I have done some MFing in hell but not so much. I am focusing on NM Mephy, Diablo, and Baal as these are the best chances at getting a Guilleme's Hat. Yes I lost the only one I had and I have since parked "Drummmer" awaiting his hat. Old ladder, non-ladder now, I had some decent dual elemental wands. Nothing to write home about, but decent. Any who, I was wondering what the benefit would be in adding runes to the wands inside sockets that are not there yet. Shael is obvious, but do both wands need it? Any other suggestions? I do have a high elemental jewel (1 to 57 lightning) with a secondary mod on it. Suggestions are welcome.



Gears at the moment are:

Hat = Rockstopper, gotta find a replacement Guilleme's
Weapons = see screenies above
Armor = Duress in a 459 base Scarab Husk that rolled pretty crappy. 159% ED i think, 15% ED, and the rest is pointless to list.
Gloves = Some rare gloves that offer up 20 IAS and some resistances, OOOO i have some charges of cold arrow.
Belt = String of Ears
Boots = Goblin Toes
Ring1 = Ravenfrost
Ring2 = Some rare with AR, and 11 all res with bonuses to Lightning res at 30 and Cold res at 24.
Amulet = Prebuff+Horking is a +2 Barking combined with a sigs shield and Heart carver, Killing amulet is a Cats Eye and yes I am looking for better.
At some point I will xfer over the Deamon Limb for the enchant charges. I do not forsee any other gear changes in the future unless I find a better ring, amulet or gloves.
Also during that same xfer session I will be bringing over the only anni that I have.



It is rather fun. Hearing the swish swish of a big burly man swinging wands to kill things is rather hilarious. People have often said to me, " what the hell are you?" Obviously they are completely ignoring my character's name, "Drummmer."



As soon as I get the opportunity to take those screenies, I will. Keep in mind that I will not be fully pointed with my stat points nor have I assigned all of my skill points. This leads to the next part of this post. What the heck to do will all those skill points?

I have 150 stat points remaining and I do not forsee the need to add to strength. I am leaving them behind as with the stats I have assigned out, I have 860 life before BO and after BO its over 1400 which is more than enough for NM. I would imagine that most, if not all, of those 150 points are going to go to vita which would give me an additional 600 life before BO. But those skill points, all 23 of them so far, what to do with them?

Berserk is based on physical damage so I would assume that the Frenzy synergy would be based on the physical damage as well. If it is, then the 20% magical damage based on very low damage wands would make no sense what so ever. I also do not see a point in placeing more than the 1 I already have in to mace mastery as I do not need the ED bonus nor the double damage bonus. The AR bonus would be nice, but I will be prebuffing with Deamon Limb. I had around 8K AR with my abbot and that seemed to work out just fine. I cannot remember what my AR is currently, but I do know that it is a little on the low side. I also know that my resistances are going to be complete and utter crap. I have yet to kill NM Baal so I do not know what my resistances are going to be in hell. I also have not yet switched around my charms to garner me more resistances. I am currently loaded down with damage charms and resistance charms are a complete after thought for NM mode. At what point does it become pointless to place points into natural resistance? Is it worth attempting to go beyond slvl13? I can see from arreat summit that beyond slvl13, for your 7 hard point investment, you only get 7 resist all points. Kinda stoopid in my opinion. So what about Iron Skin? I can bark as often as I need to. Placing points into shout would only benefit party members. I would like to have as high a defense as I can get. This would mean that I need to up my goblin toes, and the rare gloves that I have. I see no point in upping SoE as that defense boost is certainly not worth the rune investment. So what to do with these 23 skill points is the question now. My skills as I remeber them now are:

20 BO
20 Frenzy
1 all prereqs
1 Mace mastery
1 Increased speed
1 Increased stamina
1 Iron skin
1 Natural resistance
1 Battle Command

I was thinking about placing one into war cry for the stun effect. I must admit that I have not used this on any barb I have played before. I hear that it is good, I have seen it in action, and it looks ok. Is there some corelation to higher skill placement the better the chance of stunning occurs? Keep this in mind, I am not making Phil Collins, Don Henley, or any other drummer who happens to sing. The opportunity to make a singer is long gone for me. We should always focus on survivability first and then damage second. I was thinking of placing 11 more points into natural res and then dumping the remaining points into iron skin. I can always worry about damage latter. Thoughts? Suggestions? Comments? And no, quoting someone else and not offering an original thought of your own does not count, you have been warned.

This post was edited by The_Morpheus on Nov 14 2007 10:08am

OK, let's rock and roll:

IAS - From Indiablo calc: IAS - best available Frenzy with those wands would be 7.5 fpa which is really on the slow side. Petrified as main achieves that with 32% IAS. 20 on gloves +1 fervour jewel I guess. Or a sheal in the wand. Clearly we need the best speed we can achieve here for the drum solo. I would shael the wand unless you have a neat jewel to put in it.

Defence - Not sure why you are Dissing shout? It adds exactly the same defense damage / skill point as iron skin. Yeah, I know you have to recast, but then you want to run with shout in any event, so not wasted to add the dura as well. Toss up really I guess.

Resists - Absolutely your cut off on NR is 13 including adders. 60 res all is not to be sneezed at mind. Add in Anya for 20 and you're at -20 all going into Hell naked. You're not going to need IAS from ammy, so the slot is freed up if need be for a res ammy. Other than that, I can only see the helm socket slot being free, so I guess we're looking at what you need most to stick in there? Light and Fire are the usual priorities since you're well positive in cold with Duress, and with Raven I wouldn't worry unduly about that one any further. Nice to have, but no priority.

Skills:
Zerk? No, for the reasons you outlined, unless you're going with a big two hander on switch for Zerking PI's. Even so, 1pt would be enough for the occasional use.
Taunt/Howl synergy? Probably not worth it since +8% of bugger all is still bugger all. You may need more AR though so keep an open mind about the mastery. Both Taunt and Howl have their own merits, though Taunt as a means of dealing with ranged attackers work just as well at 1pt.
Mastery? See above.
WC? Sing when you're bashing. You're never going to do any damage with this, so we're only looking at the stun length. Probably not a bad idea to invest some here. Annnddd since we're up that end of the tree, I would put some more points in BC too. It works on everything. Reduces incoming, reduces defence. It's a great skill.

On the skills I think some mixture of WC and BC would suit your needs quite well indeed. Certainly worth looking at I would have thought?

Take care old boy and let the drums roll on.

Why would mod's sticky this crap?

Hm, I thought points in warcry lengthens the stun duration, but I'm too lazy to check it out right now.

What could you socket in those wands?
Shael - obviously
15ias jewels - if you reach the breakpoint anyway
Eth - -25% target defense, works on bosses too
Um - kinda expensive, but open wounds is nice
Any facet of the elemental damage on the wand. Even a 3/3 level would do. It adds a nice amount of lightning damage and the +- bonus ofcourse.

Less smart suggestions:
Cham - if you have no better place to spend a legit hr, this is the place! Freezes enemies yea
Jah - ignore target defense. Woohoo! Doesn't work on bosses though...

Mace Mastery seems to be a reasonable option, if only for the AR...
Shout would be better than Iron Skin imo, since it adds the same defense and increases scream duration. Always good for a party too. I think Blizzard should've given Iron Skin more defense bonus, since nobody chooses for Iron Skin this way.

This post was edited by yerkyerk on Nov 14 2007 11:31am

Wow, where to begin? Thanks for the well thought out post. Its nice to see someone reading this thread for the "entertainment" value that it has.

IAS - 20 from gloves means all I need is 12 from somewhere? Man, already wearing cats eye and I hit max IAS and I know its slow. Are there " faster " wands available to me?

Defense - Since I am going to solo this guy, I do not have any future plans to party up with anyone. This is why I do not want a maxed shout. However, if more points there make the BO and BC last longer, then so be it. It makes sense to do this.

I figured that slvl13 was the most any sane person would want to go with Natural Resistances. I have gambled lotsa +2 class amulets with res all features and functions. Hell I as able to craft a +2 Barb amulet. Problem is I know I will not reach 89 with the drummer. All those other +2 amulets were for everything but a Barb. I will look for a better amulet.

Skills - Battle Cry - this is the one that lowers damage and defense of critters? This would make sense as a 1 point deamon
War Cry - this the "singer" one that stuns? I will probably do a 1 point here and switch to the barking gears to raise the slvl.
Mastery for AR seems like such a waste, is the AR bonus from Deamon limb going to suck that bad?




Another "entertainment" value reader, ello there!

Shael in the one wand is probably what is going to happen. If I put an eth in the other, only on that hand do I get the -25% defense, right? If I had a nifty elemental + IAS jewel that would be stuck in there immedatly. I do not forsee another Um dropping for me any time soon. However, if one did, then a cresent moon would be made for some kind of pally character.

HRs in my weapons? Even if they were dupes I am sure I could find better use for em than in these wands. In my mind, an Ort in each wand is better ( for the elemental damage ) than the Cham or Jah alternatives.

Mace mastery for AR is what it is coming down to. Just how much AR do I have now, how much more will I need? As I stated, my Abbot had around 8K and did fairly well. He was using a multiple target skill like frenzy. However zeal hits 5 times and frenzy hits twice.

What are the synergies for the stun bark and the lower effectiveness bark? Would placing points in other usefull skills synergize with these?

This post was edited by The_Morpheus on Nov 14 2007 01:17pm

Both War Cry and Battle Cry will need the hard points to increase effectiveness. BC doesn't have any synergies iirc, and the only way to increase WC stun length is upping the skill. However, since the other synergies to Frenzy is largly if not completely wasted, you should have decent amount skill pts available unless you want to max out both Iron Skin AND shout.

Yeah, I just checked, and that's right.

WC starts at 1s and gets .2 /level after that. I'd suggest enough for 2s stun would be ideal.

Just a quick check - How do you run the Frenzy skill on your mouse?

This post was edited by AyeCaramba on Nov 14 2007 02:22pm

Atleast Lich wand and Tomb wands have [-20] weapon speed while Petrified wand is [10] and Grave wand [0]. I looked this from ias calculator.

As for skills, I would point shout instead of Iron skin, as it adds same amount of defence, but also helps your merc. I would put 1 point in Iron skin however.

War Cry is the one that deals damage and stuns. It's synenergies are Howl, Taunt and Battle Cry (all of them add +6% damage) which aren't really worth it as it's damage is rather low and should be used for stunning in this case.

Battle Cry is also very usefull skill for lowering monsters defence and damage. No synenergies though (I would put only 1 point).

Have you thought about putting point in find item? This is a pvm char after all


Mastery doesn't seem that good to me either.. Meaby you could try with Demonlimb before you put points here to see what your ar looks with it.

For sockets, Um would be great. However I think Ral would be also nice since you seem to have lightning damage mostly. I guess you would have problems in hell with lightning immunes unless you have some other source of damage. Ral and/or ort are also rather cheap and easy to find if you happen to find better wands.

This post was edited by TheBe on Nov 14 2007 02:24pm

Frenzy on left, barks and/or charges of something nice on right.

So i need a slvl 6 war cry for 2 seconds of stun?



Duress offers up cold damage, deamon limb will offer up fire damage, wands have lightning damagme.

Even if I found another UM, as I stated earlier, it would make a cresent moon for some sort of pally.

Pic of my stats screen. This is without a deamon limb prebuff but with bo. I placed 11 into natural resistance and the remain into 1 point wonders BC and WC as well as the remaining into shout. Oh yea, this is in NM and not hell.



This post was edited by The_Morpheus on Nov 14 2007 09:57pm

updated pic. This has the deamon limb buff, the anni, and I have subtracted all the pittiful damage elemental damage charms.