Wolfbarb Guide

Wolfbarb Guide Introduction

Tired of being a plain old barbarian? Getting dizzy from all that Whirling? Get bit and join the Canis Lupus family.

What is a Wolfbarb?

A Wolfbarb is a Barbarian that has been given the Druid ability to turn into a werewolf and use three Druid Shapeshifting skills. He does this by equipping the Barbarian Class specific unique Wolfhowl Fury Visor.

A wolf barb is not a cookie cutter build. The only piece of equipment required is Wolfhowl wherein lies the biggest issue with being a Wolfbarb – the required level to equip Wolfhowl is 79.

To emphasize its non-cookie cutter nature for now let’s just list some of the subspecies:

• Two-handed weapons
• Dual Wield
• Weapon and shield
• Part time
• Magic Find
• Elemental Damage
• Damage reduction

While that level 79 requirement means that you have to wait a long time to play it also means that there are no Runewords and only 10 unique items that you will still have to wait to use.

Where do I find a Wolfhowl?

Wolfhowl is a Treasure class 66 item. This means it can only be found in Hell. All of the Act bosses can drop it in Hell and the usual magic level 85 monsters have a chance to drop it.

What happens when you turn into a Werewolf?

1. In wolf form you are restricted to two attacks – Normal or Feral Rage. This means that none of the barbarian’s combat skills work. So, no Whirlwind, Frenzy or Berserk while in wolf form.

2. In wolf form you cannot use Warcries. So, no Howl, Taunt, Battle Cry or War Cry. The usual buffing warcries Battle Command, Battle Orders and Shout if sung before turning into a wolf will affect the life, mana and defense while in wolf form.

3. You gain the bonuses of the Druid shapeshifter skills of Werewolf, Lycanthropy and Feral Rage. That means increased attack speed and AR from Werewolf, increased life from Lycanthropy and increased damage, AR, life steal and increased Run/Walk from Feral Rage.

4. If you equip two weapons only the main weapon (the one above the gloves) actually gets used. This means that many of the attributes on the offhand weapon don’t work like %ED, and chance to cast on striking.

Skills

Wolf skills

Werewolf is easy. It is the skill that allows you to turn into a big hairy white wolf. Beside doing that it grants bonuses to attack speed and Attack Rating when in wolf form.

Lycanthropy is a passive skill. That means it is active when you are in wolf form. It grants a percentage increase to your maximum life and controls the length of time that you stay in wolf form.

Feral Rage is an attack skill that works similar to Frenzy in that it is a skill that gets a charge on hitting a target and that the more hits you get the bigger the effect. Unlike Frenzy’s 6 second timer Feral Rage’s timer is 20 seconds. When you use Feral Rage, you get a percentage increase to damage and attack rating. On making the first hit you also get 4% life leach and a 19% increase in walk/run speed. The 20 second timer also starts with the first hit and each subsequent hit within those 20 seconds increases the life leach and speed plus resetting the timer.

Obviously, when you are using Feral Rage, you won’t need any other life leach. However, it is something that needs to be considered while working your way to level 79 and can don Wolfhowl.

Feral Rage costs 3 mana per swing versus 5 for Frenzy and a minimum of 25 to enter Whirlwind. Based on these numbers you would not think that you need to worry about mana. However, when you get in the middle of a pack of monsters Feral Rage will eat through the barb’s small mana bulb quickly. As an example, the +2 mana per kill that Grief gives you is not enough to keep the bulb from dropping. As a result, you will either need a small amount of mana leach, 4% keeps the bulb full, or you can be constantly popping mana potions.

Wolfhowl grants three to six points in each of the skills and the only way to increase the skill level is via +skills equipment. Werewolf and Lycanthropy are like Warcry skills in that you can buff them by having +skills weapons on switch. So, for the Wolfbarb 20 is the max level you can have for Werewolf and Lycanthropy (6 from Wolfhowl, 6 from weapons on switch, 2 from amulet, 2 from armor, 1 from belt, 2 from rings and 1 from Battle Command). Feral Rage will not see the increase from Buffing so the max level would be 18 if you have a +2 skill items in the main weapon and offhand positions and while Battle Commands is active. The reality is that you will not reach these levels.

NOTE: echoing weapons that grant +3 to Warcries will NOT work to buff Werewolf. You need an item that will grant a + to all skills. Spirit is a low level Runeword for weapons and shields that grants +2 to all skills and if you have the Runes Heart of the Oak grants +3 to all skills.

Here is a table of the bonuses granted by the three skills

This is probably a good place to remind everyone how life steal works. You are NOT taking a percentage of a monster’s life. Instead, the life that you gain is a percentage of the actual damage that you did to the monster.

NOTE: The data on the number of Feral Rage charges and the maximum life stolen per hit comes from the Amazon Basin and is different from that provided at the Pure Diablo shapeshifting skills information page.

So, where do I put my skill points?

Obviously, 20 into the weapon mastery of your choice, 20 to Battle Orders and 1 into Battle Command and one each to the prerequisites of Howl and Shout. However, if you don’t know what weapon you will be using at the end you can either wait to put points in a weapon mastery, gamble that you will pick the right one, or save a respec for late in the game.

Beyond that it is really up to you. @Purplelocust finished his Wolfbarb with 46 unspent skill points.

There is one major decision to make before distributing your skills. Are you going to be a full-time wolf or a part-time wolf? If full time you don’t want any points in the combat tree, but if part time you need to select what combat skill you want to use and invest in it also.

For the full-time wolf, remember that Warcries can’t be sung while in wolf form. This will further restrict where you want to put skill points. What it does do is open up those combat masteries that usually only get a point or two in many builds.

To max Battle Orders and Weapon Mastery and 1 point in Battle Command takes 43 points. Most will distribute the remaining points among Shout, Iron Skin, Natural Resistances and Increase Speed. Another skill that might get a point or two is Find Items. The most common solution is to max shout and Iron Skin which increases defense and also lengthens Battle Orders. Putting points into Natural resistances will free up your backpack for charms doing damage or magic finding while point into Increase Speed will make your wolf move even faster.

Here are the tables for Shout, Iron Skin, Natural resistance and Increase Speed.

Here’s a suggested order for someone that will be using swords and will also max Shout, Battle orders and Iron Skin.

Level 2 – 1 point in sword Mastery
Den of Evil Reward – 1 point in Sword Mastery
Level 3-4 – 1 point in Sword Mastery
Level 5 – 1 point in Bash
Level 6 – 1 point in Double Swing
Level 7 – 1 point in Howl
Level 8 – 1 point in Shout
Level 9-12 – 1 point in Sword Mastery
Level 13 – 1 point in Increase Stamina
Level 14-17 – Alternate between Sword Mastery and Shout
Level 18 – 1 point into Iron Skin
Level 19-23 – 1 point in Sword Mastery
Killing Radament Reward – 1 point in Sword Mastery
Level 24 – 1 point in Battle Orders
Level 25 – 1 point in Increase Speed
Level 26-29 – 1 point in Sword Mastery (Now maxed)
Level 30 – 1 point in Battle Orders
Level 31 – 1 point in Battle Command
Level 32 – 1 point in Naatural Resistances
Killing Izual – 2 points into Battle Orders
Level 33-48 – 1 point in Battle Orders (now maxed)
Level 49 – 1 point in Shout

You should be in or very near to moving into Nightmare at this point. I would suggest holding off any additional skill point till you reach nightmare and access your resistances. You may want to put the next couple of skill points into Increase Resistances if they are low. If not,

Den of Evil Reward – 1 point in Shout
Killing Radament Reward – 1 point in Shout
Level 50-63 – 1 point in Shout (Now Maxed)
Level 64-70 – 1 point into Iron Skin
Killing Izual Reward – 2 points into Iron Skin
Level 71-74 – 1 point into Natural Resistances

You should be in or very near Hell at this point. I would suggest holding off any additional skill point distribution till you reach Hell and then evaluate your resistances. Depending on the equipment that you have chosen and any + skills that you have you may decide that the 5 hard points into Natural Resistances is enough, If not,

Den of Evil Reward – 1 point in Natural Resistance
Killing Radament Reward – 1 point in Natural Resistances
Level 75-77 – 1 point in Natural Resistances
Level 78-83 – 1 point in Iron Skin
Killing Izual Reward – 2 points in Iron Skin
Level 84 – 1 point in Iron Skin (Now maxed)
Level 85 and up Increase speed and or Find potion and Find Item.

Critical Strike vs Deadly Strike

Since we are going to max weapon mastery, this is probably a good place to discuss Critical and Deadly Strike. They both provide a chance to do double damage, but they do not stack and only one can be used on each hit.

Critical Strike:

Weapon mastery provides this for barbs. Critical strike is added at the final stage of damage calculation and it is entirely dependent on the values of initial stages of the calculation. A high damage weapon is still a necessity. However, with a high damage weapon, the chance to score double damage is a good thing.

Deadly Strike:

Found as a mod on gear, it is also applied at the same stage as Critical Strike, BUT the chance to score them doesn’t stack as they are different mods. They exclude each other in the calculation. Critical strike is checked first and deadly strike is ignored. If Critical Strike is not applied, deadly strike is then checked and critical is ignored. The net chance to score double damage isn’t therefore critical strike + deadly strike e.g., 66% DS + 22% CS = 88% is wrong! From the Amazon Basin It is done this way:

=CS + (DS/100)*(100-CS)

E.g., Death cleaver has 66% chance of deadly strike, let’s assume you have 22% critical strike from axe mastery. The chance to do double damage is:

= 22 + (66/100)*(100-22)
= 22 + (.66)*(78)
= 22 + 51.48
= 73.48% chance of doing double damage.

What do I do before I can use Wolfhowl at level 79?

Unless you do some farming along the way you won’t reach level 79 until you are in Hell. There are three ways to get there.

First is simply to play whatever style of barbarian you want till you reach level 79 and then respec to take advantage of being a wolf.

The second is to not put any points into a skill that you wouldn’t use as a wolf. Before version 1.13 and the ability to do respecs this was the path you had to take. You can take advantage of skills granted from equipment such as whirlwind from Bloodletter swords, Zeal and Berserk from the Passion Runeword, or play as a werebear by using the Beast Runeword. Till you get to level 30 you just slog away with whatever you have or even use a bow.

The third is a minor modification of the second. Since the earliest any of the three weapons mentioned above is level 30, you can put a point into Bash and a point in Double Swing at level 6. Besides allowing your barb two swings at a monster this gives you 10% damage from Bash and 15% AR even if you have no +skills equipment. This will also let you ignore needing Bloodletters at level 30 or not needing to use Whirlwind even if you do have them.

You can either leave these two skill points in place even after reaching level 79 or do a respec. As noted, being a Wolfbarb is not a skill intensive path.

Passion and Lawbringer are both available at level 43 and make an excellent combination, Zeal is better than Double Swing but if you were able to equip Arreat’s Face at level 42 you would be better off continuing with Double Swing instead of Zeal. Zeal will only benefit from + all skill items and as a result will see no increase from Arreat’s Face while Double Swing will get a +4 from Arreat’s.

Beast allows you to play as a Werebear starting at level 63 depending on what you use as the weapon base. If you have been putting your skill point into just those that support the Wolfbarb build then you have been making the same distribution that will increase the Bear’s effectiveness. Essentially you get to take advantage of the Wolfbarb skill distribution 15 or 16 levels earlier. If you are going to be a bear you do not want to be using Arreat’s Face as the + Barbarian skills do not affect the werebear. The Helm of choice would be Harlequin’s Crest for the +2 to all skills.

Stats

The usual for a melee character. Enough strength and dexterity to equip your gear. For Dexterity if carrying a shield, you also need enough to have a decent block rate. Life everything else.  Once you are a wolf it really won’t be necessary to put points into Vitality. You will have huge defense and life and you can decide just how high you want to go, but anything over 5,000 is getting a bit excessive!

Gear

Remember, you can’t become a wolf till level 79. This means that you can use all but a very few items once you can equip Wolfhowl. It also means that if you don’t already have good gear, you have time to farm the usual suspects in Nightmare and even the Pits in Hell.

Wolf Subspecies

Before you start gearing up and even before you allocate your weapon mastery points you need to decide what species of wolf you want to be. This is essentially choosing your weapon or at least Weapon type if you don’t already have your endgame weapon. The Wolfbarb doesn’t deal a tremendous about of damage per hit, so you will want to aim for one of the elite level weapons or one of the higher Runeword weapons.

Two hand Subspecies

This means choosing one of those big hurty sticks and all of the elite level weapons will work. You may even find a rare polearm or spear that has some nice mods, like amp damage.

Here are some possibilities with their minimum Feral Rage frame rate, and some additional thoughts on each. I’ll leave it to you to review their other attributes

A Tomb Reaver with two sockets and two Shael runes reaches 6 frame per second with Feral Rage. If you have one with 3 sockets you can use the third for a helpful jewel or an IST rune. Tomb Reaver also gives you resists and magic find. The only problem with Tomb Reaver is that you will have to wait till you are level 84 to use it.

Upped Ribcracker socketed with a Shael and an additional 40% IAS on gear it will get to 8fps as the upped Ribcracker is a Stalagmite with a slower base speed that the quarterstaff. You can start using the Ribcracker at level 31, but it will lose its effectiveness in the mid-40s and the upped Ribcracker is a level 56 Weapon so you will need a weapon to use between level 45 and 56.

Immortal King’s maul can get to 8 fps with two Shael runes and an additional 20% IAS from gear. To get the most from the Stone Crusher you will want to equip the IK Belt, boots, and gloves and if you have it, the armor. The set bonuses are impressive.

Reaper’s Toll socketed with a Shael Rune and 40% IAS from gear will reach 10 fps. Since you will be casting the decrepify yourself you don’t need an Act 2 Merc. Especially for those playing D2R this frees up your choice of merc. For example, using a Faith bow on an Act 1 Rogue would bring your frame rate to 9.

Arioc’s Needle socketed with a Shael Rune is 8 fps and with 40% IAS gear reaches 7 fps. It can also grant +4 to all skills. This could allow you to put something else on switch besides the buffing weapons. You will also have to wait till level 81 to use it.

Dual Wield Subspecies

I noted earlier that when you dual wield the offhand weapon doesn’t get used nor do most of the attributes from the offhand weapon get factored in. So, why on earth dual wield?

It’s simple, while some of the attributes of the offhand weapon do come into play such as + skills, Magic find, Gold find, Mana, Life, Strength, Dexterity, mana after a kill, defense, Defense to missiles all work. However, the main reason is for the aura granted by six different Runewords:

Beast grants level 9 Fanaticism which provides 186% extra damage and +80% AR
Doom grants Level 12 Holy Freeze which provides 50% slow and 85-90 cold damage and +2 to all skills.
Lawbringer grants level 16-18 Sanctuary and an extra 600% to 660% damage to the undead.
Hand of Justice grants level 16 Holy Fire which provides 85-97 fire damage.
Last Wish grants level 17 Might which provides 200% damage.
Phoenix grants level 10-15 Redemption which provides 71-80% chance to recover life and mana from a corpse.

Except for Lawbringer these runewords all require high level runes potentially limiting their access to you.

What to put in the main hand? As with two-handed weapons there are many usable weapons, but the two premier weapons are Grief in a Phase blade and Griswold’s Redemption, Grief does high damage and does it at 5 fps with Feral Rage. Depending on what you put in Grizzy’s four sockets you can reach 5, 4 or even 3 fps. Two Shael runes will give you 5fps leaving two sockets to do as you want with.

Here are some other good options:

• Lightsabre Phase Blade
• Baranars Star Devil Star
• Aldurs Rythm Jagged Star
• DeathCleaver Berserker Axe
• Frostwind Cryptic Sword

Weapon and Shield Subspecies

Pick whatever weapons is the best one hand weapon you have and add a shield. Of the unique shields Stormshield is the best. Other good shields are Spike Thorn and Headhunter’s Glory, especially one with three sockets.

There are also 3 good Runeword shields, two of which also provide an aura:

• Sanctuary
• Dragon – Holy Fire
• Dream – Holy Shock

And then there is the Phoenix SHIELD, the ultimate offhand item. It is without a doubt an offensive weapon wrapped in a shield. You can make Phoenix in a weapon or shield. What makes the shield the way to go is that you do get the 350% to 400% Enhanced Damage which you won’t get when you put a Phoenix weapon in the offhand. Now Phoenix is expensive (Vex, Vex, Lo, Jah) but it is worth it.

Magic Find Subspecies

For this variant we are going to give up some offense and defense to use equipment that has good magic find. Without any problems you can have over 400% Magic Find. You may also want to put a few points into find Item and 1 point into its prerequisite. Once everything is dead you can drop out of wolf form switch to you +skills weapons and hoark away.

Here is some of the better magic find items and their percent Magic Find. The usual Harlequin Crest isn’t included because you must wear Wolfhowl!

• Armor – Skulder’s Ire 1.25% per level
• Enigma % is class level
• Nagel ring – 15% – 30%
• War Traveler boots – 30% – 50%
• Gold Wrap belt 30%
• Chance Guard gloves – 25% – 40%
• Rhyme has 25% and it also has can’t be frozen which means that you don’t have to use a Raven Frost.

Rare boots and gloves can also provide a significant amount of magic find.

For weapons if you want to go the two-handed route the weapon of choice is Tomb Reaver. It has 50% to 80% MF plus up to three sockets. You can make 7 fps and still have room for an Ist Rune to bring your MF to 80% – 110% or even 2 if you can accept 8 fps and have 20 additional IAS from equipment.

For those who choose Dual wielding there are two choices for the off-hand weapon. The first is Blade of Ali Baba socketed with two Ist Runes. The second is a Phase Blade socketed with 6 Ist Runes.

There are several Runeword weapons that offer 30% MF with Eternity and Silence being possible main weapon choices, but both require high runes. The Cranebeak elite axe has 20% -50% MF, but would not be a good choice for a main weapon.

Part Time Subspecies

You spend part of your time as a wolf and part of your time as a barbarian. This gives you the ability to use Whirlwind, Berserk or Frenzy to attack monsters and it allows you to use that skill while you work towards level 79. But for Whirlwind or Frenzy to be truly effective you will have to spend a lot of points that will reduce what you can put into mastery skills. However, as Purplelocust showed you can be a successful Wolfbarb without putting all those points into mastery skills.

Berserk is a good way to handle the physical immune monsters that you run into in Hell and it only takes points in three perquisites versus 5 for whirlwind. Also, Berserk doesn’t really take a lot points before it becomes effective and Shout is a synergy that adds 10% damage per level.

Elemental Subspecies

Pick gear and charms that do elemental damage and then equip your merc with Infinity for the Conviction aura. @Grape used this approach. For armor there are not that many that provide elemental damage – Duress provides cold, Dragon through Holy Fire provides fire and Spirit Forge provides Fire. Spirit Forge also provides two sockets for elemental damage jewels. Belt is Snowclash or Thundergod’s Vigor and gloves are either Lava Gout or Hellmouth. Also, if you have been putting points into Natural Resistances you should have a lot of space in your pack for elemental Small charms.

Damage Reduction Subspecies

Obviously, the idea is to equip items that have a % Damage reduction on them. The heart of this build is an upped Shaftstop and a Stormshield. @TopHatCat64 has an excellent writeup on this concept.

Armor

since this will be your main source of defense the higher the armor’s defense the better. The usual suspects of the Mid to Higher Runeword Armors such as Enigma, Chains of Honor, Fortitude, Stone and Gloom all fit.

Other good armors include:

• Que-Hagens Wisdom
• Steel Carapace
• Arkaine’s Valor
• The Gladiator’s Bane
• Shaftstop
• Guardian Angel for the 15% increase in fire, cold and lightning resistances.

Gloves, Boots and Belt

Use these three to cover missing needs or wants or to use your favorites. Personally, I find the combination of Laying of Hands, Gore Riders and Thundergod’s vigor hard to beat in a melee build. The IK gloves, boots and belt are also a great combination.

Here are some other gloves, belts and boots and their attributes that are helpful to a Wolfbarb:

Gloves

• Ghoulhide has mana per hit freeing up the need to find a ring with mana leach. It also provides additional damage and AR to the undead and 20 to life.
• Lava Gout offers fire resists, damage and absorb, 20 IAS and a chance to cast enchant.
• Hellmouth offers fire absorb and damage.
• Soul Drainers offers mana leach and a chance to cast weaken

Belts

• Verdungo Coil has life, damage reduction and faster hit recovery
• Arachnid Mesh gives a +1 to all skills
• Gloam trap has mana leach and life

Boots

All of the exceptional and elite boots have at least one attribute that would be helpful. So, it is more what you have and what you want to get. Remember that with all of the increase speed that Feral Rage offers faster run/walk on boots isn’t that important.

Rings

who doesn’t use Raven Frost for one of the rings. While you won’t need a rare ring with life leach for the other ring, you may well want one with mana leach. You may also have a rare ring that fills holes in the build or one of the following also makes a good second ring.

• Bul-Kathos Wedding Band
• Dwarf Star
• Wisp Projector
• Nature’s peace

Amulet

The amulet is one of the places to pick up +skills, which the first three will give you

• Highlords Wrath
• Mara’s Kaleidoscope
• Seraph’s Hymn
• The Cat’s Eye
• Atma’s Scarab

Handling those Pesky Physical Immunes

The most common way is to use Decrepify with an Act 2 Merc wielding a Reaper’s Toll. That’s if you are lucky enough to have a Reaper’s. There are two other weapons that will cast Decrepify. Executioner’s Justice provided a chance to cast after killing an enemy, while Lawbringer and Reaper’s provide a chance to cast on striking. The only difference that the level has on Decrepify is the duration of the curse. Level 1 lasts 4 seconds, level 6 for 7 seconds and level 15 for 12.4 seconds.

Executioner’s Justice would have to be your main weapon. For Lawbringer it can either be your main weapon or if you make it in a sword, you can have an Act 5 Barbarian Merc carry it.

The third way is to have lots of elemental damage and have an Act 2 merc carry Infinity for the conviction aura. If you have put some points into Natural Resistances, you should have a fairly empty back pack Loading it up with elemental small charms is a good way to increase your damage and even if you don’t have an Infinity, it will still help you against PIs.

Mercenary

The overwhelming choice is an Act 2 Might merc. For those without a Reaper’s Toll an Act 5 Barb equipped with a Lawbringer sword is a very viable alternative.

For those playing D2 Resurrected this is no longer such a clear choice. The Act 3 Iron Wolves can now cast Static, the Act 5 Barbarian can now frenzy with dual swords and cast Battle Cry – how does a Grief and a Lawbringer sound?  However, the casting of Battle Cry does make the Act 5 merc less efficient than before. The problem is that when the merc casts Battle Cry it will overwrite Decrepify from the Lawbringer. Battle Cry is a help, but it isn’t as powerful as Decrepify.

TIPS

Feral Rage can go on the left or right mouse button.

Put it on the right button and simply hold it down as you move around. When a monster comes between your wolf and the cursor you will automatically attack it and after its dead you continue to move. This way you don’t have to click on each individual monster. Unlike Whirlwind it only uses mana on each hit.

There are three issues with this approach. First, you don’t see the banner of the monster you are attacking so you have no idea of its properties. You can right click it and the banner shows up, but then if there is a pack you have to click on each one or move away and swope back in with the right button held down. Second, you attack any target that comes in range. This includes towers, barriers and doors even if you might not want to attack it. Then you have to left click in order to move away. Finally, it won’t open chest and you have to left click on them.

Resistance check

If you have been putting points into Natural Resistance you should at least review where you are after receiving the reward from Malah for rescuing Anya in Hell Act 5. You will probably be able to make some additional changes.

Recharging

If you’ve maxed shout and Battle Orders, they will last longer than staying a werewolf. It is pretty obvious when you are no longer a wolf and you can quickly recast Werewolf and get back to the business of destroy monsters. However, it won’t be quite so obvious when Shout and Battle Orders end. My recommendation is that unless you are in the middle of a pack of monsters when werewolf ends, take the time to recast Battle Command, Battle Orders, Shout and Werewolf. Oh, and if you have +skills items on switch don’t forget to switch to them before buffing and then don’t forget to switch back to your main weapon.

Lawbringer

I’ve mentioned this Runeword several times and I want to emphasize what it can and can’t do for you.

Here are its attributes:

20% Chance To Cast Level 15 Decrepify On Striking
Level 16-18 Sanctuary Aura When Equipped (varies)
-50% Target Defense
Adds 150-210 Fire Damage
Adds 130-180 Cold Damage
7% Life Stolen Per Hit
Slain Monsters Rest In Peace
+200-250 Defense Vs. Missile (varies)
+10 To Dexterity
75% Extra Gold From Monsters

The knockback makes it almost impossible for the undead to mob you. This can be incredibly helpful in Act 2 and the Chaos Sanctuary for example.

If you equip it in your offhand only those attributes in bold will work. Also, the extra damage to the undead is only granted to those carrying the weapon so you won’t get that part of the Sanctuary aura if you put it on your Merc.

There is no Extra Damage included to the weapon so even with the elemental damage and 20% chance to cast Decrepify you will find that except for the undead it not a big damage weapon, especially in Hell.

It can take time getting used to Sanctuary. Every two second the undead are knocked back and all the twinkling lights can be distracting.

Phoenix

Finally, I want to emphasize just how incredible a Phoenix shield is for this build. Here are the attributes for the shield version of Phoenix:

100% Chance To Cast level 40 Blaze When You Level-up
40% Chance To Cast Level 22 Firestorm On Striking
Level 10-15 Redemption Aura When Equipped (varies)
+350-400% Enhanced Damage (varies)
-28% To Enemy Fire Resistance
+350-400 Defense Vs. Missile (varies)
+15-21 Fire Absorb (varies)
+50 To Life
+5% To Maximum Lightning Resist
+10% To Maximum Fire Resist

It needs 4 sockets, which means a Monarch shield and that means 156 to strength, but that should not be a problem for a Wolfbarb.