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The idea of getting a barb through hell seems to be a bit of a joke amongst the community. Even after this guide, I still feel like its a joke. Why is the barb so hard? The build. Stats Skills (2i) War Cry: This ability is AMAZING, for the reason that it is a SPELL! Not tethered to a paltry weapon for damage and with 100% accuracy this ability soon makes quick work of the old style of hack and slash combat. War Cry Hits all targets around you, and with the barbarians habit of getting surrounded this means it frequently hits multiple targets, something flailing about can't do. War Cry also stuns monsters around you, making them near useless to even fight you. With these advantages War Cry quickly becomes the dominating spell of choice, keeping up with even the most geared of combat Barbs. The combat tree is changed from a killing style, to a arsenal of niche tools; Concentrate for chunking bosses down with crushing blow, Frenzy for move speed, and leap for getting past the impossible. The damage on this warcry is not as comparable to a javazon or a Sorceress, but it gets by as long as it hits more than one thing. War Crys biggest upset is it's high mana cost of 29 at level 20. Getting the most out of this spell means either finding +mana loot, or sacrificing vitality for energy and then chugging mana potions as this spell drains the barbs tiny mana pool very fast. Also affected by cast speed. |
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Notable Gear/Crushing blow (3a) Crushing blow is an insane mechanic that chops down a percentage of a mobs current health. 1/4 health for general mobs, 1/8 for bosses. The more health an enemy has, the more damage a crushing blow will do. As enemies drop in health crushing blow becomes less useful and regular damage needs to take over. ¤Mercenary: Your (Act 2) mercenary can be a huge part of your overall damage output. Blessed aim will give you some more chance to hit, something like 5%-10% depending on what you current rating is. Might aura is not recommended, there isnt much damage to might up. Holy freeze slows enemies around you and might make the hoards more manageable. I cant think of anyway to make the other Mercs useful. The Route ¤Assuming you farmed in some way to get to 25, going straight to nightmare after that might not be the thing to do. Consider farming in Normal longer to get more levels, find more gear. Farming Mephisto is an idea, but in no way reliable. Cows? Canyon of the magi? |
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Other Ideas, Final thoughts (4a) Life steal/Life Tap: What little life steal you might find is halved in nightmare, some mobs and most bosses have additional leech resistance. Life tap provides an additional 50% life steal against mobs cursed with it. Consider finding a life tap wand at some point, possibly for ancients, or bosses (Baal) in general. I think I'm out of ideas on how to help out the joke that is the Barbarian class. As much as you might think all this executed together might make the run easier, it really doesn't. Stuff is always hard to hit, damage is always low, and getting swamped happens often. Sources: Myself and the years I've been playing this game. The community and all the ideas we bounce around. Numerous websites like Arreat Summit and various 'wikis' for hard numbers. And a Barbarian of mine that that is currently stuck at the Chaos Sanctuary. |
AlanVaultAlanVault
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Interesting thoughts. I wish I had time to theorycraft on barb and actually run it. I may add a few thoughts: 1) Barbs can't actually skip a bunch of acts like other classes. Mobs HP will get higher and higher, and your chance to hit/survivability will get lower. So, you need to improve your gear as you advance, act by act. Items with Fast Ht Recovery, high defense (yeah, defense matters for barbs, improved with Shout/Iron Skin) and some resistances are very important. Note, consider this with the offensive items you quoted. 2) The leveling/farming strategy is quite different of other classes when going solo after Normal: 3) A few considerations: |
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Update If you hit chance is not up to snuff, and killing anything seems impossible, leveling up to remedy this helps, but is slow, up to you how long you want to spend doing this. Sapphire Crafted Items, known as 'hit power' have the attribute Frost nova when struck. This is useful to say the least to a barb who is being surrounded. Notably the amulet (thul) and the ring (Amn) are easy to equip. They might roll garbage, but better than what you might have. Edits |