Troubleshooting my very weak barbarian

[Orangine]

Edit : Problem solved. Thanks

[Hobgoblin]

Hello all, sorry for my english.

This is my first time making a barb and I am wondering why she is so weak. I am requesting some help to troubleshoot exactly what is the problem with her. I am a long time returning player, my gear seems to be pretty outdated and I have very few past lives. I tried to solo the Gatekeepers chain (In the cerulean hills) on Reaper 1 to find some gear and it was so much more tedious than expected. I believe my damage is pretty weak. I can do some 20k crits with an Adrenaline, which seems below average for a barbarian. The damage is no where close to casters even several levels below me, who seems to one-shot everything in R1 meanwhile I require several hits. I don't feel like the damage is really the issue though. The issue is that I melt in R1. I melt very fast. Each monster hits for a few hundreds, it's hard for me to stay alive while dealing the damage, especially when they are in a pack. I have to spam Blood Tribute frantically to stay alive. Maybe I need more damage in order to kill faster before I get hit? Or perhaps my defenses are simply too weak for R1 still? Or maybe I am just a bad player and I suck at melee? I have barely 3k HP (raged and on reaper), which seems on the lower side for barbarians. I have seen many barbarians hit 4-5k hp. My PRR is 170 and MRR is 56.

Let me show you my build :

Stats
20 str (27 base at level 28)
10 dex
18 con
6 int
10 wis
8 cha
Tome : +7 all

Past lives :
3x Fighter
3x Monk
1x Paladin
2x Half-orc

Feats :
1. THF
3. Power attack
6. Improved THF
9. Improved Critical : Slashing
12. Greater THF
15. Toughness
18. Heavy armor proficiency
21. Overwhelming critical : Slashing
22. Perfect THF
24. Epic barbarian damage reduction
25. Doublestrike
27. Epic toughness
28. Harbinger of Chaos
30. Scion of Arborea
30. Stunning blow

Gear :
Helm : Legendary Mighty Stormreach Guardian Helm
Neck : Legendary Pendant of the Warrior Focus
Trinket : Legendary Empowered Dragonscale
Cloak : Legendary Mantle of Fury
Belt : Legendary Vistani Fighter's Sash
Ring 1 : Legendary Ring of Prowess
Ring 2 : Legendary Crumbling Gloves
Gloves : Legendary Knife Toed Boots
Boots : Legendary Ring of Nightfall
Bracers : Legendary Black Opal Bracers
Armor : Legendary Scales of the Exile
Goggles : Legendary Precision Lenses
Weapon : Legendary Echo of Blackrazor

My gear is definitely outdated. I am still trying to farm some gear, which proved hard and that's the reason why I am writing this post.



Skills :
Balance, UMD, Jump

Enhancements :


I went Frenzied Berserker because I felt like my DPS is really lacking compared to other players. If I go ravager then sure perhaps I would survive a bit longer, but my DPS would be in the gutter.
Razorclaw is surely not optimal, but I really wanted to TR at level 15 this time and play as a barb.



Epic Destinies :


I try to get a bit of CC with improved Trip, Great Leveler, Overwhelming Force and Strike with Poise.



Reapers :


Here perhaps I should focus exclusively on the Grim Barricade tree ?



Looking forward to your suggestions on how to improve and be able to solo R1 quests efficiently. Thanks!

Edits : Typos

first, the build is mostly ok.

second, with your gear i would avoid soloing r1 atm.
you need to farm out your gear, which is better done in elite (for you soloing)

i would go more into shifter tree. the ability to heal from rages is really nice, but you dont want to run out. so the cores are good as is magic fang and pounce is fun

right now you have low rp and no set bonus going. its the set bonus that make it. either for summer set sharn set or something.

i think toughness and heavy armor pro are a waste on your build.

once you get some better gear, you should be fine.

i would look for enforcers coat/hammerfist/family recruit sigil as a starting point if you have sharn. if you dont...... i think there is a major sale rn goin on it

[Mystickal]

Greetings!

There are many areas in your build that are ripe for improvement. Some of my suggestions will be things you can do immediately, while others will take a bit of time to put into effect.

1 - Enhancements

Frenzied Berserker
Get rid of Ranks 2/3 in Tier 3 Mad Munitions. That frees up 3 AP. Instead, max ranks in Sprint Boost and put a point into Focus Wide. Also, swap out Raging Blows for Accelerated Metabolism. Oh - and totally dump Tantrum. Cleaves and Cleave attacks are SO pre-update 45.

Explanation - With strikethrough and TWF line of feats, you'll be vorpal often enough that in practice Focus Wide is on all the time giving you it's juicy 50% strikethrough bonus. Sprint Boost - speed is life - it will let you close with enemies or get away from enemies much, much quicker. Accelerated Metabolism is amazing - if you keep your temp HP active most of the time through Blood Tribute (or others like Legendary Affirmation or Blood Feast Filigrees) your core HP will heal while your temp HP gives you a buffer. For example, if you have 1500 HP, you take 200 HP of damage, then trigger Blood Tribute - you're now sitting at 1450 HP, but your core 200 HP damage will heal while your temp HP shields your core HP from further damage. If you take too much damage, hit sprint boost and Blood Tribute and run around while you heal up. The healing penalty on R1 is negligible, and this will greatly enhance your survivability. Tantrum, while it sounds nice, has three problems - first is that it is a cleave attack, which slows down your attack speed. Secondly, it costs 25 HP to activate, and you've already said you have a problem with survivability. Third, it has a 30 second cooldown.

Occult Slayer
IMHO, at best put 6-9 points in. Take Ear Smash (3 ranks) and Knockout (1-3 ranks). Use that as your CC and swap out your stunning blow feat. In my experience, stunning blow works on Barbarians when you're in heroics and low epics, but at higher levels and end game meta it just doesn't land reliably enough to use it. Though to be fair, I don't run R1 so if your experience is that it IS landing then ignore my suggestion. There are some decent enhancements in here, but I generally don't take them on a barbarian as they either require too much investment or there are better things in other trees.

Ravager
Ravager has some goodies in it too, but I'd also dump what you have in this tree. At best, I'd put points in hardy rage - maybe also in power attack.

Vistani
Huge amount of power in the Vistani tree that you're missing out on. Haste Boost, in Tier 2, gives you a 30% boost to attack speed - that basically increases your DPS by 30%. That's FAR FAR better than 30% melee power provided by Ravager. I usually spend 11 points in Vistani, grabbing the first three cores (deflect arrows, quick draw, and doublestrike), undead hunter, and mist stalker (that will give you back some of the PRR and MRR that you lost by dumping Occult Slayer, but you'll have it all the time regardless of weapon bond level). I do grab 1 rank of Acrobatic so I can hit the prereqs for Tier 2, then either a second Mist Stalker for more PRR/MRR or a second point in acrobatic.

Falconry
***? Falconry? Yup, it has some nice goodies in it too. I take 3 cores, some PRR, Hunter's Knowledge, Conditioning for the HP boost, True Seeing, and the helpless damage - basically a heroic version of sense weakness. Expose weakness was also very handy, though I've been off a barb for a while working on completionist so I don't know if it is still as necessary since the meta-nerf. You can also grab sprint boost here instead of Frenzied Berserker and then spend the extra points elsewhere in the tree. Maybe some extra rages =)

Razorclaw Shifter
If you followed my suggestions above, you'll have 41 points in FB, 11-12 in Vistani, and 24 in falconry. I'd put those points in the core extra rage and then hardy shifting. If you're able to complete a Blood Feast filigree set, then I'd remove some of the points from falconry and take all 5 shifter cores to get regenerating rages. I'd still try and keep enough points in Falconry to at least keep Conditioning, but maybe drop the tier 4 stuff to free up points.

2 - Epic Destiny
Maybe I didn't play with it enough, but The Great Leveler was about the most finicky thing to get to work right. Mobs would have to be lined up perfectly for me, and even then it still often would not hit properly. You should 100% have Unbridled Fury. It's like hitting overdrive on your DPS. There are a few other things that I'd do differently, but I have 62 destiny points so it gives me a bit more flexibility than what you have, so I'm reluctant to make any other specific recommendations.

3 - Reaper Enhancements
Take the points out of STR and put them into melee power. The STR is nice, but melee power should result in better DPS. To be completely honest, I'd take the points out of Reaper's Strike and instead put them in melee power followed by STR. This is because you only have 2 charges so overall I think that the points would be spent better elsewhere. Though that might also depend on what your doublestrike is without the boost.

As far as focusing exclusively on Grim Barricade, my advice is to get at least 11 points in Grim Barricade before branching out. You've done that, I think you're OK. Though I'm not sure if you grabbed MRR or PRR bonus - I'd grab PRR over MRR.

4 - Feats
As mentioned above, unless you find that Stunning Blow is actually landing in the quests you're running, I'd swap it out. I carry it while levelling and then respec out of it at end game. Also, heavy armor proficiency doesn't do much for a barb. The PRR formula for medium armor is 1.5 * BAB, while for heavy armor it's 2*BAB. At level 30, your BAB should be 25, thus medium armor will net you 38 PRR while heavy armor will net you 50 PRR. However, as a barb you get +10 to PRR while raging - so that puts you at 48 PRR in medium vs 50 PRR in heavy. IMHO, not worth a feat.

5 - Gear
As Hobgoblin mentioned, the Sharn Enforcers Coat/Hammerfist/Family Recruit Sigil should be the first thing you should farm. That set bonus by itself will be a huge improvement. Later you can start farming other gear, but there are so many variations depending on the content you run and have access to that it's hard to point you at specifics. However, you should definitely find a minor artifact and put it in your gear set as well as a Sentient Weapon gem and then start feeding them in order to set up some filigrees. You're missing out on a lot of potential without having any Sentient Weapons or a minor artifact equipped, but a discussion on those could fill a whole separate post. Here is a place to start - look at Charune Grand Burden of Fury, Brand of Kalok Shash, Gauntlet of the Iron Council, Magmatic Grasp, and the Heart of Suulomades, For Filigree sets, look at Blood Feast and Prowess. Those should be relatively easy to obtain. Blood Feast is fantastic, when you rage it will give you 1000 temporary HP at lvl 30. If you take all the cores in the Razorclaw tree you'll have a bunch of extra rages and they will regenerate - basically you drop rage and then re-rage after every fight to replenish your 1000 temporary HP.

Final Note
Without seeing your character sheet, I don't know what your AC, PRR, HP, saves, etc are like. You can shore up weak areas with augments - if you don't have any augments slotted in your gear then you are missing out on a lot of beneficial effects. However, the largest weakness that you have is a lack of epic past lives.
With full epic martial past lives, you will have +60 to your AC
With full epic primal past lives, you will have +180 HP before % bonuses
With full divine past lives you will have +36 PRR
Granted, that's a LOT of work. The above will take 36 Epic lives to obtain, but they will have a huge impact on your character. The above bonuses are 'passive' bonuses, there's also the active component that will increase your power as well. I would try to get at least the following:
3 Ancient Power - +6 to attack, +6 to damage, +45 HP
3 Doublestrike - +9% doublestrike, +15 AC

[Enderoc]

I am going to go a different route than what these people are saying...you want more AC sometimes but you get better AC and PRR with shield. More so if you get into Unyielding Sentinel which gives you an AOE shield strike with stun affect which is perfect for stacking bonuses vs helpless mobs. So though you might not use it all the time take Dwarven Axe Prof and Tower Shield Proficiency instead of Heavy Armor and Toughness.
You can take things others have said here too but you stated your problem already...you are getting hit way too often. This will help you defend a little better and knock some mofos out when you need to.
By epics you will have more AC and HP going more into Unyielding Sentinel. If you had a bunch of epic past lives in martial which I keep stressing almost every post..talking the full 12...you will have both extra fate points and a bonus 60 AC at cap.
Since you don't got that right now... yes...you need to do something to get hit less especially in harder content like you said.
You already got the bonuses to stun from fighter past lives... use that to your advantage.
When you want to clear the room with a bunch of peeps use a two hander. If the room is out to clear you buckle up.

[Hawkwier]

first, the build is mostly ok.

second, with your gear i would avoid soloing r1 atm.
you need to farm out your gear, which is better done in elite (for you soloing)

i would go more into shifter tree. the ability to heal from rages is really nice, but you dont want to run out. so the cores are good as is magic fang and pounce is fun

right now you have low rp and no set bonus going. its the set bonus that make it. either for summer set sharn set or something.

i think toughness and heavy armor pro are a waste on your build.

once you get some better gear, you should be fine.

i would look for enforcers coat/hammerfist/family recruit sigil as a starting point if you have sharn. if you dont...... i think there is a major sale rn goin on it

FWIW I think this is all pretty solid advice. Gear will help a lot, even after the squish.

I'd suggest you play around with your enhancements to see what works best for you. Barb playstyle can vary quite a bit. For example, I like to go for strong CC, as downed mobs don't hit back and take helpless damage. I also use cleaves heavily, that's at cap and on all difficulties which apparently goes against the grain of much of the accepted wisdom but works very well for me. I find strikethrough isn't enough when faced with more than a few mobs, which is often the case.

I'd also suggest looking closely at the LD destiny T5, as the epic moment gives the best option for defence in reaper. It costs a lot though and means forgoing the Fury epic moment, but again the cc from Direcharge is excellent if you have the DCs, and LD T5 also offers some good options beyond the epic moment too.

Hope this helps and good luck! Remember YMMV, and there are several ways to skin a kobold!

[Orangine]

Thanks all for the help, I really appreciate it.

So I made a bunch of changes and I think it works very well now. I picked some ideas from all of you.
- I dumped The great leveler. It's true that the skill is garbage. It doesn't work half the time and it's a waste of 3 destiny points, which could be spent in something a lot more useful.
- I stopped trying to achieve high DC with my stun and trip. At 98 strength with +35 (23 items + 3 fighter PL + 9 destiny) bonus to combat feat, it only gives me around 90 DC, which is not even close to be enough to be useful in high level content. I heard you need at least 105+ to land your combat dcs consistently. I was sacrificing a lot of damage, health and defense trying to achieve high dcs, so in the end I gave up and dumped it all. My stats overall are a lot better with this change. The confusion from primal scream and knockdown from Adrenaline rush seems to be enough for now.
- Tantrum is garbage and the DC is too low anyway, dumped it.
- I invested enhancement points in those that give more rage charges per rest. I didn't realize just how much it's useful to have more rage charges per rest considering each rage is a massive heal. At 18 charges per rest, it increases my survivability by a ton.
- I put more reaper points in melee power instead of strength.
- Instead of going grandmasters of flowers for the stun dcs on my third destiny, I went unyielding sentinels for more HP, attack and defense.
- I upgraded some pieces of my gear and it makes a big difference.
- I removed stunning blow and took Epic damage reduction.
- I switched Heavy armor proficiency for weapon focus slashing. More attack and melee power is always welcome and heavy armor proficiency didn't benefit me much.

I can solo R1 in feywild, saltmarsh and sharn very easily now. With more gear I could probably go for R2. Once I acquire all the gear pieces I'll try to focus on earning more reaper XP and epic past lives and progress from there.
Thanks all

[Doomflayer]

My melee power at 30 is 261, you should have 250+. You also need
at least Legendary Part of the Family as a starting point for gear, you have no real set bonus.
Make that 268 melee power now.