Fabian's Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

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Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Introduction
I hesitate to call this a guide, or even a mini-guide, because those words carry certain connotations. I've spent a lot of time running Travincal under different conditions in the last year or so, and have had some success with it. I've received many PMs lately asking for advice regarding Travincal running. This thread is simply my attempt to summarize what I think is important about Travincal running and pass on what I've learned to those who are looking to get into it. I sort of assume you're semi familiar with some stuff though, or this would get too long and detailed with me explaining things I'm sure most of you have a pretty good grasp on already (why Find Item is good, etc).

Please keep in mind that there obviously are many possible successful approaches to most things, Travincal running included. This is just me outlining things/strategies which have worked for me, and if you have a different approach, good for you. Let us know, maybe we can all learn something


Build
I'm going to be talking about one specific build; the Whirlwind Barbarian. I want a Barbarian because of Find Item, and Whirlwind is the most effective killer. Others have had varying amounts of success with a Frenzy build, or a Warcry build. If you prefer something like that, by all means, but this will focus on what I know, which is Whirlwind.

As for skills, you want to max Whirlwind and your Weapon Mastery. I recommend maxing Battle Orders to help with safety. I recommend maxing Find Item to help with efficiency. I recommend putting a point in Increased Speed to help with efficiency (speed), and a point in Natural Resistance to help with safety. After that, it comes down to what your specific character needs. If you're struggling with resists, more points in Natural Resistance would probably be well spent. More points in Increased Speed could very well be worthwhile, especially without Enigma, but keep in mind that too many points in Increased Speed could make it tougher to Whirl effectively, as you'll move through and past the Council members quicker. Experiment and see what works for you and what you need.


Strategy
My opinion is that an effective WW Trav Barb will need these basic things:

* High damage per second
* A combination of life and resists high enough to operate safely
* A source of Life Leech and a source of Mana Leech
* A source of Teleport

The second point might seem obvious, but I think it's an important one, as my experience has been that as soon as you have to deviate from your plan to get to safety, the seconds will add up very rapidly. You want to execute the same plan run after run, and if you constantly have to adjust your play to avoid death, it will be impossible to be as effective as you'd like.

You want to always start the fight in the same place, and you want the fight to be the same way every time. The best way to ensure this happens is a source of Teleport. It will place you and your merc (which is very important) in the exact same place as always, meaning you will know how the Council members will attack you, and you will know exactly how to whirl to hit the maximum amount of members at all times. It will also mean that Decrepify will trigger from your merc within a few seconds, rather than having the merc lag horribly behind, probably never triggering Decrep and mostly just attracting some council members away from you, prolonging the fight. Not good. Note that one Teleport per run is enough if you're playing with Teleport Charges, I would typically run from the waypoint to the point where I can just teleport inside the Council house, where the members would be waiting for me.

Mana leech and life leech are fairly self explanatory, anyone with melee experience will know how important they are to keep fighting. I recommend keeping some mana potions in the belt for Mana Burn, which is annoying and will disrupt your fight.


Gear Choices
After having received so many PMs about gear choice for a Trav Barb, I want to put that information in one place and write a bit about the popular choices. In general though, this is my philosophy:

You want Teleport, you want dual leech. After that, you want AR to hit, and you want damage so your hits are effective. You also want to make sure that you're safe at all points. Keep these overall goals in mind when choosing your gear.


Helm: Some sort of insane rare Ciclet (especially with Teleport charges) is always possible I suppose, but Arreat's Face is really tough to beat. Note that Arreat's has Life Leech, which solves the first of the three must-haves, at least with a good roll. Then again, more life leech can only help with safety, so if you can find more on your gear, all the better. I have mine socketed with a rare Jewel with the Diamond affix (+ED and AR against Demons), and some other helpful stuff. Damage, regular ED, stats, resists, it's all good. Do note that the bug with %ED and +damage in a jewel socketed in a non-weapon does NOT exist when that %ED comes in the Diamond or Pearl prefix. Ragnarod tested this for me (thanks!), and these jewels work as they should.

Amulet: This is the easiest place to get Teleport charges. Ideally, you can get Mana Leech here too, or maybe more Life Leech (blood crafted amulets are great for this purpose as they will automatically spawn with a small amount of Life Leech to supplement the leech from Arreat's. If you don't go with a rare/crafted amulet, Highlord's Wrath is a very good choice despite the IAS being useless. 30+ DS still has a huge effect. Mara's should be fine if you need to focus more on safety, and the 2 skills means it has some offensive qualities as well. Crescent Moon is another possibility to solve any Leeching problems. I'm a fan of either a great rare/craft, or Highlord's.

Body Armor: There are some good choices here, unfortunately they're all expensive. Enigma is fantastic, and certainly not only because of the Teleport. The huge Strength bonus helps with damage output, as do the Skills. FRW, DR% and MF are just gravy. Fortitude is great, as is Chains of Honor. As far as cheaper alternatives go, I'm not so sure. Lionheart seems like an ok combination of offensive and defensive mods. Arkaine's Valor? Your guess is as good as mine. Any of the three expensive runewords will be great here, but note that Duress is not so good because of its Cold damage.

Weapons: You want to hit the last WW breakpoint with both weapons you're using. I've seen people swear by Death despite it being slow, and while I'm sure it's a fine weapon, I'm not sold and I'd prefer an Oath over it. I recommend Oath, Grief, Beast and Breath of the Dying (sounds insane, but I'm sure we'll see them once 1.13 has been played a while). Keep in mind that weapon range is important for WW; for this reason I recommend you making Oath in either a Balrog Blade (sword) or Berserker Axe (axe). I recommend using 1.07 bases, as etheral weapons from 1.07 do more damage in later versions than their 1.13 counterparts. If you make Grief, the only reasonable Sword alternative is Phase Blade, which unfortunately has a range of 2. In a Phase Blade, the IAS roll on the Grief won't matter, which is a nice bonus. You could make it in a Colossus Blade, however you'd need an IAS roll of either 39 or 40 to hit the last WW breakpoint, plus it would need constant repairing. The first ebugged 1.07 eth Grief 39+ IAS Colossus Blade I see on this forum will get massive style points from me For axes, again Berserker Axe is the base item I recommend for Grief, again 1.07 ethbugged. Note that these axes will not reach the last WW breakpoint if the IAS roll is 30-33, so making one is a bit of a gamble. Note that Grief is particularly good for a Travincal runner as it carres a huge amount of %ED to Demons on top of its already huge damage. I've heard some decent things about Death Cleaver, so that could be worth trying. A nice bonus with Death Cleaver would be getting an extra socket; your Mana Leech could probably come from here with a Vex rune. This is all untested though, I think Oath and Grief are more effective personally.

Belt: A 1.07 Mavina's Tenet is probably very nice here, because of the 40 FRW and huge Mana Leech. I haven't tried it myself though. String of Ears is another good choice if you want more Life Leech. A great rare/crafted belt could probably work as well. I use String of Ears, myself.

Gloves: Laying of Hands, period. It provides more damage than Fortitude does, and I don't think any other alternative comes close. The 1.07 version has 50% Fire Absorb instead of 50% Fire Resist, which is probably more beneficial.

Boots: My preferred choice here is Gore Rider, for its huge offensive bonuses and its FRW. I'm sure other choices would work here, though, depending on your character's needs.

Rings: These slots are great for adding leech if you don't have it elsewhere. Mana Leech especially might be tough to come by from other places on your gear, so if that's the case, this is your chance. I prefer rare rings packed with things that your character needs; for instance leech, AR, stats, life, resists, damage, FCR etc. There are very many mods a Rare ring can have which benefits your character. I use two rare rings on my runner, which add mana leech (which I don't have elsewhere) and lots of AR and Strength, as well as FCR and some resists.

Weapon Switch: A popular choice is dual Ali Baba's socketed with Lem's or Ist's. I don't particularly like this choice, instead preferring dual Echoing weapons or HoTo's if you have them. The Warcries will help with your and your merc's safety, and will raise your hork% by 2% (probably), effectively making your runs around 1.3-1.5% more effective depending on run time. If this is significant enough for you to choose over other alternatives is up to you; for me the choice is easy as HoTo also makes teleporting to and from the council significantly faster, as well as casting war cies (both Battle Orders and Find Item).

Merc Setup: The mercenary typically gets into a lot of trouble when Conviction spawns. In general, he will mostly take elemental damage from the Council. For this reason, I like the Kira's/Guardian Angel combination to raise his resists to 90 across the board. Another armor I've tested to moderate success is Gladiator's Bane. My recommended setup is Reaper's/Kira's/Guardian Angel though. Reaper's is the only weapon I recommend, the Decrepify makes an enormous difference in effectiveness. With some practice you will learn to always target the Decrep'd monsters, and the council will drop that much faster as a result.

Charms: This can be a great place to make your character well rounded, fixing any holes you think he might have. More often that not, I believe you will want to focus on AR and damage. I've done a lot of math to figure out which kinds of charms actually help the most, unfortunately the results vary based on the rest of the characters. Specifically, max damage from charms is more helpful the less damage the rest of your gear does, in general. It's probably smart to either do the math yourself (which is fun!), or not worry too much about it and just use whatever good Sharp and/or Steel charms you have. It's worth nothing that my best 1.07 damage charms (+23 max damage GC, +20 max damage, 3 Str GC) are the two "worst" GC's I'm wearing for my characters, and my plain +20 max damage GC doesn't make the cut. I use 5 Steel GC's and 1 Sharp GC, as well as the two 1.07 charms.


Some more thoughts
The council is no joke, especially at higher player settings. They're level ** monsters, so I recommend that you level up as far as you can/feel like. Especially your merc will have trouble if your character level is too low. This will severely impact your run time, as you will expend too much energy on keeping you and/or your merc safe.

Don't be afraid to place stat points in either Dexterity or Strength, as you see fit. I had 4343 life for a long time, then I respecced and placed some of those points into Strength. I'm just as safe at ~3900 life, and next time I respec I'll probably go down further still. I prefer this method over putting fewer points in Battle Orders, as I have nothing else to spend the skill points on anyway. Right now I have everything I want, skill point wise, and I have 14 points remaining to spend. That's with 0 points in Increased Speed (Enigma and teleporting back to Act IV after each run means I don't feel like it would help more than it'd hurt when whirling), 1 point in Natural Resistance (enough for me), 1 point in Double Swing for Mana Burn and 1 point in Berserk for when Ismail spawns PI.


Conclusion
I know that's a lot of text. Here's the gist of it:

Get dual leech, high damaging weapons, and a source of Teleport. Put Reaper's on your merc, then load up on AR and damage and make sure to stay safe. From there, just focus on being efficient, which means having a high level Find Item and practicing.

There's more stuff I could write, but this is more than long enough as it is, and it'd mostly be concerning micro optimizations most people probably don't care about anyway


Hope this block of text helped you, or gave you some ideas or different ways to think about something. If you have questions or comments, please ask away and I'd be glad to answer. Thanks for reading!

 

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Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Just thought I'd drop another good option for merc helmet: Mine uses a Steel Shade. At lvl 91 he has 55 all res naturally so with Guardian Angel he needs 35 res all to max at 90. My armour and helmet is Raled, but I could drop something else in one of them as long as it has 5% fire res. The +6 to fire absorb means he can take as many hits as he likes from the hydras, only when convicted he takes damage.

Haven't run into any big problems against other elements, except the rare purple pot when meeting something like Cold Enchanted+Lightning Enchanted but he still handles that pretty well...

the pretty low number of absorb might not look like much but it's of great use!

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Looks good . A few thoughts, though:

1) Laying of Hands: I use the 1.10+ version with the fire res instead of absorb. As long as you have your fire res maxed and wear a Dwarf Star ring, you barely take any damage from Hydras or fire enchanted death explosions at all. The 50% absorb on the 1.07 LoH look nice on paper but aren't really needed in my opinion.

2) Source of teleport: I acknowledge that you will save a few seconds because you don't have to walk halfway across the temple to get into the room. But to position your merc into the room you can just as well take the stairs to the Durance and quickly go back into the room. Merc problem solved, and this solution doesn't even take a second to accomplish. Of course, this makes only sense if you have a map where all council members spawn inside the room, which I would recommend anyway. They have a tendency to split up when they're outside and those water snakes usually distract the merc, which is bad.

3) Merc + Conviction: As you mentioned, the merc will get into serious trouble when Conviction is involved. My merc will usually die, unless I can eliminate the guy with the aura quickly. I haven't tested it yet, but would it be a good idea to put a Chains of Honor or Smoke on the merc instead of the Guardian Angel? That should keep his resists maxed under Conviction. My merc barely takes any damage from Hydras with 90% fire res, so I don't think it would be too bad to go down to 75% with him. Thoughts?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

You forgot to mention Metalgrid. Resists and AR.

My merc did fine with 75% res(he had like 18%ll with Reapers, and was level **), so a high res armour is probably a good idea.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Fabian - great write-up, I enjoyed it very much.

I disagree about maxing BO. I think you need enough to make sure there is no chance of it running out mid-run, but I think a few points can be shaved off and put to better use elsewhere (nat resists, DS, etc.). The other issue that I think is worth planning for is mana burn. I find that mana burn really slows down runs and vastly increases risk of dying. I find that a few points in double swin (enough to get to slvl 9 after +skills) really helps. Flashing to DS after mana burn keeps you killing and leeching and gets you back to whirling faster than pots.

Overall: great work as always!

EDIT: you mentioned it all. Reading on my iPhone during a conference wasn't that effective, I guess.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Very nice Fabian, I'm sure it'll be of great help to a lot of people, I'm glad I could contribute a little bit to it % absorb was capped at 40% in 1.10, that's what makes the .07 LoH comparable to the 1.10 version, I agree it's probably not worth it to hunt for the .07 ones.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

A few points from my end:

1) I don't think teleport is -THAT- important, using the stairs works fine for most people.

2) Kiras+Treachery+Reaper's is my preferred merc setup, getting the council decrepified as fast as possible is key in these runs imo for both its safety and killing-speed increasing reasons. This setup means lots of IAS, plenty of res and more importantly: CBF
My merc doesn't die from elemental attacks as I rarely let him tank it.

3) Grief in a Zweihander works well if you want a legit one, the problem is that its not much use for zealots though. But hey, Lo is but a countess rune now

3b) I think "ATMA bug" is the right term to use so as new people don't get confused about what actually produces the result of this, i.e. a 3rd party program.

4) There's a whirling technique worth learning against FE+LE monsters, it would be great if it could be included in the guide/youtube'd.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

One more thing I forgot to ask. Why Double Swing? I've seen it quite often lately, but why? If I get mana burned, I simply use Concentrate to fill up my mana again.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

This is a very good guide, congrats Fabian. I have two 'questions' for you all.
My horker currently has a slvl 9 ds and a slvl 29 find item. I have also used a point in berserk, as i tried obediance+vamp gaze+guardian angel build (mainly because cold damage on reaper's shattered a corpse every now and then). My remaining points will most likely end up in iron skin, yet i wanted to ask-has anyone tested battle cry?
Also, has anyone tried using non ebugged grief zerkers against the council? How fast does the durability burn out? I don't have a Lo currently, as i used my first one a forti, but it would be nice to know as phase blades do not satisfy me aesthetically.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Regarding Teleport: Could you do runs without Teleport? Of course. Would they be efficient? I don't think so. Considering the opportunity cost, being 20% (guess/estimate based on how I did when I found a good Teleport amulet) less effective doesn't seem like a good idea. You could easily do runs without mana leech too, you'd just have to drink lots of potions and stuff. It'd be a lot slower of course, but sure it could be done. I think Teleport works the same way here.

bcoe, that edit saved me from restating everything, so thanks The Double Swing idea is taken from your Pindle runner. I think it works decently enough, more often than not just swinging normally isn't much less effective though. When I figure out what I should use those spare points for, I'll consider putting less in BO. I definitely prefer maxing BO and skimping on the Vitality points, rather than the other way around, for now though, like I mentioned. As an aside, the calculator I used said Double Swing is free from level 6? I don't know myself, after I put 1 point in it, it jumped past that level.

Corrupted, I could definitely see Treachery working well. I'll try that some more, it's been a while since I did. I don't know what the whirling technique you're referring to is, could you describe what you mean?

Nephente, I don't know what Battle Cry does. If you think it might help, definitely try it out and see for yourself. I haven't tried non-eth Griefs, so I can't help you on that, sorry.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Re merc:

For my melee characters (and Windy), I use Andys (w/+15%IAS; ruby jewel)+Treachery+EthReaper with (w/+15%IAS; ED jewel) to get to 95% IAS. Badies are constantly decrepified.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I am currently building a barb for this purpose, so far I found it interesting. My experience with Barbs is mainly from 1.09 where enough dr and lifeleech would make my barb imune to Iron Maiden.

My barb is now lvl 61, and I play HC in 1.13b. For this reason I planned on safety first, but a lot of my ideas seem to be confirmed here. But I am stuck with some questions. I have made an Oath small crescent which is basically the best weapon I can afford right now ;-). I will not dual wield, I will go for a Stormshield, Shaftstop combination. As well as wearing Thundergod vigor, a dwarfstar and waterwalk.

Basically my aim is to have maxed resist and fire and lightning even higher than 75 with some absorp added. The stormshield and shaft bring me what I have not seen mentioned here: Damage reduction % (DR%). My char will have 65%.

I only have past experience from some years ago with barbarians in 1.09 as mentioned in the beginning, as noone mentions dr% is it not necessary in the whirlwind barb in the 1.13b patch? Or am I just planning over protective as I play HC? At the moment I have max block and 2400 life, I play nm baalruns on players 8 and never even get scratched. Even though I can't even equip the stormshield, yet. I still have some leveling to go before I can start trying my build on the council in hell. As stated safety for me is far more important than the run times.

Are there some more people that run travincal on HC in the 1.13b Patch? Are the ones that run it on SC 1.13b never dying or are you guys just going for the fastest run times and accept the occasional death?

Many thanks for your input.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



two things : i am sure i read somewhere that DR is capped at 50% ? And dont you skip DR because it only works for melee damage and the council is more about elemental atacks ?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

You will basically be always amped when running the council and if they happen to get might/fanat or both of the auras, they can hit pretty hard.

And DR is capped at 50%.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I am not sure if the game play with a barb affects merc that much, but while running Travincal with my blizzardress I see that 75 resists is not enough. I would guess that's because of BO...

Kira + Reaper + Treachery gets him elemental killed half the time. She and the merc are lvl 95.

On the other hand - the setup that Fabian suggested - with Guarding Angel - is working perfectly. Merc dies only to some very nasty mods combination. Like cursed and with fanaticism...

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



When you play a sorceress you rely on your mercenary to do all the tanking though and you don't benefit nearly as much from decrepify as a physical damaging character does.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I know its raining runes in 1.13, but still socket Death Cleaver with a Vex for mana leech :strong: What about a Perfect Skull?

Good job with the guide Thanks for taking the time.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



But that should not affect his survivability that much, should it?

My point is - some here suggest that 75 resists all is enough. My experience is completely different.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



I know it is capped at 50%, but I want it at maximum and hence use 2 items with respectively 30 and 35%. Like stated previously I might be overprotective as I only play HC and have obsession with maxed resist, absorp and dr% or dr- fixed) I am not going for the stormshield, string of ears combo, because I want Thundergod vigor for the absorp. That is also why I wear waterwalk (+5 max fire res) and a dwarfstar. To cover both elemental and physical attacks and minimize the danger. Survivability is for me the most important, only after that I will try to optimize run speeds ;-)

If I really will find plentyful runes higher than Mal (my highest since I restarted single player) I might even think about using this as a weapon with zod and 4 ias ed jewels. (Keep dreaming eh, I found one 15 ias with ed jewel this far :whistling: And who am I kidding I probably make many other runewords before ever putting this weapon at use.

Rune Master
Ettin Axe
One-Hand Damage: 167 to 338
Durability: 13 of 13
Required Dexterity: 35
Required Strength: 135
Required Level: 72
Axe Class - Slow Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 94
Fingerprint: 0x3c6f99b9
+242% Enhanced Damage
+5% to Maximum Cold Resist
Cannot Be Frozen
Ethereal (Cannot be Repaired), Socketed (5: 0 used)

Realgar Jewel of Fervor
Required Level: 37
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0x8481e53f
+23% Enhanced Damage
15% Increased Attack Speed

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



My point was that as a barbarian you should be doing a lot of tanking yourself, sharing the pain. A sorceress doesn't do that, it relies entirely on the mercenary to tank and in that case 75 resist all is rarely enough, especially because your bo level is also lower.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 2/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

When going for maximum damage output (which is ideal for rune hunting in general), Life Steal works so effectively with Whirlwind's fast and constant barrage of hits that it's usually enough that the barbarian can survive at least one of the most damaging hits the council can do, while being cursed.

Going by that logic, maxing BO is definitely worth it, because it allows to put less points into vitality and more points into strength. More strength = more damage and life steal. That's the most efficient approach I can think of for a PvM barbarian, when killing speed is a major, or in the case of rune hunting, the only concern (in addition to not dying of course).

After maxing the core skills for a whirlwind barbarian, there isn't really any other skills that would increase council run efficiency anyway, so why not max BO and achieve higher damage thanks to it?

My barb seems to survive just fine even with around ~1300 life (that's after BO), and at the moment I'm "only" using Grief PB + Azurewrath combination (Azure because I also used that barb for Pindle (gg Sanctuary aura) runs and I don't have a better alternative now).

Now in 1.13b I respec'd my barb to optimize the skills and stats a bit, and tested how the barb fares with ~800 life, and even that seemed survivable. Although that started to be on the edge and didn't leave almost any room for error, so I increased vitality to a nice and round 100 base and my barb's comfortable with that. Note that I'm using 23% DR on the barb, that helps. Without the % DR, I would need slightly more life, but no more than ~1500.


Edit: I second/third/whatever that too much run speed can make council runs less efficient (and more difficult to survive), because then the barb is spending less time in the actual whirlwind animation, as whirlwind has a short "cool-down" phase, i.e. next whirlwind animation doesn't begin immediately after the previous. Dropping Increased Speed can be worth it, depending on your equipment. However, without teleport the run speed becomes much more important, in which case the more FRW the better. It's a matter of balancing.

Edit2, note: By "run speed" in the last paragraph I meant character's FRW, as in how fast the character moves. That was a poor choice of words from me, as "run speed" usually means how fast any full run, such as a council run is.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@Denton: I thought my 2.5k life barb had too little .

Thanks to your post I won't feel bad about having high str and dex for my new untwinked barb. Woohoo!

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



My thought exactly, there's gotta be a cheaper way to have mana leech


@Denton: I didn't quite understand the run speed part

@Pijus: I also prefer titan barbs to vita barbs, more adrenaline and more power

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Note that I added a note into my previous post explaining about the confusing choice of words I did in the last paragraph. In short, I said "run speed" when I meant FRW. Does that clear it up?



In any case, I could clear that up a bit further (note that much of what I will say now can be more or less obvious to many of the forum members, I just try to be clear): When a barb is whirlwinding, his movement speed is equal to how fast he runs, and that's dependent on FRW. If the barbarian has a lot of FRW, it means one whirl will take shorter time than a whirl of the same distance done with less FRW.

Whirlwind hits at a constant rate depending on your weapon's/weapons' effective attack speed (weapon's base speed and IAS. Hits occur x times per second), so the faster the barb moves, the less there is time for one whirl to land hits on a monster, as the barb will whirl past/through the monster faster.

Let's say an example. Both Fast_barb and Slow_barb have identical equipment and stats, except that fast_barb has 2x the movement speed of slow_barb (not only 2x the FRW, but enough FRW for literally 2 times as fast movement). And for this example let's assume that both of the barbs have 100% chance to hit.

Starting with the Slow_barb, he whirlwinds through a stationary monster once, doing x amount of hits along the way. Then comes Fast_barb and also whirls through the same stationary monster once. Because Fast_barb moves twice as fast as Slow_barb, Fast_barb would only have had time to do half the amount of hits with one whirl compared to Slow_barb. So the Fast_barb would need to do another identical whirl, in order to spend the same amount of time whirlwinding and thus having the chance on landing the same amount of hits on the monster as Slow_barb.

Now, there wouldn't be any difference in the number of hits possible over a period of time, if whirlwind attacks could be chained seamlessly, so that there would be no delay between individual whirlwinds. But there is a slight delay between every whirlwind attack, even if the attack button is pressed down constantly (it seems to be a "cool-down" phase after the attack). So if a barbarian moves really fast and has to do multiple whirlwinds in row, he is spending larger percentage of time in those "cool-down" pauses than a barbarian who moves slowly, because the fast barb has to restart the whirlwind animation more often.

In certain cases a really fast moving whirlwind can be beneficial though, PvP being the most obvious one. But it has slight benefit for PvM too, that is if a barb whirls through a group of monsters fast enough, the monsters don't have enough time to land any hits on the barb before being out of range. But that's usually beneficial only if the barb would have troubles surviving the group of monsters if he would move slowly. But without teleport, FRW plays a bigger part in the speed of each council run for example, in which case high FRW would be more effective overall.

(And this information is pretty much trivial, but if I remember right, the very first hit from whirlwind (at frame 4) occurs only with the primary weapon (one on the gloves side) even when the barb has a weapon in both hands. From the second hit onwards the hits occur with both weapons at the same time every x amount of time (4 FPA max) until the end of whirlwind. This is another reason, albeit rather small one, to avoid very short and fast whirls in PvM, and prefer longer and slower moving whirls, at least when dual-wielding.)

Now, someone tell me where that wall of text appeared from.


Edit: One curious thing is that that there appears to be no "cool-down" pause with whirlwind in multiplayer. But I would guess that's because of a display error caused by desynch or something like that (Whirlwind is notorious for causing desynch in MP.), and in reality there is a cool-down pause, it just doesn't show in MP.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

No CBF mentioned here? Is that not as helpful for Whirlybarbs as it would be for other characters?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Getting frozen doesn't affect the attack speed of whirlwind so you basically get more attacks to the monsters when you're moving slower.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Todd - I've read Fabian post before that being frozen/slowed actually helps in this instance. It increases chance to hit in some cases...Quoting from Denton in #24.


EDIT - Pwned by Kimppi

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@Denton: Thanks for the detailed explanation

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I don't have any CBF on my council barb on purpose. I love getting chilled. Instead of whipping right through the pack you slowly move through it dicing them up like a blender.

My question is because of the surplus of points I decided to put a point in Battle Cry. I don't use any teleport yet (waiting on a Jah for Enigma), I used to run up and hit the stairs and pop back up to get the merc up there (thank you for that tip, I forget who posted it), but he was still dying a lot when they spawned with conviction (with Kiara's and guardian angel).

I was lvl ** when I decided to just drop the merc. My new method is buff up, run over to just below the room (they all spawn inside) and leap attack up. I land hit battle cry, whirl to the next cluster and Battle Cry and just whirl them down. With just 1 point and plus skills (skill lvl 11 with battle command) my Battle Cry lasts 36 seconds and reduces defense by 70% and damage by 35%. I have no idea how the actually numbers work out but it feels faster and 9 out of 10 times they're all dead before it wears off.

I have 2 unspent skill points (almost at 3, about to level) and was curious if anyone has any hard numbers on wether pumping Battle Cry up higher is worth it, or if it's just a placebo effect making me think it's faster? I've never seen any mention of anyone using Battle Cry for council runs before (except singers of course).

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Since I want Fortitude and Highlords on my runner and therefore don't have teleport (though my runner has found a Jah and a Sur which cubed with some HFrushed runes make for the enigma my poisonmancer wears) so I spend some time running over to the council. Therefore I put points in Increased Speed so I run really fast. I know this is kinda bad since you whirl faster too but I still like it - however I also love whene there is a Holy Freeze member since that slows the whirling down big time! I just hate when its a physical immune monster with HF since that makes zerking slow!

hmmm.. a love and hate in this post - I guess that whats happen when on betablockers

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


OK, I suspected that might be the reasoning, I just wasn't sure WW still checked at the same rate. Thanks.

edit: Also, I went with a point in Battle Cry in my build as well. It seems like it might be helpful. The range is very short, but even if you only hit a few Council Members with it, I figure that might buy a bit more safety and a higher hit rate for very little increased time. Certainly seems worth a point. I also went ahead and took Stamina+Speed. We'll see how that goes - it might end up being faster than I want once +skills and boots are added in. The nice thing about 1.13's respec is that it allows you to experiment in this way and adjust later if you don't like it.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

As long as you aren't taking points away from damage or really hampering your hork %, the more Increased Speed the better, because as soon as you get chilled it all goes away and you whirl nice and slow. Obviously if you're wearing CBF that's not the case, but there's no real reason you'd want it for Council running anyway (it's a little slow to Berserk Ismail sometimes, but honestly you're better off letting the merc handle him while you hork and then just leave him instead of taking the time, anyway).

There's always at least one CE Council Member, and HF gets in there from time to time as well. I've got level 12 or so IS (counting +skills) and the whirling is still too slow when chilled and under HF.

With the greatly increased rune drop odds in 1.13b, I'd strongly suggest testing out putting Mals in the merc's armor/helm. In 1.12 I found a Sol'd Glad's Bane and Um'd Vamp Gaze to be extremely helpful in keeping the moron alive (I would've used another Um or a Mal in the Bane, if those runes were more common for me), and I'd expect putting a Mal in each to be even more effective.

@Todd: I love Battle Cry, but I doubt it would speed up my runs any. If you notice serious problems with your hit rate, though, give it a try. Don't get carried away with trying to hit too many members at once, though, because you can get KO'd hella fast when you aren't swinging against some spawns.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I run at players3 and I find my merc is just getting in the way.

What players setting do you usually run? With players3 there are already many enough that I spend time picking up gold to check for "hidden" items.

(oh, yeah, I took the cheesy route. Respeced an old IK barb, and gave him a brand new perf roll (1st) fort in a 6% sup wyrm and two oath BB (no 1.07 base, but with this rune drop rate, I'll have to fire up my good old onezeroseven once more) and found some good rares, LoH and Arreats. I never figured it could be that easy.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Fixed that paragraph for you.

I feel the merc is an annoyance anyway

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



How so? I think the Might aura and Decrepify make up for the one corpse he almost always shatters.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

If you use fortitude you end up shattering a corpse every so often on your own anyways. It confused me at first why I had shattered corpses without my merc and no cold damage. Then I realized the chilling armor proc from fortitude shoots back at everything chilling it.. It doesn't end up breaking to many so the pros still out weigh that one con.

I still don't bother with a merc anyways. I just didn't see any big change with the might aura and got tired of rezing him. But then again that was when I started using Battle Cry so the lower armor on the council could be balancing out the higher damage from might/decrep. I'll have to try it out later.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



It's not the shattering. It's my armor's high repair cost (I use rals for crafting, so I'm often short) combined with resurrect fees that kills him, combined with the fact that for him to turn on his might aura takes longer than for him to die. BO, shaft/GA, Kira/gaze, doesn't matter. He still dies too often, and I'm not having trouble on my own. 1:30 on p3 isn't bad in my eyes, concidering how many charms/jewels/amus/dusks/STs/Monarchs/rings/circlets/rares I spend time on picking up.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@helvete: Geeze, what level is your merc? 83? Lower? I never had those kind of problems, even when I first started Council running at ~86. He'd die ~5-6 times an hour on average, but that went down sharply after a couple more levels. At 93, he dies twice an hour, max, and that's very rare. BTW, Shaft is a bad choice for Council runs since they're physical damage isn't really that tough on the merc, it's the elemental that's the big problem (unless he's under leveled). Glad's Bane really is great if you can use it, but Duriel's or Duress (people way overrate the harm involved with giving the merc cold damage) can be handy.

I used GA/Kira's for a long time, but I never really felt like it did much to help the merc's damage or survival. Glad's Bane/Gaze does wonders, though, and I'd suggest going with that or something like Duriel/Gaze. CoT is an option, but I find MDR drastically superior to %resists in this situation.

@those who have trouble with the merc dying: my first guess is he's too low a level. If that's not the case, my second guess would be you have a bad map with the members being too spread out. You want to be fighting with the merc, taking all the physical damage, either using teleport or the Durance entrance to put him right beside you and then using a whirl pattern that doesn't leave room for the members to mob the merc. Decrep speeds up runs by a large amount, and might is always an aide so it's important to tweak things in such a way to keep the merc in the fight. He's only there to decrep the things you're attacking, not to hold a flank or kill anything himself or to tank hydras.

Lastly, if you're having a run where no matter what you do the merc keeps almost dying (Convi + PI + Fana, etc./w.e) then just abandon the run. Don't let him die and fight on alone, just start a new run. Save yourself the headache and wasted time.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

helvete, the Arreat Summit says they're level ** monsters. Are you quite sure they're "only" level 85? That'd mean I can optimize my barb further, yay

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I am almost certain that the Council members ( not minions ) are **.

d2data ( Way Back Machine ) also says they are **. And GoMule, IIRC, show the items as **.

EDIT: BTW, Fabian - I think helvete goes by your own phrase, that you fixed later in the guide.

EDIT 2: to add to that thread. Both my Barb and my merc are 83 now - while runnign Travincal on /p1 - merc dies quite often. 1 every 5-6 runs. Barb, OTOH, has no problem whatsoever to staying alive. I've yet to even come close to half life bulb. I don't time my runs ( since then it feels like a job ), but I would guess that it's in 1:30 area as well, may be a bit faster, but I pick and ID all useful stuff.

Merc level would have role in his survivability, had he trouble hitting the Council, but Reaper has ITD, and just from the looks of it - he is hitting all the time.

So... I have no idea. Probably play style. Barb have to be around Merc, thus achieving two things:

- not letting him get hit too much
- using his decrepify to full power

I am still learning, so I suggest the same to everyone who has trouble.

BTW:

Kira, GA, Reaper's

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 3/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Travincal council members are definitely mlvl 85.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Any factual evidence to that claim?

Edit. IIRC the area is 85, however they are ** - much like AT bosses, isn't it?
Edit 2: or are those 87?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Can't that be checked by looking at the iLvl of the dropped items? They inherit the mlvl of the monster that drops them right?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



That is what I am saying - GoMule shows **, IIRC - at work and can't check.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

my GoMule shows it ilvl 85

couple recent pickups

Sazabi's Ghost Liberator 
Balrog Skin 
Defense: 891 
Durability: 19 of 30 
Required Level: 67 
Required Strength: 165 
Fingerprint: 0xbfdb33b8 
Item Level: 85 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
Unidentified 
+30% Faster Hit Recovery 
+300 to Attack Rating against Demons 
+400 Defense 
+25 to Strength 
+59 to Life  

Jewel of Fervor 
Jewel 
Required Level: 31 
Fingerprint: 0xc1de9ff 
Item Level: 85 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
+15% Increased Attack Speed

nothing special just showing ilvl

edit: just to make sure the supers and minions aren't different ilvl's, I seperated one of them from the pack and this dropped from a super unuiqe

Voulge of Worth 
Voulge 
Two Hand Damage: 7 - 21 
Durability: 42 of 50 
Required Level: 1 
Required Strength: 50 
Fingerprint: 0xca4942f7 
Item Level: 85 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
Unidentified 
+1 to Minimum Damage

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

You can just check the mlvl in ATMA's or GoMule's drop calculator.

The mlvl of a superunique is not tied to the area lvl.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



That's odd. I could have sworn that I have some ** ilvl items from them. I may be imagining things.

OK. Now why Arreat and d2data say they are **?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

This means that they're lvl 85 then. Both the minions and the uniques? Guess that's a good thing as they'll get easier to hit and you don't have to level up so far (up to lvl85 is fine, up to ** going on Pindle is a chore when you want to run Council instead).

I'll try them out with my lvl87 then and see how we fare (more how the Merc fares I guess, I was fine at 83 on /p1).

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Heh. I leveled a Barb to 92 on Pindle one time. If you want to deal with p3 council, p8 pindle should be a piece of cake.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



I know, I leveled my 93 sorc (just stripped her at restart, kept the char though, as a 93 was too much to just discard) on Pindle. I was planning on getting to 95 on Pindle alone but burned out and stopped playing for ½ year.

/p8 Pindle is easy. I only die if I drink coffee, get mana burn and don't drink a pot quickly enough. Runs aren't all that quick (50 secs avg) but they're very safe. Moron hasn't died in about 2 levels! Well, not true. He died yesterday once to cursed, fanatic which charged and mobbed him before I could do anything.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

None of this ( which level they are ) should really matter that much, since that chance to hit is what suffers when you are under-leveled ( correct me here ), and that should not be a problem if Merc has Reaper's... ITD doesn't work on bosses, but works on minions.

So the problem can be twofold: playing style and merc targeting a boss, thus not getting in enough hits and not leeching back as a result.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

ZeN: Well, it also works the other way around, the mobs have a harder time hitting you (or the merc) although that's a smaller part since it's not the melee damage that's the problem really.

It's both chance to hit and chance to get hit (well, rather chance for the monster to hit you/merc) that are affected by being underleveled/overleveled.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I was under the impression Ignore Target Defense doesn't work on Act Bosses, Superuniques and their Minions. Wrong?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



I am not positive about minions at all. From what I can recall - only bosses ( of all kinds : superuniques, random or act ). Cahmpions as well, IIRC.

Quick search gave this.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Got the merc working. It turnes out I was just VERY unlucky with the council rolls.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



The superunique's (Geleb, Ismail, and Toorc) are [highlight]mLvl 85[/highlight].
The council members (their minions) are [highlight]mLvl **[/highlight].

This is why you have items of both iLvl 85 and ** popping up. So, while the Arreat Summit does say that Council Members are mLvl ** (which is true), it doesn't give the mLvl of the Superuniques (which, naturally, would differ), which is where the confusion starts.

EDIT:
Also, for the ITD, it only works against normal monsters (it should work on minions), but Battle Cry would work at full effectiveness against all of the council (I don't think any of them would spawn with mods the wouldn't work at full effectiveness). It might be nice to spam a Battle Cry or two in the middle of the council if you and/or your merc are having trouble hitting.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


All of them are mlvl 85. This is why you never hear of people finding arachs or azurewraths, or +2skill circlets from them.

BC would overwrite decrep, so that's a no go unless you ditch the entire merc.

Do NOT use arreat summit for monster levels, except for the ones in normal.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Yup, the minions are level 85 too.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Leap and Leap attack are perfectly acceptable substitutes for teleport.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Doesn't merc stay behind though? Which is the whole ( most of at least ) point of having teleport?

Anyway - stepping in and out of Durance stairs is also a solution. However - after some tinkering - teleport is a huge boost.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 4/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

So, I started doing Trav now that I'm lvl87 (when I heared that Council is lvl85 I decided against waiting til **) and both me and merc are very safe. Merc basically only dies at conviction and even then it's a 50% chance if he dies or not (I always try to target the conviction guy first to minimize risks). I haven't died so far in 100 odd runs.

Anyway, away from anecdotes...

As I said I'm safe but my runs are abysmally slow. I'm avereging 80 secs on /p3. The problem is two fold;

1. Getting there. First I have to run through all of Kurast, then I have to run all through Travincal, down the stairs and finally up again. That takes a whole lot of time.


Sadly I don't really have a solution for this. Possibly putting a few skills in improved speed but that also decreases my killing speed so I'm not all that happy about it.
Using the runeword for runspeed (the bow one, is it Harmony?) isn't really an option either as then I'll miss 6 skills to warcries for BO and Horking.
Going to Act 4 is an option I guess but then I'd have to run back to the WP again so it feels kinda like a wash. Either I run in Kurast or I run back to WP.
I don't have Enigma and I can't use a teleport amulet as I'm using the Angellic combo due to abysmal AR.

2. The second problem is after horking there's a whole bunch of items (usually, sometimes there's hardly any at all. rng is a beautiful thing no?) that I have to sift through. This would be fine except for the fact that not all items show. I have to pick stuff up to see the other drops. This takes loads of time.

I don't really have a solution here. Maybe running at /p1 instead as there will generally drop less stuff but that feels like a crappy solution aswell.

Anyone got any ideas on these two? The one that bugs me the most is number 2 really.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Give up +6 skills for BO and horking. With a decent level BO and FI they really don't make that much of a difference. If you can shave 5 seconds of your run it would already be worth it.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I have solution to no2 perhaps. At least it works for me.
I have Enigma tough, so it's easy for me to do so: Roll map that has council divided. I have 5 council members on stairs and rest near compelling orb.
When I finish first 5 I tele to kill others. They usually don't get mixed up so I have two drop sites. No need for long checking anymore. I loose some time doing it like this, but in the end it's better time wise.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@Stephan: I should note that 3 of those skills comes from HoTO which also gives me 40 FCR which makes horking very very quick. I guess this is smaller than the time benefit from Harmony. I'll try the bow out and see.

@Frozen: That's actually a good suggestion. Not sure how it will work without Enigma but it's definetly worth a try, since the map is static there's not any need to find a good map anyway, just to find a good spread in spawnpoints.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

My Barb is still young so I haven't start the runs so my question might be stupid.

Can't we use the travincal WP?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@Nulio: What?

We are using the trav WP. The up and down stairs that I (and some others) speak about is to get the merc by your side as opposed to him coming running and showing up 5 minutes after the last council member is dead. Now you go down the stairs and the merc comes with you, immideatly up again and the merc is by your side as you start killing the council.

If I missunderstood you then please rephrase your question.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Yes. The problem is that the distance between the town WP and the place where you start in Act 3 is rather large. You could start in Act 4 like you would do for Meph runs, but then you face the same problem only now you have to walk back to the WP.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

You said Kurast and I thought of Upper Kurast instead of Kurast Docks and didn't understand

I understood now after stephan's post.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



You could simply cast a TP to get back to town, so there's no need to run all the way back to the WP. I've never tried it, though. Might be worth a shot, but like Stryfe my main problem is no. 2.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Hold alt as you hork, then you shouldn't miss a thing. This might be problematic for players who have their attention shared with other things though.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Holding alt shows the newly horked item and hides something older? So I always see what's horked as it is being horked?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I think the idea is that, with Alt held down as you hork, you should see a flash of orange before a rune gets pushed off-screen. So you at least know whether or not a rune is there, so you don't waste time sifting through junk when there isn't.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I go by the sound of a rune dropping. But I check too many items.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



If only it had a more distinctive sound, like "tadaaaa"....

I would love a mod that changes that sound :crazyeyes:

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I would prefer a "Allright" with the voice of Quagmire from the Family Guy show!

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Hahaha! If that was possible I would acctually enable the sound again. I haven't played Diablo with the sound turned on in many years.. I prefer watching some TV-show (like Family Guy )/movie while in windowed mode, or listening to some audiobook/music..

EDIT: sorry for the complete OT!

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I played this morning a bit and was very close to dinging **. Before ** it was the same times as the other days, after ** the runs was about 10-15 seconds quicker for some reason. I didn't really change anything (experimented with leap/leap attack to see if it was quicker but I didn't like it) except pressing alt before horking and during horking. I also tried to split them up a bit (i.e. kill a few infront of the Durance stairs, kill a few close to the compelling orb).

I can't say that any of those made a huge difference as I tried doing them before dinging aswell.

This is very very anecdotal but it was very noticable in shorter time.

Also, re: listening to the rune sound. I haven't had the sound on in basically any game (of D2 sort) in years and years. I always have music on instead.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Something I "discovered" whilst running The Pits with my latest barb. I say "discovered" as I may already be common knowledge to Hork Pros, but I can't recall ever seeing it posted.

If you enter the command /nopickup it makes horking much quicker as it stops that annoying thing when your cursor hovers over an item instead of a body and you don't hork. You can just walk around auto-horking with FI on right mouse button.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Ey, sweet. I've read about that command but never really understood what it was. I'll definetly start using that. I hate it when I accidentally pick up something or when the horking stops due to hovering over an item. That will speed up the runs a little aswell. Not a lot but one second makes a huge difference in the amount of runs I was planning.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

That command is awesome. I always play with the nopickup turned on, it helps a lot.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 5/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I don't think I played without /nopickup once ever since it became available ( 1.09? ).

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Do you have to type it each time you start the game the same as the /players X command or can you set that somehow?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

It's the same as /players x. It's saved between games as long as the Game.exe process isn't terminated.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I really would like to find the runes for Infinity (and if possible Enigma ). I'm 1.11 self found, and I really don't feel like running LK! I've been sitting on 2 x Lo for ~1 year now, and already have Fortitude, so I think I can build a strong Travincal runner.

Is it worth investing in one of these Barbs pre-1.13, or are the high rune odds that much lower. What do you guys think?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Even with the lower rune drops in 1.11/1.12, the Council running barb is one of the most efficient methods of high rune hunting. Probably the absolute best method for those of us who don't want to HF rush/run LK.

You shouldn't expect to find a Ber overnight, obviously, but with decent gear (which I, uh, *think* you can cobble together ) you should be very competitive with LK in terms of runes over time, plus the council can drop Jah and Cham. Personally, Council running with GibCouncilGrief was one of the most enjoyable things I did in D2.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

A little tidbit about run speed.

IF can get it ( I have only 1 for now ) - 2 HoTo on switch are very useful. For prebuffing, obviously, and for faster horking, but also - for raising your speed by boosting you Increaed Speed skill. That way you don't need to put more than 1 point in it and can have both - faster running to get to Travincal and slower running for wirlwinding.

Naturally - the boost is not enormous ( mine gets me 7% with 1 HoTo ), but it's still a solution.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@ZeN: you know, that's quite brilliant! I'd have to ditch my dual Ali Baba's though... and cube two Ists. Oh well, I'll give it a night's sleep and then decide.

Though I really hope I can find another Lo soon. Right now I'm whirling with a Grief PB... and a Lightsabre as a placeholder, because it matches my stats. I'm thinking about replacing it with some CB weapon, though I fear that might slower my whirls. Any input on some fast CB weapon? ^^

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


I was thinking something similar, settling on one Echoing weapon and one +2 Barb weapon for my switch instead of dual Echoing ones in order to squeeze out a bit more speed. But I can barely notice any difference even when I look for it. Obviously my +2 isn't as good as +6 from dual HotO's, but if you've already got FRW from your boots and +2 skills from Arreat's, it seems like those Vex runes would be better spent elsewhere. Unless, of course, you've already got dual HotO's lying around and nothing better to do with them...

edit: @Arkardo - If you want to test it out, try it first with some +2 Barb weapons you can buy from Halbu before you go cubing valuable runes. With the diminishing returns on Increased Speed, +4 won't be much different than +6.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I'm using an Echoing weapon and a HoTo, planning on making a HoTo once I find/cube a Vex. Definitely recommend it, especially for Enigma users since you teleport much more.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Sorry for the late reply. Just recovered from Vegas.

Just for future reference, I never use AS to look anything up. I was referencing the other post. I do all my lookups on the diablo2.diablowiki.net hosted by this website, which I assume should have the most correct information. However, time and time again, it seems as though those who know the correct information are not the people who take the time to update the wiki. I guess I'll go and make the corrections yet again :/. It would just save so much time if every time information was corrected, that somebody would go and update the wiki (or double-check it).

That said, thanks for the correction, and it certainly seems correct if multiple people are supporting it. I knew the individual member were, and it makes sense that their minions would also be of the same level.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



I came to the conclusion when I forgot to switch from prebuffing ( HoTo + Echoing Glavie ) and ran with it - I noticed that the speed was higher.

So it is definitely noticeable.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Thanks for the feedback, maareek. Ok, so basically you're saying it's a good investment pre-1.13 as well. 1 Lo goes to Grief but eventually I'll get it's value back. Naturally, I don't expect to find Ber or any other high rune for that matter overnight. If I do this, it will be a long term project. For now, this barb gets the number 5 on my build to do list.

A couple more questions:

Did GibCouncilGrief (cool name btw) get any good 'rocks' from the Council?

Is 2 x Grief that better relative to Grief + Oath? (I'd rather keep 1 Lo)

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



As far as rocks go, the Council has been by far the most giving target: a Sur, several Lem/Puls, tons of lower and something in the Um-Gul range (Mal, I think)tcan't remember right off hand (I think it was a Mal). Fabian picked up at least two Lo's from the Council around the time I got my Sur (ie, before 1.13 came out) and there have been at least three other people who found Los there pre-1.13. You can have a look at the member's rune drop odds in ATMA (or check Fabian's original "High Runes and the High Council" thread) to see just how good they are.

I wouldn't suggest going for Dual Grief, no, not that I have experience with that; I just doubt it would provide enough of a performance boost to justify the cost. If it were 1.13b drop rates, then I'd say go for it, but that's not the case. If you have an Oath or Death, I'd just use that with the Grief (I don't have an Oath, but I found Death to outpower Death Cleaver with my Grief BA by a decent margin, despite the slow attack). If you don't have either, I'd go with Grief/Oath.

With Grief BA (lowest damage roll possible), 1.07 Death BA (~mid roll), Fort, Arreat's, Gore Riders, Highlord's, LoH, two mana leech rings, SoE and GF charms (I paid out a lot for those charms so I'm still using them heh; most are res, some are AR/dmg) he averages 70-80 seconds (total) per run at p3 even given my rust. Granted, you'll be going with a PB, but it's possible your PB will outdamage my BA.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@ maareek: Thanks for the heads up.

I have 1 Death BA, 1 Oath Cryptic sword, and several Death Cleavers. I also have the runes for a second Oath, but I'll have to check and see if I have a suitable base (ie, higher wsm and higher damage sword than cryptic sword).

Which brings us to



You got that right. I prefer sword setup for various reasons. However, I don't see how on earth my still hypothetical PB would outdamage your BA. You have 1.07 bases and max damage charms. I don't. The IAS% rolled isn't enough for the last WW bp?

EDIT:

Please ignore the above! I have completely misread your post. Your Grief is a non-1.07 BA with the worst damage roll (+340 according to AS), meaning an average roll PB would probably have higher damage, and your charms are not 1.07 max damage either...

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

As a reference point for others building similar runners, here's where my Whirler is at clvl 85, along with various comments and questions.

Gear (mostly standard, except I'm using axes and don't have Fort yet): Grief BA (38 IAS, +364 dam), Oath eSC (260ED), pTopaz Leviathan (22DR, +49Str), pTopaz Arreats, LoH, War Travs (50MF), String, 6ML/5LL/28Cold/28Lit/+5MinDam ring, 118AR/31Life/19Cold/30Lit ring, 12Fire/14Lit/16MF/Tele ammy.

Charms: Gheeds, 1 4% Shimmering, 1 11% Lightning, various Sharp/Fine/Steel charms, 3x4 space left over

Switch: 1 Echoing, 1 Berserker's (+2 all Barb Skills)

Stats: 53 Dex (+20 from Arreat's) = 73 to equip the Small Crescent, 221 Vit (2467 Life w/BO), rest in Str = 201 (289 w/gear), 25 unspent stat points

Skills: Max WW, BO, & Mastery, 5 pts. Double Swing, 1 pt. Increased Speed, 2 pts. Natural Resists, 9 pts. Find Item, 1 Battle Cry, prereqs, 4 unspent

Merc: clvl 84 A2 Might with Shael'd Reapers, Rockstopper, Iron Pelt


He started running /p3 Council at clvl 82. I've never felt particularly threatened at ~2400 life and haven't died yet in ~75 runs. The main problem, as others have noted, was merc deaths. But the merc is doing considerably better at 84 than he was at 81. Now he dies maybe once every 4-5 runs, rather than every other run. In one more level, he'll switch to an ethereal Gladiator's Bane and a Vamp (probably with a Ral in the Vamp for FireRes, maybe a Sol or Shael in the armor). I expect his survivability to improve considerably after that.

QUESTION 1: Do mercs benefit from FHR?

I agree with earlier comments that Shaftstop is not the best merc armor for this task - something with MDR to counter the hydras is more useful. I've also found that I can improve his survival rate by adjusting my tactics slightly. After teleporting in, he's always immediately engaged with one Council Member. If I whirl on that member (to take advantage of the Decrep), the other members all swarm us and the merc is quickly overwhelmed. But if I first take a couple passes on the nearby council members to distract them and then go back to the merc, I can finish off the pile of them before he gets killed. Ideally, he could just suck it all up and I could use the Decrep to greater effect, but I think he'll need some more levels and the GladBane for that.

Battle Cry has proved somewhat useful - I can knock off one quick one after my first whirl and hit a few members while I distract them from swamping the merc. As the merc becomes tougher, I'll probably use it less. Still, for just 2 points I think it was worth the investment and was very handy elsewhere in the game.

I'm happy with the point in Increased Speed, but wouldn't invest in it any further myself. It's not uncommon to go a run without being frozen for at least the first half of the fight, and the WW is bit tricky to control well at high speeds. If I'm ever swamped with Vex runes, I'd go with ZeN's dual HotO suggestion, but that seems like a lot of investment for a slight improvement. But one HotO might be nice for the faster horking.

I guess I'll put those unspent skill points into Find Item, though the increases are quite marginal. On the switch (and w/BC), I've got slvl 17 which already gives a 49% hork. But there's not much else worth investing in. Meh.

Basically, /p3 runs feel pretty safe and routine, though I'm still improving my tactics. If I can make the merc more survivable, I think I can move up to /p5 without major issues. But /p7 would take some more killing power, namely Fortitude, plus more points in Str and maybe another Grief. Once the merc can wear the GladBane, I'll time some runs.

QUESTION 2: How do people handle picking up and sorting all this stuff? I've been doing a first pass to pick up gold and any useful items, then horking and doing a second pass. It would probably be more time-efficient to forget the gold and just look at items, but 1) it's a lot of gold, and 2) I'm hoping that walking around a bit and picking it up might help reveal other items that were hidden.


edit: Forgot to include some LCS numbers. WW damage shows 761-1481 for the Grief, 1983-3311 for the Oath, after BC and Might. AR is ~3800. Def is ~8000.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



The Grief hits the final bp (though with little room to spare). Only the Death is 1.07; the charms and Grief are 1.10+ (and the Grief isn't eth). All the charms on him add a total of 301 AR and 18 max damage. I'm pretty sure you can beat those numbers easily (also roughly 50 Fire/Light/Cold res; Fabian and Zerth outbid me on most of the damage/GF charms, but I picked up several nice res/GF ones) as far as the charms go.

It's pretty doubtful you'll beat out the damage on the Death (only 336% on my roll, but the 1.07 boost and being a BA probably puts it out of reach for a 1.10+ sword) but if you get a decent Grief roll (even 360 would give you a better average damage; though it'd take 377+ to beat the max damage on my BA) you should have fairly comparable numbers considering better charms.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Hi all,

quick question re council running under the new 1.13b patch-MF does not make a difference for rune drops at all correct?

cheers

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Correct.

(10 chars)

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

How much gold does it cost to repair a Grief BA and how often?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


I forget the exact cost, but it's nothing compared to what you're picking up in Hell. Maybe 10,000 total? I'm about to do some more runs, so I'll check again. For frequency, someone else reported ~13 runs at /p3. That sounds right to me, but I'll occasionally stop and repair if I'm already resurrecting a merc, selling items, stashing stuff, etc. so I'm not sure.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 6/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@ Todd: Thanks. That's much better than I thought.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Repair cost from 4/26 was ~9300. The durability went from 26/26 to 13/26 in 7 runs, so it will go 12-14 runs depending on how much you want to push it.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Just ran two rounds of p3 tests: first round I tried to avoid whirling at decreped monsters (game helped me out with bad spawns; including one merc death) and the axe broke during run 13 (broke = 0/26), second round I got better spawns and whirled similar to usual resulting in 18 runs until it broke. Cost to repair from zero was 10,568 (iirc) gold, which is nothing, obviously.

That seems a reasonable enough average (~15 runs to 0) to me, since my p1 goldfind runs required 1 repair per 30 minutes.

Edit: multi-owned ... by a single person! :crazyeyes:

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

The merc just leveled to 85, so I regeared him with a Sol'd eth Gladiator's Bane and a good, Ral'd Vamp. Wow. He went from being a serious issue to being invulnerable. His total MDR=33, total PDR=24, DR=20%, Def=10000 w/Shout. He can stand cursed in a mob of Council Members and hydras long enough to give me plenty of time to kill them even at /p5. I'm not sure the slight extra time involved is worth it without doing some timing, but the merc is definitely solid. Thanks to whomever suggested that gear combo way upthread - I can't seem to locate the post anymore.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@Todd: That was me. It was an idea several people came up with in the Piles of Money tourney and I found it worked better than anything else I'd tried. Btw, not sure if you've encountered it but Conviction can be an issue from time to time. Make sure you tank the hydras when conviction is around and try to pay extra super duper attention to keep from getting swarmed when conviction is around: the FE/LE/CE added onto the base damage can really put a hurt on him fast in those situations.

With that setup, my merc only dies in those two situations, and even then only when I more or less let him die. It was a remarkable improvement over every other setup I had given him, without a doubt.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

It is very similar to Kira + GA setup then.

My merc, at level 87 ( took my Barb 82 -> 87 on Council, BTW ) dies only to Conviction or Extra Fast + Fana or something nasty like that. And that only if I am not taking care of him long enough.

I wonder how much of difference MDR really makes.

FE/LE/CE do not bother him, AFAICT.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Any of you using CBF gear? I get the feeling that it is slowing me down. Not when whirling through the pack as it's easier to get good whirls and I hit them more often but when they run away and I have to chase them down.

I'm using Kira and GA aswell and he only dies to conviction, frenzy (probably with an extra strong) or might (with an extra strong). Otherwise he's fine. Especially if I try to whirl the ones around him to put them in hit recovery.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Two quick questions:
- What players settings are recommended to run at? I can handle /players5 fairly comfortably, /players7 is a bit hairy.
- What run times should I be aiming for? I seem to spend ages sorting through the junk at the moment - I'm paranoid about missing something.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I run at p1, sometimes at p3.

And yeah - I am too paranoid and sorting through the junk usually takes more time than actually killing the Council.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@max: Have you checked out Fabians spreadsheet? Personally I run at /p3 mostly cause Fabian said that's the most efficient setting but also because I already spend a lot of time sorting through the loot and more loot will make it take even longer.

Runtimes. That's the hard one. I'm currently at 60-70 secs per run but I'm trying to improve. My gear isn't very great so with upgrades I'm sure I could reach 50-60 quite easily.

As for sorting the loot I have a few tricks that I try to employ.
1. I try to kill them separated. Not a big clump in the middle.
2. I always check drops before horking, pick up everything intresting (in the clump that's bound to be no matter 1.)
3. Move so some of the items go off the screen (made easier with 1.)

Those seems to be the best for paranoia and they're quicker than picking up gold or stuff. However, if anyone got other tricks I'll be happy to hear them.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

/p3 is probably best, if only because of your concern about clutter. I ran with a full inventory (including a cube) and empty belt (emptied while running up the dock), and just picked stuff up randomly (only getting gold and potions in the process) until everything was in sight. There's other much better ways probably, but this strange style worked fine when I did my runs...

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

My tactics to deal with item spam:
- Carry tomes of town portal and identify to pickup scrolls quickly. From time time sell your nearly full tomes and buy nearly empty ones back.
- Drink a potion before picking up the same potion. I have my fingers over the 3-4 hotkeys for this.
- Have at least a few empty spaces to pick up 1-square items.
- Don't run /players7. I find that /P5 just about balances kill speed and item spam.
- Run a bit away from the loot with Alt pressed to see if something new appears when you move. If not, you're done.

With these tactics, I don't feel the need to separate the packs. The map I run has Toorc waiting outside while I kill the rest inside. That's separated enough for me.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

My map has the Counsil split in two. While I'm nearly done fighting the stair half, the other half starts coming out. This makes the drops nicely spread out and minimizes the time loss.

I personally run on /p5, but my gear is pretty good, if I may say so myself.
Character dump:

Spoiler

Name: Snoeihard
Class: Barbarian
Experience: 1394270496
Level: **

Naked/Gear
Strength: 118/133
Dexterity: 136/140
Vitality: 271/271
Energy: 10/10
HP: 1273/1542
Mana: 97/97
Stamina: 425/445
Defense: 34/2180
AR: 665/1056

Fire: 143/103/43
Cold: 66/26/-34
Lightning: 136/96/36
Poison: 66/26/-34

MF: 44 Block: 17
GF: 85
FR/W: 30
FHR: 30
IAS: 92
FCR: 25

Bash: 1/2
Leap: 1/2
Double Swing: 0/0
Stun: 1/2
Double Throw: 0/0
Leap Attack: 1/2
Concentrate: 1/2
Frenzy: 0/0
Whirlwind: 20/21
Berserk: 1/2

Sword Mastery: 20/21
Axe Mastery: 0/0
Mace Mastery: 0/0
Pole Arm Mastery: 0/0
Throwing Mastery: 0/0
Spear Mastery: 0/0
Increased Stamina: 1/2
Iron Skin: 1/2
Increased Speed: 1/2
Natural Resistance: 4/5

Howl: 1/2
Find Potion: 1/2
Taunt: 0/0
Shout: 1/2
Find Item: 20/21
Battle Cry: 0/0
Battle Orders: 20/21
Grim Ward: 0/0
War Cry: 0/0
Battle Command: 1/2

Horadric Cube
Fingerprint: 0x88d033e
Item Level: 13
Version: Expansion 1.10+

String of Ears
Demonhide Sash
Defense: 111
Durability: 22 of 22
Required Level: 29
Required Strength: 20
Fingerprint: 0x81cc7cd
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
8% Life stolen per hit
+176% Enhanced Defense
+15 Defense
Damage Reduced by 12%
Magic Damage Reduced by 13
+10 Maximum Durability

Gore Rider
War Boots
Defense: 158
Durability: 34 of 34
Required Level: 47
Required Strength: 94
Fingerprint: 0x7a94e5f5
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+30% Faster Run/Walk
15% Chance of Crushing Blow
15% Deadly Strike
10% Chance of Open Wounds
+194% Enhanced Defense
+20 Maximum Stamina
Requirements -25%
+10 Maximum Durability

Ghoul Gyre
Ring
Required Level: 74
Fingerprint: 0xaa25eb35
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+51 to Attack Rating
6% Mana stolen per hit
5% Life stolen per hit
Fire Resist +27%
+2 to Light Radius

Laying of Hands
Bramble Mitts
Defense: 87
Durability: 12 of 12
Required Level: 63
Required Strength: 50
Fingerprint: 0xd6eb9555
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
10% Chance to cast level 3 Holy Bolt on striking
+20% Increased Attack Speed
+350% Damage to Demons
+25 Defense
Fire Resist +50%


Death Loop
Ring
Required Level: 48
Fingerprint: 0x1159a3bd
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+91 to Attack Rating
6% Life stolen per hit
+2 to Dexterity
All Resistances +8
Lightning Resist +13%
6% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items

Highlord's Wrath
Amulet
Required Level: 65
Fingerprint: 0x1206c932
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to All Skills
+20% Increased Attack Speed
Adds 1 - 30 Lightning Damage
33% Deadly Strike (Based on Character Level)
Lightning Resist +35%
Attacker Takes Lightning Damage of 15

Sharp Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x73902bd0
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+9 to Maximum Damage
+70 to Attack Rating
+27 to Life

Amber Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0xa80133b8
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+18 to Life
Lightning Resist +11%

Amber Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x4356005d
Item Level: 69
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+16 to Life
Lightning Resist +11%

Sharp Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 23
Fingerprint: 0xbacc1334
Item Level: 99
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+9 to Maximum Damage
+73 to Attack Rating
+23 to Life

Fine Small Charm of Dexterity
Small Charm
Required Level: 21
Fingerprint: 0x25c082ac
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+3 to Maximum Damage
+13 to Attack Rating
+2 to Dexterity

Guillaume's Face
Winged Helm
Defense: 217
Durability: 40 of 40
Required Level: 58
Required Strength: 115
Fingerprint: 0xdf90150
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+30% Faster Hit Recovery
40% Enhanced Damage
35% Chance of Crushing Blow
15% Deadly Strike
+120% Enhanced Defense
+15 to Strength
+9 to Life
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Ruby Jewel of Hope

Ruby Jewel of Hope
Jewel
Required Level: 58
Fingerprint: 0xf059f5b0
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
40% Enhanced Damage
+9 to Life

Sharp Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x3954b02b
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+10 to Maximum Damage
+73 to Attack Rating
+27 to Life

Fortitude
Archon Plate
ElSolDolLo
Defense: 1572
Durability: 60 of 60
Required Level: 63
Required Strength: 103
Fingerprint: 0x714aad2c
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
20% Chance to cast level 15 Chilling Armor when struck
+25% Faster Cast Rate
300% Enhanced Damage
+200% Enhanced Defense
+15 Defense
+132 to Life (Based on Character Level)
Replenish Life +7
+5% to Maximum Lightning Resist
All Resistances +25
Damage Reduced by 7
12% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
+1 to Light Radius
4 Sockets (4 used)
Socketed: El Rune
Socketed: Sol Rune
Socketed: Dol Rune
Socketed: Lo Rune

El Rune
Required Level: 11
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: +50 to Attack Rating
+1 to Light Radius
Armor: +15 Defense
+1 to Light Radius
Shields: +15 Defense
+1 to Light Radius

Sol Rune
Required Level: 27
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: +9 to Minimum Damage
Armor: Damage Reduced by 7
Shields: Damage Reduced by 7

Dol Rune
Required Level: 31
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: Hit Causes Monster to Flee 25%
Armor: Replenish Life +7
Shields: Replenish Life +7

Lo Rune
Required Level: 59
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: 20% Deadly Strike
Armor: +5% to Maximum Lightning Resist
Shields: +5% to Maximum Lightning Resist

Shimmering Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x461fa861
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+17 to Life
All Resistances +3

Gheed's Fortune
Grand Charm
Required Level: 62
Fingerprint: 0xdaa1ba99
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
85% Extra Gold from Monsters
Reduces all Vendor Prices 14%
38% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items

Heart of the Oak
Flail
KoVexPulThul
One Hand Damage: 1 - 36
Durability: 16 of 16
Required Level: 55
Required Strength: 31
Required Dexterity: 25
Fingerprint: 0x499ad752
Item Level: 48
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+3 to All Skills
+40% Faster Cast Rate
+75% Damage to Demons
+100 to Attack Rating against Demons
+150% Damage to Undead
Adds 3 - 14 Cold Damage Over 3 Secs (75 Frames)
7% Mana stolen per hit
+10 to Dexterity
Replenish Life +20
Increase Maximum Mana 15%
All Resistances +38
Level 14 Raven (60/60 Charges)
Level 4 Oak Sage (25/25 Charges)
Ethereal
4 Sockets (4 used)
Socketed: Ko Rune
Socketed: Vex Rune
Socketed: Pul Rune
Socketed: Thul Rune

Ko Rune
Required Level: 39
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: +10 to Dexterity
Armor: +10 to Dexterity
Shields: +10 to Dexterity

Vex Rune
Required Level: 55
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: 7% Mana stolen per hit
Armor: +5% to Maximum Fire Resist
Shields: +5% to Maximum Fire Resist

Pul Rune
Required Level: 45
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: +75% Damage to Demons
+100 to Attack Rating against Demons
Armor: +30% Enhanced Defense
Shields: +30% Enhanced Defense

Thul Rune
Required Level: 23
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: Adds 3 - 14 Cold Damage Over 3 Secs (75 Frames)
Armor: Cold Resist +30%
Shields: Cold Resist +35%

Blade of Ali Baba
Tulwar
One Hand Damage: 34 - 76
Durability: 32 of 32
Required Level: 35
Required Strength: 70
Required Dexterity: 42
Fingerprint: 0xebda1d9d
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
118% Enhanced Damage
+12 to Dexterity
+15 to Mana
220% Extra Gold from Monsters (Based on Character Level)
**% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (Based on Character Level)
2 Sockets (0 used)

Grief
Phase Blade
EthTirLoMalRal
One Hand Damage: 31 - 35
Indestructible
Required Level: 59
Required Strength: 25
Required Dexterity: 136
Fingerprint: 0x93d41229
Item Level: **
Version: Expansion 1.10+
35% Chance to cast level 15 Venom on striking
+32% Increased Attack Speed
Damage +397
Ignore Target's Defense
-25% Target Defense
+165% Damage to Demons (Based on Character Level)
Adds 5 - 30 Fire Damage
-22% to Enemy Poison Resistance
20% Deadly Strike
Prevent Monster Heal
+2 to Mana after each Kill
+13 Life after each Kill
5 Sockets (5 used)
Socketed: Eth Rune
Socketed: Tir Rune
Socketed: Lo Rune
Socketed: Mal Rune
Socketed: Ral Rune

Eth Rune
Required Level: 15
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: -25% Target Defense
Armor: Regenerate Mana 15%
Shields: Regenerate Mana 15%

Tir Rune
Required Level: 13
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: +2 to Mana after each Kill
Armor: +2 to Mana after each Kill
Shields: +2 to Mana after each Kill

Lo Rune
Required Level: 59
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: 20% Deadly Strike
Armor: +5% to Maximum Lightning Resist
Shields: +5% to Maximum Lightning Resist

Mal Rune
Required Level: 49
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: Prevent Monster Heal
Armor: Magic Damage Reduced by 7
Shields: Magic Damage Reduced by 7

Ral Rune
Required Level: 19
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Weapons: Adds 5 - 30 Fire Damage
Armor: Fire Resist +30%
Shields: Fire Resist +35%

Lightsabre
Phase Blade
One Hand Damage: 103 - 135
Indestructible
Required Level: 58
Required Strength: 25
Required Dexterity: 136
Fingerprint: 0x79de3dc2
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
5% Chance to cast level 18 Chain Lightning on attack
+20% Increased Attack Speed
200% Enhanced Damage
Adds 10 - 30 Damage
Ignore Target's Defense
Adds 60 - 120 Magic Damage
Adds 1 - 200 Lightning Damage
7% Mana stolen per hit
Lightning Absorb 25%
+7 to Light Radius


Mercenary:

Name: Waheed
Race: Desert Mercenary
Type: Off-Nightmare
Experience: 82709940
Level: **
Dead?: false

Naked/Gear
Strength: 191/191
Dexterity: 154/154
HP: 1887/1887
Defense: 1387/2339
AR: 1946/1946

Fire: 220/180/120
Cold: 220/180/120
Lightning: 220/180/120
Poison: 220/180/120

Kira's Guardian
Tiara
Defense: 155
Durability: 25 of 25
Required Level: 77
Fingerprint: 0xbba2e1b5
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+20% Faster Hit Recovery
+115 Defense
All Resistances +68
Cannot Be Frozen


Guardian Angel
Templar Coat
Defense: 797
Durability: 60 of 60
Required Level: 45
Required Strength: 118
Fingerprint: 0xcad98fee
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to Paladin Skill Levels
+30% Faster Block Rate
20% Increased Chance of Blocking
+220 to Attack Rating against Demons (Based on Character Level)
+190% Enhanced Defense
+15% to Maximum Poison Resist
+15% to Maximum Cold Resist
+15% to Maximum Lightning Resist
+15% to Maximum Fire Resist
+4 to Light Radius


The Reaper's Toll
Thresher
Two Hand Damage: 39 - 463
Durability: 45 of 65
Required Level: 75
Required Strength: 114
Required Dexterity: 89
Fingerprint: 0xc002c2d7
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
33% Chance to cast level 1 Decrepify on striking
229% Enhanced Damage
Ignore Target's Defense
Adds 4 - 44 Cold Damage Over 2 Secs (42 Frames)
13% Life stolen per hit
33% Deadly Strike
Requirements -25%

EDIT: wow, the displayed resists here are way off. The correct ones for Hell are 83/6/76/6.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I do 45 second /p3 runs with a dual 1.07 eBA grief enigma WWer

- 3x3 empty space
- only pick up clutter (gold and potions) when I clearly hear a rune/charm/jewel drop that does not show
- drink a mana/health potion before picking one up, like AJK suggests
- teleport a bit to the right to change some of the items shown
- teleport back to travincal wp to get to act4 at the end of each run
- use dual spirits on switch for faster teleport and added mana
- only cast bo with dual spirit switch as soon as the barb appears to the travincal wp

Oh, and take time to roll a map where the council spawns on the lower left corner of the temple.

As a side note, I pack some MF (goldwrap, gheeds, enigma, wartravs). Unique jewelry from the council is always appreciated

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

No Battle Command zerth? That's the only surprising thing, and the only thing I think I'd do differently.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I picked up that habit when doing AT runs with my blizzie with a cta on switch. I had the switch right click at BO all the time, so that I could hit the wp, switch, bo, switch and continue with the rest of the run. It's not that BC is necessary, but I can see why you cast it

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



It's counted before resists, so enough of it will negate most of the ele damage in travi. Even with conviction.

...so if it's raining runes, a MALed bane, with a 3MAL artisan's tiara of life everlasting should negate all damage except poison and might/fanat combo. Conviction and amp shouldn't matter.

EDIT: That'd be 48 MDR and 45PDR. The most even distribution I could come up with.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I've been thinking about replacing my Lightsabre with either Death or Oath, but found no ethereal Colossus Blade with 4 sockets available. However, searching through my old 1.07 stashes revealed:



and:



Also found a Vex from an LK chest.

I have been holding off unifying my 1.07 stuff with 1.13, but this might seem like a good time to do it. Any advise on this matter? Like, which one of the two, or... well, whatever comes to mind.

P.S. GoMule can't seem to load 1.07 stashes created by ATMA (it says 'disconnected'). Any way around this?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


I think you'll have to put items on chars and forward them to 1.13, then open them in GoMule.

Started my own Barb today. Got him to ~clvl 55, lovin' the dual Oath so far (of course). Can't wait to see how he'll be doing at Trav! I'll report back in a few days.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


To expand on DZJB's explanation, here is my understanding:

1) GoMule can read and write LoD 1.10+ characters
2) GoMule can read and write ATMA 1.10+ stashes

(by 1.10+ I mean anything after the 1.10 beta versions.)

So for Classic characters of any version, or 1.09 or earlier characters and stashes, you need to use ATMA or do in-game muling.

To convert items from an earlier version to a later version, that needs to be done in-game, not by ATMA or GoMule. So for that you need to have a character convert. Typically, if you have a high-level 1.07 character you don't want to bring the character forward, so you mule the items to a 1.07 level 1 character and convert that character by opening the character with the appropriate version (1.09, 1.11, etc.) of Diablo. Once the character and the items the character are carrying are converted, then you can use ATMA. If the version you convert to is 1.10+ or later, then you can use GoMule.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 7/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

To ask a silly question: with a WW barb, does dual wielding beat 1-handed + shield or 2-handed?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@Jason: Dual wielding definetly beats 1h + shield. Depending on what you're wielding 2h I guess they're about even. If you have some awsome weapons 1h (e.g. Grief) I believe dual wield would be better.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



It depends.

1-handed + shield is only necessary when dueling in barbarian vs. barbarian duels. Unless you only have a single one-handed weapon that completely outclasses all of your other one and two handed weapons then you are better off with one of the other options. A two-handed weapon can give you more range so that you can whirl around monsters without them hitting you. The downside is that not many two-handed weapons can reach the -60 breakpoint for maximum whirlwind attack speed. Dual wielding has the highest damage setup: dual griefs (when you have plenty of enhanced damage yourself and/or a might merc), optimally in ethereal 1.07 zerkers, but it seems like ATMA bugging is going to be fixed soon. I believe (without checking the exact numbers) that dual regular griefs are still very competitive with a BotD great poleaxe. Dual wielding has another potential advantage: it hits more often. This allows for more consistent leaching and if you have lots of off-weapon (so that it applies to both weapons) crushing blow or other modifers they will trigger more often from more hits.

Whether you go two-handed or dual wield is up to your preferences and what weapons you have available to you.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


What do you mean exactly?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



This one here: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7468975&postcount=42

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I do have one question regarding the amulet

Highlord ( 1 all skill + DS is useful other mods are not necessary)
vs
Seraph's Hymn (2 all skill + 20-50% Damage To Demons (varies) and+150-250 To Attack Rating Against Demons (varies))

Which one would be more useful?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Sylar, I use Highlord's on my Trav runner, whose DPS is 154744. When I changed the numbers around and pretended I had a perfect Seraph's instead, that number changed to 145050. I understand this doesn't mean much without some perspective, but that's a very big difference, much bigger than most changes I try when switching gear around.

In short, I think Highlord's is a lot better.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@Fabian I assume you did take into account chance to hit, which should be higher with Seraph or Metalgrid?

Additionally - 154K per second? Or am I reading it wrong?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Yes zen, everything is accounted for. I've made an excel spreadsheet where I input all relevant stuff, and it calculates (among other things) how much damage I do based on those things. I wrote a bit about in my Trav runner's thread (now outdated), found here.

Edit: Actually, here's a screenshot of what that spreadsheet looks like nowadays. There's alot of random numbers along the marginal, never mind those. They've been used to put a number on how good each of my charms are. It's made for self use so I guess not everything is completely self explanatory. It's an awesome tool though, that's for sure.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Yes, hard to believe that kind of DPS, but true. Those 1.07 axes make a great difference.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

How much of a difference, damage wise, does 1.07 Eth Zerker make, as opposed to 1.10+ one?

I would imagine that 1.07 charms make much more of a difference.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I should have said the eth bugged 1.07 axes make the difference.

The 390 damage one would deal 26 more average damage than a regular eth 1.10+ axe. And 50 more average damage than a non eth 1.10 Grief. That kind of damage (26 and 50) doesn't seem like a lot until you multiply it with all those damage modifiers. And then double it for the deadly strike.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I keep seeing Whirlers with 20 points in Item Find.

If a person has a HOTO on switch and the usual semi-uber gear it seems like once you've got a 50% chance on Item Find that any points beyond that are wasted. In my case, I have 8 hard points in IF and with my gear I'm already at 50%. For that reason I stopped pumping Item Find and currently have 6 unused skill points.

Wouldn't those extra 12 (20 minus 8 equals 12) points be better spent somewhere else like Shout for example?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

With my current setup, changing nothing else, I have the following numbers:

1.07 eth BA's (36-159): 154744 DPS
Regular BA's (24-71): 139966 DPS
Phase Blades (30-35): 135677 DPS

This is with one +370 and one +390 Grief, same roll used for all base weapons of course.

As for 1.07 max damage charms, plain ones can easily be outclassed by good regular charms. I use 8 Grand Charms, 8 Small Charms and 2 Large Charms. The two worst of the GC's are the two best 1.07 damage charms I have (23 max damage, 20 max damage/3 strength). I have plain +20 max damage charms which aren't being used. If you had those with a good other affix too, they could potentially blow the other charms out of the water, of course. Realistically, this won't change the damage output by that much though. Add 40 life to a plain 20 max damage charm, and that's 10 more points you can place in Strength over Vitality, which in my case would bump my damage from 154744 to 155779. It's when you get dual max damage affixes on those charms they really start outclassing the best 1.13 charms, and I don't have those.

Just for something to compare with, magically adding 20 max damage to my current setup would change my damage from 154744 to 157701.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Well here's my quandry: I have a 1.07 eth 'Oath' Zerker (312%) that I picked up from a giveaway, but nothing much to pair with it. I don't have a Death Cleaver, but I do have Razor's Edge, Rune Master, and Cranebreak. I also have all the Exceptional Unique 1h axes (but no Pul to up them). In addition, I have a 4os and a 5os .07 eth Zerker, with the runes for Kingslayer, Passion, or Death. I need a Lo for Grief, and a Pul for another Oath.

Advice: Should I pair my existing Oath with a shield and be done with it; or pair it with one of the lesser EU axes; or make one of the 3 runewords I have the runes for; or hang out for the runes to make a Grief or another Oath; or stuff it and use a 2-hander? Also, what would be the effect of pairing the Oath (50% IAS) with a Death (0% IAS)?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I definitely vote for make a Death. When you get a Lo you want to use for it, you can unsocket the Death and make a Grief.

What will happen with Oath + Death is that Oath will hit at its normal rate (once every 4 frames), and Death will hit at its normal rate (once every.. 6 frames? can't remember exactly).

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

A Zerker axe hits every 8 frames with no IAS.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Thanks Fabian. That's great info.

And 1.10+ Eth Zerker? ( I should have been perhaps more clear )

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Maxing Item Find only will give a small extra % over those that put in a few or 1 but if you look at it over a few thousand runs, that extra few % will eventually turn into a 100+ successful horks.

In contrast putting them on an offensive war cry would mean you're overriding the Decrep from your merc and none of the offensive war cries increases your DPS as much as Decrep does

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Zen, don't really see people make an ebugged 1.13 BA Grief. The people who shy away from ebugging use regular non-eth BA's, which is understandable and completely reasonable. Why would you make such a high-end item in a suboptimal base item though?

I guess if you don't want to time travel and don't want to trade. Guess there are some people like that on the forum:

Under the same conditions as above:

Regular eth BA's (36-105): 146767 DPS

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 8/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Shout is a defensive skill that marginally helps with survival. With good enough gear (damage and life steal) a WW barb can survive any council roll without much if any trouble, regardless of defense, so Shout isn't needed.

After maxing the crucial skills (WW, Mastery, BO) and putting point(s) in the useful support skills (Increased Speed, Natural Resistance etc.), there aren't any skills that can actually increase the barb's damage and thus council run speed (well, putting more points into Berserk could help vs. Decrep-broken PI's, but the overall benefit would be practically non-existent).

Find Item is a bread and butter skill for a council running barb, so even a 1% increase in the Find Item chance is beneficial for the runs overall. That, in my opinion, makes Find Item the best place to put remaining skill points into. Maxing Find Item can bump the chance up to 55% without much trouble, by utilizing +skills weapons on switch.

In short, it's just simply effective to put the remaining skill points into Find Item, as long as your barbarian has already maxed the damage skills and is surviving without trouble.


Speaking of damage and efficiency, I definitely find it worth it to make a "titan"-oriented build for council rune hunting, so that the barb has just enough life to survive any council roll. It seems to me that many if not most people have their barb's life in multiple thousands. I do realize that something like ~3-4k life is good for a gold or magic finding barb, because that gear provides less damage than pure damage setup -> less life steal. But as I babbled earlier in this thread, vs. council ~1,5k max life (after BO) is easily enough for a well equipped barb. Rest of the status points can go into Strength for considerably increased damage.

Of course I do realize that in the end it's a matter of preference. A higher life barb doesn't immediately die if he stops attacking near monsters, whereas a titan barb kills a little faster.

Titan approach is especially beneficial for a barb that doesn't use Fortitude, as it evens out the difference in total Enhanced Damage % compared to a Fortitude wielding barb.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I dumped points in find item until I reached 55% with my BO knives switch. Rest I dumped in nat resists. With anya quest and my nat resist, I'm already at ~10% penalty instead of 100% as one would be with no quests and no nat resists. Makes gear choices easy, since arreats + fort has a lot of resists already, and LoH provides stacked fire res for conviction/hydra

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Don't do it.

Well, at that time, my barb was level 82 and was using an upped ribby. I suppose if your barb is, say, 87+ and has Grief and whatnot, it could be doable. However, I'd just shoot for at least 2k-2,5k life.
It would be something different if 1.13 final solves the mana burn bug. I'd say you could go as low as 1,5k and still be safe.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


I think Denton's point is more that you can overdo it with Vit without really thinking about if you just follow the usual "enough Str and Dex for gear" mantra you would use for most characters. Whether your safety threshold is 2500hp, 2000hp, or 1500hp depends on your gear and style.

I've got about 2500hp after BO on my whirler right now, and I find that more than sufficient. I've died only once in a couple hundred runs, and that was because I was intentionally pushing it to see how far he could go. That's with ~18% LL, a (non-eth) Grief BA, a mediocre Oath, and a significant DR coming from String and Leviathan. I'm pretty sure I could settle for 2000hp, but I'll wait to respec since I might change some more gear.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Upon previewing my post, I see I was owned by Todd, gg.


In the beginning of my post I said that with good enough gear a WW barb can survive any council roll, I meant that also in the case of building a titan oriented barb for council, I just forgot to add that in my post's "titan barb" paragraph.

Council running with a titan oriented build does require good equipment, but not absolute high end. My "PvM barb" is level 89, has just a bit over 1,4k life, 23% damage reduction (Enigma + String), 21% life steal (going by memory, could be +-1 off), 7% mana steal and at least fire and lightning resists are near max. With those numbers my barb seems to survive any and all council rolls without trouble by using a good roll Grief PB + mediocre roll Oath BB (non-1.07 base). Mana burn can require a little bit more care though, but it's manageable. I use Enigma instead of Fortitude for the mobility Teleport provides, and on a titan build the difference in total edmg% between those two armors isn't as big as it would be on a high vita barb.

Seeing as my barb is ok with Grief + mediocre roll Oath, I would say the barb would do about the same with two good roll Oaths. Before Oath I used an Azurewrath as the secondary weapon, it has a lot less damage than even a mediocre Oath, and still my barb survived just fine.

Edit: Forgot to include that my barb gets +70 max damage from charms, nothing exceptional there, but it helps. I run at p3.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



You seem a bit... defensive? Sorry if my previous post seems offensive in any way. I just wanted to point out that my titan barb was chanceless versus the Counsil, even on /p1.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I finally found i jah rune and can make an enigma. But I have a problem because i have already put 1 point in increased speed. And with my current setup i get 28% run/walk from skills and 30% run/walk from gore rider. If I use enigma its 45% on top of that. So my question is if I must make a new char or if its ok with so much run/walk for the ww. I already made the reset skills quest for this char.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

1. There's always the opportunity of more respeccs if you find the Essences the act bosses drop.

2. One point in Increased Speed is not a big deal at all. I use Enigma and Gore Riders, and while I don't have any points in IS since my last respeccing, I've had it before and I don't think there's a huge difference or anything. The entire Council is a pretty big target anyway, so it's not too difficult to not miss when there's 13 of them. In my opinion.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Maybe build the Enigma for some other character? Especially if you have a Tele amulet already. I have a mediocre rare Tele ammy and I can't see Enigma helping me all that much beyond that. I'd rather have Fortitude for sure.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Arkardo, no need to apologize, I didn't take your post as offensive. And I didn't intend my post as a defensive one, I tried to remain neutral and objective.

Speaking of objectivity, I do like titan oriented WW barb so my opinion on that is biased. But I just wanted to point out the fact that a barb doesn't need very high life in order to be effective at council, as long as his damage and life steal are high enough. It's quite fun to see the barb's life bulb jumping back and forth between ~20% and 100% life when facing a dangerous council roll.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Perhaps it's worth posting a budget setup that works for me at p3:

Tal Helm
Lionheart
Upped Ribcracker 'Shael' (mine is 276% ED so not top of the bill)
LoH
Hsarus belt and boots.
a rare AR ll ring and a rare AR dual leech ring
ammy is +1 skill with some res, not even really worth noting.

charms are to fix res and the rest whatever AR/damage I had.

merc:

Reapers
GA 'Ral'
Kira's 'Ral'

Comments:

-I've put 200 points in strength which puts me at about 3.1k life at level 83.
-The Ral's in the merc gear really help against conviction so far. I was afraid he might still have problems with LE, but doesn't seem to be the case.
-The mana leech from just Tal's is enough.
-Since the my ammy is pretty awful a switch could be made with angelic combo, SoE/Wilhelm's pride and for example Nat's boots.

Although I haven't tried it yet an interesting budget armor is Black Hades.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I want to semi-resurrect this.

What do you guys do ( if anything is possible at all ) to make your merc activate the might aura faster?

So far - all my runs ( those at least that I observed ) went on without him activating it at all.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

There isn't much to do ZeN. For the b.net crowd you have an issue of temp bans if you are to fast with your runs so there you generally kill Eldritch or something. But in SP I would say that just going at it without the aura is better for run speed. So, basically don't count on that ED to make it viable - but that's not needed...

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I suspected that short of killing something there is nothing you can do.

However, after doing some runs now ( at p3, before it was p1 ) I see that the might does get activated towards the end of the fight, alas, when all of them are dead.

Perhaps one should factor this in when considering p5 or p7. The fight might start slower but the eventual time might be close to p3, since might will boost the damage and improve speed.

EDIT: have I made a record of using a word 'might; in one sentence?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

It's probably mentioned already, but Grief/Beast is actually faster than dual Grief if you use Enigma (just did some test runs). I suspect Grief/Grief is faster if you use Fortitude though...

Also, I get the point of the Titan build, but does anyone have actual data for the highest damage council can inflict? I recall at least once getting down to 1K health (4.7K max life) with one hit.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

How much of a difference is p8 from p3 actually? p8 for me is much slower than p3 runs , so maybe despite the more drops it's better to have faster runs? I still wax the council no matter the mods they have at p8.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

The most melee damage they can do is 120. With Might on a monster that has Fanatism (I think the level would be Monster Level / 4 = ** / 4 = 22, right) and is Extra Strong, that's 250% + 407% + 150%= 807%, making that about 1k damage, 2k if you're cursed and have no DR. When the attacking monster is also Fire or Lightning Enchanted, or has Spectral hit, this damage is increased further by elemental damage, which in turn are increased if you're Convicted. However, I don't see the total damage topping 3k.

EDIT: didn't factor in the player setting. I guess it's possible to have 3,5k+ damage that way.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



From calculations that I have done, 2x Grief does more damage that Grief+Beast. I suspect that the difference in run time is down to the AR boost from Fanaticism, not the damage. I prefer to use Steel GCs to Sharp for exactly this reason.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

You are correct, the increase in overall damage output (hence about 5 secs faster runs as far as I can tell) is mostly from additional AR (my Beast does less than 60% damage than my 2nd Grief anyway) AND from additional merc damage and speed (procs decrepify faster).

I also use Steel GCs of sust/vita and steel SCs of sust/vita/resists (specifically 6 GCs and 7 SCs).

However there is a downside, now the merc on /p3 shatters a couple corpses each run (cold damage on reaper's).

Edit: Just checked the speed calc for the merc damage increase

55 ias and no fanaticism is 6 fpa
55 ias and 9 slvl fanaticism is 5 fpa (last bp btw)

This is 1 attack per second more. Not to mention the 100% additional off weapon ed.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



I haven't done the calculations myself yet, but the mercs aura might factor into this as well. Sometimes it takes him a while to activate it. I have a suspicion that Grief+Beast might do more damage than dual Grief without an activated Might aura.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 9/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

What Beast's fanaticism is good for is berserking the council member who regularly spawns physical immune. Fanaticism makes it so much faster, especially when you are frozen. It is probably fastest to just ignore him when he is physical immune but I just can't leave any stragglers.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


I would also take Grief+Beast BAs over 2xGrief BAs when using Enigma. Even with Fortitude I would probably take Grief+Beast, just because of the bonuses Fanaticism gives both to the barb and the merc.

I remember I calculated the damage for both setups once in past, and in terms of raw damage Grief+Beast does more damage with Enigma, while 2xGrief does more damage with Fortitude. I didn't factor in the +AR and merc though, as I was doing that calculation for PvP purposes mostly. A bucketload of high-end +max damage charms (1.07 ones) could change that in favor of Beast even with Fortitude though, as their damage gets boosted by Fanaticism. Btw those calculations I did were with non-eth-bugged BAs, which favors Grief as it doesn't have edmg%.

However, I would prefer 2x Grief PB mostly for their native indestructibility (I'm not a fan of ATMA-eth-bugging), and because how easy it is to reach 9 frame (fastest) Berserk speed with a PB even without Fanaticism (PB: Grief's IAS + Highlord's IAS = 9 frames).


3,7k life in one hit? I'm quite doubtful that would happen with just one hit. Maybe it was multiple council members hitting at seemingly one instant?

I did maybe around one hundred (I didn't count) test runs with my "PvM barb" which is an almost-titan build with just a bit over 1,4k life and he didn't die even once. That was at p3. The barb's life jumped at near minimum quite often, but the large amount of life steal brought the life right back up. I found that the only slight downside of the titan build is that he needs to be attacking constantly in order to keep up the life stealing and stay alive.

My barb has ~21% life steal, 23% DR and max fire+light res. With that the strongest single hit I witnessed from the council seemed to be something like ~1,2k life lost (while cursed). The barb's weapons during those test runs were Grief PB + Azurewrath/Oath BB; with another Grief PB it would be even more safe. Maybe I just didn't encounter the worst possible council roll during those test runs though, but staying alive for ~100 p3 council runs seems pretty reliable to me.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Yeah, that doesn't seem possible to me either. My barb (Grief, Oath, no Fort) has got 2.5k life, ~17LL, and ~35%DR, and I've never seen any single hit get close to one-hitting him, even with cursed/Fana/Might/etc. packs. Even if I get mana burned, I have time to take a quick Double Swing before I'm in trouble. It may help that he has a pretty high Def and DR% (from Leviathan). But mostly, I've just got to keep moving. I've done over 500 runs at this point, levelling from clvl 83 to 90, and have only died twice. One time I was totally pushing it just to see how far he could go, the other I don't recall. But 2.5k feels plenty safe to me. I'm not sure I'd want to go down to 2k, much less 1.5k. But pumping any more points into Vit would definitely be a waste at this point.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



I find that 1 point in berserk (synergized with Shout) takes very good care of our friend Ismail who frequently spawns PI--even on /p5 or /p7. Not that I have Beast anyway (yet).

I can't leave any stragglers either, and sometimes waste some time picking off the random things that shoot meteors, fireballs, and blizzards at me just out of spite.

Edit: Doh, didn't read Pyro's post on berserk as well as I should have.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


His point was that Beast's Fanaticism makes this faster because it speeds up your attack. This isn't such a big deal in normal circumstances, but when you're finishing off Ismael you're almost always frozen. And since Fana provides skill-based IAS, it directly counters the slowing from freezing. It's definitely a fine point that's only going to save you a few seconds here and there, but an interesting one. Similarly interesting is the point further up that Fana may provide a bigger boost than expected due to the merc not activating Might right away. Should I ever have Bers to spare, I'd like to try it out.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

BAs hit 10 FPA at 75% IAS (35% Grief+LOH+HLs) and needs 125% for 9 FPA. How does being chilled affect these breakpoints?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

It's more or less obvious, but I just feel like going through what I think are the key elements for a successful titan-oriented build:

1.) Enough life to not get one-hit-KO'd - obviously absolutely crucial.
2.) Life Steal - enough life steal is crucial. Basically the barb has to be able to refill his life orb to 100% in an "instant" (which is very doable).
3.) Damage - without enough damage there won't be enough life steal.
4.) Damage Reduction % - allows to have slightly lower max life, which allows for more strength -> more dmg, and life steal has a bit easier time overcoming the rate of life lost from hits.

Even if the barb has more life, but too little life steal, a few consecutive hits will wear out the life eventually killing the barb. Arreat's + String of Ears + 1x ring with life steal (ideally mana steal too) gives ~20+% life steal, which I have found to be enough to be able to steal more life back than the barb is losing it vs. any (in ~100 p3 runs anyway) council roll (again, that's with Grief PB + Azurewrath/Oath BB).

Even a few percentage difference in life steal can make a difference between death and survival. For lower damage weapons, I wouldn't consider something like ~30% life steal unreasonable at all, and that's quite easy to reach (the equipment I listed above + second life steal ring).



Fanaticism has skill based IAS, which is more efficient than item based IAS, that's why it's easy to reach 9 frame attack with Beast. With Beast's level 9 Fanaticism only 44% IAS (45%) is needed for a BA to hit 9 frame Berserk. As for being chilled (not by Holy Freeze, but normal cold damage), I don't remember how much it affects, but if you just reached 9 frame Berserk, I would guess being chilled will make it ~3 frames slower.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

My calculator is here (Excel)

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

There are some great posts in here, thanks for all the info.

I've been really enjoying my own barb. Some questions:

1) What AR are you all at? I assume that most of you use Sharp GC's or something similar. And I'm using a Metalgrid too, and I've got some AR on my rings. This brings me to 5,6k AR @ 75% cth.

2) What do you socket the Arreats with? I'm guessing a ruby (ED) jewel?

3) My merc is doing fine with his GB (Sol), Gaze (Ral) and Reapers (JoF). But still, he gets eaten when a Conviction aura is around long enough. So the trick is to kill that council member first. Could anyone point out to me how much of a difference there would be if I unsocketed the Sol from his GB, and put a Mal in it?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

1) I'm at 6500 AR. My charms are not that good but I'm using Hsarus combo.

3) Don't know. Using GA and Kira's both with a Ral works for me though.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

1. slightly over 4k , more would be better , but the council still dies , no matter the player settings

2. I use a pdiamond for the extra 100 ar

3. merc is dead , he wasn't much of help anyway

as long as I'm whirling I'm fine , no matter the council mods , mana burn is annoying though and at p8 really slows the runs down

I tried p8 for some time but went back to p3 , seems like I get better drops at p3 and it's much faster.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@ maxicek: Psst, about your excel sheet, Critical Strike chance provided by masteries was increased in 1.13. Now it begins from 5% and can reach over 30% with some +skills.

@ DZJB:
1.) IIRC my barb has close to 6k AR. Remember that character level helps with chance to hit.

2.) With high damage weapons and charms, Ruby (the edmg% one) jewel is probably ideal, even a plain one is good. Alternatively a nice +max damage jewel is good too, especially if you have a lot of off-weapon edmg% (titan build, Fort). Note that there's a bug regarding edmg% + min/max dmg jewels where the edmg% doesn't get added properly if it's socketed in anything else than a weapon. Anyone know does that bug still exist in 1.13c?

3.) I use Reaper's(Shael) + Kira's(IAS jewel) + Guardian Angel(IAS jewel) on my merc. That seems to work nicely, making him durable enough vs. hydras to survive until the council goes down. The Kira's' high resists help counter Conviction. An IAS jewel on the Reaper's would be enough to reach 42% IAS required for a 5 frame Jab on the merc, but I haven't bothered re-socketing it yet. (Faster attack = Decrep triggered more often = more constant life steal for the merc.)

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Oooh didn't realise that. I did write it in 1.12 though [/excuse]
I'll update it some time.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



If I calculated correctly, a Shael in Reaper's gives only half a frame more attack speed. So I was wondering if an Eth rune would be a better choice? I do not know the merc's chance to hit (lvl 91), but if it's not over 80-85%, wouldn't Eth be a better choice?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


I would guesstimate that depends on the merc's level. At least for a lower level merc (~85 or below) yeah it might be that an Eth in the weapon allows the merc to connect more hits over time than the half frame attack speed increase does. But, still guesstimating, when the merc is level ~90 or above, the increased attack speed is probably more beneficial. Keep in mind that even the half a frame difference when going from 5,5 FPA to 5 FPA is effectively a 10% increase in overall attack speed.


Edit @ ZeN's post below: The weapon speed calculator I used shows the same breakpoints, except 42% instead of 44%. I don't know which one is correct, but in either case, as you said, that makes no difference, as the smallest possible change in IAS is 5% (Shael vs. IAS jewel).

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Unless I am missing something the IAS BP on for Act 2 merc with Reaper are 0%, 8%, 22%, 44%, 75%.

The point still stands - 3 jewels of fervor in hat, armor and reaper get you to the breakpoint.

As for the Eth idea - I am not sure about it - my merc usually doesn't have a problem hitting the Council (judging from his decrep triggering all the time, which is why he is there in the first place), so I wouldn't do it.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

My AR to Demons is 7409, giving 82% chance to hit. This is with a few hard points in Dexterity and lots of AR from charms and such.

I have my Arreat's socketed with a rare jewel which looks like this:

Havoc Gyre
Jewel
Required Level: 42
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0xdf6669d5
+8 to Strength
+5 to Maximum Damage
Cold Resist +11%
38% Damage to Demons
+34 to Attack Rating against Demons

Quite like it. The ED/Max damage bug isn't present when it's ED to Demons/Undead, btw, so it's working like it "should".

Can't help with the Sol vs Mal question I'm afraid.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Nice write up Fabian. I have two comments on it though:

1) In the Amulets section, why don't you have Metalgrid listed? The resistance boost is always welcome and the AR bonus is huge. At level 89, it lifts my CTH from 76% to 81%.

2) If you lack Enigma and don't need +6 to BO to make the runs safer, having Naj's Puzzler on switch works well. My barb loses about 400 HP from the drop in BO and I think 1% to his hork, but he doesn't suffer any drop offs in his gear.

Just thought I'd throw these out there for some consideration.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Yeah, It's hard to conclude anything, since we don't know the exact merc's chance to hit. Does someone know the exact numbers, or is there a calculator for this purpose?

@ZeN

If he hits only 50% of the time, Decrepify will still be procing very often. But if he hits only 50% of the time, he won't be leeching as much as we'd like. So, if his chance to hit in low 90's is under 80%, I think it is better to try an Eth.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Metalgrid sounds reasonable I guess. I've never found it so I've never tried it. I have a feeling Highlord's will be better pretty much no matter what though, that DS boost is truly huge. Definitely a possibility though, for sure. Naj's Puzzler sounds reasonable/good too, definitely, since you can wear both Arreat's and Highlord's that way and still have Teleport.

Thanks for the comments

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 10/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Well, seems like mercenaries have quite low AR.

I found this thread on these forums. Although that information is for version 1.10, mercenary statistics probably haven't changed since then. There's thorough mercenary stats listing on the Amazon Basin too, that thread is ~1 year newer than the one on these forums (2006 vs. 2005), and the numbers for Might merc match.

2478 AR on a level 90 Might merc. That's including the dex bonus. So it seems that an Eth in weapon + 5,5 FPA attack probably is better than no Eth + 5 FPA attack. When I think of it, every now and then I have noticed that the merc seems to miss quite a bit in general, but with Reaper's it's not so obvious because the high chance of casting Decrep probably makes it seem like the merc is hitting very well, whereas in reality the merc might be missing a big part of his attacks...

Does the Blessed Aim "passive bonus" when the aura is not activated (+5% AR per hard skill point) apply for a Blessed Aim merc too? If yes, that might make Blessed Aim merc the king of mercs for council running. For melee characters anyway. That is especially because at higher levels it often takes a while until the merc actually activates the aura, whereas the passive bonus would be "active" right from the start of a game, allowing him to hit considerably more often (Blessed Aim level 18 x 5% = +90% AR when the aura is not active).


Edit: Just now I realized to confirm it from the text files that indeed the merc stats have remained unchanged since 1.10. So the stats in that thread should be true for mercs in 1.13c too. (The hireling stats files are identical to the last bit.)

Edit2: The desert mercenary of course uses Jab skill, which has an attack rating bonus. Although I'm not sure of the Jab level, but seems like it's either capped to 18, or it's 23 or 24 for Might merc and Blessed Aim merc respectively. In either case, that means his AR should be above 6k at level 90. Assuming the AR bonus from Jab even works for the merc. So many unknowns... : \

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This thread of comments inspired to me to look again at my AR, which I hadn't done since I started running at clvl83. I figured my to-hit sucked then because I was low level, but it still sucks at clvl90 just as much - ~4000 AR with a 67% to-hit. I was previously using a rare Tele/resist ammy and tried swapping that out with both Highlord's and Metalgrid, losing my dual skill swords for Naj's on the switch. Both seemed about the same, but both feel noticeably faster than my old setup. I think I'll stick with Highlord's for the moment. Two questions...

1) Grief's ITD definitely doesn't work on the Unique Council Members (Toorc, Ismael, etc.), correct? Does it work on the minions? The AS doesn't list minions in the ITD-not-applicable list, but I seem to recall reading otherwise somewhere.

2) Now that I'm using Naj's instead of an ammy, Teleport is frequently "forgetting" it's hotkey assignment in between games. This happened with the ammy too, but much more rarely - maybe once every 50-100 games. With Naj's it's like 1 in 3 games, which is quite annoying. Anyone have a solution for this?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Grief has -25% to target defense though... so that should work against Council and help considerably. I am not sure that LCS shows it at all.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



I remember a similar problem while using Naj's on my Hammerdin. The game would reset the hotkey every time I used ATMA. Maybe it depends, which weapon you have on switch when S&E. But IIRC correctly, that didn't make things better. I just had to live with it :dontknow:

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Mine just seems to reset randomly, even when I never leave D2 or use any other program.


I tried that, but it makes no difference. I've gotten in the habit of switching to teleport just before I S&E. Sometimes it will still lose the key - the selected skill just goes back to normal attack and the key assignment is lost. But then at least I can see that immediately when I start the next game.

It's pretty irritating. I can't understand why the magnitude of the problem is so different between the staff and the ammy.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Hey all,
A thought just occurred to me while I was running. I regularly pick up all the gold the council drops in case a HR is being blocked by too many items being on the screen(I run on /p3). Is this really a good idea, or am I just slowing myself down? I use WW with both the 'Stand Still' and 'Show Items' keys pressed, so while my barb is dancing around the screen I can see all the drops occur. I figure if I'm wasting my time with the gold pick up, then I should definitely find out. I know that's a pretty good chunk of my run time.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

That annoys me as well, since I rarely can hear the rune drop. And picking up gold with Barb takes ages - running around all blue. That's why I've given up on him for now and just run it with the Blizzy - Infinity on merc removes cold immunity all the time, except when Ismail Vilehand spawns cold immune (probably 1 in 10-15 runs, from my experience).

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I always pick up gold. It slows things down, but assures me I'm not missing anything and also gives me time to process blue items for charms and jewels. And it's a lot of gold... I've got 25 million in the stash for gambling at the moment. That's nice when I'm playing other characters too, as I don't even bother evaluating items to sell with them anymore and only pick up items that could be genuinely good. It's much faster just to use the barb's council money since he finds it so efficiently. With the gold pickup and the occasional ID'ing of potentially good rares, my runtimes average a little under 90 seconds, including all time stashing and repairing.

As for the freezing, I think I'm going to start carrying a row of thawing potions in my belt. Haven't bought one of those in close to a decade now...

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

If that's your run time you may want to consider switching to Blizzy (if you have one).

I timed it with two setups on p3:

1. CTA + Infinity merc: 37 seconds/run on average

2. Reaper merc + no CTA: 47 seconds/run on average

Couple of points I think swing it towards sorc for me - much more MF/GF (402/598 at the moment) and TK - picking up gold is much easier - also teleporting helps showing hidden items much faster.

EDIT: 47 seconds is from memory - so I might be off a bit.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


I don't have a Bliz sorc, much less an Infinity to go with it. But remember that Barbs are getting 50% more drops due to horking - your times are actually not so far from mine if you multiply them by 1.5. If I go all-out speed, take a quick look for obvious HR's/charms/uniques, hork, recheck, and exit I get very close to a minute. But I don't care to play so frenetically. It's a game, not a job.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Almost forgot to mention... I figured out a workaround for the hotkey bug. If I switch weapons back to axes and then back to the staff right before I exit, the hotkey assignment will always stick. It doesn't matter whether the Teleport skill is actually selected or not, just so long as the weapons are switched back and forth. I still can't figure out why it sometimes sticks even when I don't do that, but at least it's an easy fix.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

if you consider 1.5 times the drops for Barb on p3 - than you have to run at 55 seconds per run to match me - and that doesn't consider MF or GF (150 - 170K per run is nothing to sneeze at). Doable, but as you said - seems kinda frenetic to me. Fabian is probably going to disagree though.

But of course - not having Infinity/CtA will slow it down considerably, not having Blizzy is just a crime though

Also - I am like you - those times are pretty casual IMO, nothing frenetic about them. I pick up stuff and ID it right on the spot (2x4 open space in inventory + cube), I could skip that and just unload it through GoMule, shaving off another 5 - 8 seconds, I'd guess.

EDIT: after running some more while paying attention to gold found - it appears that per run number is lower than I stated - around 110 - 120K. FWIW.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


I was comparing to the 47 seconds, which is closer (70 secs), not to the 37. My Barb has one Grief (non-eth BA) and no Fortitude - not in the same league as an Infinity-equipped Sorc.


My Barb has 138MF and 146GF. Is your Sorc wearing Wealth/Chancies for the GF? I assume Chancies at least, since you don't need LoH.

Also, I'm including time to pick up and cube gems/runes. The efficient path would be to ignore those, I'm sure.


No doubt. But for fun, I'll reset the counter and try to speed it up a bit. That average goes all the way back to the beginning of my runs anyway, and I think I'm a bit faster now.


If I could find another Tal armor/ammy, I'd make one. But the only ones I have are on my Meteorb running Pindle/Meph.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Setup:

Shako w/ PTopaz
Skullders w/PTopaz
Chancies
Rare Lightning/Fare/MF boots
Goldwrap
2xDwarf (might be unnecessary - 1 might be enough, but 100% GF is nice anyhow)
26@ Mara (I have an MF/2 cold skills ammy, but Mara has more resists)
Oculus (surprisingly - teleport is never triggered by Hydras) + 12@ jewel
35 FCR Spirit (so I am at 65FCR BP)
Gheeds
5xchilling skillers
7 shimmering sc = 29@ res all
6MF/11FR sc

Merc:

Gaze w/ Um
GA w/Um (stolen from my hammerdin)
Infinity Thresher

Again - I've never played her for speed - 37 seconds is very casual (as I also pick up almost all rare and jewels/gems/charms) and she can be optimized some more (more MF etc), but it's good enough for me.

EDIT:

due diligence - my last 30 and 40 runs (measured them separately) averaged 39.5 seconds for some reason.

EDIT2: perhaps when I measured it at 37 - I was running it a bit more frenetically. Nevertheless - 40 seconds is still good for me. Requires 60 seconds from Barb to match.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

A small nitpick perhaps, but 40 second runs with 0% hork on p3 is the equivalent of 64 second runs with 55% hork, not 60. That's a pretty sizable differance, I think.

Other than that, please don't mind me

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I was going by Todd's 50% hork, and I still don't understand how you got to the 64 seconds. The higher the hork % - lower equivalent run time should be.

May be I should look at it this way:

amount of drops from 11 (I always forget - 11?) Council members (and that not taking shattering into consideration - which I would guesstimate is 1 member per run, but I might be wrong) per run with 55% hork should be 17 (correct me here, it's kinda late).

That is achieved, on average in 62 seconds by My sorc. So that's what the run for a Barb should be to match it.

It's 5:30 am, so I might be missing something.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I was going to point out the shattering as well - you can't avoid the occasional cold damage from the merc's Reapers. 1 shatter per run seems about right, which makes 1.5 very close to correct. Close enough for me, anyway.


Just figure that each Barb run counts as 1.5 (or whatever multiplier) runs compared to other classes. Or in other words, multiply your time by 1.5 to figure how long it would take you to do a run and a half. That's the appropriate comparison. So Fabian multiplied 1.55 x 40 = 64.

I spent a little time to find a better map, did some practice runs, and just finished a set of 35 /p3 runs at a hair under 1:19 average. That includes time to pick up gold, ID rares, stash stuff when necessary, restock pots/scrolls, and repair weapons. I didn't pick up gems or crafting supplies (blue Vampirebone Gloves, etc.), but am quite confident I got all the good stuff. Not too stressful either. But I don't think there's much room for improvement. Maybe I could reroll the map a jillion times to find a perfect one, but I hate doing that and this one's pretty good - one group in the "outer ring" of the temple and another inside. The only problem is that Toorc (in the first ring a little away from the others) occasionally wanders off. Mostly I'd just need better gear - Fortitude and another Grief would help, but I've got better uses for 2 Lo runes if I ever find them. For anyone playing along at home, here's my setup for reference...

clvl90, Str 344, HP ~2400 w/BO
Grief (normal Berserker Axe, ~+360dam, 38IAS)
Oath (eth 1.13 Small Crescent, ~260ED)
Arreat's w/pTopaz
Leviathan w/pTopaz
Laying of Hands
War Travellers
String of Ears
Highlord's Wrath
2x rare rings
Gheed's + various Steel and Fine charms, 3x4 free + cube
Might Merc w/Shael'd Reapers, Sol'd eth Glad Bane, and Ral'd Vamp Gaze
138MF, 146GF

This has been a great thread, BTW. Thanks to Fabian for the OP and to everyone else for all the comments.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

My barb hasn't reached Travincal yet, is now somewhere in act II hell, but I just got seriously disappointed by a supposedly quite godly weapon, The Grandfather. I'd been using dual ethereal Oath highland blades since level 49 and now hit 81 so tried the granny (while retaining one Oath) and immediately my survivability dropped severely. In advance I thought the damage per hit would be more or less equal, and the low speed of the granny offset by the increase in chance to hit. First disappointment was seeing the political character screen display only a 10% increase in attack rating instead of the 50% as I'd hoped for (although assumed it would be less because of how ar is calculated - I still expected 20% or more). Then in actual action in spite of having a bit more life, the bulb went down far faster then with the dual Oath setup, and it did not fill back up quickly enough. Maybe shaeling would do something, but in any case it leads me to the question of how do different swords rate (this character will start looking for high runes, and I could make Death, but for now, let's assume only unique and set swords (since I have all of them) and how they compare to Oath)?

So I can start with saying:
Oath ethereal highland blade > The Grandfather

What about Azurewrath, Bul-Kathos' Children, etc?

Other gear for now is: laying of hands, raven frost, thundergod's vigor, gore rider, naj's light plate, arreat's face, rare ring with mana steal, fire and cold resist, 20 strength and 39 life, rare ammy with resist all and lightning resist, 24 strength and a little dr and mdr, for the rest min damage, max damage and ar charms. on switch heartcarvers for horking. hell is done so far at players 7 except for areas with many unleachable undeads, those at players 3, this went all fine with the dual oath, but not with oath/grandfather.

How should I deal with dual physical and magical immunes, such as Dark Elder? Is Demon Limb's enchant enough (I did not yet carry that due to having the Heart Carvers), or should I get some elemental damage swords on switch? If so, which ones? Apart from Azurewrath (which I can't use yet), The Grandfather, and Bul-Kathos' Children I have all set/unique swords double so I could use two of the same, which would be best?

Sorry for the ot, but it's still about a whirlwinder although not yet in Travincal just general questing.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Just to clarify - I was trying a different a bit twisted way to get to Fabian's number and failed.

The simple one is: 1.55 * 40 = 62 and not 64

@Sir Lister of Smeg

I would guess that speed matters. A lot. So you leach less and kill slower.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide




I assume you're using Whirlwind. For the raw damage, The Grandfather should do slightly more damage than an Oath. The problem is the attack speed. While whirling with no IAS on Grandfather, you're doing 3 FPS attack (8 attacks per sec), if you put a Shael in it, you'll do 2,5 FPS (10 attacks per sec), with 2 Oaths, you'll do 2 FPS (12 attacks per sec). If you Shael the Grandfather, you should be as good as 2 Oaths, considering it adds some nice bonuses.



I don't think using the Azurewrath would beat your raw physical damage, it could be used as a utility weapon while in Undead Areas, or for specific Undead target running ( like Pindle).

As for the dual imune target, Enchant won't be enough, since it adds cca. 100 fire damage. Frostwind or Azurewrath seem like the best options with their cold damage. If your AR is high enough, you might try a Gimmershred, too. But you won't be able to whirl, cause you can't leech mana, and it will be tedious, if you're on higher player settings. You can also try using Tiamat's for more elemental damage, since you'll probably attack those targets with Concntrate. Reaper's will help a lot with breakable immunities.

P.S.

If you have Higlord's Wrath, definitely use it.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 11/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@SirLister: About the only sword that is better would be Grief. OK, or eBOTD for a WW barb. Sets & Uniques just don't cut it.

For PI+MIs if you have Reapers on the merc, this should break the PI part. If it doesn't, I suggest you just leave him.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

The way I got that number was by inputing the numbers in spreadsheet, which calculates it for me. Horked drops are worth more than regular drops, in terms of runes (horked drops are the equivalent of p7 drops on all player settings), so if you want accurate numbers, you can't just use a multiplier like 1.55.

That said, with 50% horking instead of 55%, 62 second runs are the equivalent of 40 second no hork runs. In that case, I'd point out I thought the barb could be built more efficiently though.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I though that the myth about horking being p7 was debunked?

Or am I misremembering? I recall someone said that it was initially thought to be treated like p7, but eventually was countered.

EDIT:

also, just tell us what your run times are currently, so we can see what an optimized Barb can do.

Also, here is what RTB had to say about it a while back.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

The difference is that when you successfully hork a body, you won't ever get a no-drop. As it happens, on p7, the council's nodrop is 0, so in practice their horked drops are identical to a p7 drop. It was RTB who helped pointing out this flaw in my spreadsheet a couple months ago, so I'm pretty confident I have it right.

I'm sure there are others who can run more efficiently than me (like not picking up too many gold piles, which slows me down a lot), but my run time on p3 is 56 seconds, and on p7 it's 62 seconds. It's faster when I focus on getting good times, probably slower when I'm playing carelessely.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

OK. I see.

So my 40 seconds picking all gold/charms/jewels/rings etc sorc is a bit slower than your barb. I thought so.

But I probably got you beat on MF/GF

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Damn, now I'll have to forward my Blizzy,too, to 1.13. But I was thinking of a bit more offensive kind. And those 2 Bers will probably be better off in Infinity than in Phoenix.

What do you think of this setup, ZeN:

Ormus, +3, +15%
Occulus (thanks for mentioning hydras don't trigger TP)
Shako
Mara's
Arachnid Mesh
Spirit Shield
FCR ring, Ravenfrost
Chancies (probably Frostburn when running Areas)

It should be enough to go through P7 council really fast.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Thanks for the replies all.

1) Good to see some AR figures from other users. And yes, I know the formula for cth. But, I had forgotten about the extra AR to demons on my Oath BB's. Another reason why the LCS cannot be trusted.

2) Don't know if that bug is still around in 1.13c, but I probably will. I'll opt for a plain %ED jewel right now.

3) I'm a big fan of adding as much ias as possible on my merc as well. Guess I'll have to try the GA setup out. Though I'm still quite curious how he'd turn out with more mdr. Thanks to the new rune drop rates, I guess I'll have a Mal to spare in a while.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



1. I don't think P7 is really that beneficial, but it could be. You should swap Shako for Nightwings then (I have one for Cows - with 5/5 facet in it).

2. Ravenfrost? Why? For cold novas from the Council? You don't need it. However Dwarf, at least one, is probably necessary, just for convenience.

3. FCR ring is also superfluous IMO - Oculus + Spirit get you to the BP, and you don't need FCR for Blizzard. It is also enough for SF. Skulders also has a nice MDR.

But, of course, I focused it on MF/GF more than anything, so...

My sorc (with CtA though) does just fine (I drink a potion once maybe 20 runs, maybe) with resistances as follows:

FR: 64, CR: 52, LR: 76, PR: 52

You really don't need all that firepower, of course it depends where your CM is. Mine is at 31 with the setup above and I am thinking about re-specing her to have a bit more SF. For Travincal that is.

Ever since I've made that Infinity - it is in constant use. Constant. Blizzy for Travincal and Cows. Pure Lite for Pits, Baal and even Travincal - although my Lite sorc Travincal map blows and I am reluctant to re-roll since she has a very very nice Countess map.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I don't have a Nightwing's, unfortunately. Ravenfrost was a mistake, I thought of Dwarf Star as I wrote it. But all my sorcs are on 105% FCR, and I've never regreted it. Nice for teleporting, and also nice for IB spamming in between Blizzards.

I think I'll have to switch to sorc mod, though, I've made so many runs with Paladin recently, and some with a Barb, it is hard for me to position my sorc properly. I guess with 50-ish runs it will come back. Some advice on that?

Infinity is on its way, as soon as I get a good base.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

A little tip. Find a map where all the Council is in the inner room - close to the windows:

and don't teleport inside - just to the middle window and cast Blizzard in. Merc also doesn't wander that way - he stays in place:

see 1, 2, 3.

I don't think you would benefit too much from teleporting faster as there is a very short distance to do - from waypoint and back (to Act4, of course).

EDIT: again - I guess CtA helps with the ability to just tank hydras for the merc (Gaze w/Um and GA /um helps too). For some reason lightning casts from the Council almost never hurt too.

EDIT2: I cast 3 SF between Blizzards (just the time it takes for Blizzard to cool-off).

EDIT3: swapped one Dwarf for SoJ and went p5 and p7. 1 Dwarf is enough even with FR at 64. Difference between p3 and p5 is may be 2 - 3 seconds (from the looks of it, didn't measure) and tried p7 as well - 5 - 7 seconds more.

I will try it a bit on p5 and p7 and see if I like it better.

EDIT4: in fact, after running a bit on p5 - you don't even need one Dwarf. I went with 2 SoJs and Hydras don't hurt at all. I am guessing due to MDR on Skullders (or perhaps absorb on Spirit - I am not sure it applies to fire damage at all).

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

This one's for Fabian (and everyone else interested ofc). Since you said in the IFT you were interested to know more about the wolfbarb i'm running with i decided this would be the best place to post about it.

And as a picture says more than a thousand words a vid would say more than i can type so i made a short video of a typical travirun.

The run is done on p7 btw. And as you can see i'm after more than just runes, so runs would be a lot faster if that's all you're looking for. If anyone is interested i can post stats/skills/gameplay/... or whatever you want to know later.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Yeah, I was wondering what made you use 1-hit attack char...

It seems to me, in general, this is as successful as WW (in comparison I mean, despite being slower attack) - is because of the somewhat chaotic nature of the WW. It hits fast, but half the time (I am exaggerating, of course) you are just whirling in the air.

I've got to make Frenzy barb to try it too.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Surprised by that dmg output Cyrax, i'd be interested to see the full char load-up.

I haven't done many travi runs, have no real appetite for them but i've used a berserker when I do, and I'd guess my speed is comparitive with your wolfie Cyrax.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Frenzy is terrible in comparison to whirlwind in the council. I originally tried my frenzy barb at the council and he was more effective using 1 point whirlwind then with frenzy.

If you are biting air with your whirlwinds then you either have stubby weapons which means you should get ones with proper range, or you need to improve your whirlwind technique. You should really be hitting every tick until the enemy is dead, unless you have very high FR/W and use whirlwinds to move between clusters such as I do.

@Cyrax: For a comparison I timed some /p7 whirlwind runs and got runs about 55-60 seconds long, and I pick up and stash even more stuff than you do.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

My WW barb has double 1.07 eBA Oath, and I know how to whirl properly. Thing is - no matter how you good you are (and Fabian's video is there to show that) - you don't always whirl over/next to the monster - sometimes you miss and sometimes the monsters are a bit apart. So some of the swings are hitting air while you get to the next enemy or after you already killed one. The percentage is not high (I said that half the time is exaggerating it) - but it's enough to bother me.

Frenzy, OTOH, gives you a targeted attack and huge FRW should get you into the fray very fast. This is a theory.

I find it very hard to believe that your Frenzy barb was any worse than Corax's wolfbarb (which is not to say it was bad). Perhaps you could share your gear on that Frenzier?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

The reason i'm using wolfbarb is a) i'm not that good with whirling, b) i don't have great gear for a whirler (i've put one on hold for that reason), and c) i think the wolfbarb is 100% safe whereas the whirler may have a difficult time with certain bad spawns.

His gear is:
highlords wrath
wolfhowl (40% ed jewel)
enigma bp
stormshield (pdiamond)
grief pb
laying of hands
IK belt
gorerider
ravenfrost
rare ring with ml/ll
and 2x spirit on switch (not rich enough yet for dual hoto, which would increase teleport speed)

Merc is wearing reaper's, guardian angel and kira's

I have ~4.9k life, LCS lives up to it's name and says damage is 753-1284 (861-1612 for berserk in case of PI's), AR ~9600, defense ~15500 and resists maxed (all still positive when under effect of conviction aura)

Str/dex/vit are 263/182/310. This could be improved because you don't need that much life for just running travi. Originally this char was intended to be able to withstand anything when running Baal. Most of the time i could even (just) survive hitting myself once with IM.

@Pyrohemia: I suspect you have some space in your inventory to pick stuff up, where i loose time to open inventory (filled with max dam/ar sc's and a gheeds) and drop things in the cube. So i could also win some time by clearing some space there as i don't need all those charms for running travincal. If that's not the case i take my hat off to you sir.
Also i could improve skillwise. I have 20 pts in iron skin and 20 in shout which could be relocated to increased speed and/or find item. So if you want to optimise there's still enough room for improvement.

@ZeN: The name is Cyrax. Unless Corax also has a wolfbarb

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

To Zen:
1) Nobody is perfect, but I don't miss more than one whirl per run and I whirl FAST (high increased speed + 115% faster run/walk) so a missed whirl is about half a second lost.

2) Frenzy, at best once charged up after X hits (say, 10), hits once every 5 frames. Whirlwind hits twice every four frames after the first 4 frames. That is more than twice the hits per second. With the amount of gear and skill based enhanced damage you should have, the extra damage from frenzy is minimal compared to hitting more than twice as often.

Also, frenzy is interruptible which can slow down your attack speed further.

Lastly, frenzy's faster run/walk needs to be charged up which makes it useless for running to the council.

The frenzy barb used:
Eth Grief zerker (+353)
Eth Lacerator
Enigma
Usual LoH, Arreats, etc.

(Both weapons hit the last WW breakpoint.)

The fact that 1-point whirlwind was so noticeably better than frenzy was part of the reason why I made another grief last year.

-------

I also did some more timed /p7 runs.
Time for a typical run including picking up 3-5 items was 47-50 seconds.
I never made it to 80 seconds even on the run where my Merc died for the first time in ~1k runs and I went to town and rehired him before finishing the run, or the run where I went to my stash to clear my inventory 3! times in one run.

I was really hoping for a run with nothing to pickup to try for 40 seconds, but I got bored before it showed up.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

The main problem with any other attack besides WW is that Holy Freeze is going to slow you down a lot. Well a Wolf would be to overcome most of it I guess.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I'm sure that decrepify doesn't matter for the wolf's attack speed. And from what i've seen so far i don't think that HF does slow me down.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Ah, well if you've outstacked decrep HF doesn't matter either, that's correct. It would hurt Frenzy though.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 12/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


@Cyrax
I see. Although the gear you listed (+another BA - perhaps Oath) should be quite sufficient for a Whirler.


@ZeN
I was just reading Corax charm guide, so the name kinda stuck. My apologies.

:embarassed:

@Pyro

Perhaps you are right, I haven't thought about HF too.

However - I didn't talk about missing the entire whirl (as in whirling from place to place without hitting anything), rather missing some parts of the whirl - you start it - and in between you miss. Those are much more common than missing an entire whirl and reduce the amount of hits you land. With a targeted attack it doesn't happen (well - except due to CTH, but the same applies to WW as well).

Still - my comment about FRW was not about getting to the Council, rather getting from one member to the other.

I am in a process of making a Frenzier anyway, so we might just see how it goes, if/when I finish him (don't want to respec the Whirler).

P.S.
In any case, I still stand by my choice of Blizzard sorc :jig: - more fun for me.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



That is basically what I was referring to without the missing in the middle. In order to miss with a range 3 weapon you have to actually be quite far away. I am not sure how you can hit at the start and then end but miss in the middle without whirling across the entire screen between two packs. Maybe if you whirl a line and the monster in the middle dies during the whirl?

Good call on sticking to your guns with a blizzard sorc. You need a character that will keep you engaged for the long haul if you actually want to find those runes.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I also tried a wolfbarb (respecing a sword wwer). Wolfbarbs are sick defensively (ez 50dr, max block, 25K+ def, massive life, maxed resists, massive leech, frw boost), but they lack offensively (even though I hit 12K ar). Even with base vit (2K life after bo :badteeth the damage output was not impressive.

For the record, the setup was similar to Zen's

Wolfhowl
Highlord's
Grief pb
Stormshield (Um)
Verdungo's 36/15
Fortitude AP
Gore rider's
LoH
Ravenfrost
ar, mana leech, resists ring
steel/vita gcs and scs

It's fun and definitely viable, just not the optimal build for fast council running.

@Zen: I see you use enigma. Can you teleport when shapeshifted to wolf? :S

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Not me. Cyrax. Quit drinking so early

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Bears and wolves can't teleport

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Haven't read the entire thread but has anyone tried an IK ww'er for this job?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Noooo! No IK! You'll shatter the council with that cold damage.

Looking through the posts in this thread maybe I should try a WW barb for the council. I currently run with my frenzier and the (P3) runs take 99s on average. I do pick up all gold/flawless gems/charms/possibly useful yellow items, so that pushes the run time up a lot. I pick everything up that I can, because I don't want to rely on hearing a rune drop. I want to make sure that I don't miss one.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Looking at the numbers, a single Grief would do more damage than IK. And dual Grief can't be beaten by any weapon in the game.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

It works fine from what I can remember but too many corpses get shattered.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



!!Woot!!, and I have 1 spare Lo. Now all I need is another 5sox PB.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Read post #135 in this thread just to see what kind of damage we are talking about.

I'm still sticking to the zealot for council running, though. It's more fun for me and not that item crowded on P5.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I finally got my barb able to run hell trav. I've got decent gear (I think) and while I don't think I'm doing fast runs, I run fast enough for me. I find myself using a lot of full rejuves though. And the council doesn't seem to drop them. I use them on myself from time to time, especially vs mana burn guys. But I've had runs where I've used three or four big grape juices on the moron. I'm using what I believe is one of the more popular merc setups. The moron has Reapers, Kira's and Guardian Angel. The merc is level 85. I find that he survives better if I'm whirling right next to him, but even with that I've used probly 50 full rejuves and I've only been running LK for a couple hours. On the plus side, with a total of 2 or 3 hours at Trav and my highest rune is already Gul.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I personally prefer a Treachery for the merc, pretty much when the council have been decrepped then their damage output drops dramatically.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I didn't think WW was such a great skill tbh. I've played a few/pvp'd some with them and the dmg just never seemed all that good so I avoided testing at council for a while.

Now i've tried it some more I can see that was a foolish thought on my part. It feels a lot quicker than my berserker and unless there is conviction present neither my barb or merc suffers.

I've just been running in a quickly put together setup though and with real tweaking/optomising I can see that this is the char to beat for Trav runs.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@Ashmer: I had lots of trouble keeping mine alive earlier, now he rarely dies.
- Level is important. When I hit 90, everything became much easier.
- I run at /players3, it seems a decent balance to me.
- Merc has Ral in Kira's, Amn in Reapers. The additional leech seems to help alot.
- Keep close to the merc. Hit the decrepped ones first. If one is conviction, hit him first.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Now that I've collected 100 million gold in GF gear, I'm switching to more killing power to try and increase speed.

I run with dual Grief PB's, LoH, Arreat's, Gore Riders, 1 Dwarf Star, 1 rare ring with ML, AR, STR, Mana, crafted Ammy with +2 Barb skills/teleport charges and String of Ears (which really makes a huge difference in survivability).

Body Armor is really the last bit that I'm trying to choose and I don't have any of the high-end armors yet. Since I'm using Wealth in GF gear, anything is an improvement. With SoE belt, I don't think I need any more safety so an offensive armor would be ideal.

I was wondering why I haven't seen anything in the thread about Black Hades

Black Hades
Chaos Armor
Defense: 823
Durability: 70 of 70
Required Level: 53
Required Strength: 140
Fingerprint: 0x96d40e36
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
[highlight]+49% Damage to Demons
+230 to Attack Rating against Demons [/highlight]
+140% Enhanced Defense
Half Freeze Duration
-2 to Light Radius
[highlight]3 Sockets (0 used)[/highlight]

Now if I throw 3 jewels with Diamond prefix in it, I can add 75-120% ED to demons and +75-150 AR to demons as well. Also if I read an earlier post in the thread correctly, if I have a Diamond jewel with +min/max damage, it will work correctly like say this one for example.

Plague Heart
Jewel
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x3cedf760
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
+9 to Minimum Damage
+33% Damage to Demons
+36 to Attack Rating against Demons
Lightning Resist +24%
Attacker Takes Damage of 4

I'm a melee novice so any comments would be nice. Are there any drawbacks or can someone recommend an alternative budget armor.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Black Hades looks pretty nice to me. I know I looked at it while choosing gears ages ago, but of course it's tough to compete with Fortitude (and later Enigma). Of course, a plain 4 socket armor wouldn't be much worse, and a Jewelers of the Whale or something would probably be better. Of course, having and burning 4 nice Diamond jewels in such an armor could be seen as somewhat wasteful maybe.

And yes, that jewel will work fine.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Here is my Black Hades, being used on my trav runner, nice budget alternative to fortitude:


Black Hades
Chaos Armor
Defense: 922
Durability: 65 of 70
Required Level: 53
Required Strength: 140
Fingerprint: 0x5eb91724
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+7% Faster Hit Recovery
79% Enhanced Damage
+5 to Minimum Damage
+159% Damage to Demons
+358 to Attack Rating against Demons
+169% Enhanced Defense
+5 to Life
Replenish Life +3
Poison Resist +20%
Half Freeze Duration
-2 to Light Radius
3 Sockets (3 used)
Socketed: Death Talisman
Socketed: Ghoul Scarab
Socketed: Doom Gyre

Death Talisman
Jewel
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x244abf54
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
25% Enhanced Damage
+28% Damage to Demons
+33 to Attack Rating against Demons
+5 to Life

Ghoul Scarab
Jewel
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x41332942
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+7% Faster Hit Recovery
29% Enhanced Damage
+35% Damage to Demons
+34 to Attack Rating against Demons
Poison Resist +20%

Doom Gyre
Jewel
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x9b51f5d0
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
25% Enhanced Damage
+5 to Minimum Damage
+36% Damage to Demons
+49 to Attack Rating against Demons
Replenish Life +3

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Wow. Had no idea this thread had grown so much!

Anyway, I have an idea for a crazy trav runner barb I wanna throw at you for comment. You might think I'm absolutely crazy when you see the set up, but perservere with it for a minute......:crazyeyes:

Iron berserker. As per my Iron berserker guide.
Merc. Prayer c/w that rune word for mana regen, guardian angel and harley.
Weapon. Any nasty two handed goo maker stick of pain. Death, Oath, Spell steel, Tomb raider, Hell slayer etc.
Rest of it. laying of hands, Gore riders, trangs belt (cbf), arreats, Treachery (Berserker = fade activates easily) or Fortitude if you prefer.
The secret ingredient. 2 x dwarf star plus rising sun amulet.

The theory.

Berserker does huge damage with big goo maker stick. One hit kills on normal councillors, 2-3 hits on bosses. (players 3). No defence so fade goes off all the time. attack speed isn't too important when you one hit kill. No leech so healing comes from Prayer/life regen and fire over absorb.

Over absorbing is banned/frawned upon in PvP because it can Heal your character. So, Berserker who does huge damage but no leeches wearing three fire absorb items stands in the middle of a dozen hydras getting healed by the fire damage while swinging away with 10 grand average magic damage plus Deadly strike and laying of hands .

So far, Ive done very little experiementing with it. My IB doesn't have find item due to fully synergied Zerk so respeccing a one point find item could be the go. Against normal council it works well but the wheels come off when councillors have Conviction. I'm gunna try changing some damage charms out for resistances there.
Overall it works pretty good. I rush/leap attack in, concentrate on the regular councillors for one hit goodness while being bombarded by hydra's and the health ball not moving. then switch to the three bosses and simply tank em out. Worst Ive had so far is loosing around 2,600 hit points which isn't too much of an issue given I could chug a red pot and have nearly 4,000 hit points.

I have a few different combo's yet to try such as an Oath plus fortitude and dropping a dwarf star for a raven frost and trangs belt for verdungo's for more hit points plus DR.

So, what do peeps think of that trav runner?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

To me it sounds like so many other builds I've seen suggested. It's probably alright and good and all, but how is it better than just whirlwinding? Slow attack speed, single target attack? I doubt that can compete with mowing the entire council down in 5-7 seconds. Especially if it puts a strain on the number of skill points you can devote to Find Item.

Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 13/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Ah, forgot to mention one important factor there.

It's cheap.

Uber WW barb that can mow the council down in that sort of time is packing what? Fortitude, Grief, Beast, Death, etc?
Berserker can use just about any weapon. Spell steel for example is a surprisingly good one here. Oath, Insight (remembered the name now) and Treachery are all Meh nowadays in v1.13 to get the runes for.
Items like loH, gores, dwarf stars are pretty easy to get. Trangs belt and arreats would be the hardest to get bits but even these can be replaced. After all, we dont need the leech from arreats, its their mainly for skills and resists and the belt is merely opening a ring slot by moving CBF to the belt slot.

It's a trav runner on a bit of a budget. Though I am mucking around with the concept to see how it will go at an uber level.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

If you swapped in a 1.07 LoH for the regular ones, you could then use two ravenfrosts for rings which will improve your attack rating and give CBF. Then you can use a better belt than trangs.

Then again, I guess that 1.07 LoH isn't budget which is the point of your build.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Can I use this thread to talk about the frenzier I'm converting for running the Council? I've got a few questions and I'm just starting to optimize him so I'd like some input.

1) What are the council member immune to? I'm using a Shaefer's on the main hand partly because of the ctc Static, which won't work with whirl, should even things up a touch. But I can't tell what the immunities are - it looks like it's fire OR lightning, with no real rhyme or reason.

2) Any tips on sorting the crap? I've heard a lot on hear about how whirl is vastly superior because the kill speed is so much faster, but I probably spend 2/3 of the time picking through the piles of blue junk, gold, etc to see if there are any runes.

3) My lvl 85 merc dies. A lot. If I load him up to keep him from getting roasted (Tal's mask, Duriel's shell or something) he gets whipped when amp triggers (which it always does). If I equip him for DR, he gets flamed to death. Fast. I'd like to keep him around, but he just can't seem to handle it. Weapon is Reaper's Toll so he should be fine there, but I can't keep him alive.

4) Why bother with tele? It only shaves a second or two over running and drops your hork value by 4-5%. I don't see how you come out ahead there.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

1) Ismail and his minions are immune to fire. Geleb is immune to fire and lighting and his minions are immune to lightning. Toorc is immune to cold and fire.

2) From what I can tell, the game always places the newest items on top of the pile if there are more than what the game can show on screen. If you hold alt while horking you should see all the items that drop.

3) Kira's and Guardian Angel.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

3. Reaper's/Kira's/Guardian Angel. Try to gain a few more levels too, I think I've read people saying 87 or ** is the point where the merc has a much easier time.

4. If you get a map where all the council members spawn inside their little house, preferrably in the lower left corner, you can teleport right onto them from way outside, saving much more than a second or two. In addition, the merc will be standing there right next to you, ready to provide Decrep within a second or two. Furthermore, this will help in "normalizing" your runs, meaning you want the same thing to happen every run. When the council members start running about in every direction, you can't have them dead on the floor in 10 seconds. Having them all in one place, and you always being in that same place, helps a lot with whirling accuracy, and safety.

It's also worth noting that 60 second runs with 55% hork are a bit less efficient than 58 second runs with 51% hork on p3. I suggest trying out Teleport, and if it really only saves you 1 second, definitely go ahead and not use it.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Well, I pretty much have to have it on switch since with the slow weapons I need the Highlord's. Makes it a royal pain. I'll try alt-ing while I hork, that will probably help a ton, and I loaded up with various merc gear so I can try out different setups.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I'm beginning to wonder if I've made a colossal mistake in my WW barb planning. Well, okay, not that big, but still.

I've been planning on using Atma's Scarab rather than Highlord's. It seemed to me that the Amp would speed runs up more than Decrep from Reaper's, and I was hoping to make a real try at having good, fast runs even without dual Grief's and Fort. Then I noticed where someone earlier in this thread said that their Schaeffer's (or maybe their "Lash) wasn't great for WWing, cuz the SF doesn't proc.

Despite having played this game for a good while now, this will only be my second whirler ever. I have absolutely no idea if the Amp will proc from WW hits or not. Can anyone tell me?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but CtC on attack/striking doesn't work with WW, so Amp isn't going to be casting

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Well, crap. I shoulda known there was a good reason why everyone wasn't using Atma's.

On another topic, I just found this a few days ago:

Shadow Edge
Gothic Sword
One-Hand Damage: 46 to 132
Two-Hand Damage: 128 to 198
Durability: 23 of 40
Required Dexterity: 20
Required Strength: 113
Required Level: 48
Sword Class - Very Fast Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0xe7740a3d
+230% Enhanced Damage
+60 to Attack Rating
Adds 1-5 fire damage
40% Increased Attack Speed
166% Damage to Demons
+259 to Attack Rating against Demons
Level 1 Enchant (7/11 Charges)

and I was thinking about upping it and using it alongside my newly-made Grief once I reach Trav. According to Titanseal's calc, it reaches the last WW bp without any further IAS after upping, so I should be able to put a Ruby jewel in there, at which point it would do approximately 90-200 weapon damage. If I ever get to the point where I could afford a 40%/+15 maxer, I'd be nuts to even think about using it for something like this, so I'm assuming 40% ed is the best socketing option.

1). I'll be using LoH but not Fort (I assume). I'll obviously max WW and mastery. I should end up with ~200 Str and ~150 Dex. I'll most likely level to 90 before I settle in as a full-time Travrunner. Given those parameters, can anyone (who can do maths) tell me whether the ed to demons, the AR, and the Enchant charges (more AR) would make this even close to a reasonable alternative to an eth Oath BB or CS? (Probably not going to get a 1.07 version, it appears).

2) Even if the damage does suffer a bit, how many style points does a rare like that get on a serious runner

Thanks!

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

scottee, I'm assuming 68% Deadly Strike (33 from Highlord's, 20 from Grief, 15 from Gore Riders). I'm assuming level 22 Whirlwind and Sword Mastery (no idea if this will be right or not, close enough I figure). I assume 31% Critical Strike (hopefully in the right ballpark). Level 90, 200 Strength/150 Dexterity as a base comparison point:

Shadow Edge (with 40% Ruby Jewel): 1770 - 4003 (avg 2886)

eth 1.13 Oath Balrog Blade (avg roll): 1451 - 7442 (avg 4446)
eth 1.13 Oath BB (perfect roll): 1700 - 8718 (avg 5209)

eth 1.07 Oath Balrog Blade (avg roll): 1451 - 8433 (avg 4942)
eth 1.07 Oath BB (perfect roll): 1700 - 9710 (avg 5705)

The extra AR boost is handled; I put you at 264 Strength for the Shadow Edge setup (319 extra AR means 319/5 = 64 less points spent in Dexterity -> 64 more points spent in Strength). Similarly, the Oath setups had 220 Strength (100 AR means 20 more points to spend in Strength). I don't know about the Enchant charges though, so I ignored that. Can't imagine it doing a whole lot of difference, then again I'm often wrong

Oh and btw, a Cryptic Sword does less damage. I recommend using a Balrog Blade, and trading for an 1.07 eth version probably isn't too expensive.

Finally, just for more comparison, here's the damage a Grief Phase Blade does under these same conditions (back to 200 Strength):

1.13 Grief PB (370 roll): 7912 - 8025 (avg 7968)
1.13 Grief PB (400 roll): 8481 - 8595 (avg 8538)

Hope these numbers help you decide.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

My Barb is finally reaching Hell

So with a Beast and from all the numbers in the thread, a Grief is better than an Oath?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I've got some questions about Trav running. I've been running for six or seven levels already and he has found a large amount of runes (in my mind at least). I found a Lo rune yesterday, and have the ability to cube a second one. This means I can make 2x Grief. Or that I'm very close. I'm curious as to what weapon would be best. I've already used all three respecs while questing, the third to make him able to run Trav in the first place. I'm currently built to use Oath Balrog Blades. I don't have the spare points for using phase blades, and I've maxed out Sword Mastery so while I have the stats for a Zerker I wouldn't have the mastery for it. I've got 3/4 of the essences, so I figure I'll end up respecing that way. So I guess my questions are this:

1. Grief > Oath correct? I think both of my Oaths are decent rolls (297/314ed) Assuming I get the minimum +damage roll would it still outdamage the Oaths?

2. How much free space to have? I'm currently using half of my inventory for AR and damage charms, plus the Gheeds Fortune. Is it better to use more AR/Damage charms?

3. I'm currently using Metalgrid as my amulet. Primarily because of the large amount of AR. I have 78%cth on the Trav guys. I'd drop it for a Highlord's Wrath, but then my CTH drops to 72%. Being that Grief has -25% to enemy def would I be able to switch to Highlord's for the extra damage instead of the AR from the Metalgrid.

4. I could, in theory make 2x Grief Zweihander. It would still require a respec to use it, but I figure there is a respec in his future no matter what. He will have almost paid for the two griefs. He has found Lo, Ohm, Gul. I know that making them in Zweihanders means that no other character could feasibly use it. Are Zweihanders better enough to warrant making them into griefs over Phase Blades?

5. 105 FR/W. I put one point into increased speed and that along with my items I have a total of 105 FR/W. While I enjoy it in town, I find it to be a negative while whirling. When I respec, its better to drop back to 75? I don't think I can go any lower, not without changing my gear around. And @75 I seemed to be okay whirling. It feels like going from 75 to 105 passed about four breakpoints.

6. Before putting the point in Increased Speed (and the subsequent point in Increased Stamina) I had 4 spare skill points. What to do with them? I've maxed Sword Mastery, Whirlwind, Battle Orders and Find Item. After all prereqs and such the build is done at level 85. Is there any other good skills to put points into. I put one into Berserk to deal with the PI that happens fairly frequently. Is this a good place to dump the points? I don't currently use shout, and I don't need the extra duration it provides to Battle Orders, but maybe it will help the merc? Or maybe Iron Skin?

7. I'm using HotO/Spirit on switch. This boosts my Battle Orders and allows me to hork @55%. I'm assuming that 55% is enough?

8. I have 2231 hp after BO. I think I could safely lose ~300hp and feel good about it. I expect I'll have to lose a bunch if I'm going to respec to use Grief PBs. After my gear I have 404 str. Can I afford to lose some str as well as some vitality in order to use the PBs?

9. I run Trav @ P3. I expect the reason for running @ P3 is the same reason you run Meph @P3. It minimizes the chance for a no-drop. This is correct?

10. Why is it that MDR is so important for the merc? It makes sense to me that the hydras deal fire damage, and it looks like there might be some lightning damage in there as well from the council. Why is it that MDR is helpful?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Nothing comes close to Grief as far as avg dmg is involved, it will dwarf even Oath's.

Respecs are easily farmed so just pick what weapon you prefer, noting the speed requirements in each case, and whether you want to use the Atma bug.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I can't answer everything (and others are probably more equipped to do so) and some of it is just my gut (which has been wrong in the past) but:

1. I have a feeling that in almost any possible setup Grief would be better than Oath (see Fabian's post above). I also have a feeling that Fortitude + 2xOath > no-Fortitude + 2xGrief so perhaps you shoud get that first, but don't quote me on that

2. I have 2x4 open space + Cube. I pick up a lot of junk.

3. Grief => metalgrid or teleport ammy. No Grief => Metalgrid is probably better over time.

4. You can' have more respecs if you wish - all you have to do is collect 4 unique "charms" from 4 (5 actually) act bosses: Andariel/Duriel, Meph, Diablo and Baal (each drops a different one - except Andy and Duriel who drop the same if I am not mistaken) - cubing them all gets you a respec "scroll" which you can than use on any char (but you probably know that - seeing as you think about respeccing for the 4th time). They also drop them very frequently.

5. How on earth did you get 105 FRW?!? 1 point in skill + Gore Riders should get you to around 55 - 60 tops (after +skills). What other gear of yours have FRW? Additionally - FRW doesn't have BPs, IIRC, it's a continuous improvement (and a somewhat complicated to compute). And, yeah, FRW does interfere with WW, so less it better.

6. I put all my remaining points in Natural Res. Let's you play more with the gear (specially jewelry), IMO.

7. 55 is what is considered a good amount. I don't think you can get much higher with the diminishing returns and it being already maxed.

8. 2K life seems kinda low to me (my barb has 3K), but some do just fine with that.

9. Most do. Horking is p7 anyway, so unless your run time at p7 ~= your run time at p3 - there is little reason to run it on p7 or p5.

10. IIRC MDR does affect fire damage.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

1. Grief being better then Oath means I need to find 2x 5os Phase Blades. Is 1.07 the same as 1.1x in terms of damage?

2. I could probly do with less space, I'll have to see what else I have for Steel GCs. I could probly get by with 2x4 plus the cube

3. With the grief I will likely use Highlords. Griefs -25% def will hopefully compensate for the loss of AR

4. I'm only missing Mephs essence. I'm sure I could get it, I just need to gear up the old blizz sorc and run him a few times. Baal and Duriel have both been generous with the essences considering how often I've killed them. My only kill of Duriel since 1.13c has yielded 2 essences.

5. I use Enigma for armor. That carries 65 FR/W. I like it in town, and running towards the council members, I just don't like it while whirling.

6. I think I'm at a point already where each point in Natural Resist is only going to be worth 1 res. Not worth it for me. I'm sure I could handle having a few points unspent

7. If I made a second HotO I might be able to get to 56%, but considering the absurd amount of wealth on this guy I think I'll stick with the HotO/Spirit.

8. If I get back to 2k after my respec I'll feel plenty comfortable. I'm sure 350 STR will be sufficient. Not that I'd be able to trust the LCS. Or my own maths. I'll just have to go with how the runs feel. But I expect the runs to go better by switching Oaths for Griefs.

9. This is what I expected. Same concept as running Hell Mephisto @P3. I'm comfortable with 3, and haven't tried any higher.

10. I get that MDR helps against the fire damage, but I don't understand the why. Bone Spear is magic, I understand MDR helping vs that. Hydra should be fire, and MDR doesn't seem like it should make any difference. It works, and thats great, but I don't understand it. Probly doesn't matter much as my moron uses Eth GA, Reapers and Kira's.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Thanks for helping me avoid the awful headache I would have had if I'd had to do all that math, Fabian. I guess if it had been eth self-repair, it would have been a possibility. As is, I'm going to use it to level until I find/ trade for an Oath base.

Oh, and btw- I actually meant colossus sword rather than cryptic sword, I should have been more clear there.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

For Trav running i believe at least 1 weapon has to be Grief. That's some nasty, hurty stick. Mine is a 385 damage roll and at players 3 they fall fast. The other weapon is a Lightsabre, i don't have Azurewrath.

I'm also running Mara's instead of Highlord's because it's not safe enough when i face Conviction. I wish i could do something about this...

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

[highlight]Some more damage number comparisons[/highlight]

I've been pretty convinced that it's better to make a Grief than a Fortitude, if it's for your Travincal runner. Since I've seen many recommendations to make a Fortitude anyway, I wanted to take a closer look at the damage numbers.

I've assumed a level 90 character wearing Gore Riders, Laying of Hands and Highlord's Wrath. I've also assumed a base Strength of 200, and I've added 20 Strength for each Oath you wear (since 100 AR means 20 fewer points spent in Dexterity -> 20 points more in Strength). I've assumed level 22 Whirlwind and Mastery and 31% chance of Critical Strike. For the weapons, I've used three different types; eth 1.07 Oath Balrog Blade, 1.13 Grief Phase Blade, and 1.07 eth Grief Berserker Axe. For each, I've used the average damage roll and the perfect damage roll

Small unimportant note about an inaccuracy in the numbers below:

Spoiler

The observant will notice I've mixed Swords and Axes when I use a Grief BA and an Oath BB. I was too lazy to do calculations for 1.07 eth Oath BA's as well, I included the Grief BA mostly to compare to the Grief PB. If you're using an ebugged 1.07 eth BA, you're clearly doing more damage than any Oath+Oath+Fortitude setup anyway, so it shouldn't matter too much that these totals are based on Sword + Axe. Just compare the BA Grief's damage to the PB Grief's, if anything.

[highlight]2 * Oath + Fortitude[/highlight]
avg rolls
Weapon 1: 1770 - 10280 (6025)
Weapon 2: 1770 - 10280 (6025)
[highlight]Total: 12050[/highlight]

perfect rolls
Weapon 1: 2072 - 11834 (6953)
Weapon 2: 2072 - 11834 (6953)
[highlight]Total: 13906[/highlight]


[highlight]Grief PB + Oath + Not Fortitude[/highlight]
avg rolls
Weapon 1 (Oath): 1451 - 8433 (4942)
Weapon 2 (Grief): 7767 - 7846 (7806)
[highlight]Total: 12748[/highlight]

perfect rolls
Weapon 1 (Oath): 1700 - 9710 (5705)
Weapon 2 (Grief): 8349 - 8428 (8388)
[highlight]Total: 14093[/highlight]


[highlight]1.07 eth Grief BA + Oath + Not Fortitude[/highlight]
avg rolls
Weapon 1 (Oath): 1451 - 8433 (4942)
Weapon 2 (Grief): 7865 - 10248 (9056)
[highlight]Total: 13998[/highlight]

perfect rolls
Weapon 1 (Oath): 1700 - 9710 (5705)
Weapon 2 (Grief): 8447 - 10829 (9638)
[highlight]Total: 15343[/highlight]


As you can see, it's pretty close between the Oath+Fort setup vs Oath+Grief setup when you have perfect damage rolls on your weapons, but even then, Grief wins out, and in the other circumstances it's not particularly close. Furthermore, the Grief + Oath setup lets you use another armor, and the bonuses of that armor obviously haven't been factored in here.

In short, if you're making a runeword specifically for your Trav runner, make a Grief. Well, probably what you want to do is to do these calculations yourself for your particular situation, as everyone's equipment/charms/etc are different. But in general, I think just make a Grief

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



I did get a Charged from Duriel when I killed him while questing... Wich is Meph's drop. But maybe he can drop both, I dno...

Btw, nice guide fabian

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Perhaps I am misremembering... and it's Duriel/Mephisto

@Fabian

Awesome. Nice to see numbers so I don't have to guess (incorrectly ).

I made Fortitude first, I thought it would have more uses than Grief.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 14/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Andy and Duriel drop the same one (see following). FYI, Baal is the only one who is judicious with essence drop. He is about 1: 100 with me.

Twisted Essence of Suffering(Andy/Duriel)
Charged Essense of Hatred(Meph)
Burning Essence of Terror(Diablo)
Festering Essence of Destruction(Baal)

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Andy and Duriel is probably right but I can bet my "treasure between my legs" that he dropped a Charged one aswell.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

1- Does anybody knows the level of the conviction aura that a council member can be spawned with?

2- An Infinity on the Merc could both nullify that aura and make us need less AR. What do you think?

3- If I find a Lo I might try a Grief Vengeance Conviction Paladin for the Council, do you think it might work? Does anyone with a grief one or min damage one would want to try it out?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Grief's +xxx does not work with Vengeance.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Infinity will break the monster's immunities but it won't break their auras. Conviction will always affect you. The skill level is Mlvl/4, so it's 85/4 = 21.

Grief is better applied on pure damage builds. You can use it on that setup, but it will always be better on a WW Barb

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

As to your other question, my Griswold MinDam Avenger doesn't do too badly with the council on p3, but it's way too slow compared to a Barb. To beat the horking of a barb you have to be able to go fast...my avenger is slower than my frenzy barb. Granted, it's not a perfectly geared avenger. You might be able to make it shine with some 1.07 charms.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



A small correction: Convictions skill level is mlvl/8, AS incorrectly says mlvl/4. That would make council's conviction level 10.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Thanks for the feedback

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Yeah... Council conviction is broken every time, and yeah - it should be lvl 10 IIRC.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

My TravHorker just hit clvl ** and has maxed out on BO, WW, Sword Mastery, and Find Item with one point in all the pre-reqs. I put one point in all the one-point wonders (Double Swing, Berserk, Increased Speed/Stamina, Iron Skin, and Nat Res). I just checked, there are TWO points in Nat Res.

I've got one skill point to allocate and am wondering what the consensus is on distributing skill points once the basics are maxed out.

Some background: This guy runs about 2700 life all buffed so I've been adding points to STRength rather than VITality. Gear is Arreat's w FHR jewel, Forti, Oath, Grief, LoH, GoreRiders, SOE, Mara's, BK's ring, and a rare dual leech/res all/AR ring. Merc running Reapers, GA, and Kira's. I use the Stairs trick to get the merc in the battle.

What I considered:
1. I could start dropping points in Iron Skin and Nat Res but the payback seems small. On the other hand, I could eventually drop the Mara's in favor of a Highlord's. The downside is that adding points to Nat Res only adds 2 percent per point...S L O W...
2. I could start adding points to some of the BO pre-reqs but adding duration won't really help with Trav runs.
3. I could start pumping Berserk which might actually be helpful.
4. I could add points to Increased Speed which might speed up the runs but that might actually work against the WhirlWind...too fast, too few strikes...offsetting any gains in speeding up the run.

Thoughts?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Don't like options 2-4. One point in Increased Speed (if that) and Berserk is all you need, imo. If Nat Res helps you towards using Highlord's, I'd most definitely go with that.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

It's a bit like extra points in a fishymancer...just plant them in the ground. I agree that Nat Res is the most useful of the remaining options, although I've never been a big fan of "move slow" WW theory.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

if you can sort out the last bit of resists thru charms, my 2 cents is on shout. a little more defense wouldn't hurt. plus it adds more ed to berserk.

EDIT: here's my question.

what switch weapon should i use for horking?
current set up is almost the same as old dude except for highlords and ravenfrost.
skills maxed are sword mastery, ww, bo and maxing find item now (he's level 83). plus all the 1 pointers.

current switch is 2x ali babas (socketed with mf jewels).
would 2x echoing be better? my native mf (without ali babas) is ~100.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Currently I'm using HotO and Spirit. The FCR makes the horking faster, and adds a total of +5 to your horking, and will also buff your BO

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I actually just used some dual Heart Carvers for +8 to horking ... i'm thinking that the FCR on the Hoto/Spirit combo would be nice though ... the +3 difference would probably only amount to 1% versus the total time gained by fcr in the long, long run ... plus you get the buffed BO ... maybe I should make the Hoto now. :yes:

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



i'm actually new to horking.. apart from council members, do you guys hork every corpse in area runs, say chaos sanctuary? or just boss packs? my mana pool can't keep up with all corpses especially large mobs like those maggots, flesh eaters etc..

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Never made a "horker" before this whole Trav thing ... I love it! :jig:

I just hork the council ... and boss packs if I need some extra full purples and the off chance of something decent. But normally I make a beeline straight to the council like many I would assume.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I've been running the Council like 2 to 3 hours each day and i get about 1 high rune each day (high rune being Mal and up). Max i've got is Lo.

Still no Jah or Ber...

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Quick question concerning attack rating. Assume a contrived situation where a clvl 90 character is using dual Grief PB but has only 100 attack rating. You have Ignore Target Defense for both weapons. Council members have 1874 defense.

According to the chance to hit formula:
100*AR/(AR+DR)*2*clvl/(clvl+mlvl)
100*100/(100+0)*2*90/(90+**) = 101% -> 95%
100*100/(100+1874)*2*90/(90+**) = 5%

Does this mean that you'll be hitting at 95% vs the council members, and at 5% vs unique mobs (Geleb, Ismail, Toorc)?

Just trying to understand the mechanics of chance to hit. I ask because I've been using Angelic ring/amulet combo, but I've started to accumulate some AR charms and at some point I think making the switch to Highlords Wrath + AR charms is more dps than just using the Angelic combo.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

From what I can tell your calculations are correct - you will be hitting at 95% all normal monsters and minions.

Against others - you have to take -25% ITD on Grief - which would be applied to monster DR. You still will be hitting at very low rate (too lazy to calculate).

My barb has 67% (or something around that) CTH against Council bosses with Grief and around 3400 AR and I feel that is good enough (I went the damage route and stuffed the Inventory with 1.07 charms, which are plain - high damage, but no AR).

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 15/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I know that people run the countess for runes. Explicitly for runes. When doing so, its best to minimize your MF to maximize your rune drops. It turns out I can have a lot more free inventory space then I needed when I started. Is it GG to pack on the MF, or is that counter-productive?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



MF will not affect your rune drops. Put it on players1 and wear whatever mf you see fit.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

As far as I know, all that matters for Countess runs (if you're doing it for runes) is run speed. I ran with an empty inventory to minimize time spent unloading runes, and I think that was probably the most time effective choice. Didn't try to get any MF on my equipment, maybe I had some from War Traveler or something though.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Run speed is definitely the key.

OTOH, it becomes extremely boring if you don't occasionally stop and stomp the roses...er...mobs.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I have scanned through the thread a bit, and will be re-reading it in its entirety soon, but what is the basic socketing wisdom for Mercenary gear? I have the advised Reaper's/Kira's/GA setup at the moment, but none of them are socketed yet, and I am trying to decide what to put in them.

(Re: Countess: I ran with a charged bolt sorceress. Get a good map, teleport to the back corner of the Countess' room, nail 'em all with the electricity. Since the runs are on /p1, it's not too tough. The mercenary keeps the baddies just far enough away from you that you are not in danger, and the Countess has a brief delay before she charges, so the minions are dead about the time she arrives on the scene. MF is irrelevant one way or the other, so load the inventory with runes, like Fabian said.)

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I haven't socketed my merc's rig yet either, but I'm looking at Shaeling the Reaper's and IAS jewel-ing the armor/Kira's. That'll get him up to a 6 frame poke speed from the base 7.5. Or maybe Shael everything? 60% FHR gets him to 8 frames on the recovery front, while 20% IAS gives a 7 frame poke.

I'm not finding that my merc dies all that often though, unless there's Conviction to contend with, even with vanilla gear. He has 4100 HP after I BO him.

There's also the option of stacking his Fire res with Rals, possibly a Ruby jewel (the Fire res, not the %ED type) in the Reaper's to combat Conviction.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

ral both kira's and ga. merc's survivabilty vs conviction solved.

edit: btw, for all those lucky with trav rune drops, in general, how long till one drops? my barb ran from level 81 (one level break for questing) up until 91 (and then some) and the highest he's got is a vex, a couple of mals here and there that's it.. =P

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Yup. The light bulb was a little slow to light up for me on that one. I shouldn't be posting at 3 AM... should be sleeping.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

my merc setup is kira raled, Ga raled and shaeled reaper. with this gear even under conviction aura the merc has 90%res fire.
@Fabian why do you need both weapons to get last ww breakpoint? i understand, maybe i'm wrong, that you only need the glove weapon the get last www breakpoint, just like frenzy. my oath+death eth 1.07 zerkers works fine.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



As far as I know, with WW your both weapon speeds are independent of each other. If you are using oath + death, you will hit last BP with your oath but the death will be swinging more slowly. Most likely that will work just fine because the DS and CB will be applied to your oath as well which will balance things out a little. If my calculations are correct, you will be hitting 3 FPA (8.3 attacks per second) with oath + death zerkers instead of 2 FPA (12.5 attacks per second) when using oath + oath zerkers.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

What Drizzy said. For Whirlwind, each weapon's speed is calculated independently, and the only IAS that matters is the IAS on that specific weapon. That's why Death will never swing at full WW speed. That said, I'm sure a 1.07 eth Death will work "fine", as it's a great wepon. It would just be a lot better if it had a bunch of IAS on it too

Not really sure if DS and/or CB will apply to the other weapon. I thought DS carried over, but CB didn't, but now that I think about it, that sounds pretty weird. I'm sure someone has a nice link handy?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Neither carries over.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Like this?
http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7562593&postcount=293

:crazyeyes:

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Recently my computer died, and the last backup I had was the first part of 2009 (doh)...so my barb is using the CoH instead of my merc as in the past since I don't have a Fort anymore for my barb.

After starting back in Trav with the old backup and upgrading to 1.13, I tried several setups to keep my merc alive. Once he hit level 85 I slapped Glad's Bane (with a Sol), along with Crown of Thieves (with Sol), and a Reapers (with Shael). GB has DR and most importantly CBF. The Crown has +33% fire res and 12% LL. In all he has 26% LL with a pretty fast stick and he seldom dies. His lightning res isn't full, but it doesn't seem to matter. He won't hold up to Conviction, but he works great other than that. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

BTW, I've leveled my barb and merc from 79 to 89 and the highest runes I've found from Trav are a handful of Fals.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I have respecced my barb.
He is now level 84, I switched Storm + Oath for a Tomb Reaver and have switched Shaft for a Skullders ire. With the increase from around 40 to 200+ mf. Occasionally The Tomb Reaver spawns a returned from one of the corpses. But it does not happen very often. I feel alot more barb wielding a big 2 handed axe (I know it is a polearm I just like the words big 2 handed axe) and am just a soccer for more mf as they make my drops that more interesting.

My Merc died one time only yesterday. He has maxed out resist and uses
the Reaper's toll (prety standard for travi barb merc I think). I have no spare Duriel's shell at the moment so I threw a lionheart armor on him.

For his helm I have an unusual option which is imo key to his survival (as Hydra's are the main damage causer) Steel Shade, mine has 8% fire absorp. I think this is the best helm option if your char is dedicated to running travi.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Tomb Reaver is a fine choice. I used tomb reaver for a good long while, I think from 84 to 90? I respecced to use the IK maul at 90 because I figured the IK maul had that extra 200%ED to demons.

As for MFing, I did pack on some MF for some runs just for the Happy Meal effect (buy hamburger get toy free). I thought, since I'm running these guys so much and since I'm so slow (120s/run) I might as well put on some MF and see if I can get any free toys. I did round out my ring collection to everything xcept SoJ so I guess it was worth it? But once you are doing it real serious, like timing runs, trying to shave time off runs, then MF becomes something not so helpful.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I was tempted to put %MF on my Travbarb, but I had to say no to myself. I'm already pretty bad when it comes to picking up drops; I just can't leave a blue amulet, ring, sorc orb, pally shield, etc. lying there - I'm too compulsive. I gotta see what it is. I've also got my IK Barb if I really want to go there with a bunch of %MF, even though he shatters most everything.

To each their own, though. I don't fault anyone for wanting to MF while they run Trav. You can get some nice stuff there.

BTW, Rals + Shael for the merc's kit really does the trick. Conviction doesn't bother him much anymore.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Sorry but I can't really read the whole thing.
Soooo, what to use with Grief (PB) ?
Oath?
Thanks in advance

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Maybe an Oath Cryptic Sword? I might not be the best to say because I went from 2x Oath to 2x Grief all at once. I used Oath Balrog Blades.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Oh well I got the grief from corrupted's giveaway and I can't afford another xD
What about an oath on a balrod blade? Why cryptic sword?
And is ww really much more effective than berserk?
I'm goin with grief + stormshield and at p3 I'm pretty fast.
Would I be even faster as ww?

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 16/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Oath in a 1.07 Eth Balrog Blade would be pretty good. Thats what I used before I got my griefs. WW > Everything else.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

grief is possibly top choice, but an oath is a close second in terms of price/performance. so it's still good. i myself use grief/oath combo which works well..

cryptic sword is an ok choice, but bb has higher damage. so that could sway you. with oath, any elite 4os swords will reach last ww bp.

as for ww vs berserk, iirc somewhere in this thread there's one experimenting with berserk/warcry. but imo it's down to playstyle. there's even one using a wolf barb as well.

with ww, you don't really *need* to target. so in running terms, you can be half-asleep doing so, i guess that's a plus =P

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



In short, yes. As Ashmer stated, whirlwind is more effective in overall killing speed than any other physical damage melee attack in the game (well, Berserk is not a "physical damage" attack as it deals magic damage, but still). At least when dual-wielding (ideal combination being Grief + Grief, or Grief + Beast).

Even with just one weapon (Grief ideally), whirlwind is still more powerful overall than most if not all other melee skills a barbarian has. But with two weapons, it's the overall damage king of all physical damage melee attacks of any character class.

The only scenario I can think of where some other physical damage melee attack can beat whirlwind is specifically vs. a single monster that is difficult to hit (high defense and level) and has the ability to block, Baal being the best example. In this case paladin's smite attack is unbeatable, because smite ignores block and has a 100% chance to hit regardless of the opponent's defense and level. Diablo might also go down faster with a smiter, but other than those two bosses, whirlwind is the damage king. (Actually even vs. Diablo and Baal, I think whirlwind could be close to smite if the barb has a high amount of AR and is very high level (Baal is level 99).)

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Thanks everyone for the precious infos
[=
Gonna make oath as soon as someone breaks my ist (hellforge helped me this time)

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

As a cheap option,
Duress, Stone or Lionheart?
And where to make them?
Thanks in advance
>.<

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



You wouldn't want to use Duress, since cold damage means fewer corpses to hork. Out of Stone and Lionheart, since most of the damage you take is elemental, I think Lionheart would be the better bet for the higher res, life, %ed.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

OK, I'm late to this party, jumping in at page 31 of the thread. I skimmed through but didn't see anything about this question, sorry if it was already adressed!

How "sub-optimal" is a full IK Barb for Trav running? If I take the time to cobble together some of the recommended gear, will I see a significant increase in performance?

My IK Barb is clvl82. I tried 10 runs at /p3 and everything seemed to be fine, no NDE's and the merc was perfectly fine as well (Kira's, Guardian Angel and Amn'd Reapers). Only thing is it seemed like a SLOW run. I can waste the council on higher settings in half the time with my hammerdin or Blizz-Baller.

I'm guessing the whole purpose of using a Barb for this run is the Find Item skill and MF isn't as important when you're rune hunting.

So anyway... full IK or start hunting for eth Balrog Blades for Oath?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

^^a full ik build isn't that bad. i tried it and it's quite a safe build. the cons however imo;

-slow compared to oath/grief/fort setup (feels about 2-3 times slower for me)
-freeze + cold damage means less corpses to hork. significantly less corpses than my trav setup which includes ravenfrost and repers toll merc.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Not sure if I am ready to make a Grief, but an Oath paired with something interesting may be fun to try out. I have most of the gear talked about in this thread other than high end runewords.
Thanks, maybe I'll give it a "whirl" so to speak! If it truly is 2-3 times faster, it'd be worth it. Otherwise I can run Trav AND the council in Durance 3 AND Meph all at /p7 with my Blizz Sorc in roughly the same time it takes my IK Barb to do just Trav on /p3.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Having tried both IK and gear suggested in this guide (except weapon, that was eDeath Colossus Sword => eBotD War Pike), I can say there's no contest in terms of safety and speed.

There are several problems with IK...

1) Shattered corpses - You WILL break all of the non-boss Council members, so Find Item is next to useless. The main reason behind using a Barb over another class is getting the double drop.

2) Lack of MDR - You need 25+ MDR to nullify the Hydras, even under Conviction. That is a huge factor in the difficulty of the run. Since the IK set has no innate MDR, you are left using BOTH of your rings for Dwarf Stars, or socketing Mal runes.

3) Low damage - The physical damage of IKSC just doesn't compare with even a bad roll on an Oath. This doesn't give you enough leech to be comfortable, in my experience. There only being 10% LL on the set doesn't help either.

Just my 2 cents. I use my IK Barb for Thresh/Eldritch/Pindle runs, since the first two are innately cold immune, so they don't shatter and I can hork them with Ali Babas. Pindle only breaks maybe 30% of the time.


-Hammy

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

IK set has an innate 10 MDR as part of the full set bonus, but that's just an academic nitpick... agreed that the set really isn't ideal for Trav running mostly due to the shattered bodies.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Hammy and Painman, I agree. I spent an hour running with my IK set on and I did indeed shatter too many monsters. It was also quite slow, but I only came close to dying ONCE...
I was amp'd as usual, and with there being a Might aura, Extra Strong, Mana Burn monster in there I almost got toasted. I couldn't see ANY red in my life bulb as I did the ol' S&E.

I was going to re-outfit him, but I don't see a really good base for Oath in my stashes.
Also of note, I just realized I am missing and entire stash which contained my Arreat's Face, among other items.

EDIT: Ended up making Oath in an eth 'zerker axe. I need to figure out what to pair it with though... I was going to make Oath in a Balrog Blade, until I realized I had no eth Balrog Blades. Was going to pair that with Azurewrath or maybe Dijiin Slayer for some style points. Something not often used...

Anyway. Maybe a Runemaster stuffed with a bunch of interesting jewels would be a fun pairing with the Oath zerker? Hmmm...

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide


Are you sure this is right? After I saw this I tried a new merc setup, Vamp Gaze + Glad Bane, which provided around 30 MDR with my rolls (don't remember exactly). The merc got completely fried. I had though this might be a better option than the Kira's/GA since that invariably gets him drilled as soon as he's amped or hit with a fanat pack, but the MDR didn't seem to have an effect.

His resists were only in the...50s, I want to say, but if MDR nullifies the hydra damage even under conviction resists shouldn't be the issue. I tried equipping my frenzier with the glad bane + SoE instead of my usual Treachery and had roughly similar results, but then I rarely have issue with the hydras anyway so that doesn't tell me much.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Another option is the unique chaos armor "Black Hades". It has inherent ED to demons and three open sockets. Here is the one I use:

Spoiler

Black Hades
Chaos Armor
Defense: 1029
Durability: 68 of 70
Required Strength: 140
Required Level: 53
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0x9f252087
+6 to Strength
+7 to Energy
+1 to Dexterity
+200% Enhanced Defense
+52 to Attack Rating
Lightning Resist +8%
+20 poison damage over 2 seconds
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
-2 to Light Radius
Half Freeze Duration
138% Damage to Demons
+339 to Attack Rating against Demons
+3 to Mana After Each Kill
Socketed (3: 3 used)

Eagle Heart
Jewel
Required Level: 25
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 49
Fingerprint: 0x616ed85c
+6 to Strength
+20 poison damage over 2 seconds
38% Damage to Demons
+27 to Attack Rating against Demons

Grim Whorl
Jewel
Required Level: 33
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x87222fcf
+7 to Energy
+52 to Attack Rating
32% Damage to Demons
+50 to Attack Rating against Demons
+3 to Mana After Each Kill

Beast Gyre
Jewel
Required Level: 19
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 49
Fingerprint: 0x4fb687eb
+1 to Dexterity
Lightning Resist +8%
7% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
29% Damage to Demons
+41 to Attack Rating against Demons

Coupled with my the rest of my gear, the Grief phase blade (+672% damage total), and my Oath cryptic sword (+588% damage to demons total) I've found it a good choice until I can find another LO for Fortitude.

Edit 2: This was originally brought up by Ohmogrande (sp? - sorry, I can never remember how to spell your name) several pages ago.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

how would Arriocs Needle behave on trav runner ?
I'm not using RWM so no death/oath/fort combos can be made...
current setup:
string of ears
guilaumes
gloom kraken shell
goblins
LoH
BKB
angelic combo (which boosts AR pretty nice, but I feel it lowers my dps/survivability horribly)

and as weapons, for the moment trying out windhammer, IK maul, dual djin slayers (shael)

moron gear :
reaper
eth ornate plate Stone
guilaumes

I know my gear is crappy, but hey, that's why I pindle with my blizzy, and hunt runes with whirlie :]

anyway, Arriocs will be available in 2 lvls, so I was wondering should I even consider it ?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Your gear isn't even close to crappy. Definitely give the Arioc's a try, the ITD should contribute greatly in addition to its damage. If you can Shael it you've got a great weapon.

By brief inspection I would rank them:
Arioc's (Shael)
Windhammer (Shael) / IK (ShaelShael)
Dual Djin Slayers (Shael)
Arioc's (unsure about where this goes, also depends on roll)
Windhammer

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



Remember that the ~25 MDR figure assumes that you're wearing a Dwarf Star. Without that, I figure you probably need closer to 50ish MDR- so, for the merc, that means perfect MDR rolls on both pieces, as well as mals socketed.

Edit: Actually, on further consideration, I'm not sure that even 50 MDR would be sufficient without fire absorb. Anyone know what kind of damage output the hydras actually do?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

not sure whether it has been mentioned before, but i actually like an UPGRADED SKULLDER'S IRE as armor. call me crazy, but i gave up my fortitude for it. i do not have a teleport source, i use the method of running up the stairs and entering the durance to get my merc into the frail.

setup:
upped arreat (6%LL and 193%ED)
upped skullder's ire (191% ED)
LoH
string of ears (unfortunately still looking for a near-perfect one before i upgrade it)
gore riders (like string of ears)
2 fantastic dual leech + resists rings

weapons:
2x grief

merc:
reaper's toll
vampire gaze
fortitude

when i got my fortitude (yesterday ^^) i tried it on my barb, while my merc had a 3800 def stone. the kill speed difference could be felt, but the overall difference in time needed was negligible after couple of test runs. 30 'average' runs and the fortitude setup was ~50sec faster in total.
ok, that's worth it, you'd say. i disagree. skullder's gives ****loads of MF and i found the council to be especially good in dropping class specific uniques and jewelry, making andariel runs totally obsolete for me. the uniques i found so far are in the same value range as the runes i found.... ok, i surely was lucky, but still....
findings:
1 maras (29res)
2 SoJs
1 highlord's
1 metal grid
5-10 rainbow facets (not a single 5/5, but still....)
couple of gheeds
and, though not jewelry, couple of class specific uniques, i.e., arreats, jalal's (found 4 of these, but no HoZ so far), oculus, etc.

since i enjoy seeing golden letters, even IF the value of extra uniques in expectation would not justifiy the extra amount of time needed, i also think that skullder's makes the whole council running less boring

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I like the idea of this. I have been musing on how to increase MF on my eBotD whirler but the idea of trading out Fortitude hasn't even occurred to me.
That said, I still think my merc needs his Treachery to survive but I suppose there's no harm in trying him out with Fort for a time.

Hmm, just when I thought I was too bored to run Trav anymore, this pops up. I like the thought that more of the blue jewels I find might end up as facets

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

sorry for not responsing, i didn't subscribe to the thread, unfortunately

so did you try it out? i like it. i now have the runes for a CoH, but i am not sure whether i will just face the same problem of having more boring runs.... (and i might want to use the ber for something much more significant should i be lucky with a certain rare rune in the future....)

that said, the number of facets and GOOD rings/amulets seems to have been really lucky. i recently did many runs and got only few facets (still no 5/5....). plenty of unique rings, but most rather boring (i.e. nagel/dwarf star/manald/....). but still, the difference in the number of unique/set finds is significant.

 

[Babyhell]

Full comments page 17/17

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

So my whirler is just about ready to run trav. For the time being, he has 2x oath eth small crescents, but that'll likely change to something much better soon I have arreat's and it'll probably get upped. SoE will as well I would guess. What do you guys like for armor both on the barb and merc?

I have a forti archon plate, CoH wire fleece, 2x Treachery, one in an eth hellforge plate, one wire fleece, arkaine's valor, black hades, and a couple others, but those are the big ones I was thinking. If I could, I'd do an eth forti on my merc and my regular forti AP for me, but I haven't found another Lo yet. It'd probably go into a grief anyway. Thoughts?

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

If no enigma, I'd say go with fortitude on yourself. Even if you have enigma, I dunno. Depends on your kill speed. I get decent run times with fort/griefs. I gotta say though, GA+Kiras+Reapers on merc really is tough to beat in trav runs.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Enigma beats all other armors. Council members are easy to deal with with oaths, Fortitude will only slow you down. You lose much time running to them, entering durance to have merc with you, and then some time passes when merc walks toward enemy... Simply put, if you wanna have decent running time, you should be able to travel fast there and have mobility, because killing is not problem here. So, if you have 45 sec killing speed with fortitude, it's decent time, but with nigma you would have under 40 in that case.

Since you don't have Enigma, Forti will serve you well if you want that. CoH is also very comparable to Forti (even better perhaps). Grants almost as much damage, but also grants other mods like + skills for better hork, increased speed, resists if you need them... With Coh, you can go more on strength build because you would be safer with mass resists and life steal bonus, so overall I believe CoH is better option than Forti. Ah yes, MF also.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

CoH doesnt add almost as much damage as Fort. The plus skills do help increased run walk for speed in getting there and hork. If your running trav why bother with MF theres other much better MF area's. Maxed resists with Fort isnt a problem for that matter. Also you can get a map where all the council is off to the right inside the room pop into durance to collect your merc and back out, it saves time since you then dont have to wait for your merc. My grief zealot does the runs in under 40 seconds unless theres a PI wearing fort. My WW barb is close.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I can see your reasoning regarding Enigma > Fortitude, but there's no chance that CoH could beat Fortitude.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

In terms of damage the difference isn't that much (200ED to demons 20ED from strenght 16 ED from 2 skills vs 300ED) (but forti also gives live that can be "converted" into strenght).

The thing is, if someone doesn't have enigma, the Ber from CoH should wait for a Jah. I'm not sure if many make a CoH before 'Nigma.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

lol

CoH does add as much dmg as fort I think, just slightly less.

200ed to demons + 20 str + 2 skills (26 ed from ww and mastery) and if we assume standard gear for trav runner you would get 2% DS from mastery (translated to 1% effective DS). Considering DS affects your total ED, it would add 1% of your total dmg (350 from LoH + 246 from CoH + 313 from skills + 200 ed from str + 200 might merc) 1% of 1309 is still 13. So 246 + 13 = 259 ED total. Close enough to fort? Also you get 1% hork more (assuming standard setup) and inc speed (that you need considering you don't have teleport) etc etc etc. Also bear in mind that + skills from CoH do affect AR on weapon mastery what leads to more consistent attacks aka more dmg. Also 8% leech isn't tosser, and 8% DR gives you 8% more effective life meaning you can add more str since both armors cover resists pretty well. MF is just useful add. You won't cry about loosing it but you won't want it removed from item.

And you have 0% of corpse shattering with CoH compared to cold armor proc from fort that has low chance to kill corpse, but still can do it.

I'd say CoH is overall better armor. Small difference in ED but lots nicer stats to boost overall. Interchangeable armors, but small advantage goes to CoH imo.

Also, I'd like to see video of close to 40 sec fort trav runs. In order to be effective without barb you need run times close to 25 sec; 40 sec from zealot is very far from that number. Close to 40 sec with fort barb...video or I'm not buying it. Even best runners (scrcrw excluded) have huge problems getting lower then 40 sec with enigma. Without it, I'm pretty sure it's impossible (close being +-20% run times at most).

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I havent timed the Barb its not as fast as the zealot for sure, close but not as fast. I never claimed a zealot was the most affective trav runner merely said that I ran it in under 40 seconds with my pally, using ****+charge of course. I run the barb because horking way more than makes up the difference in run times. As far as buying it or not I really could care less if you do.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



I made CoH before enigma because I felt like it lol. I made it ~3 months ago, and the ber would still be in my stash if I hadn't. I don't have a jah, nor other runes to cube one, and I've gotten infinitely more use out of the CoH than a stashed ber really. thinking back, I probably should have made nigma, but I'm happy with my decision. I'll probably try both CoH and forti in trav and see which one I like, but I'm thinking CoH is going to be the way to go.

ND - I have GA/Kira's/Reaper's, I just forgot to mention the GA lollll. My Kira's is eth too

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Perhaps you quoted wrong?
Anyway, try it out, it's the best way in this game. Then you'll know which way to go.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Ah crap, yeah wrong quote hahaha. I'll give CoH a shot - I have a feeling it'll be my armor of choice in this case.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

If you play on p7/p8, fortitude gives you a considerable advantage over anything else. Councils are one of those areas where CoH can actually be close in terms of damage ( due to them all being demons ) but there still isn't much reason to use it over fortitude.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

How much does clvl affect these runtimes?

I just got to trav, clvl 76, and while I don't struggle with surviveability at all, even on p1 it takes forever.

Gear:

Arreat's
Mara's (HLW hasn't dropped yet )
Ravenfrost
dual leech 11@res +27LR +AR ring (Likely the best piece of equipment I own)
gores
CoH/fort
SoE
LoH
Dual Oath eth small crescents, both with pretty crappy ED though. I'm waiting for 1.07 bases to reroll them in.

Switch is dual hoto.

Charms are almost entirely max dmg/AR charms, with a couple resist charms tossed in for good measure. Thoughts? I don't have another Lo to make Grief yet

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Let's just say 10 levels will make a huge difference in your CtH. 15 will be even better.

I don't have a great idea from your equipment (because I've never run one of these), but I think that it's probably your best bet. Ignore target defense doesn't work on bosses iirc, including bosspack uniques. Just in case you were wondering that.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I wouldn't even start trav before lvl 87. Though if you're only doing p1 runs you could start earlier I guess.

Just finish the game. Make pat and you'll be close to a good level to start.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



This makes me feel better hahaha. I thought I was doing it all wrong!

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Only one comment. Remove that Ravenfrost. You will shatter some corpses with it, making your horking ability less useful. Take some other ring and don't use any cold damage source from equipment/charms.

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide



as he said. finishing the game is advised, but you probably did it already anyway. unless you want to save that experience boost from the ancients.
i started running trav with a low level, too, don't remember, 80 or slightly above, i guess. but - if p3 is doable, you can get plenty of xp just from running the council. every level will make a difference, i felt it a lot especially on my merc. with each level his survivability against conviction aura bosses increased a lot. i actually leveled my barb from that rather low level to now lvl 93, soon 94. you can easily level to 90 just by killing the council again and again.....

as for armor: enigma is surely the best. i agree. the teleport is superior to any damage boost from any armor. my prefered alternative is still an upped skullders - i know there are better MF areas, but i combine a slightly inferior rune hunting with some ok MFing; and i need to find a better gheed's, i have at least 5, but my best gives 33% MF. next choice for me WOULD be CoH if available, the +2 skills (which also helps with iron skin, shout, battle orders, berserk) is superior imo to fortitude.

one thing i wanted to mention as an addendum to fabian's guide is that naj's puzzler on switch is also a good source for teleport. 5 skill points less for horking and warcries, but you don't have to give up highlord's. as soon as i find a good tele barb amulet i will switch, though. have only one HOTO, not sure i should make a second one just for that, vex is quite a valuable rune, still.....