My first Barbarian...just a quick question

My first Barbarian...just a quick question

Hello!
I've never made a Barb before (they were always my roomates gig) but I was remembering the old Final Fantasy games had a class called a "Dragoon" which was a fighter-type who used lances and jumping attacks.

You can all see where this is heading, so I just wanted to ask your opinion about how successful he could be. It just seems like it would be a blast to play.

Also, would you folks say Polearms, or Spears, as his main weapon? Thanks for all the help!

 

Hey, well there's a lot of pretty successful builds using either spears or polearms, what sort of barb are you going for, weapon/shield? weapon/weapon? What skills will you be using, concentrate, whirlwind, beserk? .. and ya I could see it being a blast to play!

 

I was thinking about mainly polearms or spears (can't decide which), but I seems to me that all the best weapons are swords.

As to skills, with 40 points squirreled away for leap and leap attack, I'll have some to play with, but my inexperience with playing barb's will really hamstring me in this regard. I had thought to use Leap Attack as his main attack form, maybe with some howling to make the peons run away, and some points into Find Item!

I'll be sure to check out some other posts, but can you give a barbarian Newbie a little advice?

 

Give your barb a greeen armor like the Leviathon or Hawkmail.
Give your barb a green helm like Vampire Gaze.
Then, only use Leap attack while having your character scream:

"HULK SMASH!"

 

Well, I've heard of people building leapers before .. and I actually invested like 15 points into leap attack on the first barb I ever built. I was very attracted to leap attack for the damage, however I found it really hard to play by itself. meaning that sometimes it's just really impractial to 'leap', I mean lets say .. that there's a group of 20 monsters, so you lock on one of them and leap. now you're in the middle of 20 monsters (well probably 19 because of the massive damage you did to the first one.) so what now, your idea about howl is not to bad, and I'm sure you could make it work, only playing would be really slow. Maybe a leaping zerker .. humm .. leap into the pack, then zerk the rest at close range.. The other thing I found annoying about leap attack was that it was so slow, for most of the monsters, I'd lock on them, leap attack, and by the time I actually leaped to them they had moved out of range.. or teleported away .. I guess it really depends on what you want to do/how you want to play, if you're looking for an unusual build, or to try something different great .. a leaper is that for sure. I just don't know how soloing through hell would be with a leaper.. I guess another idea would be a leaping singer.. using leap attack and a number of warcrys.. humm .. something to think about..

 

Hmm. Those are some pretty good points, I really have some things to think about. As to soloing Hell, that's pretty far from my mind as I've never even been there, and if it comes down to it I'll just party up with some friends. Thanks for all of your help!

One more thing, are Polearms considered too slow to kill effectively?

How about Whirlwind to get me out of the pack of 20 (19!) monsters in your example? I wouldn't worry about the damage, it would just get me out and primed to leap again. Or do you need a clear "line of sight" to use Whirlwind?

 

i like polearms better than spears...I dink some polearms can be fast, i never really used them b4, usually used sword. didn't like two handed weaps because of the lack of a shield.

 

This entirely depends on what polearm you are using. A Scythe displays as 'fast' while a halberd shows 'normal' which can be good enough. These are comparative, of course, if you are doing IAS bp calculations then you'll need to look up weapon speed, but for the casual gamer the comparative labels are enough.

Some Whirlers used to prefer polearms for their superior range, but I don't know what the current thinking is nowadays.

 

For appearance's sake, I prefer scythes. A personal opinion, mind you...

 

i would say got with a botd eth lance it would be sick to see the damage you do plus you would have a bit of a chance of surviving with the leap because its harder to hit when activly leaping just watch out for long rangers they'll get you good