Patriarch ViggoBladkaster, Grim Ward Throwbarb
Level: 86
St – 118 (159)
Dx – 120 (142)
Vt – 277 (277)
En – 10 (10)
HP 1499
Mana 146
Damage
Double Throw: 798 – 1894 x 2 @ AR 7901 (after Fanaticism, before Deadly Strike)
Resists:
Fire: 75
Cold: 75
Ltning: 75
Poison: 75
Skills:
Double Throw: 20/28
Double Swing: 20/28
Throw Mastery: 20/26
Find Potion: 20/26
Grim Ward: 6/13
Bash, Leap & Leap Attack: 1/9
Howl, Taunt, Battle Cry & Find Item: 1/7
Increased Stamina, Increase Speed, Iron Skin & Natural Resistances: 1/7
Equipment:
Weapon 1:
Warshrike x 2
Weapon 2:
Lacerator x 2 (1 eth)
Areat’s Face (Um)
“Chains of Honour” Dusk Shroud
Laying of Hands
Gore Rider
Trang-oul’s Girth
Highlord’s Wrath
BKWB & Manald Heal
Bone Break
Merc (Act 1)
“Flickering Flame” Great Helm
“Peace” Dusk Shroud
"Faith” Grand Matron Bow (+2 skill, 13Lvl, +3 Bow skills)
Random musings:
I had envisioned this build as being two mighty missile weapon equipped fighters standing in a shield of safety picking off low level enemies at leisure and higher-level ones and bosses hobbled by Battle Cry, but this was not to be. The description of Grim Ward states “Use on the corpse of a slain monster to create a frightening totem that causes nearby monsters to flee.” What is missing is a small asterisk followed by the phrase “conditions apply.” And those conditions? The corpses cannot be skeletons, dolls, ghosts, gloams, swarms, thrashers, oblivion knights, and probably more I forgot to mention. This alone should have made me rethink my plan but I’m a stubborn old bastard and, like a drowning man clinging to a piece of driftwood, I stuck to the plan even though it was not going to be what I’d hoped.
I had been planning to make a throwbarb for a while and I have been stockpiling throwing weapons for that purpose, so I had a good supply of them for the early game. Deathbit came available at level 44 and that worked well, especially as I had two ethereal ones waiting to be used. At level 55, I upgraded the Deathbits to Flying Knives and things really took off. At level 75 I switched to Warshrikes and although they did less damage than the upped Deathbits, they were considerably faster and that appeared to more than level the field.
Although I stuck to my plan in broad brushstrokes, I did have to tweak it a bit once I got to Hell difficulty. Originally, I had Raven Frost to help with the dexterity requirements and the “cannot be frozen” but the cold damage meant that I shattered a lot of corpses and when I had a narrower range to start with, that was not viable. I needed the “cannot be frozen” so that only left me with Trang-Oul’s as an option. I could have gone for another BKWB, but needed a little more mana and mana steal so Manald was my go-to. For normal and nightmare, I had a pair of Heart Carvers on swap and used them to give Grim Ward a boost, even though Mr. Fumblefingers here had difficulty with the quick weapon swaps, but when I got into Hell difficulty the physical immunes began to become a problem. I swapped out the Heart Carvers for the Lacerators to see if that would work, unfortunately, the chance to flee overrode the amplify damage as fast as I could apply it. Finally, I equipped the Bone Break sunder and that worked.
I generally played by using either Taunt to bring ranged attackers to me or using Howl to break up melee attackers until I got my first viable kill to make a Grim Ward. Once it was up, the monster killing was a breeze. I stopped using Battle Cry on Champion and Bosses once I realised that the amplify damage did a far better job. My Mr. Fumblefingers weapon swapping worked sufficiently well so that bosses really were not much of a challenge, then again, I did finish the final act on /players 1.
It's time to talk about Grim Ward. There were several things that I felt affected the use of GW, as I have already stated, not having the full range of monster corpses to use was a kick in the nuts. Another thing was the war cry has to be cast upon the corpse, for a melee fighter this isn’t a problem but for a ranged one it was not great; I had to actively put myself in danger to cast GW or kite monsters back to previously created ones. A third issue was that it didn’t have much of a range, not bad but not great. The more skill points you put into it the better the range, but that was skill points you couldn’t put elsewhere. And this leads me to my final point, the build is starved for skill points. I went for the GW and its synergy rather than Battle Orders and as I was a ranged attacker I felt like it would work and as I got through the game without a death, I’d say that it worked well enough. To me, GW looks better as an adjunct to a melee build but as a melee build, you would be better off using BO. To have both a full GW and BO you would have to make sacrifices elsewhere, either in main skill synergies or Masteries. I even considered a wolfbarb (bypassing the combat tree completely) but you cannot use Warcries in wolf form. To me at least, I cannot see GW being anything but a situational, one-point wonder.
Edit: Gee, I can go on.
Level: 86
St – 118 (159)
Dx – 120 (142)
Vt – 277 (277)
En – 10 (10)
HP 1499
Mana 146
Damage
Double Throw: 798 – 1894 x 2 @ AR 7901 (after Fanaticism, before Deadly Strike)
Resists:
Fire: 75
Cold: 75
Ltning: 75
Poison: 75
Skills:
Double Throw: 20/28
Double Swing: 20/28
Throw Mastery: 20/26
Find Potion: 20/26
Grim Ward: 6/13
Bash, Leap & Leap Attack: 1/9
Howl, Taunt, Battle Cry & Find Item: 1/7
Increased Stamina, Increase Speed, Iron Skin & Natural Resistances: 1/7
Equipment:
Weapon 1:
Warshrike x 2
Weapon 2:
Lacerator x 2 (1 eth)
Areat’s Face (Um)
“Chains of Honour” Dusk Shroud
Laying of Hands
Gore Rider
Trang-oul’s Girth
Highlord’s Wrath
BKWB & Manald Heal
Bone Break
Merc (Act 1)
“Flickering Flame” Great Helm
“Peace” Dusk Shroud
"Faith” Grand Matron Bow (+2 skill, 13Lvl, +3 Bow skills)
Random musings:
I had envisioned this build as being two mighty missile weapon equipped fighters standing in a shield of safety picking off low level enemies at leisure and higher-level ones and bosses hobbled by Battle Cry, but this was not to be. The description of Grim Ward states “Use on the corpse of a slain monster to create a frightening totem that causes nearby monsters to flee.” What is missing is a small asterisk followed by the phrase “conditions apply.” And those conditions? The corpses cannot be skeletons, dolls, ghosts, gloams, swarms, thrashers, oblivion knights, and probably more I forgot to mention. This alone should have made me rethink my plan but I’m a stubborn old bastard and, like a drowning man clinging to a piece of driftwood, I stuck to the plan even though it was not going to be what I’d hoped.
I had been planning to make a throwbarb for a while and I have been stockpiling throwing weapons for that purpose, so I had a good supply of them for the early game. Deathbit came available at level 44 and that worked well, especially as I had two ethereal ones waiting to be used. At level 55, I upgraded the Deathbits to Flying Knives and things really took off. At level 75 I switched to Warshrikes and although they did less damage than the upped Deathbits, they were considerably faster and that appeared to more than level the field.
Although I stuck to my plan in broad brushstrokes, I did have to tweak it a bit once I got to Hell difficulty. Originally, I had Raven Frost to help with the dexterity requirements and the “cannot be frozen” but the cold damage meant that I shattered a lot of corpses and when I had a narrower range to start with, that was not viable. I needed the “cannot be frozen” so that only left me with Trang-Oul’s as an option. I could have gone for another BKWB, but needed a little more mana and mana steal so Manald was my go-to. For normal and nightmare, I had a pair of Heart Carvers on swap and used them to give Grim Ward a boost, even though Mr. Fumblefingers here had difficulty with the quick weapon swaps, but when I got into Hell difficulty the physical immunes began to become a problem. I swapped out the Heart Carvers for the Lacerators to see if that would work, unfortunately, the chance to flee overrode the amplify damage as fast as I could apply it. Finally, I equipped the Bone Break sunder and that worked.
I generally played by using either Taunt to bring ranged attackers to me or using Howl to break up melee attackers until I got my first viable kill to make a Grim Ward. Once it was up, the monster killing was a breeze. I stopped using Battle Cry on Champion and Bosses once I realised that the amplify damage did a far better job. My Mr. Fumblefingers weapon swapping worked sufficiently well so that bosses really were not much of a challenge, then again, I did finish the final act on /players 1.
It's time to talk about Grim Ward. There were several things that I felt affected the use of GW, as I have already stated, not having the full range of monster corpses to use was a kick in the nuts. Another thing was the war cry has to be cast upon the corpse, for a melee fighter this isn’t a problem but for a ranged one it was not great; I had to actively put myself in danger to cast GW or kite monsters back to previously created ones. A third issue was that it didn’t have much of a range, not bad but not great. The more skill points you put into it the better the range, but that was skill points you couldn’t put elsewhere. And this leads me to my final point, the build is starved for skill points. I went for the GW and its synergy rather than Battle Orders and as I was a ranged attacker I felt like it would work and as I got through the game without a death, I’d say that it worked well enough. To me, GW looks better as an adjunct to a melee build but as a melee build, you would be better off using BO. To have both a full GW and BO you would have to make sacrifices elsewhere, either in main skill synergies or Masteries. I even considered a wolfbarb (bypassing the combat tree completely) but you cannot use Warcries in wolf form. To me at least, I cannot see GW being anything but a situational, one-point wonder.
Edit: Gee, I can go on.
Last edited:
Google