Presenting: The Summoner Barb!

Hey y’all, got a fun new barb build I’m trying out, let me know what you think! It’s probably not new, but it sure is fun!

Is normal barb farming boring? Do you hate having your stash full of gold? Want to make an Amazon, necro and Druid jealous they can only summon from their own skill trees! Try this build out! It’s not that expensive to get the gear together. It’s centred around some interesting items, specifically added skills and charges, giving your barb the best summons in the game!

Gear:

Head:

Shako and

Wolfhowl
Amulet: seraph’s hymn,

Metalgrid, or any other +2 all skills
Armour: any +1/2 all skills, Stone
Weapon: Harmony

Belt: arachnid’s mesh, or razor tail
Gloves: frost burn

Boots:

Silkweave, war travellers, or any other preferred

Boots
Rings:

Carrion Wind, nature’s Peace or

Wisp Projector, soj or bul kathos wedding band
Charms:

Annihilus, barb torch, warcry skillers and res charms

Merc: act 2 might with Insight, Treachery, and

Helm of choice

Skills: everything into the warcries! Less the 1 point wonders in masteries.

Stats: enough strength to wear gear, around 200 points into vitality, the rest into dex to increase your bow attacks!

Play style:
Step 1: You need some pre-buffing here, first step is to cast a

Valkyrie from Harmony (May need to re-roll a couple times to get +6), before you cast it you’ll want a

Shako on

Helm, a +1/2 all skills armour, +skills rings. This should give you a level 16+

Valkyrie! You have to keep Harmony equipped or your

Valkyrie will disappear.

Step 2: Now to cast the rest of your summons - change out your

Helm to

Wolfhowl, armour to Stone, rings to either

Carrion Wind/

Wisp Projector, and nature’s Peace. Now you can cast

Clay Golem from Stone, a Spirit of oak or other Spirit from your rings,

Poison Creeper from

Carrion Wind, and 3 dire wolves from wolf

Howl!

Step 3: Go to your favourite farming spot and

Battle Command, battle order and

Shout everything making your summons strong!

Step 4: (Optional) you could morph thanks to

Wolfhowl, but it’s also just as fun to run around yelling enemies to Death beside your new army. Your normal bow attack is actually fairly decent too. As a final step you can

Revive monsters thx again to Harmony!

Step 5: You’ll need to collect at least 80k gold to recharge all your summon charges, but this is pretty easy to get. While you could

Revive monsters, the recharge of that will require at least 200k gold, so if you want to take on a boss you could!

Step 6: Profit!

Let me know your thoughts, I’m finding it really fun to play! Definitely not for players 8, but you should be ok throughout most of the game. I ran into trouble in the world Stone keep and

Nihlathak, but everything else should be fine!

I don't know if I'll give it a try anytime soon, but I love the concept. So many different summons and such a silly build!

I appreciate the write-up. Good stuff!

Edit: the Peace armour and passive/magic skillet charms don’t buff

Valkyrie, only the + to all skills do

How does the +6 to

Valkyrie work on a barb? It's not a

Charge so you wouldn't be able to cast it, no?

it is an o skill on the Harmony so any class can use it (capped at +3 for amazon)

Faith, save on the

Revive charges until you need them for a boss, also

Fanaticism

Cute concept.

Though between the low lvl charges and no synergies whatsoever to improve those summons, I would be a tad surprised if this was in any way really viable for the summons themselves (i.e. not just your merc killing stuff while summons look cute).

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Cute concept.

Though between the low lvl charges and no synergies whatsoever to improve those summons, I would be a tad surprised if this was in any way really viable for the summons themselves (i.e. not just your merc killing stuff while summons look cute).

Yea it’s not a meta shifting build, more just a proof of concept. After I did a bunch of trav and meph farming I had everything to make the build, so I just wanted to see how many summons I could get on a barb. You could make it better if you swapped out the Stone for Enigma, but then you’d have to use the

Iron Golem/metal grid combination, which isn’t bad if you had the right base, you could maybe make it out of a cheap Insight then swap the merc’s weapon or merc to get some other auras.

But all the summons do compliment each other fairly well, the golem,

Valkyrie and wolfs coupled with the oak Spirit and maxed bo get some great life bonuses and are quite tanky.

Damage wise I swapped my frostburns for the gloves that proc

Weaken on strike, which helps when coupled with the

War Cry that does the same thing, so monsters do go down fairly quickly, nothing compared to a

Frenzy barb, sorc or Hammerdins, but still enough to enjoy the unique play style!

I’d be interested if anyone has any thoughts on other summon options!

Yeah the BO will make then survive decently. Then, if you wanted to ratchet up the price, throw a Pride on the merc!

Update*

So I did try this build with Enigma and

Metalgrid, making an

Iron Golem out of a cheap Insight and gave my merc an Obedience, it’s awesome. Sure you need to recast golem each game, but I find at least one base every game anyways, and the runes are easy to get too, so for me it’s worth it to not have to chug mana pots during my runs. I also swapped out the gloves for

Chance Guards, Great way to do mf in the level 85 areas. It’s essentially the same as a singer barb, but better!

*update*

Damn, with patch 2.5 saying that your

Iron Golem from

Metalgrid will persist between games, this just got real!

Summoner barb could be a real thing!

After 2.5 drops I’ll try this out again and see if the changes actually add anything

Persistent IG is great but it still depends on the item that carries the

Charge as I read the notes so it's not completely viable for every build after all. But for those kind of experimental build, perfect.

this is amazing.
a huge barbarian carrying a tiny gentle bow, summoning like crazy and turning into some

Werewolf..

would love to see a video gameplay of this!

PS
did anyone actually try this or this is still on theory??

Barb-o-mancer lol. Looks to be fun at the cost of being able to do any sort of AoE or crowd control dmg with the exception of

War Cry. I'd be surprised if this is viable in players 3 hell, if so that's good enough for me since that's usually what the games I'm in are at.

I'd honestly be surprised if it is even viable in P1, seeing how nothing gets any synergies in that zoo.
May try it out later on though just for shits and giggles.


Disclaimer:
Yes, of course it'll be viable in P1...everything with a merc is...but you know what I mean.

Yes I have actually built this character, it is super fun on p1, and it works, but I’d keep it to pit farming.

Once 2.5 goes live I’m going to try it out again, sounds like we may even be able to swap out weapons like Harmony without losing the

Valkyrie, if that’s true then this build really opens up and you could have some significant options for weapons/other skills

Nate wrote: 2 years ago

Once 2.5 goes live I’m going to try it out again, sounds like we may even be able to swap out weapons like Harmony without losing the

Valkyrie, if that’s true then this build really opens up and you could have some significant options for weapons/other skills

I do believe you read the patch notes wrong. The change is referring to a bug that caused IG to disappear on inv updates/new games. Changing/fixing that merely means that if you switch out other pieces and/or join a new game, it'll stick around. It does NOT mean that you can equip a piece of gear with a summon

Charge on it, only to then unequip it for something else while still keeping the summon active.

That having been said...this build is...weird.
It works. But really only for three reasons:
1) Merc (with fort and

Eth reaper's in this case)
2) HOW from

Wisp Projector buffing said merc
3)

Metalgrid

Iron Golem built using a Beast to buff said merc even further

All in all, that leaves the merc with ~9k damage, meaning he can basically solo anything.

All of the other summons - while cute - are honestly just in the way. They do no damage whatsoever (as expected, due to lack of synergies and lvl) and really the only thing they do do is stand in the way and block the merc from actually getting to his target.

Basically, if you drop all of the other summon gear and go only for wips +

Metalgrid and then

Leap around like an idiot to keep HOW and IG alive, it performs SIGNIFICANTLY better than it does with all of the other summons added. Which..is interesting. But pretty much as expected, sadly.
Still cute though.

Cool!

Yea I read you could keep the Harmony equipped but you could use your weapon swap without her disappearing, if not, oh well.

Yea there’s a fine balance with the summons, you want enough so your merc doesn’t get dogpiled, but not so much he doesn’t just sit at the back and only emit aura. I think the

Valkyrie and

Iron Golem are good Argo targets.

I recently did make a fort and Faith, so I might try it out with a manic pixie Dream girl. I’m using her on my throw barb and the attack speed, elemental damage (fire from the bow, Ice from her skills) and

Confuse proc is really something, it may be a better way to keep all the summons alive!

I believe you can get a much higher level

Heart of Wolverine from Oath, and then swap that out. As long as you keep

Wisp Projector on as well, the summon should remain.

One thing I’d like to chime in on is how good the

Clay Golem you can summon off of Stone is. I’ve been playing through the game with one and it’s fantastic for crowd control and very tanky with Warcries.