Monkeycid's Guide To The Barbarian

[monkeycid]

Much has happened since I last posted this guide on the old forums:) It has been very much improved and now resides at it's own adress. Please read it and leave comments / suggestions / complaints here :)

Monkeycid's guide to the Barbarian

All comments welcome :)

Monkeycid

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

I understood that the "staff" class was one of the two weapon classes (along with cross/bow) that a barbarian couldn't master in.

This is confirmed?

Gads... my Singer could definitely have fun with his wands with THIS! :)

[monkeycid]

The "blunt" class (which includes staves and wands) works with mace mastery, so yes, a barbarian CAN use mace mastery and benefit from it when using wands (and staves). Good luck and have fun :)

Edit: Actually, there are two things the barb cant master even considering this - bow/xbow and daggers.

[Artega]

But you forgot to mention that Barbarians roll d12 instead of d10, and mention their Enrage ability and inability to wear Heavy armor and... Er, wrong game. Seriously, though, a very good read. Makes Paladins like myself (currently AD&D Paladin - I haven't played D2 in about three months) learn a bit more about Barbarians. Yes, they're unbalanced. But yes, they are a helluva lot of fun. Berserkers are my favorite diversion from Paladins. Zerk is a great skill :)

A couple of nits and/or comments:

*

If you got both Battle Cry and War Cry, use the latter first. Its better to give them -100% damage than 25-44. Do Not Use when around necros.

-100% Damage is attributed to Battle Cry, which would mean that you are talking about the former, and not the latter. But personally, I prefer using War Cry first. It's easier to "curse" the baddies when they're standing there like little EXP pillars than when they're beating on you ;)

* From a strictly statistical standpoint, one-handed axes are superior to one-handed swords in most cases. Axes do more damage, have lower requirements, and are generally faster or are the same speed. The Zerker Axe does more damage than the Mythical Sword, yet has lower requirements and the same base attack speed. Of course, one-handed axes look like crap, but Mythical Swords don't look much better (everyone knows Cryptic Swords look the best, though they belong on the Paladin and not Ugg). I never used two-handed swords in the one-handed fashion (all two-handers were distributed to my two-handed Zealot and two-handed Avenger), so I don't know how they factor in.

* Spears are about even with Pole Arms. Pole Arms are generally faster, and look MUCH better than a giant grey toothpick (especially scythes; scythes look great), but have lower damage. I think Blizzard intended Pole Arms to have very high minimum damage, while very low maximum (such as 50-60 or something), while spears were supposed to have high maximum and low minimum (10-50, perhaps). That's just my speculation, though. In practical use, a spear would be a pole arm, though if you find yourself a Stormspire, why not make a Pole Arm user?

* You didn't mention those godawful desynch errors associated with high Run/Walk Barbarians (or really anyone who can get really fast movement - Assassins and even us Paladins are bad about this, too.) I recall that breaking the 200% point causes some nasty desynchronization errors. I've never seen one, but I've heard about them. Supposedly like the Charge bug amplified twentyfold.

* Ever notice that the base range for Leap at slvl 1 is 4.6 YARDS? That's one helluva big hop. Just thought I'd add that in.

* I concur with your analysis of Concentrate. It's an effective skill. I prefer Zerkers to Iron Barbarians, but it's fun to have upwards of 40,000 Defense for a split second :)

* This is out of order (I'm making these nits and comments as I read the guide, if you haven't picked up on that yet), but I recall you referring to the Paladin aura Concentration as "Concentrate". A simple and common mistake, but it could lead to confusion. Just an observation.

* I didn't check into the WW-strategy link you sent, but a tactic I used with my Zerker for a quick escape would be to gather some enemies near a corner, let them close in, and then zip through them with WW. This would injure them somewhat (slvl 1 WW, since I was a Zerker), and would allow me to use a War Cry or two to keep them against the corner. Follow up with your favorite melee attack (Bash works well.) Also a fun thing to do if you're a Smiter, or if you've got a Smiter with you. I had to teach my friends this trick so I could exploit it with my Smiter :)

* I'm not sure about this, but WW MAY be similar to Charge in the Defense/Blocking department. With Charge, you'll maintain your Defense and Blocking values as if you were walking so long as autorun isn't enabled (I never use Autorun, anyway, so this was a nonissue for me). Use Autorun, however, and it's exactly as if you're running. Whether a feature or a bug, I have no idea. Might want to check that for WW.

* The "Crying Frenzier" sounds like the Battle Barbarian build, but without the Battle Cry. The basic usage of the Battle Barbarian would be to lure things in close, use War Cry to stun them, use Battle Cry to disable them, use another War Cry to keep them stunned (this eats a lot of MP in the process, so some MP-adders would be useful here), and then slice 'em up with Frenzy. A lot of work for a single group of monsters, but it's very viable and eats up Frenzytaurs like nobody's business.

*

Det är slut nu. Hej da macken, vi synns immôrn.

Looks Germanic, but I'm not sure what specific language. Dutch or Swiss, perhaps?

All in all, a very thorough and superb guide. You said English wasn't your native language, but I thought your English was superb. Better than most of the general Battle.net populous speaks it, anyway. Very well done.

[chunkylover53ataol]

what exactly does frenzy do??

[Cartimandua]

Fine guide - it gives information that one can work into one's own ideas, rather than just being a prescription, as many guides are.

Being a staff fan, I wonder if it would be worth mentioning in the section on Mace Mastery that there are some pros/cons to using a staff:

IMO:

pros:

• Low strength reqs allow you to really pump VIT (low STR implies weak armour, so would make sense with a WarCry-for-defence build)
  <>
  
• Good range (better than two-handed maces)
  <>
  
• Ribcracker is a lovely weapon (but see below)
  <>
  
• you look like a transvestite sorceress ;)<>
  [st]cons:
  • Can be hard to find a weapon that will do much damage in Hell. Ribcracker only takes you so far. There's Naj's staff, or perhaps the Fury and Silence runewords, but none of those are easy to acquire. I believe that +damage mods are not available on staves, so there is no such thing :( as a Ferocious Walking Stick of Evisceration (which is a hell of a pity - I mean I would carry a weapon like that for the name alone).<>
    [st]But maybe this is all getting into the equipment area, which looks like it is still work-in-progress in your guide.
    
    Thanks again. B)

[WarBlade]

what exactly does frenzy do??

Frenzy is a double swing attack that temporarily accelerates both attack speed and foot speed with each successful attack. So after a few seconds of Frenzying on something, a Barbarian moves and strikes like a psychotic mongoose on speed.

Tricky to control sometimes though - A couple of days ago I attacked a cat in Act 2 and missed. The mercenary started jabbing away at it, while my Barbarian did one complete orbit instead :lol: . . . before I took the pointer off and clicked on the cat more carefully.

[Loschonorg]

while my Barbarian did one complete orbit instead

that's why some frenziers prefer to place 'frenzy' on right mouse click & let the program auto-target. B)

[Occhidiangela]

And a few added observations.

You claim 'Find Potion' is not useful in Battle.

Au contraire, mon frer! :D

Find Potion and Find Item (and Grim WArd) are useful in battle when facing reviving packs. Kill a monster and then FP or FI it and the Unraveler or Shaman cannot raise it to attack you in the rear. :)

Taunt: Great against Abyss Knights, they don't cast if you Taunt them, but you might want to point out it does NOT influence Oblivion Knights in Act IV. The critical advantage of this skill is its abililty to neutralize any spell caster or missile shooter. Wont work against champions or bosses, thought. Might want to spell that out as well.

Stun: No duration reduction in diffs. Stuns everything but act bosses, or can. Nice partner to Berserk and Concentrate for little to no mana. Con: Only works on one monster at a time. If you Stun / Bererk with left right mouse button, the lack of DR in Berserk can be overcome. (Warcry is nicer for crowd control, though. :))

Leap Attack: A nice boss killer when maxed. Even with 50% reduction, it does nice damage and has a nice AR boots. You need not attack from across the screen. From shorter range, it does not tend to cause the desynch problems.

Note: you cant drink while Leap Attacking, same as WW, and may want to put that in the skill discussion versus down at the bottom of odds and ends. :)

Pretty comprehensive guide. Nice work.

Dual Bloodletters is hardly sub par items. :)

[Bolty]

Niiiiiiiice stuff, Monkeycid (hi Monkeycid)! Keep up the good work.

-Bolty

[Albion Child]

I read your guide from front to back, and here is wha I came up witht to change.

1.) In the Skills section under Throwin mastery there is one very small, quite insignifigant thing that might be good to add. In addition to having larger stac sizes, Axes and daggers also move across the screen faster, making it somewhat easier to hit. Also, throwing axes have an added usefulness of benefiting from axe mastery when used for melee. I built a Berserer axe/winged axe barb, pumped throwing/axe mastery and WW. Very fun and effetive.

2.) You played off BC as basically worthless. However as I see it, You get more damage (from mastery and attacks), more resists, more defense, more speed, more life, more mana. All for one skill point. As I see it, it is worth spending 5 or 6 points on it and sacrificing points in natural resist, increase speed, warcry, and other skills which you may have multiple points in but do not max. This would basically mean that you sacrifice 1 point in 5 or 6 skills. In return, BC will return those skills to the level they would have been as well as boosting the rest of your skills by one point. As an example I will use your example for a WW barb.

Sacrifice 1 point in the following skills, Battle Orders, Mastery, Natural Resist, Whirlwind, Berserk.
Then put the extra points into BC. This would give you more defense (from shout and Iron skin) as well as faster speed (from increase speed) at the same level with no loss except needing to cast it quite often.

Also remember those you party with. They would get the extra skill with the same level of Battle Ordes to boot. Again, the only loss is the fact you would need to recast.

3.) I'm not sure what you meant by a knockback effect on landing with Leap. Did you accidentally write something down for Leap Attack? Maybe it has one I never noticed?? Heh, I never really used leap, just waited for Leap Attack.

4.) Now the most nitpicking thing I could think to say :) berserk is the "barbarians best anti PI attack"
Replace best with only

5.)Now, I know all of this is basically negative. HOWEVER if I were to praise all the good stuff in your guide, It would just take much too long. There is much good info and some new insights I had not thought of before. Thanks for the nice guide, and keep updating it as often as you can.

Also though I also don't claim to be any ind of Barb expert, I'll try to message you with any info I think you
might find useful.



EDIT: to Ice, Yeah I just never used Leap enough to notice a knocback effect. I'll check it out when I get back to playing.

Also, though I can see how you could build a barb to kill PIs quickly using lots of elemental damage and frenzy, Berzerk is still the only skill that is realy good for PIs as a stand alone skill. However, I was only about .03% serious up there in item #4.

[Loschonorg]

3.) I'm not sure what you meant by a knockback effect on landing with Leap. Did you accidentally write something down for Leap Attack? Maybe it has one I never noticed?? Heh, I never really used leap, just waited for Leap Attack.

the discovery

[Ice]

3.) I'm not sure what you meant by a knockback effect on landing with Leap. Did you accidentally write something down for Leap Attack? Maybe it has one I never noticed?? Heh, I never really used leap, just waited for Leap Attack.

There's definitely a very distinct knockback effect upon landing with Leap; just that most people wouldn't notice since Leap is usually skipped in favour of Leap Attack which allows a much longer range at just level one.

4.) Now the most nitpicking thing I could think to say&nbsp; berserk is the "barbarians best anti PI attack"
Replace best with only

Berserk is definitely not a barbarian's only PI attack... it all depends on the build. For one thing, at least two of my barbs don't need (or can't use) berserk against PIs.

One is a frenzier who relies largely on high elemental damage (and occasionally crushing blow) and has very minimal physical damage, meaning that frenzy will tend to give a far faster killing speed against PIs. The other is a bowabarb who doesn't have the option of berserking in the first place. Buriza (or Kuko) + elemental charms more than covers the amount of damage I need to kill.

For most other more normal barbarians, berserk is most certainly the best solution though.

[Caos2]

I usually bind all my attack skills to the rmb because of the autotarget and that's actually once of the reasons I have problems playing with Paladins :P

c2

[Occhidiangela]

1. Loshonorg makes another good point about Leap Attack I suggest is worth putting into your skill description.

From his Amazon Basin post . . .

"I have found that Leap Attack has min target range of your weapon reach; try it with a mace vs a pike. the difference is horrible."

I too have found this with my Polearm Barbarians in both Realms and SP. When inside weapon's range, an attack still goes off, but it is not the Leap Attack and I am fairly certain that the AR and damage bonuses go away when inside the weapon's range. I can't remember if this is comfirmed or not, but it seems to act like Bash. If you select it when the blue mana ball is empty, the Barbarian defaults to a normal attack, unlike an Amazon whose mana based attack, with an empty blue ball, turns into whining: 'Not enough mana!' )

2. I disagree with Albion Child about Battle Command.

Battle Commands, for the cost of one point, pumps all of your passives for its duration, but it needs no more than one point. By the time you max some of your primary skills, it is quite likely that you will have either +skills amulets or + barbarian skills amulets or + skills hats of some sort. Also, given the refresh Warcry scheme that your present (which I heartily endorse :) ) you will want to refresh BO before it runs out, and you are just as well off to refersh BC at the same time.

BC adds one to:

You Weapon Skill
Your Weapon Mastery
Your Attack Skill
Your Battle Order's Level
Your Iron Skin Level
Your Shout Level
Your Natural resist level.
Your Increased Stamina and Speed levels.

In HC, I would suggest that Natural resists might be where you want to put that extra point or two, particularly with a non-shield two handed Axe, Pole Arm, or Lance Barbarian.

Letting BC stay at one, to be boosted by such items as you run across, allows you to save points in a few of these skills, to where they are just under the diminishing returns threshold, and allocate either more to Berserk, or to another skill that you might not otherwise maxe out.

It is in my opinion a 'one point wonder', very much like Taunt. If you have any Mana Leach at all and high Battle Order's levels, Battle Command being refreshed every thirty to forty seconds is No Big Deal, and in HardCore, you may want to stay proactively engaged in refreshing BO anyway to keep life high.

My two cents worth.

[Albion Child]

ARTEGA, also to support your arguement in favor of 1H axes, Berserker axes have better reach than mythical swords.

Also, Going back to the short discussion about stave barbs, I'm gonna build one. This sounds fun, and it will be great to suprise the morons out there laughing at the transvestite barb when he starts some serious ownage.

I'd like a little input however. I'm trying to decide between hunting for a 300% ED ribcracker, or making a FURY stalagmite. (i chose stalagmite because, though it doesn't have as much damage (avarage) as an archon staff, the difference is only 1/2 point, and stalagmite is faster. Both (FURY and Ribcracker) have comparable mods. Ribcracker is a little faster. FURY has Life leech.

How much damage would a FURY stalagmite do, or where can I find a reliable calculator to determine this?

(Stalagmites have a base damage of 75-107.)

As far as other equipment goes, I'll probably just play what I find (though I might crack and trade for runes to make Lionheart plate, since they are cheap.....(heh, I'll probably need to make lionheart studded leather or something beause of low str.)

[Loschonorg]

How much damage would a FURY stalagmite do, or where can I find a reliable calculator to determine this?

someone calculated:

Damage on a stalagmite is 234 - 333 along with usual Fury mods (which includes -40% ias, 6% LL and ITD)

you may wanna double-check for accuracy.

[monkeycid]

Whoa, this generated alot of response :) I've been away on a ski trip, so apologies for the late reply. Now let's see... :)

100% Damage is attributed to Battle Cry, which would mean that you are talking about the former, and not the latter. But personally, I prefer using War Cry first. It's easier to "curse" the baddies when they're standing there like little EXP pillars than when they're beating on you

You misunderstood my writing (which in that case was easy to misunderstand). What I meant with -100% damage is that when they are stunned, they cannot deal damage. Thus WarCry gives an effective -100% damage reduction while they are stunned :) we're thinking the same thing, it's just that I phrased it badly (never try to be witty monkey, you write too bad for that)

From a strictly statistical standpoint, one-handed axes are superior to one-handed swords in most cases. Axes do more damage, have lower requirements, and are generally faster or are the same speed. The Zerker Axe does more damage than the Mythical Sword, yet has lower requirements and the same base attack speed. Of course, one-handed axes look like crap, but Mythical Swords don't look much better (everyone knows Cryptic Swords look the best, though they belong on the Paladin and not Ugg). I never used two-handed swords in the one-handed fashion (all two-handers were distributed to my two-handed Zealot and two-handed Avenger), so I don't know how they factor in.

The thing is that the two handed swords (Colossus blades, mostly) are very easy to get cruel (thanks to the 3chip recipe), and they deal great damage.
Axes may be better (slightly), but much much harder to get. Compare the ratio of cruel berserker axes VS the ratio of Cruel Collossus Blades... Zerk axes are hard hard hard to get :)
The section was written thinking that you would use a 2hand sword either onehanded or when dual wieliding :)

You didn't mention those godawful desynch errors associated with high Run/Walk Barbarians (or really anyone who can get really fast movement - Assassins and even us Paladins are bad about this, too.) I recall that breaking the 200% point causes some nasty desynchronization errors. I've never seen one, but I've heard about them. Supposedly like the Charge bug amplified twentyfold

Good point, I'll add that. You start desynching around ~160%, there is no magical desynch breakpoint :)

Ever notice that the base range for Leap at slvl 1 is 4.6 YARDS? That's one helluva big hop. Just thought I'd add that in.

Well, 4.6 yards is a little bit shorter than a Waypoint tile. Not a helluva hop :) But it's decent. I really like Leap :)

This is out of order (I'm making these nits and comments as I read the guide, if you haven't picked up on that yet), but I recall you referring to the Paladin aura Concentration as "Concentrate". A simple and common mistake, but it could lead to confusion. Just an observation.

Uh, doh :) Was probably cause I had written about Concentrate earlier :) Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm not sure about this, but WW MAY be similar to Charge in the Defense/Blocking department. With Charge, you'll maintain your Defense and Blocking values as if you were walking so long as autorun isn't enabled (I never use Autorun, anyway, so this was a nonissue for me). Use Autorun, however, and it's exactly as if you're running. Whether a feature or a bug, I have no idea. Might want to check that for WW.

I'm certain that Blocking and Defense is enabled when WWing :) (Tharn had done some tests, and I trust him)

* The "Crying Frenzier" sounds like the Battle Barbarian build, but without the Battle Cry. The basic usage of the Battle Barbarian would be to lure things in close, use War Cry to stun them, use Battle Cry to disable them, use another War Cry to keep them stunned (this eats a lot of MP in the process, so some MP-adders would be useful here), and then slice 'em up with Frenzy. A lot of work for a single group of monsters, but it's very viable and eats up Frenzytaurs like nobody's business.

C'est possible :) I've got a self-designed barb that sounds like he's very close to this, except that he uses WW and Zerk. I'll post him up in the next version... I named him Battle Barb, thought that was unique but it seems someone else is using that build name? Could you please provide a link to a description of a battle barb?

And finally...

Looks Germanic, but I'm not sure what specific language. Dutch or Swiss, perhaps?

It's Swedish (which is also my native language) :) Swedish dialect, actually... :o . It means "It's over now/It ends now. Goodbye gas-station, (slang word for gasstation, anyway) see you tomorrow (Värmland slang for tomorrow)". It's the end quote from a old popular swedish humor serie.

Thanks for the praise :)

Monkeycid

[monkeycid]

Find Potion and Find Item (and Grim WArd) are useful in battle when facing reviving packs. Kill a monster and then FP or FI it and the Unraveler or Shaman cannot raise it to attack you in the rear.

I prefer to Taunt the revivers in that case, but each has different ways :) I've already said that it makes corpses unuseable, but I'll spell out this use to make it more clear.

Taunt: Great against Abyss Knights, they don't cast if you Taunt them, but you might want to point out it does NOT influence Oblivion Knights in Act IV. The critical advantage of this skill is its abililty to neutralize any spell caster or missile shooter. Wont work against champions or bosses, thought. Might want to spell that out as well.

I wrote that it can neutralize archers (I mentally included abyss knights and the like in this) and revivers (mentally lumped spellcasters there). (from my guide: "Good for stopping ranged attacks [snip]"

I guess I*ll have to write down every specific scenario *grumble* must stop writing in shorthand for myself :)

Stun: No duration reduction in diffs. Stuns everything but act bosses, or can. Nice partner to Berserk and Concentrate for little to no mana. Con: Only works on one monster at a time. If you Stun / Bererk with left right mouse button, the lack of DR in Berserk can be overcome. (Warcry is nicer for crowd control, though.

The reason I dislike it so much is that WarCry is AoE stun, without reduction in diff, it can stun anything but act bosses. Before level 30 there are not many big threats that you really *need* to stun, so it's just worthless. Bleah!

Leap Attack: A nice boss killer when maxed. Even with 50% reduction, it does nice damage and has a nice AR boots. You need not attack from across the screen. From shorter range, it does not tend to cause the desynch problems

Nearly all Combat Skills are good boss killers when maxed. Zerk is, Conc is, and WW (if you do the DoD) definatly is.

you cant drink while Leap Attacking

Read the guide again. "You cannot drink potions or use town/identification scrolls/tomes while midair or during a WhirlWind."

When are you midair? While Leaping or Leap attacking ofcourse!

[monkeycid]

1.) In the Skills section under Throwin mastery there is one very small, quite insignifigant thing that might be good to add. In addition to having larger stac sizes, Axes and daggers also move across the screen faster, making it somewhat easier to hit. Also, throwing axes have an added usefulness of benefiting from axe mastery when used for melee. I built a Berserer axe/winged axe barb, pumped throwing/axe mastery and WW. Very fun and effetive.

Thanks, I'll add air speed :)

2.) [regarding BC]

See occidangelas reply down there :)