Best Barb spec for sniping Elites and Heralds

Hi there, I'm currently in progress of leveling 'Taxman' who is supposed to collect outstanding tax debt in all of Sanctuary with the purpose to hunt heralds and enforcing double-entry bookkeeping. Did anyone accumulate experience on how to spec / gear a Barb so it can handle the higher level heralds? Should I go for an uber-like spec?

Any tips are highly appreciated!
Kind regards

People keep recommending zerkers for that sort of thing though personally, I've always found Frenzy more convenient. Teleport in, fear all the little stuff, Frenzy down the elite, move on.

The dmg is still perfectly sufficient, even on phys res/immunes. And unlike zerkers, you actually leech -> heal yourself so no need to ever bother with pots or the like.

The only thing posing a bit of a possible challenge to a proper Frenzy barb is heralds with Thorns (which a zerker doesn't need to worry about) but if you run with dracul's, Life Tap easily outheals the Thorns dmg so once that procs, you're good.

I never did heralds but Frenzy is the best 1v1 build for barb and you can easily handle ubers with it.
So simply Howl the enemies then annihilate your target with Frenzy.

If you do not have enough life leech, take a Life Tap Wand on your weapons switch.

Alright, Taxman reached Lvl75 and I got an impression for the first time of how many Elites are actually Physical Immune. Before I find an appropriate Sunder Charm, any options with Frenzy are pretty much ruled out.
I will check out Frenzy once I can deal with those immunities. Berzerk is a pretty stressful gameplay loop, imho, especially if the motoric automatisms are not there yet...

TeleTabitha wrote: 5 months ago

Alright, Taxman reached Lvl75 and I got an impression for the first time of how many Elites are actually Physical Immune. Before I find an appropriate Sunder Charm, any options with Frenzy are pretty much ruled out.
I will check out Frenzy once I can deal with those immunities. Berzerk is a pretty stressful gameplay loop, imho, especially if the motoric automatisms are not there yet...

Frenzy does have a synergy with Berserk that converts up to 20% into magic dmg. Should be plenty to deal with most phys immunes until you get a sunder.
Or get yourself a merc with amp/decrep to break most of those immunities.

My dual Grief Travhorker does OK against Heralds using Whirlwind, but HP of Stone Skin Heralds should be reduced before switching to barb, as they just take too long otherwise, even with sunder. That said, i would add my voice to Frenzy as a general recommendation.

But farming TZ with barb is a pain imo, independent of build. I tend to look at today's barb as a very specialized char with Find Item as the outstanding feature. I use WW Horker only for Travincal/Heralds and Warcry horker only for cows, for example.

It seems having Taxman run behind a Nova sorc to do have his way with the corpses is most efficient for all involved.

My berserker Pelle could be considered a tax collector of sorts. Farming heralds I have been swapping items around some. I have used him mostly for farming the pit and keys but recently I have been using him for terrorized act 1 where so many of those shards drop. My current set up keep in mind Pelle has made me some of that hard money not that weak fiat currency. Main weapon : Grief -Off hand Last Wish or 6 socket Phase Blade with Ist runes Helm Harlequins crest with Cham depending on how tough the farming is you may want to consider using storm shield until you get to some levels things get alot easier around level 90+ . Belt String of Ears amulet high lords Boots War Traveler 10 fcr rings with min max dmg and life/mana leech the gloves can be swapped around but mostly i find my self using Laying of Hands and of course Enigma Armor on my weapon swap I use Ist'ed suicide branches and us that to TP around fast and hork filled inventory sharp grand charms and MF small charms he has 297% mf on Kill and 310% on hork. If i am just doing keys or pit i swap to more mf Gold wrap Belt chancies for glove and what not. Pelle says "I like the splats and pops." On another note I got tired of swapping for farming the Trav so i leveled up a separate barb for that who is a Gold find barb who also finds lots of nice runes he also uses Berserk I just find Berserk to be more consistent on killing elites in 1 or 2 hits VS Frenzy which is lots of fun to play also just not as efficient for me.

I know it isn't nearly as popular but I have been using a WW barb. I placed a few points into Frenzy for 1v1 situations. As other people mentioned, Howl can be used to fear targets so you can just focus down the Herald or whatever you are fighting. Having one point into Berserk is extremely important for Phys Immunes and just shreds them.

My WW spec:
Dual Grief PB
Shako or G-face depending on if you want more MF or kill speed
Laying of Hands but I have more recently been experimenting with Steelrend and they have been actually really good
Fortitude chest (also another reason to experiment with Steelrend)
War Trav or Gore Rider
Highlord amulet
Raven Frost
Dual Leech ring

If your focus is to target farm heralds and stuff like that then a Frenzy build might be better and probably is. I like the idea of using WW for density though and sometimes just like to try something different. In all my years of playing D2R I never really tried the WW spec up until recently. I essentially Frenzy a target a couple times to get my move speed/AS up and then just start spinning around till everything is dead. The CB from the gear (G-face, Gores, Steelrend) definitely helps for killing stuff and even makes WW effective for killing bosses too. The move speed from Frenzy really helps so you can WW from group to group, which is pretty nice.

Got too annoyed with the post-RotW targeting issues surrounding Frenzy (or any melee build..but Frenzy makes it even more obvious) and shifted things around a bit.

Actually growing quite fond of conc. Feels like basically all the benefits of a zerker with none of the downsides.
Well, again excluding Thorns heralds but that's what drac's is for.

Feels basically immortal, less impacted by the targeting bugs and still plows through anything including ubers at a solid pace.

I use a Double Swing barb and just farm Terror zones. No issues with killing anything, though I play kinda chill style. After trying alot of different things, I've found Lawbringer with arreats + protector Stone to be the best combo, main weapon is flexible, and since everything in ROTW seems to hit you with amp damage, felt this was more viable than going with Dreadfang.

Yeah, 3.2 probably outdated this thread. Since sniping and heralds don't go well together anymore.

It seems the commoners will have to pay their taxes to Taxman too...

WW Barb with Max Find Potion 1 point in Find Item to get the syndergys with alot of warcries + skills from 2 javalines with +3 warcries each and some grandcharms with +1 warcries and from gears, you get +70% Find Item easely, get some good Axes like Breath of the Dying, and Death in eterial, and good life + mana leech rings with high attack rating, highlords amulet, laying on hands for more IAS + some other good stuff like arreats face, Mine has no issues with hearlads even before the patch, Horking for more items is legendary epic good.

I could donate a Arreat's Face helmet I got one spare, its upgraded tough so it has more STR req like 196 and req lvl 73, I could also donate a spare Laying on hands & one of 2 Verdungo's Hearty Cord both have 15% physical dmg reduction or a String of Ears Demonhide Sash with 14% physical dmg Reduction aswell as +10 magical dmg redictoin, for the Taxman If you needs it, I am in the RoTW DLC tough.

Schnorki wrote: 5 months ago

People keep recommending zerkers for that sort of thing though personally, I've always found Frenzy more convenient. Teleport in, fear all the little stuff, Frenzy down the elite, move on.

The dmg is still perfectly sufficient, even on phys res/immunes. And unlike zerkers, you actually leech -> heal yourself so no need to ever bother with pots or the like.

The only thing posing a bit of a possible challenge to a proper Frenzy barb is heralds with Thorns (which a zerker doesn't need to worry about) but if you run with dracul's, Life Tap easily outheals the Thorns dmg so once that procs, you're good.

Frenzy/Zerker hybrid is also a thing, it's worked for me for ages.

Best build for farming Trav, Meph, and Andariel. Mine gets it done marginally slower than Javazon or Lightning sorc and much more safely+reliably, not to mention more MF and horking on top of that.

rixsen wrote: 2 hours ago

This will result in you barb running wherever you position your mouse (no clicking needed!) and he will attack whatever you hover your mouse over (again, no clicking needed). This is the most chill way to play: just move your mouse, no clicks at all, targeting crazy easy and everything dies

You can do that without Quick Cast too - map Frenzy to right-click (I'd imagine most people put it on left-click), and just click and hold the right mouse button. Your character will follow the mouse pointer and attack whatever comes in range.

rixsen wrote: 1 hour ago

True, but not having to click or hold anything at all makes it even more fun

Fair enough, can't argue with that