Hello everyone, I've recently started playing D2HU (again) after a couple years of not playing. My friends and I are running together over TCP/IP and my room-mate has run into a problem. His barb is supposed to be a tank barb, sword & shield, but the dexterity required to bring his barbs block chance up to anything decent seems insane. I ran a test earlier and I found that with a white monarch with no mods a barbarian needs 643 dex to get 75% block. Are barbs not supposed to wield shields in HU? Should I just tell my friend to re-roll or is there any way he can bring up his block chance other than having an un-reachable amount of dex?

using a shieldwith no incresed chance of blocking is a bad way to test. A friend of mine has a barb that uses a spirit ward with 1 ether stone in it. He has around 180 dex iirc to hit max block. That can come from emeralds in equip sockets and ko runes in weapons mid game.

Do a test with orphans call shield, its probs the best shield he can use for high chance to block.

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shield barbs are the best

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Like Purerage said you need ICB and more importantly FBR on a barb. I generally invest no more than 50 dex on any barb that I build and get the rest from a good ICB shield, 1 uber amethyst in my shield, and a helm with however many emeralds I need to reach ~60-75% block rating. I then switch that helm out if I am using a 2hander.

Keep in mind that barb FBR is heavily nerfed here so you will want at least 30% FBR from items (ideally more). But most early shields have 30% mods.

I'm not an uber experienced barb like jarl, but when i made my conc barb a few ladders I relied on HPs and defense to get me through normal and ignored my shield, then in nm i started to focus on getting that block rate up as more gear became available

I personally think Conc barbs suck. A Assassin can tank better than well geared barbs. Its sad imo.