Keyhunting/Goldfinding EQ setup needs skill build!!! Help with decision please :)

[Socialism1]

Keyhunting/Goldfinding EQ setup needs skill build!!! Help with decision please

Having never built a melee barbarian, I might be short on logic.
Objective: Keyhunt (Countess, Summoner, Nihlathak) and Goldfind (Travincal Council) efficiently with zero or minimal equipment switching.

Read many of the threads but haven't seen my particular mix (key/gold) covered. I have the equipment decently figured out; I just need the skill build now.

[highlight]TeleBarb Equipment Setup[/highlight]

Head: +1 Barb Skills 20 FCR 18 All Res Rare Circlet (Cham)
Amulet: Damage Reduced by 20 Amulet
Armor: Enigma Breast/Mage Plate
Weapon1: [highlight]Wizardspike (+all res jewel)[/highlight]
Weapon2: [highlight]Heart of the Oak[/highlight]
Belt: Goldwrap
Ring1: Dwarf Star
Ring2: Dwarf Star
Gloves: Chance Guards
Boots: Infernostrides

This is the iffy part.
Killswitch1: [highlight]"Grief" Phase Blade[/highlight]
Killswitch2: [highlight]"Silence" Phase Blade[/highlight]

[highlight]Inventory[/highlight]

Barbarian Torch ~15/15
Gheed's Fortune
Cube
Maybe some GF charms

[highlight]Mercenary[/highlight]
Act 5 Barbarian
Lawbringer or possibly Azurewrath (depending on build)
Gladiator's Bane / Iron Pelt (Um'd?)
Arreat's Face (%Enhanced Dmg / IAS)


Teleport mode
- hits 105% FCR bp (20 circlet, 50 Wiz, 40 HOTO)
- has +8 all (3 torch, 3 HOTO, 2 Enigma) and +1 barb skills (1 circlet) which means level 9 (10 with bc) teleport, level 30 battle orders, 15 Find Item (5 hard points), and 10 natural resistance (54 all res)
- 75 (90 with jewel) Wiz + 54 nat res + 18 circlet + ~35 HOTO + 15 torch + 30 Anya - 100 Hell = ~127 stacked resists
- if Baaling, switch out Goldwrap for Thundergod's Vigor

Should be able to teleport safely enough to Nihlathak (without dying to crazy dmg vipers) with a life everlasting amulet.

Murder mode
- Why phase blades? Very fast base weapons, range-2 is a bit of a drawback, no repairs with phase blades, shiny-cool factor x10, ITD doesn't work on bosses/superuniques (right??) so extra dexterity is useful
- should theoretically kill Nihlathak/Summoner/Countess/Council quickly in 1 player games with Grief/Silence combo; 75 all res from Silence maintains max (85 mini-stacked) resistances, just in case
- when horking, switch Silence with Wizardspike for the extra 30 mf

This equipment setup ends up with ~680 ish goldfind and ~210 ish mf when killing and horking.

Problem: I don't know whether to go Frenzy, Berserk, or Whirlwind.

Whirlwind is skill-pts friendliest, having no synergies apart from mastery. Frenzy might be more awesome due to speed increases? I don't know. Berserk is massive (but slower) irresistable damage delivery + has maxed howl as a crowd controller and Nihlathak extra-safety device (plan: teleport onto Nihlathak, howl, teleport onto Nihlathak to re-center merc, war cry, battle cry, killkillkill).

What should I do?

What works best versus the scenarios mentioned above? Trav + key bosses?




...should I just forget the whole thing and build a 20 leap barb decked out in MF equipment that just hops around howling/battle crying/stunning stuff while merc kills? Scrap the Grief/Silence for 2x LemLem Ali babas and call it a night? Question: apart from the 7 difference in mana and wider range of leap attack's stun, do they work identically? Is hopping around with leap attack without targetting a monster the same as hopping around with leap?


sigh.

Thanks much in advance for any/all input, greatly appreciated.

 

[Socialism1]

No comments as to viability eh?

 

[Arkardo]

Keyhunting and goldfinding are hard to combine; You need fcr, +skills and goldfind as well. You also need space to store your keys and whatever interesting items you find while key/gf finding.

+ Barb skills don't give +skills to Teleport, so your Barb Torch and your circlet don't help reducing it's cost.

You do have a nice setup here, but what's with the resist jewel in the Wizardspike? 75 (Wizzy) + 30 (HotO, assuming lowest resists) + 18 (Circlet) + 30 (Anya quest) + 15 (Barb Torch) + whatever you get from Natural resist = 175+; max all in Hell.

I'd say, replace the Circlet with a Cham'd Arreat's and replace your belt with a Arachnids, if you can afford it. Then, replace your amulet with a 10 or more FCR amulet with whatever mods so that you can replace your Wizzy with another HotO; this gives you another +3 skills so that your Teleport cost is reduced.

While you could do this, I'd really suggest to make two seperate Barbs for these jobs.

You could consider going the Concentrate way; I think it's the fastest (you don't attack other monsters) and safest (+ defense) way to collect keys. If you have enough life, Berserk could be better though. Another advantage of being able to only kill the keyholder, is that, when you kill Nihlathak and he drops a Grand Charm, you can be absolutely sure that he dropped it and not one of his minions.

With this skill setup, I'd go Hell Travincal and kill them together with your Merc.

 

[Socialism1]

+ Barb skills don't give +skills to Teleport, so your Barb Torch and your circlet don't help reducing it's cost.

You do have a nice setup here, but what's with the resist jewel in the Wizardspike? 75 (Wizzy) + 30 (HotO, assuming lowest resists) + 18 (Circlet) + 30 (Anya quest) + 15 (Barb Torch) + whatever you get from Natural resist = 175+; max all in Hell.

Good point, 9, not 10 in teleport with battle command. Whoops. Forgot Annihilus in this equation. That's 10 in teleport with BC. Regarding Wizardspike (res jewel): I recently killed off a charater to conviction gloams. Apparently their conviction spawns at -80 res. Lower res in hell a5 is -55res. So with the res all jewel in place, I'm at max resistances in conviction and ~27 all res with LR/Conviction on me. Just an extra safety feature.

I'd say, replace the Circlet with a Cham'd Arreat's and replace your belt with a Arachnids, if you can afford it. Then, replace your amulet with a 10 or more FCR amulet with whatever mods so that you can replace your Wizzy with another HotO; this gives you another +3 skills so that your Teleport cost is reduced.

If I have mana problems, I think I'll dump a 55 mana gc into my inventory; I don't think teleport cost will be much of a problem, to be honest. Amuletwise, I think the damg reduced by x is pretty key for teleporting through Nihlathak's snakes... and the +3 to find item won't matter so much anyway. Also, I'd lose out on mondo stacked resists with 90allres Wizardspike.

While you could do this, I'd really suggest to make two seperate Barbs for these jobs.

Specialization is king, but so's time-efficiency. I'd rather do 2 things at once, minimizing chance for 'realm down' and also coming out on top with a rather decently built untwinked-until-level-80-ish barbarian.

You could consider going the Concentrate way; I think it's the fastest (you don't attack other monsters) and safest (+ defense) way to collect keys. If you have enough life, Berserk could be better though. Another advantage of being able to only kill the keyholder, is that, when you kill Nihlathak and he drops a Grand Charm, you can be absolutely sure that he dropped it and not one of his minions.

I've never used concentrate or berserk. I guess it's time to come out of my shell and play the damn barb

With this skill setup, I'd go Hell Travincal and kill them together with your Merc.

For sure.

Thanks for the input! Greatly appreciated.

 

[ambid]

Never really tried this but wouln't nithalah be really easy to kill with war cry / frenzy barb. Just tele on nithalak howl once -> all hes minions run up to the walls, then finish nitha off/ let merc kill him?

 

[Socialism1]

Never really tried this but wouln't nithalah be really easy to kill with war cry / frenzy barb. Just tele on nithalak howl once -> all hes minions run up to the walls, then finish nitha off/ let merc kill him?

I think this would work with howl/anything; I'm building chars to test it now

Man, I should build these in single player... but I don't have any char/item editors..hah

 

[Lexur]

I do keyruns and gold/magic find with my singer.

A regular singer build with 1 point in Find Item.

For goldfinding, gear would look something like this:
Head: IK Helm 'LemLem'
Amulet: +3WC/80GF or +3WC/10FCR or rare GF amulet
Armor: Enigma
Weapon1: Heart of the Oak
Weapon2: Heart of the Oak
Belt: Arachnid Mesh
Ring1: Dwarf Star or FCR ring
Ring2: Dwarf Star
Gloves: Chance Guards
Boots: Infernostrides or rare GF boots

HorkSwitch1: Ali Baba 'LemLem'
HorkSwitch2: Ali Baba 'LemLem'

Act 2 Mercenary

Insight Thresher
CoH
Guillame's Face ED/IAS

On a scale Easy to Hard I would say:

Countess: Easy
Summoner: Easy
Nihlathak: Easy - Hard (Depends on minions really)
Andariel: Medium (Have your merc poke her in the back)
Mephisto: Easy
Travincal: Medium (Depends on auras, phys immune etc.)


It seems a melee barb would really need a third weapon switch. (Kill/Tele/Hork)

*Two Lem'd Alibabas add 750 goldfind at level 90 (and 180 MF)
*Two 6xLem 'something' add 900 goldfind

So I have around 1500 goldfind on my singer, half of it from Ali Babas on switch.

 

[ambid]

Lexur, How much you get gold from average gf run?
I'm interested on making gf baba my self and was thinking of something like your build.

I think i have about all items, now i just got to start lvling. :wink3:

 

[Lexur]

Lexur, How much you get gold from average gf run?
I'm interested on making gf baba my self and was thinking of something like your build.

I think i have about all items, now i just got to start lvling. :wink3:

Average is probably around 300k per run, with 1304 goldfind atm.

I'm not sure, I'll do some tests..

... and the results are in:

Run1: 281.898 *
Run2: 313.212 *
Run3: 270.917
Run4: 449.816
Run5: 225.598

*one phys immune

 

[kohlman]

Does this amount of gold come from gold only or from sold items as well? is this trav only too? is it hard to get lem runes? I have a 2xlem'd ali baba and one plain and was wondering how difficult would it be to get 2 more.

Sorry for all the questions but I'm slowly turning my WW barb into a GF barb and he usually nets me around 200k-300k per run and every run ill try to grab at least 2 items worth 20k-30k so it brings my runs to around 250k-375k.

Also, does goldfind suffer from the same diminishing returns that magicfind does?