BARB ARMOR & WEAPON Endgame ADVICE

yuhumphrey

have a LV95 barb and start thinking which weapon and armor path I should go, Morai, NIV or R8? R9 is out of the budget XD. BTW, which morai order is better for Barb? MY BARB is pure PVE tank.

thank you very much for all help!!!b:thanksb:thanksb:thanksb:thanks

FistToDeath - Dreamweaver

I'd go with G16 Nirvana. Easy, somewhat cheap, decent endgame with high refine rate, great set bonuses and will also be great if you ever decide to do some TW and NW, which are PVP.

As a pure tank, maybe the R8r weapon with a good amount of def lvls would be a nice fit for you.

I see no reason whatsoever for R8r armor unless you want some very specific adds, and Morai wouldn't be any good for TW or even NW, which, granted, are PVP, but at least NW is important to farm for better gears these days.

swabian

I agree that the bang for the buck is in G16.

IMO R8 stinks with the exception of as said above the potential Defense levels you can get from the reforged R8 Pole Hammer.

Unicorns Tragedy are pretty decent Axes to have and again G16. With these you will get the 40 attack levels and sometimes its good to have a little extra hit power to maybe make someone think twice about attacking you. Might want to consider Chill of Blizzard as well for the same reason.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

yuhumphrey wrote: »

MY BARB is pure PVE tank.

When I hear 'pure pve tank' I have to assume aps, although I know thats not what you meant. PvE tanks are all about better aggro and more damage since you will have plenty of def and hp with todays gear. The idea is you want to do enough damage on mobs that they'll die before aggro switches, and you want to generate enough damage on bosses that anyone who has enough dd to steal aggro should have enough defense to tank. Remember, almost everything in the game people used to do with tt90 and +4 refines and our gear is about 4 steps better than that nowdays, refines are easier, heals are stronger... I've also made numerous arguments for why aps builds survive much better in pve (I get about 8k paint heals per second and can spam invoke and sunder, all without a cleric). If your vit barb was in squad with my aps barb, my aps barb would be the tank. Anyways, my opinion is vit build for cata pulling, strength build for 1v1 pvp, aps for pve tanking /Rant.

I know, unsolicited advice. Now to your question. I agree with the posters above me. Go with G16 axes. R8r can be great but the dd isn't as high, refine rate is lower, and you're less of a threat if someone attacks you (although, you're also more likely to survive until you can get away). I had Morai axes and they're almost as good as r9 (about 10% less dd) and can get some great adds with 3 add-ons, but it just wasn't enough for me. I eventually made N3 axes and they hit really hard. They also have 3 add-ons, so you can focus on dd or get extra hp.

Having had the Morai axes I feel like I wasted 17.3 mil coin. They aren't tradable, they don't stash, and they pale in comparison to my N3 axes. Morai are almost as good as r9 axes but N3 are almost as good as r9r. If future upgrade come to the game there are talks of making r8r upgradable to Nirvana line or to a new r8r chain. Any other upgrades will be to the Nirvana chain, probably. So Nirvana weapons are nice because they're not a "dead" weapon once you outgrow them. If you get the extra coin or just have spare nation war tokens, making a +def r8r weapon is nice because then you can swap between defense and offense depending on the situation.

If you're not going r9 on your barb there really is no reason to get r8 other than the recast weapon. The ornaments are pdef and refine poorly, and as a barb you'll want magic ornies to refine for mdef. The chest has a nice base defense but again, offers pdef and refines poorly. Pdef is always good but barbs have plenty of it already. A better option would be N2 or N3 chestplates that offer better refine rates and mdef also. The cost of 200k rep is 48 gold, so almost 80mil coin that you can save if you don't go r8 or r8r.

As for which morai order, it really doesn't matter. I think Cornered Beast is in Shroud and that's probably the best morai skill. Blood Rush is nice, but it's more for dd/aggro oriented barbs. Raging Slap is from Lumi (?) I think and it's a pvp skill that is almost never used because of its cast time and chi cost. Shroud offers an extra nix valley token daily, which may appeal to you if you're trying to level. Lumi offers an extra cube run each day, which can be profitable and help you level. Corona offers an extra caster token, which I suspect you're not interested in. Another thing to consider is with 7k prestige you can now craft skill books, but they're spread out around the orders and I don't know which books is where.

One thing to consider if you want all books is start in the crappier order first and end in the order you want to stick with. For instance I want Lumi for the daily cube token, so I'd want to end there even though it has a skill I want.

WannaBM - Archosaur

I advise this and this

As for morai there are 3 skills to get:

Bloodrush. This is an interesting skill. It is not really important for just tanking. It is however a wonderfull skill if you want to solo AOE things like PV and TM. If you would decide to go APS, it is also a bit helpfull there.

Cornered beast. This is the skill you want for pulling most of all. Not only as safety net, but also for calculated use. It purifies you when pulling poisonous mobs, you can simply pull until cornered beast goes off and then you are purified and you get sparks so you can safely invoke.

raging slap seems pretty useless to me. I dont do TW though, it might be more usefull there. But even then probably the last skill you want.

I would also like to advise you to go demon even if you think you just want to be a tanking barb really. The advantages of sage are a slight bit more tankiness and some lower chi consumption for reaming/devouring. If we were in the days that TT90 was end game equipment, i would say the choise between demon and sage could be an interesting one because life would be difficult and every bit of tankiness really helps.

As it is however, all PvE jobs are rather easy and those slight advantages of sage are absolutely not needed. Even with my dex build, in G16+6, i can do full pulls in lunar and warsong metal/fire. No need for more that that. so there is no reason not allow yourself some offensive options as well. If you choose demon, you can learn demon sunder. Demon sunder is the most amazing omfg wow pve skill you can dream off. Combined with armageddon you do huge amounts of damage and this will help you to hold AOE agro from other squichy AOE DDs like wizzies and archers simply by doing more damage than them. In G16+5, you will do 50k sunder + 100k armageddon easy. Spark + bloodrush + sunder + berserkers wrath will allow you to AOE mobs at 35 meter distance for around 100k as long as you also have something nearby to target your sunder. Going demon means giving up like 5% of your tankiness to gain 100% more AOE offense.

This also brings me to the weapon choise. 99% of the population uses unicorns tragedy. It is a fine weapon. If however you want to chalenge yourself with solo AOE tasks that are at the limit of your ability, you want damage to be reliable. When i say 100k AOE, that means your unicorns tragedy will do something between 60 and 140k while resonance of pride may do something between 80 and 120 k. Now suppose you are doing TM69. The mobs happen to have 80k HPs. The resonance or pride guarantees them to be dead, the unicorns tragedy does not. When you have your weapon +10 refined, the same is true for TM79, but then the mobs have about 110k HPs.

I too would suggest you consider APS. However, it is not something you need to consider now imo. APS starts to shine when you do enough damage to hold agro from most other DDs just by the raw damage you do. That means you will want an expensive tome for 5APS and proper refines (+10) on your fist/claw. Meanwhile, you will want your tiger form HPs to be around 20k and your standing HPs in APS equipment closer to 15k than 10k. Since the required dex will reduce the amount of vit you can stat, this means you will need more refines. And of course you need 2 sets of equipment. If this is your first or main toon, it will take a long time to get the wealth to afford this and i would advise you to first go with a vit build and restat to dex later. Going APS means giving up another 10% or so tankiness to gain like 500% single target offense.

BTW, also make it a priority to get stomp of the king once you get to level 100. This is the skill that alows barbs to hold agro against todays DDs. Just ream and devour dont cut it.