Gunter, the Barbarian Mage

[MongoJerry]

GUNTER BUILD AND EQUIPMENT

Gunter is untwinked except for the Trang Oul's set, so all items except for the Trang Oul's set are items that he found himself. He's level 76 now and is about to step into hell for the first time. He's going to follow the same rules as Grizabella:

1. He plays solo.
2. He plays in /players 1 mode.
3. He must get every waypoint and quest in game order.

He can skip or reroll monsters if he needs to, but he has to fulfill every quest. I'm going to play him as if he were a hardcore character and see how far he can go without dying.


CURRENT EQUIPMENT

Helm: Trang-Oul's Guise (Bone Visage)
Belt: Trang-Oul's Girth (Troll Belt)
Gloves: Trang-Oul's Claws (Heavy Bracers)
Weapon: Bahamut's Yew Wand of Enlightenment (+106 mana, +29 energy)
Shield: Chromatic Tower Shield of Deflecting socketed with 2 perfect diamonds (69% block, +61% all resists)
Ring: Bahamut's Ring of Greed (+105 mana, +31% extra gold from monsters)
Ring: Great Wyrm's Ring of the Wraith (+82 mana, 4% mana leech)
Amulet: Cobalt Amulet of Luck (27% cold resist, 30% magic find)
Boots: Rare 20% lightning resist, 33% fire resist, +5 dex, +39% extra gold from monsters, +10% faster hit recovery)
Armor: Skin of the Vipermagi (+21% all resists, 11 mdr)

On weapon switch he has:

Heart Carver (for the occasional Find Item attempt)
'Ancients Pledge' Tower Shield

Charms: The charms are extremely underpowered. His inventory is almost completely full of them and combined they give:

+129 life
15 poison damage
9% lightning resist
4% poison resist
3% magic find
+3 mana
+5 dexterity
+1 Warcries (my favorite charm)

I would love to use more +mana charms, but the +3 mana charm is the only +mana charm I've found.

Gunter also found a Razorswitch in the nightmare Dark Woods. I just about fell out of my chair when I saw it drop. It was great through most of nightmare, but sadly by about halfway through nightmare Act V it became clear that Gunter needed to wear a shield. Too bad. I spent four hours shopping the hell Act I shop for a Jeweler's or Artisan's Tower Shield of Deflecting (3 socket, 69% block shield), but it never showed up. I had to settle for the Chromatic Tower Shield of Deflecting and socket it using the Larzuk quest reward. I hated having to use one of Gunter's socketing quest rewards that way, but a person has to make do with the hand he's been dealt.

I had planned to wear the Trang-Oul armor as well, but when the Skin of the Vipermagi dropped in the Throne of Destruction, I decided I could do without the armor. Wearing the armor would allow Gunter to cast Meteors, but I found that Firewall was more effective, and one only needs to wear three Trang-Oul items to cast Firewalls. Also, the +1 all skills on the Skin of the Vipermagi makes the Firewalls do 66 points more damage per second and really helps boost the effectiveness of all of Gunter's abilities.


MERCENARY EQUIPMENT

I feel pretty good about Gunter's equipment, but I've had terrible luck getting anything decent for his Might enchanted mercenary:

Rare Thresher: 23% ed (14-173 damage), +30% ias, socketed with a perfect emerald
Sigon's helm
Sigon's armor

His mercenary used a normal socketed lance -- socketed with a perfect skull and a perfect emerald -- up until Act V nightmare. In the Frigid Highlands of Act V, Gunter found the Sigon's armor which finally allowed the mercenary to have some life leech from his armor. That allowed me to try a couple of imbues and the best of the two was the pathetic 23% ed thresher you see above. At least it allowed me to socket it with a perfect emerald without using a quest reward. The poison damage is critical to stop the new extremely fast monster life regeneration.

Gunter's mercenary is clearly extremely underpowered and I plan to focus on getting him equipment in the early acts of hell. I've collected a lot of gems (yes, Gunter is allowed to mule), so I plan to try a lot of attempts at the 3 normal, 3 flawless, or 3 perfect gem horadric cube magic weapon recipes. In addition, Gunter has found all of the runes necessary to make an 'Honor' or 'Passion' weapon. He just needs to find a good weapon to put the runes into. Unfortunately, those runewords don't have poison or Prevent Monster Heal, so I'm really hoping a Wormskull or another helm or armor that adds poison damage drops. In addition, Gunter is only an 'Um' short of making 'Crescent Moon,' which would be my ultimate preference for a mercenary weapon. Unfortunately, it doesn't have Prevent Monster Heal or poison damage on it, either.

I chose to use a Might enchanted mercenary, because much of Gunter's power against single opponents comes from his mercenary. I'm hoping that Gunter's warcries will provide enough crowd control to make a Holy Freeze mercenary unnecessary.


SKILL ALLOCATION

My skill selection process was pretty clear:

WARCRIES

20 points Battle Orders
20 points War Cry
20 points Battle Cry
11 points Taunt
1 point Howl
1 point Shout
1 point Battle Command

COMBAT MASTERIES

1 point Increased Stamina
1 point Increased Speed
1 point Iron Skin
4 points Natural Resistance

COMBAT SKILLS

1 point Leap Attack
1 point Leap (prereq)

Leap Attack is used only for mobility -- not for attack. It's kind of a poor man's teleport. All further points will go into Taunt and, if Gunter gets that far, Howl.


STAT POINT ALLOCATION

Gunter's naked (no items) stat allocation looks like this:

Str: 106
Dex: 171
Vit: 183
Energy: 10

After equipping everything, his stats look like this:

Str: 106
Dex: 181
Vit: 183
Energy: 39

I chose not to put any points into Energy, because barbarians get 4 life points for every point put into Vitality and only 1 mana point for every point put into Energy. I'm counting on equipment to give Gunter the mana he needs.


RELEVANT STATISTICS

With this equipment and stat setup after Battle Command, Battle Orders, and Shout, Gunter gets:

511-540 War Cry physical damage
825-848 Firewall damage/second (for 3.6 seconds)
75%/75%/75%/50% resists
75% block
2374 Defense
2174 Life
1196 Mana
+3 Warcries
+2 All other skills


GAME PLAY WITH GUNTER

In theory, a fight against a typical monster pack works something like this:

1. Gunter runs up to the largest pack of monsters and casts War Cry to stun it.
2. He then Taunts the other monsters, particularly missile fire types, to draw them into the range of the stunning War Cry.
3. Once everyone is safely stunned, he then alternates between War Cry and Firewall to finish off the pack.

Of course, bosses and champions can't be stunned or taunted, so they're always an adventure to deal with. The only thing Gunter can do to them is cast Battle Cry (-47% damage) and try to find a way to take them on one at a time. Also, low power casting characters like Gunter are at a huge disadvantage compared to low power fighter types like Grizabella, because casters can't stop monster life regen by simply putting a poison charm in their inventories. Monster life regen rates are extremely high now, so it takes a lot of mana to kill things using War Cry and Firewall. Gunter is constantly going back to town to buy mana potions. I often let his mercenary take care of small groups of stunned monsters to conserve mana.


COMMENTS

1. Playing through nightmare convinces me that Taunt is one of the greatest skills around. Even the most cookie-cutter whirlwind barbarian should use it. I'll save the descriptions of what it does to different monsters for the adventure reports, but I already have a feeling that those reports are going to be "brought to you by the skill Taunt."



This is a screenshot of Gunter in a magic finding run after he had already completed nightmare and had donned the Trang-Oul set. He had killed Baal in a /players 8 game using only War Cry already. It took a long time.