Help with my Concentration Barb

[Ellis_D._Trails]

Hello all, I've been making a Conc Barb based on Hal's Concentration Barb guide that was posted on Diabloii.net. Well, my Barb is an IK Conc Barb, and so far he's going good. However, my question is: how much should i put into dex? Since I'm not using a shield, I dont have block, but for every few dex pts your chance to hit increases. Would it be worth it to put some points into Dex? At the moment I have base dex, 89 with my equipment. Thanks

[gekko]

Short answer: depends a great deal on your equipment.

Longer answer:

There are three reasons for a melee character to invest in dexterity: blocking, defence, and AR. The first one is meaningless if you're going with the IK set, unless you plan on using a mace/shield combo while leveling up. Assuming you'll be using a two handed maul all the way through, you can ignore dexterity for the purpose of blocking.

Secondly, adding to defence. While dexterity adds a fairly pathetic ammount of defence (1 DR point per 4 points in dex, IIRC), the bonus is not insignificant. This is particularly true if your barb uses a decent combination of iron skin, shout, and concentration, since all three significantly boost your defence. Overall, however, points spent in dexterity for the sole purpose of increasing defence would be far better spent investing in strength or vitality. So that leaves us with the last (and most important) dex boosted stat: attack rating.

So that brings us straight to the short answer. If your gear happens to include +10 000 AR and a further +90% AR boost, then no, you don't need to pump dexterity to hit things.

You mentioned 89 dexterity after items, but not your level or how well you already hit things. ANd frankly, that last bit will tell you all on its own whether or not you should increase your dexterity. Concentrate is uninterruptable, however, it only strikes one enemy at a time. For that reason, you want to make every hit count. A to hit % in the 80's (or low 90's if you can get it there in hell) will help your character a great deal. Spent points in dexterity if it will help you reach a better to-hit %. Just keep in mind -- every point spent in dexterity is a point taken away from vitality. You might consider saving 20-30 stat points if possible, particularly if you haven't yet reached the level where you can wear your "end-game" gear. Once you see just how well you do in hell, you'll know if you need those saved points in dexterity or vitality.

gekko

[Ellis_D._Trails]

Thanks for your insightful post, gekko. Well, right now my Barb is at lvl 86, with 73 Dex and 213 Vit. Currently, my chance to hit is
%89, so I guess I'll be investing into Dex more. Also, anyway to calcuate how much Dex would be needed to reahc a desired %-chance-to-hit? 10000 Defense, and many things only have a quarter of a chance to hit me. and about My Barb has 1211 Life before BO, 2500 with. I'm not sure what would be a good range would be for AR, %Chance to hit, and Defense for an IK Barb would be, so any insight on this would be great. Thanks