bardbarian question

[der_kluge]

My TR'd Bardbarian is currently 6/5 bard/barb.

My plan was to go 8/12 to pick up Frenzied Berserker II.

But FB II seems lackluster, and now I'm wondering if it might be better to go 9/11 to pick up Inspire Greatness, while still retaining Greater Rage at barbarian 11?

Thoughts?

[Lyzernn]

Not very experienced in the multi-class section but inspire greatness doesn't seem worth the levels you'd lose. It's just +2 Attack, and any Bard can cast it easily.

[karl_k0ch]

I'm not a great friend of changing builds while leveling.

My opinions:
Go 8 Bard, or 14 Bard. The latter grants better to-hit and damage for everyone.
Both Warchanter and FB are rather feat-starved. The 9th level of bard adds amost nothing. Consider splashing Fighter, if you don't want to go 8brd/12 brb or 14brd/6brd.

Supreme Cleave seems to be popular among fellow barbarians, though. And the additional Crit damage doesn't sound too bad, too.

[Cam_Neely]

I love both of these classes, but on their own. I think (unless you are splashing barb for the Past life extra rage power) 18 Barb and 14 Bard are both minimums I would take of either class.

Ive spoken a bit in other pieces how I dont like the inflexibility that being raged on a bard brings, and that was with a splash of just 2 barb levels. Even more and you are losing alot of a bards abilities (casting and scroll tossing)

[TheDjinnFor]

My TR'd Bardbarian is currently 6/5 bard/barb.

My plan was to go 8/12 to pick up Frenzied Berserker II.

But FB II seems lackluster, and now I'm wondering if it might be better to go 9/11 to pick up Inspire Greatness, while still retaining Greater Rage at barbarian 11?

Thoughts?

I cannot think of any reason why you'd make such a deep multiclass on a barbarian and a bard. When I read this thread I was expected 16 bard 2 fighter 2 barbarian or something along those lines. Maybe you can make a 15 bard/5 barbarian and then LR/TR the build into a 16/4 or 18/2. Rage stops you from using bard spellcasting, including scroll use.

Anyways, FB isn't bad, you get supreme cleave & +1 crit multiplier on rolls of 19-20, in a nutshell. Much better than Inspire Greatness. Supreme cleave has had its animation time evaluated and now leads to ~15% more attacks per minute when spammed in combination with regular attacks. That's tons of AoE damage and solid single-target DPS at the cost of about 10 HP per second; significant, sure, but healer permitting it's pretty awesome to use in say a mass of 5 held mobs.

And the crit multiplier is good too, boosting your base damage by 10%. It doesn't affect burst/blast abilities, though, which is a shame.