Nightmare difficulty

I don't think your barb is a waste, but he definitely needs better items and warcries to proceed on. Either run Baal on normal until he gives up something good or run him until you're able to gamble something good or make a MF char and find him something good. I would suggest running WSK and Baal at least until you hit level 50 for now with him. Get points into howl, taunt, shout, battle orders and battle commands. Battle commands increases all of your skills by one point, so you definitely want that. Battle orders gives you a huge boost in life, stamina and mana and can easily be the difference in life and death. Shout increases your defense, and between that and walking instead of running (you don't have a shield and very little life so you can't really afford to be auto-hit by anything) I think you'll notice a difference in survivability.

Taunt, as mentioned before, will draw ranged attackers to you and decrease their damage. Once you start using this, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it. Howl is a great crow control tool because if you're engaging a pack (say, a bosspack) and you get swamped you can use howl to force most of the baddies away and either taunt one back or, if it's a bosspack, you'll be left alone with the boss to carve him up. Battlecry is another important warcry, but I don't think you need it as urgently at the moment.

As far as the merc, if he/she is dying too much then either change his/her equipment or just forget about em. It's nice having someone else doing some damage, but if they're just a liability don't worry about it. With good crowd control you should be alright solo, anyway.

If you'd like a hand with gear, I'd be willing to send you a pair of IK boots, a 2os Gothic Sword (to make strength in), a M'avina's Tenet, Sander's Taboo, and one of these circlets:

Chromatic Coronet of the Mammoth
Defense: 31
Durability: 30 of 30
Required Level: 41
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 66
Fingerprint: 0x5db18c34
+34 to Life
All Resistances +21

Bone Brow
Circlet
Defense: 27
Durability: 35 of 35
Required Level: 33
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 56
Fingerprint: 0xd0c97df2
+15 to Energy
Damage Reduced by 7
Poison Resist +38%
+1 to Barbarian Skill Levels

or

Scintillating Circlet of Excellence
Defense: 29
Durability: 35 of 35
Required Level: 51
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 62
Fingerprint: 0xcaa3de37
+9 to Minimum Damage
All Resistances +15

If you'd like them, just let me know your mail (I have a copy of all the set/uniques, and no real use for the helms.) If you want to play self-found, then forget I said anything. I play 1.11b Vanilla, so no worries about "taint" if you take the items.

Good luck, regardless of what you do.
 
Thanks for the offer, but I am playing self-found. Out of all the equipment I have, what would you say needs the upgrade the most? I have some money to burn on the gamble.

Dragonlover
 
Your amulet definitely needs upgrading. Something with +life would be great, resistances would also be good. Pretty much anything is going to help your survivability more than what you have now.

Looking for boots with resistances would be a good idea, also. Faster run/walk is a desired trait, but you really need boots that give resistances especially if you aren't getting them from other gear.

A belt with better resistances (poison is the resistance you need the least) would be good.

Obviously, better weapons would help but they're kind of hard to gamble for (in my experience.) So, I'd say work on those with the gambling, in that order.
 
Llathias said:
It's a shame only one person suggested teh solution, and it was lost in 17 posts.

The single solution to your archer problems is the war cry TAUNT.
Click to expand...

Quoted for Truth. A little patience will help as well (and gear & vit, of course).


... to hammer home the point about Taunt, this is copied directly from my /players8 Frenzy Patriarch thread:

me said:
Taunt is probably one of the most underrated skills in the game; with enough patience you can chip away at any dangerous pack of monsters. For example, I was able to escape this in the Chaos Sanctuary in Hell, using Leap Attack to get away and then drawing every minion away with Taunt (1-3 minions each time). The whole process for that group took 3 Full Rejuv's and about 45 minutes. I felt somewhat guilty pausing the game to take the screenie, but at least I didn't save and exit - or die.
Click to expand...



 
While your amulet is nice for the magic find, I would recomend some resists or maybe damage reduction on one.
Some ways to get these are :
Gamble (Expensive but 10% chance of rares is nice)
The 3 rings = 1 amulet cube recipe (cheap, just grab all those odd blue rings you see and cube them up as you find them)
Crafting (tends to be a bit more expensive in material, but you are guaranteed to get rares with certain mods on them)

Also I echo the comments about warcries, they are higly valuable.
 
I will go against the crowd as usual.

Run, don't walk! Charge them, stun them, kill them! War Cry is an amazing skill even with few (~4) invested points, and Battle Cry (1pt here) reduces incoming damage. Your defense will be weak anyway, while you can dodge most of the attacks due to superior speed. Once you start attacking, you stand still, and your defense counts normally. Playing untwinked, boost Frenzy synergies rather than weapon mastery. Battle Orders is almost mandatory skill for any barbarian.

Moreover, I think that Taunt sux. IIRC it doesn't work even on champions, not to mention bosses. Still, it's a synergy to Frenzy, thus you might give it a shot or two ..before returning to much more useful WC/BC :hide:

EDIT: checked the Arreat Summit - Taunt doesn't work against anything except for regular monsters and (maybe) your merc.

Swords are usable, but you won't be killing as fast as with axes or maces while having less life due to higher dexterity demands. That's not a major problem, I'd better call it a challenge :wink3: Anyway, remake your runewords into exceptional weapons, NOW! ..at least if you intend to kill anything bigger than a Fallen.

Concerning build itself - every statpoint you don't need to use the gear should go into vitality. You are a Frenzier, i.e. you don't block, your defense sucks, and you will most likely not be so lucky to find decent PDR stuff.

Definitely try to search for Andidi's untwinked frenzy barb from TWD3 tourney hosted by Psycho. He used very nice skill-point distribution and displayed amazing skill and dedication :thumbsup: He wrote very detailed reports about his progress.
 
Personally, I'm putting it down to not having enough HP. I'm gonna level to 50 on Baal runs and generic hitting of stuff my level when killing the Lord of Destruction gets boring. As for why I'm using swords... one of the first items I found was a Crystal Sword. They look awesome, therefore are being used. I'll be dual wielding them as soon as I find a socketed one.

@maareek: I'll keep that in mind, thanks

@Sir P: Woah, that is a nuts screenie. Well played on surviving.

@Ugla: On my next level up I'll look into some kind of warcry, but if Taunt only works on normal stuff then it's not what I'm looking for, so thanks for that.

Dragonlover
 
lionheartthebrave said:
did you intend that? (sorry for the hijack)
Click to expand...

not even close - I got swarmed near the entrance of CS and there was a monster convention right in the doorway (i.e. no retreat)... of course, when you can't retreat, and standing still isn't going to work, you might as well charge forward... then I got swarmed again... I tried to outrun them even further ahead, but both corridors on the sides were blocked with monsters.

I reflexively hit Esc (I know, it's a cheesy tactic but my survival instinct kicked in :embarassed: - I really try not to do that). After about 2 seconds internal debate on Save & Exit (when the screenie was taken), I decided to see if I could figure out a way to survive through it.


... And AFAIK, Ugla is correct about one thing with Taunt - it only works on minions. However, in the grand scheme of things individual monsters, or even small groups, are seldom dangerous - it's the large swarms that scare the crap out of me, and Taunt works wonders there.

I'm not a big fan of BC/WC because they're such 'in-close' skills, they're "interruptable" while you're casting (and how many barbs want to load up on FCR to cast things faster - wouldn't you rather load up on +damage/AR?), and any mana-burn pack has a reasonable chance of kicking your butt some lucky hits... at least with Taunt you keep your distance and engage enemies on your own terms.

Taunt has a range of "the screen", so it's easy to step up, cast it 1-3 times, and run away quickly - the Taunted monsters will follow you further than their normal monsters (and bosses), and quickly leave their pack behind (a little FR/W helps the safety factor too, and with Increased Speed as a barb-skill, that's easy enough).



 
Gods, some of the terminology in this game confuses me. Correct me if I get any of this wrong, but Taunt works on the following:

Normal monsters
Monsters with the 'Minion' tag
Some roaming bosses

Not working on blue-text monsters is somewhat aggravating, but I can live with it.

Dragonlover
 
There are actually 6 types, if we're going to be too meticulous:

1. Normal monsters: as the name implies, these are what you see everywhere
2. Minions: they're normal monsters accompanying uniques and super uniques. They carry some of the mods of their boss (such as Extra Fast, but not for example Lightning Enchanted). They're the same level as their bosses.
3. Champion type: These are the ones with the blue text, with subgroups Champion, Berserker, Ghostly and Possessed, each having different properties. Their monster level is 2 higher than the normal monsters in the same area, and they have a specific drop pattern.
4. (Random) Uniques: These are monsters with fancy names, that randomly spawn, with random mods. They are 3 monster levels higher than the area they're found in. These also have a specific drop pattern.
5. Super uniques: These are unique monsters that always spawn on the same place in a given map, and have pre-determined mods. The additional mods added in NM and Hell difficulties are random. Again, area level +3, with yet another drop system.
6. Bosses: The 1-of-their-kind monsters, like the Smith, Blood Raven, Act Bosses (e.g. Andariel-Duriel-Mephisto-Diablo-Baal), Griswold, Izual etc. They don't have minions, and their levels and drop systems are different.

The term "boss" is often used interchangeably with uniques or super uniques.


Now, as for why Taunt is a superb skill... Yes, it works only on normal monsters and minions; which constitute possibly more than 85% of all the monsters you encounter. A group of skeleton mages firing at you mercilessly can get you killed fast (as you've experienced). If you Taunt them, though, they'll walk toward you, not shooting arrows, and you slaughter them when they get into melee range. If there's a champion/unique/boss, back a few steps, or just take the hits from a single monster, instead of the whole group! What's better is, you only need a single point in this skill!
 
If you are looking for better swords, you can always use the 3-chipped gems recipe to re-roll a magic sword and get some sockets with it. I still use this on my early characters...though I know a lot of you don't anymore.
 
Llathias, thanks for the monster breakdown. I've not needed to use Taunt yet, but I've done a bit of testing with it and it looks to be just what I'll need. Boulos, I'm thinking of that, if only to provide myself with some stash space.

Dragonlover
 
I've got ATMA, but when I'm halfway through a game I don't want to be closing down D2 to sort out my stash, plus I like having all my gems and runes on hand.

Dragonlover
 
If you want to use crystal swords because they look cool (which is a pretty good reason), you could always consider upgrading your rare to an exceptional crystal sword - a dimensional blade.

The Horadric Cube recipe is:
Ort rune + Amn rune + Perfect Sapphire + Normal rare weapon = upgrades rare weapon to exceptional

This would well over double the damage of that sword, and you'd easily have the stats to use it. Finding the runes and sapphire will probably be easier than finding a decent dimensional blade, though.

(You could gamble to get a better rare crystal sword before upgrading, if you want even more damage)

Maybe not needed if things are dying fast enough already, but eventually they won't, and killing things faster is always good. It might let you play comfortably on higher player settings, as well, for more experience and drops.
 
Dammit, I knew the recipe existed, but I couldn't find it so I chucked the sword for a sweet mace I found. However, the solution to my problems was simply that I didn't have the life. I'm currently doing an Andy run and I think I've died twice, both time thanks to running round a corner into a LE boss. Taunt has also been useful, so thanks to everyone that said about it.

Dragonlover
 
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