A Tale of Woe

[Kasreyn]

Hooray. Hope you are well. :D

Occhi!! Great to see you. I haven't been lurking much recently (bad Kas! no cookie!) so I'm not up on the news. Are you overseas right now or back in the states? Have you been well?

Hmm, I tried the walking, it looks like it'll work fine. Right now (A3 Normal) nothing can really hurt me too badly so I'm not bothering, but it might be a lifesaver in hell diff.

Out of curiosity, if I want to go Ironbarb route, how much defense rating do I need to attain in order to actually reduce hell diff monsters' chance to hit me? The thought of facing Lister and co. with no shield is making me a bit nervous... Can it be done without godly unique and runeword elite armors? Should I push Shout to 20, Iron Skin to 5-10 or what?

Alternatively, I'm still contemplating forgetting shout and iron skin and DR altogether and going for Warcry to stun monsters. Which build requires better gear, and which requires more skill point investment? I don't have much to work with here...

Also, I have slvl 1 Taunt right now, and it seems to only affect one to two monsters right next to me at a time. Is this due to limited range? Will I be able to effectively taunt packs if I get it high enough?

I'm seriously thinking of putting Ginsu on hiatus and starting a mace mastery frenzier. Flatulence's <a href="http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=508">Warcry/Frenzy Build</a> at DiabloII.net makes the point that maces require no dex, allowing extra tweaking into vit... 110 Dex for a Cblade is 440 more base life before BO is factored in. (Whew, Barbarian armpit! Motto: Defeating enemies with stink since 1999) The only worry I have is, with base Dex will I have to waste a bunch of inventory space on +attack rating charms just to hit anything, or will Frenzy's attack boost handle it?

One last question from this inquisitive grasshopper: how useful is Berserk for dealing with phys. immunes? Without high-end gear, will it take a lot of skill points to make Berserk a phys. immune killer? I'm not really impressed by its Frenzy synergy, I just want to use Berserk itself against them.

*crosses fingers and hopes someone can help*