Help me un-gimp my barb.

[pie2655]

After returning to the game after roughly a 18 month break my 17 Barbarian / 2 Fighter is feeling a bit outdated. I have a free LR, and am looking to use it. I'm just not sure what is viable in the current game. I heard AC was revamped, and with the new enhancement system I'm essentially lost. Any and all help/tips is appreciated.

[Jasparion]

It all depends on what you call gimped. Your DPS? Your survivability?

Sadly the main issue with Barbs is survivability. And you can really only fix that easily with Monk or Paladin levels. And that wont work with a Barb...

[Pala-forged]

TR into a non barb. Simple.

[LOOON375]

I tr'd my horc barb into a str based horc bard. And never looked back.

Not as good of damage, but still good enough for EE content and great self healing. I splashed 2 rogue for evasion and traps.

Now it's super survivable, and in the end, I didn't give up TOO much DPS.

The problem with barbs is self healing and survivability. Im sure there are ways to help compensate, but to me it just isn't worth it personally.

And this is coming from someone that absolutely loved playing a pure barb. But I was screwed without a dedicated healer in the group.

[ReaperAlexEU]

for DPS the usual barb feats still apply, but of importance is the cleave line as they will unlock overwhelming critical in the epic levels. spamming cleaves is also a great boost to your DPS due to the +[W] bonuses.

for survivability, well, that one is tough. for easier content farming out the purple knight gloves for 30% healing amp (really easy to farm for in the initial epic levels) combined with silver flame pots will let you power through easy content like EN/EH VON3. my usual stat dumped dorf managed to get all his stats to 11 or above with a few tomes and minimal gear. there are 2 large problems with the silver pots, the crappy stacking size of 10 that eats up backpack space and the run speed penalty. it's not a show stopper though, just need to be a bit tactical when you chug to ensure you're running at full speed between fights as much as you can. things like chugging a pot just before you hit the next group instead of after mopping up the last group help there.

fury of the wild is a great epic destiny, but so too is legendary dreadnought. i've got fury sorted on my barb and am now working on dreadnought. my aim is to merge my cleaves with the dreadnoughts momentum swing and lay waste as there is a lot of synergy there. i'm unsure as to which i'll keep as my main destiny, fury is great for boss fights, dreadnought promises to be great for trash mobs.

for enhancements i stayed with the berserker for the bulk of my points. i did splash in the others to keep my rages time per day nice and high, and to pick up a few other goodies like ear smash. so i still have the crazy high crit multi on a 19-20. others are trying the wider crit threat range of the ravager tree and have reported good things from it. enhancement respecs are cheap, so feel free to mess about to find out what works for you.

if you want a real change of pace check out the BYOH barb thread in this section. there is an interesting build with 4 divine levels (FvS by preference, though cleric would also work) and TWF that gets a healing attack with a 15s cooldown, offhand and double strike hits will also proc a heal hence TWF focus. it will need a bit of gear though to pump the amount it heals up but the great thing about it is it works when fully raged!

[smckelv]

for DPS the usual barb feats still apply, but of importance is the cleave line as they will unlock overwhelming critical in the epic levels. spamming cleaves is also a great boost to your DPS due to the +[W] bonuses.

for survivability, well, that one is tough. for easier content farming out the purple knight gloves for 30% healing amp (really easy to farm for in the initial epic levels) combined with silver flame pots will let you power through easy content like EN/EH VON3. my usual stat dumped dorf managed to get all his stats to 11 or above with a few tomes and minimal gear. there are 2 large problems with the silver pots, the crappy stacking size of 10 that eats up backpack space and the run speed penalty. it's not a show stopper though, just need to be a bit tactical when you chug to ensure you're running at full speed between fights as much as you can. things like chugging a pot just before you hit the next group instead of after mopping up the last group help there.

fury of the wild is a great epic destiny, but so too is legendary dreadnought. i've got fury sorted on my barb and am now working on dreadnought. my aim is to merge my cleaves with the dreadnoughts momentum swing and lay waste as there is a lot of synergy there. i'm unsure as to which i'll keep as my main destiny, fury is great for boss fights, dreadnought promises to be great for trash mobs.

for enhancements i stayed with the berserker for the bulk of my points. i did splash in the others to keep my rages time per day nice and high, and to pick up a few other goodies like ear smash. so i still have the crazy high crit multi on a 19-20. others are trying the wider crit threat range of the ravager tree and have reported good things from it. enhancement respecs are cheap, so feel free to mess about to find out what works for you.

if you want a real change of pace check out the BYOH barb thread in this section. there is an interesting build with 4 divine levels (FvS by preference, though cleric would also work) and TWF that gets a healing attack with a 15s cooldown, offhand and double strike hits will also proc a heal hence TWF focus. it will need a bit of gear though to pump the amount it heals up but the great thing about it is it works when fully raged!

Best advice so far. EDs are the main key if you are still pure melee. Lots of off-heal options there. Not as good a splashing blue-line, but still a max-dps barbarian. Also stunning blow is a survival tool FYI