Why is FFC so bad?

Maybe they want to decomp others FC gear for Orders of Blessing. b:chuckle

If it wasnt for lacking enough Strength to wield your Dragonhunts, I would have suggested using a Swindlers/Demon Slaughter Neck/Belt respectively, but if you're able to run instances safely as you are...

Nothing is really wrong with FCC gear. It isn't craftable any more and has to be found, and its a half step between TT80 (G10) and TT90 (G11) but is grade 10 so it's not really an upgrade from TT80. It's about as good as most the Legendary equipment around that is craftable, cheaper, can be crafted/resold until you get 4 sockets, and is easier to find. Alot of people don't spend 2mil per piece on their 80-90 gear but the FCC pieces tend to run around 1.5-2m to decomp and sell for exp Order of Blessings so people find more worth in them that way.

Also, TT90 gear is required for making TT99 which is alot of peoples goal so why spend money and time refining gear for 85-89 then do the same thing for 90-98 gear? Most people prefer to just use the gear for 79+ until level 90 rather than add another step of gear for 4 levels.

I tried balancing your build more since there are a few things I'm not a fan of in there. Here it is I kept most the gear around the same level, same refines, and same shards, then rebalanced your stats.

First off, pdef ornies on a barb. Barbs have tons of pdef, especially while in tiger form. Physical damage is what we primarily tank, but we still have such a weakness to magic damage it cuts through our high hp like butter. That's why I avoid R8 ornies since they only strengthen an area we already have covered.

Single element tomes. Why go with a 10 stat tome when an equal priced one gives 13?

WOCC is cute, G13, and great for arcane users. It's even great for barbs up to a certain level. The real benefits are it can hold G12+ stones and its amazing adds pre level 90, but you are over level 90, you don't have G12+ stones, and you are an HA user so it's +500 pdef doesn't do you a huge amount of good. The speed bonus is nice for pulls getting you out of range of damage and overall its still a nice cape but not ideal.

Your interval wrists gain you 5% damage and chi gain. Not huge and not a bad thing, but -int isn't really purposeful at low attack speeds and you might trade it for something more useful.

Overall, I'm not a huge fan of single purpose barbs that are only meant for pulling FCC. You're high vit, low attack speed, tiger form damage nerf, hp focused weapon, low crit rate and accuracy will turn you into a devour/buff ***** which gets old. It's nice if you can support a sin/bm/seeker/archer tanking for you, but its why many barbs feel they lose their purpose, or see squadmates pull aggro and die no matter how many tricks they know. My guess is without a weapon and without sparking my sin would hold aggro from you. Just something to consider when you think about endgame goals and what you want your barbs job to be.

Salari - Raging Tide wrote: »

I see where you all are comming from but you must have not read or mis-read my post. My endgame gear will be a full r8 set except for the weapon. I was asking why FFC is frowned on and such not what gear I should use. M/Pdef wise only TT99 and some OHT made gears has better stats. tt90 does have better vit and hp but lower m/pstats. So for me going straight to R8 it is a waste of time and coins to farm tt90 and 99 when they will be replaced.

Sakubatou - The weapon has hp yes but I will be upgrading it to Nivarna, so why not use it? And no you cant pull agro from me with just your fists on your sin b:chuckle. My sin cant take agro with DDT's unsparked what makes you think you can with no weapon b:chuckle

I told you the reasons people tend to not use FCC gear then took the liberty of commenting on your gear since you gave us your current gear calc and told us the gear you plan to use. In my opinion R8 plate is fine, belt and pants kinds of suck. Really the only piece worth having is the weapon since its as good as most first cast Nirvana weapons for a fraction of the cost, and I found it funny that you are aiming for the two pieces I would avoid and avoiding the one piece I consider worth it and instead dropping 100x the amount of coin on a different axe.

And the reason I think I can take aggro so easily is because I've done it a dozen times. Alot of barbs use roughly your build and gear and since about 85 I could take aggro at will. 103 barbs in squad and the level 85 sin would say "may as well heal me so I don't have to hold back." Now that I'm 100 and have decent gear it's a no contest to the point that I prolly can do it without even a weapon, ijs. Saying you can hold aggro from a G15 5 aps or zerk sin with a barb with minimum refines and the worst damage output in the game is just a lie, sorry. I know I aggro bounce while skill spamming and auto attacking unsparked with R9 +12 barbs.

Salari - Raging Tide wrote: »

But I do not appreciate you calling me a liar. I could just as easy call you a liar saying since 85 you could take agro at will. But I wont as will not bring myself down to that level. There have been many times I have brought my "weak damage" barb to the new bh's because we could not find a barb. I never had any problems keeping agro not only off my own sin as it auto attacks but others as well. I would love to see you pull agro off a 90+ barb that knows what they are doing on a "non random agro" boss, while you attack with just your fists without sparking.

Well, I wasn't expressly calling you a liar but saying you can keep aggro off G15 sins with .87 aps, a +3 weapon, and vit build is... unheard of?

As for keeping aggro until 89, that is the usual standard because of triple spark and some -int gear that becomes available at level 90 but I'm noticing earlier and earlier barbs are giving up and turning over tanking. It used to be level 100 weapons, then it was 89/90, then it was get 2 clerics and let the DD tank BH69 and LA/AA are better at tanking BH 59... so now some tanks are turning over tanking job at 70+. When I leveled my barb I would simply always ask "want me to try to hold aggro, or support you with devour" but when my sins join squad before we ever touch a mob I'll hear "sins in squad, they can tank bosses." Now I'm hearing it with my archer, lol. I am doing BH69 and use fists sometimes on bosses and will start out with no blessing, if I get aggro I'll remove my -int wrists, if I still get aggro I move to no weapon. If the barb is a high dd build and can hold aggro decently I can put my blessing back on, if not its easier to just stand back attack with bow and take things slower.

Just my two cents on balancing hp and aggro to make a real tank. Too much into surviving and you'll never have aggro and won't tank, too much into DD and aggro ability and you'll have trouble surviving bosses or pulls. You seem to have gone 100% survivability and those barbs scare me because they don't usually tank. 17k hp is great for a 98 barb, but I'd prefer a 12k hp barb with more strength/dex as my tank any day over that. Just an experience thing, but I take back my accusations and sorry for any derailing.

Deago - Lost City wrote: »

Mind I tell you that you can still hold aggro just takes some timing on skills. A barb will never lose his aggro hold skills and if you use them correctly then well you'll be fine. It doesnt stop at 89 since I can hold it from most sin, and from pretty much most BMs. This being said if you can hold aggro from a pure rank 9 arhcer +12 with DoT then you're fine. b:bye

please tell us more about how vit Barbs (cause that's what we are talking about here) can hold agro from Sins and BMs...any 5 aps sin/bm with average refines will take agro from a Barb even a r9 Barb you can agro tag but that doesn't mean you are "keeping agro" and that you are actually "tanking" is not about skills lol is about the game mechanics; Hell imma try it with my poorly geared BM (deicides +5 lol) as soon as I can log and im almost sure imma hold agro xD

Magnanimous_ - Heavens Tear wrote: »

It's fair to say that the crappy game mechanics of pwi severely limits the ability for barbs to hold aggro over aps users. The sad part of it is that... quite a lot barb give up on flesh reaming at the first sign of starting to loose aggro. I won't claim that I can hold aggro against a 5.0 +12 sin but what I can say is that it doesnt take much effort for any barb to have a majority aggro time against a 5.0 sparked bm with deicide +5... assuming that you really know what you are doing.

I always try to keep agro on my barbie

lets do an experiment with mmm whatever boss that takes 5 mins+ to kill for a bm and a barb only and 1 cleric BBing i bet the barb is just going to tag the agro after a a couple of min. and the BM will be do most of the tanking (haven't try it on my bm but let me do it and I'm going to come back to you...like next week cause I don't have a PC on my new dept. QQ)

Magnanimous_ - Heavens Tear wrote: »

he sad part of it is that... quite a lot barb give up on flesh reaming at the first sign of starting to loose aggro.

I agree with you on this one; trying to keep aggro helps squishy sins/bms while doing bosses

Shield - Raging Tide wrote: »

please tell us more about how vit Barbs (cause that's what we are talking about here) can hold agro from Sins and BMs...any 5 aps sin/bm with average refines will take agro from a Barb even a r9 Barb you can agro tag but that doesn't mean you are "keeping agro" and that you are actually "tanking" is not about skills lol is about the game mechanics; Hell imma try it with my poorly geared BM (deicides +5 lol) as soon as I can log and im almost sure imma hold agro xD

I would love to see your Bm with +5 deicides take aggro from me, good luck. And with aps Id still hold aggro as well so please tell me when you see a 5 aps +5 deicides take aggro from either a great r9 barb or even a r9 barb thats claw. b:bye

have pwi change the game mechanic to allow tank barbs to hold aggro from decent APS characters?

if they haven't, there is only a few explanation why you are able to hold aggro.

The aps user is holding back, by that i mean he is either

1.not using blessing,
2.not using his full -int gear,
3.using a weaker weapon
4.avoid demon spark or cant.
5.Not attacking to prevent accident grab

Occasional Aggro ping pong is not okay. If the aps user get 1-shot he should learn not to grab aggro, if he is able to tank then it is way better for a cleric to heal him than you.

You can just devour and do more damage that way. FC is about speed not who can make the cleric sweat more..

Sesusixo - Raging Tide wrote: »

hi, im kinda nooby 99 barb.. but i'd like to point out a couple things that i've tried, to increase my agro.

i try to arrive at boss first, and get a head start vs the rest of the squad, sometimes using roar as a first attack (don't knock it less u tried it!)

I believe demon barb has the best agro capability, due to demon true form, and flesh ream has a shorter cooldown . thus if chi is not an issue... flesh ream can be cast more times.

i am aware that devour's debuff duration is longer than it's cooldown, but devour grants agro. if want agro, cast it everytime it is available!

then ya know... gear, refines...

all else fails, use genie skill "Expel" on the sin right after he sparks the first time. he'll hate u, but agro all yours while he buildin chi again :P

Lol'd at this and have done it on my cleric with aggro hoars to help the barbs keep aggro.

I like starting with roar if I'm gonna be aggroing with FR. Demon roar also gives a stronger reflect than bramble, so against [?] bosses that can be a decent amount of dd. Only thing is it's 60 second cooldown so you have to know your squad. Sometimes I just wait to use it till after the initial barrage of debuffs since when HF, amp, EP, TM, devour, seeker stances... are all applied a character can be doing 6x their normal damage. That's how bosses die in <10 seconds. In this situation it's nice to let the damage happen for that 15 second window, then roar to reset aggro and start your FR spam.

I've had debates on whether devour helps. Yes it is an aggro skill but I think the debuff helps dds more than the aggro helps you. Simply put, it's about a 35% physical dmg increase. If you're dps is 40k spamming FR/devour and the sin next to you is 150k (many sins have even higher dps than this) then you will get some aggro from devour and 14k more dps, while they get 52.5k more dps. That 52.5k more damage per second will probably outweigh the small amount of aggro devour gave you and cause them to get it. Just my opinion. Although it's good to cast devour once at the start of a boss for the accuracy glitch and that initial barrage of debuffs, as well as anytime a BM HFs.

I don't like arriving at a boss first and it actually kind of annoys me when people do. Bosses in FCC have timed skills that kick in about 35-45 seconds after you start the boss. First boss has traps, second has bubbles/sleeps, third boss is based on hp not time, fourth boss has bishops, 5th boss has his shout, 6th boss has his 40% dmg aoe and sleep, exp room boss has his mini-me. The best time to get in major damage is prior to the boss starting those tricks.

For instance the shouting boss. Once he starts shouting damage goes very slow as you have to run out and run back in between shouts. There are also rumors that he has 0% pdef until his first shout. So it's better to line up, make sure everyone has chi (something that should be considered before your squad is waiting on you), and all go in together and start at the same time syncronizing triple sparks and debuffs. Taking that 10 seconds to organize is the difference between a 15 second boss and a complicated 2 minute boss.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

I've had debates on whether devour helps. Yes it is an aggro skill but I think the debuff helps dds more than the aggro helps you. Simply put, it's about a 35% physical dmg increase. If you're dps is 40k spamming FR/devour and the sin next to you is 150k (many sins have even higher dps than this) then you will get some aggro from devour and 14k more dps, while they get 52.5k more dps. That 52.5k more damage per second will probably outweigh the small amount of aggro devour gave you and cause them to get it. Just my opinion. Although it's good to cast devour once at the start of a boss for the accuracy glitch and that initial barrage of debuffs, as well as anytime a BM HFs.

What part of this do you not understand?: "Reduce target's Attck Level by 15 for 4 seconds." I despise barbs that don't spam devour for the real tank.