Barbarian Evolution for Berserker

[nsrr]

Adds Barbarian as a new class evolution prodigy for Berserkers. Find it here or on the Steam workshop.

Barbarians lose their body armor slot, but gain the ability to wield two-handed weapons in both their main and off hands, as well as access to the Duelist and Dual Techniques talent trees. Additionally, each turn that they land a melee attack with their dual weapons they will enter a blocking stance, deflecting damage with their weapons and setting up foes for deadly counter-strikes. Block power is based on the combined base damage of their dual weapons and Dexterity.

The prodigy requires Strength and Dexterity and is unlocked by killing a boss with a two-handed weapon while no body armor is equipped.

Bug reports are greatly appreciated, and questions and comments are most welcome, as always. Enjoy!

[nsrr]

v1.0.1
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Fixed an error that would occur if you learned the prodigy while wearing no body armor.

[nsrr]

v1.0.2
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The hasDualTwoHand check, and therefore the block-on-attack check, now properly check that each weapon has the twohanded property.

[Pisastrish]

Mostly a selfish request for addon compatibility so it's not important (it should be easy for me to make a special case in my addon), but having is_class_evolution = "Berserker" in the prodigy definition already prevents non-berserkers from taking the prodigy. Having src == game.player and src.descriptor.subclass == "Berserker" in Actor.die just prevents other addons that change who can take evolutions, or allow permanent summons to take evolutions, from working by default.

[nsrr]

I just wanted to run the check as little as possible, but I think it will be just fine with a couple less requirements

[nsrr]

v1.0.3
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An actor no longer needs to be a Berserker or the player to meet the 'kill a boss with a two handed weapon while wearing no body armor' requirement, expanding compatibility.

As a note, anyone who wants to fudge the requirement can give the actor the attribute "can_barbarian".

[Thexare]

One Pride down and the Charred Scar cleared, by the end of today's session. Still alive, kinda.

I've been having a blast with this, honestly. The dual-wielding parry seems nearly unbreakable if you take the evolution at 25, but it tapers off later on. With your most reliable defense being based on rushing into battle, this feels more like a berserker than the base class did. I lost my head to the Fanged Collar before I could get Slasul's trident, so I got kinda robbed on Legacy, but I've also got a 93% crit chance with the Trident of the Tides so I'm not too mad. As you'll see, I did the often unrecommended allocation of significant stats to Con (and Dex) for a bit of extra defense and to play off some of the abilities - that it powers up the Parasite's shield is an added bonus.

No bugs to report so far, just wanted to give credit where it's due, this is fun as hell.

[visage]

The dual-wielding parry seems nearly unbreakable if you take the evolution at 25, but it tapers off later on.

Yeah, given that it's the base damage of the weapons, you should be close to the max it's going to get at lvl25 (at least on Insane, you're likely to already have at least a T4 weapon or two by then). Still, 140-or-so block seems like it should be pretty good as long as you can land the hits that proc it.

[nsrr]

Thanks for the feedback

The block value might benefit from some more dynamic scaling of some kind, not really sure what though. Perhaps reducing the base amount and adding some other scaling. Stat scaling might work, especially if it scales with Dex or Wil (Con could also fit, but you're more likely to max that as a Zerker anyway; same for Dex, but to a lesser extent). Another idea could be to allow the block value to crit (again, reducing the base amount first). Stat scaling could be interesting to give weight to an off stat and to allow you to beef up the value with stat investment, while the crit idea would put more emphasis on gearing. A Berserker is likely to build crit mult anyhow, but it would improve scaling into the later game, where stat scaling would still drop off a bit after you max investment in the stat and can only improve it with gearing for the stat.

I'm not set on any particular idea yet, but it's definitely something I'll think about. My Stalker and Juggernaut runs have reached the point where the game gets a little dull and I just started a new Barbarian run (first died before getting a prodigy). Hopefully this one will last long enough so I can see how it plays in a regular game scenario.

[visage]

The block value might benefit from some more dynamic scaling of some kind, not really sure what though.

I ran into a similar issue in an addon I'm working on -- using a weapon's raw base damage jumped significantly upon getting access to a new tier (and a weapon of that tier with Massacre, early on)... and then completely stalled. The solution I ended up going with was to basically replicate some of the the mechanics that go into weapon damage and then massage the values based on sample numbers:

Code: Select all

 	   weapon_pow = self:combatDamagePower(weap)
	    local res = self:rescaleDamage(0.3 * weapon_pow * self:combatMindpower())
	    res = res * (0.8725 + t.getDamageScaling(self, t))
	    return res

Not necessarily the correct solution in your case, but it'd be pretty straightforward to use physical power, or accuracy, instead of mindpower and then tweaking constants according to your targets; slightly less straightforward to be to massage dexterity or constitution.

[Thexare]

The run completed today, Normal/Adventure.

There's a hilarious thing about the stat bonuses on two-handed artifacts - they're not expected to be doubled up on. But thanks to a Poltergeist's Blighted Maul and a normal Blighted Maul, I'm sitting at 300% crit multiplier, and due to some hilarious gear pickups I have a constant 100% crit rate without buffs.

A shame that Legacy of the Naloren's going to waste since the parasite thought Slasul looked tasty, but it is what it is.

But I feel like the ability to stack two-handed weapons *might* lead to a bit of a power concern. I was reliably bumping for four-digit damage, nevermind my actual abilities. My Execute hit Argoniel for about 4k to finish her off - she was still in high orange health when I did it. 100% crit chance and 300% crit multiplier is insane.

Previous character link is still valid. Once I got my head ripped off, all my deaths stopped, so some of my success likely comes down to how powerful the Parasite racial tree is - the permanent global speed buff definitely helped by offsetting the reduced attack speed on my Blighted Mauls.

My defense was not unbreakable. I came very close to dying several times, and I escaped it with tricks available to standard berserkers - namely, Blinding Speed and Unstoppable. The sheer ludicrosity of my damage output definitely helped though, and in fact makes for an exceptionally nasty combo with Unstoppable.

So tldr, I feel like the balance might be a bit off but holy shit is this fun. I had some concerns going into it about how the character would hold up without a torso slot, but I'm glad I tried it.

Now I kind of wish I'd gone for Flexible Combat or Windblade instead of Legacy, but I didn't know the parasite wouldn't let me get the trident and I wanted to dual-wield tridents. Oh well. Fun, will try again sometime.

[KingOfAllTrades]

Completed a run with this a couple weeks back. I use several addons, so my balance musings should be taken with a grain of salt. I usually play on Nightmare/Roguelike.

The coolest part of this for me is the insane mobility you get from mixing two-handers and dual wielding. Between Rush, Fearless Cleave, Heartseeker, and Whirlwind, I was twirling around the battlefield like a maniac and it felt great. Jumping from enemy to enemy and introducing their faces to the pavement was maximum barbarian energy.

The damage and durability both felt pretty high. I never came close to death once I had the prodigy; I was able to bump Atamathon to death, and I definitely killed at least one of the pride masters by accident while I was zooming through their zone. Partly this is because I found a pretty solid T5 randart in the sandworm tunnels, but I value flat damage resistance pretty highly and 172 is a *lot* of flat damage resistance. I do like the idea of flat DR as the defensive mechanic, but it could be half as strong as it is and still be very solid.

[nsrr]

Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you had fun with it

That kind of dash and smash play style is exactly what I was shooting for, so it's great to hear how it played out for you

The block value is likely to get some kind of scaling introduced along with a bit of power reduction. I still want to try out one of my own in a real game before I tweak anything and I haven't had much time to get one going just yet.

[KingOfAllTrades]

I ended up taking Eternal Guard, which may have tilted things significantly in my favor. I only had to hit every other turn to keep my block up, which makes a HUGE difference, and the counterstrike effect doubled a substantial portion of my damage.

[nsrr]

I ended up taking Eternal Guard, which may have tilted things significantly in my favor. I only had to hit every other turn to keep my block up, which makes a HUGE difference, and the counterstrike effect doubled a substantial portion of my damage.

Oh, that's very interesting! Normally you have to know the Block talent to learn Eternal Guard. Of course, that's a condition easily met by putting on a Shield, but that requires a generic point that will be otherwise useless to a Barbarian since they can't wear armor and don't want to use shields.

Perhaps being a Barbarian should just allow you to bypass that requirement?