Oh, those rascally barrels!

[Sir_Eldras]

If barrels simply did less damage I could see it being a solution to your problem.  Being able to completely obliterate a wave is ridiuclous, but what if it only weakened them to a point where we could deal with them easier (like many teams currently do for Fatsods and Followers).  If instead of blowing up ALL of the Prince's Huscarls it instead made them much easier to kill (maybe one good hit's worth of health remaining) it could be a viable solution to the abuse.  Even if people placed two barrels, that would still be requiring twice as much to achieve the same result, and barrels aren't exactly easy to get. 

There could even be a possibility of coding it in a way that it takes away a set percentage of health from every Nord it hits instead of doing a set amount of damage.  This would be especially restrictive of abuse if it were made that barrels can only take away that set amount of health once.  This would mean blowing a barrel would take away (80%?) health from a group of Nords, and blowing a second would not affect the ones already hit and only affect ones that have not been hit yet.  This would stop people accidentally barreling bosses, stop entire waves from being blown away, and annihilate the abuse.

Nice compromise. I know that people love using them especially on prince runs, as it makes it easier and faster to get to wave 20, but they are OP.