Back a fourtnight ago after 11 years away. I love my barb.
Solo, I’m hugely suffering from squishiness and ngl, at times I almost feel rage quit it’s so frustrating.
Just got rank 4 with Tamarin, got my first T3.25 piece but the rest of my gear’s still on the light-weight side (bar a couple pieces). I’ve nps with rotations / combos.
My aim here is to see if there’s something I can learn to be capable to defend vs more than 2 mobs.
OFC, solo I spec zerk. Here’s my build Barbarian - Feat Planner - JoharAoC
Unstoppable/Welcoming death is not as good as it sounds, from general you can gain armor/prot which does help you regardless of your current hp. Though Eyes of Madness is an awesome feat, you do not profit that much from it in a solo situation, instead try the additional stun - when the mob is stunned it can not hit you, I would take that over a questionable dps feat. Instead of pushing two combos with Hammer and Anvil you gain more steady dps from Lethality.
For rota/combos: Do you switch weapons for Wreck Armor and applying the debuff? Do you use highest second step of butcher, or already Upheaval?
What do your AAs look like?
Depending on your playstyle you might want to try a reaver heavy spec, if your aim is to fight multiple mobs. https://cutt.ly/4WgRld1
Reaver Stance, Mainly using Wreck Armor (notice the specced AOE), Jagged Cut/Upheaval 1H, weapon switching for Staggering Blow (proccing Reverse Swing), stacking dps buffs, not forgetting Back in the Fray. This is more of a jump in - explode - run style, and you might need some better gear to fully profit from it, but if you like a faster and dps heavier playstyle give it a go.
Double tapping forward gives you a nice chance of stunning with your next hits.
Fortunately you can get away with some really dumb specs on a barb and still have success (like the one someone linked). So I wouldn’t worry about your spec too much.
A great tip for barbs to is right click on your blood rage stack and click “delete” to cancel it after you hit rank 15; that way it resets and you can start building it up again. (the base regen buff it gives at rank 15 is puny compared to the heals you get for stacking up new levels of blood rage, so not resetting blood rage at 15 stacks is potentially missing out on thousands of extra health regen.)
If I had to nitpick your spec, I’d give up the 5 points atrocity (it’s not as good as it seems) depending on how much AA you have in Without Warning or Determination it can be worth it to drop. And maybe add a few points in Arcane Marauder too, because who doesn’t like speed boosts and also it will help stack blood rage just like Atrocity.
You could definitely afford to go into general too to pick up Lethality, but dont waste more than 5 points on armor/prot to get there. I think 1 point in Eyes of Madness is a better value than 3.
But in the end it’s not that important because barbs in solo PVE and even PVP for that matter can get away with using almost any spec, the most important thing is using the class right. For now if I were you i’d just put all my points into the zerker tree and whatever you get will be fine.
Later on once you get into hyrbid specs and reaver specs things will get interesting. Barb gets really fun when you go full dps mode. One tip is to never put more than one point in Sever, the difference is like 50 damage at the cost of 4 points lol.
Another tip is to fully utilize Swarm Fighter when you’re solo leveling. People often don’t realize barb has an instant self big heal. You can get a couple thousand health instantly if you activate that when surrounded by enemies.
I agree to almost everything you said, with the only exception about Atrocity, which I definitely like to have.
Also, I guess it’s worth noting that it’s not always necessary to delete the Blood Rage buff, Blood Fury is also helpful, because it drops 5 stacks, while also giving a damage buff.
Another thing I’d like to mention is that it’s much easier to do weapon switch if you keybind it to a single key, instead of using the default Shift+R. I have it on the key next to ‘1’ (’`’ on my keyboard, but it may vary), so that it’s easy to reach while doing combos.
The spec you posted, Myriandore, is fine. Get the AAs Upheaval and Without warning. Use your ccs and then move behind the mobs so you don’t hit the shields with your combos.
Just took my first x5 mobs down like they were nothing.
Taking your advice on board, I tweaked my feats tree, remapped keybinds, altered combat positioning… and boy… what a massive vote of confidence in my barb!
Unfortuately we dont get to see the exact stats for atrocity but in all the testing i’ve done I think it’s around a 25% chance to stack blood rage. At the expense of 5 points I dont think 1 extra blood rage stack every 4 combos is very good. WW guarantees a new stack every combo which is more than enough to depend on IMO.
That requires you to have enough AA in Without Warning though… which might be a lot to ask for new characters. And if you want to bring both upheaval and boneshatter then yeah definitely get atrocity.
BTW i noticed in your spec you can get decap if you’re thrifty with your points link
it might look weird but both me and lurvi have had success in pvp with specs like this*, so i bet it works fine in pve you might wanna try it out if you’re ever bored and wanna try something new ^^
you might wanna try it out if you’re ever bored and wanna try something new ^^