The Vampbarian

[SocratesBastardSon]

I should have posted this build a lot sooner because it made a bit more sense pre-u24. That being said, there is still a niche for it in which it dominates: small group teamplay.

The Vampbarian (VB) is a build that was developed by one of our Band of Gypsys guildies, Repyr. The original motivation was to create a way to get through Barbarian lives with less pain, as Barbarians u23 and earlier were not fun. We discovered a very effective synergy between some less obvious components that makes for a very potent build. As for u24, a divine-Barbarian build would be best for solo play now, whereas a VB pre-u23 was superior in my opinion.

Note: This is a self-buffing melee build, not an offensive spellcaster nor a party buffer. In this description I'm going to focus on elements that are specific to the build; elements that are important but are problems related to all melee or light-armor builds I won't spend much time on since any experienced player will be familiar with the issues.

The key elements are:
- Team play: several of us tend to tr together so death aura on undead forms stacks impressively (we keep lesser and regular DA running nearly all the time)
- Single Weapon Fighting with an orb (Skull of Madstone, specifically; which means nothing in off-hand until lvl 12)
- Multiple Cleaves all proc'ing together
- Minimum of 7 levels of Wiz so you have access to both Death Auras and Neg Energy Burst
- Essential spells: Lesser Death Aura, Death Aura, Rage; also important are: Neg En Burst, Blur, Displacement, Haste, Sonic Blast (stunning mobs then diving in with Auras and cleaves is a blast)
- Khopesh is the best weapon choice, especially when combined with crit enhancements Barbarians have access to, but it is not essential for the build to work

Note that Barbarian rage enhancements modify the Rage spell; and in addition, Undead are immune to the fatigue effects from Barbarian Rage.

Enhancements:
- 11 points in Pale Master in order to activate vampire
- EK's Eldricht Strike for another cleave
- 11 points in Occult Slayer for Ear Smash + Knockout and Arcane Encumbrance
- 12 points into Harper for Strategic Combat II; essential for Rogue splashes, optional for pure melee VBs

Then there are two paths we have tended to follow:
- EK up to Tensers, or
- Occult Slayer to t5 bonds

I also include Hardy Rage from Ravager and Extra Rage from FB
Cloak of Night: see below.

Feats:
- Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave
- The entire Single Weapon Fighting line
- Improved Crit: Blade
- Exotic: Khopesh
- Extend Spell and Imp Mental Toughness from Wiz bonus feats

Races:
Any race

Skills:
Heal (don't bother with spellcraft)

Variations:
- Rogue splash (2 levels is plenty) is very effective, especially with Harper's Strategic Combat
- Fighter splash for more feats

Equipment:
- Elemental Water Khopesh
- GS Khopesh (Pos III, Lit II; Occult Metalline makes Min II unnecessary).
- Skull of Madstone
- Ring of the Stalker
- (Spare Hand if Rogue)
- Shroud of the Abbott
- and grab a stack of Inflict Serious Wounds pots from the House J potion seller

A VB is working at it's most effective when you have 2-4 people with auras, raging, and chaining multiple cleaves all together. If you have two people, the second person should take a Rogue splash for trapping. If 3, another pure melee VB. If 4, a traditional insta-kill PM is nice for ranged attack. In case it's not obvious, keeping everyone together so everyone is healing each other is important. Death Aura heals and dishes out decent damage so this is a significant resource for offense and defense.

There's very little that will stand up for more than a few seconds; I felt like a flying Cuisinart when we did this. So, yes, it is a zerg-friendly build. We have played this build solo, but u24 probably makes this less optimal for solo play since u24 provides better self-healing options. Again, I should have posted this sooner, but it is still a more-than viable, and quite possibly the optimal build if you run with more than one person.

[SocratesBastardSon]

The Achilles heel of this build is obvious: light casters.

You may have noticed I did not include the primary defense against light casters provided in enhancements: Cloak of Night. The reason for this is that Cloak of Night reduces the effectiveness of Death Aura as well as light damage. So if you're in a light-caster heavy quest, like Run With the Devils, you'll probably do just as well turning off Shroud of the Vampire as having Cloak of Night active, and that way you save on APs.

That being said, for the most part whenever we did Run With The Devils, we stayed in vampire form with auras up. We just had to be a bit more careful about zerging and we did fine. Yes, we had a couple deaths, but that was the exception when it came to heroic level questing: deaths were rare. But light casters are clearly always our first target, and they usually don't long enough to get off more than one shot before we took them down.

To be honest, so few things were actually a threat it was kind of fun having something we had to be careful around for a change. ;)

[SocratesBastardSon]

I'll let some of the others chime in on this if they want since I had the least amount of experience running a VB in epic. We have taken VBs through multiple epic reincarnations and they did fine in ee content all the way to level 28.

The best destinies are Shadowdancer and Divine Crusader. I twisted in Embrace the Light, set up Cloak of Shadows, and had no more worries about light damage. Adding a Shroud of the Abbott or Phiarlan Epic Mirror Cloak is even better.

Get yourself a Thunderforged Khopesh with a Meteoric Star Ruby and you're good to go.

[domnslave]

Very interesting concept and I can see how well it would synergize with 2-3 other's just like it. I'm curious what the divine spin off would be, obviously making use of cons. ground come epic. But before then would you end up devoting the t5 slot to positive energy aura?

[SocratesBastardSon]

Very interesting concept and I can see how well it would synergize with 2-3 other's just like it. I'm curious what the divine spin off would be, obviously making use of cons. ground come epic. But before then would you end up devoting the t5 slot to positive energy aura?

I have a buddy currently experimenting with a divine splash for heroic content. I'm not convinced at this point it's going to create much additional value, but I'm glad he's trying it out. When I find out more I'll post something. One benefit to a divine splash is access to a higher heal skill, which impacts necromancy spells. And for epic content, cons. ground could be useful, but I have not tried using it. My epic destinies on this build have centered around the primal sphere and shadowdancer and dreadnought in martial, both of which work well. If you give it a go, lmk what you think.

As for pos energy aura, this build would not use it since we run in undead form almost exclusively. The idea here was to leverage death aura with a group of melee types. Death aura, of course, not only heals pale masters, it also damages a larger number of opponents than pos aura, which damages only undead. Combining the damage death aura plus lesser death aura inflicts and throwing in lots of cleaves gives you lots of area effect damage.

That's not to say you couldn't do a Barb/Cleric build with pos energy aura, and given all of the new barb enhancements it may work very well, but again, that's not the concept here.