My Barbarian needs more power

Hi there,

since the beginning of Diablo (actually even further back, Might & Magic etc.), the Barbarian has always been my main class - preferably two-handed with Sword.

I am now very well equipped, but I am wondering how I can do more damage.
Up to 6 players it works quite well, but with players 7 or 8 it gets tough(er).


Attribute Points:
100 Points in Str (= 190 Str)
40 Points in Dex (= 125 Dex / 95 Dex)
Everything else in Vitality


Equipment:
Guillaume's Face with IAS / Cold Resist Jewel
Fortitude
String of Ears (max, upped)
Laying of Hands
Gore Rider (max, upped)
Raven Frost (max)
Highlord's Wrath
Ring with +9 min Dmg, Dualleech, 2 high resists
Hellfire Torch
Ethereal Breath of the Dying Colossus Blade (max)
alt Grief Zweihander + Stormshield
no Annihilus (will find it by myself)


Overall, I got
max Resists (with 2 Charms till I find an Anni), Lightning 80%
4k Life
10k (Default) - 18k Defense ( Concentrate)
29% Life leech
12% Mana leech
6.5k - 13k Concentrate Damage with 9.5k Attack Rating
5k - 10k Whirlwind Damage with 7k Attack Rating
all achievable (rational) IAS Breakpoints


Frenzy / Whirlwind / 2x Grief
Playing with 2 griefs (and Frenzy, Whirlwind) - where the damage is supposed to be immensely higher -> I can't confirm that - maybe I don't notice because I don't like the play style.


Hireling
Hireling is an Act 2 Merc with Might aura.
Eth Obedience and Eth The Reaper's Toll available.

Had already thought about assembling Pride - but the merc damage is bad then.
Has anyone tried that? Is it worth it?

According to the calculator, Eth The Reaper's Toll is most beneficial - when Decrepify triggers.


What else could help?
Quite a lot of Max Dmg Charms? (to expensive...)
Are poison charms (313+) useful?
Annihilus ("only" brings +1 skills and max 20 Str)
Use Steelrend, where most mobs are demons and Laying of Hands is probably better?
Sacrifice a lot of Vita for Strength?
Waiting for the patch?

For Frenzy, you need MH Grief, OH Lawbringer.

For WW, use Grief + Grief or Grief + broken weapon.

For Armor, if you are farming Worldstone Keep or Chaos Sanctuary, use Treachery instead of Fortitude. It's a lot more useful there.

With Lawbringer, you can replace your Merc's Reaper's Toll with Pride if you want to (but make sure he get life leech elsewhere). Why are you worried about his damage? He just needs to leech enough to stay alive.

There is a very good Frenzy Barb guide for max players WSK + Chaos here.

So what are you using as main skill? Are you more a WW or Frenzy or Concentrate? Have you maxed out your synergies (there are not many but still). Have you tried using your shouts to deminish ennemies défense ?
Your gear seam pretty solid to me,
Have you got any skiller (masteries) in your inventory, some max dmg/attack rate/(str/life/dex) large or SC? Have you got enough attack rate to be able to actually hit monsters often enough? (I personally use Blessed Aim a2 merc)
My barbarian is wielding double PB Grief (very bad rolls tbh) and using Frenzy/ Berserk.. Quite powerful but not if I go solo fighting in a 7 8 people game.. It fine if I fight the same boss with others mind you. I can not like do Travincal while ôther players do their own areas..
Imo Barbarian are a bit limited when it comes to solo players 8..

Additionally, if you play Frenzy, dont forget to use Howl liberally to get some space. You want to move between boss packs (or Seals in Chaos), not to spend time hacking and slashing Minions or normal mobs.

Jinsho wrote: 4 years ago

Additionally, if you play Frenzy, dont forget to use Howl liberally to get some space. You want to move between boss packs (or Seals in Chaos), not to spend time hacking and slashing Minions or normal mobs.

Depends on the play style, I prefere to kill every mobs in CS and hork them after. It brang me alot of very good things so far for the time I spent doing It I'm quite happy

Mine is here.A Mace Brb.Any suggestions?

You haven't given us a lot here, but it looks like you have full Immortal King's set with a Stormlash on swap for the Static Field. That's a good setup. You have a lot of + skills as well.

What's the issue you're having? If you want to minmax your barb more, you have to get rid of the IK set and tell us what you want to farm and what your problems are.

Thnks,yes I got full set,but I need alternative building,for more damage set up.I got arreat face,mara necklace but poor rings and the left hand has Honor with Stormlash,not good enough for Frenzy.

The Gold standard endgame BIS barb gear is as follows:

Arreat's Face
Highlord's Wrath
Grief MH
Lawbringer or 2nd Grief OH or broken weapon for Whirlwind
Treachery (for Chaos Sanctuary and Worldstone Keep runs) or Fortitude for everything else
Laying of Hands
String of Ears
Raven Frost
Rare dual leech ring
Gore Rider or War Traveler

Weapon Swap : Either 2x +3 Warcries weapons from Malah, or 2x Blade Of Ali Baba with 2x Ist.

if you are deviating from this and you can justify it, you should go ahead and do that.

Jinsho wrote: 4 years ago

Crushing Blow does not scale up with # of players, so it's much less useful at players 8 than it is solo. I would go Arreat's Face instead of Guillaume's Face.

I don't understand that argument. Yes, the Crushing Blow doesn't scale with players 8 but you normal damage doesn't either. But if you fighting alone in Player's 8, Crushing Blow still become better then in Players 1. Let me show what i mean. Lets take a Monster with 1000 HP and gets only hit by Crushing Blow (it is no possible i know), the damage goes as follow:

250 → 187 → 141 → 105 → 79

In Players 8 the Monster has 4500 HP and goes as follows:

250 → 236 → 223 → 211 → 199

The Contribution of Crushing Blow becomes better because the HP remains longer at higher levels and so can Crushing Blow eat the big HP chunks for longer. Your normal Damage doesn't change at all in contrast.

In my eyes Chrushing Blow gets better in Players 8 even if doesn't scale but only if you are alone.

EDIT: Oh, I now see what you mean by that. I am correcting my previous statement.

EDIT 2: Yes, you are fully correct. For high player counts, Crushing Blow is still the fastest way to kill high HP targets such as Act bosses, thus making Guillaume's Face and Gore Rider much stronger.

you can also shop the +3 warcry throwing spears at Anya's, using the pindle portal to refresh her store !

From personal experience leveling my barb, I have noticed that charms actually matter a lot. Annihilus will make a difference. Every time you get a better +DMG charm you will get a little extra. And the bonuses pile up.
Another useful off hand swap is Demon Limb, which adds a significant amount of AR and a minor boost to damage.

i prefer an Eth Lacerator / ebotd zerker Axe myself.

amp damage > Decrepify

also helps scare away trash minions.

trash minions are for characters that do AOE damage. barb/fireclaw druid etc should be boss/champion hunting IMO.

and the G face isn't worth it compared to arreat's amazing mods.

really you won't see much of a change at this point. it is what it is.

you aren't going to clear mobs as fast as a hammerdin or light sorc.

xtremerotary wrote: 4 years ago

From personal experience leveling my barb, I have noticed that charms actually matter a lot. Annihilus will make a difference. Every time you get a better +DMG charm you will get a little extra. And the bonuses pile up.
Another useful off hand swap is Demon Limb, which adds a significant amount of AR and a minor boost to damage.

I got it and I don't like its performance at all.But Brand new Beast arrived for the left hand to asist to the Stormlash.

Demon Limb is not used as a weapon for damage. You have it as a swap to cast Enchant only.

Well there was a lot of posts going on here .

Jinsho wrote: 4 years ago

For Frenzy, you need MH Grief, OH Lawbringer.

For WW, use Grief + Grief or Grief + broken weapon.

For Armor, if you are farming Worldstone Keep or Chaos Sanctuary, use Treachery instead of Fortitude. It's a lot more useful there.

With Lawbringer, you can replace your Merc's Reaper's Toll with Pride if you want to (but make sure he get life leech elsewhere). Why are you worried about his damage? He just needs to leech enough to stay alive.

There is a very good Frenzy Barb guide for max players WSK + Chaos here.

With my second barb I use Whirlwind with Grief + Grief, and to be honest, I don't find it stronger than 2h eBotD. But that may be very subjective.
I have to test Frenzy with Grief + Lawbringer, so Lawbringer is not that expensive either.

I'm less worried about the Hireling damage, but more about the expensive runes for Pride, which may then be burned.
According to the calculator, it's the only thing that still gives a huge boost in damage - with the exception of proccing Decrepify.


What about all the top rune words?
Is there anything that can keep up? Death, Beast, Last Wish, Fury?

Lapwaire14 wrote: 4 years ago

So what are you using as main skill? Are you more a WW or Frenzy or Concentrate? Have you maxed out your synergies (there are not many but still). Have you tried using your shouts to deminish ennemies défense ?
Your gear seam pretty solid to me,
Have you got any skiller (masteries) in your inventory, some max dmg/attack rate/(str/life/dex) large or SC? Have you got enough attack rate to be able to actually hit monsters often enough? (I personally use Blessed Aim a2 merc)
My barbarian is wielding double PB Grief (very bad rolls tbh) and using Frenzy/ Berserk.. Quite powerful but not if I go solo fighting in a 7 8 people game.. It fine if I fight the same boss with others mind you. I can not like do Travincal while ôther players do their own areas..
Imo Barbarian are a bit limited when it comes to solo players 8..

Main Skill is Whirlwind (maxed) + Concentrate (maxed) for solo Targets / fast Kill + Berserk (1 point), depending on the situation.
Attack rate is 9.500 Concentrate and 7.000 Whirlwind (and the -25% Target Defense from Breath of the Dying).
Charms Max Dmg / Attack Rating mostly, but not high end charms.

Secondary Slot Grief + Stormshield has one hand Damage equal to two handed for Concentrate, but Whirlwind damage is bigger with two handed Breath of the Dying (calculator).

Travincal actually works quite well (also Players 8 solo), but River of Flame, for example, takes forever.

Chickenhawk wrote: 4 years ago

i prefer an Eth Lacerator / ebotd zerker Axe myself.

amp damage > Decrepify

also helps scare away trash minions.

trash minions are for characters that do AOE damage. barb/fireclaw druid etc should be boss/champion hunting IMO.

and the G face isn't worth it compared to arreat's amazing mods.

really you won't see much of a change at this point. it is what it is.

you aren't going to clear mobs as fast as a hammerdin or light sorc.

Yes, Arreat's Face stats are probably better overall, although I don't necessarily need them.

For me, the style is mostly about perfect equipment.

Everyone loves Arreat's Face, but I'm into Warhammer > Chaos, that's why I use Guillaume's Face (and the stats are nice anyway).
I also tried Arreat's Face, but that doesn't make a big difference to my performance either.

Like you said ... it is what it is at this point.