- May 12, 2007
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Overview of WhyNot and Thoughts on Frenzied ZealBarb Builds
Alright, well I wasn't as prepared as I would've liked, but I did a little overview of my Baal runner from the MFO: WhyNot, a Frenzied ZealBarb. If you're not familar with that concept, here's the Pat thread. I also included a little section on why you should build a Frenzied ZealBarb of your own. Video spoilered below.
The reason I'm pushing this idea is a few fold: first, I have no more plans to play Diablo 2 and feel that this build needs to be felt out in much greater depth than I have thus far. Second, I really enjoy seeing people putting together interesting build ideas and I think this outline provides incredible depth for leading to builds based on the concept that look and play completely different from each other. Lastly, I feel this is by far the most accessible character of the multiple kooky ones I've made. When I say you can make a solid Frenzied ZealBarb from pretty much whatever you have, I'm not just flapping my gums.
Consider the weaknesses of the Zealot Paladin: He's slow, he has basically no crowd control and he has no solution for Physical Immunes (and IM, if you're playing a patch prior to 1.13). Contrast that with the ZealBarb, who has skills to run monsters away, stun monsters, weaken monsters and a skill to have distant ranged monsters stand attacking to come up to you ("Excuse me, Mr. Gloam. Could you come over here please? ... ZERK!") on top of Berserk to handle any Physical Immunes. Now you add in Frenzy, which grants unparalleled movement speed, allowing you to outflank dangerous enemies, pick out dangerous bosses and separate yourself from even the baddest of attackers.
One of the greatest advantages of the Barbarian Zealot comes from his hat. Arreat's grants a whopping +4 skill levels to Frenzy, meaning that pretty much any Frenzied ZealBarb can have at least a skill level 25 Frenzy. That accounts for a huge chunk of IAS, not to mention all the other juicy mods on that hat and the available socket it presents. This is not to say that Arreat's is a requirement; you can get by fine without it, but it can take that out there build and make it solid.
And don't forget, if you find a War Scepter/Divine Scepter/Caduceus with +Zeal, you gain that modifier on your Barbarian, if you make Passion in the weapon. So, if you find a War Scepter with +2 Zeal, make Passion in it and cast Battle Commands, you automatically have level 4 Zeal, granting you all 5 hits.
What it all comes down to is this: the Frenzied ZealBarb is not summed up with WhyNot. This is not a "use these items or fail" build. It is a template, from which many other ideas may be built. Say you want to run the Chaos Sanctuary with a melee build, for kicks. Take this template, add in Leap Attack, drop a few points in Find Item and voila. You can howl away minions and regular monsters to clear the way to uniques, then taunt over what you need to keep your Frenzy constantly charged. Plus, you get to hork the corpses. You want a hardcore Baal runner and don't care about items? Pump Double Swing and Taunt. This doesn't even cover equipment, which is eminently customizable because only one item is required. Find the breakpoints you want, throw on some extra groovy mods and go.
I bring all of this to your attention, because WhyNot was probably my second favorite character of my D2 time (nothing touches Blova) and I want to make sure everybody understands that when I said in my Pat thread I would command this build to a friend, I wasn't joking. This concept is a lot of fun and provides more than ample opportunity for you to customize it into whatever you want and go out and make it work. And, if it doesn't work, you've got enough utility skills to make it through without abandoning it, anyway. And, even if it didn't work the way you wanted it, finishing the game with a build you started and planned is always a nice feeling. That's what I'm really after here: giving you nice feelings while you play, because I've had so many here. Not to sound pompous, but I look at this idea as my gift to you, not because I consider myself some visionary or whatever, but because it's something I stumbled on and want to share just how amazing it was for me with you. So, give a Frenzied ZealBarb a chance, for me. Like momma always said, "Try it, you might like it."
Thanks for putting up with my little rant. If you have any questions, comments, musings or general inanity (I'm looking at you, omg! ;p) feel free to post away.
May the good mojo rest in your dojo, may the good huju go wit ju and may the demons of ill hocus-pocus be set upon by locusts. Cheers!
Alright, well I wasn't as prepared as I would've liked, but I did a little overview of my Baal runner from the MFO: WhyNot, a Frenzied ZealBarb. If you're not familar with that concept, here's the Pat thread. I also included a little section on why you should build a Frenzied ZealBarb of your own. Video spoilered below.
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The reason I'm pushing this idea is a few fold: first, I have no more plans to play Diablo 2 and feel that this build needs to be felt out in much greater depth than I have thus far. Second, I really enjoy seeing people putting together interesting build ideas and I think this outline provides incredible depth for leading to builds based on the concept that look and play completely different from each other. Lastly, I feel this is by far the most accessible character of the multiple kooky ones I've made. When I say you can make a solid Frenzied ZealBarb from pretty much whatever you have, I'm not just flapping my gums.
Consider the weaknesses of the Zealot Paladin: He's slow, he has basically no crowd control and he has no solution for Physical Immunes (and IM, if you're playing a patch prior to 1.13). Contrast that with the ZealBarb, who has skills to run monsters away, stun monsters, weaken monsters and a skill to have distant ranged monsters stand attacking to come up to you ("Excuse me, Mr. Gloam. Could you come over here please? ... ZERK!") on top of Berserk to handle any Physical Immunes. Now you add in Frenzy, which grants unparalleled movement speed, allowing you to outflank dangerous enemies, pick out dangerous bosses and separate yourself from even the baddest of attackers.
One of the greatest advantages of the Barbarian Zealot comes from his hat. Arreat's grants a whopping +4 skill levels to Frenzy, meaning that pretty much any Frenzied ZealBarb can have at least a skill level 25 Frenzy. That accounts for a huge chunk of IAS, not to mention all the other juicy mods on that hat and the available socket it presents. This is not to say that Arreat's is a requirement; you can get by fine without it, but it can take that out there build and make it solid.
And don't forget, if you find a War Scepter/Divine Scepter/Caduceus with +Zeal, you gain that modifier on your Barbarian, if you make Passion in the weapon. So, if you find a War Scepter with +2 Zeal, make Passion in it and cast Battle Commands, you automatically have level 4 Zeal, granting you all 5 hits.
What it all comes down to is this: the Frenzied ZealBarb is not summed up with WhyNot. This is not a "use these items or fail" build. It is a template, from which many other ideas may be built. Say you want to run the Chaos Sanctuary with a melee build, for kicks. Take this template, add in Leap Attack, drop a few points in Find Item and voila. You can howl away minions and regular monsters to clear the way to uniques, then taunt over what you need to keep your Frenzy constantly charged. Plus, you get to hork the corpses. You want a hardcore Baal runner and don't care about items? Pump Double Swing and Taunt. This doesn't even cover equipment, which is eminently customizable because only one item is required. Find the breakpoints you want, throw on some extra groovy mods and go.
I bring all of this to your attention, because WhyNot was probably my second favorite character of my D2 time (nothing touches Blova) and I want to make sure everybody understands that when I said in my Pat thread I would command this build to a friend, I wasn't joking. This concept is a lot of fun and provides more than ample opportunity for you to customize it into whatever you want and go out and make it work. And, if it doesn't work, you've got enough utility skills to make it through without abandoning it, anyway. And, even if it didn't work the way you wanted it, finishing the game with a build you started and planned is always a nice feeling. That's what I'm really after here: giving you nice feelings while you play, because I've had so many here. Not to sound pompous, but I look at this idea as my gift to you, not because I consider myself some visionary or whatever, but because it's something I stumbled on and want to share just how amazing it was for me with you. So, give a Frenzied ZealBarb a chance, for me. Like momma always said, "Try it, you might like it."
Thanks for putting up with my little rant. If you have any questions, comments, musings or general inanity (I'm looking at you, omg! ;p) feel free to post away.
May the good mojo rest in your dojo, may the good huju go wit ju and may the demons of ill hocus-pocus be set upon by locusts. Cheers!
Hopefully it convinces some people to try him out.
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