Over the weekend I leveled to 13. So now Samius is 12 barb/ 1 fighter. I could not be more pleased with that fighter level. It allowed me to pick up Stunning blow, the faster attack enchantment and gave all the armor proficiencies allowing me use a set of Stonemeld Plate Armor I have sitting in my TR bank for a while now. The DR5/- is one better then my barb DR, has a funny camouflage clicky to play with and hell looks cool. With my Maul and the Stonemeld Plate all I need is a dumb winged hat and I could claim to be Thor. Well a new Thor anyway. 🙂
I went back and forth a lot on staying pure this life or adding the fighter level/s and after 12 I thought why not? All that love above was calling my name.
I am planing on taking another fighter level next level again; also for the feat. It will allow me to pick up another THF feat either finishing the chain or mostly finishing the chain.
That said if I do take that second fighter level I will not get a lot of time to play with the 3rd tear of the barb PRE. I wonder should I bother?
With 4 levels of fighter you get a 3rd feat which could be used to take Weapon Specialization netting me more damage sooner. As well as haste boost 2, and trip/stun 2 enchantment lines. All very handy things.
If I do the 4 levels of fighter loose out on trying the barb PRE to its fullest. And it makes taking anymore barb levels mostly point less as the gains would be fairly small.
I don’t know. What do you think?
Samius Gurobo 
If you’re not going to stay at 20, I wouldn’t bother trying for the 3rd tier PRE anyway. Sounds like you’d get more out of the journey to 20 with the extra fighter levels.
If you’re going to stick around at 20, I’d keep with the 18/2 split.
Also, unless something changed since I played my barbarian, you don’t get their innate swift movement in heavy armor. Just tossing it out there.
I don’t plan to be 20 for very long, i will have to think about it some more. Also from the wiki: Unlike the PnP versions of the D&D 3.5 ruleset, Barbarians in DDO do not lose this movement speed increase if they wear heavy armor, nor under any other circumstances. It is a permanent effect.
I am by no means an expert, but I have given this a quite abit of thought as I am leveling a barb on my first ever TR. I was torn between staying pure and taking a couple of lvls of fighter. Now my main issue is that I’m trying to fit in TWF line. Staying pure just wasn’t going to work out. I couldn’t get enough feats to make it work.
So….my next decision was taking 2 lvls of fighter or more. I have decided to stick with 2. If I had planned to take more than 2, then I was going for 6 lvls fighter to get Kensai 1. Utlimately I think you should either stick with 2 lvl fighter or go to 6 lvl fighter. I don’t see how stopping at 4 would really benefit you much.
At this point, I am kind of regretting going the Barb route at all. I like fighters so much better. It feels like I can maintain a pretty high Sustained DPS with fighter while Barb seems to be more about the bursts of massive DPS. Once Rages and Frenzy run out on barbs, DPS seems to be lacking.
Well…sorry for rambling, good luck with your journey.
18/2 is better than 16/4. 2 points of damage per hit is far outweighed by x2 more to crit multiplier for 18 barb. In non epic content with a great ax, its practically a vorpal that hits on a 19-20, as the crit damage usually exceeds the mobs HP.
Tier 3 Berserker is HUGE. Trust me. You want it. Don’t listen to that guy 🙂 You shouldn’t run out of rages between shrines. As far as frenzy goes those are unlimited. Frenzy your little angry heart out, if your cleric bitches about it get a new cleric. Remember: you don’t have to be nice you’re a barbarian!.
@XavierElanor – but if i am TRing again right away should i bother with power later that i might not really use or power now?
Hey Samius,
This is exactly what I have trouble with on DDO. Where do you want your character to Shine? Level 6, 12 and 18 can be obvious points due to PRE’s. Sometimes delayed by splashing. But certain spells (FW, BB etc) can also allow for a peak. Not to mention item minimum levels. If you don’t stay at level 20, why bother going for 18/2 splits with Tier III PRE’s? So I set my target for levels 12-14 now as the main peak with a steady but smaller increase going to level 20. Then again, I don’t play epics yet. So I might regret my choices later…but that’s what we have LR for! 😉
The level 12-14 range allows me to take advantage of the PRE tier II abilities as well as splash in levels (Rog2, Mnk2 or Ftr2) for optimal use of extra feats, saves, and/or evasion. Also better items become available. The rest of the levels I plan to add something that will improve my level 12-14 build at almost each level. This means that while planning characters I take some of the frontloading away and add them later to keep that slope going up. Example is 2nd (or sometimes even 1st Toughness) which I take around level 12 for tanks. Meaning you get 14 hps at once, instead of 1 each separate level. I don’t miss them at lower levels, but they improve my durability at higher level.
So, I would go for fighter levels instead of barb…unless the barb levels add something better than the fighter levels can.
Cheers!
I think people need to understand the you are going to be 20 for as long as it takes to run from the trainer to the TR guy.