Looking for Barbarian Build Help

[jortann]

Hey Guys!

I've been away from the game for a while and it looks like things have changed a little. I am thinking of TRing into a Barbarian and was looking for some guidance...

1. Pure of Splash? When I left everyone was building with evasion. It looks like with PRR and MRR evasion is not as important. So do I go pure or splash 2 Rogue for the evasion.

2. Looks like everyone is going Ravager. I am guess for the self healing. Any reason not to do this?

3. Race choice. Horc, Dwarf or Human? They all look like good choices, but it seems that you may want to save most of your APs for the Barbarian Enhancements and not be dipping to deep into racial trees. Does anyone have a good argument for any of these races?

4. Maul or Greataxe? I am seeing a lot of Maul builds. What is the reason for this? Would going great axe be bad? I definitely have a better collection of GAs in the bag to use.

5. What else am I not thinking about?

Thanks for all you help!

[unbongwah]

Welcome back. :)

My thoughts on barbs these days:

Stay pure for max melee DPS; Storm's Eye (FB capstone) got a huge buff a few updates ago. Splashing is for extra feats or trap skills or other features, IMHO. With the addition of MRR, most people don't bother building barbs around Evasion anymore.
The general consensus is Ravager has the best T5s (Blood Strength + Crit Rage), while FB has the best DPS capstone. The drawback is if you spend 41 APs in FB for capstone and 36-37 APs Ravager, you don't have much left for other things.
Human is still the defacto choice for barbs (and most other builds); extra feat, racial Dmg Boost, and heal amp are as useful as they ever were. But as you say, barbs are strong enough that you can go with whatever race you like and still do well.
Mauls are preferred for LD THF barbs because Pulverizer stacks with Crit Rage. So maul crit profile: 20/x3 base -> 19-20/x3 Pulverizer -> 17-20/x3 IC:Blunt -> 15-20/x3 Crit Rage -> 15-18/x3 19-20/x6 (Overwhelming Crit + Devastating Crit + Death Frenzy). Whereas greataxe: 20/x3 base -> 19-20/x3 IC:Slash -> 17-20/x3 Crit Rage -> 17-18/x3 19-20/x7 (OC+DC+DF+Headman's Chop). For other EDs it's a wash.


Some build threads to look at:
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/453857-Zoda-Pure-Zergbarian
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/460222-Easy-Living-Build-Occult-Ravager-U25-THF
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/458525-Redsonja-3-0-U25-TWF-Pure-Barb
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/458025-U25-Cetus-Barbarian-with-Manyshot

[AbyssalMage]

The only thing I would add to Unbongwah's post is that Blunt (1HB; Warhammer/ 2HB;Maul) is the new "weapon of choice (for some builds)", much like Khopesh was back in the day. It's mostly/all do to the way the formula to apply critical profiles are done.