Hello all, this is Dazling. I have formulated an idea for a series of builds for DDO that I am calling “Dazling’s Benchmark Builds”, the first installment of which is Dazling’s Benchmark Barbarian. These builds are meant to be accessible to all players, and are tested by being quested on r1 solo and playing r4 solo at max level. As the name “Benchmark Build” implies, I’m hoping to make all of these fairly standard builds- nothing will be using crazy stuff that’s hard to get, bug reliant, or has a really high skill floor. It’s a build that’s intended to be straightforward to get into, and easy to tweak for people with different preferences.
I’ve designed a video, along with 7 gameplay videos, which presents and showcases this build. I’ve also written up what you’re currently reading, which will be a fairly short guide to the build. Additionally, I have written up a significantly longer and more detailed write-up on the build that delves into the build and the decisions that made it in a lot more detail.

The video is available here:


And the long write-up is available here: Long Write-Up

The build:
This is a Half-Orc 20 levels barbarian build focused on having high damage and burst, while also being tanky enough to survive difficult content and have reasonable self-sustain. Because as part of this build we are not utilizing universal enhancement trees, it does not get access to Vistani’s haste boost, so we instead use orcish rage, which holds up reasonably well with Legendary Dreadnought’s +10% attack speed. On the utility side of things we get access to open lock through half-orc, and we have intimidate if we need to aggro something, although for higher reaper we are built as a tank.

For our ability scores, we take the usual good barbarian stats with our main stat being strength, as well as intelligence so we can get improved trip for an AoE knockdown at 32.

I have fancy tables for a few different things in this build guide, but I don't believe I can do tables on the forum, so I'm trying to format stuff decently how I can, sorry if it's sloppy.

Strength: 19 for 28 points, 20 for 32-36.
Dexterity: 8 for all.
Constitution: 14 for all.
Intelligence: 13 for all.
Wisdom: 9, 10, 12, 14 for 28, 32, 34, and 36.
Charisma: 6 for all.

We aren’t taking improved trip from the epic destiny because our epic destiny points are a lot tighter on this build. Sometimes people tend to like having very very high starting constitution on builds, and you could pull points from wisdom to make that happen. But with a 1.55x multiplier to HP gained on this build thanks to our enhancements, epic destiny, and items, every 2 points of constitution is about +50 hp, which isn’t bad but we can only get up to 16 without compromising our other important stats, and personally I evaluate +3 will saves as more valuable than +50 hp. All of our ASIs as we level will go towards strength.

For our skills, our biggest priorities are Use Magic Device so we can revive people at max level and keep up tenser’s transformation if we would like, and Intimidate so we can aggro things when needed and to scale our open lock. And tumble is always nice. We’ll have leftover skill points beyond that, which I would recommend putting into Listen, Search, and Balance. Leftover skill points beyond that can go wherever you want.
Our feat breakdown is as follows in this table:

Level. Feat
1. Two-Handed Fighting
3. Stunning Blow
6. Improved Two-Handed Fighting
9. Improved Critical: Slashing
12. Greater Two-Handed Fighting
15. Combat Expertise
18. Improved Trip
21. Overwhelming Critical
22. Perfect Two-Handed Fighting
24. Epic Barbarian Damage Reduction
25. Doublestrike
27. Epic Damage Reduction
28. Harbinger of Chaos
30. Epic Reflexes
Legendary. Scion of Arborea
31. Deific Warding


Your level 21 and 24 feats can definitely swap order if you want, it doesn’t really make a big difference. You might notice a lack of power attack, personally I found that having power attack on at max level did bad things to our accuracy, and since we’ll be using adrenaline + boulder’s might on this build grazing that combo represents a massive DPS loss, on top of the usual DPS loss for excess grazing. If you really wanted power attack (for example, maybe if you’re playing an uber completionist with a bunch of extra +’s to hit) I would recommend taking it instead of Stunning Blow or Epic Reflexes. Scion of Arborea is going to be the best Legendary Feat to scale our damage. I go into this more in the long version of this breakdown, but effectively Arborea is a bit stronger than the other options for DPS on this build already, and we don’t need ghost touch or blur from ethereal because we have LD ghost touch and can get blur from our gear. Not to mention the melee power will scale our various heals and abilities better.

As part of this build I limit reaper points to 15 maximum spent, that way I’m not completely just pretending they don’t exist and missing out on easy ways to dramatically scale damage like the doublestrike memento, but I’m also not running in with +800 health and a dozen memento charges and making a totally unrelatable build for people without many reaper points. Here’s a picture of how I’d allocate with 15 points:



Beyond that, I’d personally go barricade to tier/core 4 and pick up reflex on the way, then get another memento charge from thaumaturge, then just go heavy adversary for max melee power. But I’ve had no trouble pulling my weight in reaper 8+ quests with only spending 15 points, so I wouldn’t overly sweat it, the build really isn’t made to be reliant on reaper points.

For enhancements, the ending split looks like this:



On the way there, we go Frenzied Berserker up to 9 points for blood tribute and sprint boost, then take all the half-orc stuff. We then get core 3 Berserker, before putting all our points in Occult Slayer until level 12. At level 12 we ideally perform one cheap respec to get rid of our half-orc points temporarily so we can immediately gain access to tier 5. Then we get our half-orc stuff back, and starting filling out Frenzied Berserker again, grabbing Occult Slayer core 5 when we hit 18. If you don’t want to respec half-orc, either because you want open lock for levels 12-13ish or you just hate respeccing, you don’t have to respec, levels 12-13 will just be a bit tougher without t5’s.
For Epic Destinies, our final allocation will look like this:



On our way there, we’ll be getting dread mantle +1W at level 20 immediately, as well as adrenaline. We’ll then push our boulder’s might combo, and gradually take stuff as we hit the level thresholds to move up in the tree. Once we get to 26, our knockdown adrenaline and primal scream/rage heals mean that we’ll have a lot of extra damage and survivability. We don’t end up taking all of the Fury tier 5’s, just because we’re short on points and LD action boost speed and vulnerability are both very important since we won’t have sources of those stats anywhere else. If you get a few extra points from EPLs or something, tier 5 fury is worth grabbing everything in, although personally I don’t like using Great Leveler except as a CC option in Unbridled Fury, so I’d leave it as one point.
When I had excess points, I would just toss them in Grandmaster Flowers for +5 MP and a few stunning DCs, then respec them before taking levels 23/26 so I could immediately grab the valuable stuff. I think this ended up being under about 1k platinum total to do 2-3 times, but it’s optional if you don’t want to do that.
I’m not going to overly stress gear since you can use a lot of different gearsets on any given build, but the gearset I’m recommending is what I personally use (with differences noted where I haven’t acquired a piece of gear yet). I specifically am using a BTA gearset that is mostly easy to farm because I’m not a big fan of making a guide for a build and then saying “And you’ll need 3 items from THTH and a 5 piece LShroud set to make this work”. The hardest gear piece here is a Feytwisted item, but it has a good alternative as well. Parentheses denotes augments, if an augment isn’t mentioned where there is a slot that just means you can put what you want there, or leave it empty.

Hat: Titania’s Glory [Crown of Butterflies also works here, you just miss out on 15% helpless damage from the set, and good bypass]
Necklace: Hyena’s Claw (Dexterity, True Imperial Blood)
Trinket: Crocodile Tooth (Wisdom)
Cloak: Cape of the Roc (Dodge, Max Dex Bonus)
Belt: Direbear Belt (Sheltering)
Ring 1: Lionheart Ring (Damage)
Ring 2: Nocturne Ring
Gloves: Prince’s Gauntlet (Greater Heroism, Good Luck, Quick Movements)
Boots: Red Dragonscale Boots
Bracers: Vambraces of the Summer Court (false life)
Armor: Legendary Snowscale (resistance)
Goggles: Flexible, Spectacles of Spirit Sight or something with Deception is good
Weapon: Whirlwind

Filigrees:
Weapon:
Dreadbringer melee power
Long Shadow melee power
Long Shadow reflex saves
Dreadbringer strength
Dreadbringer tactics DC
Dreadbringer PRR
Shattered Device Melee Power
(Beyond here starts requiring sparks, and definitely aren’t necessary)
Shattered Device Strength
Shattered Device fort bypass
Shattered Device attack and damage

Minor Artifact:
Dreadbringer melee power
Long Shadow melee power
Shattered Device melee power

If you want to spend threads, you can put sucker punch/one against many in instead of long shadow melee power, and then a melee power sucker punch. That gets you a bunch of strength and melee power, but you miss out on the +50-60 acid damage per hit from Long Shadow. I wouldn’t worry about it too much unless you really don’t mind spending the threads.


That’s the short version. If you want to see more of these let me know, I’m planning to make one of these for every class eventually, but it takes quite a bit of time for each one so they’ll be coming out quite slowly.