[:1]Ok its time for me to fall back in love with my orginal Classic char. thats right Lancer WW Barb.
Now im doing a ladder barb and i know Lancers suffer from Slow speeds even BOTD'd compared to others.
So what im looking at is most likely a Eth War Pike
Helm Upped Arreats
Armor either fort or Nigma
Belt Perfect Nos
Weapon Botd Eth War Pike
Now here is where i need help what doi need to have a good WW for Speed.
Gloves=Was thinking Dracs but would it be better for a IAS glove here?(wont afford SteelRend)
Ammy= Should i use Highlords or Mara's? (hopefully later craft him one)(wont afford Metal Grid)
Boots= Thinking Gores or Treks anyone have other suggestions?
Rings=Raven and other one in question thinking atm Perfect BK or Dual Leech
Socket for arrests= Should i Um it, IAS jewel, or a 30%ED 25%Fire Resist +10Max damage
Merc= What merc to use? Thinking of Defiance merc|||WW isn't affected by offweapon ias, so you might as well skip all of that. I'd use an ebotd ghost spear or great poleaxe if I wanted to use a 2h weapon|||War Pike has the most damage out of all the Pike classes how are those better?|||They hit 4fpa-> a 50% damage increase. War pike doesn't do 50% more damage than those.|||is that 4fpa w/o other IAS|||IAS off the weapon does not affect whirlwind attack speed, like I said in my first reply. Only ias & weapon speed modifier from the weapon affects attack speed.|||How does a 2H spear-type WWer stack up in comparison to a GriefZ + BeastZ WWer as far as Hell Chaos/Baal runs?|||I second the eBotD Ghost Spear/Great Poleaxe suggestion. Make sure to load up on off weapon ED to take advantage of that huge base damage from your eBotD weapon.
Quote:
How does a 2H spear-type WWer stack up in comparison to a GriefZ + BeastZ WWer as far as Hell Chaos/Baal runs?
A lot less trips to the blacksmith for sure. I will say that my titan WWer (with a eBotD Ghost Spear) did pretty well in 8 player Hell Chaos and Baal runs.|||@NanoMist: Around how many HP should someome shoot for with a Titan WW'er?|||If you wanna steamroll hell cs and baals, you might want something more like mah boy build
ˇ Quote:
@NanoMist: Around how many HP should someome shoot for with a Titan WW'er?
I'm thinking about coming back to diablo (just a quick question, there aren't any resets coming soon, right?)
I'd like to try BvC / BvA this time. Here are my wishes:
1) I'm interested only in one, universal pub gear. Max 2-3 items which I could change if there are only casters or only melees in game
2) I want my inventory to be as cheap as possible to still have a decent chances of winning. Anni + Torch is no question, but I really can't afford 60x 20/20/10's. Do you have any suggestions on how to make inventory as good as possible while keeping it's price "possible"?
If you have any ideas, please help me out |||60x 20/20/10's???
what the hell this should be? scs with 10 life? and you need 60 ?
check the stickies for bvc guide. its all there|||I've already done it and I'm confused
Oh, they're 20/20/3 btw|||Usual pub inventory is a mix of life/res and max/ar/life charms, dont have to be perfect 20/5 and 3/20/20 scs to work. For gear Griefz/Beastz/Enigma/Arach/Trang gloves/Raven/Raven/Highlords/etc keep a Angelics ring/ammy in stash, a few pieces of sorb gear if you need it otherwise its just the basic bvc set up. The pvp forum has a few good BVC guides I believe|||nokozan + dual dwarfs for fire sorks, wisps for light sorks and javas, ravens for cold. Angelics for palas and barbs, eni for everyone exept maybe javas and barbs (use forti instead), use dual wield vs casters, i suggest that u should use stormshield vs ele-druids since it helps a lot. Widowmaker or two Lacerators for smiters who don't move.|||I thought sorb was for noobs|||Well the others pretty much answered everything except that I don't think there is a reset coming soon. It was just reset I believe.|||Blizzard has announced that the Diablo II ladders will be reset next Monday, March 28th.
In the base site about half way down there is an article in the news about it...wonder if i can get a link to work...
i have a question about frenzy speed. the german speed calculator ignores the speed of offhand weapon. is this correct or calculator has an issue?
assume i will use edeathzerker (no ias and 0base speed). will a runemaster with 5shael (100IAS) help to improve frenzy speed (with edeathzerker) or edeathzerker speed will always be same?
final thing, i think only way to improve edeathzerker speed is fanat aura or IAS gear on other equipment, right?
thanks|||It was long thought to be correct but it turns out that your off-hand weapon's IAS is used (for the second swing) when the primary weapon lands a hit successfully. You can download a script by Titanseal (you'll have to register) to check what your breakpoints are (the SIAS you enter is Frenzy's skill-IAS).
The Runemaster won't do anything (much) to increase your attack speed with the Death, and yes, you'll want either fanat or IAS from other gear. The Runemaster will do fine, but I'm not sure whether you should aim for Beast or BOTD after that. As an aside, because of Grief's weapon-independant damage and how base WSM is calculated a Colossus Sword plus Grief Phaseblade is probably the best setup.|||ok i see.
thanks for the info.
btw, calculator shows nearly same results (only 0.5 attack changes) with perfect PB grief. seems it only affects its own attack speed.
[:1]My (currently) Level 69 Frenzy Barbarian is using the two swords of the Bul-Kathos set, with the Mythical Sword one on the left (e.g. the first one that he equips with... which is the one that governs IAS... right?) and the Colossus Blade on the right-hand side. This is purely because the base speed of the Mythical Sword is "0" whereas that of the Colossus Blade is "5" (e.g. the Mythical Sword is slightly faster).
Now here is my question : Although he chops things up (slice 'n dice!) real good, the animation isn't quite as fast as some Frenzy barbs that I have played. Do I need to :
(a) Shael just the Bul-Kathos Mythical Sword?
(b) Shael the Bul-Kathos Colossus Blade?
(c) Shael both of them?
N.B. He is using the IK gloves, belt, hat (+15% IAS jewel) and boots, plus a Stone Runeword armor (love the Clay Golem!) and an Atma's Scarab amulet (for Amp to deal with pesky physical immunes).
I don't want to waste one or even two socketing quests if I don't really need to... in other words I only want to do it if it's going to get me to a breakpoint or something like that (I am too lazy to do the math myself).
One other miscellaneous question for you Frenzy Barb drivers : He is SO fast when charged up that it is very difficult to control him, he rockets from side to side of the screen almost like an unguided missile... I'm kind of afraid this is going to get him into trouble one of these days. Are there any tips about how to better control a juiced-up Frenzy Barb?
It's not all bad... even when frozen he is so fast that I hardly notice it...
Cheers and thanks in advance for any advice
Mr. Bill|||Well, here's the attack speed table for your weapons:
IAS attack speed [ticks] attacks per second
0 8 3.12
3 7.5 3.33
11 7 3.57
23 6.5 3.84
40 6 4.16
68 5.5 4.54
117 5 5
Personally, I'd go with an ed/ias jewel in the mythical sword and a shael in the CB for maximum ww speed (presuming you do that, too) and flexibility. As rule, I socket all weapons on a barb. If you don't need extra speed, you get better extra damage than from any other source.|||the base weapon speed of both ur frenzy weapons is averaged and from that point only the ias on the on hand and other equip except off hand counts. so the mythical sword needs a shael and off weapon ias would help too|||If the first swing with the primary weapon was successful, IAS on the off-hand weapon does count when swinging with that weapon. I can't get to Titanseal's script at the moment so I'm not sure about the breakpoints, but if putting a Shael in one helps, then it'll help for the other weapon as well.
Because of how base WSM is calculated (it's not just averaged) Frenzy should be slightly faster if you put the slower weap (ito base weapon speed/WSM, not IAS) in the left slot. If you don't want to use both quests you could just Shael the CB and use it as the primary weap.|||quoting spankehs frenzy guide, off-hand weapon ias does not affect the attack speed
Quote:
Base Weapon Speed and IAS
Frenzy checks the base weapon speeds in each hand and averages the difference.
Then it checks for any ias on main weapon and any other ias from other non weapon gear.
It never checks any ias from off hand weapon, so equiping a weapon with 0%ias here will not penalise you.
The idea is to max your weapon swing speed to 5 attacks per second.
Another common term is 5 frame animations per attack, or 5fpa
edit: also just played around with titanseals calc. while having frenzy as the attack skill, off-hand weapon ias does not change the attack speed|||Potential Calculator Inaccuracy for Frenzy Attack Speed by Onderduiker
The info about the script is either in the Amazon Basin thread of the same name, or in a newer thread or posts by Onderduiker somewhere here.|||way too much to read. i�ll just asume u�ve done ur homework and are right |||hubb- I do understand that calcs are refutable, however, It's interesting that I never see anyone complain about slow, 0% ias off-hand weapons, Like a Death CB for example, in the 4 years since Spankeh's guide came out. Maybe that's due to other criteria like any off-weapon ias that effects the final outcome. Is there any true, easy to use calc available?|||Ye, Frenzy's SIAS, off-weapon IAS and the fact that base WSM calculation is pretty screwed up makes noticing it tough. It's not impossible that they're wrong, but I'm willing to accept it seeing as Onderduikers' tests plus Hammerman's and Titanseal's theoretical equations (mostly) show the same breakpoints. I think Titanseal is still taking a break from D2 which is why his calc isn't updated; using the script is fairly easy if you choose the 'Calculate all' option.
That being said, there still seems to be some unresolved issues, and just how much IAS on the off-hand weapon matters doesn't make a huge difference. The major reason why people haven't been bothered by Death offhand is probably because it works well despite the slightly slower attack.
Perhaps a more important fact is that the WSM calculation seems to be influenced to a great extent by (right inventory slot WSM) - (left inventory slot WSM). I.e. you can gain a lot of speed by using a Colossus Sword in your left slot and a PB in your right slot, versus the other way around or using something like 2xBA.
I was thinking about making a Barbarian with an 1h sowrd and a shield for LoD HC Ladder. My aim is to be a living wall, a character what can join to a Hell game and dont have to ask if the town portal is safe or not, cuz it doesn't really matter for him. I read the barbarian builds and guides sticky, but there aren't any 1h/Shield WW build suggestions and I'm a bit scared. Is this really that bad?
I want to support my sorc friend during area MFing. As a caster+meele team we would go through AT and Pit runs with me hitting the bad guys, while he casting. For this (and because of the fact that I played a sorc myself, and I really need some hard action face to face) I want to make a barbarian who can stand still in hell without risking his life in most of the situations. Shield (75% block to be precise) is obvious for achieving that goal.
Please tell me if I'm thinking something wrong, and you even can tell me your experiences about playing hell with a 1h/shield WW bard. How easily (hardly) he survives, what to keep in mind, ect. I dont even know where to put points now after BO and WW are maxed. What should be my single target attack? I've read a WW/Conc build, but I have read many bad things about concecrate also. I'm not even sure, that WW is the way to go and not a zerker barbarian, for my purposes.
So basically, anything according to a survivability based (block capped, hihd defense) barbar is welcome.|||Hi. Often times you can look at that sort of build as a serious tank. Since barbs already have high life with BO, and a nice natural resist and defensive bonus, adding a shield boosts protection to greater heights. With the ability to block up to 75% and a possible huge resist boost, you can tank just about everything.
BUT... This weakens your potential killing by a lot, I'd say at least 1/2. This can and does at times pose a problem if you are really low on wealth and can't get a good weapon. You may be fine for awhile, but once you get to hell you could have big problems killing effectively.
On the positive side you can always swap the shield out for a second weapon, but you will have lower life too as you would have spent a lot on dex for max block.
I personally have build a lot of bvb type barbs which are normally shielded. I find them fine for pvm use and fun, but less effective then dual wielding.|||I coun ton my sorc mate doing the killing with the insane blizzard dmg due to the extremely good runewords for casters with low runes. Being able to stand the hits is a bit more important then doing the killing itself. By the time we can get enough high runes and items for me to be pimped i'll be fine
The thing I need to figure out is what way to go. WW/Conc, WW/Zerk, Zerk only... i dont really know. WW/Conc is my choiche right now, but it can change with your advices.
How effective is dmg reduce%? Is it worth sacrificeing a high runeword fro shaftstop for e.g?|||Dr is caped while PDR isnt.
Battle cry and a high PDR makes you VERY tanky.
Theres a PDR barb guide in the stickies but that was very gear intensive IIRC.
Edit
Just noticed youre making a HC toon.
I totaly agree with max block then|||I found that guide and that was interesting. Seeing the guys standing in hell in front of gazillions of enemies and being just fine is my idea with my actual barb Although with a sorceress backup I dont really care about killing a bit slow or being this strict on the gearing.
I'm not really sure I know how this reduction thing is working so a little help on that could come handy.|||Well, if you can afford it, a good setup for 1h/ww is a grief/stormshield. Hop in ravenfrost/thundergod/hotspur for taking elemental damage and you become practically invincible
For maximum style points you should use
- crown of ages (1 sock is enough and cheap)
- grief on a zweihander (swords give max style pts)
- forty/enigma on a wirefleece
Very good looking and very sturdy on the field. You can also put an eld rune on the shield for lowering dex requirements.
As to the build, there's really not much to it. Max ww, sword mast, battle orders, shout. Just don't die too soon |||So if i'm rigth the damage mitigation line is the following:
defense- block % - (cry?) - PDR -DR?
So if... let's say there is a type of monster with an attack of 200 dmg. If 10 of them attacks me 10 times that's 20.000 dmg (100 hits total). BUT my defense rating make them miss ~50% of the time. So that is only 10.000 dmg I take BUT from that 50 hits what can go trough my defense rating only 75% of them will be successfull so I only take 13 hits wich is 2600 dmg. (1950 if i cried). After this comes the PDR which is let's say 20 (this amount cant be hard to aciheve even without focusing on it) so the dmg I take is 13x180 ( or 13x130 if I cried [i need confirmation on this. so Battle Cry comes in calculation before the PDR or after?) and after the dmg left over will be mitigated with my 30% dr on the stormshield so 13x126 dmg I take total wich is 1680 during from 20.000. My calculations are correct? (I haven't calculated final dmg with battle cry because I'm not sure how it works, but would it be 1183 dmg in total?)
I have some question regarding this topic. What FBR does exactly? Lowers the frame to block? So if I block at 75% but I get 10 hits at the same time (theoretically) how many of that 10 hits can I block? only 1 of them? Or if I get 5 hits in a 1 sec period (24f) time I can only block as much as my FBR allows? (9% FBR = 6f Block = maximum of 4 blocks/sec; 42% FBR = 4f block = maximum of 6 blocks/sec?)
Edit
As I looked up in the arreat summit page, there arent really monsters (without mondifications) what can hit that much even on hell so the result is theoretical. Although it would be good to know where to test my barbarian in game? what monsters hits the biggest dmg on hell?|||Reducing physical damage:
Damage reduce % is very important e.g. Shaftstop/Stormshield/String of ears/etc.
The cap is 50% DR.
Shield block is capped at 75%, and it drops down to 25% while running, so make sure you are walking if you are in a tough area.
If both of these statistics are capped you will be fine when it comes to physical damage.
Reducing elemental damage:
Items that absorb elemental % such as ravenfrost are very important, and reduce a huge amount of damage. Try to get as much as you can.
Items that increase the maximum resistance above 75, such as thundergods valor, are also very important.
If you can get over 75 resist and elemental absorb % for an element or two, and you will be fine when it comes to elemental.|||My gear set is starting to form... the onl thing I dont know is how I'm gonna get max resist in Hell Nearly any of the wishlist items give them|||Yes griefz/ss barbs are the best choice for hc for more survivability. I would agree with that part having 50% dr and 75% block when it comes to hc. My opinion is go for it.
[:1]Mal's"Everyone Can Do It"Leaping Gold & Magic Find Barbarian Guide
Last updated September 18th, 2008. Discussion assumes Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, v1.11, Season 5 Normal US East Ladder when discussing costs and abilities.
You may ask what that means and why it's part of the title and the reason is because the whole concept is to keep things reasonable and accessible for the majority of people out there playing to build something similar without having to break the bank so to speak. I'm not one to use dupes and high runes unless I made them myself or found them myself but I still like to have effective characters and use interesting items, though I am in no way suggesting that others should avoid using these things. It's a game, so do what you want that is fun for you. The guide is built around the concept of keeping it accessible.
Purpose of Build:
The point is to have a character who can kill the Hell Council with reasonable to good speed while utilizing a lot of Gold Find gear in order to get a bunch of gold. The secondary purpose is to also magic find, collect charms, gems and runes. The ultimate purpose of the gold is to gamble. Why gamble you may ask? Because at higher character levels, you can get some of the most awesome items and generate ridiculous amounts of wealth with a bunch of luck through gambling. Amulets with +2 skills and faster cast rate and other mods like resistances, life, strength, etc, are some of the most prized items that are not floating around and are extremely valuable. Plus, they're stylish. Circlets can get very similar mods and get the global +2 skills and up to 20% faster cast rate, as well as awesome resistances and other mods (plus it can be socketed for more gravy). This is just the tip of the iceberg. But the point is, you will be gambling mostly for whatever you want, but the best items to gamble are amulets, circlets, gloves and boots and occasionally rings.
Expense of Build:
"How much could this cost me?" That's an important question when looking to try something from a guide or on a whim. Building a gold find barbarian ranges from very cheap, to average, to insanely expensive. It all comes down to what you have available, what you can trade for, and basically how much gold find you want to amass on yourself and your mercenary. Rest assured, there are no high rune based runewords involved with this particular guide, but that doesn't mean you can't go that extra mile if you can. The highest rune you'll be using is a Lem rune for the most part. The rest is a bunch of uniques that are pretty typical. The goal is to keep it accessible for most people out there who are not swimming in currency while still being effective and fruitful.
Why the Barbarian:
The Barbarian is ideal for one main reason: find item. This warcry skill gives you a chance to get another drop from a monster. At higher levels, it's just over 50%, so half the time, you're getting more drops on average. The really, really ideal reason is because unique monsters tend to drop around 4 items, and when you "hork" them (ie: use find item on the body) they have that chance to drop another 4 items again. Combine this with the gravy durability of battle orders and mass stunning skills like leap and warcry and you have the perfect gold finder. Plus, he can dual wield weapons, so he can carry more gold find than other characters.
Watch a Video of the Build:
I put together an example of my own Leaping Gold & Magic Find Barbarian running the Hell Council in Act III. He is level 90 with a level 90 Act II Mercenary. His gear can be seen by clicking here: MalsGambler Gear. The Mercenary is using a stock Duriel's Shell, Tal's Mask and Eth Insight Colossus Voulge. The Merc has no Gold & Magic Find. It's all on the Barbarian for the Video.
This example is to show that even when playing sloppy, having no resistances really, not using tremendous gear and running typical stuff on the Mercenary you can still get fantastic results. This example run is showing nearly 600,000 gold obtained from the Council as well as showing why Leap is the skill of choice instead of Warcry (this will be discussed more in the appropriate skill discussion section of the guide).
The Barbarian doesn't need much to do what he needs to do for the purpose of the build. He buffs himself and the mercenary, stuns enemies into submission and then uses Find Item to hork out the goodies. You do not need resistance at all. It helps in some situations, but overall you should very rarely find yourself in a situation where you're having problems, and when you are in a situation, a red potion does the trick. You should be running easily with nearly 4,000 health as should your Mercenary. You can take the heat. You have built in resistances through the Anya Quests and Natural Resistances so that at least you're not too far in the negative values. The gear discussion here focuses on just getting you a good amount of Gold & Magic find, as that is your role in this build.
Helms:
(Cheapest)Immortal King's Will. It has 2 open sockets, +2 warcries, 37% gold find and 25~40% magic find. Socket it with cheap jewels with gold find, topazes for more magic find, or lem runes for more gold find. Entry level, you can probably buy it for a single perfect gem.
(Cheap)Tarnhelm. +1 skills, 75% gold find, 25~50% magic find. You can socket it to add additional gold find from a jewel, a lem rune, or more magic find from a topaz. This is the hybrid approach (ie, magicfind & goldfind) and costs only a handful of perfect gems.
(Average)Crown of Thieves. 80~100% gold find. That's the only reason we look to this helm. This is the pure approach to gold find, because it's the most gold find we can get on a single helm (100%). Getting a perfect 100% roll will cost you, so expect to pay something for it (though it's still not expensive). You can get another one of these for your mercenary (and it can be eth). Socket them with Lem runes to maximize gold find if you can afford it. Otherwise, jewels with additional goldfind are cheap and plentiful.
Body Armors:
(Cheap)Gold Skins. 100% gold find. It's very cheap, if someone bothered to keep it, so probably shouldn't cost more than a single perfect gem. Socket it with more gold find from a jewel or something else very cheap.
(Average)Wealth. 300% gold find and 100% magic find. There really is no other armor that comes close.
Belts:
(Cheap)Magical/Rare Belt. Magical and Rare belts can get hefty amounts of gold find with other mods. Ultimately you will gamble one of these yourself probably. Otherwise, it's sort of "if you find it" you can use it.
(Cheap)Goldwrap. 30% magic find and 50~80% gold find. Ultimately you'll likely be using this one because you can get it for a few perfect gems and it's more suited to the hybrid approach (both gold find and magic find). It's recommended that you use the horadric cube and upgrade the goldwrap to it's exceptional form as a battle belt to increase it's storage capacity for potions.
Rings:
(Cheap)Magical/Rare Rings. Rings can have some gold find on them and you can find them or gamble them relatively easy.
(Cheap)Dwarfstar. 100% gold find on each ring, with some extra life and fire absorption. Simply the best ring for the setup, so get two. They only cost a few perfect gems a piece.
Amulet:
(Cheap)Magical/Rare Amulet. Amulets can get a bunch of gold find on them, and a rare one can have nice other mods too. Your ultimate goal will be to gamble a nice rare with high gold find and other mods that suit you. A magical amulet will suffice until then. You can also use one with +skills to enhance your find item and other skills. Teleport is another handy ability to have in order to better place your mercenary.
Gloves:
(Cheap)Magical/Rare Gloves. Rares can have nice amounts of gold find and other useful mods. Magical ones can have limited of each. Essentially just use whatever you can find until you get to the next item of interest.
(Average)Chanceguards. 200% gold find and 25~40% magic find. Pretty much your best bet for gloves. They can be cheap for a low end pair (low magic find %). Or they can be more expensive for a closer to perfect rolled pair. Get what you can.
Boots:
(Cheap)Magical/Rare Boots. Rares can be very attractive, so don't be shy about gambling boots. Faster run/walk, life, mana, and a big gold find amount. Your best boots will be a pair of rares. And it only costs you gold.
(Cheap)Infernostride. 20% faster run/walk, 40~70% gold find. In addition, you get higher resistance caps on Fire and some Fire resistance. Very good boots. Probably costs about a perfect gem or two at best.
Weapons:
(Average to Expensive)Blade of Ali Baba. You'll want two of them, which is why the price is average. What you socket them with determines how much more they will cost you overall. You get 1% magic find per character level. And you get 2.5% gold find per character level. At level 90, I get 90% magic find and 225% gold find on each item. If you socket them with Lem runes, you get an additional 150% gold find on each one. At level 90 with 2x Lems in each Ali Baba, each blade gives 375% gold find and 90% magic find. This is the most expensive option for the Ali Baba, but it's ultimately one of the best for the hybrid approach as you get high magic find and gold find at the same time.
(Expensive)Lem x 6 Crystal Swords/Axes. Each Lem rune gives you 75% gold find in a weapon, so times 6 gives you 450% gold find. This is the highest gold find on a weapon you'll get, and since you can hold two, you'll get 900% gold find from both of them right away. Obviously 12 Lem runes will cost you something. This is the pure way to get maximum gold find.
(Cheap)Edge. The Edge runeword is a must and it's cheap to make. It gives you 15% reduced costs at vendors. That's like having 15% more gold when you go to gamble.
Inventory:
(Average to Expensive)Gheed's Fortune. In your inventory, this grand charm gives you several things. 80~160% more gold find. Reduce vendor prices by 10~15%. And 20~40% magic find. Ultimately just stress getting one with 15% reduced vendor prices. The other stats are less important, though favor higher gold find of course. The magic find is nice, but don't worry about it's stat when buying.
Gold & Magic Find Mercenary Equipment:
This guide uses the Act II Mercenary. You actually could use a Rogue or a Barbarian Mercenary, but giving them a very high damage weapon to kill the council with will cost you a lot more than an Act II mercenary will, because of extremely cheap options like Insight and other very easy to make high end damage weapons. Not to mention simple cruel items that you can shop. Know that you can equip a Rogue/Barbarian to be very good as your kill switch, the only reason I avoid them for this is due to the cost of the gear to get them up to snuff when it comes to killing council members for cheap. If looking for an alternative, the Barbarian is cheaper and easier to build around than the Rogue. Consequently, the Rogue is the most difficult because she doesn't mount the same amount of damage potential nor focus as well on attacking Council members as she will attack anything in her range compared to a melee based mercenary.
When gearing up your mercenary keep a few things in mind. If possible, get crushing blow as it will speed up kill time by quite a bit. Try to avoid items that have cold damage because you don't want to explode bodies (you can't use find item on bodies that explode). You'll need life leech unless you want to non-stop feed potions to your mercenary (hydras hurt over time). You don't have to have any of this, but it greatly improves kill times and survival. Note: surviving is a big deal because that's negative gold if you or your mercenary dies.
Helms:
(Cheap)Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest. 10% life leech, resists, and life. Very cheap, maybe a perfect gem or so. You can socket it with more resistance, an increased attack speed jewel, a strength jewel/gem to help wield a larger polearm/spear, or even just some +life. You can also just throw a jewel with gold find in it, or a Lem rune (though that's expensive for a Tal's mask).
(Average)Crown of Thieves. Just as before, you can get up to 100% gold find on here, but it also has great life leech for your mercenary. This would be pretty ideal as you get two things you really want. Socket it with an increased attack speed jewel, gold find jewel, or a Lem rune.
(Average)Guillaume's Face. +15 Strength, and 35% crushing blow. Socket it with whatever you need. Ultimately this is for the crushing blow, because 35% is a huge amount for a helm. Combine this with the Hone Sundan and you have 80% crushing blow and room to spare. Combine with other items and runewords with crushing blow to keep it above 50% if you can.
(Average)Andariel's Visage. 20% increased attack speed, 8~10% life leech, 25~30 strength and some big poison resists. Socket it with a Ral rune to get your Fire Resistance back where it should be if you need to, otherwise, another increased attack speed jewel, or even a Lem rune. This helm is really ideal if you're not gunning for maximum gold find on your merc. Depending on what weapon you're using, most weapons will only need somewhere around 60% IAS on the gear to get to a higher attack per frame, which means more killing power. Don't stress it though. You'll be fast enough.
Body Armors:
(Average)Wealth. Just like what your Barbarian can wear, you can slap a Wealth on your Mercenary too, for another 300% gold find and 100% magic find. Not a bad option. You can throw it in an ethereal armor too for more defense if you have the armor. Ultimately you don't have to worry about defensive measures, as your stun skills will keep the mercenary alive more than anything else with just a bit of life leech to counter the fire attacks from hydras.
(Cheap)Duriel's Shell. Dury's Shell is amazing armor. Huge resistance, big bonus to strength, some extra life, good defense, and cannot be frozen. Great all around armor. Socket with whatever you need. If you can get an ethereal one, all the better.
(Average)Treachery. 45% increased attack speed, 50% more gold find, 25% chance to cast Venom on striking (poison damage, so you can prevent Council members from regenerating while you stab them) and 5% chance to cast Fade when struck (the hydras will trigger this very often, boosting Fade which gives you huge resistances and curse length reduction). Awesome armor for your merc. Combine with another item with increased attack speed and you can get your merc stabbing at a higher frame per attack value for faster kills.
Ultimately, there are too numerous armors to list. It really depends what weapon you're using as to which helm/armor to use with it. Your armor is a good place to get IAS, resistances, or more gold find. Overall, I'd suggest another Wealth unless it slows you down, in which case, go for a cheap Duriel's Shell or make a Treachery. They keep you alive. Wealth is for when you're comfortable and able to keep things stunned while increasing your gold and magic find again.
Weapons:
(Cheap)Insight. Insight is ridiculously powerful and stupid cheap. You can make this weapon and look no further. Huge damage, meditation for non-stop mana and you can throw it in any 4 socket polearm, ethereal or not, and get massive damage. Keep an eye out for ethereal Cryptic Axes, Great Poleaxes, Threshers, Giant Threshers and Colossus Voulges. The runes are dirt with a Sol rune being the highest one, it's the socketed item that will be harder to get. You can find them in Pits/ChaosSanc/WorldStone readily if you just join some runs.
(Average)Obedience. Obedience is pure awesome. It has a single flaw, and that's cold damage. But if you can live with the chance that you may not get to hork a body now and then due to it exploding, this weapon is otherwise brutal and perfect. Huge damage, resistance, 40% crushing blow, hit recovery, huge Enchant (AR and more damage), defense, reduced req's, etc, you name it. It's just a monster of a weapon. It's a 5 socket polearm, so seek out the ethereal Cryptic Axe, Thresher, Giant Thresher and Great Poleaxe. The Cryptic Axe is the easiest because it only gets up to 5 sockets, as does the Thresher, so will be able to be used at the Larzuk quest. Ko & Fal are the highest runes used in this recipe.
(Average to Expensive)Ethereal Hone Sundan. Great damage, 3 open sockets, 45% crushing blow. If you get an Ethereal one and upgrade it to a Ghost Spear, it ends up with around ~750 damage listed, and it's other mods (the crushing blow). You can then socket it with Amn runes for 21% life leech, making it the perfect slaying weapon. It can be expensive because getting an ethereal one is rare, and upping it is costly.
(Cheap)Steel Pillar. The unique Warpike has great damage, 25% crushing blow and 25% increased attack speed. Amn it for some life leech, or Shael it for more attack speed.
(Average)Bonehew. If you can get an ethereal one, the damage is insane. It prevents healing, has fast attack speed and sockets to allow you to plug in some life leech (Amn runes).
(Average to Expensive)Tombreaver. An ethereal Tombreaver with high stats and 3 sockets can be expensive, but a non-ethereal one can be average to cheap. Go for what you can. It will have really good damage, very fast attack speed, and has sockets to let you customize for your other needs. It has built in magic find even and resistances. The only down side is that 10% of the monsters it kills are reanimated which means you can't hork them. So if you can live with 1 out of 10 monsters not being able to get horked, this is a great weapon if you can get it.
Note that ultimately there are way too many weapons to list. Anything with big damage, fast attack speeds, crushing blow, life leech, etc, are all fantastic and will do the job. You can even just shop a cruel weapon and use that.
Leaping Gold & Magic Find Barbarians who are using the Mercenary as the actual death-dealing component of the build are actually incredibly flexible when it comes to their skill point allocations. In this guide, I'll cover the ones that I consider as needed and then address other skills that help along the way. There is no right way to do your skills. So take from this what you will and try things out for yourself. I'll give you information based on my own experiences. As for your character's stat points, they're completely open ended and have only one requirement which is to be able to use whatever gear you are going to end up using.
Barbarian's Character Stats:
No matter what you end up doing with your stat points, each Barbarian starts out the same which flesh out as the following:
Strength: 30
Dexterity: 20
Vitality: 25
Energy: 10
Hit Points: 55
Stamina: 92
Mana: 10
Each level of progression you achieve, you gain the following bonuses automatically:
Life: +2
Stamina: +1
Mana: +1
And for each stat point you sink into your character stats, you receive the following bonuses:
1 point in Vitality: +4 Life, +1 Stamina
1 point in Energy: +1 Mana
Stat Placement Based on Equipment Requirements:
You only have to place hard stat points into character stats to meet your equipment's requirements. Beyond that, do as you wish, though I suggest you simply pump your Vitality to keep yourself very healthy with a huge life pool of nearly 4,000 life or higher at higher character levels. This is obtainable without any gear helping you out too because Barbarians receive so much life per point, more so than any other character. You can use that to your advantage and it does help while battling as you will have low resistances and no real defensive attributes beyond your mass stunning skills which ultimately allow you to be so vicarious with your defense measures.
Strength is only needed for equipment. You won't be dealing any damage yourself, so there's no reason to have more strength than is necessary. Based on the equipment discussion, this can be as little as 43 total Strength, or 70, or higher. It totally depends on the gear selections you make. There's no right or wrong about it. Just put in enough to use what you're going to end up using in the end so that you can switch items out as you obtain new things, unless you get everything you want right away.
Dexterity does absolutely nothing for you other than let you use specific weapons. Various weapons that you may use on weapon switch, such as Echoing weapons with bonuses to Warcries generally have a Dex requirement and the Blade of Ali Baba has a small Dex requirement as well. So a few points is not a big deal here, and you start with a decent Dex stat as it is, so only a few hard points opens up new gear options which you likely will be using. Don't put in more than the weapon requires though.
Vitality is our life. It's also your Mercenary's life because if you die, he dies. You will have low resistance, low defense and no attacks to leech from nor will you be blocking. You need a large life pool to survive torrents of elemental damage, poison damage and the occasional physical attack that gets through while you move around. Pump this with everything you have that isn't needed for equipment.
Energy is a pitiful stat for the Barbarian. You get +1 mana per point. Don't bother. You already get that per level and then double that with Battle Orders. You'll have plenty of mana and never run out even while mana burned, leaping around. Ignore this stat.
Barbarian's Skills:
Warcries:
(1 Skill Point)Find Potion is a required warcry as a prerequisite to Find Item. But it's not just that. You can hork rejuvenation potions from bodies which are really useful for you and others.
(8~20 Skill Points)Find Item is absolutely required. There is a lot of debate on whether to go with a low level one compared to a high level one. I'm of the mind that you should drop 20 points into this skill because every single 1% matters when you're only looking at a few bodies to hork over and over. But that doesn't mean you have to. If you're looking to get the most from the skill per point, stop at 8 hard skill points, or 9~14 skill points after battle command and gear. This skill has a diminishing return value. At level 9 it is 41% chance. You have battle command built into your barbarian for +1 skill, so everything is at +1 after hard points. 8 hard points with +1 from battle command gives you a skill level 9 Find Item for 41%. At skill level 21 (20 hard points, +1 from battle command) it's 51% chance. To me, 10% is a lot of chance and that's why I recommend you drop 20 skill points into Find Item. If you're using any other gear with a single +1 skill point and reach Skill level 22 on Find Item, it increases to 52%. After that, the diminishing return gets worse so don't bother trying to focus too much on additional skills to it.
(1 Skill Point)Howl is a prerequisite to Shout and then to Battle Orders and Battle Command. It's also pretty useful. One point wonder.
(1~20 Skill Points)Shout is a great skill, but it's not required by the build what so ever. Shout combined with the duration increase from Battle Order's synergy makes it a one point wonder for party play because you can get a really nice increase in defense for everyone and your merc for a single skill point in Shout that lasts a very long time. For this guide, I only recommend a single skill point as a prerequisite to Battle Orders and for good party play. In your gold find running, you'll find nothing really takes a swing at you due to your stun skills and your merc doesn't get hit either hardly at all, so defense is not needed. Maxing this skill is not useful unless you just feel like doing it for party play while leveling.
(20 Skill Points)Battle Orders is a must have skill. Lots of life and mana for both you and your mercenary. Life matters in Hell as you and your mercenary will be hit with elemental damage often, while physical damage is far less often going to be a problem. Having a big life pool makes it a lot easier. Big life pools also means less need for gear-based resistances and durability concerns. You can survive tons of damage with a big life pool. It's critical for your Mercenary because he's going to be taking more damage than you likely. It's also a good skill to have while leveling and while playing with parties. Everyone likes Battle Orders.
(1 Skill Point)Battle Command is a one point wonder. +1 skills for everyone and the duration is synergized via Battle Orders.
(0~1 Skill Point)Taunt is not needed at all unless you're focusing on a Warcry build. However, it can be very useful early on while leveling with a Mercenary to bring enemies to you instead of chasing them around.
(0~1 Skill Point)Battle Cry is a really handy skill to have while leveling for other players, but not so much for yourself because your stun skills will make it hard for anything except act end bosses to actually attack you.
(0~20 Skill Points)WarCry is an attack cry that deals damage, though only little, but mainly stuns enemies. It will stun most monsters in the game, including the Council, with repeated castings and has a stun length of 5 seconds at skill level 21 (20 points, +1 from battle command). It costs a hefty chunk of mana, so spamming it is only an option for someone using Insight or drinking blue potions constantly. Before various changes in the patches, this was the skill of choice for the Gold Find barbarian because it stunned enemies in place for the Mercenary to do the killing. It's not needed anymore, what so ever. However, I will note that it's fantastic for leveling because it's a great skill to have during dangerous runs. Most public games don't favor many effects that make the run slow down, so knocking things back and making them flee is not good for party play. But stunning things in place is great for party play. And the beauty is you have so many skill options with this build, you can go with both a maxed Leap and a maxed Warcry if you want (I did, because I like having both).
Combat Masteries:
(0~1 Skill Point)Increased Stamina is a prerequisite to Increased Speed. If you want more running speed, you'll have 1 point here. If you don't care to move faster, then ignore this skill and the speed skill. Personally I recommend Increased Speed highly, so for me, this is a 1 point prerequisite.
(0~1+ Skill Points)Increased Speed is an option to help you move faster without a reliance on gear. Personally I highly recommend it because moving faster means you can quickly zip into the Council's area leaving your Mercenary behind and he will instantly appear near you when you get too far away, which happens to be the distance it takes to get into the Council's area. Moving faster makes this more likely to happen at the right time so that he doesn't get stuck fighting some mob on the way there, or swarmed by something ugly before you start your Leaping. A single point goes a long way. However, you can dump as many points as you want in here. I dump 5 hard points into it, making skill 6 after Battle Command, and at skill level 6 it is a 30% increase in speed. Combined with boots that increase your speed as well, you move very quickly. See the video linked in the introduction to see the process of why moving very fast helps when it comes to using a Mercenary who will "teleport" to be with you when you get too far away. If you're using an item that grants you Teleport charges or skills, you do not need this at all. Though I find it handy for shopping and gambling while in town to move around even faster and since there's so many unrequired skill points for the build, it's sort of a "why not?" thing that you don't have to feel guilty for treating yourself to. Again, completely not required for the build. I simply recommend it.
(0~1 Skill Point)Iron Skin is a prerequisite to Natural Resistance. Iron Skin itself is not useful at all to you so treat it as a 1 point means to something better skill.
(0~1+ Skill Points)Natural Resistance is a phenomenal skill giving you a ton of resistance for a few skill points. Combined with the Saving Anya Quests, you can easily put yourself out of the negative resistance area while in Hell, depending on your other gear selections. As mentioned earlier in the guide, you don't actually need resistances, however I still find that at least having no resistances compared to having negative resistances is a big deal because you will come across things that really hurt, like tons of mega packed bolts of lighting from more than one Council member that happen to hit you at the same time and the Hydra firebolts hitting you. Once conviction is on you and these are slamming into you, it starts to hurt when you're taking basically double the damage due to having -100 resistance. This is why I recommend you at least get 1 or more skill points in Natural Resistance so that you just take something closer to listed damage which your huge life pool can much more readily handle. Again, this is not really required as you will usually be quite safe due to mass stunning, but for some runs, it can be the difference between living and seeing a red screen with a big gold loss.
Combat Skills:
(8~20 Skill Points)Leap is an absolute must. Leap is what makes it all come together and is the fuel that keeps the machine going for the mercenary to make your kills so that you can collect your gold and loot. Leap costs 2 mana, so even without a big mana pool and without Meditation or anything similar, you can literally Leap non-stop, even after mana-burned, because your mana will regenerate as fast as you use Leap. Non-stop Leaping, no matter what. The only time you'll have to stop Leaping is basically if you lag and it won't let you. 8 hard skill points puts you where you should be at a minimum. +1 skill from Battle Command puts you at skill level 9, which grants 14 yard radius for your Leap's knockback & hit recovery animation that you inflict on every enemy except act-end bosses. At level 21 it goes to 17.3 yards radius, so only a 3.3 yard increase for 11 skill points. If you're conservative and have more use for skills elsewhere, then leave it at a simple 8 hard point skill. Otherwise, you can max this for the largest radius possible. Personally, I maxed it because enemies who are outside of that 14 yard range can still cast on you (hydras for example) and I'd prefer to not have to deal with a load of those while leaping. The reason I use Leap over Warcry for the stunning process is because Leap is cheaper to cast over and over even while mana-burned and because it's actually more effective at keeping the Council (and any monster in the game, except act-end bosses) stunned and off you than Warcry is. The Council members can be stunned, but not 100% of the time, which is why I don't favor Warcry here. Leap however works 100% of the time and sends them into knockback animation so long as they're in your Leap's radius of effect. Every single time. By the time you land a short in-place Leap (holding shift + casting Leap repeatedly right where you're standing), they're just starting to recover so you literally keep them forever stunned unless you stop Leaping (due to picking something up, checking a monster's spawned mods, or because you lagged a little bit) which means they will not be able to cast Hydras very much if at all and will basically never get to phsyically attack you or the Mercenary. Leap keeps throwing the enemies back directly away from you, the center of the screen, so position yourself the opposite direction that you want the monsters to be pushed to and you can control where they go.
Total Hard Skill Points Required:
You can build your barbarian as you wish and there is a lot of flexibility with the skill requirements. Only a few skills are actually required, and most of them are not skills that you must max out so you have plenty of room to do whatever you please with the remaining skill points to make it more fun, more effective based on your gear, or more party friendly for while leveling, etc. It's totally up to you. But to give you a quick idea, here's the following that I consider the required number of hard skill points to invest:
Warcries: 31
Combat Masteries: 0
Combat Skills: 8
That's a whopping 39 skill points for the entire build. From there you can follow my recommendations or slice it how you see fit to use the rest of your skill points. Note that at character level 85, you'll have 96 available skill points to spend, or 57 points to customize your barbarian with. Even more if you go higher on your character's level. This leaves you plenty of room to max skills, get a few points in several skills, or whatever you please. It's completely open-ended beyond the humble 39 point requirement for the core of the actual build.
Mercenary Skills Information:
Act II, Nightmare Difficulty, Offensive Mercenary:
The Nightmare Difficulty Offensive Mercenary is the only one that has the Might Aura, which increases his and any party members' physical damage. No other Aura is useful for what this Mercenary does, ie, you do not need Defiance because everything will be stunned until they're dead, you do not need Holy Freeze because they will be stunned and unable to attack anyways, and you do not need Prayer, Thorns nor Blessed Aim because they will do nothing useful other than look pretty while attacking the Hell Council members, or anything in Hell for that matter. So the Might Mercenary is simply it.
Might Aura: The Aura's skill level is dependent on the Mercenary's level. Note that there is no apparent cap on the Might Aura (though the other skill Auras do have caps, oddly). The formula for knowing what level Aura he is running is 10/32*lvl (where lvl = your Mercenary's current level). In this Guide, I suggest you get to at least level 85 for both you and your Mercenary, and higher if you can stomach the grinding to get there. At level 85, his Might Aura will be level 26 which is 290% enhanced physical damage. It goes up from there. With a good ethereal weapon, this means you literally can add thousands of damage depending on the base damage of that weapon he's wielding.
Jab: The attack skill your Mercenary uses is Jab, so it will attack faster than the listed attack speed on the weapon as he attacks with several thrusts and so actually attacks pretty fast surprisingly. There are some break points for increasing his attacks per frame though which are worth discussing since some gear can help you get there (while other break points are unobtainable while using a good crushing blow build or additional gold & magic find). The slowest weapon that your Mercenary can use is a weapon with an attack speed of [20] such as a War Pike, and at this basic speed with no increased attack speed while using Jab, he already is attacking at 10 FPA (frames per attack) which results in 2.5 attacks per second. Using this as the slowest possible attack (at least while not frozen and not decrepified), it goes up from here. Instead of listing it all out, I suggest you use the following: Weapon Speed Calculator. Select Merecnary - Act 2 in the character form. Select your weapon type by base item in the drop down box beneath that. Jab is already selected for you. It will list the FPA and attacks per second at the bottom. Click "Show IAS/FPS Table" to have a table brought up with your possible break points for increasing your attack speed. I will note that with Treachery and a 15% IAS jewel in a helm, such as Guilaume's Face or just a base Andariel's Visage, you can easily achieve the 6.5 FPA with 3.8 attacks per second break point. If you're using a weapon with some life leech and more crushing blow, you're going to eat through the Council very quickly (far more quickly than what you saw in the video I posted in the introduction). It's still possible to achieve the 6 FPA break point, but I don't recommend sacrificing gold & magic find options for the tiny increase in speed. Shoot for the 6.5 break point if you can while maintaining crushing blow. Otherwise, load up on pure gold find, life leech and a good damage weapon.
Simply crashing the gates isn't always going to work, so let's talk about some strategies for getting to the right place, taking on various spawns of the Hell Council that can be tougher than others and keeping everything you're wanting to attack from being knocked out of an area, or in other words, to maintain control.
Leveling your Barbarian:
You probably wonder how you're supposed to get to high levels without having attack skills and without taking weeks and weeks of watching a merc do all the work through all the acts. This guide assumes you're able to take care of this. While some want to play from level 1 to the end level of their character and do all the acts themselves, that's fine, you'll have plenty of stat point and skill point flexibility options to manage this and still come out with a perfect gold finder who was able to level himself and get through the quests and finally get to high levels. This is one of the reasons this guide leaves it very open ended in terms of the required skills. Until you actually start Gold & Magic Finding, you're able to wear whatever you want and use those 57+ skill points to do whatever you please. As a suggestion, a Concentration barbarian seems logical since you're already pushing Battle Orders and it's a synergy and a great skill and they're able to do well through the whole game with junk items, so having decent items just makes it all the better. You can also go the Warcry barbarian route where you're a support character with massive warcries and crowd control. You're leaching that experience, but you're doing something useful and fun at least. Ultimately, you will do whatever you feel is fun and/or necessary to get to your appropriate level of choice to start your Gamble runs. You can play it from scratch or you can self-rush or have a friend rush you. Whatever floats your boat.
Various Hell Council Spawns:
The Hell Council can spawn with all the horrible auras and abilities that you can imagine. You can walk right into some Conviction & Lighting Enchanted & Holy Freeze messes where you might ask yourself, "Is it worth attempting?" The answer is typically yes, it's worth it because Leap makes it all too easy, no matter their spawn mods. You can easily take on Conviction and the other nasty auras and you can tank the Lighting Enchanted Council Members as well. With maximum resistances on your Mercenary (easily achieved at level 85 and higher with the basic gear talked about in the equipment discussions section) and just a little life leech, he'll take on Lighting Enchanted even with Conviction on him just fine. The Warcry version of the Gold Find Barbarian has a much harder time with various spawns because they are not 100% stunned from Warcry all the time, though Leap puts them in recovery animation every single time. So you can take on all the ugly spawns. There is only one spawn mod that actually makes it impossible to kill the Council Member, and that's Immune to Physical Damage. Without Amplify Damage or Decrepify from something, you simply will not break this immunity and your Mercenary cannot take him down. If he gets stuck on that one Council member that he can't kill, move away quickly and your Merc will follow, then begin Leaping again and your Merc will go after a new target, hopefully another member. If it becomes too much of a bother, don't be too proud to portal to town and make a new run. Tons of gold find is good but really slow runs are not so hot.
Mercenary Placement and "Teleporting:"
Placing your Mercenary close to the Council is pretty important so he doesn't get side tracked on lesser mobs. Since you cannot actively control him you'll have to learn to manage him by using Mercenary (and Minion) "teleporting." Basically, if you move away from your Mercenary very quickly and far, he will lag behind you a bit and then suddenly appear near you, like he teleported, bypassing all obstacles and just appearing. You'll likely want to use this to quickly place your Merc right in the heart of the Council so he can get to work and you can get to Leaping. This is easily achieved every single time if you make sure your Run/Walk Speed is really high. This is why I recommended points in Increased Speed skill combined with fast Run/Walk boots. If you watch the Video posted in the introduction, you can see how I run fast and hard past everything and into the Council's chamber and my Merc suddenly is just "there" with me. That's the "teleporting" I'm talking about. Even if the Council is not in the chamber, it's still a good idea to teleport him in there via this method because they will come in after you at the door and your Leap skill goes through the walls so you can keep them stunned even from within the chamber. It takes a few seconds for the Mercenary to teleport in to you, so don't worry if he's not there, you'll notice he arrives. Move very far into the right side of the Chamber, the Council never spawns there (though sometimes some Zealots do, they're nothing to worry about though) so you'll be safe and your Merc will teleport into a safe zone as well. If you have gear that gives you the actual teleport spell or skill charges, you can do this much easier and without having to use this strategy to get your Merc in place. So if you're amulet has teleport charges, you can use that. Or you can use something on weapon switch, like Naj's Puzzler (set staff with lots of charges of Teleport). But, since this is for everyone to do, you don't have to have an item. You can simply run and watch them appear without gear at all. Practice it and then it's a piece of cake to place your Merc and set up the run.
Effective Leaping:
Leaping seems obvious but it does take some consideration to make it really effective. For starters, your character is the center of the screen and that's where the knock back effect will be generated from (where you land, which is still always the center of the screen). Enemies that are knocked back or put into recovery animation always move directly away from you and either are pushed back, or don't move at all if they're hitting another enemy or friendly creature (they will not go through your Merc, they actually stop if they contact him and he'll stab away) and they don't go through obstacles that are not normally passable. So when you start your Leaping session to keep things locked down, it's a good idea to make sure that most of the Council will be in the court and chamber area of where they spawn so that they don't get pushed out into the open and then far off into the Travical area. As you can see in the video in the introduction, your goal is to push them into walls and obstacles so that they're close to you but locked down by the Leap. If they spawn outside of the chamber and all in the court area, run past them or Leap over them and let your Merc spawn inside the chamber with you (ie: the "teleporting" strategy). The Council will cast Hydras and come in after you as your Merc goes after the nearest enemy. Once they gang up at the door way into the chamber, Leap out of there and get behind them. Start Leaping and they are pushed into the walls of the Chamber and some into the Chamber. You're set. Either way, once they're in this area (court or chamber), they're in your Leap range all the way to the walls and your Merc will easily just go from member to member splattering cherry pie all over the walls.
Keep Leaping until they're all dead. Council members love to cast hordes of Hydras which can be deadly if too many are in place and Conviction aura is on you and your Merc. If you keep Leaping, they can't cast while in recovery animation and they never get out of that animation unless you stop Leaping. So once you start, that's it for them and there will be no more casting unless one is not in your Leap's area of effect. Leaping also prevents members from healing one another, which if they do, can be really annoying. This speeds things up since no healing means less attacks needed to get kills. Leaping also keeps lesser mobs at bay. You will see Vampires and Zealots all over the place who like to cast spells at you and generally run around and lure your Merc. Leap keeps them away so you can just focus on the Council. The mobs tend to be outside the court & chamber, so your Leap will keep them off in the open and away from your tight area of control and you should have no worries with them at all. Leaping causes "on hit" effects to trigger, so those Lighting Enchanted members will spew lighting out while you Leap non-stop. Just stay out of the lighting path and you'll be fine. You can keep leaping even when mana-burned. Your mana regenerates fast enough to keep up with the cost of Leap and the time it takes to Leap gives you enough time to get that 2 mana regenerated. Leaping in place is simple: Shift + Cast in place, in one spot. It gives the shortest possible Leap in order to produce non-stop recovery animations. If you Leap around, you will give things time to recover and start casting, moving and healing each other. So keep it tight and in place. If you slip up or lag, no big deal, just start up the non-stop Leaping again and swallow the seconds.
Fast Runs with less Gold & Magic Find or Slower Runs with more Gold & Magic Find:
You can use mass crushing blow gear, high attack speeds and even use various skills of your own to make the killing process really fast. You can use all kinds of super gear to generate tons of damage and kill the Council in a minute or more for a very quick run. Sure, you will get a lot of gold (if you calculate the amount of gold you get each run over a couple or runs you can generate what you average in the given amount of time) and it may be a very high average gold for your time spent, but creating games over and over really quickly like that will have you "Realm Down" for 15~30 minutes real fast. That's annoying to say the least. If you do slower runs with more focus on Gold & Magic find, you can get the same high average gold for the time spent and make fewer games in the process so that you can fill up your coffers and go gamble without getting the "Realm Down" triggered on your IP. Gold Find is capped however since you can only wear and carry so many items, so maxing it out and taking a really long time to kill isn't making your average gold over time better. Find the optimal time it takes for you to do the Council regardless of their spawn mods and keep the most Gold & Magic Find you can. For me, I find that 3 minute runs are best for me because I average around 600,000 gold. 5 runs generally fills my stash and nearly fills my inventory capacity. I go gamble at that point because gambling takes up some good time and I don't get Realm Down doing it in these intervals. I also tend to check shops while in Hell, because some blue items are really worth while and naturally we can afford them.
Selling Loot to Generate more Gold:
Gold isn't the only thing we're picking up. The Council often doesn't drop much gold and instead drops items instead. We can still make tons of gold because often times, we're able to sell these items in Hell for good gold amounts. As this is a Gold & Magic Find build, things that are not gold can end up being nice sets, uniques, gems, runes, charms, etc. But they can also just be junk that normally we would leave sitting there. Your inventory should be relatively empty. I carry Gheed's Fortune, my Town Portal Book full of Scrolls and my Cube. This way I can quickly fill my inventory and cube with the items that drop. Prioritize items that you know are generally worth more as that is a smarter use of the space. Some items always sell for max or near max gold in Hell (which is 35,000 gold). Most exceptional and elite armors sell for max gold. Most elite items of all kinds sell for near max gold or high gold amounts. Wands, Scepters & Staves tend to sell for max gold if they have a skill. So focus on what actually sells for gold and avoid things that don't sell well that take up space. This is part of your average gold over time that you will generate because you can generate so many items via initial drops from the kills and the secondary drops from Find Item that you may have to make two trips to actually sell a good amount of the stuff. If most of it is not stuff that sells for much, then don't bother picking it up to sell. Focus on things that are generally going to sell for the 35k and things that you plan on keeping of course.
Gambling:
Gambling is what the gold is for, so we might as well talk about that. You should be aware of how Gambling works, so check out the Arreat Summit real quick: Gambling Explained via Arreat Summit. Note that rare items spawn 10% of the time when you gamble. That's pretty good if you consider applying it to Circlets, Amulets, Boots, Gloves, Belts, etc. You can get some great items if you just keep rolling rares. And with the amount of gold you'll have, you'll buy lots of these over and over. If you're after specific kinds of mods on your items, you can gamble with another character to make it very specific. Gambling uses a forumla for generating which base item type can be viewed and gambled for and what level affixes and suffixes it can have. Some items have qualities that change this (like Circlets, which have higher quality than normal so you can get higher mods on them even at lower character levels). Basically if you want specific mods, you consider which affixes and suffixes can spawn based on your character's level. Use the following calculator to find out what level your character needs to be in order to have the best odds to get the affix & suffix that you're after and then gamble like crazy: Affix & Suffix Calculator. An example would be that you want to gamble a rare amulet with +2 to skills and then a bunch of other mods. On the calculator, it shows you have to be level 90 to spawn that. That's the highest level that Gamble requires for mods. So if you want those top mods, you'd have to get to level 90. However, not everyone is after that. Maybe you just want to gamble magical +3 branch amulets. You only need level 60 for that. No mods above that level can spawn so your odds to get what you want are better since there's less for it to choose from when it rolls the mods. Apply this logic to all the items you can gamble and their affix & suffix potentials and you can make characters to gamble for specific affix & suffix combination items. Or you can just gamble for the highest stuff with a level 90+ character (the ultimate amulets and circlets, for example). Make sure you have your Gheed's Fortune & Edge runeword because 30% off vendor prices means 30% more gold to be spent on more gambles.
You can gamble forever and never get anything worth while. It's a gamble after all. But you can also roll some of the most prized and rare items in the game. This is the ultimate gambler's holy grail. Gambling an amulet that blows your mind can either make your day or make you insanely rich. For example, a +2 skill amulet with faster cast rate, strength, resistances and life, if hefty enough, will fetch a price that most people cannot afford without resorting to high-rune class prices. Circlets are another place to get wealth because they can spawn amazing mods. An example of a simple yet very expensive trade-item is a jeweler's circlet (3 sockets) with the 30% Faster Run/Walk mod on it. That will fetch high-rune class prices as well and that's just a magical item. Most of the big PVP community will pay out of their ears for things so if you're gambling, you should head over to the PVP boards and read up on what is being used that is not a unique/runeword item because chances are, they're extremely good rares, magical items and often times crafted items. You can cash in on this with some of your gambles if you get lucky. I suggest gambling Amulets, Circlets, Boots and Gloves. They tend to be the most useful and can beat a lot of uniques and set items and be worth quite a bit in the trade boards. If you ever find something that you think might be good but you are not sure, we have a nice "Trade Values" board in the Trading section. Post it up there and find out for current responses based on the current economy.
This build is worth conisderation, very thorough study from you sir
As soon as I get home from work i will finish reading it |||Haven't read it all but it looks good (although it's obviously inferior to Tyrranicydes )
small remarks: you should mention more charms, like torch, anni and goldfind small and grand charms for the sake of completeness. Both barb torches and annis aren't that expensive even on ladder.
For belts i prefer either rares or crafted blood belts - they can get 80% goldfind plus some awesome mods like high str, high life etc. I'd never use a goldwrap.
It also seems to me that 4k life which you mention is very low even for a welfare ladder barb, a lot more should be possible with mediocre/bad gear.
I prefer IK helm for it's two sockets and a bonus to warcries - more life and higher chance of double drops.
Dwarfstars are a few pgems each so i wouldn't really advocate anything else for that slot, nothing beats 100 goldfind and fire absorb on that thing, and boable life Same with gloves, chancies are the only option for a support barb imo.
I might have some more comments later |||First off, it looks good. Easy on the eye when reading, which is important to a guide.
Some things:
-Chance Guards and Dwarfstars are pretty much the only option for gloves and rings.
-Leap isnt 'really' needed at all. A GoldBarb can do just fine without a single point in Leap.
-Reapers Toll for a Merc is a nice choice, as the Decrepify removes the physical immune.
-Fortitude is a very nice choice for Merc-armor, as it speeds up the killing significant imo.|||Very impressive goldfind, this guide should be stickied
The text in the guide does it no justice, watch the utube. 600k in 3 minutes is a large amount indeed.|||Excellent guide, MaleauX! Very thorough and complete with gear selections for those that care not to dip into the 1337s.
And as always, excellent music in the vids!
A few questions that I came up with: Do you think this guy would work in Hardcore mode? Is it worth running any other bosses? Shenk and Fire Eye maybe?|||nice guide overall! certainly substantially better than some guides i've read on this topic.
couple small points: under Helms, ou should list rare/magic helms with the Of Wealth suffix. these can sometimes be far superior to any of those you mentioned. for example: this is the one on my GF skellynec. If you're gambling a lot of circlets, something like this will pop up eventually.
for Amulets, the ultimate prize is the Of Wealth suffix AND Teleport charges. this one is a "failed" crafting attempt that my GF skellynec just adores.
Quote:
Haven't read it all but it looks good (although it's obviously inferior to Tyrranicydes )
ARRRRRRGH!!!|||Quote:
ARRRRRRGH!!!
you obviously fail to see that optimal mfing>goldfinding (j/k)
I've only used warcry for stunning so far, only a bit of leaping on the new ladder goldfinder. I like the leap idea, in particular for weaker chars, the fact that leap knocks back all monster is a huge factor.|||Nice guide overall (no guide will ever include everything on anything diablo2 related). Only one thing that I think should be definitely added:
The Reaper's Toll. This should definitely be added to the merc weapon's section. 33% ctc Decrepify, up to 15% Life Leech, 33% deadly strike. These add up to insane damage (arguably more than the rest of the options) AND it solves the PI problem (which is easily the most time consuming and annoying thing about hell council runs). Couple of shattered corpses (adds 4-44 cold dmg) are definitely worth it.
Edit: hmm, pwned by Krembanan (you managed to hide it very well in your post, didn't you?)|||fantastic job MalV! i've got a barb finlally in hell baals and thought i'd level him straight up to 93 ready for crafting and gambling. he's got free skills left and this helped me with the allocation problem i had
Mike: thanks to you too. i almost followed this guide but then you reminded me about the Tyrranicydes and did the right decision!
[:1]Hi guys. Few weeks ago I opened this topic to get some help about a safe, tank-like HC build what can cut through Hell with no problem. From 1h/shield WW I went to 1h/Shield Conc just because of the defense bonus and honestly I can't stand my barb spinning around 0-24 So yeah, here I am with a Barb who has many items set it stone, but I still find it a bit difficult to choose a decent armor (and mix the remaining slots)
As a defense oriented HC IronBarb I maxed BO, Shout, Conc, and Sword Mastery. Now I'm hesitating between Ironskin and Bash to put the rest of the points on. Don't know if the +defense worth sacrificing the dmg bonus of Bash but my real issue is choosing between CoH and Forti.
Although CoH sounds obvious in most situations, I just don't feel it really worth that Ber rune with my current gear and stats. As you can see, with no Anni, no Torch and no Body Armor, 2 of my resist are already maxed in hell. While CoH has some very good adds, even with a low baba torch I'd feel that +65 all res would be wasted. It can boost my other 2 resist quite well, but that's all. While Forti still has a decent 25-30 allres (and +5 lightning making my lightning resist a very good 90% with a 20 absorb). Tha crucial part is that Forti has a 200% edef bonus what makes it more a "defense" oriented armor (no, really it's an offensive armor ofc) then CoH with it's low 70% edef bonus. So basically I have to decide weather +35% allres (most part of this wont even be recognised due to the already maxed resists) +2 all skill and Lifeleech worth a Ber rune over 300% ed, 200% edef, +5% max lightning res, and X to life... Forti even has som PDR on it, and with that armor I'd have more def, life, lightres, and damage... really don't know what to do.
Also here are some picture about my rare stuff. The gloves I use (IAS is a charm, 3% LL, nice FR... I like this beauty a lot) and the ring. (AR, pdr, vita, allres, nuff said
The other part what gives me headaches is socketing. I have 60+20+20 IAS on me atm. Next breakpoint would be 149 wich is far, BUT achieveable with a fana merc and some 15% ias jewels here and there. In the other had, I can stick with this speed (which is fast enough) and socket 40%ed in arreat and 7% chance to block (to lower the dex requiements on max block and put the points into vita). Or if I choose forti over Coh i can socket Um in SS and that would cover the rest of the resists.
help me make this Barb a perf Conc barb|||Hi,
Just a couple quick thoughts before I go out. The real big benefit of fort is the damage mainly. The other attributes are gravy. Defense is overated with a shield in hand, which also goes along with Conc. Yes you get a big Defense boost from conc, but to me the real benefit is that it cannot be interrupted, which means you can attack and leech forever.
The question then comes down to, when I kill stuff do I want it to take forever? In that case consider a good defense can also be from a good offense.
Understanding the tank concept, it's hard to go wrong either way and Fort+ebotd seems logical to me, and I like it for everyday random hack-n-slash. However, I know you try to run with a killer, but if you ever went up against ubers with your current setup it would fail. And the fact is that conc is very viable vs the ubers. You need crushing blow, ow and overstacked resist for that. Coh, guilliams face, dracs and probably a phase grief would be closer to perfect for that.
Either way, I don't think you can always strike a "perfect" balance between offense and defense, but you can indeed change whatever you want to suit your gameplay style.|||Imo Fortitude and Bash is a no-brainer, mostly for the reasons already explained above: The best defense is a good offense. With max block and an uninterruptible attack the defense gains from Iron Skin won't make or break the char, while more damage always helps. It's pretty silly to choose a low-defense armor with the amount of +def% you have, plus Fort's Shiver Armor is equivalent to another 13 points in Iron Skin. You'll be safe enough with War Cry, Battle Cry and Howl at your disposal, so from this point on I think you should try to maximize damage.
I would stay away from a Faith merc. A merc with Reaper's is by far (far) the best setup ito both safety and damage.
I won't say anything regarding the IAS issue because all I'm thinking about is a Grief Phaseblade |||Oh **** I've typed my message for an hour and now it's gone due to logoff during writing. I'm pissed now!!
So you say that Forti > CoH in my situation due to the fact that 300%edmg is the best defense Well, I thought the same. Bigger defense, bigger dmg, enough resists, and plus life can't go wrong. The +2 all skill (+2 BO, Iron Skin, Conc, Sword Mastery) won't make up the differences.
So Forti set. Still got problem with belts. 2 possibilities:
TGods + Forti + SS = 90% LR 20 Absorb and 35%DR
Dungo + Forti + SS = 80% LR 0 Absorb and 45-50% DR
I think for a HC (Iron)Barb 50%DR cap is a must (just like 75% block or max BO). The question is, do I need 90% LR and 20 Absorb when Souls only appears in few places (where I can swap Tgods anywtim). I think I'll go dungo. Although, gonna miss the str attributes of Tgods)
Socketing isn't really an issue since I wont go for 149 IAS Breakpoint, but I think I can't go wrong with a 40% edmg jewel in helm and UM or ETH is SS to cover the remaining resistances or lowering the dex req. for max block (thus boosting vita).
What do you think? (and please somebody can tell me how ed% works. works the same in weapons and armomrs?)
Regards|||That sucks, I almost always /select all/copy/ if I drag my feet on a post since the same BS has happened to me before.
Personally I don't think you need either of these in absolute terms....
TGods + Forti + SS = 90% LR 20 Absorb and 35%DR
Dungo + Forti + SS = 80% LR 0 Absorb and 45-50% DR
BUT... I do find the Tgod/Fort combo more useful with the light res/sorb than I do with 50%DR/dungo combo. It's been awhile since I've baaled and was given "Hot-TP's" or ran into a pack of mana-burn souls-however, with TGods on 24/7 I have no fear.
If you find you must go 50% DR, you could also consider a string of ears or upped version. That would give you the DR + even more insane leech stack. Justa thought|||Just a quick pic of my new toy I'm literally IN LOVE with the character. I already started to feel the downside of this character. The 'I'm immune to death' side Check him out here
Arreat
Highlord
Forti wire fleece (214% ed)
eBotD Cb (very low, 359% ed, but it's mine:P)
gore rider
dwarf
Crafted ring (allres, AR, PDR, life, mana)
Tgods
Rare gloves (20 IAS 3%LL dual-res gloves)
SS
Armor is 30450 during Conc. this is not 100% though. there are some socketing and upgrading left and no annihilus, nor the might aura of the merc (he jsut dont activate it no matter what...).|||Another possibility is to combine 1handed conc with Zeal. That way you can keep the fast swing speed of grief and switch to zeal if surrounded by monsters and things get dicy.
My choice for gear optimization of that build would be though combat skills would need to be slightly adjusted
[:1]hi guys, im having a hard time killing the act bosses in hell, im not dieing or anything its just it takes me forever to land hits sometimes, sometimes it takes me 5+ mins to kill baal? also i have a hard time with physical immunes. i dont know what to do. ill post my gear i am using.
helm: wolfhowl
ammy: 2 to warcries, 1 max dmg, 19 to energy, 11 max stam, 11 all res, 32 to
extra gold
Wep: grief pb
shield: SS with a cham rune
armor; ap enigma
belt: verdungos
Boots: goreriders
rings: angelics, and dual leech ring with fire res and Mf
charms: anni, gheeds and barb torch
now merc is good rarely dies which i like dont need tons of gold for him, his gear is
eth gaze
eth fort
eth pride wep
so this is all the gear i use, all my main skills are maxed, i only play pvm us east ladder. please help me thanks.
PS im only lvl 87 atm|||no one has an idea, is it my attack rating? or something else?|||some crushing blow or LoH gloves, fortitute, Highlords wrath ammy might help. Also sword mastery should be at MAX. Angelics are useless without the ammy, are you swapping?|||i got both angelics rings and ammy, but i dont have enough mana leach that is why i use a dual leech ring instead. im also using drac gloves.|||You don't need Dracs since feral rage gives you massive life leech. Use Laying of Hands or a blood craft to get some more CB, both will help kill Baal faster.
What charms are you using? You can load up on AR/life charms if you are having real problems hitting or you can pre-buff with enchant from Demon Limb.
Not sure how you are having AR problems though, my wolfbarb who doesn't use Angelics or Demon Limb has 11k+ AR plus Grief comes with ITD and -25 targets defence.
As for PIs, a Reapers Toll on your merc will break most.|||ok so better to use reapers on my merc pref eth, and LoH gloves or crafted ones. what mods on the gloves am i looking for other than CB?|||Well if you can get STR, DEX and resistance(s) all the better. Laying of Hands will work well too though.
20% IAS isn't a must but will possibly let you maintain a 5 frame attack even when under decrepify or holy freeze.|||just got these crafted gloves
102 def
20 ias
20 attack rating
1 life stolen per hit
10% cb
17 life
56 enchance def
22 lightning res|||I second the Reapers suggestion, but also give him Guillaume's Face since you're gonna struggle to get CB on yourself.
I've got no idea why'd you put a Cham in the SS instead of just Shaeling it. You can get your CBF from Raven plus up to 250 AR for free; wolfbarbs tend to have good AR already (without Angelics) and ideally you'd want to use Highlord's. Laying of Hands will make a big diff, but I guess you need the CB. I assume you're using Enigma for the MF; for general play imo Fort with WT and chancies seems like a better compromise.
In order to handle phys immunes I use Azurewrath off-hand permanently. Its Sanctuary aura (Lawbringer also has it) removes undead phys immunity, which is most of the PIs, but also increases your damage against undead in general. Decrip can handle the rest, although the only ones I regularly encounter are WSK witches and I don't find those worth my time so just run past them.
Wolves have great FHR breakpoints and mediocre blocking, plus with your leech and HP block is really not necessary. Just Shael the helm and get one of two FHR charms for a decent breakpoint.|||Quote:
I second the Reapers suggestion, but also give him Guillaume's Face since you're gonna struggle to get CB on yourself.
I've got no idea why'd you put a Cham in the SS instead of just Shaeling it. You can get your CBF from Raven plus up to 250 AR for free; wolfbarbs tend to have good AR already (without Angelics) and ideally you'd want to use Highlord's. Laying of Hands will make a big diff, but I guess you need the CB. I assume you're using Enigma for the MF; for general play imo Fort with WT and chancies seems like a better compromise.
In order to handle phys immunes I use Azurewrath off-hand permanently. Its Sanctuary aura (Lawbringer also has it) removes undead phys immunity, which is most of the PIs, but also increases your damage against undead in general. Decrip can handle the rest, although the only ones I regularly encounter are WSK witches and I don't find those worth my time so just run past them.
Wolves have great FHR breakpoints and mediocre blocking, plus with your leech and HP block is really not necessary. Just Shael the helm and get one of two FHR charms for a decent breakpoint.
Why swap helmets all of the time? Its just crazy to swap gear all of the time on a build. I would not recommend that at all. I believe the op said that he is suffering ar issues which is leading for him not having a high enough chance to hit bosses.
To the op:
If you are suffering ar that badly I would suggest you to get lots of 36 scs if that is what you have to do. Or go with angelics ammy and angelics ring/20 dex raven.
Has anyone tried out Giant Skull for such a build? I'm guessing with good stats and 2x ed/str jewels this could be nice. Plus the extra CB cant hurt, right?
Also, is Knockback procced in WW?
Is that enough to beat Arreats?
My other question is about the boots, WTs vs Gores, anyone willing to share their opinions?
Thanks,
Madness|||The Knockback could be helpful on a full titan. Why not go all the way and use Guillaume's Face?
Re the boots, there won't be a massive difference ito damage output so just go with whatever you want. Use WT if you fancy a bit of MF and Gores if your CB is below ~30%.|||I dig the old-school grim helm look, Barb is about the only character it looks good on
Guilliam looks ugly imo, but other than CB, why use it over, say arreats?|||cb doesnt add much but ds adds more damage than other possible options.. even a 120 ed helm|||Nvm googled it.
Thanks |||The Grim Helm does look pretty cool, but the G-face helm is by far my fav look on almost every char
If you've got enough leech elsewhere I'd say go for it, you're not gonna miss Arreat's.|||Since it's all on paper right now, what is enough leech?
I'm gonna be using an eBOTD GPA, so that's at least 7/12.
Assuming Dracs is another 10, how much more would you say I need?
I can probably make up for the 6% in arreats with a ring.
I'm more worried about the loss of 30 res @ FHR and that nice 20% ar bonus.
I could go with Angleic ring/amu but I'd lose the nice DS from highlords.|||even a grief pb can leech ~500 health per hit with roughly 7% lifesteal... its wonderful the damage|||The 20% adds with skill AR% so it's not all that, although you do get another 36% from Arreat's +skills. 3 or so ~130 AR GCs work nicely to get your AR up to a respectable level.
If going all str, then yes, a ring with some LL sounds like a good idea.|||Quote:
cb doesnt add much but ds adds more damage than other possible options.. even a 120 ed helm
Its still nice to have to boost up killing speed a bit.
(just a quick question, there aren't any resets coming soon, right?)
|||Exhausting.
)
|||Oh **** I've typed my message for an hour and now it's gone due to logoff during writing. I'm pissed now!!