Starting grail hunt

[Fabian]

CBF on weapon is no good as you switch away from it when on teleswitch -> frozen -> fail. I'm also sure I must be misunderstanding the rest since it sounds like you'd use a 5Ist Rune Master for killing monsters, which obviously can't be the case? That thing has no killing power at all. In that Berserk thread, there's a link to an old (somewhat similar) WW Pitbarb, you might want to check it out. That said, Berserk is almost definitely better.

 

[zaphodbrx]

Ah, I see your point. I was thinking theoretically, as I haven't made the character yet. The runemaster would be the secondary weapon ( alongside grief za ) for WW, it adds a decent bit of damage, more than a 6 ist crystal sword anyway.. Don't know how much of a pain getting frozen while teleporting might be, as I'm still only halfway to 'enigma'.

 

[Fabian]

Heh well obviously you wouldn't be using a 6Ist weapon with WW, the point of Berserk is you only need one weapon for killing. For WW, the only reasonable choice is dual Grief, it's miles ahead of Oath/Death/botd and then lightyears ahead of everything else. Edit: More like lightyears ahead of everything to be honest.

CBF isn't as important for a WWer as a Berserker, possibly to the point where it's not worth getting if you control your whirls well. With Berserk, it slows down your attacks and your horking, with WW it only slows down your horking, ideally. Based on the limited WW Pitbarbing I did, it was still worth having, because in practice you whirl less than perfectly, and when those whirls are slow you lose a lot of time. You also do some limited amount of running all the time, which would be super annoying to be frozen during, too. That said, it's probably worth trying without and see how you like it.

 

[zaphodbrx]

But a grief doesn't have MF. The point of the rune master is to get some MF going, CBF, and still have 1/3 the damage of grief za. Not to mention my second grief is in a phase blade.
I have tried WW without cbf and honestly I don't like it at all. Half the time I am slooowly whirling through empty air.
Also, berserk is flat out not for me. I have a berserker with some mf items and max block on rhyme. He still takes waaay too much damage due to the no defense no leech thing, unless you want to warcry every 2 seconds.

 

[Fabian]

A Berserker likely shouldn't have maxblock, it'll disrupt your attack and generally suck. Don't knock it until you try it though (meaning, get Enigma and re-evaluate), since the playstyle is very different and you don't stay in one place for long, thus allowing the first Howl you cast to be pretty much sufficient. And Stormshield etc.

As for Grief vs Rune Master, I guess I won't try and convince you further. When you do get your barb up and running, you might want to compare run times with the two different setups and decide which run time/MF combo you prefer, though. I'm feeling pretty confident that you might literally throw the Rune Master away after doing 2 runs with the Grief.