Hal's 1.10 Conc Build Guide (Updated Edition)

Johny, you have to realize that you'll be getting a lot of life from your gear and such as well. My 156/222 base barb had around 4k or so after BO with all his gear on. Don't sweat the math so much, that's just how it works out between charms/gear/skills/etc.

1. Yes, it shows up on the right mouse button. That's why I revised the guide to make leap/leap attack optional, since if you're wearing enigma, you don't need it.

2. Trading, or forge/countess runs. You'd just have to make and rush new characters for the most part, unless you were wicked and tricked newbies out of their quest rewards.

3. You meant with shout, not BO. What are you wearing? My barb has around 23k defense after shout, 30k+ with conc, using verdungo's, arreat's, enigma archon, travs, blood gloves, stormshield, BotD berserker, dual ravens, and highlord's. That's with level 33 shout (20 base), 22 ironskin (15 base), and 29 conc (20 base)

4. Arreat's, Anya quest, annihilus, a point of natural resists with +skills, and other gear/charms to help out. You don't HAVE to use enigma, it's just a suggestion. CoH will take you to max easily, and Duress (my new favorite) also has a nice amount.

5. Elemental damage is usually more dangerous period, since you can't block it and it always hits, unlike physical attacks. That's why resists/absorb/life is important. The base idea of the conc barb is that between blocking/defense/pdr/battlecry, you don't have to worry about physical, so your big life pool and resists are there to take care of the elemental dangers.

6. Life tap is a curse. When anyone hits an enemy that has been cursed with lifetap, you leech back 50% of the physical damage you deal.

-Hal
 
2. Trading, or forge/countess runs. You'd just have to make and rush new characters for the most part, unless you were wicked and tricked newbies out of their quest rewards.
Click to expand...

Oh, yes, I didn't think of this method. I can make a new char myself, and can use other chars (my acct or my friend's) to rush the new char to get the hell forge quest. I won't rob other newbies of their reward in hell forge quest, in fact, I have been rushed before, and let the one who rushed me get the runes. Anyway, I don't mind his getting the runes. But as you reminds me, I won't do the same thing. :)


3. You meant with shout, not BO. What are you wearing? My barb has around 23k defense after shout, 30k+ with conc, using verdungo's, arreat's, enigma archon, travs, blood gloves, stormshield, BotD berserker, dual ravens, and highlord's. That's with level 33 shout (20 base), 22 ironskin (15 base), and 29 conc (20 base)
Click to expand...

Yes, you are right. It is Shout, not BO. A friend of mine equpped me well, but can't be comparable to your godly items. Now what i want most is annihilus, Stormshield, and a CoH (I prefer CoH to Enigma, coz it can add 65 to all resistances, quite a good attr, although it doesn't have teleport skills). But they are too hard to get. Maybe I should look at eBay, dunno.

Thanks for your reply, Hal. :P
 
Another question about shield:

Hal's Guide recommends Stormshield as the King of shields for barb.

But as far as I can see, Gerke's Sanctuary seems even better:

1. defense:
Gerke's is 221-268, while SS is (136-504) - (151-519), averagely, SS has a higher def, but the difference is not that big.

2. req:
Gerke's req lvl 44 and str 133, while SS req lvl 73 and str 156. SS's req is quite higer.

3. chance to block:
Gerke's is 79% for barb, while SS is only 72% for barb.
This means to achieve 75% block rate, we need to put less dex pts, save pts into vit.

4. Enhanced Defense:
Gerke's +180-240% Enhanced Defense
SS + (3.75 Per Character Level) 3-371 Defense (Based On Character Level)
hard to say which is better.

5. resistances to elemental attack:
Gerke's All Resistances +20-30
SS Damage Reduced By 35%, Cold Resist +60%, Lightning Resist +25%
Gerke's is better, i think.

6. bonus to stat pts:
Gerke's Replenish Life +15
SS +30 To Strength
SS is better in this respect.

7. Damage taken:
Gerke's Damage Reduced By 11-16, Magic Damage Reduced By 14-18
SS Damage Reduced By 35%, Attacker Takes Lightning Damage of 10
SS is far better.

To summarize, I think Gerke's is better in low req, high block rate, 4 res, while SS wins in bonus to stat pts, and pdr.

Is Gerker's comparable to SS? I think it is.

But I think Hal must have his reasons to acclaim that. And history shows that I always missed something. :)

Hope Hal can clarifies this point.

thanks,
 
Gerke's is a nice entry-level shield, but you're not putting enough emphasis on the importance of the bonuses each shield has:

The 35% pdr on Stormshield is HUGE, and is the #1 reason it is so popular. You don't get a physical resistance stat, and so the only way to cut back on the damage that gets to you is via this mod. Between Storm and Verdungo's, or Storm and String, or so on, you can get max; without storm, it's almost impossible to get to 50% without sacrificing quality gear.

Defense rating: Gerkes is always going to have a fixed amount, ranging between 221 and 268. The LOWEST possible defense a stormshield will ever have is 414 (133 base, but you can't wear it until you hit 75, so you get +281.25 from the shield mod), and will only get stronger from there, up to 504-514 depending on the base you find. That's a significantly large difference; I think you must've misunderstood how it adds up.

The Str bonus: if you're stacking gear, that 30 comes in handy, as it can help you wear large-str gear without having to actually get the stats for it. Steelrends come to mind, as do other pieces like Steel Carapace. Similarly, 30 str = 30% damage.

Block SPEED: Gerke's has 0. Stormshield has 35%. Nice to keep you out of block lock/interruption if you have a slow frame conc attack or if you're using another attack like berserk.

Duribility: Stormshield is indestructable. Gerke's isn't.

Weight: Gerke's is a pavise, which is a "heavy" class shield. This means it gives a -10% run/walk/stam drain penalty. Stormshield is a monarch, or "light" class shield, which has no penalty.

Now, Gerkes does have a much nicer block rate, requiring less dex, but Stormshield is more than sufficient and has nicer overall mods. Likewise, the resists on Gerke's are nice, but as a barb there are so many other ways to max resist, and Storm gives a huge boost to cold and a decent amount to Lightning, the most important resist. The other mods are on Gerke's are negligible; Granted, if you upgraded it to elite, the max defense range would change to 406-547, but the str req would shoot up to 219 as well.

It's a decent shield, but as far as importance of mods go, Storm is in a league of its own.

-Hal
 
Thanks Hal for the quick response. :)

OK, I got to understand the importance of SS.

Another question: SS is already in the Elite Shield category, as can be seen from Arreat Summit. How can it still be upgraded? Any method to upgrade it or Gerke's?
 
You can't upgrade Storm, I mentioned you could upgrade Gerke's; I edited the post to make sure that was clear. The formula can be found over on purediablo.com or on the summit.

-Hal
 
lets say if i use this build for the next season, everything except the equipment is be the same as the build, and thats where the problem lies. since starting from scratch what items do i need for the build? or maybe it snot wise to make conc barb from scratch? without good items i doubt it could make a difference in hell.
 
Conc barbs are very dependent on items to kill quickly. More to the point, conc barbs are very dependent on a godly dmg weapon to kill quickly.

Conc barbs are not very dependent on items to survive. You can get away with some very minimal gear to survive hell act 5, as long as you don't expect to be very quick at going anywhere.

All a conc barb needs to survive is good block, good leech, and resists. Throw in some good dmg and you will tear things up, albeit rather slowly compared to a hammerdin.
 
a frenzy barb is the least weapon-intensive build I can think of, which is usually what a barb lacks the most. So for survival's sake, that might be the best to start off, assuming you're familiar with frenzy. Otherwise a conc barb will survive the best.

If you're familiar with barbs, the best barb to start with is the build you're most familiar with.
 
TheZealot said:
whats the best build if u r starting over in the new season
Click to expand...

conc barb could work if you had enough AR/def off your gear, got some lucky drops, and managed to stick with a mastery

I'm doing frenzy because early on without mana steal there will atleast be a no mana skill in double swing to fall back on

in any case, good use of warcries like taunt/battle cry/war cry can offset poor AR or def to an extent

the drawback of frenzy would be poor resists for lack of a shield while the drawback of conc would be its slower attack speed and need for high def gear to function properly
 
Just want to post my gratitude to Hal's great guide. Now my conc barb is lvl 83. He can solo Hell, solo baal, etc. Just kill like a "well-oiled machine" (quote Hal's original words). Bloody close combat. Yeah, I like.

My life after BO is about 2.7k, def after Shout is about 14k, str around 260, dex around 230. with concentrate dmg at about 1.7k - 5.2k (with botd zerker), AR around 10k.

My gear is as follows:
BotD zerker axe
Enigma Archon Plate
Arreat's Face,
Stormshield,
Dracul's Grasp,
Verdungo's Hearty Coil
Gore Rider
Highlord's Wrath
BK ring
Raven Frost

Nearly identical to the aimed gear in Hal's Guide. Now i just lack one annihilus to boost my resistance to elemental attack. Yet, this conc barb does great even without annihilus. It is not a must-have.

Some questions:
1. Although he is good at killing bosses, help others to finish quests, he is not good at mf, even though i have put 1 pts into Find Item. (Btw, this skill seems not applicable to the corpse of bosses, such as Baal). How to improve the chances of MF for this conc barb?


2. I have defined hotkeys like F1 to F8.
F1 - Concentrate
F2 - Berserk
F3 - Battle Command
F4 - Shout
F5 - Battle Order
F6 - Howl
F7 - Battle Cry
F8 - Teleport

But when I click my second-attack icon (skill for right mouse), and press F9 on Find Item, there is no response. It seems that only F1 to F8 are available for hotkey definition, any other method to use F9, F10, F11, F12 as hotkeys?


Again, credits go to Hal - The Godfather of Babarian Community.
 
johny: menu-options, you can define which keys are bound as skills hotkeys (up to the 16 skills keys I'm not wrong).
 
For mfing with a conc barb, I'd say:

armor = archon enigma (65-99 mf since you can't equip until lvl 65, I'll say about 80)
helm = ptopaz shako (74 mf)
boots = war travs (30-50 mf)
gloves = chance guards (25-40 mf)
belt = upped goldwrap (upped for extra row of belt slots, 30 mf)
ring 1 = nagel (15-30 mf)
ring 2 = ravenfrost

For main weapon/shield, keep your botd zerk/ss. But on weapon switch for bosses 2x dual isted alibaba (35-99 mf, once about [80+60]*2 = 280 mf).

for running areas like the pit where you can use find item, 2x echoing weapons.

perfect mf from main gear w/only gheed's mf charm (40mf)= 344 mf
on switch with alibabas = 624 mf

There are, of course, other choices but this is a basic layout and one that I think would work out well.
 
That pretty much covers it. The only things I'll add is that if you're interested in a bit more mf with little sacrificing, you might drop the raven for another nagel/mf ring and switch out storm for Rhyme, which has nice block, mf, cannot be frozen, and resists. That's what I use on mine. Amulet-wise, a fortuitous amulet of luck or a rare barbskil/mf ammy will do.

-Hal
 
Thanks to all who replied.

to pneu:
Yeah, I found F9 to F12 is marked as "unused" in Option - Configure. How to make it available?

to mstrnicegui:
Can dual alibaba kill bosses like Baal or Memphisto? Even as I use botd zerker now, it takes me about around 1 min to kill Baal. I fear the dmg of alibaba would not be enuf for boss. Anyway, this is my guess, i haven't laid my hands on any alibaba yet. Hope you can give me a rough sketch about its dmg number.



Another question is:

Sometimes when I enter the game, I found Teleport is not available even I was wearing Engima Archon Plate. And when I re-enter the game, it is available. Is it a bug?
 
The dmg on alibabas are sorely lacking, (25-35) to (56-77). You're not likely to kill much with them and even upgraded, they only do 50-150 at a perfect 120%ed. Where do you rely on your killing then? You attack with your main weapon, botd, then when the boss is slivered you switch to alibabas and attack.

Still it would be a long haul unless you have a merc to finish him off. Outfitted with reaper's toll, skullders and shako, he'll provide a decent dmg and survivability while also offering mf.

There is a bug with skills granted by items like teleport on enigma, it can easily be solved by taking enigma off and putting it back on.
 
niceguy,

Thanks for your info provided.

I will train my merc. He is only lvl 52 now. Can't survive Hell Act5. So I usually solo hell without him. :(

It is really a SOLO. haha.
 
Log in to Reply / Create Site Account
Remove Ads - Go PurePremium

Latest posts

Back
Top