Long story shorter, saw there was an update to the DDI Character Builder, tried to update it, says I’m up to date but I can’t be because it’s not update and so I was playing around with the tool.
I made a 21st level Barbarian for the hell of it using the Autobuild function. Is it just me or are the powers for the barbarian broken? As an example for a Dwarvish Barbarian using AutoBuild set to 21st level.
Ignoring the ‘raging powers’ but just looking at some of the at-wills and encounters I see stuff like this -
At Will – Recuperating Strike – +20 attack 1d10+3d6+17 damage and gain 11 temp hit points. That’s an average of 33.5 damage for an At-will.
Encounter – Tide of Blood – +20 attack, 2d10+10 damage + 1 for each enemy adjacent up to 6. Â So an average of 21 damage plus up to 6. So a maximum average of 27 damage IF the barbarian has 6 enemies adjacent to him.
When are you EVER going to use the encounter power? The At Will averages significantly more damage even if the barbarian is surrounded.
Encounter – Vigorous Strike – +20 attack, 26.5 average damage and you gain +16 temporary hitpoints.
At level 21 just how good is that extra 5 temp hit points (over recuperating strike) going to be versus the 33.5 damage of the at-will? The level 21 monsters are doing around 15+ damage on average per hit with some kind of special effect (slowed, dazed, disease etc). So that 5 temp health isn’t even ONE THIRD of a single hits worth of average damage.  So what’s better, absorbing 5 more points of damage or doing 7 more points of damage to the creature and getting rid of it?
And then there’s the at-will Rage Strike which at level 21 does 7d10+10 for an average of 48 damage. Assuming the barbarian is raging, ZOMG it’s a major player in the ass kicking department. At level 29 the barbarian is doing 9d10 damage with it, not counting bonuses.
So maybe it’s just me but these powers seem broken when an At-Will is better than two of the barbarian’s encounter powers in multiple ways.
