Real differences between Barb and Fighter

[Kinerd]

Granted, however barb's dps is also a bit more tied to fortification than fighter dps... and in the same update we're probably going to see boss's fortification go up.



Hmm i'm not sure of what you mean there, power surge uses an attack boost 'charge', and fighters don't have damage boosts unless they're human or half-uglies.

Pure human/half-ugly thf fighter w/ esos might become the best burst dpser around, albeit with less boosts than a horc so it's probably going to run out of them sooner.

Barbarians get a lot out of criticals, yes, but they actually end up losing less DPS as fortification increases than fighters. They have two things going for them that transcend fortification: Vicious damage and base damage. Fighters' attack speed can make the same claim, but it turns out that when treated quantitatively the barbarian is in better shape.

You people do realize that a pure fighter is leading in Shade's dps challenge atm on the giant? With a rather significant margin too. So significant that all the past lives he has don't really account for it.

Both barbarians and fighters are heavy dps classes, but anyone who thinks barbs are more than a little bit ahead in pure damage is fooling himself. Fighters also get *much* more utility from their feats.

As some of us have been saying since its most recent inception, Shade's DPS challenge is just not a good way of comparing classes or builds. It's only useful for comparing characters, and even that is not a sure thing because this is a game of dice.

[Emili]

Barbarians get a lot out of criticals, yes, but they actually end up losing less DPS as fortification increases than fighters. They have two things going for them that transcend fortification: Vicious damage and base damage. Fighters' attack speed can make the same claim, but it turns out that when treated quantitatively the barbarian is in better shape.

Yes barbarians gain an edge in high fort situation out of the box as do many classes with built in procs. Fighters procs all come from weapon as the class is tied tightly moreso to base damage,extra crit range, double strikes and haste boosts to garner more of those.


People complained about spell pass and "auto-crit" being changed which in many cases I thought quite funny because most was comming from people who mainly played barbs and pallys ... who gained even more edge in the mix due their procs got an increase evening them up to the heavier crit depedendet classes.

[Alex301]

You people do realize that a pure fighter is leading in Shade's dps challenge atm on the giant? With a rather significant margin too. So significant that all the past lives he has don't really account for it.

Both barbarians and fighters are heavy dps classes, but anyone who thinks barbs are more than a little bit ahead in pure damage is fooling himself. Fighters also get *much* more utility from their feats.

I'm not sure this will hold true after update 11. With the changes to damage boost there will be little reason not to go pure anymore and offers a significant boost for barbarians. If children were to LR his build after the update i think the results would be very close, even with the lack of past lives the fighter has. However, the dps challenge has never been perfect with many of the flaws benefiting barbarians. I think half orc fighters are going to see a shift in power though.

Half elves on the other hand should perform much better. The extra feats of a fighter also allow them to pick up more past lives feats, such as the paladin and rogue, and they should beat half orc barbarians by a fair margin against 0% enemies with sneak attacks. Against 50% fort they should be very competitive as well, although i'm not sure how useful these advantages will be in U11. Half orc barbarians are going to perform better against high fort targets and hold aggro more easily than fighters.

[Viisari]

Half elves on the other hand should perform much better. The extra feats of a fighter also allow them to pick up more past lives feats, such as the paladin and rogue, and they should beat half orc barbarians by a fair margin against 0% enemies with sneak attacks. Against 50% fort they should be very competitive as well, although i'm not sure how useful these advantages will be in U11. Half orc barbarians are going to perform better against high fort targets and hold aggro more easily than fighters.

I hear Improved Sunder will lower fortification by a fair bit after U11 though, and fighters have plenty of feats to have that around while barbs do not. Granted any barbs in the party would benefit from it too, but doing stuff like that is actually the role fighters should fill imo, while barbs are pretty much pure dps with low to no utility, fighters are very high dps with lots of utility.

As a side note, the tactics DC enhancements are way too expensive for fighters, and dwarf & wf racial dc boosts are too weak since a horc barb (probably fighter too) will get higher DC purely through STR...

For some reason I still like my pure kensai life as a wf the best on my TR toon, barbs are tons of fun to play too though, supreme cleave is awesome