New WW Barb, Suggestions Welcome

Greetings, I decided to make a new WW barb as this is one of the only characters I haven't made for a very long time. The build is:

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/nk4xo0x4

So far, it's been slow going as I'm just now, at level 35-40, able to do any kind of serious damage on Nightmare. I was going to try a pole-arm WW Barb but seeing the insane damage increase with 2x Grief over even the best pole-arm made me change my mind. It was something like 15k WW damage vs 73k. I almost forgot how difficult the game can actually be as a melee character if you're relatively low level, don't have very high skills, don't have a crazy merc yet, etc. I also forgot just how fun

Leap Attack and WW are, probably two of the most fun skills in the game for me.

I'm mostly going for raw damage and survivability, as stacking IAS past 62% isn't worth it to me. Hence,

Steelrend instead of IAS gloves, Verdungo's instead of

Nosferatu's Coil or some IAS

Belt. Suggestions are welcome, but I do really enjoy the Steel/chrome gear setup I have as well as it's overall suitably high WW damage.

Maxroll's IAS calculations for

Whirlwind have been wrong since

Whirlwind was changed(/nerfed) in patch 2.4. This IAS calculator is correct: https://warren1001.github.io/IAS_Calculator/

But even with the right calculations, polearms are still short on damage, because they are capped at 5 frame attack speed

My favorite setup is max damage horking, with dual Grief, chammed gface, LoH, and gore riders. For fastest possible runs, I have Enigma and wizspikes on swap and reaper's toll on my merc

It looks like you don't care about horking at all. So I guess my main suggestion is to consider gface over arreats. Arreats gives you more life overall, but I find the extra crushing blow and deadly strike on gface are very noticeable, especially farming trav or

Terror zones with bulkier monsters

How are you going to play? If above p3, ditch the Fortitude for Enigma and give emilio reaper's toll. From experience, this combo outshines the 300% from fort by many many many miles. The decrep is critical for high players counts.
I like gface a lot better than arreats. Arreats is basically a res

Helm, and you're a barb you're fine. Grab a gface, throw

Cham in there, put on you

String of Ears and a pair of dual leech rings with res. Gface increases the damage by a significant amount.

Arreat's Face

Gore Rider

The Reaper's Toll

Guillaume's Face

Laying of Hands

Thanks for the suggestions. I was hoping to avoid using G-Face as I have it on nearly every mercenary and my pally. It's like Blizzard said, let's make a

Helm that's basically the best thing for any melee character for any situation and obsolete all other melee helms! Oh well, one cannot hope to achieve perfect balance in such a game anyway, nor should one hope for this.

Well I was planning on running Trav, Pit and many other TZs with this guy, as my other characters are not as well suited to some of these areas. Good thing I have about 15 G-Faces XD. I will also use Enigma instead of Fort and give the merc Reaper's Toll as I have these as well and did not consider the benefit of those changes. It's a bit sad that Enigma is another item which is basically just "best for everything", but what will you do.

vectorViridian wrote: 1 month ago

...basically the best thing for any melee character for any situation...

That's how I feel about Grief. But I think gface looks best on a barb. Especially with Enigma in

Russet Armor

If you want to try something different, I also really like Breath of the Dying (main hand) and Death (offhand) in ethereal berserker axes. You need some creativity to hit 4 frame

Whirlwind (65 IAS) with horker-friendly gear, but in your case with ravenfrost it would be easy. You could run it with any

Helm, even gface...

Essentially, you just gain some more crushing blow over dual Grief, and your other weapon has some nice qol features. You also get extra range over Grief in a phaseblade. Overall it's not better than dual Grief, but it's fun

Gface does look coolest and is ultimate dps but the other helms are definite contenders. With the defensive perks, stat boosts and life leech from arreats, it opens up more stat points you can invest into strength and shore up some of the damage differential between it and gface. For mobility and mf purposes, I’d even throw the green hobo hat on the list. Hell, right now my horker barb is running a chamd, lemd Ik hat.

Really, unless you’ve got a stop watch running, you probably won’t notice the performance differences between these options assuming you’ve got the other strong supportive gear, particularly highlords, probably loh depending on the portion of demons in the area and other gear with ds and cb.

Considering the other pieces of gear nearly any serious barb uses, you’ve got more freedom of choice in the

Helm slot. There are definitely situations I wish I was wearing arreats verses gface. But as far as highlords, Grief and Enigma, it’s essentially use it or suffer severe handicap.

I’m 100 percent with you concerning the lack of variety for what is best in the end game. I’d like a bit more nuance. It’s what made the wf vs Faith argument so compelling before Hustle served as the proverbial nail to its coffin.

Long live wf, the longest reigning contender and now undisputed champion in all of d2 :p

Highlord's Wrath

Windforce

fredkid wrote: 1 month ago

Highlord's Wrath

Windforce

True. What came first, wf or highlords? Same time? Diablo 2 historian, please speak up

marl71 wrote: 1 month ago

vectorViridian wrote: 1 month ago

...basically the best thing for any melee character for any situation...

That's how I feel about Grief. But I think gface looks best on a barb. Especially with Enigma in

Russet Armor

If you want to try something different, I also really like Breath of the Dying (main hand) and Death (offhand) in ethereal berserker axes. You need some creativity to hit 4 frame

Whirlwind (65 IAS) with horker-friendly gear, but in your case with ravenfrost it would be easy. You could run it with any

Helm, even gface...

Essentially, you just gain some more crushing blow over dual Grief, and your other weapon has some nice qol features. You also get extra range over Grief in a phaseblade. Overall it's not better than dual Grief, but it's fun

100% regarding Grief as well. I have to wonder what whoever came up with some of these crazy rune words was thinking exactly. I mean, it's really cool and effective to use, but using anything else is almost a handicap.

There's no way I can stomach using

Harlequin Crest, as I already have it on my Bone Necro. Although it's a great all-around choice, there's a real limit to how many characters I can use it on as it's probably the least pleasing

Helm in the game aesthetically speaking.

I will consider trying to get a

Cham and put it into G-Face, also upgrading G-Face. I love upgrading items when it makes sense and I have the resources. Then I just need to find some of those crazy rare dual-leech/etc rings. Once again, the input is much appreciated. You all definitely highlight why this game's community is one of the best aspects of the game.

Based on a topic from another forum, I'm also considering using an A5 merc with an

Eth, upgraded

Headstriker and some crazy rune word in one of my many Phase Blades, probably Fortitude for armor and G-Face. This poster presented quite a nice picture of this A5 merc that really makes me want to try it out. The A2 merc is getting to be a bit old hat.

Rik wrote: 1 month ago

fredkid wrote: 1 month ago

Highlord's Wrath

Windforce

True. What came first, wf or highlords? Same time? Diablo 2 historian, please speak up

Well, technically,

Windforce is one of the original uniques from Diablo 1

This looks to be the final build, based on suggestions:

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/gibq0z93

I was going to drop the

Laying of Hands, but I need the fire res. That appears to be one of the only things missing from this build, res, but given the attack power, defense, damage reduction, etc, I'm hoping it won't matter. I'm probably putting a

Ber into the G-Face because I don't really have a decent ring to replace

Raven for CBF. Yes, the Enigma is in a

Shadow Plate because I got it that way recently, and they don't exactly grow on trees. I was looking at possibly using

Magnus' Skin to pair with G-Face, but the bonus is a measly +35 Life.

I find that instead of maxing

Iron Skin,

Natural Resistance is much more necessary. I'm assuming

Berserk is more for bosses/tougher enemies?