imagine a mage actually maintaining about 70% in the old system, however, unless they were just not casting spells very often. It was definitely to one's huge advantage to run with low attunement if casting spells with any frequency. So this means that for most mages this actually ends up being an overall loss of attunement regeneration, making resource management something they have to worry about more now even with the reduction of the costs of certain spells.

Casting costs:
As for the casting costs, I am probably the one person not a GM to have gone through every single spell's mana and difficulty changes. This perspective highlights some misconceptions on both sides about how much spells have had their costs reduced. The cost of many, but certainly not all, spells was lowered, but only in certain situations was the cost significantly lowered and in many cases was not lowered at all or even raised.

The only spells that had a really significant reduction in costs are the lowest tier debilitation and TM spells (typically the ones a character would be able to choose in their first 5 circles) where they tended to have gone from requiring from up to 100 mana to now typically requiring 1 to 33. Higher tiered TM/Debil is typically 10 to 66 now from the same starting point, which is still fairly significant a reduction but not quite as much. And AoE or especially powerful TM/Debil are still 10-30 to 100 so there's no reduction there. One or two of those even actually went up in cost slightly, now starting at 30 mana when they used to start at something like 20 before, for instance.

Cyclics got about a reduction on average, although it is hard to estimate by how much and is a bit less meaningful a stat since several actually went up in cost too, or had their minimum go up and the maximum go down, or vice versa, etc. Overall, they're cheaper by a little bit but not significantly so. They're still a balancing act to maintain, in most cases, while casting other spells with any frequency.

Most standard buffs, wards, and utility effects stayed generally the same cost with only minor changes here and there, generally still going from 1 to 30 at the bottom end to 100 at the top. It is here that the mana regen changes feel most like a nerf, since this is where the bulk of training spells are and spamming them to train results in low attunement levels.

Ritual spells frequently saw an increase in cost with starting ranges often going up to 300 mana from 150 mana before, and the upper end going from 600/700 to 800 mana. Since these spells on only cast about once every hour or so at best, however, the cost increase doesn't have much of a meaningful impact on resource management overall.

Hope that helps every get on the same page about regen and spell costs.

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Oh, and guild actually would have an impact on the perception of how much the mana regen changes would affect you, simply from the mana cost changes, nevermind the pool size changes.

Empaths, for example, had very few changes at all to their spell's mana and difficulty ranges. So, for them the only change they're really going to notice would likely be the attunement regeneration.

Bards with their large number of cyclics are all over the map in terms of mana cost changes, and so it's a bit of a grab bag how the regen change would feel to them based on which cyclics they are used to using.

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Are we slated to get some slots refunded with these magic changes? If so, soonish?

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

>>the only thing done

Well, that is still much more than many of the other Guilds :P

And while that is your opinion, I don't believe it accurately reflects the effort spent implementing and testing the SvS changes across your abilities. It omits the effort expended to re-balance the IF cost of your abilities and enabling of Barbarians to have more abilities up at once. It leaves out all the testing and time I spent in conversations about Barrier changes that have unfortunately not been finished yet.

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes