My claw Barb experiences

Demodude - Dreamweaver

This is NOT a thread to debate the usefulness and effectiveness of claw barbs. Although they are not my personal preference, I do recognize that they can be incredibly effective farmers and dish out incredible damage.

My problem is that, from the claw barbs I have been in a squad with, people seem to think that the extra damage and aggro that claw barbs generate makes them exempt from working on their gear.

I can't tell you how many times I've been in a squad with a claw barb that has unrefined deicides and +2/3 aps armor, then are shocked when they can't tank BH's. And then when I try to explain that they need to refine their gear and whatnot, I get the same response every time

"Claw Barbs are different I'm OP as is"

My response is to usually just drop squad because I can tell that this is not going to end well

So, in conclusion, I believe claw barbs can be awesomely powerful (for example the 3-3 farming videos Joe posted), but the people I've been in squads with seem to think claw barbs rule all and they don't have to work on their gear.

It may just be my bad experiences, but people seem to not be using their claw barbs effectively, which leads to a lot of nub claw barbs running around.

Just my thoughts on it

WannaBM - Archosaur

Sorry for my contribution in popularizing them. I know many nabs started building them lately b:pleased Give them some time. Next year they will be R9s and you cant keep up with the speed they are butchering their way trough every instance. b:laugh

Demodude - Dreamweaver

In the scheme of things it's not so bad. For every badly geared claw barb I see i must see about 20 terribly geared sins b:laugh

opkossy

It's the same as old-school heavy/robe venos. The good ones are amazing but most who try it... not so much even if they think they're doing it right.

ovenusarmanio

Yup, same with sins. Or heavy armor venos. Or clawchers. Lots of people that go to these builds don't have either the skills or the gear to make up for the lack of skills, to back it up.

Roar_King - Sanctuary

Yes, they have to work on gears.
I saw too many barbs that can't keep aggro with claw because low refine or because they use claw with a VIT build and not STR. So the squad can't do damage to not steal aggro and need 1h to kill a boss.
With good gear claw barbs are awesome for PVE because they can debuff and increase critical hits before aps and are the best aps DD after assassins.

Keisari - Raging Tide

Kitty has all the builds mentioned and she's pretty much shown their capabilities.

As APS-barb barb should have both APS-set and tank set. For APS-barb who cannot afford both at once Kitty recommends getting tank gears first, with elemental(for pulling) and APS-ornaments and APS-cape.

With T2-helm, plate, legs, boots and wrists APS-barb would be then just 0.05 -int away from actual APS-set's APS. And refines on these T2-pieces better be something like +4 and fully flawless sharded to gain tankiness. At that point Kitty already solo'd TT3-1 bosses(except Steelation and GBA) with ease BP'd(GBA seriously hates Kitty so Kitty hasn't still managed to kill it 'cause Purge+def. debuff+EP always, every single time @400k left GG).

In FWS, as APS-barb, Kitty solos any phys. pav with quite easily(unless lag spikes, explosion and poison ring at once, but that's quite fatal combo for anyone).


HA-claw archer has proven itself quite tanky. With T2/T3 HA-set Kitty's archer can solo easily solo any pav in FWS. With APS-gears it's not that squishy either if played correctly as Kitty usually tanks Snake successfully despite having just 5,9k base HP in APS-gears(rank 4 plate to get T3-claws to 5APS GG). It's just about using survival stuff properly.

As T3-HA pieces gives lots of str, Kitty sometimes takes her lunar T3-axes on archer as it's fun to see ppl's reactions to seeing axercher. Actually, 2 days ago while Kitty was waiting for timer Kitty solo'd water on it. Unbuffed, just charm as heals for later half(Kitty ran out of crabs during first half).
Kitty just spammed Wingspan with axes(Wingspan and Winged Pledge can be used with any weapon), never swapping for bow during the entire pav. Wasn't even hard. Thus Kitty gives quite mean looks for any HA who says they can't solo water even fully-buffed and BP'd.

Maybe Kitty should use her seeker's blades next time.


On HA-veno it's indeed very easy to go wrong as being effective requires quite specific gears and rolls. But it's quite rewarding when successful. Kitty's current gears: PW-Calc. Calc ofc lacks cards and meridian. Kitty also has T3-cape(10 str, 11 str, 11 dex, 10 mag. Sapaki's Crafting Service has good rolls. Kitty had to buy CS for that piece as she had TW coming and she wanted the T3-HP boostb:surrender).

Back to the topic: with T2-pataka Kitty was capable of soloing any pav except water, and when she got her T3-m. sword made even water became too easy. If Kitty had a bit more damage she could probably solo mobless earth but that probably becomes possible when Kitty gets her APS-ornies and boots+wrists farmed(2.22APS Wind Shielded b:avoid).

2 common mistakes Kitty sees many HA-venos do ish that they think using spells ish more effective than APSing and that they don't use their myriads. Purging, amping, Proccing p. def. myriad and APSing in Fox ish HA-veno's real power. When Kitty once participated NW, she had loads of sins using Tackling Slash from stealth and spark-APSing Kitty. Too bad they lost that contest.
If HA-veno manages to use Stunning Blow(to prevent them from escaping) on a caster, it's usually a very quickly dead squishie(unless it has massive spirit advantage).
Kitty's also 1vs1'd some equal-geared and -spirited BMs and to their disappointment, HA-veno has too many ways to kill one while they can't bypass charm(unless, again, high spirit advantage) due to HA-veno's massive p. def.

If someone with both phys. and magic-skills caughts a HA-veno off-guard, though, HA-veno ish almost as good as dead. Kitty hates good seekers and their metal-combo Q.Q

Kitty forgot to mention: having both gearsets of all these builds hotbar'd ish pretty much a necessity. When in bind the time taken to swap from gearset to another can be a matter of life and death.

Kitty's sorry about a wall of not that well-thought text. She felt like she needs to defend these builds('cause they can be epic if played properly) and Kitty just woke up not that long ago.

WannaBM - Archosaur

Kitty would be so fantastic if she could speak first person and in white text b:pleased