Arelith

I love tribal barbarian. Having two henchmen that you can talk through and direct is very cool. They are nice leveling helpers for someone wanting to solo, up til about 13 or so.

Then in my experience they begin falling off - even more so if you multiclass to pick up UMD, Tumble, or any other utility that you absolutely need to round out your individual PC's now lackluster ability without the barbarian rage. The problem is that without the henchmen, you are a subpar barbarian without a lot of ability to do much at all. And once you get into mid-high levels, even with henchmen you arent that good.

What do people think could be done to improve the class if it were to remain in its current iteration?

Being able to change the tribals' weapons would be a quality of life change imo, not necessarily fix much else though. Maybe if tribals had other abilities than just HIT WITH AXE, somehow giving them magic/thievery tools when you summon them, randomly, so you have a chance to spawn two mages, or two warriors, one archer and a warrior, etc. This could open up the playstyle and give them more utility.

I also wouldn't mind if it was all reworked and instead you were given a Tribal Spirit summom that did... idk, something more than the current tribals, but something equal in utility to barb rage. I think of the shadowdancer's shadow summon when I think about the tribal spirit idea as a comparative ability.

Tribal Barbarian I think is REAL close to being viable. I think with a few things it could be a real good time.

1: The ability to choose between a dual weilding, two handing, and a sword and shield summon. The sword and board would -guard you, the other two function as they do now. You can set with feat/command what combination of tribals you would like. Keep them melee berserkers, but let you pick the flavor of berserker. I don't think there should be mages, rogues, or archers.

2: Give them bonuses for picking up rage feats. The real core issue of tribal barbarian is you essentially no longer have a class feature, and so all your class's unique feats are no good. Give Tribarb summons a boost for each epic rage feat you take - let Mighty give you a 3rd summon (or something equally good - Mighty is the hardest to qualify for. Maybe it lets the Tribals use axe-copies of whatever weapon you're holding when you summon them.), Thundering gives them sonic damage and will save bonuses, and Terrifying gives them a Doom onhit, or something.)

3: If you take EDR feats, let them be shared with your tribals. The same with Epic Prowess and Armor Skin.

Right now, Tribal Barb is pretty much restricted to doing 27 barbarian 3 rogue. I'm OK with "summon" classes encouraged to go as pure as possible, really. I just think the class is missing that last little bit of oomph it really needs to succeed. I make my change suggestions without the idea of changing entirely to "ancestor spirits" or whatever, but I think it would work just fine if you aesthetically changed them to "Ancestor Spirits" or whatever, but kept the same mechanics, if that's something you want to do. I don't see it as a big deal.

I would guess they are more likely to be removed than reworked, to be honest. The subclass seems like a legacy thing that wasn't unbalanced enough to kill off like favored soul and weavemaster but isn't anything anyone is going to bother reworking substantially either. But hey I could be wrong and some dev could be working on it right now.

RP-wise I think they should spawn with race-appropriate names to actually encourage RPing them as sentient beings instead of anonymous nameless "Tribal Barbarians". Maybe the names could even be consistent and if one dies the next spawned gets a new name. I've seen tribal barbarians RPed very well but with two sidekicks to run around with this is a class that really sticks out like a sore thumb when not (and it's a class newbies are drawn to, so you do see a fair bit of "not") and encouraging players to give their sidekicks some personality can only be a good thing.

Hot take: Tribal barbarian is a meme path that should be removed. More often than not, tribal barbarians just annoy their party members by bodyblocking more viable/useful/ACTUAL PLAYERS from participating in fights or just moving around - especially in tight quarters (cave systems, tunnels, hallways, etc - y'know, at least 60-75% of the places you'll be grinding in.)

Solutions:

1) Remove the meme. So sayeth Memelord.
2) Placate the Memelord by removing collision on tribal barb henchmen, allowing them to be passed through freely so they stop bodyblocking people and pissing me off.

Thank you, that's all.

Everything TimeAdept said plus that they scale with Character Level instead of Class Level so long as you're an Epic Barbarian (or have taken a specific Epic Rage feat, which also keeps in line with TimeAdepts suggestions)

Mostly in agreement with TImeAdept, though I'd think having an option that throws axes would be neat and partially deal with the issue of blocking other PCs from getting into melee range.

Being able to speak with them was a great change. I just wish you could further customize their names and looks and such.

Having played a role in their latest balancing, playing one for a long time pre-EE, and giving it a look in the PGCC just now, here are my two cents:

The way to build a tribal barbarian correctly at the moment is to get EDR, and do 1h/shield, wild elves, shield dwarves, duergar and maybe gnoll are the most min maxed optimal races that come to mind. Do 27/3 barb rog, and you should have a lot of skill points since barb sweats them, improved expertise is a must have, you also get cray 15 DR. The tribal barbarian summons have I think the second highest AB from summons, capping at 38 (unbuffed) at level 27, but their AC scaling and lack of immunities make them poor tanks, thus the PC must fill the role.

Pre-epic PvE: My experience when playing one one or two years ago was pretty laid back, but it needs to come with the understanding your character is the tank, as opposed to the summons being tanks (which they usually are for summoner classes). So you go in first with expertise up, and summons go in second.

Post-epic PvE: Given a lot of epic dungeons are tailored for parties and tend to have some form of CC or high AB enemies, solo tribal barb falls off, and in a party you won't want their summons getting in the way, making them a crappy rageless barbarian in party roles (unless they are clerics or bards and the party benefits from having more bodies).

PvP: This is likely where they shine, you have the PC and two extra bodies for the opponent to handle, and your summons all have respectable AB, damage and HP, with 6 APR unhasted each. There are, of course, situations where they won't be as good, as is with most builds, but they have the added benefit of excellent synergy with party buffers, with the right setup you could get their AB as high as 46, if not higher, while you yourself can get 46 AB without outside buffs. VERY NOTEWORTHY, they CANNOT be dismissed by WoF, all you need to do is take a sip of remove blind/deaf and your squad is good to go.

tldr

Tribal barbarian is niche, it's not amazing, but it's good at what it does (early PvE, swarming PvP). I would love to see more customization given to the tribals in terms of appearance. Giving them the option of picking a weapon type could be an interesting experiment, but I would not think of giving them any extra mechanic buff. Unless you want to see the server swarmed by druids, monks AND tribals.

Lvl 27 tribal stats unarmored(the ITWF attack is missing in the screenshot for some reason, but they later had it)


Lvl 27/3 tribal PC dwarf example (you can still take armor skin, on this case i took epic spot since the final feat is interchangeable and I wanted a look without it)
No stats or misc slots used because I couldnt be assed enchanting each bit, wearing elf armor, wielding a mdamask dwarf axe(I forgot the rune axe existed at the time, so they'd get +1 AB), and adamantine shield.