Barbarian Build/DPS Question(s)

[Ravanys]

I will start by outlining my assumptions (correct or not) about this topic. TWF is higher DPS than THF when facing a single opponent, but the opposite is true when fighting a crowd of trash mobs. TWF is better for players who tend to move around a lot, as THF takes penalties to damage when moving. Barbarians perform better in THF because their enhancements promote glancing blows. Being a Tiefling is not part of this discussion (but should be, because my Barbarian is a Tiefling lol). Khopeshes do less base damage than Bastard Swords, but have a greater chance to critical so have the potential to deal more damage. Dual-wielding Bastard Swords is pointless because you can't get glancing blows with TWF. So Khopeshes win, if you're TWF, but lose if you're SWF (like if you have a Bastard Sword in one hand and a shield in the other - which seems odd for a barbarian to do, but at the same time is exactly how my barbarian was specced until I lesser reincarnated her the other day). Barbarians are DPS, but they are NOT glass cannons, they have damage reduction, armor class, hit points, and trap sense to make them a more balanced class than a glass cannon would be.

Okay, now that my assumptions are out of the way, and I'm sure some of you will have decided to prove me wrong on any point I'm wrong about (which I'll be glad to listen to, as I'm here to learn more about this class I'm fairly unfamiliar with), but now it's time to get to the meat and potatoes of my question with a short explanation of exactly how I play and what I intend my barbarian to be able to do. As an aside, I consider myself a master of only one class - the rogue.

I run ahead of the party when there are mobs within eyeshot. I expect to survive any traps I trigger, and rely on triggering them to alert my party to their presence when there's not a rogue or artificer in the group that can disable them. I like to "tag" all the mobs I can find in reach, round them all up focused on me, and just play whack-a-mole with their skulls until they're all dead. (In other words, I run around getting them to follow me, then stand in one spot surrounded while swinging my weapon(s) like a maniac.) I follow any enemies that retreat, and I'm pretty quick on my feet for doing so, never letting a gap open up while I strike them down (this applies to ranged foes, mostly) so being able to kill them while on the move is often important (because casters can do more damage than most melee trash mobs). Otherwise, killing everything as fast as possible while taking the least amount of damage while being able to stay in one spot and not use many active skills is the goal. I'm a mouse-click spammer who keeps rage toggled on when fighting, but I am not wholly opposed to using the occasional active skill - the goal here isn't to not use active skills so much as it's to keep my hotbar as uncluttered as possible (and I have a hireling, potions, and various weapon sets - such as the main set, a crossbow, and a healing wand for my barbarian, who has UMD - on my hotbar already, on top of rage, end rage, and search taking up the first three of ten slots). I'm also wearing medium armor, because my dex bonus is 3 and I can take advantage of that dex bonus while wearing medium armor, but not heavy armor. At least, as far as I can tell. If there's heavy armor out there with a high enough dex bonus allowed to be useful, I may consider spending a feat to be able to wear it. I also mainly play solo with a cleric hireling, but on occasion I play with a friend and have the UMD healing wand so I can heal him if needed.

Now, I'm not that familiar with all the little things. As a rogue, for example, I never had to worry about picking a weapon type because the enhancement tree chose for me. But neither the barbarian enhancement tree nor the tiefling racial enhancement tree seems to benefit any particular weapon type, and I don't even know what to make of the special purple enhancement trees. I've taken some time looking at all the enhancements, making my eyes bleed from the strain (not really), and looked up guides online until I found a selection that seems mostly to my liking (it calls for some points spent in a different racial tree), but that still leaves me with the question of weapon choice. Depending on how many feats I get I may end up doing both the TWF and the THF trees, so I can swap between depending on the situation (I hear epic quests sort of require that anyway), but I would still like to know which weapons deal the most damage the way I play. My goal is for all my enemies to vanish as swiftly as possible. I've seen some discussion online about it, but such discussions always seem to turn into a battle of numbers and math and I have no idea what's even being said at that point. So, let me describe a scenario:

A barbarian, no enhancements but with all the feats in either TWF or THF lines (as well as the requisite weapon proficiency feats, and focus feats relating to the weapon of choice, but nothing else) with starting stats str 18 dex 16 con 14 cha 10 the rest 8 and all future stat points at level up in str, wearing no piece of equipment that would boost stats, damage, or any other attribute that would contribute to increased damage in any way (and the weapons in hand are basic, like if they had just been keyed for crafting). At this base level, which would kill the most enemies the fastest, TWF or THF? Which weapons would kill the most enemies the fastest in TWF? And which weapons would kill the most enemies the fastest in THF? And which of those two lines would I be best advised to focus on according to my playstyle? (Obviously, I would have enhancements and equipment to boost these statistics, but I like taking the base level and then working to improve on it - so this information would be helpful in choosing a weapon, then the weapon choice would further help me in choosing equipment and enhancements.)

Thank you for any responses. I hope I don't sound too much like a newbie or noob lol. Also, I apologize for the wall of text.
Tl;dr: if you ignore equipment, stats, enhancements, and feats, does TWF or THF kill the most enemies the fastest, and which weapons kill the most enemies the fastest for TWF, and for THF? Thank you.

[Coffey]

I like your take on the Barbarian class. I think with your style of play THF would better suit your needs. Rounding up mobs as you go is very effective way to clear with THF focusing on a champ or two and killing everything else with cleaves and glancing blow damage while CC the more dangerous targets and focus on them the trash dies fast around them.

It seems to me that not all THF weapons are created equally as either. Seems like the Great Axe has the largest hitbox and procs the most glancing blow damage of all. While it may not the best crit profile it seems better over all with a lot of mobs to contend with.

I have been testing out builds for the next HCL lately and one of the best quests to test a THF builds DPS and its tanking ability is Escape Plan. Its in Evening Star level 15 quest perfect for an iconic class. If you can tank it on Elite youre on the right path. Test it with TWF Barb and then THF and see the difference for yourself!

[Ravanys]

I like your take on the Barbarian class. I think with your style of play THF would better suit your needs. Rounding up mobs as you go is very effective way to clear with THF focusing on a champ or two and killing everything else with cleaves and glancing blow damage while CC the more dangerous targets and focus on them the trash dies fast around them.

It seems to me that not all THF weapons are created equally as either. Seems like the Great Axe has the largest hitbox and procs the most glancing blow damage of all. While it may not the best crit profile it seems better over all with a lot of mobs to contend with.

I have been testing out builds for the next HCL lately and one of the best quests to test a THF builds DPS and its tanking ability is Escape Plan. Its in Evening Star level 15 quest perfect for an iconic class. If you can tank it on Elite youre on the right path. Test it with TWF Barb and then THF and see the difference for yourself!

Thank you. My barbarian just reached level 7, and I've never heard of that quest lol, but then I haven't done many quests above 7 either. I'd taken to using Devil Assault on normal to test newly created level 7 characters (with a hireling, ofc) but this character started at level 1.

[Coffey]

All melee has a -4 to hit while moving unless you have dodge, mobility and spring attack then no penalty. THF feat enables glancing blows to work while moving so thats a plus. Youre not going to waste three feats getting spring attack as a Barbarian though.

Takes time to learn the mechanics of DDO. I found a good post that explains the melee attack very accurately from a different forum but im not sure if i can link it so i will just quote it from Cleaving VS Attack VS Single Target Attack:

Robsta43
Sarlona
10 months ago

"Cleave has a fixed attack speed, never doublestrikes, can critically hit and produces an automatic glancing blow. It also interrupts your regular attack chain essentially immediately. Given that the first attack of your attack sequence typically produces a glancing blow; using cleave in between first attacks can generate a large amount of glancing blow damage very quickly (good for taking down groups).

When to use cleave:

You're under the effect of an attack speed slowing attack (underwater combat, slow spell)

You're surrounded by enemies

You have a lot of glancing blow damage

When not to use cleave:

You have a lot of doublestrike

You're under the effect of an attack speed boosting effect (haste boost)

Typically double-strike on most/all builds can get to the point where it's never a good idea to cleave vs single targets at high levels, except when slowed."

You get glancing blows on double strikes while concentrating on single targets while THF but at a certain point SWF and TWF are better overall DPS with higher double strike and no glancing blows.

[Kinerd]

you definitely should not get both the TWF and THF chains on a barbarian, there just aren't enough feats to go around and it blunts one of the advantages in going THF in not having to sink a lot of build points into Dex. burning a feat on Heavy Armor Proficiency is also not a good idea - barbarians are not very self sufficient, and you will begin to struggle with the 'take all aggro' strategy as you get to higher levels, but heavy armor won't change that. you only get 7 heroic feats as an inhuman barbarian.

as you observe, barbarian has a number of enhancements that only help THF and none that only help TWF. with that said, one thing to keep in mind in general is that one of the biggest advantages TWF has over THF is that you get 1.8 hits of the effects on your weapons rather than 1.1125, which for example makes the 2d6 on hit from Pain Touch or Vicious much stronger for TWF. since you want to hit many enemies at once as a barbarian your best melee option is THF.

the base level scenario you propose is generally not helpful because it puts significant weight on a weapon's base damage, which even these days with #[W] modifiers is very misleading. the significant factor is critical profile, which is most concisely compared as (critical threat) * (multiplier - 1) because when we look at all 20 attack rolls...

1 is always a miss
2 up to (20-threat) is 1 * damage
(20-threat+1) to 20 is multiplier * damage
=
1 * 0 + ((20 - threat) - 2 + 1) * 1 + (20 - (20 - threat + 1) + 1) * multiplier
0 + 19 - threat + threat * multiplier
19 + threat * (multiplier - 1)

this value for the basic THF weapons is:
3 falchion
2 great axe, maul, great sword
1 great club, quarterstaff

so your best bet for non named weapons is a falchion

sidebar: it's worth pointing out that algebraically any multiplicative modification to threat is necessarily irrelevant to this order, so if we double our critical threat with the Improved Critical feat, we get 6 falchion 4 great axe etc. 2 great club etc. however the same is NOT necessarily true for additive modification to multiplier. for example adding the +2 from Focused Wrath in frenzied berserker tree to our IC scenario ends up with...
18 falchion (6 * (4-1))
12 great sword (4 * (4-1))
8 great axe, maul (2 * (5-1))
6 great club, quarterstaff (2 * (4-1))

with that said, the additive modification that only applies to 19-20 (such as from Death Frenzy) won't change any order unless you're comparing weapons that only crit on 20, which you really shouldn't ever be doing on a barbarian.

.

but of course there are named weapons. two very famous ones for THF are Carnifex and the Epic Sword of Shadow, but i haven't played a THF character in a long, long, long time so there may be better ones now.

[Ravanys]

you definitely should not get both the TWF and THF chains on a barbarian, there just aren't enough feats to go around and it blunts one of the advantages in going THF in not having to sink a lot of build points into Dex. burning a feat on Heavy Armor Proficiency is also not a good idea - barbarians are not very self sufficient, and you will begin to struggle with the 'take all aggro' strategy as you get to higher levels, but heavy armor won't change that. you only get 7 heroic feats as an inhuman barbarian.

as you observe, barbarian has a number of enhancements that only help THF and none that only help TWF. with that said, one thing to keep in mind in general is that one of the biggest advantages TWF has over THF is that you get 1.8 hits of the effects on your weapons rather than 1.1125, which for example makes the 2d6 on hit from Pain Touch or Vicious much stronger for TWF. since you want to hit many enemies at once as a barbarian your best melee option is THF.

the base level scenario you propose is generally not helpful because it puts significant weight on a weapon's base damage, which even these days with #[W] modifiers is very misleading. the significant factor is critical profile, which is most concisely compared as (critical threat) * (multiplier - 1) because when we look at all 20 attack rolls...

1 is always a miss
2 up to (20-threat) is 1 * damage
(20-threat+1) to 20 is multiplier * damage
=
1 * 0 + ((20 - threat) - 2 + 1) * 1 + (20 - (20 - threat + 1) + 1) * multiplier
0 + 19 - threat + threat * multiplier
19 + threat * (multiplier - 1)

this value for the basic THF weapons is:
3 falchion
2 great axe, maul, great sword
1 great club, quarterstaff

so your best bet for non named weapons is a falchion

sidebar: it's worth pointing out that algebraically any multiplicative modification to threat is necessarily irrelevant to this order, so if we double our critical threat with the Improved Critical feat, we get 6 falchion 4 great axe etc. 2 great club etc. however the same is NOT necessarily true for additive modification to multiplier. for example adding the +2 from Focused Wrath in frenzied berserker tree to our IC scenario ends up with...
18 falchion (6 * (4-1))
12 great sword (4 * (4-1))
8 great axe, maul (2 * (5-1))
6 great club, quarterstaff (2 * (4-1))

with that said, the additive modification that only applies to 19-20 (such as from Death Frenzy) won't change any order unless you're comparing weapons that only crit on 20, which you really shouldn't ever be doing on a barbarian.

.

but of course there are named weapons. two very famous ones for THF are Carnifex and the Epic Sword of Shadow, but i haven't played a THF character in a long, long, long time so there may be better ones now.

My eyes went glossy when you got to the algebra, the only thing I think I took from all of that is falchions deal more damage than other THF weapon types?

[Ravanys]

The DDO Store +4 weapons has the following descriptions:

Greataxe: Does 5 to 16 points of slashing damage and has a low chance to make a large critical hit.
Falchion: Does 6 to 12 points of slashing damage and has a good chance to critical hit.

[Hobgoblin]

The DDO Store +4 weapons has the following descriptions:

Greataxe: Does 5 to 16 points of slashing damage and has a low chance to make a large critical hit.
Falchion: Does 6 to 12 points of slashing damage and has a good chance to critical hit.

yes but greataxe hits harder when it does crit

[Kinerd]

the only thing I think I took from all of that is falchions deal more damage than other THF weapon types?

yes

The DDO Store +4 weapons has the following descriptions:

Greataxe: Does 5 to 16 points of slashing damage and has a low chance to make a large critical hit.
Falchion: Does 6 to 12 points of slashing damage and has a good chance to critical hit.

so in DDO we roll a twenty sided die (d20) when we attack. every weapon base will generate a critical hit¹ on specific values of that d20 - this is also known as "threat". every weapon base also has its own base damage dice and critical multiplier. let's look at the great axe and falchion:

great axe has base damage dice of 1d12, or a twelve sided die rolled once, therefore a +4 great axe with no other damage modifiers will do between 1+4=5 and 12+4=16 damage. its threat is only on 20, which as one out of twenty = 5% is fairly described as "low". its multiplier is 3, which is larger than the minimum value of 2 so i suppose it could be called "large".

falchion has base damage dice of 2d4, or a four sided dice rolled twice, therefore a +4 falchion with no other damage modifiers will do between 1+1+4=6 and 4+4+4=12 damage. its threat is on 20, 19, and 18, which i wouldn't say is a "good" chance in a vacuum but it is the highest chance of any weapon base. its multiplier is 2 which is the minimum, so critical hit fairly has no adjective.

the first thing is there's no way to mathematically compare low * large against good * regular. so forget the words entirely, your best bet when starting out is really to just fire up a spreadsheet and write out what happens for each roll of the d20 from 1 to 20 (keeping in mind that 1 is an automatic miss).

the second thing is that DDO is an enormously powerful setting. even taking into account critical profile, the above great axe is looking at 11.025 damage per swing compared to the falchion's 9.9‡, so the great axe is clearly better... but there has never been a THF barbarian in the history of DDO with 0 Strength bonus. at level 20 you're going to have at a bare minimum 12 Strength bonus which goes into damage at *1.5 since you're THF for +18 damage, and another +16 damage from Power Attack (a feat you should definitely have). with that +34 alone we get 46.725 great axe against 47.3 falchion, and these numbers go to 51.175 and 53.75 with Improved Critical (another feat you should definitely have). depending on what enhancements you pick the gap can get really tremendous.

.

it's a lot of math for sure, but it really just comes down to the premise that there are huge damage bonuses in DDO relative to base damage dice. a spreadsheet program is very helpful to see it all for yourself, which i think is valuable, but there's also a math oriented community here so we're totally a resource you can use for any questions. good luck!

.

.

¹technically you have to roll another attack roll to "confirm" the critical hit if your threat isn't on 20; generally this isn't a significant factor for pure melee classes.

‡this doesn't take into account glancing blow damage. THF generates glancing blows on (eventually) three of your four attack animations, and since they can't generate critical hits the higher base damage weapon always does better there. however, even in the absolute best glancing blow case you're only getting 75% * 70% = 52.5% damage on them (*19/20 because 1 is still an automatic miss), and with only a 1.5 base damage advantage that's nowhere near enough to close the gap from critical hits.

[Ravanys]

yesso in DDO we roll a twenty sided die (d20) when we attack. every weapon base will generate a critical hit¹ on specific values of that d20 - this is also known as "threat". every weapon base also has its own base damage dice and critical multiplier. let's look at the great axe and falchion:

great axe has base damage dice of 1d12, or a twelve sided die rolled once, therefore a +4 great axe with no other damage modifiers will do between 1+4=5 and 12+4=16 damage. its threat is only on 20, which as one out of twenty = 5% is fairly described as "low". its multiplier is 3, which is larger than the minimum value of 2 so i suppose it could be called "large".

falchion has base damage dice of 2d4, or a four sided dice rolled twice, therefore a +4 falchion with no other damage modifiers will do between 1+1+4=6 and 4+4+4=12 damage. its threat is on 20, 19, and 18, which i wouldn't say is a "good" chance in a vacuum but it is the highest chance of any weapon base. its multiplier is 2 which is the minimum, so critical hit fairly has no adjective.

the first thing is there's no way to mathematically compare low * large against good * regular. so forget the words entirely, your best bet when starting out is really to just fire up a spreadsheet and write out what happens for each roll of the d20 from 1 to 20 (keeping in mind that 1 is an automatic miss).

the second thing is that DDO is an enormously powerful setting. even taking into account critical profile, the above great axe is looking at 11.025 damage per swing compared to the falchion's 9.9‡, so the great axe is clearly better... but there has never been a THF barbarian in the history of DDO with 0 Strength bonus. at level 20 you're going to have at a bare minimum 12 Strength bonus which goes into damage at *1.5 since you're THF for +18 damage, and another +16 damage from Power Attack (a feat you should definitely have). with that +34 alone we get 46.725 great axe against 47.3 falchion, and these numbers go to 51.175 and 53.75 with Improved Critical (another feat you should definitely have). depending on what enhancements you pick the gap can get really tremendous.

.

it's a lot of math for sure, but it really just comes down to the premise that there are huge damage bonuses in DDO relative to base damage dice. a spreadsheet program is very helpful to see it all for yourself, which i think is valuable, but there's also a math oriented community here so we're totally a resource you can use for any questions. good luck!

.

.

¹technically you have to roll another attack roll to "confirm" the critical hit if your threat isn't on 20; generally this isn't a significant factor for pure melee classes.

‡this doesn't take into account glancing blow damage. THF generates glancing blows on (eventually) three of your four attack animations, and since they can't generate critical hits the higher base damage weapon always does better there. however, even in the absolute best glancing blow case you're only getting 75% * 70% = 52.5% damage on them (*19/20 because 1 is still an automatic miss), and with only a 1.5 base damage advantage that's nowhere near enough to close the gap from critical hits.

I think I'm finally starting to understand some of these numbers. Basically, early game a greataxe may be better because base damage and glancing damage are higher, but falchions overtake them eventually as you level and are especially good for players who have bonuses to crit?

[drunkbarbarian]

Just another option that may or may not help. You could always go swf with a bastard sword or dwarven axe. Take the thf bonuses from FB tree for extra glancing blow damage. Its not a lot but does help. You now have great single target damage and glancing blows. This way you get swf attack speed, 1.5 ability mod to damage, don't have to worry about dex for twf. Don't forget to put skill points into balance to qualify for swf.

This might not be the optimal choice but it does give you the best of both worlds. Good Luck

[Kinerd]

I think I'm finally starting to understand some of these numbers. Basically, early game a greataxe may be better because base damage and glancing damage are higher, but falchions overtake them eventually as you level and are especially good for players who have bonuses to crit?

yes, but what i want to stress is *all* characters are going to have really big bonuses to damage (there are bonuses strictly to critical damage but they aren't as common or as large). by the time you take Improved Critical at level 9 you will definitely be doing better with a generic falchion than a great axe, and probably even earlier.

[unbongwah]

You could always go swf with a bastard sword or dwarven axe. Take the thf bonuses from FB tree for extra glancing blow damage.

Unless they changed something, you can't take Angry Arms from FB without the first THF feat; and you can't take both SWF and THF feats. There's no feat pre-req for Perfect THF, though, and IIRC when Unbridled Fury temporarily grants the THF feats they stack with SWF if you're using a dwarven axe or bastard sword.

[drunkbarbarian]

Unbongwah, you are correct about req for Angry Arms. Forgot about that. Thanks for the correction.
Unbridled Fury and Strong Swings (25mp version) work with bastard swords and dwarven axes.