I think I've taken my two-weapon barbarian about as far as he's going to get without cranking up some masteries, if only for the attack rating, but it's come to my attention that I no longer know base weapon requirements or high-level available options (for instance: it has only recently come to my attention that swords don't require gigantic dexterity to use and I just found out that Tancred's set no longer uses a one-handed axe - surprise!) and I don't want to stupidly waste skill points.

Does anyone have advice on a weapon type decent-to-good for a player without access to extremely high-level items?

I'd say that maces is your best bet, heavy hitting. Usually packs cb and you can get them pretty fast with runewords/crafts. Oath+Obediance, Oath+Death, deathcraft+obediance, deathcrafts etc. Otherwise swords gets good later on. Deathcrafted two-handed swords dualwielded usually gets good dmg.

Consider an Eth rune (-50% TargetDefence) if ARating is giving you a hard time. You'd need 1 for each weapon. At almost any character level or situation, an Eth rune is more powerful than anything (any 1 thing) else you could do to improve ARating.

Does that work on bosses and bossflagged monsters Brevan?

As far as I know, yes. Only "Ignore Target Defence" is well known for not working. I think the -%Def on Eth is the same as that on Conviction, which definitely works on bosses.

I'm rather against swords because they're very close to the only barbarian weapon around in vanilla D2. I don't think I've actually ever seen someone Frenzying with two hammers, though.

One more question - I've seen Crushing Blow crop up on two rare weapons, but they were both maces. Is that a mace-specific mod, or have I just been spectacularly lucky?

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You know, he very easily could have been talking about unique and/or runeworded maces. Those seem to have the lion's share of crushing blow.

But, yes, thanks for the clarification.

No prob, bro.

Maces & mauls usually have cb mod
rares , uniques, and rw ones.

Or at least, more often than other type of Wpnry

♥

( Sorry for the previous slight-unfriendly post if it bothered you )

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I found my old mace frenzy barb to be great against bosses, but not so much on the journey to them. Stick a lawbringer on switch with a very fast weapon on your main hand and lawbringer as the offhand. I used that combination to charge up frenzy. By the time I was fully charged I had CtC level 16 decrep from lawbringer on the boss (if there was no amp around). Axes are ok on a frenzy barb IMO. You dont see so many axe barbs around these days and the base speed is great.

*heads off to make an axe barb

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Is there a cap on the -%Defense? Or is one Eth rune all that you can use per weapon?

dunno if there is a cap. my conviction gives -80% defense though, so you should be able to use more than one eth.

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