Why am I so terrible at Barbarian.

[Torm51]

So I have never had a lot of success with Barbarians.  I know there is a thread here discussing them and I tried following it but on my last successful ToI/PoTD I ended up shelving the guy and restricting him to guarding Caed Nua lol.  In this last run I didn't know spirits were immune to KO and we all died at Caed Nua.  I had made a Fire Godlike Barb she was level 3 with Frenzy and Blooded...I figured I would play that wreckless type with Blooded, carnage, eventually savage Defiance, the fire godlike racial with retaliation but it never get that far.  Needless to say blooded at low levels while perma stunned by phantoms is terrible.

 

My first guy just didn't seem to have any oomph like melee rogues do...I know its supposed to be AOE damage what th Barb does but sometimes I just want one thing dead FAST....can they not do that?  They seem to lack active single hard hitting hits...hell even a Paladin seems to be able to burst better with Flames of Devotion....I guess you could take Barbaric Blow? Is it any good?

 

I will try again today and restart my TC play through (I know ghosts are immune to KD now!).  I want to try and Duel Wielder with Ruffian Barb (Sabres and clubs) meaning I can put her in plate and she can still swing fast....I was thinking stats like , 16 Might, 17 Per and 15 Int and leaving the rest at 10 (I don't really dump stats).  Can any barb pros help me?  I think I am going to abandon "wreckless" fire godlike blooded type spec...I will run a priest so Brute Force/Threat Presence build can work.

[Boeroer]

Barbaric Blow is not so good. Everything that is great about barbs evolves around carnage.

 

Two handers and Vuln. Attack are great for AoE dps because carnage has only 66% dmg of the original hit and you don't want to lose all the damage because of enemy DR.

 

Draining on weapons works great with carnage. Great healing source. You can get Gaun's Share in the Tempel of Eothas.

 

You get the best results (in my opinion) when you build your Barb as an Interrupt Machine. You can lock whole groups with Interrupts until they are dead - and there's no immunity against that. Make sure to bring some concentration/resolve debuffs like frighten and terrify.

[Torm51]

Barbaric Blow is not so good. Everything that is great about barbs evolves around carnage.

 

Two handers and Vuln. Attack are great for AoE dps because carnage has only 66% dmg of the original hit and you don't want to lose all the damage because of enemy DR.

 

Draining on weapons works great with carnage. Great healing source. You can get Gaun's Share in the Tempel of Eothas.

 

You get the best results (in my opinion) when you build your Barb as an Interrupt Machine. You can lock whole groups with Interrupts until they are dead - and there's no immunity against that. Make sure to bring some concentration/resolve debuffs like frighten and terrify.

Too bad spirits are immune to frighten now! (makes sense).

[Torm51]

Barbaric Blow is not so good. Everything that is great about barbs evolves around carnage.

 

Two handers and Vuln. Attack are great for AoE dps because carnage has only 66% dmg of the original hit and you don't want to lose all the damage because of enemy DR.

 

Draining on weapons works great with carnage. Great healing source. You can get Gaun's Share in the Tempel of Eothas.

 

You get the best results (in my opinion) when you build your Barb as an Interrupt Machine. You can lock whole groups with Interrupts until they are dead - and there's no immunity against that. Make sure to bring some concentration/resolve debuffs like frighten and terrify.

The only thing I don't like about 2handed Barb is that he has to be in lighter armor OR invest heavily in Dex.  You can put him in plate go DW and he will still be fast.  I guess you cant have everything.  Didn't you see Duel Wield Sabers was the best DPS barb?  or were you just talking AOE damage on the post? 

 

What does a barb do when you are fighting say just a Dragon? Once the adds are dead?  Is he just an above average damage dealer?

Edited December 10, 2015 by Torm51

[Boeroer]

Dual sabres are good. Any weapon that does high damage and/or has some disabling effect is good. Besides that: Frenzy gives you +33% attack speed. That's ok with a two hander even if you wear thicker armor. You only need to put on heavy armor at the beginning. Later hide armor and the like will do. And you can have some nice defensive ablilities/talents like the Yell, One Stands Alone, Threatening Presence and Savage/Stalwart Defiance.

 

Against dragons: he will cook the meal for the guys that come back to camp after they slew the beast. Barbs vs. dragons is a tragic drama.

But they are nice mob killers. They are like rogues, just the other way round... 

[Torm51]

Well I guess he will definitely annihilate the Xaurips ASAP and the Mind controllers that the Adra Dragon has.  Also the Alpine Dragon fight is hard because he has a CRAP ton of adds.  I see value in chewing up those adds ASAP as they are what makes the fight less straight forward...or you can you just Charm adds and the dragon with a Wizard...hahah.  After the adds are dead he can still debuff I guess.  Although now I am not sure if Dragons are immune to Sicken lol.

[Raven Darkholme]

Haven't read everything, but ...

Last time I tried to solo with barb was before 2.0.

Accuracy was bad so it sucked.

Should be better now, but single target dps is not barbarians specialty.

Carnage is as Boroer said his thing.

[Boeroer]

If all immunities can be damped with Arcane Dampener, then "Hello again Repulsing Seal, where have you bee... whohaa" says the dragon.

[SamHam]

Meh, alpine dragon adds seems so much more susceptible to electric storm. Now that I think of it, as do all groups of enemies

[mosspit]

I have tried a 2H WF Adventurer barb, a dual WF Peasant barb, a dual WF Ruffian barb and a dual WF Knight barb. The thing about barbs is that they are highly item dependent I feel. So they take a longer time to come "online" than most. Before that, you probably will not notice them making significant contribution to a battlefield. Their early game is quite unimpressive. Before lvl5, they are also quite squishy and I had to play them like rogues just so they don't fall unconscious often.

 

And since they inherently have lower acc than most frontliners and carnage itself lowers acc even more, you need high Per just to overcome this. Especially so if you use on-crit proc weapons. Attack speed is also important as mentioned. You will want high atk speed to get the mobs to stay interrupted/cc'ed between your attacks, and you also need speed to compensate for the slower swinging of 2H weapons should you want the higher dmg. My latest playthrough I even forgo Frenzy to use Potions of DAoM instead since the potions gives higher attack speed increase and suppressed the ias from Frenzy. So decent Per and Dex investment are kind of needed. They also need other stats to be honest. For Int for example, I only have 2 points in there and supplement it with +2 int item and a ring of overseeing.

 

Oh yeah, I really like Barb with the St Ydwen's Redeemer I made my Barb an Island Aumaua because of that.

Edited December 11, 2015 by mosspit

[Boeroer]

Try an interrupt build with either Shatterstar or the Vile Loner's Lance. Both have a huge interrupt bonus (1 sec instead of 0.5) that's kind of secret since it's not a listed enchantment. If you add a small shield, put on a not-too-thick armor and enchant these three with durgan steel. Take Interrupting Blows and use Frenzy and Yell/Shout and it's awesome. Both weapons you can get early, and you don't need superhigh carnage-ACC for a solid interrupt rate. The shield adds survivability.

 

It's true: barbs are bad at the beginning and are item dependent. But they are so much fun later on.

[mosspit]

Indeed. My previous reply might seem a tad negative towards the Barb. But as Boeroer said, they are quite fun once your build comes together. It is quite satisfying to go through the barb's early game, slowly accumulating the items, skills and talents needed and then experience the way the same barb rekt stuff once things are in place. It is worthwhile to stick with one through the game imo.

[limaxophobiacq]

In addition to being item dependant, barbs also strongly benefit from buffs if you want them to really shine. F.ex. if you're running them with a small shield as an interrupting off-tank, Crowns for the Faithful not only gives them a defensive bonus like it does for all tanks and off-tanks, but also gives them a big bonus to their offence by increasing carnage AoE and their interrupts. Barbarian with a priest and barbarian without a priest are quite far appart in effectiveness.

 

As a class, barbarians have pretty bad innate stats, and beyond their starting ability and savage defiance their abilities aren't all that great (compared to what say a rogue gets), but their starting ability is great and has huge synergy with items and buffs. The class is really all about carnage and finding something it synergizes well with.

[Boeroer]

So right. Priest's Crowns of the Faithful & Barb = big love.

 

Not only this buff is great for barbs (like limaxophobiacq pointed out - and it truly is). But also Painful Interdiction + Threatening Presence + Brute Force is a great combo.

 

Throw an invocation-based chanter with the lvl-1-concentration-phrase plus the lvl-2-frightening-phrase (or use Devine Terror) into the mix  - who also uses the terrify-invocation. He will smash the concentration of foes on the ground while debuffing their ACC which helps staying alive enormously. People often prefer things like stun/paralyze and so on - but forget that these things do not last very long. Constant Sickened (barb), Frightened (chanter) and occasional Weakened (priest) and Terrified (chanter) are very strong, long lasting debuffs that help your offense AND defense and make your barb a true AoE interrupt monster.

 

Now give your barb maxed DEX and INT and put on a Ring of Overseeing, the Dunryd Demon, one of the long-interrupt-but-average-speed weapons (the Vile Loner's Lance is truly great since it has 1 sec interrupt, inherent +5 ACC AND causes -5 defenses on hit with carnace, that's like +10 ACC to all your hits).

 

These three buddies rule the battelfield. The huge AoE power-interrupts will stunlock every mobster around the barb, the others can just walk around and finish them off. You can add a glass cannon rogue or ranger with max damage per hit to clip them all one by one while they jerk around. It's fun and low micro. And your rogue will not collapse every 5 seconds like he used to.

 

Maybe you guessed it: I totally love barbs. :D  You can build them in so many ways and they have such great synergies with other classes. Maybe I will once do a [PARTY BUILD] instead of a [CLASS BUILD].

Edited December 11, 2015 by Boeroer

[mosspit]

Well, I used a Barb without a priest in my no-caster run before. Still okay I guess. Priest is simply a huge combat modifier for the entire team so no surprise that Barb effectiveness is greatly increased.

 

My thought process for barbs is this: If there is a new weapon with an interesting on-hit effect, put it on a barb

Edited December 11, 2015 by mosspit