Barbarian skill and party guide

In Perfect World barbarian's are basically the meat shield(tank). High HP, High physical defense, low magical defense, and low damage. Though it can be a relatively easy class to play if you stick to the rules.
Whats that? What rules you ask?

3 rules to being a barbarian

1.Never run when tanking bosses or difficult mobs when in a party. Unless that is of course your slow poke healer is out of casting distance and your hiero/pots are on cool down and you need a heal ASAP.It's a known fact that if you get stupid and try and run from a boss the parties going to wipe.

2.Tanking bosses is simple. It's basically a combonation of Ripping Bite(Spam like theres no tommorow), Bluster(Personally i only use this when i lose aggro),Raging Pounce(Time it to cancel bosses skills),Frighten(Aggro's and makes your life a little bit easier).

3.There is only one way to build your barbarian and thats with enough strength and dexterity for dual axes and heavy armor and every thing else into constitution. Dex or Str based barbarian's just get raped in PvP not to mention their perdition is useless.

Skill Building

Skill name in US .int | .my-en

Levels 1-19:

At earlier levels playing a WB is a cake walk. We have high HP to start with and if you go with the build i mentioned above you will have around 1k HP by level 15. Not to mention 99.9% of the mobs you'll be facing at this level will be physical and you wont have any magical mobs until at least level 20.

You will only have one skill to start with which is Stomp of the Beast King(Beast Lords Whomp). Use this to quest and grind your way to level 3. By which time you can go into city and can learn Garrote learn it. It's a good soloing skill at lower levels. I highly suggest that you don't waste any SP on upgrading Stomp(Whomp). This skill will become obsolete at higher levels when you'll be needing all the SP you can get to get a skill which is actually useful. Once you get to level 9 go to your skill master and learn your transformation skill this will transform you into a tiger which will increase your movement speed,and physical defense, while decreasing your attack. Always level this skill as soon as you can even though it only goes to level 3.

Continue on your way to level 19 while putting only enough points into strength and dexterity for your dual axes and heavy armor and everything else into constitution. Once you get to level 19 you'll get your iron blood tablet from the city elder. Make sure you do this quest it's your first FB and you'll get an awesome blue Poleaxe which you'll likely use until level 35 or so. You can probably find lots of people willing to help you and earn some rep for themselves.

Level 30 Humanoid Skills Overview:

Once you reach level 30 you'll have noticed that there's several new skills available to you. I'll give you a quick run through of each skill and how high of priority it should hold for you.

Stomp of the Beast King | Beast Lords Whomp
This skill is basically worthless if you ask me. Due to the fact that when it's at level 10 which can't be achieved until somewhere in the 40's and even then it's only 7xx damage. There are plenty more useful skills that you could be using instead of casting this.

Garrotte
This is a pretty useful skill which does your normal damage plus an additional 15 seconds of bleeding damage. I tend to use this when soloing. It's not super important but it can be fairly useful.*Note: Only use this in PvP when trying to build up vigor for a more useful skill seeing as once the poison damage is reduced it only comes to about 200 or so over 15 seconds. Or if your willing to stack it continuously.

Mighty Swing | Gravitation Stonker
This skill is your bread and butter. Both for PvE and PvP, it does fairly decent damage aswell as a chance to stun your opponent. This is one of the few ways you'll be able to finish off an archer, venomancer, or wizard in PvP and you better hope your lucky since it only has a low chance of success. Level this skill ASAP.

Penetrate Armor | Anti-Armor Batter
This is a great skill to use when soloing mobs or even when your PKing alone or sometimes in a group if the venomancer is too slow to use their dispell with the same effect. The only downside of this skills i that you wont be using it at all during FB's. Level it as best you can.

Swell | Billow
This is the first AOE you'll get and let me tell you, It's not all that great. It only attacks in a fan radius and does relatively low damage.Theres no real need for this skill but you can invest a little bit into it if you feel the need to.

Firestorm | FireStorm Wielder
This is a pretty decent skill even though it only has an 8 meter or so line radius. Though it does cost 1 chi which you will be wanting to save for much more useful skills at higher levels. Level it a bit, it can come in handy for AOE parties at lower levels if the mage is taking abit too much damage.

Swimming Mastery | Watercraft Mastery
Max this it's self explanatory. Since it only has one level and it's extremely cheap while increasing your swimming speed by 50%.

Feral Regeneration | Ferity Restoration
Level this one ASAP since it'll make your job a lot easier and it's pretty cheap too.

Beast King's Inspiration | Beast King Reanimate
Always have this at the max possible level since you should have it on whether your soloing, AOEing, doing FB's, running HH, or PKing. Not to mention this skill has effect on your entire party giving everyone 30% more HP at level 10.

Blood Bath
This skill is absolutely 110% necessary if you wan't to PK. Though the only turn off with this skill is the fact that it's alot of HP to trade in for 10% more hit rate at lower levels. But at level 10 it's 200% hit rate for a mere 16% less HP. Trust me at higher levels if you don't use this you'll have alot of trouble killing dex based builds.

Tiger Based Skills:

True Form | White Tiger Transform
Like i said level this up ASAP. Always use this in HH, FB's, Luring for AOE parties at wolves or spiders, or even for running forest ruin.

Flesh Ream | Ripping Bite
This is your main aggro tool. Keep this at the highest possible level. This is also a fair bit of damage too seeing as you can stack it.

Alacrity of the Beast | Raging Pounce
This is a great skill, Make sure that when fighting bosses you time it correctly to cancel their skills. Especially on higher level HH or FB bosses like asura and you can save your hiero. I suggest keeping this at a moderate level since the skill cancel is effective at any level of the skill but it does do fairly decent damage.

Devour
This is a pretty helpful skill, but the only problem is that it'll cost you 35 chi to use it. So the only time you should really be using this when in a party fighting bosses ''IF'' the venomancer doesn't have their armor break at a decent level and is willing to use vigor transfer on you so that you can use veil of shadow or sundering heaven.

Beastial Rage | Swing Smack
This is a great skill to use when tanking bosses since they'll be focused on you without interruption you can just cast this every 30 seconds to build up your vigor. Needless to say just learn it.

Poison Fang
This skill is pretty controversial but i have to say i did test it on a fellow guild member on PW-MY to check the damage difference with it at level 10 and i did an additional 300 damage with it consistently. I think it's worth leveling so long as you have the money and SP for it.

Axe & Hammer Mastery | Axe & Mace Mastery
This is basically common sense. Just keep leveling it.

During your onslaught from level 30 to 40 you will notice that you have received only 3 new skills. Yeah, You may find this some what disappointing but seriously, Deal with it. Two of these skills will become very important in the future and the other a useful filler.

Level 40 Humanoid Skills:

Slam | Ground Rending
This is the only new humanoid skill available to you levels 30-40. But trust me this one was well worth it, it will be our first decent AOE and extremely effective for luring end game. I highly suggest getting this skill to at least level 5 by the time you have reached level 70 as while luring in human form you will use this to keep the mobs aggro. Also this will be one of your few useful skills in TW seeing as you can use this then perdition or vice versa. Note: The higher level this skill is the further the knock back range. So it'll save you a lot of pocket change on hieros.

Level 40 tiger skills:

Surf Impact
To tell the truth this skill isn't all that great. Though i do recommend investing a little bit into it as if you master the ability to lure in tiger form it can also be quite a hiero saver due to it's slowing effect. Though i do not suggest upgrading this over frighten which should be maxed well before investing in this and is a much more effective skill as it is a 360 degree AOE and also reduces the mobs speed.

Talk is cheap | Bluster
This is a great skill and is highly effective when used at the right time. I suggest trying to keep this skill at the highest possible level, though it's alright if you let it lag behind a level or two so long as you can effectively use ripping bite and frighten to hold aggro. Also never think that this skill is completely useless in PvP seeing as after level 89 whether you go heaven or hell it will be useful for you while pulling catapults in TW.

Level 50 Humanoid Skills:

Strength of the Titans | Titans Strength
Simply put, This skill is self explanatory. Max it and it's as simple as that, just don't forget to always buff yourself and your party with it.

Beastial Onslaught | Beast King Onslaught
This is a really great skill, remember how were always complaining about our hit rate? Well second only to blood bath this is the cure to that problem. Not only is this skill great because it reduces our opponents evasion by 50% but also because it's our only ranged skill as well as being one of our highest single target damage skills. But wait! It gets better if you decide to go heaven this skill reduces your opponents evasion by 100% or if your hell then it'll give you an additional 35% crit rate for 6 seconds.

Level 50 Tiger Skills:

Frighten
Honestly this is one of my favourite skills to use as a Barbarian. Probably because of it's triple debuff effect. Trust me you'll want to max this skill ASAP. Once it's maxed it'll reduce all of targets within the 12m radius's attack power and attack speed by 30% while reducing their move speed by 50%. I tended to chain this with bluster and (when i had the vigor) sundering heaven. Also this skill is a great way to gain vigor. When tanking bosses or even elite mobs always cast this every 15 seconds.

Level 60 Humanoid Skills:

Perdition
Just to tell you guys the truth, I never really liked this skill. Partly due to the fact that i had around 15k HP and every time i used it 7.5k HP would tick and my hiero would go down a considerable amount. But if your really into PKing or have a need to crash zhen parties this is the skill to do it with. The only downside of this skill is that barbarians have an excruciatingly low hit rate. Which means we needed to use bloodbath if we wanted to make sure they weren't just gonna turn around and PK us. Therefore reducing our HP and our damage, though the damage should still be sufficient with a pure con build. Also if you can get your hands on a ling yun, this skill can be used without blood bath and is basically GG. Note: This is a very expensive skill to level up but in the end is worth it. Though if you don't crash AOE parties or aren't involved with TW at all don't bother with it.

Level 60 Tiger Skills:

Sunder | Swing Smack
I really like this skill, It's great if you can manage luring for AOE parties in tiger. Also this skill can be useful when tanking bosses and your doing fine and have no need to use black tortlen, just use this to get the job done a little quicker and save yourself and the healers abit of trouble. If your the kind of guy who likes to lure in tiger form you should level this up quite abit.

Invoke the Spirit | Black Tortlen Possess
Whether your tanking tough bosses, or trying to get that last few second on the crystal with your catapult this skill is amazing! Not to mention it only has 1 level and is very cheap to learn. Just get it.

Note:
I will not be giving any information or be talking about the 3 new barbarian skills due to the fact that i never did have the chance to use them and never will. Also because these skills only have 1 level it's easy to see that a little bit of commonsense will tell you what you need to know to be effective when using these skills.

Finally now that were through with all that skill hooplah we can get on to the real core of what it means to be a barbarian, That's right party etiquette:

Party Orientation:

Now, Im Sure that some of you are wondering "Hey, i have all these great skills but how and when do i use them when in a party? Being in a party is fairly simple for barbarian's so simple in fact that i can divide it up into 3 sections. Now there are however a few rules which apply to all sections:

Rule 1 - Never ever run when tanking a boss.
Rule 2 - Always buff your party with Divine Strength and Inspire.
Rule 3 - Aggro,Aggro,Aggro.

Running HH and FB's:

There's one main differences i have noticed between HH and FB's, Simply put the difference is that HH bosses take a whole lots longer to kill while FB bosses tend to be quite a bit quicker. Either way you should follow the guide lines listed below to safely get your party through this ordeal:

- Usually i like to start off bosses with a few quick raging bites. This will insure that you get early aggro coverage, while still having Tiger's Challenge to grab that aggro back in the case that you do lose it.

- Usually after i feel that i have built up sufficient aggro ill begin casting Tiger's Presence which will make the healers job a lot easier and if the boss has AOE skills which he manages to get out it can make the difference between having your entire party laying dead or vice versa.

- Some bosses as you may have noticed have skills or special attacks, I believe the first boss that you will encounter with skills is located within FB29, This is where you should begin to practice your timing with wrath of the tiger to cancel those attacks before they end up killing you. On the MY version this was a very difficult practice due to the 3-5 second skill delay but here it should be fairly easy for you. By the time that you begin running HH you should have this ability perfected so that you can cancel AOE's from bosses like Drums which possibly can wipe out some of the squishy's in you party.

- Sometimes you will be required to lure a boss towards your party or away from your party ill use Armorer Ko. as an example. Usually you'll have to lure this boss towards the wall because if not the 4 territory war bosses that spawn will kill you. I find that the most efficient way to lure a boss is to have everyone else in the party stop DPSing while you hit it with ripping bite once and run to where you want it to be. Then once it has reached and you've resumed your aggro routine it's safe to commence DPSing.

Zhen or AOE Parties:

Now depending on where your leveling at there will be 2 distinct types of mobs, Aggro and Passive. Aggro mobs like spiders or wolves will aggro you as soon as you walk into their radius. This means easy work for you since you'll just have to run by the mobs, collect a few, and then return to the party. Though your going to have to be a lot more careful when AOEing at aggro mobs and make sure that the Priest,Mage,or Archer don't get overwhelmed by mobs and die. If you notice this happening your probably gonna want to run into the middle of their AOE's and cast Tiger's Challenge.

If you happening to be AOEing on passive mobs, Well your job just got a little bit more difficult. There's 2 ways that you can do this either in Humanoid or Tiger form. While in humanoid you'll want to just use Splitting Earth every 8-10 seconds or so after you've got some mobs following you. Even though while in Humanoid you only have to use 1 skill, the downside is that you wont have as much speed as in tiger as well as your hiero taking a slightly heavier beating. If you decide you want to lure while in tiger what your gonna want to do is aggro the mobs and cast tigers presence. Depending on how far you need to lure the mobs you may need to use either Tigers Challenge or Sundering Heavens to keep the mobs going. I however highly suggest using Humanoid to lure until you've figured out how to micro manage your barbarian very well.

Summary:
- Always keep an eye on the Cleric, Wizard, and Archers health.
- 2 mob types, Passive and Aggro as well as luring strategies for each.
- 2 luring styles, Humanoid and Tiger.

Territorial War

Once again, you'll want to make sure that you've fully buffed yourself as well as your party. If not do it. Anyways well start with TW, In which from my experiences barbarians will be put into 1 of 3 parties. 1. Perdition Squad. 2. Mixed. 3. Catapult. Below ill break down each party type for you.

Perdition Squads:
This is a rare tactic in territory wars but it has been done. This squad usually consists of all barbarian's but a priest can be thrown in as well for good measure. Most members of this party will be given spark pots so that they can use perdition. Usually the party will break up into groups of 3, each including 2 barbarians. The idea is that the barbarian's will run into large groups of people, perdition at the same time(Probably killing everything caught in the radius), and then regroup. This can be a highly effective tactic during higher level territory wars.

Mixed Squads:
This is basically your normal group with a Warrior,Barbarian,Werefox,Priest(Or Two), an archer, and/or a Mage. The basic goal of this party is usually to frag and defend the catapult teams, though they can also be used to cause distractions or to escort a perdition team into the fray. Also depending on how the battle is going it may end up becoming a defense team. The barbarian's sole role in this squad is his buffs, After that he should just try and frag to the best of his ability or to aid others in the party once they come under attack.

Catapult Teams:
This is the kind of squad that only the very best of barbarian's will get into. Usually the 3 highest levels in the guild. Possibly even only the 2 highest depending on the guilds strategy. Catapult teams tend to consist of 1 barbarian, 1 Werefox, 1 Warrior, 2 Priests(Possibly 3), and maybe an archer. The classes all contribute certain buffs and heals needed to keep the barbarian alive. When pulling catapults you need to know when to use your pots, special pots, black tortlen,and or sundering heavens, as well as skills like frighten.


To be finished soon.

By xkwisite From Official Forum. And i did the skill name edit.