Real differences between Barb and Fighter

[Kinerd]

Kensai - saves? Kensai - saves? If anything, defenders have better saves because of their stance.

The ~+4 to reflex you get from all the feats (really, did you take lightning reflexes, luck of heroes, AND snake blood?) is still less than uncanny dodge, which barbs get for free.

If you wanna talk saves - play a pally.

Kensei have a +3 to Reflex saves against magic. Stalwarts get +3 across the board, but only while in stance, and of course are more limited offensively, making a comparison between them and barbarians irrelevant. Throw Lightning Reflexes on that +3 and you're up to +5. It also must be pointed out again that Improved Uncanny Dodge is not free - the part we are talking about is an ability you must activate, which takes time.

All I said was that a fighter can get a good Reflex save without too much effort. This is a useful ability that is relevant if someone asks what the difference is between a fighter and a barbarian.

[Nick_RC]

Using umd while dishing out 100% dps is much more eficient than sucking down silver flame pots and having a constant -10 str on a barb, Your'e to-hit and tactics suffer, both of which I won't have on my melee.

Shame on You Cetuss this statement is hideously misleading (assuming ur talking heal scroll usage)

YOU run a completionist fighter fully tricked out. Nearly every other Pure fighter will look like this.

11 rank
4 gh
3 stat (6 base, 2 tome, 6 slotted, 2 ship)
2 luck (slotted)
3 skill focus umd
(3) (if they have the festival bunny hat skin!!- careful tho it causes a lag spike when u hotswap to a umd item)

=23(6). THIS is at 100% melée dps.(actually not quite as ur missing madstone) Any Hotswapping, passing conc checks, arcane spell failure, time spent scrolling and reequipping etc etc reduces that 100% value - 'midfight' at least. I see where ur coming from and for you personally with the skills, gear, completionist feat etc what you say is true. For 99.9% of the remainder of the population and particularly in a thread from an obvious new player it is definately not the case.

Nearly done with groans trs see ya on argo a coupla nights a week soon.

Cheers mate,

N

[Qezuzu]

I can get that on my barbarian, no buffs.

No buffs? Lies.

Where does one need +70 hit anyway? Including double destructs and outside buffs.... not much.

[Kourier]

Kensei have a +3 to Reflex saves against magic. Stalwarts get +3 across the board, but only while in stance, and of course are more limited offensively, making a comparison between them and barbarians irrelevant. Throw Lightning Reflexes on that +3 and you're up to +5. It also must be pointed out again that Improved Uncanny Dodge is not free - the part we are talking about is an ability you must activate, which takes time.

All I said was that a fighter can get a good Reflex save without too much effort. This is a useful ability that is relevant if someone asks what the difference is between a fighter and a barbarian.

[licho]

Overlarge slabs of ham.... ftw and profit!!!!

Its only worth it if its a Tasty Ham!

FIghter vs Barb:

Fighter:
- Have more feats to sellect than you have idea what to do with, but some of them are defined by PrE.So you can pick every tactical feat and play with it.
- Can choose any combat style, 2HF, 2WF, or even AA with melee backup.
- Hit faster.
- Passive Past Life feat is very interesting
- Are easier for splashing
- If you choose Kensai PrE you are limited to one weapon to shine.

Barbarian:
- Have strong synergy with 2HF style.
- While raging use of clikies and some pots is limited. And Barbarian should rage.
- The feat selecion is decided and fixed before you though about rolling a character.
- Have inherit perks (DR, movment, Uncanies, diehard) which are good one
- Have better HP potencial.
- You can swich weapons type, as long as its same dmg type. (like slashing)
- Is better when it comes to penetrating DR/-
- Passice PL feat is loussy, while acrive is sexy.

Both:
- Can reach good enoygh HP and DPS.
- Can reach good DC of Stun/Trip.
- Are funnier to play if there is divine friend around, even if divine use mostly burst or aura.
- Need some gear farm/swich skill to perform best.
- Benefit from basic inteligence in combat, like facing one enemy at time, jumping toward enemy caster first, going one step from enemy AoE and two steps to friendly AoE.
- Are welcome addicion to party as long as player behind have some respect for fellow teamatters. (works for all classes).
- Benefit from your own stack of pots for your needs.

What to pick as new player who uses forum: IMO Barb is better choice, as long as you know the 7 feats, there is little to screw. Also 2 tactical actions is enough for begginer. Futhermore 2HF is more poorman friendly.

Have fun.

[Asmodeus451]

seeing ALOT of advocates for Barbarian in this thread, so allow me to advocate for Fighter abit.

Fighters get "almost" the same DPS as Barbarians, but they also get ALOT of other toys to play with.

Properly built, a Fighter can bring something to the table no Barb can*. Crowd Control.

With SO MANY feats most players don't even know what to do with them, Fighters can easily fit in many more CC feats than any Barb ever could. Add in the fact that fighters can also then spend AP to boost the DCs of said feats, while a Barb cant.

I know the argument will be made that a dead mob cant hurt anyone (aka BARBS PWN AND FIGHTERS ARE GIMP)
but a mob thats Stunned dies faster (due to taking more damage) and ALSO cant hurt anyone. and a mob thats been Tripped and is on its back stops hitting long before its dead.

*disclaimer- I know that some Barbs can fit in the Stunning Blow feat, but this does not nearly compare to the number of CC feats and bonuses a Fighter can

[bigolbear]

barbs are pure brutality.
fighters are more customiseable and can have more tricks.

for me this comes down to length of quest and speed of play.
in the short term fighters are very slightly beter
in the medium term (most quests) barbs are better.
in very endurance based slow paced combat fighters are beter - note this is very rare.

the reason for this is down to boost timers and rage timers. fighrts get a lot of short boosts so do well in sudden encounters or interspersed fights. Barbs get several rages which each lasts a few minutes. An unraged barb is much worse than a fighter but honestly i can think of very few quests where a barb has to wory about running out of rages, its only occured for me when having to wait patiently for slower players, most recent example was made to order elite - waiting for the rogue to clear the minefeilds played havok with my rage timers.

Fighters are more inclined to two weapon fighting gaining essentialy double bonus from weapon specialisation feats.
barbs are more inclinded to two handed fighting gaining bonus glancing blows and cleave is beter with a 2 hander.

The only true advantage a fighter has over a barb tho is feats. Due to the bonus feats fighter gets it is a very popular splash class, a fighter can be customised in ways a barb cannot but the pay off for this is that the barb will be tougher and hit harder.

Honestly either class would be a fine choice for a new player to learn mele. If you play a fighter learn to boost. if you play a barb learn to rage.

[Shade]

Implying.

The part of my statement you did not put enough weight on was "without too much effort". A DPS Fighter is going to have Kensei - the Reflex save there is no effort. A fighter has more than enough feats - picking up a saves feat is practically no effort. Now the barbarian has to keep Improved Uncanny Dodge up just to keep pace, AND has to lose DPS to do it.

And theres no dps loss if you know the quest. uncanny dodge is 30 seconds, activate it as you run up to the caster.. They will certainly all be dead before it runs out. Casters arent so common that you have to keep it always activte like haste boost, so you very easily avoid activation time dps loss by simply knowing what to expect. So it's still 3 more for most builds, for good players. I'll acknoledge that doesn't include most players, but we can give the OP the benefit of the doubt.

I run my cleric through epic traps, let's be serious. Who cares about traps?

It's aparently too much effort for 90% of fighters that like to post their builds. They certainly don't take any reflex save boosting feats. Even Durnaks build he touts so much doesn't have it.
So yea, its hard enough.

About epic traps being easy - BS. Show me your SS of completing von5 epic without a rogue. Hell show me one with a rogue. Lets see the death count.
How about chains of flame epic . Your clearn can open that air jet/flame jet door. good luck with that.
How about blood road, I did that without a rogue the other night.. Insane traps, I had to carry the whole party soulstones thru some traps, since you cant rez thru air jet traps.
Maybe partycrashers? just did that last night melee style.. air jets + 300 damage spikes you constantly get shot thru, lets see your cleric survive those (without exploits)

Epic traps aren't easy to survive. There avoidable with skill or rogues, but for when your skill fails and you rely on your character, barbarians are up there with rogues, while every other class has no chance.

re: Durnak. lol. I don't think your blanket statement really hold any weight. Anyone with any amount of logic would understand fighters are a million miles behind in total DPS these days.. Supreme cleave put barbs aoe dps up about a million miles ahead, in an area fighter scould only dream to hit.

Sure your completionist fighter can put out pretty sick single target dps. But overall dps throughout a whole quest, doesn't involve much single target if your at all good at targetting. And your aoe dps is rather non existant due to twitching.

Just transfer over to khbyer and i'll show you how proper THF dps melee really fights now. It certainly doesnt involve much single target anymore, all about the aoe. If im not killing 2-3 mobs at a time, im not doing enough dps.

oh yea groan its time for a rematch too.. TR back to melee.. Should have my abishai set by the time your done =)

[JollySwagMan]

If trying to choose between the two, a 12 Fighter/6 Barb/2 Rogue can be pretty awesome. Tactics, tanking, ****** mode and UMD...delicious.

EDIT: However there are perils to multiclassing that may be inadvisable to new players who wish to invest heavily into a character they're learning. From this perspective, I lean more towards recommending Barbarian, as the build options are relatively simple. On the other hand there are lots of tricks to actually playing a Barbarian. One of the simplest yet underused tactics is to take advantage of the Barb's speed and dodge enemy attacks/spells. More advanced would be maximising DPS with the precise 'twitching' tactics that Shade documents in several threads. But the main thing is lots and lots and lots of potions

[grodon9999]

re: Durnak. lol. I don't think your blanket statement really hold any weight. Anyone with any amount of logic would understand fighters are a million miles behind in total DPS these days.. Supreme cleave put barbs aoe dps up about a million miles ahead, in an area fighter scould only dream to hit.

I'm very curious to see this but my barb is only level 4 . . . can we see a video?

[Ngha]

The way this thread went (FF=Fighter Fans, BF= Barbarian Fans, RF= Rogue Fans):

BF: Barbs are better

FF: No they're not Fighters are better

BF: Nope.

FF: Well, they're almost as good.

BF: No.

FF: Um...

RF: Rogues are the best Yay.

BF: No.

RF: ...

FF: We're close for 20 seconds a quest!

BF: ...We'll give you that.

*Insert pic of Conan standing on top of decapitated Highlander here*

[chak]

This really will just boil down to what you enjoy more.Everyone has there own opinion and its going to be biased ,theres just no helping that.

I have both barbs and fighters and with my play style the fighter is ahead by a long shot.But that could be because i do not like to rely on others to keep me alive.

My barbarion while he does insane amounts of damage seems to also take insane amounts of damage lol.

Oh..and yes im very twitchy in combat So i normally dont get the smack layed down on me too often.

[Cetus]

re: Durnak. lol. I don't think your blanket statement really hold any weight. Anyone with any amount of logic would understand fighters are a million miles behind in total DPS these days.. Supreme cleave put barbs aoe dps up about a million miles ahead, in an area fighter scould only dream to hit.

Sure your completionist fighter can put out pretty sick single target dps. But overall dps throughout a whole quest, doesn't involve much single target if your at all good at targetting. And your aoe dps is rather non existant due to twitching.

Just transfer over to khbyer and i'll show you how proper THF dps melee really fights now. It certainly doesnt involve much single target anymore, all about the aoe. If im not killing 2-3 mobs at a time, im not doing enough dps.

oh yea groan its time for a rematch too.. TR back to melee.. Should have my abishai set by the time your done =)

You seem to be the one threatened by my build, so come on over to argo and enlighten me.

Sure, supreme cleave is way more damage, I'm not that blind to argue that point. But go ahead, cleave away in a group of held mobs - thats where your place is. I'll work on chopping down the boss, thats what I find most important, hence what I built my character for. Even a wizzy can aoe down a group of held mobs if theyre not insta-killable in relatively no effort, so I quite frankly don't care about aoe damage- but then again, in my case, I only run with great casters.


I'm pretty secure in my understanding of the differences- and I'll take that barb of yours on anyday.




PS- As far as reflex, don't be so fast to judge- im at a 19 base +1 haste + 4 gh +4 holy aura + 1 dex yugopot (-2 to hit is unnoticeable on my character) +3 from vornes set with exc 2 dex crafted on ring if I need to swap = 32. Crafted a +10 reflex item from new stuff to hotswap plus a superior stability item if i need it, not to mention the untyped 2 from rogue past life = over 40. I really don't have anything to hide.

[vVAnjilaVv]

PS- As far as reflex, don't be so fast to judge- im at a 19 base +1 haste + 4 gh +4 holy aura + 1 dex yugopot (-2 to hit is unnoticeable on my character) +3 from vornes set with exc 2 dex crafted on ring if I need to swap = 32. Crafted a +10 reflex item from new stuff to hotswap plus a superior stability item if i need it, not to mention the untyped 2 from rogue past life = over 40. I really don't have anything to hide.

TY for that bit of INFO.....I have a 20 Kensei...this is something I should look more closely at

[Cetus]

Shame on You Cetuss this statement is hideously misleading (assuming ur talking heal scroll usage)

YOU run a completionist fighter fully tricked out. Nearly every other Pure fighter will look like this.

11 rank
4 gh
3 stat (6 base, 2 tome, 6 slotted, 2 ship)
2 luck (slotted)
3 skill focus umd
(3) (if they have the festival bunny hat skin!!- careful tho it causes a lag spike when u hotswap to a umd item)

=23(6). THIS is at 100% melée dps.(actually not quite as ur missing madstone) Any Hotswapping, passing conc checks, arcane spell failure, time spent scrolling and reequipping etc etc reduces that 100% value - 'midfight' at least. I see where ur coming from and for you personally with the skills, gear, completionist feat etc what you say is true. For 99.9% of the remainder of the population and particularly in a thread from an obvious new player it is definately not the case.

Nearly done with groans trs see ya on argo a coupla nights a week soon.

Cheers mate,

N

Hey bud, well even if the two hotswaps I use to heal up quick costs me a few swings, I don't find it as bad as taking the -10 str penalty, particularly because of the to-hit and tactics, not even the damage loss. If you need to self-heal, chances are you don't have a bard handy, , and if you're fighting the right ac boss, that -10 str will start making you miss- especially if you're caught without a gh or whatnot.

Anyone who says they never miss, I'm calling bs, because even my completionist fighter (+4 str tome as well) will miss, given the correct lack of buffage and the right enemy, I have no problem admitting that because its how the game works (although I can easily get my to hit to a rediculously high number).

Do i carry the silver flame pots? Of course, but theyre reserved really for emergency situations.

PS: got a spot in ck just for you =D

[Cetus]

TY for that bit of INFO.....I have a 20 Kensei...this is something I should look more closely at

In the middle of all the "my dad can beat up your dad talk," glad to help. Cheers.

[Koshy11]

Absolutely....

one awesome crafting idea would be to take numerous small, medium, and large infernal chains from the Shroud, and be able to craft a retractable chain/yo-yoish kinda thing ....

then strap it to the back of a a dual wielding, halfling rogue and then duct tape some weapons to their feet too...... (think of the James Bond movie, Octopussy)

now that..... THAT.... >>THAT<< would be some ranged, returning DPS for melees.

+1

Though with the introduction of big orcs and even bigger swords, you would wonder when it might be possible Turbine lets us perform a Fastball Special maneuver .

[EustaceTrevelyan]

Conan is king.

I miss andy tho

[AndyD47]

So, from a simplified perspective what's the real melee difference between a barb and a fighter with a rage pot? Does it really just boil down to AC vs DR?

A fighter has a chance at being box-trained,while the barb has to be an "outside" melee.

If anyone mentions "combat tactics" you know what they mean now.

[Kinerd]

It's aparently too much effort for 90% of fighters that like to post their builds. They certainly don't take any reflex save boosting feats. Even Durnaks build he touts so much doesn't have it.
So yea, its hard enough.

As I said, fighters can, not fighters do. You are justifiably excited about Supreme Cleave - do you think the majority of barbarians use it? Does its popularity have any bearing on its mechanical effect?

About epic traps being easy - BS. Show me your SS of completing von5 epic without a rogue. Hell show me one with a rogue. Lets see the death count.
How about chains of flame epic . Your clearn can open that air jet/flame jet door. good luck with that.
How about blood road, I did that without a rogue the other night.. Insane traps, I had to carry the whole party soulstones thru some traps, since you cant rez thru air jet traps.
Maybe partycrashers? just did that last night melee style.. air jets + 300 damage spikes you constantly get shot thru, lets see your cleric survive those (without exploits)

Epic traps aren't easy to survive. There avoidable with skill or rogues, but for when your skill fails and you rely on your character, barbarians are up there with rogues, while every other class has no chance.

If you really think a barbarian can go through traps better than a monk or ranger, there's nothing more to say.