Barbie vs Zerker - now with Dwarven defenders
The_Potty_1
Member Posts: 436
Yes, the Barbie vs 'Zerker question has been asked and answered a million times, everyone has a favorite, TL;DR etc, stop trolling.
Don't get me wrong, I do love Barbies, if you want a solid indestructible character that can solo anything with ease, and still has 75% of their hit points when all other builds died ten rounds ago, well (s)he can be your man. Or half-orc.
Of course, not all fights in the game are as long as the final Ascension battle. In this case, a 'Zerker is probably better. They deal more damage, their rage protects against imprisonment, 60% physical immunity is not that much less than 80%, and their hit point aren't that much less either.
Enter the Dwarven defender. It matches the barbarian's innate 20% physical immunity, so with the defender of Easthaven and Hardiness, this can get up to 80%. It can get 4* in axes & hammers, between the 'zerker's 5* and the barbie's 2*. So the same indestructibility of the barbie, with some of the zerker's DPS.
Of course, instead of any sort of rage, it has a mild sort of blade's defensive spin. How dare I even suggest these three are comparable. In truth, I don't think I am, probably what I'm saying is, a duo comprising a 'Zerker & Dwarven defender may well be better at everything than a pair of barbarians would be?
OK .. go!
Don't get me wrong, I do love Barbies, if you want a solid indestructible character that can solo anything with ease, and still has 75% of their hit points when all other builds died ten rounds ago, well (s)he can be your man. Or half-orc.
Of course, not all fights in the game are as long as the final Ascension battle. In this case, a 'Zerker is probably better. They deal more damage, their rage protects against imprisonment, 60% physical immunity is not that much less than 80%, and their hit point aren't that much less either.
Enter the Dwarven defender. It matches the barbarian's innate 20% physical immunity, so with the defender of Easthaven and Hardiness, this can get up to 80%. It can get 4* in axes & hammers, between the 'zerker's 5* and the barbie's 2*. So the same indestructibility of the barbie, with some of the zerker's DPS.
Of course, instead of any sort of rage, it has a mild sort of blade's defensive spin. How dare I even suggest these three are comparable. In truth, I don't think I am, probably what I'm saying is, a duo comprising a 'Zerker & Dwarven defender may well be better at everything than a pair of barbarians would be?
OK .. go!
1
Comments
Thus, while barbarians are still of course cool to roleplay, and not useless by any means, from a powergaming standpoint, they are obsolete.
Powergamming, Zerker is still top dog. Barb is still my favorite to play because their rage (while shorter) feels more useable since it doesn't have the fatigue downside. Dwarven Defender makes a nice change of pace Barb, but something (probably that Dex penalty) always keeps away from rolling a dwarf.
My two cents
+ Movement speed helps in battlefield maneuvers a lot. This is especially useful in TBP2 where the opponents rush your mages from the start. The barbarian can close the distance to them quite quickly.
+ Backstab immunity is a nice boon
+ No cooldown on the rage ability. This is the biggest plus for me. If your rage ends before the battle is finished as a zerker, your main advantage over the barb is unusable.
+ Damage reduction is infinitely more useful than the berserker's AC bonus.
+ The only immunity the berserker has over the barbarian rage is imprisonment, which is not very common, and can be metagamed around.
Create a movie about Barbie fighting Zergs. It will be like Alien 2 all over again!
The stereotypical 'barbarian with 2-hander' doesn't translate well into powergaming. Barbarians should dual-wield for greatest effect, using longswords (entire BG1), axes or katanas (early-mid BG2) and flails (for Defender of Easthaven). A barbarian in ToB is nigh indestructible in melee combat with his damage resistance (15% from class+20% from DoE+40% from Hardiness. I have the Rogue Rebalancing mod, so I use the Abishai Hide Armor for another 15%, making the total 90% damage resistance. Now if only I had Armor of Faith...) while also easily having 25 strength and somewhere between 22-25 constitution. The Dwarven Defender is likely outmatched in damage, and the Berserker in raw damage resistance.
I can't speak for the berserker or the dwarven defender due to lack of experience with either class, but I've gone through the game with a barbarian and he scaled very well, and I loved it. It may be my favorite fighter class in the game, and the only one I enjoy as much as my fighter-mage/blade/thief-mages.
Oddly enough, Korgan is technically the ideal berserker and yet when I use him, I... don't like him very much. He just takes so damn much damage when he fights and I constantly have to withdraw him to heal. But maybe it's just me and I suck real bad at fighters.
Plus, when you already deal more than 30 damage per hit with the good gear, the +2 coming from the Enrage aren't really significant (it's not even a 10% increase), same goes for the +2 bonus to THAC0. Most of the times, a Berserker will kill his enemies as fast as a Barbarian, or it will kill it one hit faster and that's it.
And the Dwarven Defender won't reach 80% but 90% damage reduction with Defensive Stance.
Which means that if all three characters have 200 health points, the Berserker will die after suffering 500 damage, the Barbarian after suffering 1,000 damage and 2,000 damage for the Dwarven Defender. The difference is huge, the Berserker will get destroyed in melee, especially if you're playing on Insane difficulty.
It's also incredibly unimaginative, which is why I'll never play one. Yawn, pass.
Before EE I'd say Barbarian was better but now with true grand mastery the Berserker gets an extra 1/2 attack, more damage, and can equip bracers that give another 1/2 attack.
It's more of a toss up now, for me anyway.
For example, on paper, the berserker should be the better tank because they can wear heavier armor and eventually get grandmastery in melee weapons, but how do you quantify the fact that barbarians can rush opponents quicker (due to extra movement rate) and potentially do substantially more damage (due to str bonus from rage)?
There are also other unique things that barbarians can do - for example, the str bonus from rage can potentially give them the ability to break open chests or doors in situations where you either don't have a thief or the thief's skills aren't sufficient, like that one chest upstairs in the Candlekeep Inn.
I think the mistake that many people make is that they believe that barbarians are intended for one specific role (namely, tanking), when in actuality, they are versatile characters that can come in handy in a variety of situations. For example, I'm currently playing BG1 with a barbarian, specialized in halberds and longbows (now with an added point in 2-handed weapon style), and I use her mainly as an archer and flanker (standing behind Dorn or another pure tank), then "raging" her and sending her rushing among enemies during confrontations with enemy parties. She's been extremely successful so far, and has far and away the highest killcount in my party (doubling Dorn's).
For me it comes down to the barbarian using the strength from his rage to try to keep up with the berserker's natural damage output. Berserker will always have more attacks and more damage from grand mastery with all other things being equal.
On the other hand the barbarian will always have more natural damage resistance.
OK that's a bit harsh.
My BG1 group comprised the dwarven defender, an orc zerker, plus an elven archer. The defender started out strong at level 1, and stayed pretty good all the way through BG1. This run was super easy.
The BG2 group comprised the dwarven defender, an orc zerker, a dwarven Fighter/cleric, and an elven dragon disciple. the zerker really started to shine here, and the defender was pretty good to start. However, round about 3M XP, the the zerker took off, the dragon disciple leapfrogged the zerker, and the defender became utterly mediocre. The cleric could bring out epic level elemental summons, buff the group, and then fire off a GWW and match the defender in melee. Both could run hardiness, which was generally better than the innate defenser ability, and doesn't stack with it.
In conclusion, I wish I'd done this with a barbie as well, but I expect that it would have started out relatively weak, but ended up pretty much on a par with the zerker in terms of time spent in the thick of the fight.
People focus a lot on the fact that a berserker gets an extra immunity from their rage, but this only comes into play in a few isolated moments in only the second of the two games. I don't think it's worth sacrificing the other 99% of the time when barbarians are chunking opponents left and right due to the strength bonus that their rage gives them.
It becomes barbarian vs fighter/cleric, which the fighter cleric is going to usually win. I'd rather have a dwarven fighter/cleric multi-class.
It's a much closer and better debate when you have a non human berzerker vs a non human barbarian, imo.
I presumed the berzerker would want to take advantage of grand mastery, which imo, makes taking a pure berzerker over a barbarian viable. This is strictly the thac0 and damage of each. I didn't calculate weapon usage and dps.
Berzerker To Hit:
+3 Grand Master
+3 Strength
+2 Rage
-------
+ 8 Total To Hit
Berzerker Damage:
+5 Grand Master
+7 Strength
+2 Rage
-------
+14 Total Damage
Overall:
+8 To Hit, +14 Damage
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Barbarian To Hit:
+1 Specialized
+3 Strength
+2 Rage
-------
+ 6 Total To Hit
Barbarian Damage:
+2 Specialized
+7 Strength
+4 Rage
-------
+13 Damage
Overal:
+6 To Hit, +13 Damage
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With all things being equal and presuming they would use the same weapon, the berzerker would have a +1 advantage to damage per swing and a +2 to hit (-2 thac0).
Unless you're intentionally nerfing the berzerker, he'll always do slightly more damage than the barbarian except for early BG1 when the berzerker doesn't benefit from more attacks and damage from grand mastery.
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The berzerker will always have better armor class. There's really no reason to slap on some full plate as soon as you can. At some point in SoA super low AC can be overkill but it's nice to play most of SoA without getting hit at all unless on critical attacks.
You can get creative and get low AC with the barbarian too. Taking the half orc character, the barbarian will have more hitpoints and won't worry about getting hit a little more than the berzerker.
The barbarian will start to get the damage resistances to help some but it won't be really noticeable until ToB.
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I touched on the rage earlier but I'll reiterate that I like the barbarian rage over the berzerker rage.
One often over looked aspect is that the berzerker actually gains a -2 AC (good thing) and the barbarian gets a +2 AC (bad thing). But the barbarian's rage handles extra hitpoints better and there's no fatigue period after the rage wears off. You probably won't be in a situation where you'll absolutely need back to back rages as a berzerker but it's nice to have with the barbarian.
The immunity to imprisonment (or lack of immunity to imprisonment) has been talked about before. To some it's a game breaker. To me it's not.
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Summary:
Berzerker has a slight thac0 and damage advantage.
The Berzerker will usually have 1/2 apr advantage with one handed and two handed weapons. The Barbarian would have to dual wield with a speed weapon to catch up.
The Berzerker will probably always have better AC.
The Barbarian will always have more hitpoints.
The Barbarian will always have better damage resistance.
The Barbarian moves faster.
The Barbarian can't be backstabbed.
The Barbarian will have a wider variety of weapons.
The rage is debatable. I like the barbarian's rage.
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Personally, it comes down to the berzerker's AC, thac0, and damage output vs the barbarian's better rage, more hitpoints, and damage resistance.
Before EE "fixed" grand mastery, I'd say the Barbarian was the clear winner. After EE it depends more on your play style.
EDIT: Updated info on APR after considering the weapons of extraordinary specialization.
For laughs, try comparing barb to berzerker, both with 15 str and cons. This is cool, but obviously judt proves Barbarian is more forgiving of lower but still good stats.
If the apr and damage gap is made smaller then the barbarian is better because of late game resistances, imo. Especially since the barbarian will have extra proficiency points laying around.
and Constitution..."
A half orc starting with 19 strength gets a +4 bonus to strength, giving him 23 strength for a total of 23.
23 strength gives +5 to hit and +11 damage unless my manual and math is wrong.
One other advantage of Barbarian Rage: you can use it to force locks.
I would say it depends on your choice of race. Dwarves should choose Defender, Half Orcs and Humans should Choose Beserker, Elves and Halflings should choose Barbarian.