The Worker - A War Cry Horker Barbarian Build [Guide]

The "Worker" (A portmanteau of its main skills

War Cry and Hork) is a caster barb, using the skill

War Cry to defeat enemies and

Find Item to generate drops.

Abbreviations and terms used

AoE: Area of Effect
BO :

Battle Orders
CR/FR/LR/PR: Cold/Fire/Lightning/Poison Resist
FCR: Faster Cast Rate
FHR: Faster Hit Recovery
GF: Extra gold from monsters
Hork: Using

Find Item
IAS: Increased Attack Speed
Keys:

Key of Terror,

Key of Hate and

Key of Destruction
MF: Better chance of finding magic item
SOJ: The

Stone of Jordan
Sundered: Monsters affected by broken immunity due to use of a sundering charm
TP: Town Portal
Uber:

Pandemonium Event
WC:

War Cry, your main damage source
Zerker: Barbarian using

Berserk as main Attack

Preface

It's not a new build at all, but one that i learned to love and want to share. Using the right equipment, it is not as redundant and single-target focused as a Zerker, it is faster than a

Whirlwind and

Frenzy horker in terms killing monsters and generating drops and, in my opinion, more fun to play and cheaper to equip with best-in-slot gear than a Thrower.

You enjoy catching cows and killing all of them at once as a

Nova sorc? The worker is for you! You are fed-up by splitfarm games, where you have to wait on a new run to begin, players to join or worry about players taking over your farming spot? Try the Worker and forget about the times you where dependend on other players just to get more drops!

Concept behind the Worker

The chances of dropping some of the best items in the game, which are charms, jewels and runes only depends on the amount of drops generated. The chance of getting a good runeword base, which may be very valuable, also grows with the total number of items dropped. Battlenet has no /p8 command like single player does, so a way to generate more drops is to do a build that does very high AoE damage like Hammerdin or Javazon and solofarm games with lots of players. The

Find Item skill by the barbarian bypasses this in a way, as more players in the game just reduce the chance of a no drop per monster.

Find Item, in contrast, has a chance to guarantee a drop. Using the skill takes time, of cause, so builds like the zerker

Concentrate on high-value single targets like the council members in

Travincal. Having a high Faster Cast Rate, like the Workermakes you

Teleport faster and enables you to quickly hork through big piles of corpses.

You also shouldn't underestimate the increased amount of Gems you will pick up:

Perfect Gems may be quiet valuable in certain amounts, often times traded for

Ist or other currency runes.

Pros

• Efficient in creating lots of drops playing solo in Bnet
• Capable of all
  Terror Zones
• Easy to level
• Playable with budget stuff

Cons

• Bad at killing high HP single targets
• Other builds are better at farming keys, although the worker is able to do it
• Unable to do uber-bosses (But you can farm the uber levels once you've done the bosses with another build)
• The damage is not that high even with high-end equipment
• No team playing build. Gets worse with more players in game,
  Battle Orders is on the low end compared to other Barbs
• Not efficient in single player. You have /p8 command to enhance droprates
• Expensive equipment required to be really fun and efficient (Enigma,
  Stone of Jordan, Skillers, etc.)

Farming
Your main farming zone will be cow level. It takes between 7-10 min unterrorized and up to 15 min terrorized for a well-equipped worker (with Enigma) to do a full horked clear, including getting

Wirt's Leg. That sounds like much time compared with Javazon or Novasorc, but consider this: The time includes horking and you got a 72-75% chance for a cow corpse to drop an item in addition to their usual drop. This sums up and i don't think that the builds mentioned before get more drops per hour when solofarming. Creating new games and porting to leg all takes time that sums up in the long run and which is not efficiently used.

Just follow the way on

Stony Field. The portal to

Tristram always appears near it. I suggest to kill

Rakanishu at the portal and hork him. He's easy to kill and always has two drops besides pots. Only click chests and dead rouges if cows are terrorized: if not, they drop only act 1 stuff.

It also depends on the current

Terror zone wether to do cow or not. More on this later. ("Comments on

Terror Zones")

Playstyle and routine
You will want to position yourself in the middle of monsterpacks, preferably champion- and bosspacks with more monsters joining them. Avoid wasting your time on single targets and better ignore them and continue. I suggest keeping right mouse button with

War Cry pressed, as well as Alt

Key for showing items that drop. While keeping the buttons pressed, click on an area without a target. Switch to

Find Item as soon as there are only about 2-4 monsters left. Your mercenary should take care of them. Hork the corpses by targeting an empty area and hovering in circles above the monsters. Listen to the sounds of the drops. You should be able to hear it when charms and runes drop. If the area is full of drops and you get the feeling your missing some on the screen, press f. This zooms the screen.

Stats Allocation

Strength: Enough to wear gear, best value is 0 with

Annihilus and

Hellfire Torch
Dexternity: Enough to wear gear, best value is 0 with

Annihilus and

Hellfire Torch
Vitality: Rest
Energy: 80-150 depending on gear and farming area. See discussion: "How many Points in Energy"

Skill Allocation

Max:

• War Cry
• Find Potion
• Battle Cry
• Taunt
• Howl

1 Point:

• Leap
• Shout
• Battle Command
• Increased Stamina
• Increased Speed
• Iron Skin
• Natural Resistance
• Grim Ward (Optional, see discussion: "One point in
  Grim Ward?")

1 Point at least:

• Battle Orders
• Find Item

Gear suggestions

One word on Faster Cast Rate:
Barbarian is one of only two characters being able to reach the highest cast speed in the game at 7 frames, with the other being Sorceress. Important breakpoints are as follows:

9 Frames: 63 FCR
8 Frames: 105 FCR
7 Frames: 200 FCR

Build your Worker around FCR. Your aim should be to reach at least 105 FCR, so always have this in mind when equipping

Budget / Leveling
Leveling a Worker is quiet easy, as you don't rely on the best weapon damage for the current level. Skilling a Barbarian as a War Cryer is the most efficient way to level up a barb in general, i daresay. But it might be difficult and tedious to farm for basic equipment. Thats why i can't recommend going worker as your first build on a new ladder season, unless you know what you are doing.

• Double Spirit Swords or two
  Wizardspike
• Stealth,
  Skin of the Vipermagi
• Magefist or
  Frostburn
• Echoing
  Circlet /
  Coronet /
  Tiara /
  Diadem (+3 to Warcries)
• Echoing Amulet or
  Caster Amulet with +skills
• Ring of the Apprentice (10% Faster Cast Rate)
• Caster Belt,
  Gloom's Trap or upgraded
  Nightsmoke
• Silkweave or
  Caster Boots

You shoulnd't have a problem with resistances thanks to your

Natural Resistance passive skill. Buit if you havn't got

Annihilus or

Hellfire Torch yet, they might be necessary. +Mana and +Energy are also desireable stats on your magical, rare or crafted equipment.

The Mercenary
Your mercenary is essential for this build. Without him, your mana pool will empty in no time, indepent of how good your gear is. He also fullfills the role of killing remaining monsters while you start horking.

There is no alternative to an Act 2 Might mercenary in my opinion. An Act 1 Rogue is simply to fragile and the other merces can't wield an Insight.
Might is the aura of choice here, as it increases the merc's damage by a lot.

• Ethereal Insight (prefer aura level over damage)
• Ethereal
  Andariel's Visage with
  Ruby Jewel of Fervor (+15 IAS / +30 FR)
• Ethereal Treachery (or others, see Discussion: "What is the best in slot armor for the merc?" below

Budget Merc:

• Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest instead of
  Andariel's Visage

Endgame (105 FCR)

• Double Heart of the Oak (80% FCR)
• Enigma in
  Breast Plate or
  Mage Plate
• Frostburn
• Magical or rare Barbarian Headgear with +2/+3 Warcries. The Dream would be: +3 Warcries, +3
  Battle Orders +3
  Find Item, socketed with 2
  Ber Rune. Socketing a
  Cham here is not necessary, as you would seldom move with your feed in the wild when you've got Enigma.
• Double
  Stone of Jordan
• Crafted Caster Amulett with +2 to Skills and at least 5% FCR to reach the breakpoint
• Arachnid Mesh (20% FCR)
• Silkweave

Charms:

• Annihilus (of course)
• Hellfire Torch (of course)
• Small Charms with Life/Mana/FRW/FHR/MF
• Bone Break
• Sounding Grand Charms (+1 Warcries)

You shouldn't need much, if any resistance charms. The hotos, the unique charms and your

Natural Resistance skill allready pushes them to the max.
Concerning the Grand Charms, i prefer mixing in four with FHR suffix "of Balance" to reach the breakpoint at 48 FHR. The barb allready got lots of health.

Endgame (200 FCR)

• Double Wizard Spike (100% FCR)
• Enigma in
  Breast Plate or
  Mage Plate
• Magefist (20% FCR)
• Echoing
  Circlet/
  Coronet/
  Tiara/
  Diadem of the Magus (20% FCR)
• Double
  Caster Ring with 10% FCR (20%FCR)
• Crafted Caster Amulett with +2 to Skills 20% FCR to reach the breakpoint
• Arachnid Mesh (20% FCR)
• Silkweave

Charms like mentioned above.

On switch

• Double
  Heart Carver (If no point in
  Grim Ward)
• Call To Arms with at least +3 to
  Battle Orders And magical weapon with +3 Warcries
• Double magical weapon with +3 Warcries

This depends on wether you want to spend one point in

Grim Ward or not.

Dealing with physical immunes and the importance of

Grim Ward

Grim Ward synergizes with

Find Potion by increasing the physical damage dealt to affected monsters and breaking immunities on some.
It also lowers the physical resistance by sundered monsters, making them die in a reasonable time.

The fear effect may be annoying, but is of no big importance to the worker as you usually

Stun monsters before creating a

Grim Ward, preventing them from flight.

Even without a sundering charm,

Grim Ward alone is effective for most physical immunes. The only problem here are Stone skin bosses, but as you may even

Stun pysical immunes with your WC, just keep them busy with your merc, refreshing

Stun from time to time and ignore them when you finished horking.

Keep in mind, that Grim Wards can't be created from the remains of certain monster types, allthough this is usualy no big deal:

• Bone Fetish
• Finger Mage
• Flying Scimitar
• Frozen Horror
• Oblivion Knight
• Skeleton
• Skeleton Archer
• Skeleton Mage
• Willowisp
• Wraith
• Static (
  Catapult,
  Gargoyle Trap,
  Mummy Sarcophagus etc.)

The dynamic of corpses

Corpses tend to disappear when you are too far away. Try to first hork all corpses in your current area. Hork before you TP. You can pick up the drops when returning, but the corpses might be away.

Discussion and reasoning

105 vs 200 FCR
200 FCR provides faster

Teleport, hork and

War Cry. On the other hand, the damage dealt goes down because of less +skills.

Allthough i havn't got the chance yet to test a 200 fcr build on bnet (Mostly due to the lack of a +2 Skills 20% FCR Amulett) my experience on single player suggests, that it is only a minor improvement, if any at all. The speed boost you gain thru it is barely recognizable, but the damage you have to

Sacrifice is. The +6 of Hoto is missing as well as +2 from sojs and also the possible +3 to

War Cry from the headgear.

How many points in Energy?
Putting points in Energy is quiet rewarding on this build. Not only does it decrease or even completely remove the urge to drink Mana Potions, it also gives you resistance against Mana Burn packs. Even when drinking mana pots, there is a point where you casting gets delayed due to lack of mana when your mana empty. This may happen for example at the Cow Level, when more and more cows are lured to your place.

On the other hand, you don't have to worry to much about survival as a barb, when hitting a certain point. Having around 3.7k health makes you quiet immune to most dangers and investing too much in vita makes less and less sense.

If you are using lots of % increased mana items like i do, its even more rewarding. My 105 fcr build uses 140 pt in Energy at the moment with some unspent points left. I honestly consider putting even more in energy.

One point in

Grim Ward?
I would say yes.

Grim Ward is no essential, but an important skill on this build as shown above. Putting one point in it enables you to boost your

Battle Orders by putting +3 BO Call To Arms combined with plain +3 Warcries weapons on switch instead of Heart Carvers. The build does not benefit from the additional 7 points the Heart Carvers provide, because they only increase the slow effectiveness on

Grim Ward. On the other hand, you got lots of health, so you can delay putting the point in it until you've got really good BO weapons.

Why not hork with Heart Carvers on switch?
Because the time lost by decreased FCR sums up, especially when horking bigger bunches of corpses. The additional 2-3% Chance to

Find Item does not justify this in my opinion.

What is the best in slot armor for the merc?
There are three viable options in my opinion:

Fortitude:
Higher survivability due to increased damage and greatly increased defense. On the other hand, the proccing

Chilling Armor shatters corpses, which you want to avoid. This may sum up quiet fast and a might merc with a good damage Insight usually hasn't that much survivability problems.

Treachery:
The best default choice in my opinion.

A budget armor that increases survivability by greatly increasing Attack speed. I suggest looking up your favourite IAS Calculator if the Combination of your Polearm, the armor and the fact that you socketed Andy with an IAS Jewel or not pushes the Mercs attack to a new breakpoint.

According to my experience, the time you have to wait for the

Fade prov to push fire and lightning resistance to max is no big deal unless you intend to farm

Travincal. But if you want to do this, i would rather suggest building a dedicated Zerker/WW/

Frenzy Horker.

Chains of Honor:
You can't go wrong with that if you've got a spare

Ber for it. Resistances, Life Steal, Damage reduced by % and damage to Undead and Demons increases the survivabilty by a lot. But have in mind, that Cows are Animals, negating the last point. I can live quiet good without it and doubt, that it is such a big improvement that it justifies the

Ber rune invested.

I also recommend a

Light Plate base with a superior ethereal

Archon Plate being the ultimate choice here. The reason for this is, that using a heavy plate like a

Sacred Armor reduces the walk speed of your Merc. This might be no problem on other builds, but as a worker you want your merc to be mobile, managing additional monsters while you start horking.

Why no MF/GF?
If you want to MF, better do a dedicated build. Both endgame builds have too much item being mandatory to substitute them for mf items. You also reduce the amount of runeword bases dropped by doing so. Putting some mf charms in your inventory is absolutely possible, but don't expect them to do wonders. Your aim should be runes, charms and bases, not TC 87 uniques or gold.

Why put one point in

Leap?

Leap is a very versatile skill, even with endgame gear:

• It may be your lifesaver if you overestimated the crowd you can take at once
• It can manipulate monster position which comes in handy at certain situations.
• It is a cheap Enigma replacement if you don't have it.
• And last but not least, if you put it on left click, it prevents you from doing a slow attack if you misclick.

Comments on

Terror Zones

If the current

Terror Zone is bad for you, go to cow level. You should avoid zones, where monsters of the

Sand Maggot and

Vile Mother type appear on a regular base. Reasoning for this is, that their offspring may be horked but never generates a drop, which lowers your efficiency in considerable amounts.

Here are some zones i consider worth farming instead of cow level and a comment where necessary. General tierlist of Terrorzones also applies here.

Act I

• Cold Plains and The Cave
• The Forgotten Tower
• The Pit: One of the best TZs for the worker
• Jail
• Cathedral and Catacombs

Act II

• Sewers
• Rocky Waste and Stony Tomb: Straight to Stony Tomb
• Dry Hills and Halls of the Dead: Straight to Halls
• Arcane Sanctuary: Worker has an advantage here, because even ghosts that did not drop anything due to being killed just slightly off the way may drop something when horked. But consider that if the Ghosts are too far off the way, the hork drop lands in empty space where it cannot be picked up. This may yield frustrating results (imagine
  Jah dropping from hork but cannot be picked up)
• Tal Rasha’s Tombs

Act III

• Spider Forest and
  Spider Cavern
• Flayer Jungle and Flayer Dungeon: Flayer Shamans generate four drops. Very good zone.
• Kurast Bazaar,
  Ruined Temple, and
  Disused Fane: Only good with Enigma. Start
  Lower Kurast, find the first campfire, open superchests and then head
  Ruined Temple. Ignore the other temple and kill only boss packs in
  Kurast Bazaar that you meet on the way.

Act IV

• Chaos Sanctuary

Act V

• Bloody Foothills: Only do
  Shenk the Overseer, then next game
• Frigid Highlands: Only do
  Eldritch the Rectifier and surrounding packs, then next game
• Nihlathak’s Temple,
  Halls of Anguish,
  Halls of Pain, and
  Halls of Vaught: Do Pindle, check if Flayers have spawned in
  Halls of Anguish and do next game if not

Links and Resources

Some resources i consider worth reading, concerning releated topics

forums/to-warcry-hork-or-magic-find-hor ... 93802.html

https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/war-cry-barbarian

https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/war-cry-ba ... nger-build

Dedication

This guide is dedicated to the community of d2.

Io, the drops i missed while writing it and the texteditor VIM i used for its creation.

This is a nice write up. I don't much like

Find Item as a skill, but I might give this a shot for variety.