A Tale of Woe

[Fragbait]

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? [...]
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.

Hi,

My lvl 91 paladin has a little over 17000 defense, resulting in a chance to hit of about 10-20% for usual monsters. Harder monsters (like the Blood Lords in act 5) can achieve a cth of 21-28% against him, and only act bosses manage to hit him with 30-40% cth. I think that with around 12000-15000 def, you should do ok in hell.


Since you actually have 20 Dex base and 30 Str base, the amount of hitpoints gained by wielding something like a devil star instead of something like a conquest sword or berserker axe later on is:

devil star StrRequ:153 DexRequ:44 avgdam:48
conquest sword StrRequ:142 DexRequ:112 avgdam:45
berserker axe StrRequ:138 DexRequ:59 avgdam:47.5

Life Points wasted (in comparison to investing in Vit):
for the devil star: ((153-30)+(44-20))*4=588 life. (with BO ~1176)
for the conquest sword: ((142-30)+(112-20))*4=816life. (with BO ~1632)
for the berserker axe: ((138-30)+(59-20))*4=628 life. (with BO ~1256)

Life Points wasted assuming at least 153 Str will be invested for the armor in any case:
for the devil star: (44-20)*4=96 life. (with BO ~192)
for the conquest sword: (112-20)*4=368 life. (with BO ~736)
for the berserker axe: (59-20)*4= 156 life. (with BO ~312)

So if you choose the sword, you have 368-96=272 less life than with the mace. (~544 with BO)
If you choose the axe, you have 156-96=60 less life than with the mace. (~120 with BO)

Seems to me that if you can hit something without dexterity, then you should go mace. I tend to go axe with my frenzy barbs, though. I'm thinking you'll need angelic rings and amulet or many +AR charms to cope without investing in dex in hell though.

Concerning Berserk:
Many put 1 point into it. A one point wonder, it helps defeating pi monsters quite well. My lvl 73 IK barb maxed it out. It's actually quite impressive - not only on pi monsters. Just have to make sure to stand behind my hireling, since 0 defense isn't pretty in hell;). The 0 defense time goes down to 1.2 seconds at slvl 20, but that's still more than enough to get you killed against fast attackers, so that is no reason to max the spell. The damage is impressive though, and I frequently use this skill for single enemies / enemies I can't leech of, since WW is not the right skill then.

Greetings, Fragbait