Big race barbarians are unlikely to do much more damage. The way it works (using the initial 2*(armor points) = (percentage blocked)) is that if you do less than 50 points of damage you will do more, if you do more than 50 points of damage you will do less.

Right now, an Oog-ra with a drathain two-hander should average about 50 points per attack. Obviously this doesn't exist. A thugian is two points less than that, and take off another 4 or so for the weapon, that makes 44 per attack.

Against 15pt/30% armor a 44pt attack does 29 now, and will do 30.8 (rounded down to 30, apparently).

This is, of course, just speculation and only one specific example, but it illustrates my point: Big race barbarians are close enough to the 50 point cutoff between more and less damage, that they won't really gain any significant damage.

That being said, presently a barbarian can't really fight without a shield, unless the opponent doesn't have one either (and who wouldn't want a shield against a barbarian?), and they definitely can't hunt without a shield. So using a 1.5 hander things get a little more interesting.

Now you are averaging 38/attack (thug max strength, 1.5 emiel). Against the 15pt/30% armor you do 23 now, and will do 26 (a significant change, considering how fast barbarians attack). Only 4 point difference between 1.5 and 2-hander.

I guess I don't really have a point to all this... but it does slightly exasperate the problem with zerker PVP (a completely different update). I.e. you need to use a shield against a zerker, but if you use a shield the zerker has to use a shield, in which case you have to dodge the shield (good), which also dodges the zerk (bad). I think the shield update will fix most of zerkers PVP problems (with the exception of people who intentionally dodge zerk).

Hunting is still kind of a toss up (at least until there is a place that requires 300+ OR to hunt in, which only helps high level zerks). Monster damage is said to be adjusted, but odds are zerkers are still going to be taking more damage.

This should make it easier for zerks to kill mages though (because the walls are to be nerfed, apparently, and most mages do more than 50 pts).

I don't really mind zerkers being rare (in fact, one of the reasons I like playing my zerker is that they are rare), so I hope that doesn't change. Big race, skilled zerks just need to be feared a bit more. ;)

I think nons will be looking pretty scary after this update (maybe I should pull mine out...).

Whatever happens, I think it will be interesting to see (that is... if mythic will reopen my account).

cheers,
Whight