Semi-new player needs advice on potential new main character and items for him.

[Jayzilla]

hullo all: I've been playing as a Haggle bard, which i figured was a good starting place since I only had 28 point builds (but I am VIP). I figure if i wanted to be in the long haul, i should farm up a bunch of tomes and money and unlock 32-pointers and THEN i can make a really, really nice character.

I'm hitting the road bump of what tomes to collect, which is based on the fact that I'm not sure exactly what character i'm going to make for my 'pro-nice character.' I know i want melee DPS, and my roommate is going to play a barb as his 'pro' toon. I'm thinking I want something with a lot of ranger, because I don't want to have to sink major stat points into dex to qualify for gtwf. But i want something with really, really good endgame DPS, a character that people would want on endgame raid-type stuff. These are the options i'm considering, but feel free to let me know if i'm missing something I should consider.

1. pure ranger
2. fighter6/ranger13/monk 1 (kensai tempest)
3. ranger/rogue mix (unsure on level distribution)

The character will probably be among those three classes. the other question is what race i should make him.

1. human
2. warforged
3. drow

My roommate that i'm going to plan on playing with a wf barb. Which of these classes is going to play the best at endgame? what items should I be looking for to make these characters really solid early on and which tomes should I be farming for? sunblade? +2 str tome? +2 con??? any advice would be greatly appriciated. Thanks!

[Dark-Star]

Pure ranger, pure ftr, pure barb are all good end game dps if you focus on strength.

13 rogue/6 ranger/1 ftr or monk or barb is very high DPS if you go str based, and has some nice self healing and utility.

It's a difficult question to answer because there are so many possibilities. My advice would be to read a lot of the builds, then decide what suits your play style best.