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The Barbarian

http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/classes/barbarian.shtml




Player Versus Monster

PvM is the corner stone of the Diablo II gaming community. A game is enjoyable because of the individuals who participate and play by the rules. The Barbarian is, at best, a melee class character. Even poorly equipped Barbarians are still more than capable of pulling their own weight in the damage department, and almost no monsters are immune to their native attacks. But more importantly, they play critical roles in effective team-play, covering a multitude of needs, including but not limited to: tank/crowd control, stat buff, and MF.

Quote (unknown)
Team work makes the Dream work.




Guide Preface

This is a General guide for making an effective PvM Barbarian. I will highlight three levels of play (Utility, Standard, Lord of Destruction) to touch base on different levels of gaming aptitude. This Guide will only be a brief reference to tools needed to plan a character to your liking, with few suggestions on how to reach those goals.



Maths

When you don't have the ability to test every setup you want to in game due to time or item availability constraints, some simple maths can help identify better options from a theoretical standpoint. More accurate modeling will more closely resemble in game results. This is only how the game works and is not a course in statistical analysis.

Damage
Damage can be counted on a time basis in order to compare theoretical designs.

The easiest way to get a numbers for you min, max and average damage, is to find a Diablo II damage calculator that is already made where you input the specified values.

Additional damage and chance to hit information is located here: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/basics/characters.shtml

And this table from mannm d2library faqtoids str damage modification to different weapons via status points
Code
weapon class            %ED/str %ED/dex     Notes
common melee weapons    1       0  
hammers                 1.1     0           all two-handed plus War Hammer, Battle Hammer, Legendary Mallet
knives                  0.75    0.75  
common throwing weapons 0.75    0.75        no matter if used in close or ranged combat


Special item effects that add to damage information is here: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/magic.shtml

Resistance information is located here: http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=45978417&f=87


Attack Speed

TitanSeal is the King of attack speed. Find his calculator and use it.

To get your damage into a time basis, you need to know how quickly you are attacking

Updates to TitanSeal’s calculator for frenzy are not complete at this time. The IAS it gives, are generally conservative in respect to game mechanics and should serve you well in most cases. He has derived formulas that fit a little better for frenzy that I will share with you here. Be warned that this section is primarily of academic interest.

Terminology:
IAS: Increased Attack Speed
Primary Weapon: is first weapon to attack when using standard Attack, Frenzy, Double Swing, and Whirlwind. All other combat skills will only use this weapon. The default primary weapon is set to the gloves side of the inventory screen. The default is restored whenever you join a game, pick up your corpse, or switch weapons. Generally, you will want the fastest weapon on the primary slot.
Secondary Weapon: is the other weapon (only when dual wielding)
Off-Hand Weapon: is the weapon not being used to attack with. Damage modifiers of the Off-Hand Weapon are not applied to attacks, so none of that Deadly Strike or Chance to Cast X on attack/striking will work since you aren’t attacking with that weapon. Character modifiers will apply, so MF and FCR will work.
WSM Glitch: is when you force the boots side weapon to be primary. To do this, re-equip the gloves side weapon, it’s that easy, just double click it. For Frenzy and Double Swing, Some weapon combinations get a speed boost from doing this, but only when the WSMB’s are different.
WIAS: Weapon IAS, increased attack speed on the weapon
WSMB: Base weapon speed modifier
OIAS: Off-weapon IAS, any IAS on equipment
SIAS: IAS from skills
WSM: weapon speed modifier
EIAS: effective IAS, basically an intermediate term
ACC: acceleration, used in final FPA calculations, has lower and upper caps at 15 and 175, respectively
FPA: Frames Per Attack. There are 25 frames/second
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Frenzy IAS:



Because of the WSM Glitch, there are four different ways to equip two weapons. WSM is calculated slightly differently for each of these four ways. I have written a code for MATLAB that generates a table displaying values of IAS in increments of five in the left most column. The next four columns correspond to frenzy FPA for the input weapons, frenzy slvl, and the four different ways that they can be equipped. Feel free to copy this code into a .m file and run your own calculations.

>>% Frenzy IAS calculator
% TitanSeal's equations

% Put the weapon with the fastest (lowest number) base weapon speed
% modifier (wsb)in the wsb1 slot.
% If both wsb's are the same, then put the one with the most on weapon
% increased attack speed (wias) in the wsb1 slot.
clear all

wsb1 = input('wsb1 right (glove) hand base weapon speed modifier');
wsb2 = input('wsb2left (boot) hand base weapon speed modifier');
wias11 = input('wias11 right (glove) hand on weapon ias');
wias22 = input('wias22 left (boot) hand on weapon ias');
frenzy=input('frenzy skill level: ');
fanat=input('fanatacism skill level: ');

%input to matrix conversions
wias1=ones(33,1)*[wias11 wias22 wias22 wias11];
wias2=ones(33,1)*[wias22 wias11 wias11 wias22];
x=(0:5:160)'*ones(1,4);

%equipped as specified above, right primary
wsmRPF1=(wsb1 + wsb2)/2 + wsb1 - wsb2;
wsmRPF2=(wsb1 + wsb2)/2;

%equipped as specified, left primary
wsmLPS1=wsb2 + wsb1 - (wsb2 + wsb1)/2;
wsmLPS2=2*wsb1 - (wsb2 + wsb1)/2;

%switched, right primary
wsmRPS1=(wsb2 + wsb1)/2 + wsb2 - wsb1;
wsmRPS2=(wsb2 + wsb1)/2;

%switched, left primary
wsmLPF1=wsb1 + wsb2 - (wsb1 + wsb2)/2;
wsmLPF2=2*wsb2 - (wsb1 + wsb2)/2;

%all wsm matrix
wsm1=ones(33,1)*[wsmRPF1 wsmLPS1 wsmRPS1 wsmLPF1];
wsm2=ones(33,1)*[wsmRPF2 wsmLPS2 wsmRPS2 wsmLPF2];


frenzymod=[7 13 18 22 25 27 29 31 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44 44 45 45 45 45 46 46 46 46 46 47 47 47 47 47 47];
siasf=frenzymod(frenzy);
if fanat <= 0
siasn=0;
else
fanatmod=[14 18 20 23 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 31 32 33 33 34 34 34 34 35 35 36 36 36 36 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 37 38 38 38 38 38 38 38 38 38];
siasn=fanatmod(fanat);
end
sias=siasf + siasn;

%enhance ias
eias1 = floor(120*(x + wias1)./(120*ones(33,4) + x - wias1));
eias2 = floor(120*(x + wias2)./(120*ones(33,4) + x - wias2));

%accelleration
acc11 = (70 + sias)*ones(33,4) + eias1 - wsm1;
acc22 = (70 + sias)*ones(33,4) + eias2 - wsm2;
for h=1:33;
for i=1:4;
if acc11(h,i)>=175
acc1(h,i)=175;
elseif acc11(h,i)<=15
acc1(h,i)=15;
else
acc1(h,i)=acc11(h,i);
end
if acc22(h,i)>=175
acc2(h,i)=175;
elseif acc22(h,i)<=15
acc2(h,i)=15;
else
acc2(h,i)=acc22(h,i);
end
end
end

%frame rate
fpa1 = ceil(256*9./floor(256*acc1/100)) - 1;
fpa2 = ceil((256*17 - fpa1.*floor(256*acc1/100))./floor(256*acc2/100));
fpa=(fpa1 + fpa2);


disp(['first weapon base speed = ',num2str(wsb1),' '])
disp(['first weapon ias = ',num2str(wias11),' '])
disp(' ')
disp(['second weapon base speed = ',num2str(wsb2),' '])
disp(['second weapon ias = ',num2str(wias22),' '])
disp(' ')
disp(['frenzy skill level = ',num2str(frenzy),' '])
FPA=[(0:5:160)' fpa]


Here’s an example of the output if you were to have slvl26 frenzy and use Stormlash and Stone Crusher

first weapon base speed = -10
first weapon ias = 30

second weapon base speed = 20
second weapon ias = 0

frenzy skill level = 26

Code
0    13    13    17    17
    5    13    13    16    17
   10    12    12    16    16
   15    12    12    15    15
   20    12    12    15    15
   25    12    12    14    14
   30    12    12    14    14
   35    12    12    13    13
   40    11    11    13    13
   45    11    11    13    13
   50    11    11    13    13
   55    11    11    13    13
   60    11    11    12    12
   65    11    11    12    12
   70    11    11    12    12
   75    11    11    12    12
   80    11    11    12    12
   85    11    11    12    12
   90    11    11    12    12
   95    11    11    12    12
  100    11    11    12    12
  105    11    11    12    12
  110    10    10    12    12
  115    10    10    12    12
  120    10    10    11    11



Grief Phase Blade and Azurewrath

first weapon base speed = -30
first weapon ias = 30

second weapon base speed = -30
second weapon ias = 30

frenzy skill level = 26

Code
0    10    10    10    10



In the code I used the term ‘x’ to represent OIAS as the manipulated variable, the ‘ones()’ matrixes are used to keep matrix notation in order, and the if statements are there to keep acceleration values within the lower 15 and upper 175 limit values. If you are so inclined, it should not be too terribly difficult for you to reproduce these calculations in a spreadsheet.

If you had paid attention in math class, the above should be plenty of information for you to be able to approximate kill speed of any weapon and skill combination against any monster that can be generated. This concludes the Maths portion of the guide.

This post was edited by MajinKaisa on Mar 26 2011 04:59pm
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Mar 26 2011 04:55pm
Utility

This is for the player who uses what they find. There will be the most variation in this build due to the abundance of possibilities of item drops.

Items:

Beggars can’t be choosers. Use what you can get here.
If you can’t find anything better, you can beat the game using Malice and Black Rune Word weapons. Crushing Blow and Open Wounds will be your primary sources of damage, and the -100 monster defense per hit will ensure that you will be able to make contact on a regular basis. It may be necessary to shop for a wand with Life Tap charges for one of your switch weapons.





Attributes:

Strength and Dexterity as needed for equipment requirements, the rest Vitality. With poor armor and resists, you may take a lot of damage as a melee character.

Skills:

It is best to start out using Double Swing as your primary attack. As you gain levels, Whirlwind will do better damage and hit more targets, so use a respect when you feel comfortable with how much mana it uses. Putting many points into Whirlwind is a waste, it does not add much damage with each skill point. Berserk is necessary for killing physical immunes.

You will be the most dependent on your War Cry skills; they are what keep you alive. Max Battle Orders for the benefit of the party and for longer duration, making it more manageable. Use Taunt to get a one-on-one battle with strong monsters. Grim Ward can offer a circle of protection that most monsters will not cross, that works like Howl except you don’t have to keep casting it. Warcry is an excellent stun skill if you can afford the mana. Battle Cry works very well as a curse to lower defense and damage of monsters to give you an edge over the monsters that might otherwise be too strong.

Mercenary:

Town Guard – Nightmare – Defensive/Holy Freeze
Put an Insight weapon on him to take the strain off your Mana, and some life leach gear so he can stay alive. Having mana and slowing down the monsters gives you the best defensive stance, and with poor gear, you will need as much safety as you can get in Hell Mode.

Conclusion:
The barbarian is a very versatile character. Making use of the Warcry tree lets you tackle monsters that should be entirely too strong for any comparably equipped melee character.



Standard




Typical Barbarian build, fully capable of killing any monster the game can generate with ease. Albeit not the fastest killer, this barbarian is an excellent asset to any team. He can be a tank, holding back monsters from attacking more fragile team members, boosts everyone’s stats, and is a good item finding character.

Items:

Immortal King Set. Use the whole set, it has everything you need, great for PvM, and shouldn’t be too expensive. That fills everything except your jewelry slots. Highlords Wrath amulet is best with its IAS, +1 to all skills and Critical Strike. Ring slots are very versatile, craft some Blood Rings for additional life leach, or use elemental absorb from Dwarf Star or Wisp Protector, or more MF with nagelring. Most popular would be a Raven Frost for its CBF, so you won’t be slowed from taking cold damage, but this is arguable since cold does not slow down Whirlwind attack speed, only the movement, so you can potentially land more hits by having cold status effect, so you decide. For switch you could use Naj’s staff or Spellsteel for their charges, or 2x Spirit Rune Word for the FCR and +4 All Skills to Find Item with or 2x Ali Baba’s or Gull Dagger’s for more MF, really whatever you like.

Attributes:

Strength as needed for equipment requirements, the rest Vitality. You are the party’s damage tank and you do not wear a shield, so you will want much life.

Skills:

Max Mace Mastery and Battle Orders. Put 1 point into the other Warcry and Mastery skills that you will use. The strongest Combat Skill allocation would be to use Whirlwind as your main attack, and Berserk as your secondary attack, distributing your remaining skills between them and their synergies as best you see fit.

Mercenary:

Town Guard – Nightmare – Offensive/Might
The Reaper’s Toll will be a nice weapon to cast Decrepify on your enemies, increasing the damage they will take, reducing the damage they do, and slowing them. The might aura provides some additional damage for the team. Treachery Rune Word armor is rather cheap to make, and will help him hit more often, then when fade casts he will be as safe as you could ever ask for.



Lord of Destruction

It won’t be cheap to make a Barbarian that is better than the Immortal King Set can provide, but it can be done. There are many barbarian guides to choose from, and theorycrafters will fight over the finer points until the cows come home. The point is, you are going to make whatever kind of barbarian you feel like with whatever gear you want to, and you’re going to believe it’s the best there is, and for you and your expectations it is! So there’s really no point in spelling out how to make a PvM Barbarian… or at least there wouldn’t be if any of those other guides were right. So, here’s my barbarian set-up, which does it all with, reasonable cost equipment, reasonable damage, reasonable amount of mf, equating to a reasonable balance of speed and safety.

Reasonable Goals:
9 frame case rate (switch)
200 MF
75 lightning and fire resists in hell
49% Find Item (switch)
4000 Life
800 Mana (switch)

Items:

-2x Grief Rune Word, Phase Blade
-Azurewrath Phase Blade
-2x Spirit Rune Word, (any 2x sword or sword/shield)
-Immortal King’s Will, set Avenger Guard (2x Perfect Topaz)
-Enigma Rune Word, (any)
-Highlord’s Wrath
-Gore Rider, War Boots
-Laying of Hands, set Bramble Mitts
-String of Ears, Demonhide Sash
-Raven Frost
-Ring: mana leach is suggested, preferably a dual leach ring with +min damage, AR, resists, whatever you like or can find
- Annihilus, Hellfire Torch, Gheed’s Fortune

Most of the time you will be using 2x Grief PB, they do massive damage with speed to spare. Some areas have many undead monsters, in which you will put Azurewrath in the secondary weapon slot, not only to repel them for unparalleled safety, but also to nullify all of their positive physical damage resists. 2x Spirit on switch with a combined +63% faster cast rate, is the best combination of +all skills, FCR, and Mana, letting you Find Item and Teleport like a Champion. Teleport isn’t only for finding bosses quickly and rushing friends, it also positions your mercenary to optimize your collective damage output, and give your merc some safety since they smart enough to leap out of danger. IK helm just looks better than SZACKO ^_^ .

Optional additional Equipment (for Ubers):
-Soul Drainer, Vambraces
-Marrowalk, Boneweave Boots or Life-Tap charges wand/dagger

Personally I like Marrowalk for Life-Tap charges here, so you don’t need to switch and it has a higher slvl so longer duration. Soul Drainer gloves are not only for the dual leach, but the -50 monster defense per hit lets you hit those high mlvl and defense Uber Bosses at a much more reliable rate. Take the Treachery to prebuff fade and Guillaume’s Face off your mercenary, Whirlwind and Howl/Grim Ward like a crazy person and they will go down with ease.

Mercenary:

Town Guard – Nightmare – Offensive/Might
The Reaper’s Toll unique Thresher, Treachery Rune Word armor, Guillaume’s Face set Winged Helm.


Attributes:

Strength and Dexterity as needed for equipment requirements, the rest Vitality. This will give you around 4000 Life which should be more than enough to stay alive in any situation the game can throw at you, even on Hard-Core mode.

Some players believe that 2000 life is enough, primarily for Soft-Core PvM, and that is fine. I would suggest for those players to still stat vitality, and use their skill points on skill damage synergies instead of Battle Orders.

Skills:

20 Sword Mastery
20 Battle Orders
20 Frenzy
2 Find Item (if you followed the equipment precisely, 1 extra skill point gives 2% more chance, which is probably worth it?)
1 everything else (Exclude other weapon masteries)
Remainder – Frenzy Synergies, or Whirlwind, or Howl

This barbarian is skilled much like a Frenzy Barbarian, but plays like a hybrid.

Whirlwind is the highest damage melee skill since it boasts the fastest attack speed while dual wielding, there’s no arguing over this, that is just how it is. It hits hard and fast enough that additional points don’t necessary award much merit. You also move around while you’re using this skill and can’t use potions, so it leaves you and your team vulnerable. It is a powerful skill indeed, but has its time and place

Berserk does massive damage but is fastest at 9FPA, and leaves you completely defenseless. Great skill, but you’ll only use it against non-undead physical immune monsters. If you absolutely love this skill, I have to recommend putting extra points into the Howl synergy since it not only adds damage, but the increased radius makes it much more effective.

Frenzy is my preferred Combat Skill since you can just hold down the right mouse button and wave the cursor around, watching the monsters being obliterated. It is an uninterruptible attack, making it far superior to Double Swing, and hits faster than attacks other than whirlwind. The tremendous FRW boost enables your barbarian to walk faster than most characters can run, keeping your defense in check.

Double swing is my preferred choice of Frenzy synergy. With a few points invested, it actually has a negative mana cost, meaning you regenerate mana while using it, which can be handy against mana burn monsters.

End Notes

I wish to extend special thanks to:
TitanSeal
onderduiker
Eywa
Ancalagon
and the rest of the SnG_Team that have put up with my Nuden-Theorycrafting while I sit naked on a chair.

Blizzard – Please re-enable Iron Maiden.

This post was edited by MajinKaisa on Mar 26 2011 05:16pm
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Mar 26 2011 04:56pm
whoah I almost cut you off halfway, haha you would have been angry
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Mar 26 2011 05:16pm
4k hp? lol

not even a reset barb should have that much.
str>

p.s page #2 completely useless, nobody needs to see the charts themselves. you already referred them to the calc.

Quote (Infamous_WuBird @ Mar 27 2011 02:21am)
for PvM on the reset Frenzy really the best way to go

crescent moon is a great weapon to use until better options are available like Death and Grief

azurewrath nn on barbarian for any reason imo. much better options available

and frenzy synergies>>mastery imo

20 Frenzy
10 Double swing
20 Taunt
20 Battle orders

1 in masteries, BC, zerk

put enough in find item to have 40%> chance then put the rest in Double swing and/or weapon mastery


LOL

This post was edited by Synonym on Mar 26 2011 05:25pm
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Mar 26 2011 05:21pm
for PvM on the reset Frenzy really the best way to go

crescent moon is a great weapon to use until better options are available like Death and Grief

azurewrath nn on barbarian for any reason imo. much better options available

and frenzy synergies>>mastery imo

20 Frenzy
10 Double swing
20 Taunt
20 Battle orders

1 in masteries, BC, zerk

put enough in find item to have 40%> chance then put the rest in Double swing and/or weapon mastery
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Joined: May 29 2006
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Mar 26 2011 05:43pm
Quote (Synonym @ Mar 26 2011 05:16pm)
LOL


160% vs 120% dmg

AR not really a big deal in PVM

only thing is critical strike, if youre using gg items like Death and Highlords, then the Dmg from synergies>>>>hard points in mastery

when you consider the diminishing returns on mastery for Critical strike, its better to get it from items and +skills(lvl 7 mastery = 20% critical, lvl 20 = 29% critical)

pretty self explanatory

This post was edited by Infamous_WuBird on Mar 26 2011 05:58pm
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Mar 26 2011 05:45pm
and for untwinked early on, having double swing vs mana burns is pretty helpful, and Taunt>>>shout in PVM imo
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Mar 27 2011 09:22am
Quote (Infamous_WuBird @ Mar 27 2011 02:43am)
160% vs 120% dmg

AR not really a big deal in PVM

only thing is critical strike, if youre using gg items like Death and Highlords, then the Dmg from synergies>>>>hard points in mastery

when you consider the diminishing returns on mastery for Critical strike, its better to get it from items and +skills(lvl 7 mastery = 20% critical, lvl 20 = 29% critical)

pretty self explanatory


ye right, and when using grief/grief setup u have only 75%ds, so more ds = shit ofc? lulz..
even with death/grief, ds is at 60-70/40, still all the more reason to have more ds, even if u use gulli which is +35ds, makes it 100 for death but grief's side needs more ds.

160% ed vs 120%ed + xx%extra ds.
pretty self explanatory.

This post was edited by Synonym on Mar 27 2011 09:22am
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Mar 27 2011 09:56am
Quote (Infamous_WuBird @ Mar 26 2011 11:21pm)
for PvM on the reset Frenzy really the best way to go

crescent moon is a great weapon to use until better options are available like Death and Grief

azurewrath nn on barbarian for any reason imo. much better options available

and frenzy synergies>>mastery imo

20 Frenzy
10 Double swing
20 Taunt
20 Battle orders

1 in masteries, BC, zerk

put enough in find item to have 40%> chance then put the rest in Double swing and/or weapon mastery


azurewrath ignores phys res of undead and the aura gives ed for grief
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