So, I'm making another barbarian. I've made way too many to count over the years on Bnet and HU. I've been looking at the synergies and kicking things around in my head for a little bit now. So far this is what I've come up with:

Warcries:
1 Howl
1 Shout
20 Battle Orders
1 Battle Command
1 Find Potion
1 Find Item

Combat Masteries:
1 Sword Mastery
20 Increased Stamina
1 Iron Skin
1 Increased Speed
1 Natural Reistance

Combat Skills:
1 Bash
1 Leap
20 Stun
20 Concentrate
1 Leap Attack
1 Whirlwind
20 Berserk

I know this looks like a weird skill tree, but I figure I'll only be whirlwinding to get through mobs or to do some crushing blows to bosses and not destroy myself with IM, therefore 1 pt in WW. As for the 1 pt in sword mastery, I get more AR from concentrate and berserk, so I don't see that being too much of an issue. It also Allows me the felxibility to use other weapons since I won't be so heavily invested in sword mastery, and if I counted right, I should have 1 more point to spend by 101 and I could actually pick up mace mastery when it's all said and done.

As for gear, I'm planning on the following:
Tyraels
D Horn
Spirit Ward
WSG
Upped Gore Riders
Steelrends
Eth GF, Eth CB, or Upped Eth Swordguard
Metalgrid
Rings-not sure yet, depends on the need but probably blood rings


Now, I'm looking at stats for this build, and I see I'm going to need a lot of str. Lots of bonuses but those won't be reachable until about 185 str. Obviously I'll be using the best annhi I can find, hopefully perfect, and I'm sure I'll have a few str/max damage charms in there as well. I guess blood craft rings are going to be the way to go here. This is obviously going to be a max block build, so I'll need the points in dex also. So, depending on the rings, I'm thinking this should leave me about 200-250 base Vitality. I'm not sure if this will be enough even with max block and dr. I'll be putting Rubies in the Dhorn I suppose, and maybe even the Tyraels, so hopefully that helps to make up for it.

Whew, kinda long winded there. I know it's a big post but I've been thinking about this for a while now and I thought, might as well put it out there and see what some of the other experienced people think.

I'm sure at first look it seems like more of a tank build, but I think in the end he can be a pretty mean boss killer. Obviously he'll be relying more on crushing blows than actual damage, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Now that I've said my piece, any and all comments are welcome. I'm trying to make the best of the best here and I'll be open to all suggestions and ideas.

Not maxing the mastery is fail imo.

I suggest to max the mastery instead of BO or increased stamina. With maxed bo you are more party friendly ( but WC barbs will be always better than you on bo anyways ). With inc stamina you will tank even better...

I'd go into inc.sta, since you are going into somewhat tank skills and stuff

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I would only 1 point stun personaly. A friend of mine has that exact same setup except he maxed sword mastery instead of stun. We play on hc and he had no trouble tanking every boss through all difficultys. He is yet to go up against hell baal but Im sure he`ll have no real problems there either.

Maxing mastery for the ar and boost to damage and not maxing a synergie is alot better. The synergies to physical weapon based damage attacks add very very little damage per point. having more ar is alot more important.

You can get away with 50 str/dex for max block and all the heavy equip. You want as much in vita as you can squeeze since you get very good returns on it. You can always use emeralds/amethysys for stats. Hard points in vita are buffed by lifebuffs. Points in vita from equip is not buffed by lifebuffs.

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Thanks for the replies.



To start, a barb with no bo is fail imo, unless you're running barb twins with a cryer. I can't see being in a party or solo and having 1 point in bo. I mean, if you're going to do that, why even put any points in the warcry tree at all? If I was always running with another barb then obviously I'd just skip it altogether, but I really don't see that happening.

Also, I never had a problem with putting one point into my masteries. It's not the most ideal setup, but it does give you the flexibility if you put one point in say sword, axe and mace masteries. When you look at the attack rating gains from these skills, concentrate and berserk give a lot more than the mastery. I get 10% per pt from sword mastery where as I get 25% per point from berserk and concentrate. This is why I say I don't see AR being an issue.



I understand what you're saying here. My line of thinking was that another 400% to berserk would be huge against physical immune bosses. I guess I can save the points and see where I stand AR wise. If I'm lacking then maybe I just go mastery instead of stun. I've also thought about going 10 mastery and 10 whirlwind. This might give me some trash killing abilities. I'm not too sure how well that would work with no points in ww physical synergies.



I thought this too, at first. However, when looking at my gear I don't see anything that gives +str that is a lower requirement than 185 str. So, I don't see how I could put amethysts in gear until I reach the 185 str mark. Yes, I know I can put emeralds in there to save some dex, but doing the math, I would think it better to put the 30 hard points into dex and put a ruby in the gear. Rubies will give me the 30 vit AND the 10% more health, but emeralds only give the 30 dex. You said that only hard points into vit are buffed by life buffs, does that include the 10% life buffs from the rubies?

I have thought about putting some wirts into the Tyraels and getting the requirements down a bit to get the bonus stats from the jewels and the armor itself. Not sure if this would be worth doing, but I would think wirts would be the most bang for the buck.

I've made this barbarian in HU before and had no problem soloing almost the entire game. The only thing I ever had a problem with was the necro in LoS. Eventually I got him in a good spot and kept bashing him, knockback worked wonders. This was also with 1 point in eash mastery. This was a while ago though and I think the biggest change since then has been the ability to be curse immune. It was pretty easy to do back then and I think that's made a huge difference in this game. Everywhere I go now I have a curse over my head.

Well, thanks again for the replies. You guys have me thinking a little more in depth now. I hope I don't sound defensive here, I'm just trying to play devils advocate a little bit. Keep the suggestions and comments coming, I love the brainstorming.

short answer: decreasing bonus life/mana/sta per lvl on BO.

Still dont see my point?
btw, rage reminded me that my conc barb has no stun synergy...
so, max bo and inc anyway xD

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Salutations Mustang,

It's nice to see you're willing to do the math on your skills and realize what's really worth maxing. You'll be disheartened by how many multizons actually dump 20 points into Multi for it's synergy to GA, despite those 20 points only doing like 8-11% of their final damage.

That aside:
1) The synergy between Stun and Concentration is only 10%ED, and while it's weapon-inspecific, you'll probably benefit more from a Mastery. Not maxing Stun will reduce your Berzerk damage by probably 20-40% depending on your stats (2-H swords gain 3% ED per str, so loosing 400% from Stun synergy might not be that big a deal).

2) If you're planning on using Berzerk on most bosses, then AmpDamage isn't important to you (except for CrushingBlow). With your curse option freed up, you can consider a curse to help you tank via Weaken or completely solve your ARating problems and possibly tank even better with BattleCry. Techincally Weaken or BattleCry (at lvl 25) both offer -50% enemy phys dmg, so can effectively double your life. Both are a lot stronger than BO in that regard. If you've maxed your absorbs, you might seriously consider maxing BattleCry instead of BO, but maxing both would be pretty damn strong (BO is a significant part of your +Life even if you've maxed Increased Stamina). If you get BattleCry to level 50 (-75% enemy dmg), then you have effectively quadrupled your char-screen listed life against phys dmg. BattleCry is the only skill that can do this.

3) Consider revising some of your chosen gear to include something with less than 185 str. I'm sure your offense will suffer a little, but I'm guessing you can do better. From the list you provided, it looks like elemental damage will cut you to peices, since your absorbs are pretty low. There's a post discussing how important Absorbs are. Reading that post will make these suggestions make a lot more sense.
Consider these items for the reasons given (I'm not telling you to throw out your previous item list):
3.1) Leviathan armor (dr%, +30Str, Cleansing, high block bonuses) or Glassglare (Absorbs, pois reduction, low block bonuses)
3.2) Andy's Hat (pois reduction, low str, +30Str) or SteelShade (absorbs), or Ondal's Hat (Weaken, low level)
3.3) Don't up yor Gores. The defence boost won't even affect your To-Hit%, just sell the runes to Charsi if you don't want them, at least you'll get some gold. If your To-Hit% manages to change by 1 because you're right on the edge, then go for it.
3.4) TitanBlade for elemental bosses (it's pretty much the only weapon with absorbs, dr%, with 5%CBlow).
3.5) RisingSun ammy (absorbs).
3.6) WhispProjector ring (SoBarbs, -10%EnemyMagicRes, +10%ResMagic), or Nature'sPeace (Pois Reduction).

I have to say that I also maxed multi shot on my bowazon but the main reason is that there really isn't anywhere else to put the points. I wouldn't have enough points to max an elemental skill with synergies, so I figured it best to go all out physical.

As for the barb, I'm not exactly sure how battle cry works. If it does work that well against bosses then it's definitely something to think about.

I was thinking about my absorbs last night and I'm pretty sure I'd be adding one of each gem to the shield. I know titan blade has some on it, and with the dr and cb it's looking like a good option for the weapon slot also. I'm just not sure if I should look for an ethereal one or maybe add a ber to it. So, with this weapon and gems in the shield, that should put my absorbs in the 32-34% range. I would think that's a decent amount.

Well, thanks for the reply Brevan. You've got me thinking about getting battlecry as a 1 pt wonder at the very least now.

In the table I linked to, the following is derived:
32%Absorbs + 75%Res = 40%Absorbs + 55%Res = 91%Res = +1011%Life
34%Absorbs + 75%Res = 40%Absorbs + 60%Res = 92%Res = +1150%Life
40%Absorbs + 75%Res = 95%Res = +1900%Life

I'm not sure what gear you're using instead of maxing your absorbs, but I hope it's worth that +750% Life you're missing out on.

That aside, BattleCry lowers damage (1% per point starting at 25%) and defence (2% per point starting at 50%). It isn't useful against stuff that's had it's damage or defence buffed, such as trash under influence of Might aura, or the Smith (Defiance aura). The same is true for "Extra Strong" stuff. Act Bosses however, are not under the influence of either of those buffs as far as I can tell, they just have very high base damage and defence. Keep in mind that you have to get the skill to level 25 before you can ignore boss defence and their damage is halved, so 1 point might not be enough. After skill level 25, the damage reduction will have exponential benefits.
This is derived from the table I linked to:
Just remember that this only applies to physical attacks you didn't defend or block. Also, the Effective Life bonus stacks with regular damage reduction (50%dr means double all these "+Life%" bonuses, i.e. lvl52BC with 50%dr is 20 times better than lvl1BC with 0%dr).

If you've got a really high Battlecry and Absorbs, about the only things to fear is magical damage (so use Glassglare, and possibly Souldrinker dagger instead of a shield) and Poison.

So, are you saying maxing battlecry would be better than maxing battle orders? Or, max battlecry and have no synergy for concentrate? I like what you're showing me with the numbers but I don't really know which way to take it.

Also, I'll definitely have to try glassglare when it comes to just tanking. I'm trying to make this a well balanced barbarian but with all this talk it seems like he's just turning into a full on tank.

My point here is to have a barbarian that can be a solo boss killer but also help out while in a party. I'm not really sure which way to go with this now.

to deal with trash, use a 2 handed sword on switch with an eth rune in and use WW.

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Yeah, I have a non eth grandfather for trash. I figure that should be good enough. Can throw en eth rune in it if I see any ar problems.

you want to aim for 20k+ ar

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I'm making a barb and going to max the above 3 skills and take berserk too. At that point I have a question: How does warcry works, does it works for bosses for example? (Since I have both synergies for it I figured out might be a good idea to go for it.) Or I'm better off with a synergie or a weap. mastery?

If you have any pointers about that pls share it with me.

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WarCry does physical damage in something like a 6 yard radius. The stun effect does not affect act bosses (Andy, Duriel) or sub bosses (Mort, Toby). The stun effect does work on named and champs, but not 100% (probably the level of the skill is the % to stun, it's hard to test). WarCry doesn't miss, so ARating is irrelevant. The damage of WarCry is very high in late normal, and it's quite nice for NM. With the 50% global Phys res of Hell, you'll find it frustrating to consistently Amp-curse stuff unless you've got a fast-attacking merc with a good chance to cast amp (Of course you can just get A3 merc to handle trash).

Since you'll be maxing Berzerk, you'd probably be fine to mostly use WarCry as your trash-wrangler. Just switch to Berzerk+BCry for the few things you don't feel like using Amp+WCry on. You'll probably want a set of high-absorbs and dr% gear for bosses (along with a massive weapon for Berzerk), and a set of high +Skills gear for trash.

Thanx for the fast reply Brevan. It's really helpful for me, tough I have a rather unorthodox playstyle so I should test how it works for me.

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Roses are red, violets are blue
This poem should rhyme, but it doesn't.