I have a few questions about some feats.

[XFracture]

I'm wanting to mix it up a bit. My collection of toons are pretty much sorcerrors and variant versions of twf stat damagers and I'm thinking of trying out the dps version of barb.

I was thinking of making a pure barb dwarf going for the rage/crit enhancements with a collection of Falchions and these feats:

1 Pwr Attack
3 Cleave
6 Great Cleave
9 Stunning Blow
12 Imp Crit: Slash

OR going with, as a Human:

1 Pwr Attack, Cleave
3 Stunning Blow
6 Great Cleave
9 Quick Draw
12 Imp Crit: Slash

The reasoning behind the Quick Draw feat is so I can hot swap my Weighted 5% and vertigo +10 items out with my DPS'ers w/o missing much of a beat. I know with my stat dmg'ers it pains me when I'm hot swapping weapons in battle. I have to stop swinging, stand there for a second or two, do my swapping, continue attacking, stop for a second or two, do my swapping again and then continue on with my battle.

It's pretty frickin' annoying and I thought I'd try out Quick Draw to see if it makes a difference. Anyone have any opinions? If it doesn't make much of a difference I'll just stick with my original dwarven version.

I was also wondering what the AoE is on Great Cleave? I'm assuming that is all Great Cleave does, increase the AoE, please correct me if I'm wrong. If so, is it that much of a difference then that of Cleave? Is it worth it? I mean, how often do you really find yourself completely surrounded on all sides? But that could just be me, I'm used to jumping in and out of those situations with my tactical builds. However if Great Cleave really isnt' worth it then I'll just stick with the Dwarven version after all and toy with the idea of Quick Draw.

I am well aware that I can swap out my feats easily enough, lord knows I've done it dozens of times already on my stat dmg builds but I figured I'd save myself some headache and a little coin by asking for advice first. All I know is if Quick Draw works out as well as I hope it does I'm just gonna have to dump something on my stat fighters to accomodate. Because that is by far the biggest down fall of playing melee's. IMO anyway.

[tihocan]

Never tried quick draw.
Cleave/Great cleave is ok but does not add a lot of DPS (mostly useful on weapons that have a special effect on hit, like para/vorpal/disruptor...). It's a bit tricky to time them correctly, especially since they don't have the same cooldown.

[Allasar]

I usually hit Great Cleave first, wait a beat or two, then Cleave. A few secs later I can hit GC again. It's as Tihocan said it's great with some of the power 5 (I love it with Vorpals and Disruptors).

[Rickpa]

I was disappointed with Quick Draw. It only seemed to work outside of battle. If a fight was going on, I would click frantically without much luck. Some kind of lag.

[Blazer]

I tested Quick Draw out last year. All my testing was done in a tavern, so no "real battle" data. What I found was that changing from one weapon set to another on a character without QD took on average of 1-1.2ish seconds. On a character with QD, that was reduced by about 50%, to about 0.5-0.75ish seconds.

Obviously, these numbers are relative to the accuracy and precision of my stopwatch as well as my own manual dexterity and how quickly I can start/stop the clock. One more thing - this testing was done on a fairly low level character, somewhere in the 3-5 range. Since attack speeds increase when your BAB increases, perhaps QD speeds up as well? Who knows.

Also, it's entirely possible that the QD feat has been changed to speed up the change a bit. Afterall, my testing was done back around Mod 2. My feeling after the testing that I did was that QD was not worth a feat to save about 0.5 seconds.

[Scalion]

I really enjoy quick draw on my fighter, but I have the extra feats to spare to pick it up.

The two instances it is of real use is for throwing weaopn damage, which is signifigantly better with quick draw (it increases the speed you can use throwing weapons) and for swappin in and out the old muckbane when those oozes come crawlin about.

I personally don't think you'd want to switch regularly on every fight because even with quick draw you miss about 2 attacks worth. If you're having problems seeing a difference, I suggest you actually stop attacking before trying to switch weapons.

As for cleave and great cleave...I think a barbarian has enough strength that the two weaopn fighting feats will work out better in the end if you are going to be using 2 handers. The cooldown on greatcleave is pretty hefty and I find myself getting glancing blow damage in addition to normal damage on the same target with the same swing fairly often.

Most people would also prefer toughness over stunning blow, but some who prefer those types of attacks may indeed make good use of them.

[Casta]

I was also wondering what the AoE is on Great Cleave? I'm assuming that is all Great Cleave does, increase the AoE, please correct me if I'm wrong. If so, is it that much of a difference then that of Cleave? Is it worth it? I mean, how often do you really find yourself completely surrounded on all sides? But that could just be me, I'm used to jumping in and out of those situations with my tactical builds. However if Great Cleave really isnt' worth it then I'll just stick with the Dwarven version after all and toy with the idea of Quick Draw.

Greatcleave and cleave are on diffrent timers, meaning you can cleave more often. If your taking cleave its defenitly worth taking greatcleave.

[Scalion]

Cleave has a somewhat smallish radius of basically stuff you could hit with glancing blow damage on a 2 hander, but it has a 5 second cooldown.

Great Cleave is practically as good as whirlwind attack. Only things directly behind you will not get hit, and if you let something get directly behind you then you're probably doing something wrong. The only problem with great cleave is that it has a 10 second cooldown.

They are both valuable, but I think you might want to give the two handed fighting feats a good look as well.