Barbarians: Useless against boss encounters?

[Davos]

So I've been bouncing around the various classes trying to decide on what exactly I want to roll come release. After playing around with a barbarian in the beta I found the class to be a lot of fun with its focus on melee offense and the aoe effect of carnage making them extremely effective against groups of enemies. However I'm concerned about whether encounters against large groups of enemies may be the only place where the barbarian is of use. Pretty much all of their abilities seems to be focused on attacking many foes at once or engaging while outnumbered, but in a situation where it would be something like the whole party vs. a dragon or some other singular, powerful boss they don't seem to have anything of real use. In comparison to this we have other damage-focused classes like rogue, monk, druid, etc. which have abilities that can both be of use against a group and powerful single target attacks.

 

So I'm wondering if anyone with greater experience or knowledge of the game might be able to give some input on whether barbarians are of any use in those situations where they aren't fighting a group of foes?

[metacontent]

I haven't even played the game yet, but I think your assumptions are correct, Barbs are good for groups, but not so good against Bosses.

 

But this is why we have groups, so that we can have a fighter for a boss fight, and a Barb for the swarms of goblins.

[mrmonocle]

there are a lot of boss fights (bounties) in which you have to dispatch groups of ads.

Edited March 26, 2015 by mrmonocle

[Voss]

They can still hit a single primary target for decent damage, and they do have access to a few debuffs, which given their propensity for Int, will hang on for a long time. 

 

Do the pure dps numbers go down if you aren't dealing splash damage?  Yep.  Are they useless against single monsters? No, not really.

[Doxy]

Bosses are gonna be whack and hack anyways i think. Fighter classes can only use couple abilities 2-3 times per encounter and then they are back to just auto-attacking.

Barbs specd for dps will excel at that.

[Voss]

Yeah, I don't see this system handling single boss fights well.  Slicken Knock-down, Knock-down, Slicken, Assorted Esoteric Debuffs, Hack, hack, hack.

 

Dogpile on the wizard dragon by Crom!

[khadoran]

Well I have not played the game but I kinda want to make a barbariand and use him as the main front line in boss fights..Or do i need to have a warrior for that??

 

Figured I use him with heavy armor 2handed weapon and some defensive feats.

 

Also the closest to a Bard is paladin kind of? I mean the chanter seems to be mostly a summoner..I dont feel my bard should do that..I want a classic bard Buffing the team.

[PIP-Clownboy]

Barbs lvl 11 talent Heart of Fury (1 per rest lol), is also quite garbage when compared to say, Rogue's deathblows, which can be triggered multiple times each encounter considering how trivial spreading debuff is. Heck, even Barbs lvl 2 active ability barbic blow seems more useful. 

 

Barbs are still very strong when you build the party around carnage and will be useful in POTD with increased enemy count but they have a plethora of near useless and situational talents which makes me sad. 

 

Also really wish I could throw axes/spears at faces to open combat. 

Edited March 26, 2015 by PIP-Clownboy

[Magrusaod]

Also really wish I could throw axes/spears at faces to open combat. 

You need an Impi mod sir.

[Voss]

A lot of per rest abilities are head scratchers.  But then I find a lot of the talents and class abilities to be complete trap choices.  Limited resources (6 talents and 6 class abilities) + highly situational  = bad.  Tossing limited use by adding per rest is just... nope.

[PrimeJunta]

I'm actually quite curious to see how the boss fights play out. I've developed a real appreciation for the ones in BG2 -- they're not just about whittling down a mountain of hitpoints, but about finding a good strategy. Just got Firkraag kilt in five rounds or so, using two characters, without doing anything obviously cheesy. That's much more fun than the usual game of hack hack hack. If P:E manages boss fights that have even close to the range of tactical options BG2 does, it's gonna be awesome -- and it's only even better if different characters get to shine in different ones.

[Tamerlane]

Yeah, I don't see this system handling single boss fights well.  Slicken Knock-down, Knock-down, Slicken, Assorted Esoteric Debuffs, Hack, hack, hack.

 

Dogpile on the wizard dragon by Crom!

 

A faithful adaptation of your average tabletop experience, then.

[Mlatimudan]

I love how if anything isn't the absolute best at something it is automatically useless on these forums

[khadoran]

I love how if anything isn't the absolute best at something it is automatically useless on these forums

 

Im mostly interested if its viable so i dont end up with a party unable to complete the story on hard.

I plan to make 2 characters, a barbarian(main) and his brother probably chanter then fill out the rest with ingame characters but one of those would be the "tank".

Didnt plan to have a warrior/monk/paladin so really need to know if this is playable, else id prob skip the idea for something else.

[PrimeJunta]

I'd expect it to be completable, but going for your first playthrough on Hard with a gimmick party is going to be an extra challenge for sure.

 

I'm going to go with a somewhat traditional tank-stabber-nuker-healer core, with the two other slots filled by whatever takes my fancy. Thinking tank = Pallegina or Edér, stabber = PC, nuker = Aloth or that carnivorous orlan druid, healer = the priest who looks like Jesus. I really dig Kana Rua's and Sagani's concepts though so I'll def. have to try to fit them in even if I'm a not totally sold on the ranger as a class.

[Coaxmetal]

maybe not for tanking a boss but you can still smash them with your berserker skills while your companion is tanking. I'd hate to see a Barbarian be as damage resilient as a Paladin or something, goes against everything the berserker is about!

[khadoran]

Guess adding the warrior you are suppost to get early will be ok then run something like druid, mage rogue!

Il grab the cleric/monk/paladin on another try..

[Davos]

Barbs lvl 11 talent Heart of Fury (1 per rest lol), is also quite garbage when compared to say, Rogue's deathblows, which can be triggered multiple times each encounter considering how trivial spreading debuff is. Heck, even Barbs lvl 2 active ability barbic blow seems more useful. 

 

I think the key aspect of Heart of the Fury is that carnage still applies on those attacks, making it potentially able to clear a group in one hit.

 

Imagine you're a barbarian attacking 5 enemies in a pentagon around you, situated such that a carnage attack on ones hits the two adjacent to him. Heart of the Fury means that not only do you strike each foe once, but the carnage on those adjacent them to is applied, leading to each enemy being hit by one attack and two carnages instantly. Higher intellect could lead to that being exponentially more damaging. But, as with all barbarian abilities, its effectiveness scales only with number of enemies nearby

Edited March 26, 2015 by Davos

[gkathellar]

What makes anyone here think that boss fights are going to be 6-to-1? None of the BB ones were. Barely any IE boss fights were. There's absolutely no indication that AoE and crowd control are going to be useless in boss fights.

[Voss]

What makes anyone here think that boss fights are going to be 6-to-1? None of the BB ones were. Barely any IE boss fights were. There's absolutely no indication that AoE and crowd control are going to be useless in boss fights.

I do hope this turns out to be true.  Boss fights are the most ridiculous and sad things ever.  Like kicking a bullet-spongey kitten.

[Luckmann]

What makes anyone here think that boss fights are going to be 6-to-1? None of the BB ones were. Barely any IE boss fights were. There's absolutely no indication that AoE and crowd control are going to be useless in boss fights.

 

I blame consoles.

[Stun]

I blame modern RPGs in general. In PoE, Combat is a party affair, and the classes were designed to complement each other. A rare design in this day and age. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Imagine that. As it stands every class, on its own, will "suck" against a big boss.

 

Fighters can go toe to toe with any boss, but just like Barbarians, they won't do much damage against them. Rogues will do great damage against Bosses, right up until that boss one shots them. Mages suck ass against Bosses, but can wipe out the rest of the battlefield faster than anyone. Priests can Buff and Debuff. Great. But you can't Debuff a boss to death in this game. You can, however use your cleric to turn the rest of your party into combat machines that can Kill that boss.

 

That said. I'm currently Playing a Barbarian, and I'm noticing that he works quite well along side Eder. I built Eder up to be the Battlefield distraction. I gave him that talent that lets him engage 3 enemies at once. And every time he does that, I just send my Barbarian up to carnage those 3 from behind, constantly. Works every time.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Stun

[Lephys]

The trend, nowadays, is to sort of act like significant tactics are inherently hard/complicated. There's nothing wrong with games that just let you make one character, then tear everything up. But, they keep taking things like this -- party-based play -- and trying to force it into the mold of another type of play, as if it's wrong. Or as if they need the novelty of its aesthetic ("Oooh, it's neato to have a party of people! 8D!"), but every other part of it just gets in the way somehow.

 

I don't get it.

 

By all means, make Dragon Age and Skyrim, but stop trying to breed out everything else, ya crazy companies!