Barbarian Skills Guide

As a new character in Age of Conan, one of the first decisions you will have to make is how to spend your skill points. The skills you chose to invest in, and how many points you chose to invest will have a significant impact on the development and playstyle of your barbarian for all your remaining levels.

Thankfully, skill point investments are not permanent, and at any time you can remove all points invested in a particular skill for a fee. This is done by Alt+Left Clicking on the skill you wish to reset.

The following is a list of skills available to barbarians and an overview of each followed by an "out of 5" rating of each for both a solo pve and solo pvp environment. As additional aspects of the game (raiding, group pvp) begin to grow in importance, ratings for those will be added as well. Keep in mind, depending on what level you are, you may not have all of these skills available to you yet. If you're missing some, don't worry. You'll get them eventually.

• Bandaging: The Bandaging skill increases your rate of Health regeneration, depending on your skill and current character level.
• One of the primary causes of downtime for a Barbarian is a deficiency in health. When there are no healers about, Bandaging and using the Rest ability are the most efficient way to regenerate Health and keep the grind going. If you frequently run solo, keep this one high.
• PvE - ****
• PvP - ***
  
• Recovery: Adds Stamina regeneration while using the Rest ability.
• While a lack of Health slows down a barbarian's grind, Stamina is our absolute limiting factor when it comes to chain pulling. Contrary to some things I've read, one point is not the same as a hundred. While you may not want to keep it maxed, this is definitely one all barbarians want to keep high.
• PvE: *****
• PvP: *****
  
• Fast Recovery: Gives you a chance to regenerate double the amount of Stamina when using the Rest ability. After further testing, it DOES appear that one point is sufficient in this talent. This is, until they fix it. I tested it repeatedly with 1 point and with 165 points. Each time it took my Stam bar 11 seconds to regen, with 5 procs of fast recovery.
  
• As with Recovery, this one is also often indicated to only need one point invested to be efficient. It is true that a single point will be enough to get this ability to proc 6 or 7 times while resting a full bar of Stamina, whether or not more points makes it regen faster is hard to say. I put points here from time to time, nothing too much. Just be sure to have SOMETHING in this. It nearly cuts resting time in half for a full bar of stamina.
  
• PvE: *****
• PvP: *****
  
• Endurance: Lowers the Stamina cost of Sprinting.
• This one is personal preference. As an individual who finds myself sprinting frequently, whether to chase down an enemy or simply quest faster, I keep a few points in here. It is usually at about 1/3 of max.
• 100 points = 1% reduction in Stamina cost.
  
• PvE: *
• PvP: ****
  
• Run Speed: Increases your movement rate, when not engaged in combat.
• I'm always a fan of moving quicker and try to keep this between 1/3-1/2 of max.
• Adds 1% movement speed per 100 points invested.
• PvE: **
• PvP: ***
  
• Skulk: Increases your movement rate when using the Hide ability.
• Hiding is an important part of your life, as a barbarian, and this is one way to augment it. stealth is generally used to bypass content or to get an opener on a (sometimes moving) enemy. Skulk will help you get there quicker. However, it has been said that the gains are relatively menial. This only gets occasional points from me, but may become more useful as endgame group PvP evolves.
• 100 points = 2% increased movement speed while stealthed.
  
• PvE: **
• PvP: ***
  
• Climbing: The Climbing skill determines if you can climb a surface.
• Climbing is an integral part of Age of Conan. However, I have yet to experience any use besides quest completion. For example, you need 80 to complete an early quest in Tortage and something like 130 to complete a quest your respective (race specific) 20s zone. I give 5 or 10 points here every other level or so. Just enough to keep it up, perhaps as siege and keep based PvP develops, we will see more of a use.
• PvE: **** (necessary to complete certain quests)
• PvP:
  
• Hiding: The Hide ability gives you a chance of avoiding detection by enemies.
• Key aspect of playing a Rogue archetype. Always keep this maxed. Remaining hidden allows you to get the jump on ranged attackers (allowing a stunlock ftw) and sneak by various baddies to speed up quest completion.
  
• PvE: *****
• PvP: *****
  
• Perception: The Perception skill increases your chance to detect hidden enemies.
• This is an ability that I find relatively useless currently, again, will become more useful as frontier and group-based PvP comes about. A few points might save you from a gank, but I doubt it. Search would be a better option if you know someone is sneaking around you.
  
• PvE:
  
• PvP: ***
  
• Subtlety: In battle, your attacks have a chance of being treated as less of a threat, so the target is less likely to break off from their current target to attack you.
• Great if you are in groups with a tank. The last thing you want is to pull an elite off a Guardian and get smashed. However, this is useless if you are solo and completely useless in PvP. This will probably get to be very important as we progress into end game raiding.
  
• PvE: **
• Raid/Group PvE: *****
  
• PvP:
  

Hopefully you will find this guide beneficial through the life of your Barbarian.

UPDATE

A few requests were made for a % of max breakdown of spending skill points. Here you go!

While Leveling:

• Bandaging - 70-85%
  
• Recovery - 50-70%
  
• Fast Recovery - 1 Point
  
• Endurance - 20-40%
  
• Run Speed - 15-20%
  
• Skulk - 0-10%
  
• Climbing - 70-80% (Need 350 for a mid 40's quest, working on a list of climbing spots.)
  
• Hiding - 100%
  
• Perception - 0-5%
  
• Subtlty - 0-5%
  

Projected End-Game PvP - Highly Speculative due to the unknown nature of end game PvP.

• Bandaging - 70-90%
  
• Recovery - 70-90%
  
• Fast Recovery - 1 point,until FunCom fixes it.
  
• Endurance - 60-75%
  
• Run Speed - 30-60% (Mounts?)
  
• Skulk - 40-60%
  
• Climbing - Minimum required to climb player buildings, if possible
  
• Hiding - 100%
  
• Perception - May be more useful, 10-20%
  
• Subtlty - 0%
  

Projected End-Game PvE (Group/Raid based)

• Bandaging - 40-60%
  
• Recovery - 60-80%
  
• Fast Recovery - 1 point unless fixed
  
• Endurance - 0-20%
  
• Run Speed - 0-20%
  
• Skulk - 0-20%
  
• Climbing - Minimum for climbing the world
  
• Hiding - 100% (Or, 0%, depends on playstyle. Probably won't need to hide in raids.)
  
• Perception - 0-10%
  
• Subtlty - 60-90%

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