I'm confused. Usually when I play a Barb I settle for some sort of weapon, and roll with that the entire way, with a Respec at some point if I find something godly.

But, what do you guys usually do for progress through normal? Few points in different masteries to compensate and being more flexible? Or do you roll with a choosing?

I find it hard often to stay with one sort, but it has often been a part of my challenge (polearian for instance).
I'd like to hear your response

If you put 3 points into 4 masteries, 9 points will be wasted at any given time.

Max one & respec if you find something gg like you already stated

But you could go with a few points in Ace and sword mastery and vary those two. Would make you more flexible.

Yeah but early on it'd still be better to max one for the crits too.

Say you have a mace and an axe.

Imo maxing either mastery would be better than half the points into both even with double swing/frenzy, but it's just my opinion

You don't need to be flexible in norm/nm. You do need good damage though.

This post was edited by Vilify on Apr 14 2018 11:33am

Before you get to mid-late NM your base weapon damage is going to be terrible (unless you get crazy lucky and get a Bonesnap from your quest kill on Normal Diablo or something like that) so the percentage based damage increase from weapon mastery isn't going to help much at all. The difference between level 20 mastery and level 1 mastery on some crap rare with less than 100% ED is barely noticeable. I would rather spend 1 point in mastery and get 19 extra points of BO/zerk/frenzy/etc, just put 1 point into the mastery of whatever my best weapon is at that time, and wait to max out a mastery until I get a weapon that is strong enough to get me through the early parts of Hell.

i usually do maces through normal. Pally scepter to flails in act2 . Make a steel then ez normal untill battle hammer in a5. I put 1 point in mace mastery and try to find a helm at trist that has axe or sword mastery if i'm wearing those. You can do 1 in each (sword,mace,axe) just so you have some crit but like they said above me, normal base dmg is terrible. Just pump frenzy/bo once you hit 24 with saved points untill nm andy drops a butchers.