Shattered Kingdoms

I wouldn't agree on that 90% deal. Being able to make the right moves in SK is just as important as having the right buffs and EQ. You can have all the EQ in the world but if you spend your time panicking or brandishing a chill touch staff during combat you're still pretty useless.

Aura of Negation is still an uneccessary and hurtful change on an OOC level. Adding Aura of Negation just says "Hey, all you guys who trained MR and suck because you can't use buffs before a fight? We're going to give you a feature that only screws over your enemies who have actually put in the proper time and effort to have those buffs. Congratulations for rolling a character who is good for nothing but making other players' time less useful." MR barbarians were already very good against hellions, priests, paladins and maybe sorcs, adding AoN just made them even better against those classes even with zero prep, and still at best puts them on even footing with normal melee classes without changing any of the frustrating PvE problems with the build.

On an IC level, the entire reasoning for MR in the very first place was that in the helpfiles it's stated that most barbarians abhor magic. Well, Dulrik went out of his way to actually say that AoN would actually be made more useful if you have MR enchantments on your gear. So now, to be a fully effective MR barb, you have to... use magic. That's unbelievably dumb. There isn't going to be a single MR barb who says "Hey, don't cast heal on me, because I hate magic." They're going to say "Hey, please cast enchant my armor for MR and MP, and please cast heal on me because it still heals me, and please give me mistletoe herbs so I can heal myself with them, you know, through magic. Man I hate magic so much!"

And honestly, it's actually more valid to argue MR from purely a griffarb perspective, because not a single person playing SK wants to spend their time leveling and gearing up a crappy barbarian who has to actually put more time into prep to get buffs, and who still can probably be avoided just by casting invis and laughing. MR is still only an option for playing a character you know is going to die a lot and be crappy overall, and griffons fit the bill perfectly. Playing a non-MR griffon would just be an exercise in frustration, because if you want to be good you're going to have to use magic anyway, which nullifies even the supposedly cool RP style of "I hates magic lolol"

Why is there anything wrong with casting invis and laughing?

On an IC level, the entire reasoning for MR in the very first place was that in the helpfiles it's stated that most barbarians abhor magic. Well, Dulrik went out of his way to actually say that AoN would actually be made more useful if you have MR enchantments on your gear. So now, to be a fully effective MR barb, you have to... use magic. That's unbelievably dumb. There isn't going to be a single MR barb who says "Hey, don't cast heal on me, because I hate magic." They're going to say "Hey, please cast enchant my armor for MR and MP, and please cast heal on me because it still heals me, and please give me mistletoe herbs so I can heal myself with them, you know, through magic. Man I hate magic so much!"