Shattered Kingdoms

I'm really bored, so why not...

Barbarian
Pros: Less combat versatile than mercs, but more versatile outside of combat. You lose out on trip/eparry, usually encouraging barbs to go straight damage with accurate damaging two-handers to take full advantage of the fury speed bonus. Alertness/counterstrike/toughness sort of balance out a bit the lack of defense- but i'd still, in general, rather have a merc over a barb in a fight.

However, you get TRACK. People are stupid. That's the long and short of it. You should always be flying everywhere, but people aren't. You can get so many kills by just making runs of the portal stones till you find somebody. It really doesn't take that long. Just track them down, eat a haste herb, run in and bash. It's over.

Cons: Less combat versatility. You also take more damage in combat on average then swashes or mercs. If you have a shield this helps offset the lack of defense, but you're WASTING your fury speed bonus. Slow damaging weapons benefit more from speed bonuses than fast low damage ones because they deal more damage per hit. Fury+haste=damage machine.

Just like swashes, IMO barbs have less potential than mercs. In the hands of a halfway good char, they can be decent chars. however, a major skill like toughness is USELESS to a great player because they'll always have the best adamantite. Also, good players will usually be starting combat so counterstrike gets a wimp. Constant DI/DH of prepared players negates alertness except for camo/sneak, which aren't used enough to really be worth it.

Some of the good things
Toughness is not usless not everyone and their grandmother can whip out a full set of heavly enchanted super armor. If your skin is as tough as say mithiral or adamantie then why need the super armor get some heavy enchanted sorta-super armor and your all set.

Fourth attack - weapon =Wild fighitng which is equal to pain
If you disarm a barbarian chances are it is going to hurt.. a lot do to the fact it is hard to parry their fist/nuckles/claws.

General thing about barbs
They are the most distructive (non spell plaeyer) force in the relms mercs may get specialize and swashies get finesse but you get a barb who flys and is good at disarming and you are fubar.

Counterstirke
A fun skill to have if whats their class wants to cleave you or a dumb scout wants to abush you (what I mean by this is if their foolish
eneough to ambush you in the same room).

Wild fighting is the third level of hand to hand combat available only to
barbarians. It allows the fighter to inflict more damage than brawling and
adds a third attack if both hands are free. Wild fighters are notoriously
hard to parry. Those trained in wild fighting are also skilled with claws.

Fury allows you to surpass normal attack rate the 3 attacks? Nifty. Still is no substitute for a good weapon, though.

There's always the last sentence in the above quote...

And there's still the problem of people quickly slicing off your arms with eparry.