Monkeycid's Guide To The Barbarian

[monkeycid]

Whoa, this generated alot of response :) I've been away on a ski trip, so apologies for the late reply. Now let's see... :)

100% Damage is attributed to Battle Cry, which would mean that you are talking about the former, and not the latter. But personally, I prefer using War Cry first. It's easier to "curse" the baddies when they're standing there like little EXP pillars than when they're beating on you

You misunderstood my writing (which in that case was easy to misunderstand). What I meant with -100% damage is that when they are stunned, they cannot deal damage. Thus WarCry gives an effective -100% damage reduction while they are stunned :) we're thinking the same thing, it's just that I phrased it badly (never try to be witty monkey, you write too bad for that)

From a strictly statistical standpoint, one-handed axes are superior to one-handed swords in most cases. Axes do more damage, have lower requirements, and are generally faster or are the same speed. The Zerker Axe does more damage than the Mythical Sword, yet has lower requirements and the same base attack speed. Of course, one-handed axes look like crap, but Mythical Swords don't look much better (everyone knows Cryptic Swords look the best, though they belong on the Paladin and not Ugg). I never used two-handed swords in the one-handed fashion (all two-handers were distributed to my two-handed Zealot and two-handed Avenger), so I don't know how they factor in.

The thing is that the two handed swords (Colossus blades, mostly) are very easy to get cruel (thanks to the 3chip recipe), and they deal great damage.
Axes may be better (slightly), but much much harder to get. Compare the ratio of cruel berserker axes VS the ratio of Cruel Collossus Blades... Zerk axes are hard hard hard to get :)
The section was written thinking that you would use a 2hand sword either onehanded or when dual wieliding :)

You didn't mention those godawful desynch errors associated with high Run/Walk Barbarians (or really anyone who can get really fast movement - Assassins and even us Paladins are bad about this, too.) I recall that breaking the 200% point causes some nasty desynchronization errors. I've never seen one, but I've heard about them. Supposedly like the Charge bug amplified twentyfold

Good point, I'll add that. You start desynching around ~160%, there is no magical desynch breakpoint :)

Ever notice that the base range for Leap at slvl 1 is 4.6 YARDS? That's one helluva big hop. Just thought I'd add that in.

Well, 4.6 yards is a little bit shorter than a Waypoint tile. Not a helluva hop :) But it's decent. I really like Leap :)

This is out of order (I'm making these nits and comments as I read the guide, if you haven't picked up on that yet), but I recall you referring to the Paladin aura Concentration as "Concentrate". A simple and common mistake, but it could lead to confusion. Just an observation.

Uh, doh :) Was probably cause I had written about Concentrate earlier :) Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm not sure about this, but WW MAY be similar to Charge in the Defense/Blocking department. With Charge, you'll maintain your Defense and Blocking values as if you were walking so long as autorun isn't enabled (I never use Autorun, anyway, so this was a nonissue for me). Use Autorun, however, and it's exactly as if you're running. Whether a feature or a bug, I have no idea. Might want to check that for WW.

I'm certain that Blocking and Defense is enabled when WWing :) (Tharn had done some tests, and I trust him)

* The "Crying Frenzier" sounds like the Battle Barbarian build, but without the Battle Cry. The basic usage of the Battle Barbarian would be to lure things in close, use War Cry to stun them, use Battle Cry to disable them, use another War Cry to keep them stunned (this eats a lot of MP in the process, so some MP-adders would be useful here), and then slice 'em up with Frenzy. A lot of work for a single group of monsters, but it's very viable and eats up Frenzytaurs like nobody's business.

C'est possible :) I've got a self-designed barb that sounds like he's very close to this, except that he uses WW and Zerk. I'll post him up in the next version... I named him Battle Barb, thought that was unique but it seems someone else is using that build name? Could you please provide a link to a description of a battle barb?

And finally...

Looks Germanic, but I'm not sure what specific language. Dutch or Swiss, perhaps?

It's Swedish (which is also my native language) :) Swedish dialect, actually... :o . It means "It's over now/It ends now. Goodbye gas-station, (slang word for gasstation, anyway) see you tomorrow (Värmland slang for tomorrow)". It's the end quote from a old popular swedish humor serie.

Thanks for the praise :)

Monkeycid