Barb Mage

[Bloodstar6078]

I recently stopped playing diablo but my friend who just started playing made me want check out the lounge again.

Reading MongoJerry's posts got me reinterested in making a barbarian mage like his, making use of the War Cry tree, but I don't know what skills and stats to get for the early levels so can anyone tell me what to get for the first 10-15 levels?

[Pren]

You can easily get to 15 in act 1, though leveling in act 2 might be more enjoyable. You don't really need anything other than a solid weapon to get that far. With enormous life and howl you shouldn't have any problems, even if you just wield a basic weapon with no mastery. You could work on building the synergies for skills you use later (taunt? maybe shout?)

If you plan to go no combat skills like he did, then there's not much question about skill allocation... 90% into warcry synergies, the rest into helpful tools to you, if you need any.

[whyBish]

I would recommend one point in bash and one in double swing, double swing is a great little skill, especially if you find a couple of weapons with crushing blow (or runewords such as amn-tir). Double swing should get you to level 30 without trouble, and you can spend the rest of your points in warcries... Note, you don't need to invest in a combat mastery as you get the A.R. from battle cry essentially (which is a warcry syn.) Double swing will remain useful later on to fill up your mana globe (especially if you bypass BO/Shout for warcry synergies), and especially if you get an UM rune (the new Big Mac with triple cheese)

[MongoJerry]

You have to max BO like Gunter did. Otherwise, you'll be constantly running out of mana. Plus doing so makes 1-point shout and battle command useful, since BO extends their duration. I have to warn you that leveling is *slow* in the late stages of normal and early stages of nightmare until you find some good +mana items and can start using war cry consistently. If you're going no barbarian attack skills at all like Gunter, then use a blessed aim merc to give you a good bonus to your attack rating up through normal and Act 1 nightmare. Fight all urges to drop points into energy. You'll want mana badly for a long time, but it's just not worth putting points into energy when you only get 1 mana point for each stat point. Use items and charms to give you mana and drop your points in Vitality where you get 4 life for every stat point. Place points into war cry and battle orders early to increase war cry's stun duration and to be able to have the mana to use it. Even though war cry doesn't do much damage until you get a lot of points placed in its synergies, the stun duration on war cry is terrific and will let you and your merc pick off monsters. Mana leech will help when leveling.

By Act II nightmare, you should be able to start to switch over to using war cry more consistently, although mana will still be a problem. I suggest switching to a might merc then -- just to increase the damage your merc does, since he'll do more damage against individual opponents than you for a while. In Act V nightmare, you might consider switching to a barbarian merc if you have a decent sword -- which looking back I should've done. Oh, well. Find potion is a godsend to refresh mana potions along the way. You'll need to drop a point or two in it if you don't have that dagger I found that gives +4 to Find Potion and Find Item. Once you max BO and war cry, you'll be able to drop points into war cry's synergies and the character will start taking off then.

Good luck with the character and let us know how it goes. Don't let late normal and early nightmare frustrate you. Singer/mage barbs get better later.

[gekko]

Fight all urges to drop points into energy.  You'll want mana badly for a long time, but it's just not worth putting points into energy when you only get 1 mana point for each stat point.  Use items and charms to give you mana and drop your points in Vitality where you get 4 life for every stat point.

Just wanted to offer a slightly different opinion here: with high level battle orders, that one point of mana turns into 2. If you go with frosties, 2 soj's, silkweaves and gloom's trap, that one point of mana can easily be 2 or 3. If you happen to have 2 wizardspikes... you get the idea. Still doesn't sound like much? It adds up. 3 or 4 mana times 200 energy can make a big difference, particularly early in NM, where you hurt for mana the worst.

I guess the main point is how much life you think you need, and what kinds of charms/items you want to use. If you can get by without putting points into energy, you'll definately be much tougher in the long run. However, points into energy are not as useless as some believe. Obviously, the equipment I describe above is more difficult to get ahold of as +mana items, however, the singer can certainly be viable pumping energy rather than simply dumping all the extra points into vitality.

Of course, the most well rounded character would probably ignore energy, keep vitality at a moderate level, and be strong and dextrous enough to use a weapon on the switch for situations where war cry simply doesn't cut it.

gekko

[Crystalion]

Of course, the most well rounded character would probably ignore energy, keep vitality at a moderate level, and be strong and dextrous enough to use a weapon on the switch for situations where war cry simply doesn't cut it.

Well, if you *aren't* looking at a more-than-warcry Barb build (which MongoJerry can be excused for because he had a specialty storyline build) then you really ought to compare this plan/build with doing a Shockwave Werebear Druid.

Among benefits to consider in the analysis: the Druid has Shockwave, the Grizzly and Maul all stunning monsters into immobility at reasonable mana costs and can choose a vine to produce mana from corpses or use Hunger to leech mana. As of v1.10 this Druid can also have Armageddon up to deliver damage (which suggests, ironically, the poison creeper to keep the stunned enemies from regenning while your 'geddon nukes them).

Both WereDruids and Barbs can have enormous amounts of life. The Druid probably wins out here, though the Barb can have much better resists and DR. The DR doesn't really matter for these builds, as the local monsters will all be stunned... this means dropping out of wereform and having a long synergized duration on cyclone armor is a difficult but interesting proposition.

Yes, I understand that War Cry is a lovely skill, doing *magic* damage (better than Shock Wave) but my point is that it isn't the only game in town for this mode of play.

edit: actually it isn't clear to me from glancing at skills.txt whether Shock Wave and War Cry do magic or physical or some combination. IIRC whatever they do is the same thing, and War Cry synergizes to more damage than SW, but SW ramps up to longer durations than WC. Best to check than take my recollection for granted however.

edit2: hmm, since Armageddon needs all the elemental skills as prereq, dumping an additional 38 points into Hurricane and Cyclone Armor is intriguing (mutual synergy: lots of elemental absorb and 30 net seconds for the Hurricanes--every half minute you drop out of werebear and refresh both then re-werebear) as you get more damage and apparently 600+ elemental damage shield (albeit possibly pre-resist?! yuck).

edit3: as per Pren's comments: if Armageddon sucks, you can still (saving points) do the Cyclone/Hurricane thing. But I don't see why a werebear using shockwave can't then move though the forest of stunned enemies--or do I misunderstand?

edit4: Hurricane used to *not* trigger LEBs... is that still true?

[Pren]

Pretty sure war cry was changed to physical damage a long time ago.

Armageddon doesn't deal that great of damage when you're standing still, it works best on the move. Which is the exact opposite of a shockbear. Armageddon is just a really poor ability, fissure deals better damage, and to max it, you have to dump all 105 skill points into the skill. Diverting 25 at the minimum into shockwave will greatly reduce its ability. Probably more than that if you plan to use poison creeper to stop regen. Investing meaningful amounts into cyclone armor will completely clip your wings. The build will surely work through nightmare, and shockwave+powerful merc could probably take you through hell with some skill and luck. Shockwave is just... wow. I'm using it for the first time, and it's crazy.

***

The idea of twinking a singer barb with dual wizardspikes, frostburns, SoJ, and whatever else to alter a core aspect of the class and suggest that as some sort of blanket fix all is ridiculous. People are too obsessed with items in this game. As a friend of mine points out, yes, a barbarian wielding dual breath of the dying can solo 8 player act 5 trivially. What an unlikely happenstance!



edit: since you edited...

shockwave does physical.

Shockwave's stun duration is not as long as it is listed on the skill screen, though it is still longer for a cheaper cost than war cry. And war cry is much much more damaging than shockwave (though, not so much for equal mana.)

[Crystalion]

you really ought to compare this plan/build with doing a Shockwave Werebear Druid.

Well, rather than going to edit #5, I'll try to be "normal" and comment via reply... ;)

An advantage a duration (not damage) War Cry barb has over the Druid stunning build is this: taunt.

Between Howl, Leap, Taunt and Leap Attack (not to mention Grim Ward) the Barb is more likely to be able to easy position himself and monsters where he wants them. Besides the obvious utility of this for stunning (and War Cry is more convenient than Shock Wave anyway, since you don't have to aim it and you get everything for sure) this means that such a Barb is really really tempted to use an item with CE charges.

A possible scenario looks like this...

Barb moons monsters and runs away, herding lots of monsters into a tight pack and "grabbing" reluctant monsters with Taunt (also incapacitating their special or ranged attack).

Once a nice mass is achieved Barb stuns 'em. Kills a couple with Bash or Frenzy or whatever. Re-stunning the mass if need be, of course. Now that there are corpses, Barb fires off a couple (item-based) charges of Corpse Explosion. Entire mass of monsters is now dead and Barb can hork them for items or walk away as desired.

The key is that items with charges of CE tend to have much lower skill levels and therefore radius than a Necro can easily have by pumping and +skills, so the victims need to be closely grouped yet harmless. As I've outlined the Barb has the ideal characteristics (and more) for this maneuver.

edit: items with charges of CE (from search on AS, so YMMV)...
runeword Black, Thul Io Nef, hammers, clubs, maces, Level 4 Corpse Explosion, 12 Charges. (pretty easy to acquire, clvl 35 req)
Corpsemourn unique Ornate plate, Level 5 Corpse Explosion, 40 Charges. (pretty hard to acquire, clvl 55 req)
Bonehew elite unique Ogre Axe, Level 14 Corpse Explosion, 30 charges. (very hard to acquire, clvl 64 req)

so an obvious extreme (probably unnecessary) thought is to dual wield Blacks on both weapon switches and assign four hotkeys, to have 48 charges available between trips to town for repair. Off hand it looks like nightmare Countess runs will yield up Io runes without insane amounts of time investment (which is not to say that that is better than nm hellforge rushing). Level 4 CE is apparently 3.6 yard radius and level 5 a 4 yard radius, fyi, so the monsters do need to be close together (although, if they are all stunned, you could try to get the corpses in the middle of them).

Because of Howl, Grim Ward and Taunt (i.e. a multitude of options for parking and retrieving monsters) there isn't any reason why the Barb can't simply repeat the cycle without having to bash (berserk, etc.) anything to death by leading the next group for stunning on top of the last (dead, now corpses) group.

edit2: ~2746 gold per charge of repair on Black, fyi. So perhaps a fast way to kill, but an expensive one.

[MongoJerry]

Just wanted to offer a slightly different opinion here: with high level battle orders, that one point of mana turns into 2. If you go with frosties, 2 soj's, silkweaves and gloom's trap, that one point of mana can easily be 2 or 3. If you happen to have 2 wizardspikes... you get the idea. Still doesn't sound like much? It adds up. 3 or 4 mana times 200 energy can make a big difference, particularly early in NM, where you hurt for mana the worst.

Ah, but you see, without any uber items, 1 stat point turns into 8 life points with maxed BO. You could never get to 8 mana points for a stat point even if you had every item to choose from in the game. Having that life frees a person up to fill their inventory with +mana charms. Also, the last time I got a legit SOJ was when I gambled one back in pre-LoD days. But, hey, I've found four Bahamut's magic rings and several Great Wyrm's rings with other useful stats on them. And the nice thing is that the mana on charms and rings gets further multiplied by BO, so you get even more mana. So, wearing two Bahamut's rings beats putting 200 points into Energy. And if you really want to, you can still wear your Frosties and Wizardspikes.

[gekko]

I agree with you... mostly :). I still feel that the 200 or so mana you pick up by pumping energy can be very much worthwhile, particularly for a pure singer. My singer, with less than optimal equipment (he was actually built in classic, originally -- had no soj's, no wizardspike, no bahamut equipment, no +mana charms, etc. With my singer, I found I had more than enough life with about 100 vitality. Could I have used another 1000 hit points? Absolutely. However, I found the extra 100 mana was more useful than the 5 or 6 hundred life I could have gained instead.

*shrugs* Everyone'll play their guy out differently. Just didn't want people to believe adding to energy was a complete deadfall -- it can be made to work just about as well as hoarding +mana items.

gekko

[whyBish]

The DR doesn't really matter for these builds, as the local monsters will all be stunned...

DR is still useful with these builds, especially if pumped... There are large numbers of archers, and even with taunt you are going to see a fair number of volleys coming your way before you can warcry them. (Mind you I may be biased by playing H.C., in parties ;) ) I could possibly even be pushed to chose shout/IS over B.O., but that would be more relying on party play (most barbs you meet in H.C. have max B.O., so it can be a bit safer to dump points elsewhere in online play).

[Bloodstar6078]

Thanks for all the tips! I just started Schturdark and he is in Act 2, lvl 14 and just beat Radament Quest and collected the cube.

Jeez taunt and howl are fun to use! They were especially helpful in getting the cube. When I got swarmed I could make them run scared then taunt the Unravelers and Spear cats to come get their butts wooped.

Anyway I haven't gotten any combat skills yet, but I'll see how the rest of Act 2 and 3 go. Ill most likely have to use a point or two by then.

Thanks

[Guest]

i've completed hell with a hammerdin - might not seem so relative with this post, but he had around 1k life since later nm and it didn't increase by much and he didn't have any huge problems.

since the builds are related in a way, the hammers kill the monsters so fast and war cry stuns everything, it feels to me that you should be able to survive with 1k hp through hell, and thus can spend points into energy if you're untwinked(*hint* MongoJerry *hint* i'll repeat again: untwinked)

[MongoJerry]

*hint* adamantine *hint*, read the actual Gunter writeups. Gunter *was* played untwinked -- except for the three Trang-Oul's set items which were the minimum items he needed to cast firewalls -- and he was played up through players-8 nightmare 100% untwinked. However, if I had played him fully untwinked even through hell, Gunter would have actually had *more* mana from the helm, belt, and gloves that he found that I would have used. No way that 1k health would've worked. No way at all. You have to talk about 1.5k at a minimum when you're playing hardcore, can't kill that fast, and you're going up against champions and/or bosses who can't be stunned. Once again, it would be completely stupid to place points in energy when you can get so much more for every stat point placed in vitality. You're so much better off as a barbarian placing all your points into vitality and using charms, rings, wands, amulets, and perfect saphires (if necessary) to give you the mana you need. I specialize in playing untwinked or low-twinked hardcore characters, so I know what playing untwinked is all about. It was gekko who talked about Frosties, 2 SOJ's, and duel-wielding wizardspikes, not me. Sorry, but I have to play the "I've played one, you haven't card." I know what works and what doesn't. What works is getting mana off items. What doesn't work is wasting stat points in energy as a barbarian. Placing points in energy as a barbarian is not just a bad idea, it's a stupidly moronic idea.

[Draconis]

Heh pumping EN works for my classic barbarian, but from what I hear about expansion.... charms by themselves could fix the effects of pumping EN, and with most people being 1 hit killed it seemed, vit would be very helpful:) It was painful enough taking on normal diablo with ~300hp when you can't stun.

[Occhidiangela]

As soon as I step in, the video slows down to a crawl and I cant seem to get the hammers off fast enough.

I tried an Attract Wand, but maggots who I targeted did not seem to get attacked fast enough to die.

I am thinking of finding a CE item, kill a bunch of stuff and then try to chain CE, but most CE items tend to be low level CE.

Will also try to get my hands on a teleport item, and just try to teleport down as fast as I can once game is made to get ahead of the spawning rate.

Any other suggestions?

[gekko]

Placing points in energy as a barbarian is not just a bad idea, it's a stupidly moronic idea.

That's like saying putting points in vitality for a sorceress is "stupidly moronic." After all, you get MUCH better return for points placed in energy. And with maxed energy shield, you'll absorb more hit points that way anyways!

The math most definately shows that pumping vitality for a barbarian gives better returns. The math also shows that an all warcry barbarian is a waste of time -- you get much better damage (and especially better damage / mana spent) using just about ANY of the combat skills.

The math most definately shows that the melee sorc is a waste of time. After all, you can get much higher damage with firewall, meteor, frozen orb, static field, etc. than you can with enchant.

Frankly, I think the math supports pumping energy to a certain point. Early in the game (i.e. while war cry is still at low levels), you don't need to put every point in vitality to survive, even HC. Having another 20-40 points in energy here can let you cast many more war cries and keep you in the field longer. Later in the game, you can still have enough life without pumping vitality non-stop -- and while 1 mana per point in energy is very low, it adds up, and it adds on top of whatever other equipment you have. It adds on top of your +mana equipment, whether that be a 3 saphire helm or 2 soj's, 2 wizardspikes and an inventory full of +mana charms.

gekko

[Bloodstar6078]

The math most definately shows that pumping vitality for a barbarian gives better returns. The math also shows that an all warcry barbarian is a waste of time -- you get much better damage (and especially better damage / mana spent) using just about ANY of the combat skills.

<_< First warcry barbs, or singers, are not a waste of time. Your forgetting about faster cast rate items. If you can cast it fast the damage multiplies. Also in 1.10 synergies give it a boost making it a little more powerful. Also, we know its not the most damaging attack the barbarian has which is probably why MongoJerry used Trangs for firewall AND it isn't a PvP build either. It's for enjoyment and for getting away from the typical boring sword shield using Whirlwind build.

Also someone should check the max WC damage with all synergies (Howl, Taunt, and Battle Cry) maxed. :P I won't try to avoid embarrassment. Anyways I'm not sure how much it does /w synergies but multiply that by the number of times you can cast per second. I'm sure you can easily reach above 1000 damage. Just guessing on that though. Ask someone in the workshop.