The Definitive Guide to Barbarians

[Irinis]

hOrcs are the master race. Get a grip.

Gnomes are the master race, that's why we don't have them in DDO it would be too unbalancing.

(Tongue in cheek, or is it?)

[Krag]

Even with a 18/2 split of paladin/barb (which i would not call a barbarian but paladin) and a gs 30% weapon and all the other amps, no he wouldnt get near 450%. I think youve got it mixxed with solar phoenix build which is not a barbarian. But you could easily get to 200% amp. And thats pretty good too

I know this is only a theoretical excersise but you can't multiclass paladins and barbarians due to conflicting alignments.

[P3tunion]

Even with a 18/2 split of paladin/barb (which i would not call a barbarian but paladin) and a gs 30% weapon and all the other amps, no he wouldnt get near 450%. I think youve got it mixxed with solar phoenix build which is not a barbarian. But you could easily get to 200% amp. And thats pretty good too

To bad you can't build a pally/barb...

[sephiroth1084]

Even with a 18/2 split of paladin/barb (which i would not call a barbarian but paladin) and a gs 30% weapon and all the other amps, no he wouldnt get near 450%. I think youve got it mixxed with solar phoenix build which is not a barbarian. But you could easily get to 200% amp. And thats pretty good too

I don't know all the info, but off the top of my head he'd be losing only 30% vs. Solar Phoenix.

And...what paladin levels? I never mentioned any, and you can't combine paladin with barbarian anyway.

[Shuleagh]

I don't know all the info, but off the top of my head he'd be losing only 30% vs. Solar Phoenix.

And...what paladin levels? I never mentioned any, and you can't combine paladin with barbarian anyway.

With a half-elf barb you can get pretty high healing amp. Not quite 450% though.

1.1 Item
1.2 Item
1.3 Item
1.2 Half-Elf Recovery
1.2 Monk Dilletante
1.15 Pally Past Lifex3

284%

Not being able to equip Jidz-teka bracers (25% healing amp) and missing two sources of 10% healing amp hurts you. I think only human 12/6 pally/monk splits and variations can hit 450% healing amp.

[Arkadios]

So good healing amp + great saves = best overall tank imo.

Sounds like a Helf paladin with monk dilly and 3 pally past lives...

[sephiroth1084]

You miss out on 30% from monk or 20% and 10% from a pally/monk split. Fire Stance in Jidz-teka gives you 25% healing amp too. Doesn't feel like much but due to how multiplicative stacking works losing out on that healing amp means the difference between healing amp in the mid 200%(max for a 20 barb) and healing amp that is over 400%(monk or pally/monk splashes).

Uh...helf gets 20% human and 20% monk. Solar Phoenix gets, what? 20% from monk 7, 20% from hunter of the dead 2, 30% from human amp 3 and 25% from Jidz bracers?

So the half loses 10% from not being human, 20% from not having HotD and 25% from Jidz.

Still has 20% human, 20% monk, 10% finger necklace, 60% items, 10% ship, 5% paladin past life...about 300%. Yeah, 450 was an exaggeration. My bad. Still, 300% is pretty nice.

[lethargos]

So 20% human, 20% monk, 30% (10%+20%) items,10% ship = 205% easy. I was just trying to demonstrate that you went a little overboard with your estimarion. But like i said , easy 200% amp for any first life barbarian without too much of a grind. On the other hand with about the same ap cost human gets the 30% human, 30% items,10% ship = 188% and a feat. Actually now that i did the comparison , im not too sure if halfelf for just the healing amp is that nice.I would count out the 30% gs weapon,finger necklace, epic gloves of the glaw .

And even with all the possible uber items, the gap would be 282%/309% human/helf.

[Shade]

300%?

heh.. I think anything over 200% is pretty much overkill. At that point you can pretty easily heal the most difficult raids on heal scrolls alone as they will hit for something redicules like 500 points with 0 sp used so there's not much point in going further. (assuming your character has enough of a HP buffing to cover the bosses damage through the cooldown)

I've got finger, 10 and 20% items on my dwarf, and I find just the 20% is plenty to ensure SP healing is more then enough. Especially when combined with ship buff 10%.

Once I get the claw gloves 30% I really can't see myself worrying about needing more.

I only really add the finger and 10% for when lots of scrolls will be used, as I lose a bit of DPS to fit them in. (Epic Marilith chains swaps to Dragontouched, Shintao necklace swaps to Finger)

Less you wanna heal on wands lol. or CSW potions for soloing..

But if you work that hard on heal amp gear, you could just get silver flame potions, and heal yourself for a nice 500 a pop would do the trick.

[Chad28]

There are potions that can heal that much? I didn't realise that. Who sells them?

[Quikster]

Uh...helf gets 20% human and 20% monk. Solar Phoenix gets, what? 20% from monk 7, 20% from hunter of the dead 2, 30% from human amp 3 and 25% from Jidz bracers?

So the half loses 10% from not being human, 20% from not having HotD and 25% from Jidz.

Still has 20% human, 20% monk, 10% finger necklace, 60% items, 10% ship, 5% paladin past life...about 300%. Yeah, 450 was an exaggeration. My bad. Still, 300% is pretty nice.

helf with monk dille gets 20% from human, 20% monk. These two stack up to more than 30% human.

[PopeJual]

There are potions that can heal that much? I didn't realise that. Who sells them?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Favor

Silverflame Healing Potion - 4,000GP (recovers 250HP, 50% slow, -10 abilities and saving throws for 30 seconds as side effects)
Silverflame Lesser Healing Potion - 2,000GP (recovers 100HP, -10 abilities and saving throws for 30 seconds as side effects)

Once upon a time, it gave you -10 Con as part of its side effect, but Turbine realised that +100 HP from healing and -100 HP from Con loss wasn't all that sensible. Now the potions give -10 to all stats except Con.

Make sure that you have at least 11 in each stat if you don't want to be stunned and helpless from having a 0 in one of your stats.

If you have 250% healing (i.e. +150% healing amp), then a big Silver Flame potion (just 400 plat) will heal you for 625 HP.

[karnokvolrath]

A great tounge in cheek guide on how to be awsome.

Self centered? maybe but i think it was a bit of a joke folks, lol. At least it speaks the truth.

Axer i hate to go all Bette Midler on you...

but....

"Did you ever know that your my hero?"

[PopeJual]

helf with monk dille gets 20% from human, 20% monk. These two stack up to more than 30% human.

But the 20% monk dilettante doesn't stack with anything you get from "real" monk levels.

[bendover]

I did put like ten excalmation points after BONUS FEAT didn't I?

heh. Personal experiance doesn't argue with the base stats. Perhaps the best barbs on your server prefer the look of humans, that would be a more logical reason why you find that.

On Khyber very few barbarians are humans. Most are actually Warforged, Dwarfs probably a close 2nd. Hell we used to have like 2 entire warforged only guilds at one point.. Each of which had a ton of Barbs.
I dunno about Half-orc yet as I just got back, but I know a couple of my guildies have really good ones.

There really should be no more reason to be making Warforged or Dwarven barbarians. Half-Orcs DPS is far superior to that of Warforged and Dwarf. It makes healers cringe to have to heal a Warforged and there really should be no other reason to make a Dwarf. Maybe TWF DA's but that's still inferior. The abililty to stay alive and be healed at a much higher rate is why survivability of the Human barb is superior to the 100% from an Arcane healing a Warforged and by far superior to the "make me cringe" 50% amp from a Warforged.

End game is all about DPS and staying alive and the two best that will fit this role will be the Half-Orc and/or Human.

[Emili]

300%?

heh.. I think anything over 200% is pretty much overkill. At that point you can pretty easily heal the most difficult raids on heal scrolls alone as they will hit for something redicules like 500 points with 0 sp used so there's not much point in going further. (assuming your character has enough of a HP buffing to cover the bosses damage through the cooldown)

I've got finger, 10 and 20% items on my dwarf, and I find just the 20% is plenty to ensure SP healing is more then enough. Especially when combined with ship buff 10%.

Once I get the claw gloves 30% I really can't see myself worrying about needing more.

I only really add the finger and 10% for when lots of scrolls will be used, as I lose a bit of DPS to fit them in. (Epic Marilith chains swaps to Dragontouched, Shintao necklace swaps to Finger)

Less you wanna heal on wands lol. or CSW potions for soloing..

But if you work that hard on heal amp gear, you could just get silver flame potions, and heal yourself for a nice 500 a pop would do the trick.

What people miss about such things like "Solar Phoenix" type builds and the like are that they are self-healing as melee with the idea of not utilizing mana/scroll/pots but via fighting in many cases.

The idea behind that huge healing amp is that they generate enough hp back while they are swinging. While a healer on thier back may be impressed with a crit clwm hitting these builds for well over 600 and a crit heal going off on them for 4000hp the builds designed is really for solo "they heal thru fighting" for some 60+ hp on a swing.

Typically those builds fall sway to lower to mid DPS ... but shear heal prowess allows their longevity thru the fight. Most on average do not fall into the "Blitz" kill quick ideals of a Barb or any DPS builds ... though am sure are a few exceptions.

"Solar Phoenix" and heal amp... possibly a tank of tomorrow? The redesigns in the "hate/Intimi/threat" systems may only tell. There is a piece-meal change to these the dev's are digging into.

Either case you are spot on correct in assessment ... Human and later H-elf healing amp enhancements are what I'd considered compromised or slowly being antiquated at this point due to the dev's placing so many items of differing values out which can substitute in...

btw... I really like how you've switched to your presentation as a guide, Welcome back and I think you'll have a lot of fun exploring and tweaking your H-orcs.

[sephiroth1084]

There really should be no more reason to be making Warforged or Dwarven barbarians. Half-Orcs DPS is far superior to that of Warforged and Dwarf. It makes healers cringe to have to heal a Warforged and there really should be no other reason to make a Dwarf. Maybe TWF DA's but that's still inferior. The abililty to stay alive and be healed at a much higher rate is why survivability of the Human barb is superior to the 100% from an Arcane healing a Warforged and by far superior to the "make me cringe" 50% amp from a Warforged.

End game is all about DPS and staying alive and the two best that will fit this role will be the Half-Orc and/or Human.

This is off-base. The greatest value of a WF DPS/barbarian is that it is the most flexible tank in terms of accommodating group composition. It's the reason I probably won't TR my WF barb into a horc: the ability to run the major raids and tough quests with otherwise non-ideal parties (not waiting around indefinitely for divine healers) is pretty powerful. Also, being able to ignore healing curse in tough situations is also very good.

The fact that it's possible for a WF tank to have over 100% healing amp, means that it's simply the most flexible type of barbarian at tanking, and that's ignoring inherent immunities and potentially more HP.

As for dwarf...yeah, I fail to see any great benefit there anymore. Previously, the biggest draw was in their having a higher to-hit than WF while having a decent DPS boost as well. Horcs have the option to be swinging with the same to-hit and more DPS.

[stoolcannon]

Fireball is much more useful than haste at that level. A wizard that wastes SP on haste is doing it wrong. Get potions!



Fireball has waaay more potential than a barb at low/mid levels. It doesn't even compare.

LOL by the time you complete your spell animation the fireball will sail harmlessly over the heads of your enemies corpses if you've got a decent barb in the party.

[stoolcannon]

There really should be no more reason to be making Warforged or Dwarven barbarians. Half-Orcs DPS is far superior to that of Warforged and Dwarf. It makes healers cringe to have to heal a Warforged and there really should be no other reason to make a Dwarf. Maybe TWF DA's but that's still inferior. The abililty to stay alive and be healed at a much higher rate is why survivability of the Human barb is superior to the 100% from an Arcane healing a Warforged and by far superior to the "make me cringe" 50% amp from a Warforged.

End game is all about DPS and staying alive and the two best that will fit this role will be the Half-Orc and/or Human.

I would never have changed from Dwarf to Horc if not for the fact that I could no longer hold aggro against decently geared Horcs. Dwarven con and spell defense make dwarves extremely resilient (and yes to the person that asked about +3 to saves yes indeed it does make a big difference).

But when it comes to DPS dwarves can't come close anymore. My capped dwarf did at least 10-15% less DPS than my horc and I haven't changed any gear at all. I went from being the steady maintank (either by choice or happenstance due to stealing aggro) to having aggro stolen after Horcs came out and I didn't want to have to wear threat gear while tanking.

I'm not sorry I TR'ed but I do miss my dwarf.

[Aaxeyu]

LOL by the time you complete your spell animation the fireball will sail harmlessly over the heads of your enemies corpses if you've got a decent barb in the party.

lol, not if you know what you're doing