I tried using barriers for the enchantment power, but since they don’t last long now since they are so small, I wasn’t all that impressed.
I had a crazy OP parry barrier build pre patch: Ultimate Tank Build . 70% barrier gain from lucky exalts. Eating an apple would give me something like an 80% barrier. Parries kept the barrier up as well. I just never lost them. So it definitely needed a nerf. I’ve been slowly going through my builds after the patch, and this one was definitely hit the hardest.
I was using mottled pearls and have moved away from them since the barriers aren’t providing much protection anymore and I wasn’t using lifesteal because of that protection. I prefer being able to have full health and a large health pool now. Barriers are just sad now, especially considering this build goes all in on them. They don’t feel viable at all, even maxed out, which means they are even worse normally. It makes sense that barriers wouldn’t be based on % of health so you can’t increase them by having a bigger health pool, though they left the head enchant which gives a barrier on eating still a percentage rather than fixed number, but it maxes at 5% now rather than 10%. Barriers paired well with blocking, but they instantly disappear now. They can no longer counter act the chip damage you take from bosses. That’s probably a good thing in that this was another way to ignore the combat system, but it does kill any dreams of being a traditional tank with bosses.
It feels like blocking is great for trash since you mitigate most of the damage and parrying is the way to go for bosses, though with the mottled pearl nerf, I can no longer delete anything with a parry. So overall I think it brings things more in line with souls like combat, but at the cost of making barriers mostly useless now. The fixed numbers need to be doubled now, if not tripled. I feel like for barriers to have meaning, there needs to be a dependable, skill based way to maintain them. They were a great way for learning parry timings since barriers would mitigate missing a parry, and I think that’s a great direction barriers could go. So tanking bosses would be about getting parries to keep up a barrier rather than mindlessly blocking everything. All that would take is reverting the glove enchant nerf, since the nerfs to enchantment power should keep the barrier in check.