[Mikan]

Offensive stance only makes you take about 200 more damage. While it's a huge amount against archers, it's almost nothing on a barb (or mages after the update, since armor hardly affects DOTs anymore). Simply put, neither Offensive stance nor Defensive stance have much effect against barbs, because even if you halve their damage with full protection buffs... they'll still do 400 normals, and 800 SC and possibly 1k Ripost.

And that's on a fully buffed Knight who can't use any offensive powers.

This screenshot was probably mainly a combination of STR gear, Onslaught stacking and Fulminating. Onslaught alone can easily push the damage of my non-offensive characters (Knight, Marksman etc.) into the 1k range on players... so imagine Ons stacking on a barb. Someone had a picture of a 10K SouthCross on Vesper from Onslaught stacking before the update.

After the update, STR accounts for over 50% of your attack and does not change with weapon speed anymore. This means that STR stacking (Colossus) etc, is more effective than damage items, and Fulminating multiplies all of this by a flat percentage, it is very powerful.

The only way to survive barbs is and always has been Ao1, which seems to be how NGD wants it.

EDIT: Critical hits completely ignore armor and protections (except the Resist damage and Resist ranged damage), so it wouldn't have mattered what amount of debuffs he had on him, as they would have no effect. They behave like Tear/Break apart and Magma blast.

Regards.