Teach Me How to Barb My Fellow Pillarites

[RequiemArc]

Hey all its me again. Still haven't gotten through the game (I know, but I'm making steady progress!) and am already looking forward to my next character, a Barbarian Fire Godlike. I've crawled through the forums and haven't really seen much discussion on the class in a while, so I was wondering what anyone's advice would be for this kind of character (again please no spoilers). There have been quite the few patches since most of the discussions I've looked and, with mechanics still being my weakest subject, wanted to know if people have noticed some changes. Plus, to be honest, I took a break from the game for a while and am a bit rusty. Loving Act 2 though. Stat builds, talents, abilities, equipment, etc. would be wonderful. The goal here is run up, beat in some face, and (hopefully) light a lot of stuff on fire. Preferably through dual-wielding.

After the initial discussion on peoples thoughts I'm perfectly good with this becoming a place for people to post and store their favorite Barbarian builds for easy reference for other users.

Edited March 2, 2016 by RequiemArc

[peko]

It's late/early so I'm just going to give some very quick pointers.
A dual wield barbarian is a good candidate for attack speed stacking, trying to hit or get close to 0 recovery.

Otherwise what the barbarian excels at is to use on hit/crit effects, as they hit at lot with carnage they get a lot of procs. The same goes for interrupts. In both cases a high perception score is going to be helpful.

 

My current dual wielding barb started out something like this.

Mig - 15

Con - 13

Dex - 15

Per - 10

Int - 15

Res - 10

 

I went with Frenzy, Savage Defiance, Weapon focus, Dual wield, and Vulnerable attack.

There's more to it but that's what I feel is a reasonable start to a dual wielding barbarian.

I went with Weapon focus Noble for Daggers and Rapiers, going for the fastest attacks possible. Another upside to that is that both are accurate weapons so I felt I could leave perception at 10, otherwise I would probably try to squeeze in some Perception.

[Anaeme]

Josh Sawyer has refused to allow Barbarians to succed in this game.

 

How can one class need 4 attributes  (MIG, CON, PER, and INT to be viable), when other classes need 3?

 

If you lower INT, your Frenzy will not last long, 

If you lower MIG, you cant punch through enemy DR

If you lower CON, you die

Without PER you never hit

 

 

Barbarians have been an excercise in frustration for me

[Francis Ironwood]

From what i've tried I don't think barbarians problem is being efficient. It's more of a thematic thing for me. Barbarians work more like Dreadknight type of deal where they slowly whittle down enemies and cause afflictions with carnage. There's really no carnage in carnage. Only slow death or disables.

[KDubya]

If you want to run into a crowd, kick some ass and survive you might want to look into a heavy plate wearing Monk with two fists o' fury. Much more durable than a Barbarian and you still have AoE attacks from the cone of Torment's Reach and the line attack from Flagellant's. A lot easier on the specs as well since a ten intellect will suffice, especially with a +2 item and some food.

 

Barbs are a one trick pony - Carnage - but it is a really nice trick. AoE damage with every melee attack. Nothing clears trash mobs faster than a Barb (or at least nothing that doesn't require resting to get back spells )

 

As Anaeme pointed out you need a lot of stats and a lot really high. If you go for max Perception for the accuracy and interrupts and the max intellect for the area increase to Carnage you can run out of points with everything else at a 10. Not really a death dealer but you will have good CC.

 

For a more pure damage dealer you could drop Perception to ten, use accuracy weapons like spears, maybe shave a few off of intellect and add what you can to Might and Dex. Try for zero recovery.

 

if you were willing to go with two handed instead of dual wield you could go with reach weapons like quarterstaff or pikes. These would let you wear a dress and hide behind the tough melee guys while you hit from the second row. Much more survivability and faster attack speeds.

[Heligor]

Barbarian is my favourite class in the entire game. In my current playthrought i'm using a hearth orlan barb, with 21 per, 18 int, 15 dex, 12 res, 6 might, 6 con. I'm planning to dual wield weapons that prone on crit to control every crowd with minimal effort. I tried this build in another high level game and it worked extremely well.

[Boeroer]

Josh Sawyer has refused to allow Barbarians to succed in this game.

 

How can one class need 4 attributes  (MIG, CON, PER, and INT to be viable), when other classes need 3?

 

If you lower INT, your Frenzy will not last long, 

If you lower MIG, you cant punch through enemy DR

If you lower CON, you die

Without PER you never hit

 

 

Barbarians have been an excercise in frustration for me

Not that again please. Barbs are totally cool. And you can do a lot of different things with them. They just don't excel at soloing and against single targets (but that's ok). But their class ability carnage opens up so many possibilities. For example it's totally cool not to deal a lot of damage if you build an max PER interrupter. You can leave MIG at 3 if you want. Greater Frenzy with max INT will give you +6 for quite some time in return. You will interrupt-lock a whole area after some levels and still deal more (combined) damage than the average fighter can.

Or you can build a sturdy barb with Savage & Stalwart Defiance and a draining weapon.

You can even build a healer-barb who uses Shod-in-Faith and max MIG, CON and INT and dump RES.

Any weapon that has a x% spell chance like Unlabored Blade works best on barbs because it will trigger a lot more often than on any other class.

With carnage you can do a lot of weird things, even build an affliction-immune tank like I showed in this build: The Leech (still works in 3.0 by the way).

Barbs only need deeper knowledge of the mechanics and a bit of thinking out of boundaries. But a classic apporach like Plate + Shod-in-Faith + Tidefall also works great.

I even build one the other day with duplicated Whispers of Yenwood and other +CON items and brought CON to 30 points permanently without resting bonuses or consumables. That means double endurance and health. Together with a fat armor and Veteran's Recovery that guy will not go down so soon, even if his deflection is not top notch.

Maybe barbs are not the best class for beginners because at low levels they fall quickly and also don't hit a lot - but they can be shaped into hilarious builds.

For example a Fire Godlike retaliation barb with high MIG, INT and CON, stacked Retaliation, Potion of Flame Shield and that new retaliation skill that deals raw damage and Blesca's Labour or Edge of Reason pluas Shod-in-Faith will be working very well as a tank. 

Edited March 2, 2016 by Boeroer

[MaxQuest]

If you lower INT, your Frenzy will not last long, 

If you lower MIG, you cant punch through enemy DR

If you lower CON, you die

Without PER you never hit

And then there is also dex.

 

But I suppose there is a possible high-dps build which is actually fine with non-maxed might.

Something like 10/10/12/21/18/7 crit-oriented hearth orlan with battle axes. (for example: Rimecutter and We Toki)

The idea is to max the crit chance and thus dilute the effect which mig has on your damage. 

And things like high acc, Minor Threat, Dire Blessing, Critical Focus, Potion of Merciless Gaze greatly help at that.

 

Worth mentioning is that priest and cipher make great team members for such a barbarian. They not only fix his survivability but can also greatly debuff enemies fortitude and deflection, leading to more crits, more damage, more prones, and thus again to more survivability. Win-win situation.

 

 

With carnage you can do a lot of weird things, even build an affliction-immune tank like I showed in this build: The Leech (still works in 3.0 by the way).

Hah, and I just yesterday was testing Spelltongue + Starcaller combo for a potential barb tank (hearth orlan with maxed per/int/dex and completely dumped might)

With permanently prolonging Dire Blessing and Frenzy, it stuns often, and it was also stunning Forest Lurkers who are usually immune to stuns.

Edited March 2, 2016 by MaxQuest

[Psychevore]

 

 

 

Using a pike or another reach weapon. You could probably swap out the race for Fire Godlike, but Godlikes can't use helmets and that sucks. This build also isn't really aimed at getting hit like a barbarian probably should be (hence the pike), so you can get away with the 9 con. The deflection is so low though you'll get below 50% endurance quickly if you do get hit, so I'd advise getting that cross class recovery talent.

 

And Eder's Armor. Eder's beastly armor. Can swap out for the Ring of Wonder if that hasn't been changed lately.

 

Edit:

 

I haven't played in long time though, my last run of the game was before the White March I (before perception gave accuracy... it used to be my main dump stat ), but I have been keeping up with patch notes to some extent. But the build works fine for now. Granted, I haven't really come far yet, just got to Defiance Bay.

 

If anyone's wondering about the full custom party:

 

 

Base builds without item bonuses:

 

 

Edited March 2, 2016 by Psychevore

[cavemandiary]

Josh Sawyer has refused to allow Barbarians to succed in this game.

 

How can one class need 4 attributes  (MIG, CON, PER, and INT to be viable), when other classes need 3?

 

If you lower INT, your Frenzy will not last long, 

If you lower MIG, you cant punch through enemy DR

If you lower CON, you die

Without PER you never hit

 

 

Barbarians have been an excercise in frustration for me

 

IMO, Perception, while not a dump stat, is not nearly as important as the other ones. If you bring a priest, you're getting atleast +20 accuracy every battle thanks to Devotions for the Faithful. Never dump con, as barbs have low deflection but high health gain from con, so dumping this would require either multiple allies with field triage or constantly resting. Never dump Might either, as a barb is ultimately a damage dealer. Plus it improves savage defiance. Int also doesn't HAVE to be maxed, I believe that after a certain point it becomes difficult to create a radius that extends past your nearest enemies. Granted, it works with both frenzy and savage defiance duration, but still, 15-16 would probably do the trick. Food and resting boni should do the rest.

 

The strongest barb I've ever made was neither an interrupt build nor aoe proc build, just a standard 2h max might max con warrior with Abydons Hammer. At level 16 he had almost 600 endurance, and about 65 damage when below 50% hp and flanked by 2 enemies.

[Ymarsakar]

Any kind of per encounter aoe debuff against deflection or fortitude can be pretty good opening for a barb. The priest's affliction, wizard daze aoe, druid's sunbeam, and cipher's aoe flank power. The ones that are per encounter or that you can keep up the entire battle, would have better effect.

 

Carnage would also work well with doorway pulls, choke points, where you make sure there's a line the enemy can't get around.

[Cragen]

I've had great success so far with the standard max mig and int Barb running the Forgemaster Gloves and building around that.
Only level 7 so far in my current POTD run, but suspect that I will respect when I get the Abydons Hammer. Max might with that hammer just seems to funny. Thor-alike Barbarian smashing faces.
Barbarians from my experience is pretty dependent on gear and party support for added accuracy early on. Things like Sanguine Plate works amazingly well since it stacks with int and Barb talents so as long as you get crit once in a while you pretty much got perma frenzy.

[MountainTiger]

 

 But I suppose there is a possible high-dps build which is actually fine with non-maxed might.

Something like 10/10/12/21/18/7 crit-oriented hearth orlan with battle axes. (for example: Rimecutter and We Toki)

The idea is to max the crit chance and thus dilute the effect which mig has on your damage. 

 

 

 

That's almost exactly what I used for my current Hearth Orlan, intending to be primarily an interrupter. He's also leading the party in damage, though, wielding the Vile Loner's Lance and Cladhaliath (both Durgan enhanced). Debuffs a significant area with Threatening Presence and the Lance's Disorienting, stuns with Cladhaliath, and between crits and Greater Frenzy he still puts out a solid amount of AoE damage. Definitely my favorite character I've run.

[Gairnulf]

Barbarians start too weak to make any sense in using that class. Anyone claiming otherwise must justify their having base deflection equal to the Rogue class, and second tier base accuracy.

 

The large health pool isn't comparable to high deflection in how useful it is to keep you from dying, for the simple fact that enemy recovery times (between attacks) are much too short compared to the barbarian's. Unless your enemies are unarmored or very lightly armored, as a barbarian you have to use a large weapon if you want to get through their DR. Once you equip a large weapon your recovery time becomes very slow compared to their recovery times, and you are quickly drained of endurance and often interrupted. And it is supposed to be "their recovery times" because the barbarian is expected to engage groups.

 

The conclusion is that a meatshield tank just doesn't work well in PoE. A high-deflection tank (the fighter) is a much better option.

[Mocker22]

Barbarians start too weak to make any sense in using that class. Anyone claiming otherwise must justify their having base deflection equal to the Rogue class, and second tier base accuracy.

 

The large health pool isn't comparable to high deflection in how useful it is to keep you from dying, for the simple fact that enemy recovery times (between attacks) are much too short compared to the barbarian's. Unless your enemies are unarmored or very lightly armored, as a barbarian you have to use a large weapon if you want to get through their DR. Once you equip a large weapon your recovery time becomes very slow compared to their recovery times, and you are quickly drained of endurance and often interrupted. And it is supposed to be "their recovery times" because the barbarian is expected to engage groups.

 

The conclusion is that a meatshield tank just doesn't work well in PoE. A high-deflection tank (the fighter) is a much better option.

I disagree ENTIRELY. IMO you will get hit no matter what, especially against the mobs that really matter. Therefore higher DR and items or abilities that heal you are the keys to survival. Barbs do start very slow. But really that's a very small portion of the game. By level 6-7 you can start to form a nice build. I think the starting endurance for barb is a very nice treat. It allows to ignore con a bit more since you need so many stats. With the right items, as long as you have a decent Might you can survive well on healing.

 

IMO many of the more complex, interrupt, or on hit effect builds, starting working a lot better later in the game when you have access to outstanding buffing. I don't really like crit focused builds for a barb until I know I can buff the crap outta his ACC, reliably debuff enemies, and have good enough items to really get a big AoE for carnage. If your not opposed to respeccing try something simple to start with.

 

A basic Tidefall + Shod in faith combo works good as boeroer said. With a solid might score you have a LOT of healing going on. Tidefall also puts out very steady reliable dps as Wounding property is amazing on barbs. With Savage Defiance for Oh Crap moments and some solid plate on you'll be fine. You could have this build going strong by level 7-8.

 

 

On a side note, to those of you barb experts, do you feel that a Interupt build or Prone on Crit build is more reliable CC at higher levels?

[Ymarsakar]

The priest tends to work well with barbarians or a paladin. Dire crits. ACC buffs. Paladin heals and ACC buffs. 

 

My level 4 barbarian was able to tank the mini boss matron in level 3 caed nua. 2 criticals, 1 hit. 4th hit downed em, but it took a long time. Not that I could do any damage given half my party had been "wiped out" by battering ram, due to bad positioning. So the barb and 1-2 guys wasn't going to damage Z druidess.

 

But even with 30 deflection against the 90-105 ACC of the Z matron, the barbarian still lasted long enough for a full party to take good advantage. 140 endurance with high con. I was doing some experimentation, so punted out Eder and Kana, replaced em with npc rogue and npc barbarian. My monk was main tank with 60 def using dual hatchets and cautious attack.

 

As for CC, if barbs can interrupt as well as the Wall of Fire... then yea, I'd go with interrupts.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Ymarsakar

[Anaeme]

PoTD will show you the weaknesses of your character very clearly.

 

Barbarians with their multiple attribute dependencies have been a huge frustration

[Sking]

Hey RequiemArc,

 

I struggled to figure out Barbarians as well. Then this guy (YouTube Link) came from internet heaven and laid it down. Dude is a scientist.

 

I got your back

-Sking

[ottffsse]

I balanced out manaha (classic barb with high might and int average Dex and perception) now for damage, cc and survivability. Main hand strike hard durganized (disoriented on hit) , off hand edge of reason for endurance steal on damage done (purgatory would work too but it isn't superior but exceptional by default), glittering gauntlets for daze on hit, binding rope because as a barb she will be hit regardless. I emphasize afflictions which cannot be resisted (disoriented, dazed, stuck) - yeah she is a very good debilitator and damager now. Sure a barb can do even more damage with BotEP or tidefall but for the overall needs of the party and usefulness this is quite nice.

[Teioh_White]

I agree that Barbs are a one trick pony, and that trick is Carnage. Pretty much the entire rest of their Kit is very underwhelming. But that one trick alone makes them just fine, and probably the best non-caster class at high levels of optimization. There's a reason half of Boer's posts about nutty game breaking things involve carnage. And this is even after Carnage took a big a hit too its cheese!

 

As for how to use, just need to work the accuracy and attack speed formula's, same for any class. Difference is, if you do it right, anything caught in Carnage's AoE is immediately taken out of the fight. Still can't deal well with casters at range, and has no real special ability to not get owned by CC, but everything moving towards your side of the field just runs into a blender.

[Boeroer]

Right. That pretty much sums it up perfectly.

 

Barb = carnage and you have to build around it.