Barb Gearup

Been working on gearing a barb and have ran into a little snafoo. Not sure what would give me the most damage and was wondering if I could get a little help. I'm going WW only so no talk of going with another build or mentioning of another build would be appreciated. My mind is set on WW. My issue is coming to what merc to use and Phoenix vs Beast.

Should I go dual Last Wish A5 merc or a might merc with Pride? (I know years ago that Might and Conc didn't stack, not sure if that still holds true for D2R though)
Which would be better, Phoenix offhand or Beast?
or
Would some combo of these work better...I've already tried dual Grief and I have faster clear times with a BotD Zerker with Phx.

act 2 might merc with

The Reaper's Toll. anything that is immune to physical u kill with

Berserk.
Also the faster he attacks the better. Throw a 15% ias jewel in the weapon,

Helm, Treachery for armor. More chances from him to proc

Decrepify and keep himself alive with the life leech

I cannot answer your other question, I only have exp with dual Grief phase blades / botd in a

War Pike.

More often than not, you get the best results out of simply dual-wielding Grief.

For the merc, it largely depends on where/how you actually play. If you focus primarily on P1, as a stacked WW barb, you kill stuff so quickly that no A2 merc can keep up (even with Hustle and the like). Not only will that result in him not proccing

Decrepify due to not being there to attack, it also results in him never turning on might and/or you constantly being out of range of said might if he ever did proc it.

A dual Last Wish merc by contrast not only offers a higher might than A2 does, meaning more dmg, his higher might is also on by default and - equally as important - has a noticeably higher range so you don't lose it as often and actually get a bit of might uptime. Adding to that, if he ever does get somewhere in time to attack, he will build up massive

Frenzy run speed quite quickly, giving him at least a fighting chance of keeping up for a few more packs.

The above includes accounting for phys immune stuff that you just

Bone Break down. They give your merc a tiny bit of time to catch up but typically still not enough unless he happens to

Teleport over in that moment.

Once you move to higher player counts, the whole thing changes noticeably though. You stop 1-2shotting everything, you don't run away from your merc 98% of the time as a result and even an A2 merc actually gets to attack somewhat reliably. So not only do you now get the (admittedly lower) A2 might aura but more importantly,

Decrepify starts working for you. The latter is even more important (night and day) on higher player count phys immunes as dealing with those using only

Bone Break is rather annoying to say the least.

Additionally, A2 (i.e. reaper/

Decrepify) is pure gold for uber runs as a barb.

So in essence, if you focus on whirling through say P1 Chaos and the like, I for one would go for dual Grief + dual Last Wish

Frenzy merc. But if you focus on higher player counts and/or want to throw in the occasional uber run, A2 reaper's is hard to beat.

Keep in mind the dual Grief setup is the solution of choice for stable flat damage. This is firstly due to the extremely high average damage you get out of Grief as compared to basically any other weapon but secondly also largely due to the extremely low spread between your min and max damage so you can actually rely on "x hits to kill" vs. "sometimes 1, sometimes 3, sometimes 8 cuz dmg range RNG sucks!".
There is something to be said for going after a crushing blow setup like dual Death instead or possibly even a mix of the two. The performance overall is comparable for the largest part, with CB being a bit "more annoying" on mob clearing due to the higher dmg spread but being better on bosses to make up for it.
Personally, I'd say which of the two you roll with is ultimately just a matter of taste. Both are perfectly viable and utterly annihilate anything P1 once stacked.


Note:
All of the above is based on extensive updated theorycrafting and actual playtesting I happened to be doing over the last week anyways for both, WW and

Frenzy.

Great points from Schnorki. Dual Grief is the strongest setup on your barb. I also like Grief + Last Wish, but def not as much damage.

As for merc, A5

Frenzy with 2x Last Wish is my favorite for survivability in most places due to merc applying

Life Tap almost instantly. Means you can't apply other curses though since they'll get overridden pretty quick, but

War Cry's

Stun will stack with it, and it works really well for Trav + other areas.

I also occasionally switch back to A2 merc + Insight for the infinite mana when I'm doing socket runs. And WW is pretty mana intensive, so that may still be a good option if you're ever feeling mana starved. And Reapers can be good if you're running into a ton of phys immunes and don't care too much about horking (decrep can help a lot with those hell witches in

Baal runs). Or maybe

Bone Break will take care of PI's and you don't need Reapers (haven't tested

Bone Break much yet tbh).

Judging by the sounds of things from both Jbmc and Schnorki, an A2 might merc with Reaper's Toll is the way to go.

I had already tested dual 390+ Grief vs a 410 BotD Zerker and 390 Phoenix and the BotD/Phoenix gives me faster clear times than the dual Grief does. Looks like I'll need to actualy test and compare BotD/Phoenix vs BotD/Beast though. Feels like BotD/Phoenix will take it though

Thanks for the input and advice all