Q-staff barbarian

[Sunnie]

Doable or not? It's either that or a 6/6/8 split with rogue and artificer using repeaters for the past life, but I would like to play a "proper" THFing barbarian once. I just can't stand how two-handed fighting looks in general, it's like staggering around drunkenly. Only the q-staff looks good.


My tentative plan for a q-staff user is 15 barb/3 rogue/2 fighter OR 15 barb/4 rogue/1 fighter. Ravager's Blood Strength will probably be more useful than Staff Specialization from the TA tree, though the increased crit multiplier and threat range would be nice to have. The question is how deep I need to go into the TA tree.
Tier 4 gives access to No Mercy, 30% extra damage to helpless opponents, but loses me a feat from fighter level 2. If No Mercy stacks with Bully from Ravager and Sense Weakness from FotW it would probably be worth it, if they don't stack I believe the extra feat will be better, has someone tested if they stack or not?

Furthermore, with the high attack speed of q-staves and the doublestrike bonus from Quick Strike, how useful are the cleaving feats? I must admit I haven't really followed the development on that front, I recall that cleave and great cleave used to not cause extra attacks from doublestrike, is that still the case?
Does doublestrike cause extra glancing blows on normal attacks? It probably should, but in this game it's sometimes hard to tell.

[LordTigerDawn]

I am playing one right now.

Twelve barb, five rogue, three druid...

Rogue for the staff spec, druid for fatal harrier, rest in barb... Highest eps toon I have played in a long time. I would recommend if going epic lvls, if not your idea would be fun. Staff spec is better if you have sticks with a bigger threat range, they only really show up in epic levels.

Otherwise you only need two rogue lvls... And will regret not just using axes the whole time.

[elcagador]

Rogue splash for traps is always a good option, also can use know the angles for some int to dmg (although very tight on action points, between ravager, frenzied, acrobat, occult and harper). I probably would go with18 barbarian for death frenzy, also blood strength is supposed to work with Barbarian levels so the more Barb levels, the more self heal from that enhancement. Also 2 rogue give you the basic for staff dmg with thieft acrobatics, quick strike and possibly haste boost. Cleaves are always useful for cleaving waves of enemies, also for reset of momentum swing and lay waste on epics. Using heavy armor for prr/mrr would probably be better than using light armor with evasion, but having both options is also good.

If not going with 18 barbarian lvls, then 3 Druid levels for fatal harrier would be another decent option.

[Eth]

I tried a 2 rogue splash with q-staffs on lammania, but wasn't really impressed with it compared to a pure barbarian.
Not saying it's bad, but really not better.

[Blackheartox]

Opener, at least imo, you can hardly call something without cap stone a proper 2 handed barb

[Sunnie]

Opener, at least imo, you can hardly call something without cap stone a proper 2 handed barb
Point taken, but with the [W] and crit profile of q-staves, some rogue or monk levels are needed to boost dps. And hey 75% class levels is better than two out of three, which we all know ain't bad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKz-iVmNtqY).

Does anyone know if No Mercy, Bully, and Sense Weakness stack? If they do I'm definitely feats towards Stunning Blow.

[Toro12]

I am playing one right now.

Twelve barb, five rogue, three druid...

Rogue for the staff spec, druid for fatal harrier, rest in barb... Highest eps toon I have played in a long time. I would recommend if going epic lvls, if not your idea would be fun. Staff spec is better if you have sticks with a bigger threat range, they only really show up in epic levels.

Otherwise you only need two rogue lvls... And will regret not just using axes the whole time.

'Staves don't have expanded crits till epic'
Very false info

Cheiftans spear , level 4, 19-20
Arylns staff , level 6 , 20x3
Theurgic staff and staff of the seer , level8 , 19-20

So there are plenty of non standard crit sticks for lower levels.

[Blackheartox]

Point taken, but with the [W] and crit profile of q-staves, some rogue or monk levels are needed to boost dps. And hey 75% class levels is better than two out of three, which we all know ain't bad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKz-iVmNtqY).

Does anyone know if No Mercy, Bully, and Sense Weakness stack? If they do I'm definitely feats towards Stunning Blow.

As i know they stack.
Bdw keep it onh´hold if you can til we see how new acrobat tree will turn out, maybe 2 rogue levels which is usually enough for staff builds might be changed

[SealedInSong]

As i know they stack.
Bdw keep it onh´hold if you can til we see how new acrobat tree will turn out, maybe 2 rogue levels which is usually enough for staff builds might be changed

Aside from sense weakness, are you certain that:
no mercy (rogue/monk), bully (barb), and brutality (half orc) stack?
I have asked this in the forums and even vets like Munkenmo didn't know :(

No Mercy: You deal 10%/20%/30% additional damage to helpless opponents.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 3 Progression: 20 No requirements

Bully: You deal +[5/10/15]% damage to helpless enemies.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 3 Progression: 30 Requires: I Hit back!

Brutality: When using a two handed weapon, you deal an additional 20% damage to helpless opponents.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 15 Requires: Orcish Weapon Training

Screenshots if possible would be wonderful.

Sense weakness I am not worried about; most ED typed items stack with everything if untyped
Sense Weakness: Passive Bonus: You deal [10/20/30]% extra damage to helpless targets. Your melee attacks deal [1d8/1d8/1d8] extra untyped damage to enemies below 75% HP, [0/1d12/1d12] extra damage to enemies below 50% HP, and [0/0/1d20] extra damage to enemies below 25% HP. These are cumulative.
EDP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 12 Requires: Acute instinct 1/2/3

[Blackheartox]

Aside from sense weakness, are you certain that:
no mercy (rogue/monk), bully (barb), and brutality (half orc) stack?
I have asked this in the forums and even vets like Munkenmo didn't know :(

No Mercy: You deal 10%/20%/30% additional damage to helpless opponents.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 3 Progression: 20 No requirements

Bully: You deal +[5/10/15]% damage to helpless enemies.
AP Cost: 2 Ranks: 3 Progression: 30 Requires: I Hit back!

Brutality: When using a two handed weapon, you deal an additional 20% damage to helpless opponents.
AP Cost: 1 Ranks: 1 Progression: 15 Requires: Orcish Weapon Training

Screenshots if possible would be wonderful.

Sense weakness I am not worried about; most ED typed items stack with everything if untyped
Sense Weakness: Passive Bonus: You deal [10/20/30]% extra damage to helpless targets. Your melee attacks deal [1d8/1d8/1d8] extra untyped damage to enemies below 75% HP, [0/1d12/1d12] extra damage to enemies below 50% HP, and [0/0/1d20] extra damage to enemies below 25% HP. These are cumulative.
EDP Cost: 1 Ranks: 3 Progression: 12 Requires: Acute instinct 1/2/3

Sense stacks with 1 racial, now my wild guess is that you cans stack sense +1 class +1 racial, so no double class.
But it can be easily tested on a iconic rogue monk if 2 no mercys stack.
Personally i dont know if horc one stacks since, to be perfeclty honest, i didnt even once make a horc after encha revamp since it is just so bad and to get it you need to spend so many aps and it costs to mucho.

I can test rogue monk no mercy stack tho /you would be better off as pdk or human or bf anyways for racial boost
and if barb rogue one stack.
But nope no horc, since i really dont want to taint my account with horc atm ;)

cant provide proper pscreens since this latpot is just..

Anyways barb and rogue ones stack, you can simply test it by making a pdk barb rogue and go stun something, you have enough ap for t2 from barb, check damage and then spend into rogue acrobat, you can max it and then stun and test again.
I got around roughly 30% damage but my assumption is that they also dont stack additive but multiplicative.
Aka in short it would not be 30 from sense +30 from rogue +15 from barb but more like 1.3x1.3x.1.15 same as the test i got provided by moo cow with my sorc idea.
(was about stacking of monk debuff strike and sorc t5 debuff and from his simple test you can see that it isnt 25 but 26.5% so stacking helpless damage modfiers might actually be good vs trash)

[Sunnie]

I did some quick and dirty testing on a training dummy. Rolled up a SDK rogue/barb and checked the damage. I used a +3 q-staff, +8 str mod, no power attacks active.

I didn't get all the numbers added together to calculate an average, but simply noted the maximum and minimum damage numbers.

Against a fresh dummy: 23 - 30 damage
Helpless dummy: 34-43
Helpless dummy + No Mercy: 41 - 54
Helpless Dummy + No Mercy + Bully: 42 - 58

So it does seem those two stack.
Damage from Glancing blows does not appear to go up with helplessness, however. The range for those remained at 11-15 throughout.

I also noticed that I got glancing blows while cleaving, but no extra attacks from double strike. I stuck to Quick Strike - Cleave - GC - C - GC, rinse and repeat until the dummy had dropped two times, and never got a double strike on a cleave. That makes cleaves even less attractive considering that they already slow down the attack sequence.


I'll look into rogue/monk to see if both No Mercies stack as well.

[SealedInSong]

I did some quick and dirty testing on a training dummy. Rolled up a SDK rogue/barb and checked the damage. I used a +3 q-staff, +8 str mod, no power attacks active.

I didn't get all the numbers added together to calculate an average, but simply noted the maximum and minimum damage numbers.

Against a fresh dummy: 23 - 30 damage
Helpless dummy: 34-43
Helpless dummy + No Mercy: 41 - 54
Helpless Dummy + No Mercy + Bully: 42 - 58

So it does seem those two stack.
Damage from Glancing blows does not appear to go up with helplessness, however. The range for those remained at 11-15 throughout.

I also noticed that I got glancing blows while cleaving, but no extra attacks from double strike. I stuck to Quick Strike - Cleave - GC - C - GC, rinse and repeat until the dummy had dropped two times, and never got a double strike on a cleave. That makes cleaves even less attractive considering that they already slow down the attack sequence.


I'll look into rogue/monk to see if both No Mercies stack as well.

Thanks for looking into that!

@Blackheart and @Sunnie, I am more or less certain rogue+monk wouldn't stack, because they're typed the same (same name).

I was only interested to see if Brutality, No Mercy (acrobat OR ninja), and Bully stacked.

If they do, interesting. In all honesty, no one needs that much extra helpless damage as most mobs will crumble with just sense weakness. However, I was curious.

[Ikeas]

Aside from sense weakness, are you certain that:
no mercy (rogue/monk), bully (barb), and brutality (half orc) stack?
I have asked this in the forums and even vets like Munkenmo didn't know :(

No Mercy (Ninja Spy tree) and Sense Weakness didn't stack the last time I checked.

[Sunnie]

I rolled up a rogue/monk SDK. The No Mercies from Thief-Acrobat and Ninja Spy are antirequisites of each other. It's not stated explicitly in the tooltip that I could see, but putting points in one made it impossible to put points in the other.

We can conclude that it's impossible to stack them.

[SealedInSong]

No Mercy (Ninja Spy tree) and Sense Weakness didn't stack the last time I checked.

Oh no. That would be sad.

[SealedInSong]

I rolled up a rogue/monk SDK. The No Mercies from Thief-Acrobat and Ninja Spy are antirequisites of each other. It's not stated explicitly in the tooltip that I could see, but putting points in one made it impossible to put points in the other.

We can conclude that it's impossible to stack them.

Anything with the same name generally shouldn't stack.

So:
Reported (Ikeas): Sense Weakness does NOT stack with No Mercy.
Confirmed (Sunnie): No Mercy STACKS with Bully.

Pending: Brutality stack with Sense Weakness?
Pending: Brutality stack with No Mercy?
Pending: Brutality Stack with Bully?
Pending: Bully stack with Sense Weakness?

[Sunnie]

I think I have the roadmap figured out. I'm taking one level in fighter, 4 in rogue, and ditching the cleaves. Planned feats are the THF line (3 feats), Power Attack, Stunning Blow, Improved Crit, Toughness, and Magical Training (to fuel Cocoon if necessary).
Epic feats I'm thinking Overwhelming Crit, Epic Toughness, and Epic DR. ED feats will be perfect THF and Elusive Target.


I'll max out strength and con at start, put the rest of my build points in Int, bringing it to 12. Level-ups go into strength. With first level rogue and figuring in my +4 Int tome that gives me 36 skill points at first level, and another 124 throughout, that should be enough to max out search, disable, open lock and UMD, maybe some points left for other goodies as well. Tharne's Goggles (http://ddowiki.com/page/Tharne%27s_Goggles) should help with the trapping.

For race I'm thinking half-elf with pally dilettante, half-elf over human mostly for aesthetic reasons, and because I don't need the extra feat. If I have the AP to spare this would also allow me to raise strength a little further, but I kinda doubt that. I haven't done the definite math on Action Point distribution, but I'm looking at a minimum of 32 (more probably 36 or 38) in Ravager, and a minimum of 23, maybe as many as 34, in Thief-Acrobat as well, at least 13 in Frenzied Berserker, and Occult Slayer does have some goodies, too. There might not be much left for racial trees there.


As for gear, I pulled a white dragon helmet earlier and have 20 flawless scales, so I could craft myself a dragonplate armor. Worth the investment or am I as well off using the more easily available MotU items? (PDK armor at 20 and maybe an Embrace of the Spiderqueen at 23)

[Sunnie]

Forgot about the charisma requirement for pally dilly, went human instead. Now I have a feat slot I don't know what to do with.

I guess there are worse problems to have.

[Toro12]

Forgot about the charisma requirement for pally dilly, went human instead. Now I have a feat slot I don't know what to do with.

I guess there are worse problems to have.

Fears used to be so precious , now they just don't matter that much.
options
Cleave for a bit more utility even without getting the full line.
Sap a bit less useful with a THF weapon but it is reasonably reliable Single target CC.
Skill focus , 3points of UMD can be a big help in heroics for getting some of those scroll casts a bit earlier in heroic

Nothing OMG gotta have it but each a nice little addition for the right situations.

[Sehenry03]

I think I have the roadmap figured out. I'm taking one level in fighter, 4 in rogue, and ditching the cleaves. Planned feats are the THF line (3 feats), Power Attack, Stunning Blow, Improved Crit, Toughness, and Magical Training (to fuel Cocoon if necessary).
Epic feats I'm thinking Overwhelming Crit, Epic Toughness, and Epic DR. ED feats will be perfect THF and Elusive Target.


I'll max out strength and con at start, put the rest of my build points in Int, bringing it to 12. Level-ups go into strength. With first level rogue and figuring in my +4 Int tome that gives me 36 skill points at first level, and another 124 throughout, that should be enough to max out search, disable, open lock and UMD, maybe some points left for other goodies as well. Tharne's Goggles (http://ddowiki.com/page/Tharne%27s_Goggles) should help with the trapping.

For race I'm thinking half-elf with pally dilettante, half-elf over human mostly for aesthetic reasons, and because I don't need the extra feat. If I have the AP to spare this would also allow me to raise strength a little further, but I kinda doubt that. I haven't done the definite math on Action Point distribution, but I'm looking at a minimum of 32 (more probably 36 or 38) in Ravager, and a minimum of 23, maybe as many as 34, in Thief-Acrobat as well, at least 13 in Frenzied Berserker, and Occult Slayer does have some goodies, too. There might not be much left for racial trees there.


As for gear, I pulled a white dragon helmet earlier and have 20 flawless scales, so I could craft myself a dragonplate armor. Worth the investment or am I as well off using the more easily available MotU items? (PDK armor at 20 and maybe an Embrace of the Spiderqueen at 23)

Have you tried the build yet? I was gonna do this to get my last Barb life in and I was thinking the 15Barb/3Rogue/2Fighter but taking all the cleaves.

Was just curious how yours was working out?

[Sunnie]

Have you tried the build yet? I was gonna do this to get my last Barb life in and I was thinking the 15Barb/3Rogue/2Fighter but taking all the cleaves.

Was just curious how yours was working out?

Currently at level 11 with 2 rogue and 1 fighter, planning to take another 2 rogue levels at 13 or 14 and 20. So far it's working great. I've also used greataxes and -swords a few times (found an aligned greatsword, which was pretty handy) and my impression is that the faster attack speed plus the 25% doublestrike from Quick Strike make up for the larger damage die and crit profiles. I used a Greataxe with ghostbane and frost for a while, but ditched it for a Witching Hour I got on the AH. Incorporeal enemies started dying faster after that.

Next level it should get even better when I can start putting points into Ravager's Tier 5 enhancements and get G2HF. I noticed the lack of Cleaves mostly at the start, but every increase to glancing blow damage and chance of procs makes it less apparent.

Level 20 should also be interesting when I can put points in No Mercy, with Stunning Blow I should be seeing some really juicy damage numbers then.

[painkiller3]

I tried a 2 rogue splash with q-staffs on lammania, but wasn't really impressed with it compared to a pure barbarian.
Not saying it's bad, but really not better.

did the capstone make the difference? or something else? just curious, as I think that since they weakened storm's eye, the traps and attack speed from 2 rogue would be pretty good

[Sunnie]

Good news, everyone! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8IVI0sZ6F8)

Sense Weakness stacks with TA's No Mercy.

[Ikeas]

Good news, everyone! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8IVI0sZ6F8)

Sense Weakness stacks with TA's No Mercy.

So... Ninja's No Mercy stacks with Sense Weaknes? Or this is another case of no-monk love?