question about uber baal and his self heal

And I need 1 stack of

Frenzy to hit max fpa with Death

Berserker Axe anyway with my current gear. So worth maintaining

So you're waiting to proc

Frenzy before going ww ?

Have you 11k AR with

Frenzy or ww ?

I just swing

Frenzy once then ww after. I'm not at my pc rn I'll have to check my

Frenzy ar later.

Regarding your play style, low AR with

Frenzy = you will never hit = you will never switch to ww.

Lol, again I cannot stress this enough, I just wanted to know why

Baal was healing when I had prevent monster heal on my weapons

Use Grief or Death as the main weapon and Kingslayer in your offhand. You can also use Duress on the body armor if you're not urgent in need for Chains of Honor.

If you're playing hybrid you maybe also want to have a source of Amp Dmg.

Frenzy until Amp procs and switch to WW after.

Search on Youtube for Cooleys WW barb Uber speed record.

Besides OW like already mentioned, sounds like AR is probably an issue.

Frenzy Barb doing Ubers I'd recommend having at least 10k minimum BEFORE any

Demon Limb buffs etc.

I do Ubers with my

Frenzy Barb all the time and he hits about 23-24k after

Demon Limb and all the other buffs.

Usual gear i run is Angelic Combo, Ravenfrost, Gface w/AR+IAS jewel, CoH, 2xKingslayer (Grief+Kingslayer sometimes but Kingslayer gives better AR plus CB&OW),

Life Tap knife and HoTo on swap, LoH, Tgods for Uber Meph and

Blood Belt for all the rest. That also brings up the point, if youre using a ton of res charms against Uber Meph you may want to switch them out for AR charms vs

Uber Baal, his

Chilling Armor and high defense is a motherfucker compared to the other Ubers.

Just my 2 cents too, WW/

Frenzy hybrid build probably isn't a strong build for Ubers (PvP is a different discussion, Cooley has some interesting vids on his channel about this). But for Ubers I'd pick one or the other. You can either be good at

Frenzy or good at WW but trying for both makes you bad at both (based on my own experience). Cooley's brawler barb is another discussion but all other arguments aside requires some expensive gear including

Warshrike+

Lacerator at minimum it seems like.

Having a

Frenzy barb myself I'd make sure you maxed out

Frenzy,

Double Swing, whichever weapon Mastery youre using,

Battle Orders (technically every Barbarian should maxing

Battle Orders if u ask me, no matter what build). Then the usual 1 point wonders in Masteries, 1 point in

Berserk (usually to mop up

Baal's summons after or in a pinch) and in other War cries (again assuming the goal is Ubers) I'd completely forgo horking/

Grim Ward (horking for

Frenzy Barb tends to just slow you down on a build that prioritizes kill speed anyways) and put as many remaining points into

Taunt and

Howl as you have left.

Taunt for the synergy with

Frenzy and

Howl is useful for fearing all the summons away to focus your attacks more (especially if you're playing on console as opposed to PC where targeting might not be as precise).

BigD wrote: 6 months ago

Just my 2 cents too, WW/

Frenzy hybrid build probably isn't a strong build for Ubers (PvP is a different discussion, Cooley has some interesting vids on his channel about this). But for Ubers I'd pick one or the other. You can either be good at

Frenzy or good at WW but trying for both makes you bad at both (based on my own experience). Cooley's brawler barb is another discussion but all other arguments aside requires some expensive gear including

Warshrike+

Lacerator at minimum it seems like.

Having a

Frenzy barb myself I'd make sure you maxed out

Frenzy,

Double Swing, whichever weapon Mastery youre using,

Battle Orders (technically every Barbarian should maxing

Battle Orders if u ask me, no matter what build). Then the usual 1 point wonders in Masteries, 1 point in

Berserk (usually to mop up

Baal's summons after or in a pinch) and in other War cries (again assuming the goal is Ubers) I'd completely forgo horking/

Grim Ward (horking for

Frenzy Barb tends to just slow you down on a build that prioritizes kill speed anyways) and put as many remaining points into

Taunt and

Howl as you have left.

Taunt for the synergy with

Frenzy and

Howl is useful for fearing all the summons away to focus your attacks more (especially if you're playing on console as opposed to PC where targeting might not be as precise).

ww has an absolute TON of free points. My goal with my barb isn't ubers, it's pretty much to do everything. so he has 20 points in

Frenzy and 20 points in ww. WW is the primary damage dealer. i just use

Frenzy for the running very fast buff and to give me a little more ias until i find a 15 max 15 ias jewel

Inventory is full of max/ar charms. I'm at like 14.8k

Frenzy ar with

Demon Limb with no angelics.

I think just howling the phys immunes away so they don't eat up my ww hits will make it much faster next time

Spectie wrote: 6 months ago

Inventory is full of max/ar charms. I'm at like 14.8k

Frenzy ar with

Demon Limb with no angelics.

I think just howling the phys immunes away so they don't eat up my ww hits will make it much faster next time

Do you have a Merc that can wear Infinity? If yes, I recommend trying this out. Infinity not only lowers res but def as well! With my Zealer it makes a crucial difference if I have my Merc with me (otherwise I have no chance but to use

Smite on

Uber Baal).

Some more info about monster regen;

First of all, assuming you're playing online, if you can somehow damage a monster at a rate of once per 8 frames (3.125 times per second), you will automatically prevent monster regen regardless of PMH, poison or OW, since any damage done to a target prevents regen for 8 frames (the frame on which the damage took place plus an additional 7 frames). In your case this might be hard since you rely on actually striking the target with your attacks, and you probably miss frequently (due to hit chance and block chance).
(NOTE: this 8 frame regen prevention is only for online game modes - offline regen is only prevented for a single frame, i.e. the frame on which the damage took place)

PMH doesn't work against ubers as already mentioned by others (it does work vs dclone though). For non-ubers, it also need to be applied by a player (PMH doesn't work at all for mercs).

Poison completely negates monster regen. Of course, you need to actually strike the target to apply it (overcome both his defense and block chance). And as noted, with

Venom: Skill CtC on Grief, poison durations are reduced to 10 frames (0.4 seconds), so you need to actually strike him at least 2.5 times per second to continually keep him poisoned. Due to the hit chance calculation and

Uber Baal's block chance (he has 55% chance to block on top of the AR vs defense hit calculation, block chance cannot be circumvented except with

Smite), you will very likely often miss several hits in a row, causing the poison to run out before you manage to re-apply it. Without Grief (which triggers

Venom: Skill), it should be easier to keep him continually poisoned because the poison duration will be longer giving you a larger window to re-apply it before it runs out.

Open Wounds also negates monster regeneration. Again, you need to actually strike the target to have a chance of applying it (overcome both his defense and block chance). The difference vs poison is that OW has a fixed 8 second duration but it's not guaranteed to be applied on every hit unless you have actually stacked 100% OW. So you see, even if you do have OW, if you have a low amount of it, you have the same issue as with poison - it might run out before you re-apply it. The more OW the better. For Smiters this isn't much of an issue - they never miss so the OW chance is checked on each swing. For AR-based skills like yours, the OW chance is only checked if you actually manage to strike the target.

• If you have
  Dracul's Grasp as your only source of OW, you have 25% chance of applying OW, meaning that you need to on average hit the target at least once per 2 seconds to keep it continually applied, preferrably more often due to RNG.
• If you have
  Gore Rider as your only source of OW (10%) you need to on average hit the target at least once per 0.8 seconds to keep it continually applied, preferrably more often due to RNG.

A combination of OW and poison is probably for the best. Not sure what equipment you have besides weapons (might have missed it if you mentioned it somewhere), but see how much OW you have and see if you can increase it. You already have poison via Grief, but if you do try to switch out Grief, just make sure you have another poison damage source (you mentioned having a small charm, so that should be good).

Finally; Reducing the target's defense is a good way to increase your overall chance of hitting the target. While ITD (Ignore Target Defense) doesn't work on any bosses like has been mentioned, -X% Target Defense does work (though at half effect vs bosses coming from gear). It can be tough to stack it though as it mostly (only?) appear on weapons and you're a bit limited in which weapons you might want to use. You can also use

Battle Cry (it works against bosses to reduce their defense, but it overrides curses so keep that in mind), or Infinity on an Act 2 merc (

Conviction shreds enemy defense, it works vs bosses) for this purpose.

oOKIWIOo wrote: 6 months ago

Do you have a Merc that can wear Infinity? If yes, I recommend trying this out. Infinity not only lowers res but def as well! With my Zealer it makes a crucial difference if I have my Merc with me (otherwise I have no chance but to use

Smite on

Uber Baal).

That's not easy to keep Merc alive against

Mephisto. So he'll have to res him against

Baal.

oOKIWIOo wrote: 6 months ago

Spectie wrote: 6 months ago

Inventory is full of max/ar charms. I'm at like 14.8k

Frenzy ar with

Demon Limb with no angelics.

I think just howling the phys immunes away so they don't eat up my ww hits will make it much faster next time

Do you have a Merc that can wear Infinity? If yes, I recommend trying this out. Infinity not only lowers res but def as well! With my Zealer it makes a crucial difference if I have my Merc with me (otherwise I have no chance but to use

Smite on

Uber Baal).

there's only one merc who can play with my barbarian - another barbarian

@ShadowHeart
I think this was my biggest issue
Poison completely negates monster regen. Of course, you need to actually strike the target to apply it (overcome both his defense and block chance). And as noted, with

Venom: Skill CtC on Grief, poison durations are reduced to 10 frames (0.4 seconds), so you need to actually strike him at least 2.5 times per second to continually keep him poisoned. Due to the hit chance calculation and

Uber Baal's block chance (he has 55% chance to block on top of the AR vs defense hit calculation, block chance cannot be circumvented except with

Smite), you will very likely often miss several hits in a row, causing the poison to run out before you manage to re-apply it. Without Grief (which triggers

Venom: Skill), it should be easier to keep him continually poisoned because the poison duration will be longer giving you a larger window to re-apply it before it runs out.


Not knowing about PMH, and having the mobs around

Baal eating up my

Frenzy and ww attacks, AND

Baal's high defense/block just made it very tough.
Once i brought in Lawbringer on my merc it became much easier. I wonder if dual lawbringers would work better, specifically for

Baal. I think the

Sanctuary Aura would push the baby minions away.

This char isn't built to be an uber killer. Was just something i wanted to try with him since i had the keys. I am gonna farm up another keyset this weekend and give it another go with a few tweaks and see how it goes. If it's still a slog i'll just go back to kicking them

This should work
(I actually stopped using Mercenary 5 with Lawbringer because it was annoying for my melee build - Fury Druid - to have undeads constantly being knocked out of my range...)

Spectie wrote: 6 months ago

I think the

Sanctuary Aura would push the baby minions away.

went back in today with another 3x3 set on the barb.
put 1 Lawbringer on my merc, it totally solved the minion problem. used

Shout to lower defense, dual griefs, actually had

Enchant on this time (didn't use last time) and just got everything separated and ww down was no problem at all, i think i only used 2 pots and it was just to get back mana

with just

Enchant and

Shout/

Decrepify it was pretty easy to keep hitting

Baal and he never really healed.

It certainly wasn't fast by any means, but it wasn't THAT slow

So that was mainly an AR issue ?

Tornado_OLO wrote: 6 months ago

So that was mainly an AR issue ?

Curious about this. Is the goal to stack insane AR or does it not matter due to monster level (i.e. focus on stacking other stats)?