Quote (Dr_Lecter @ Mar 3 2025 12:38pm)

Crafted items are going to be significantly harder than magic items, but you already knew that.

I am not super well versed in crafting, however the principal is largely the same, you will need (eventually) an elite weapon with high enhanced damage and attack speed, or the ability to slap shael runes in it.

Are you doing players 8? Do you allow white items with sockets too or is it just straight everything crafted? Only reason why I ask is because a 2 handed barb needs a bit of something for attack rating, like a white helm with diamonds in it, or (for example) insight runeword.

Without a semi-guaranteed amount of attack rating, I can only suggest a blocking build. A build with max block will, guaranteed, be able to hit things without the use of any extra attack rating items. At minimum I'd go for 50% block.

Beyond that, I would do axes for that guaranteed enhanced damage, you will need everything you can get from your crafts.

In my opinion, I would do whirlwind. It'll be slow, but you can leech and block while moving, which will keep you alive. Whirlwind also moves through enemies, so you won't get cornered and then gangbanged by a mob if you have at least some FRW on your boots and increased speed.

I would definitely go for crushing blow gloves. You're not going to have cannot be frozen, which will hurt a lot, however I would do a row of thaw potions for those situations and just slam them when you get chilled.

Rings, amulets, basically just go for attack rating, stats, skills, anything you can get. I think most of your crafts are going to be blood crafts so you can become an immortal leech.

You might have to go for a caster helm just to get SOME mana leech, as whirlwind is a mana hungry skill, but blood everything else will probably be your best bet.

Depending on how many craftables you run into, you might want to fuck around with safety crafts and see how much damage reduce you can stack up. Shield is going to be rough, since block will keep you alive, but you also need at least some resists. That'll probably be hitpower or caster shield for more block%.

Whirlwind only needs 20 points, so you'll have some free points. Your ability to clear screens will not be great, but you could go for 20 in find potion and 20 into grim ward to completely shut down a screen and destroy the trash mobs. This does not help you against elite enemies, which are kind of a problem for this build.
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Ok so other stuff to add.

Your weapon is your most important piece of gear. Since cbf is off the table and attack speed is probably going to come from shaels in the weapon and jewels in the helm and armor (you only get 3 socket quests so itll be rough), I would first get a caster helm that rolls 4% mana leech and socket that with 15 ias jewels. I think you only get 1 socket from crafts, not 100% of that but Im guessing its like rares. That should be your first priority. Try your very best to get a good roll before you spend that socket quest because you will need that nightmare socket quest for your weapon. Hell socket quest, I'm not really counting here because you don't get that until the game is almost over.

Early on, double swing is going to be king. It'll be a pain in the ass to get 2 axes for that, but doubleswing has an innate 50 ias on it and it only needs 1 point, rest can go into bash and battle cry so you don't die.

Since ort runes are going to be a pain in the ass, I would go for blunt weapons early, as it only requires a tir rune and a psapphire for safety weapon. Not sure if that includes scepters but I would try those first for sure, big early damage.

Easiest way to farm for perfect gems early is to find a chipped sapphire and go to stony field, dark wood, and I think black marsh too, and just run a quick circle around the waypoints to find gem shrines by searching for shrines on the minimap. If you're doing this singleplayer, try to roll a good map for these shrines later because you will be doing it a lot. Ort runes are kind of a pain in the ass to get early on for blood weapons so hitpower it is.

I would definitely take your time and grind normal mode until level 45 at least. Nightmare, level 75. Chance to hit in Hell is greatly increased once you get to level 74 and it only gets better the higher level you are.

To that end, battle hammers do 45 base damage (almost as much as zerker axes) and while they are slow, with doubleswing they will still swing decently fast. They are also only exceptional weapons and you should be able to get them late normal/early nightmare. I usually gambled for mine as rare weapons, but you'll have to turn around and craft them. 60 to 70 ED on a battlehammer is honestly good enough for all of nightmare mode. I would gamble hammers until you get a rare hammer. If you get a rare war hammer, you can upgrade it to a rare battle hammer, which has 45 base damage and is slow, but hits like a truck. Then you craft that into a rare battle hammer, which will have 60 to 70 ED base and won't need much more than that to be viable into nightmare (and even hell depending on how it rolls).

Once you hit nightmare, you can probably switch to axes ie blood weapons as ort runes will become more plentiful. Depending on what your situation looks like, you could transition from doubleswing to whirlwind earlier, just dont go and max weapon mastery right away, you'll want a nice axe first.

If you don't have that 15% jewel in a decent mana leech helm first and you don't have weapons that will whirl faster than 7 frames, I would stay as doubleswing and just max out battlecry instead. This will allow you to basically ignore attack rating and go straight for vitality, and the damage mitigation is also huge. Depending on what you find (like crafted battlehammers with 150ED), you might even stay with that all nightmare.

Ok, so theres something I want you to test first. I'm at work and I'm not on my computer, but I want you to test if throwing axes count as axes that can be crafted into a blood weapon. If that is true, your problem lategame just got a hell of a lot easier. The reason for this is that in hell act 2, Farah sells elite magic winged axes. A winged axe has decent attack speed and damage and hits a 6 frame whirlwind with no added attack speed. With 8% (so one jewel in helm), you hit 5 frames. With 42% you hit 4 frames, which will be very difficult to hit without obscene luck. Only reason why I bring up winged axe is that I'm 90% sure that dexterity and strength both benefit throwing weapons even in melee and you'll probably end up with 180ish dexterity for decent block and attack rating.

Other thought, if you're willing to forego melee and do throwing instead, is that you could craft elite throwing weapons by buying elite javs or winged axes from act 2 farah, make literally any set of knockback gloves, and just cruise control easy mode through the rest of the game as a fat bowazon.

If throwing axes cant be crafted into blood weapons, Farah also sells war spikes. They're fairly quick and also have decent damage. Same IAS frames as winged axes too. Zerker axes do more damage but you're going to struggle with attack speed and war spikes also only need 8% IAS to hit 5 frame whirl.

So endgame will be a struggle, but whirlwind has no synergy so you have some options. Find item is kind of useless here because you won't be using uniques, sets, or decent runewords and pretty much all of your craftables can be bought from vendors for bases or gambled.

Barbs basically have these for points
main attack - 20
battle orders - 20
weapon mastery - 20, eventually, I usually dump like 5 or 10 here then max it last
3+ natural resistance
1 battle command
1 leap attack
1 berserk

Generally, you go doubleswing with blunt weapons all normal mode. Nightmare mode, depending on drops and crafts, either stay with doubleswing for a while, or switch to whirlwind. Do everything you can to not spend that respec, out of all characters the Barb needs respecs more than any other character.

I try to use only 1 (doubleswing to end game build) and depending on what drops, I can then change my stats/weapon mastery to accomodate once or twice.

So your respec will be like level 50 after grinding normal til 45 and then countess runs for a few levels to get runes and shit.

I usually max main skill (ww or zerk), 9ish points into battle orders, 3 to 5 into natural resists, 1 into weapon mastery (for now) 1 into battle cry, 1 into battle command, 1 into increased speed, 1 into berserk or whirlwind (berserk for killing phys immunes, whirlwind if you are zerk barb because you need to be able to GTFO of a bad situation, or get past a trash mob blocking a door).

Realistically, that leaves about 20 points left over to play around with after prereq's and such since you're not going to be hitting level 99 with this build, level 80 is going to be a struggle lol.

That leaves a few options like maxed warcry, which I think is an undignified way to play, but 20 points does have a ton of stun.

Battlecry, which might honestly be your best option, it'll really cut down on incoming damage and make you hit 95% of the time. It helps in every fight, especially bosses. 1 point helps of course, but 20 points lasts an entire bossfight and basically doubles your life through damage mitigation and makes all your attacks land.

Or, max find potion and max grim ward, which will let you wreck trash, it's bigger damage pierce than amp damage. However it doesn't work on elites or bosses, so I'm kind of leaning towards battlecry here.

Shout would be kind of worthless since you're unlikely to have big defense armor. Yeah it would help, but to a certain point I think your problems are going to be resists and just being able to kill things at a decent rate.

If your goal is to simply complete the game, an argument can be made for 10 points into howl (just to make the screen run away from you) and the rest into battlecry. Then all you need to kill is one member of council, all the act bosses, seal bosses, ancients, baal waves, then baal. I have done this with a build that only did 2,000 damage a hit with like a 14 frame berserk. It can be done.

Other comments

Blood belts give open wounds, but I would still prioritize having at least 1 poison charm with a long duration to negate regen. DPS will be low and you'll need all the help you can get to stop regen.

Charms wise, prioritize lightning and fire resist. Cold and poison are kind of irrelevent, also thaw / antidote pots exist.

For damage charms, anything with +2 or more damage per square should be kept. So +2 on a small charm, +4 on a large charm, +6 on a grand charm. These drop early, a lot of them have level requirements of 21. Keep your eyes open even in normal mode.

As far as mercs, we already know what's real here. Act 2 merc is pretty much the only option. Safety spear aka ghost spear or war pike craft and pray for enhanced damage. Act 2 Farah in Hell will sell magic ghost spears and magic warpikes, so it shouldn't be hard to get a base at least. Blood helm and blood armor. I'd either go for holy freeze early for slow, or if you're strong go for might. Between holy freeze and battle cry and taunt spam against ranged attackers like gloams, howl for panic, high block%, you should be pretty fucking hard to kill.