Shattered Kingdoms

You're right, clearly the only reason that he 2-rounded you is because he's an MR barb and not because he's a hammer member who deals tons of damage to darkies. Clearly, because my hammer mercenary gnome was tanked by a human merc with high-level protection, SA, haste, <insert cabal spell> and spam heals, your human barbarian should be able to out-tank a griffon hammer barbarian even though he eats a charge while prone, with just sanc and without any healing.

It's just that pesky AoN, that's what did it.

He doesn't work half as well without the ability to 100% of the time remove buffs. Any unbuffed character is going to eat it. There are tons of logs of newbs getting shanked because they don't believe in buffs, and stand front row. The ability to destroy buffs as effectively as aura of negation does completely changes the way the game can be played because it actually is an ability with quite a bit of cheese on it.

But like with most things that is added in the game, there is little thought in how it's implemented.

What's the difference between aura of negation and an ethereal dispeller, then?

dispel magic has a saving throw. Aura of negation does not. Also aura of negation is very, very cheap to maintain. I think last I checked it took 3-4% of a barbarians mana pool, and they don't even have impressive pools to begin with. So they can pretty much keep it up permanently.

Right off the bat, I would say one works much MUCH faster then the other. Secondly I would say that ethereal dispellers are dealing damage at the same time, so if you happen to get one on you it is easy enough to get out.

Ardith is going for the Kinohki award here.

If MR barbs are so off the wall broken, why didn't you make your barbarian MR? HoL does more damage to darkies. Did you know that? The way you are arguing with Edoras makes it sound like you do not. Also, AoN is not a guarantee to eliminate every single buff. Like everything you've been arguing about, there is little thought into how the game actually works. You just cannot accept that you lost and so you have to blame it on a bug.

I thought you were supposed to be tough. What is tough about this Nile River of tears?

I can assure you a lot of thought and play testing went into it. It was clearly intended as a disruptional change to challenge the supremacy of super-buffed characters and it looks to have succeeded there.

That's not to claim that it is perfectly balanced. Particularly as players learn better and better ways to optimize their barbs, it may need to be scaled back. But we had to err on the power side, because players like Ardith had been laughing at MR barbs as "unplayable" for years.

What's that called? Irony? Poetic justice?

Hilarious!

Swashbucklers and rogues have been laughed as unplayable, and they haven't been getting anything worthwhile.

Your play testers are bad then.