Need help with first pure (melee) life!

[Scrag]

SO, I have done melee with clerics, melee with bardbarians, melee with dark hunters, melee with rogue types, melee with a paladin.

For something new, I want to go all in on a thf something. Big axes. Big swords. The builds in fighter and barbarian subforums do not necessarily make sense to me, as my melee experience is limited.

@unbongwah has what looks to be a super cool bearbarian, but I would really like to see my giant swords and axes. I do want to play a bearbarian though.

For a complete pure-melee noob who loves self sustain and trapping for survival, how would you build something? Mix some barbarians? Mix some fighters?

I am really excited to try this and want to enjoy all these big huge giant weapons and my melee gear I have collected, but I don't want to be useless, or die a lot.

I have very few past lives, and only 80 ap.

Thank you for your guidance!

 

[Purr]

Barb 5, Bard 3 gets you a barb-swashbuckler build which is the single most fun you can have as a melee.

If you want 2-handed, eldritch knight is a lot of fun, and if you do warforged, you'd have insane self-healing

 

[Purr]

Dark Hunter 12 / Barb 6 / rogue 2 would get you evasion, +1 crit range, +2 crit multiplier, trap skills, and evasion. You could run around in your underwear with an SOS at 15-20x5 with lots of sneak attacks and imbues. Only cure moderate wounds, but can drag a hire along for healing.

 

[Scrag]

Barb 5, Bard 3 gets you a barb-swashbuckler build which is the single most fun you can have as a melee.

If you want 2-handed, eldritch knight is a lot of fun, and if you do warforged, you'd have insane self-healing

I did a bsword/orb ek which was really fun and one of my more enjoyable lives, and I did a bardbarian which was _amazing_. But for this, I want to just give it a go without any spells or trapping.

I have friends that run a lot of pure barbarians or heavy split barbarians and a few straight 20 fighters. Somehow they get around, don't die to traps, and have some sort of sustain mechanism. It would be cool to experience that kind of life, to learn about what useful tools exist in fighter and barbarian enhancement trees and how they work.

Hope that makes sense!

 

[Scrag]

Dark Hunter 12 / Barb 6 / rogue 2 would get you evasion, +1 crit range, +2 crit multiplier, trap skills, and evasion. You could run around in your underwear with an SOS at 15-20x5 with lots of sneak attacks and imbues. Only cure moderate wounds, but can drag a hire along for healing.

This is one that I wanted to try, but I didn't get much positive feedback on swinging a two handed weapon around instead of twf.

I mean, it can't be THAT bad, can it?

 

[Purr]

You'll be fine. It's not optimal, but you'll be fine on r1

 

[Scrag]

You'll be fine. It's not optimal, but you'll be fine on r1

So 12 dws, 40ish in fb for focused wrath. That is 18 levels of natural, so with 20+ish points in dark hunter I can score +18 search/disable device. All told that is about

26 in dark hunter
21 in dws
annnd i don thave enough for fb (35 or 37 points)

Suggestions on what to use for starting stats?

 

[Purr]

strength for hitting things. int for disable and locks, con so you don't die?

I don't have a suggestion for fixing not enough points, although you might find switching some to rogue for extra imbue might be nice.

If you look at it as a "let's have fun trying this out" build and not worry so much about it, you'll have a blast. Kali's pure barb would be a fun next life to do, too.