Current wisdom concerning "classic" barbaric tanks?

[Ben No.3]

I just realised I never gave dragons maw to a barbarian. Furthermore, I realised I had no idea how to build that barbarian. Anything I came up with I found to slow or not hitting hard enough. But there must be a good barb+shield damage dealing tank right?

 

In more clear words:

I'm looking for a tank/DD hybrid, preferably with focus on DD... Looking not for something like the leech but a more "classic"/"old school" approach... If possible a barbarian tank with dragons maw and medium armour.

 

Any advice is welcome

Edited October 26, 2016 by Ben No.3

[JackalTornMoons]

Here's what I would start with:

 

Abilities:

 

Barbaric Yell

Savage Defiance

One Stands Alone

Thick-Skinned

Threatening Presence

Heart of Fury

Dragon Leap

Barbaric Retaliation

 

Talents:

 

Weapon and Shield Style

Veteran's Recovery

Stalwart Defiance (does anybody know if this would modify the Savage Defiance from Dragon's Maw?   I'm not an expert on what buffs stack in this game, so this talent might be worthless )

Hold the Line (depending on how many tanks you'll be playing with, you could respec this or Stalwart Defiance out for Accurate Carnage when you get Dragon's Maw)

Weapon Focus (Your style of choice, I'd probably choose Noble and use Spelltongue since it synergizes well with Heart of Fury)

Superior Deflection

Bear's Fortitude

Body Control

 

Grab a healing amplification item and enough survival for at least healing recovery II, and you're gonna be pretty hard to take down.

 

The main problem I see is that you'll pretty much need every stat, other than maybe dex.

 

If retaliation still triggers carnage in 3.0 (haven't tested it so I'm not sure) I'd focus on grabbing as much retaliation equipment as possible.

 

I believe Heart of Fury procs bashing.

Edited October 25, 2016 by JackalTornMoons

[Boeroer]

Hold the line is totally worthless in my opinion, but to each his own.

 

Barb tanks work really well. You not only can amass a lot of endurance and health, but the deflection is also nice enough after some levels. THe best thing is that he can debuff enemies' ACC in an AoE: with Frighten (-10), Terrify (-20), a bit with Threatening Presence and also with Minor Fatigue on hit via Captain Vicollo's Anger (unique hatchet). This way he can raise the survivability of his team members, too.

 

Dragon's Maw works really well with Heart of Fury, you will not deal as many damage as with Badgradr's Barricade or with a dual sabre setup, but you will heal completely because of Taste of the Hunt - and the damage through it is also good. Not top notch like dual sabres, but really good. In addition, if everything goes bad, you'll also have another use of Savage Defiance when your endurance drops under 50%.

 

Retaliation doesn't trigger carnange anymore. This was nerfed a long time ago, I can't remember tha patch. It was 1.something.

 

When I'm done with my current playthrough I will post a barb tank build, named "The Golden Dragon". I just don't have that much time to play atm, so you'll have to wait a little longer. But most abilites/talents JackalTornMoons suggested I took as well.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Boeroer

[Ben No.3]

Thanks to both of you

What stats would you recommend? Also Boeroer, how about a little sneak preview? Maybe a teaser? and where do I find that hachet?

Edited October 25, 2016 by Ben No.3

[JerekKruger]

Hold the line is totally worthless in my opinion, but to each his own.

 

Agreed. The only class that really seems to get anything from Engagement is a Fighter using Overbearing Guard (there's a Lady of Pain variant taking advantage of this), but even then I don't think it's worth spending a Talent point on getting +1 Engagement (thought Andrea disagrees so what do I know )

 

Captain Vicollo's Anger (unique hatchet).

 

I am not familiar with this weapon, and neither the Wiki, nor Gamebanshee have it listed. Where does it come from and what does it do?

[Boeroer]

It's from a WM II bounty (Brynlod the Pirate) and causes Minor Fatigue on hit (for 6 sec). In that encounter you also get Wind's Arm if I'm not mistaken. It's a unique pollaxe with the Zephyr aura.

It is in the wiki, but not listed under unique weapons, but under hatchets.

 

Minor Fatigue causes –10 ACC, - 5 to all defenses and *0.9 to max endurance. And it stacks with every other ACC debuff.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Boeroer

[Ben No.3]

Does coordinating also work for every carnage attack? Or just engagement?

Edited October 25, 2016 by Ben No.3

[Boeroer]

Do you mean the coordinating enchantment on weapons that gives +4 ACC and +25% damage? It only works on the target that is attacked by a fellow team member. Can't say if the carnage attacks also profit from this if a team member attacks an enemy in carnage-range of yours.

[Raven Darkholme]

It's from a WM II bounty (Brynlod the Pirate) and causes Minor Fatigue on hit (for 6 sec). In that encounter you also get Wind's Arm if I'm not mistaken. It's a unique pollaxe with the Zephyr aura.

 

It is in the wiki, but not listed under unique weapons, but under hatchets.

 

Minor Fatigue causes –10 ACC, - 5 to all defenses and *0.9 to max endurance. And it stacks with every other ACC debuff.

I just found these items and they seem pretty op to me.

Wouldn't the zephyr Aura be the dream of any interrupt barb?

[limaxophobiacq]

Zephyr has to hit vs. Will first though,  and I think the longer interrupt and how much easier it is to have faster attack speed with dual-wielding with Vile Loner or Mosquito or Shatterstar would make a bigger difference than +20 interrupt.

[Boeroer]

You can reduce the will defense with a frightening or even terrifying yell/shout and Threatening Presence. With those two the zyphyr aura will hit most of the time. But yeah - the weapon is too slow to lock enemies comletely with interrupts.

 

If you have a party, a better setup is to use a chanter who wields it and also chants "Thick grew Their Tongues". Then use a wizard with Expose Vulnerabilities/the Golden Gaze together with an interrupt barb who aims for 0 recovery with that dual warhammer setup or Vile Loner's etc. You will stack a lot of concentration debuffs and both wizard and barb can then interrupt-lock enemies in an AoE.

[Dr <3]

After some experiments my opinion is that stun locking or prone locking is easyer to achive and gives you far better "rewards" than go for interrupt-locking.

[Boeroer]

That is true. But nobody says that you can't do both. Normally a character who is good at scoring crits also has a high interrupt value because of high PER.

[Jojobobo]

Minor Fatigue causes –10 ACC, - 5 to all defenses and *0.9 to max endurance. And it stacks with every other ACC debuff.

Is the -5 defence part still true? I know when I first pitched this idea, I was going off the wiki - which we all know is the ultimate source of all truthful and accurate information. However, after getting fatigue in the game, I notice that the -5 defence part is now missing. However however, that doesn't mean to say that the game still doesn't use an outdated form of fatigue for applying it to enemies on that weapon - so it might still also cause the defence debuff? It should be easy to spot when using any other weapon, as their Deflection should shift by +5.

 

Also, was using Captain Vicollo's Anger the best weapon you found to be paired with Dragon's Maw? I know it's the one I originally suggested for the build, but at some stage you recommended Purgatory for the endurance drain - which I thought was pretty neat. I guess with the sabre change coming into effect in 3.04 maybe it's now not worth it, and the 5 deflection shift for the Barbarian coupled to the 10 accuracy debuff for himself and every else in the party (more with the fear effects) is pretty sweet - but I still didn't know if you'd come up with anything else in terms of outlandish weapons?

Edited October 26, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Ben No.3]

I was thinking I would use forgotten tears of the beloved (flail from one of the first WM bounties). It looked great for this build: Dazed is a nice debuff, especially with carnage, it has some nice spellbinds (prayer against treachery, surpressor affliction) that can be really useful, graze to hit means that I won't need to invest into per, and still trigger dazed (as it is on both crit and hit, at least according to gamebanshee).

 

Flails also have a nice development for uniques... Early on you got gaun's share, then unforgiven and then forgotten tears or starcaller.

It is also a small weapon, so it's fast, but the look still fits an barbarian (very important ). Since a flail does not need very high acc you don't need to heavily invest in per and go for Dex.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Ben No.3

[Jojobobo]

I was thinking I would use forgotten tears of the beloved (flail from one of the first WM bounties). It looked great for this build: Dazed is a nice debuff, especially with carnage, it has some nice spellbinds (prayer against treachery, surpressor affliction) that can be really useful, graze to hit means that I won't need to invest into per, and still trigger dazed (as it is on both crit and hit, at least according to gamebanshee).

 

Flails also have a nice development for uniques... Early on you got gaun's share, then unforgiven and then forgotten tears or starcaller.

It is also a small weapon, so it's fast, but the look still fits an barbarian (very important ). Since a flail does not need very high acc you don't need to heavily invest in per and go for Dex.

I'd still think the hatchet is a better end game choice, as the fatigue accuracy debuff stacks with the Dazed or Frightened/Terrified accuracy debuffs you can create - the flail doesn't do this. The fatigue accuracy debuff is also on any kind of hit, so graze/hit/crit - which sets the benchmark bottom of the barrel for getting a proc. I would say that I'd consider it extremely late game due to the difficulty of the encounter, but there's a lot of weapons you can use on the way like Cladhaliath or the Vile Loner's Lance that benefit from WF Peasant.

 

On the flip side, the whole graze to hit conversion as you point out means you get a nice number of hits for the effect to proc, and again as you say getting hits in general is a lot less hard than the on-crit status weapons. I'd probably steer away from full tankiness for such a build (because I would say it can be done better by other means) and make a two weapon DPS build with Guan's Share or Starcaller as you say - the (hopefully) constant Daze will make up a little for the lack of Deflection, or you could always aim for relatively good Deflection (calculating in the debuffs) for a two weapon MC, with a Barbarian's huge health I think this would be a good way to go. With Starcaller in particular, for those you don't crit and get the Stun proc on, you have a good chance of getting the Daze if you hit fast enough - so it would be an interesting pairing.

 

Just my two cents, it's quite a departure from a tank I know 

[Ben No.3]

Heh, that's fine I'm looking for some way to combine DD and tank in a barbarian, and my problem was always not enogh acc or not enough speed, so I'm putting my hope in flails. I also wanted a fast weapon that looks cruel enough, and a hatchet doesn't do that but hey, that's just taste

 

Edit: also speaking realistically, wielding to flails might be quite a challenge... Wielding one is already hard enough

Also, it's "only" a 10% chance to daze a single target... Even with carnage, the shouts/screams are still worth it, even if only as openers, or to affect back liners, etc.... But yeah, purley from a powergame-perspective the hachet is better

Edited October 26, 2016 by Ben No.3

[Boeroer]

You are already dazing with Dragon Leap, so you don't need the flail actually

[Ben No.3]

You are already dazing with Dragon Leap, so you don't need the flail actually

Details Boeroer, details... I'll just keep on telling myself it's worth it keeping enemies consta-dazed (if all strings rip, I can still just use starcaller)

Edited October 26, 2016 by Ben No.3

[Slack83er]

Ben, I've read thus far, this is interesting idea indeed. Having a "less savage" barbarian with shield may be fun. Let me know, once you tride, how it fares!

[Ben No.3]

I will most certainly