Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

[ZeN]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

The reason i'm using wolfbarb is a) i'm not that good with whirling, b) i don't have great gear for a whirler (i've put one on hold for that reason), and c) i think the wolfbarb is 100% safe whereas the whirler may have a difficult time with certain bad spawns.

His gear is:
highlords wrath
wolfhowl (40% ed jewel)
enigma bp
stormshield (pdiamond)
grief pb
laying of hands
IK belt
gorerider
ravenfrost
rare ring with ml/ll
and 2x spirit on switch (not rich enough yet for dual hoto, which would increase teleport speed)

Merc is wearing reaper's, guardian angel and kira's

I have ~4.9k life, LCS lives up to it's name and says damage is 753-1284 (861-1612 for berserk in case of PI's), AR ~9600, defense ~15500 and resists maxed (all still positive when under effect of conviction aura)

Str/dex/vit are 263/182/310. This could be improved because you don't need that much life for just running travi. Originally this char was intended to be able to withstand anything when running Baal. Most of the time i could even (just) survive hitting myself once with IM.

@Pyrohemia: I suspect you have some space in your inventory to pick stuff up, where i loose time to open inventory (filled with max dam/ar sc's and a gheeds) and drop things in the cube. So i could also win some time by clearing some space there as i don't need all those charms for running travincal. If that's not the case i take my hat off to you sir.
Also i could improve skillwise. I have 20 pts in iron skin and 20 in shout which could be relocated to increased speed and/or find item. So if you want to optimise there's still enough room for improvement.

I see. Although the gear you listed (+another BA - perhaps Oath) should be quite sufficient for a Whirler.

@ZeN: The name is Cyrax. Unless Corax also has a wolfbarb

I was just reading Corax charm guide, so the name kinda stuck. My apologies.

:embarassed:

@Pyro

Perhaps you are right, I haven't thought about HF too.

However - I didn't talk about missing the entire whirl (as in whirling from place to place without hitting anything), rather missing some parts of the whirl - you start it - and in between you miss. Those are much more common than missing an entire whirl and reduce the amount of hits you land. With a targeted attack it doesn't happen (well - except due to CTH, but the same applies to WW as well).

Still - my comment about FRW was not about getting to the Council, rather getting from one member to the other.

I am in a process of making a Frenzier anyway, so we might just see how it goes, if/when I finish him (don't want to respec the Whirler).

P.S.
In any case, I still stand by my choice of Blizzard sorc :jig: - more fun for me.

 

[Pyrohemia1]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I didn't talk about missing the entire whirl (as in whirling from place to place without hitting anything), rather missing some parts of the whirl - you start it - and in between you miss.

That is basically what I was referring to without the missing in the middle. In order to miss with a range 3 weapon you have to actually be quite far away. I am not sure how you can hit at the start and then end but miss in the middle without whirling across the entire screen between two packs. Maybe if you whirl a line and the monster in the middle dies during the whirl?

Good call on sticking to your guns with a blizzard sorc. You need a character that will keep you engaged for the long haul if you actually want to find those runes.

 

[zerth]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I also tried a wolfbarb (respecing a sword wwer). Wolfbarbs are sick defensively (ez 50dr, max block, 25K+ def, massive life, maxed resists, massive leech, frw boost), but they lack offensively (even though I hit 12K ar). Even with base vit (2K life after bo :badteeth the damage output was not impressive.

For the record, the setup was similar to Zen's

Wolfhowl
Highlord's
Grief pb
Stormshield (Um)
Verdungo's 36/15
Fortitude AP
Gore rider's
LoH
Ravenfrost
ar, mana leech, resists ring
steel/vita gcs and scs

It's fun and definitely viable, just not the optimal build for fast council running.

@Zen: I see you use enigma. Can you teleport when shapeshifted to wolf? :S

 

[ZeN]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Not me. Cyrax. Quit drinking so early :wink:

 

[Dakkas]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Bears and wolves can't teleport

 

[In The Name of Zod]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Haven't read the entire thread but has anyone tried an IK ww'er for this job?

 

[AJK]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Noooo! No IK! You'll shatter the council with that cold damage.

Looking through the posts in this thread maybe I should try a WW barb for the council. I currently run with my frenzier and the (P3) runs take 99s on average. I do pick up all gold/flawless gems/charms/possibly useful yellow items, so that pushes the run time up a lot. I pick everything up that I can, because I don't want to rely on hearing a rune drop. I want to make sure that I don't miss one.

 

[nirolo]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Haven't read the entire thread but has anyone tried an IK ww'er for this job?

Looking at the numbers, a single Grief would do more damage than IK. And dual Grief can't be beaten by any weapon in the game.

 

[Kimppi]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

It works fine from what I can remember but too many corpses get shattered.

 

[In The Name of Zod]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Looking at the numbers, a single Grief would do more damage than IK. And dual Grief can't be beaten by any weapon in the game.

!!Woot!!, and I have 1 spare Lo. Now all I need is another 5sox PB. :thumbup:

 

[nirolo]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

!!Woot!!, and I have 1 spare Lo. Now all I need is another 5sox PB. :thumbup:

Read post #135 in this thread just to see what kind of damage we are talking about.

I'm still sticking to the zealot for council running, though. It's more fun for me and not that item crowded on P5.

 

[Ashmer Amadeus]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I finally got my barb able to run hell trav. I've got decent gear (I think) and while I don't think I'm doing fast runs, I run fast enough for me. I find myself using a lot of full rejuves though. And the council doesn't seem to drop them. I use them on myself from time to time, especially vs mana burn guys. But I've had runs where I've used three or four big grape juices on the moron. I'm using what I believe is one of the more popular merc setups. The moron has Reapers, Kira's and Guardian Angel. The merc is level 85. I find that he survives better if I'm whirling right next to him, but even with that I've used probly 50 full rejuves and I've only been running LK for a couple hours. On the plus side, with a total of 2 or 3 hours at Trav and my highest rune is already Gul.

 

[Dakkas]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I personally prefer a Treachery for the merc, pretty much when the council have been decrepped then their damage output drops dramatically.

 

[Schmaleop]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

I didn't think WW was such a great skill tbh. I've played a few/pvp'd some with them and the dmg just never seemed all that good so I avoided testing at council for a while.

Now i've tried it some more I can see that was a foolish thought on my part. It feels a lot quicker than my berserker and unless there is conviction present neither my barb or merc suffers.

I've just been running in a quickly put together setup though and with real tweaking/optomising I can see that this is the char to beat for Trav runs.

 

[maxicek]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

@Ashmer: I had lots of trouble keeping mine alive earlier, now he rarely dies.
- Level is important. When I hit 90, everything became much easier.
- I run at /players3, it seems a decent balance to me.
- Merc has Ral in Kira's, Amn in Reapers. The additional leech seems to help alot.
- Keep close to the merc. Hit the decrepped ones first. If one is conviction, hit him first.

 

[Ohomemgrande1]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Now that I've collected 100 million gold in GF gear, I'm switching to more killing power to try and increase speed.

I run with dual Grief PB's, LoH, Arreat's, Gore Riders, 1 Dwarf Star, 1 rare ring with ML, AR, STR, Mana, crafted Ammy with +2 Barb skills/teleport charges and String of Ears (which really makes a huge difference in survivability).

Body Armor is really the last bit that I'm trying to choose and I don't have any of the high-end armors yet. Since I'm using Wealth in GF gear, anything is an improvement. With SoE belt, I don't think I need any more safety so an offensive armor would be ideal.

I was wondering why I haven't seen anything in the thread about Black Hades

Black Hades
Chaos Armor
Defense: 823
Durability: 70 of 70
Required Level: 53
Required Strength: 140
Fingerprint: 0x96d40e36
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
[highlight]+49% Damage to Demons
+230 to Attack Rating against Demons [/highlight]
+140% Enhanced Defense
Half Freeze Duration
-2 to Light Radius
[highlight]3 Sockets (0 used)[/highlight]

Now if I throw 3 jewels with Diamond prefix in it, I can add 75-120% ED to demons and +75-150 AR to demons as well. Also if I read an earlier post in the thread correctly, if I have a Diamond jewel with +min/max damage, it will work correctly like say this one for example.

Plague Heart
Jewel
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x3cedf760
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Unidentified
+9 to Minimum Damage
+33% Damage to Demons
+36 to Attack Rating against Demons
Lightning Resist +24%
Attacker Takes Damage of 4

I'm a melee novice so any comments would be nice. Are there any drawbacks or can someone recommend an alternative budget armor.

 

[Fabian]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Black Hades looks pretty nice to me. I know I looked at it while choosing gears ages ago, but of course it's tough to compete with Fortitude (and later Enigma). Of course, a plain 4 socket armor wouldn't be much worse, and a Jewelers of the Whale or something would probably be better. Of course, having and burning 4 nice Diamond jewels in such an armor could be seen as somewhat wasteful maybe.

And yes, that jewel will work fine.

 

[Mungo]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Here is my Black Hades, being used on my trav runner, nice budget alternative to fortitude:


Black Hades
Chaos Armor
Defense: 922
Durability: 65 of 70
Required Level: 53
Required Strength: 140
Fingerprint: 0x5eb91724
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+7% Faster Hit Recovery
79% Enhanced Damage
+5 to Minimum Damage
+159% Damage to Demons
+358 to Attack Rating against Demons
+169% Enhanced Defense
+5 to Life
Replenish Life +3
Poison Resist +20%
Half Freeze Duration
-2 to Light Radius
3 Sockets (3 used)
Socketed: Death Talisman
Socketed: Ghoul Scarab
Socketed: Doom Gyre

Death Talisman
Jewel
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x244abf54
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
25% Enhanced Damage
+28% Damage to Demons
+33 to Attack Rating against Demons
+5 to Life

Ghoul Scarab
Jewel
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x41332942
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+7% Faster Hit Recovery
29% Enhanced Damage
+35% Damage to Demons
+34 to Attack Rating against Demons
Poison Resist +20%

Doom Gyre
Jewel
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x9b51f5d0
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
25% Enhanced Damage
+5 to Minimum Damage
+36% Damage to Demons
+49 to Attack Rating against Demons
Replenish Life +3

 

[Asmodeous1]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

Wow. Had no idea this thread had grown so much!

Anyway, I have an idea for a crazy trav runner barb I wanna throw at you for comment. You might think I'm absolutely crazy when you see the set up, but perservere with it for a minute......:crazyeyes:

Iron berserker. As per my Iron berserker guide.
Merc. Prayer c/w that rune word for mana regen, guardian angel and harley.
Weapon. Any nasty two handed goo maker stick of pain. Death, Oath, Spell steel, Tomb raider, Hell slayer etc.
Rest of it. laying of hands, Gore riders, trangs belt (cbf), arreats, Treachery (Berserker = fade activates easily) or Fortitude if you prefer.
The secret ingredient. 2 x dwarf star plus rising sun amulet.

The theory.

Berserker does huge damage with big goo maker stick. One hit kills on normal councillors, 2-3 hits on bosses. (players 3). No defence so fade goes off all the time. attack speed isn't too important when you one hit kill. No leech so healing comes from Prayer/life regen and fire over absorb.

Over absorbing is banned/frawned upon in PvP because it can Heal your character. So, Berserker who does huge damage but no leeches wearing three fire absorb items stands in the middle of a dozen hydras getting healed by the fire damage while swinging away with 10 grand average magic damage plus Deadly strike and laying of hands .

So far, Ive done very little experiementing with it. My IB doesn't have find item due to fully synergied Zerk so respeccing a one point find item could be the go. Against normal council it works well but the wheels come off when councillors have Conviction. I'm gunna try changing some damage charms out for resistances there.
Overall it works pretty good. I rush/leap attack in, concentrate on the regular councillors for one hit goodness while being bombarded by hydra's and the health ball not moving. then switch to the three bosses and simply tank em out. Worst Ive had so far is loosing around 2,600 hit points which isn't too much of an issue given I could chug a red pot and have nearly 4,000 hit points.

I have a few different combo's yet to try such as an Oath plus fortitude and dropping a dwarf star for a raven frost and trangs belt for verdungo's for more hit points plus DR.

So, what do peeps think of that trav runner?

 

[Fabian]

Re: Travincal Running WW Barb Mini-Guide

To me it sounds like so many other builds I've seen suggested. It's probably alright and good and all, but how is it better than just whirlwinding? Slow attack speed, single target attack? I doubt that can compete with mowing the entire council down in 5-7 seconds. Especially if it puts a strain on the number of skill points you can devote to Find Item.

Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong