Merry Christmas, SPF! This year I got you all a Patriach. And not just any old Patriarch! A Barbarian who specializes in Warcries, capable of singing all your holiday favourites. He's a real hit at parties.
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STATS
Level 85 Barbarian
Strength: 100 (148 w/ gear)
Dexterity: 20 (95)
Vitality: 130 (178)
Energy: 270 (308)
Life: 1105 (1920 w/ Battle Orders)
Mana: 953 (1421 w/ BO)
Resistances: 75% across the board
War Cry (slvl 43) damage: 1880-1917
SKILLS
20 points: War Cry, Battle Cry, Howl, Find Potion
1 point: Battle Command, Battle Orders, Find Item, Grim Ward, Increased Speed/Stamina,
Iron Skin, Natural Resistance, Leap
Leftover points: Taunt
GEAR
2x 'Heart of the Oak' Flail
'Myth' Archon Plate
Harlequin Crest (P. Topaz)
Frostburn (or Chance Guards)
Arachnid's Mesh (or Goldwrap)
War Traveller
Rave Frost, Nagelring w/ 30% MF
Rare amulet w/ +2 Warcries, +48 life, +20 all resistances
17/17 Barb torch
Anni
5x Warcries skillers
Gheed’s Fortune
A bunch of 7% MF SCs
MERC(s)
Ulric the Barbarian (Frenzy)
2x 'Grief' Phase Blade (substitute one for 'Lawbringer' eth Mythical Sword against undead)
'Fortitude' Great Hauberk
Arreat’s Face
-or-
Desert merc (Prayer) w/ 'Insight' and 'Cure'
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The first Barbarian I played through D2R completed the game as a Singer, and that was my first experience (that I can recall anyways
) using War Cry in D2R or LoD. It was fun and I managed to get through Hell, although with some struggles along the way because I had no good gear back then. Now I have the gear to equip a much stronger War Cry Barb, so I decided to revisit the build, with a bit of a different approach compared to the first time round.
I completed Normal difficulty as a Double Swinger. bigmouth started out with gear loaded up with Jewels of Envy and then subbed in any weapon upgrades found along the way. I can't remember much of anything noteworthy about Normal, except that my only death in this play through came against Normal Diablo. Didn't get out of the way of the lightning hose fast enough. Oops
I started Nightmare difficulty at level 45. That seemed like a high enough level to re-spec to War Cry and have a good amount of points allocated to War Cry and Battle Cry, so I went ahead with the re-spec. I made the decision to go heavy on stat points in Energy, to have a nice, fat mana pool that would hopefully enable my character to not be completely reliant on an 'Insight' mercenary. War Cry is quite strong in NM, particularly when your character is super twinked like this guy. I had no problems killing monsters without help from a mercenary on p8 in NM. Similar to Normal, there was not much noteworthy that I can recall happening in NM. It was fast and easy. Sets and uniques were dropping like nuts from bigmouth's relatively high MF % compared to my other questing characters, plus the incorporation of Find Item. There were not any really good drops in NM, but it was amusing to see the green and gold items dropping so frequently.
In Hell difficulty, the pace of play slowed down significantly. Clearing the Blood Moor in Hell on p8, even with the end-game gear described above, was tedious. Not necessarily hard or dangerous since everything was being stunned. Just slow and tedious. At this time, I was still running with my Act I Rogue mercenary that was gifted to me at the start of the game. And I was used to the ease of play in NM where my character's War Cry was responsible for killing basically all the monsters. It was time for me to re-think my strategy. I decided to have bigmouth--previously the star of the show--take a step back and play a support role to a new hired gun who was a real killing machine. I briefly returned to Act V NM to hire Ulric the Frenzy Barbarian merc, equipped him with some nice stuff, and jumped back into Hell.
The strategy with the Frenzy merc was essentially for my character to be the set-up man, and for the merc to be the closer, to use baseball parlance. I would jump into the fray, stun as many nearby monsters as possible with War Cry, then hit them with a Battle Cry. Then I let Ulric eat. If needed, I would run around and stun more monsters with War Cry. Once the first (usable) corpse hits the ground, drop a Grim Ward, and then watch as the merc absolutely chops everything up. Maybe spam a few more War Cry for the fun of it. Once all the bodies have hit the ground, go nuts with Find Item.
I was very happy with the results of my new setup, and it was pretty much lather, rinse, repeat until the end of the game. I eventually settled on p3 as the right players settings for my desired pace of play, although higher players settings were certainly doable if I had a bit more patience.
A couple of takeaways for me from this playthrough:
I will definitely keep experimenting with this character and I expect to spend some time running The Pit with him. I might try changing out the mercenary for a Prayer merc with 'Insight' and 'Cure'. If I keep it on p1 or at most p3 then I should be able to farm The Pit pretty comfortably.
Thanks for reading
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STATS
Level 85 Barbarian
Strength: 100 (148 w/ gear)
Dexterity: 20 (95)
Vitality: 130 (178)
Energy: 270 (308)
Life: 1105 (1920 w/ Battle Orders)
Mana: 953 (1421 w/ BO)
Resistances: 75% across the board
War Cry (slvl 43) damage: 1880-1917
SKILLS
20 points: War Cry, Battle Cry, Howl, Find Potion
1 point: Battle Command, Battle Orders, Find Item, Grim Ward, Increased Speed/Stamina,
Iron Skin, Natural Resistance, Leap
Leftover points: Taunt
GEAR
2x 'Heart of the Oak' Flail
'Myth' Archon Plate
Harlequin Crest (P. Topaz)
Frostburn (or Chance Guards)
Arachnid's Mesh (or Goldwrap)
War Traveller
Rave Frost, Nagelring w/ 30% MF
Rare amulet w/ +2 Warcries, +48 life, +20 all resistances
17/17 Barb torch
Anni
5x Warcries skillers
Gheed’s Fortune
A bunch of 7% MF SCs
MERC(s)
Ulric the Barbarian (Frenzy)
2x 'Grief' Phase Blade (substitute one for 'Lawbringer' eth Mythical Sword against undead)
'Fortitude' Great Hauberk
Arreat’s Face
-or-
Desert merc (Prayer) w/ 'Insight' and 'Cure'
---
The first Barbarian I played through D2R completed the game as a Singer, and that was my first experience (that I can recall anyways
) using War Cry in D2R or LoD. It was fun and I managed to get through Hell, although with some struggles along the way because I had no good gear back then. Now I have the gear to equip a much stronger War Cry Barb, so I decided to revisit the build, with a bit of a different approach compared to the first time round.I completed Normal difficulty as a Double Swinger. bigmouth started out with gear loaded up with Jewels of Envy and then subbed in any weapon upgrades found along the way. I can't remember much of anything noteworthy about Normal, except that my only death in this play through came against Normal Diablo. Didn't get out of the way of the lightning hose fast enough. Oops
I started Nightmare difficulty at level 45. That seemed like a high enough level to re-spec to War Cry and have a good amount of points allocated to War Cry and Battle Cry, so I went ahead with the re-spec. I made the decision to go heavy on stat points in Energy, to have a nice, fat mana pool that would hopefully enable my character to not be completely reliant on an 'Insight' mercenary. War Cry is quite strong in NM, particularly when your character is super twinked like this guy. I had no problems killing monsters without help from a mercenary on p8 in NM. Similar to Normal, there was not much noteworthy that I can recall happening in NM. It was fast and easy. Sets and uniques were dropping like nuts from bigmouth's relatively high MF % compared to my other questing characters, plus the incorporation of Find Item. There were not any really good drops in NM, but it was amusing to see the green and gold items dropping so frequently.
In Hell difficulty, the pace of play slowed down significantly. Clearing the Blood Moor in Hell on p8, even with the end-game gear described above, was tedious. Not necessarily hard or dangerous since everything was being stunned. Just slow and tedious. At this time, I was still running with my Act I Rogue mercenary that was gifted to me at the start of the game. And I was used to the ease of play in NM where my character's War Cry was responsible for killing basically all the monsters. It was time for me to re-think my strategy. I decided to have bigmouth--previously the star of the show--take a step back and play a support role to a new hired gun who was a real killing machine. I briefly returned to Act V NM to hire Ulric the Frenzy Barbarian merc, equipped him with some nice stuff, and jumped back into Hell.
The strategy with the Frenzy merc was essentially for my character to be the set-up man, and for the merc to be the closer, to use baseball parlance. I would jump into the fray, stun as many nearby monsters as possible with War Cry, then hit them with a Battle Cry. Then I let Ulric eat. If needed, I would run around and stun more monsters with War Cry. Once the first (usable) corpse hits the ground, drop a Grim Ward, and then watch as the merc absolutely chops everything up. Maybe spam a few more War Cry for the fun of it. Once all the bodies have hit the ground, go nuts with Find Item.
I was very happy with the results of my new setup, and it was pretty much lather, rinse, repeat until the end of the game. I eventually settled on p3 as the right players settings for my desired pace of play, although higher players settings were certainly doable if I had a bit more patience.
A couple of takeaways for me from this playthrough:
- Grim Ward is really strong! Who knew!? (Surely other people, but not me
) It really turbo charges your damage when synergized by Find Potion. And Find Potion conveniently gives a nice boost to Find Item. I liked this a lot. - A War Cry Barb, especially a twinked character with this much +skills gear, does not need 20 skill points spent on Battle Orders as is recommended by some of the guides I've read online. You can stun monsters at will, or completely disrupt their plans to attack you with Howl or Grim Ward. It's an extremely safe build IMO and points spent on Battle Orders instead of War Cry synergies or Find Potion seems wasteful to me. YMMV of course. I similarly don't think it would have been helpful to spend more stat points on Vitality, and I was happy with my choice to load up on Energy for more mana. Different strokes and all that.
I will definitely keep experimenting with this character and I expect to spend some time running The Pit with him. I might try changing out the mercenary for a Prayer merc with 'Insight' and 'Cure'. If I keep it on p1 or at most p3 then I should be able to farm The Pit pretty comfortably.
Thanks for reading
Let's shout and make some noise
