I haven't played D2 for many years, but will likely return for the D2R, and have been eyeing the barbarian as my first and perhaps only ladder character (since the season will be quite short) with the intention of farming as many ladder-only runewords/items as possible (I'll of course also rely on e.g. gambling/crafting to trade for runes and such)..

My plan is to stack as much MF/GF as possible (Wealth, GoldWrap, Alibaba, Chance Guards, etc.) without caring about damage - basically achieve the same build as a trav GF barb which is very inexpensive.. then I'll rely on 8 player games for everything (to clear the game and afterwards do cow/baal runs) - my team will do all the killing while I provide max BO and maybe stun/"tanking", and then I honk all the corpses with 50% Item Find.. After I get Obedience / dual Oath then I guess I can also sneak an 8 player trav run into baal runs before the team reach the 1-3 wave.

In my eyes then this approach seems just as efficient as any other character/build, but I've yet to see the likes of coooley, dbrunski, etc. mention any barb build in their suggested ladder reset character/build guides.. I get that many might consider it boring to have a character that can barely kill anything and have to rely on others.. but is there any reason why this approach wouldn't work or wouldn't be efficient?

I have tested a Horcker Barb years ago... issue... Mana and time, and yup, I had to add points into Energy because 3 columns of Super Mana potions were annoying... I prefer 1 heal / 2 mana / 1 full (just in case your team leaves stragglers around and they attack you).

Also, their killspeed will be way faster than you horcking... unless you specifically only horck elite/champions for drops... Cows are annoying also.

Oh, I did have over 1k MF% also... was kinda crap, even in Chaos / Baal runs (level up runs) ... you would get those running behind you for the drops and their Pickit on.

End of the story... I just made a Berserk Barb that BO'd and also Horcked.

EDIT: basically howled lesser mobs away, kill the champion/elite, horck bod, move to next elite/champion, rinse & repeat... and yes, you can easily kill in 8 player games with right gear... not a cheap build when fully setup.

This post was edited by izParagonzi on Jun 10 2021 05:54pm

I guess the mana issues could be solved by giving the merc an insight (and only switch to something like Obedience when doing trav by myself)?

As for not being able to keep up with their kill speed, I figured in cows you might only be able to hork 20% (or 100% if you stick around after your team leave the game, but might not be worth it since it become a “players 1” game), whereas in Chaos you can probably do 50%, and Baal 90+%? In Baal runs you’d of course compete with most/all party members for the drops, but would also get full xp, whereas in Cow and Chaos you’d sacrifice some experience to ensure others wouldn’t be near the corpses when horking (and if you get into a run where someone will glue themselves to you then you can just find a different cow/chaos/baal run team)?

I haven’t tested but I’d think a barb with 1000MF that would get 100% of the horked corpses in cow/chaos runs would be a lot more efficient (both in terms of xp and drops) compared to e.g. a sorc doing mephisto by herself, or an ama/necro/etc. that are involved with most kills but compete with everyone else for the drops and have close to zero MF?

If I only do cows/chaos/baal where the team does all the killing, and sometimes trav where I do the killing alone with merc, wouldn’t it be more efficient to use WW build with dual Oath (or war cry/leap and let the merc do 100% of the damage)? Since there’s no enigma then I’d think these kinds of runs are more efficient than a berserker? Then again, I guess it would be much easier to do a quick pindle run before the sorc arrived and made a TP until the gear is good enough to do trav before the run starts, so now that you mentioned it then I’d probably start with a berserker, but once trav is an option then I don’t see why berserk would be better as long as you don’t have enigma?

I like your thinking here, now the following is NOT researched... this is a leaper build with NO ENIGMA... so in a chaos run (level up) you could leap your way to the 3rd Seal, Howl lesser mobs, open seals and leap, then howl and kill elite, then horck bod while howling... normally the Chaos run will start with the first seal being top left, then move to the top centre(center) but then you have killed the 3rd seal boss and boom... Diablo spawns, killing off all the monsters in your location and dropping items that you can Horck their remains... note: even those that follow behind you will not be able to keep up because you are leaping over the hordes of monsters.

Oh... btw... when you use Howl, the monsters howled are more dangerous when encountered by 100%... so anyone that randomly teleports into their path can die because they are "Riled up Monsters"

War cry aka singer barb is very safe self found way to play the game. On ladder that insight will come in handy big time to keep on yelling