I've decided to document my journey in building the top LLD conc barb in D2R here in my blog, just for my own purposes and interest. I don't mean #1 in a snooty way, but say it because he is currently #1 on the (inactive) LLD gm melee ladder with a 9-1 record

I am basically an exclusive gm melee player in D2R and I only play wolf druids. I needed a departure from that for a bit and have always been interested in conc barbs and BvB, but some of the gear I would want for a good HLD conc barb was and remains too rare and expensive in D2R (i.e., high defense 5 bo visos, 40ias 300ed fools erep zerks, and the like). I thought an LLD conc would be the best alternative given that you can get good LLD for cheaper -- not cheap, but cheaper compared to HLD. This would allow me to play a barb with the cool rares in a more affordable format, and also play a character that is not a wolf druid for the first time in forever.

Once I started building my LLD conc, I realized it was insanely fun to acquire LLD items. It definitely felt like more of a project than my HLD character. I think it's because it's just hard to find genuinely good LLD gear (the supply is much scarcer than good HLD gear), so when you find that one really solid LLD item you've been ISO forever, it is extremely rewarding and satisfying. The LLD community told me it would take months (if not years) to build my LLD conc the way I really wanted it, and I understand why now.

To be clear, the LLD gm melee community where my conc would shine is not exactly active right now. It was active for a short time where I ended up going 9-1 with him in official ranked matches (which is his current win/loss record). But it just became fun simply to build him and get the gear for him, even though it's not a super active dueling scene at the moment.

I'll start documenting the journey of acquiring the items I currently have for him and update it as I get more of my ISO, which at this point is pretty rare and inaccessible stuff. This is kinda just for my own personal interest in building an LLD GM melee char at this point, but also because many HLD gm melee dudes have asked me about it. Maybe it will spark some interest in LLD gm melee duels and get more of an active community going.

I guess the goal is kind of twofold right now:
1) be an “ambassador” of sorts and try to get more people into LLD melee
2) document my journey in completing the character

Huge thanks to the following users for getting me started and teaching me everything LLD (in no particular order)

Nupper
chum
ferdia
ThisDonger
Rawcore
Kado
TheClockKing

This post was edited by Koston on Aug 3 2023 11:58pm

1. First item

I had initially decided I wouldn't move forward with making an LLD conc unless I could acquire a higher-end rare weapon and armor. I heard that these would be the hardest items to get if I wanted to go with rare items instead of traditional cookie-cutter stuff, such as an Honor.

After starting to ask around, I found the person who had most recently bought what was considered to be the #1 LLD gm melee rare armor at that time (early late 2022-2023). Although it wasn't an Ornate, its stats made it very well-known amongst LLDers, and its low str req would be good for low strength SoE builds. Every stat on it was considered useful, and the perfect 100 ED was nice lookin too. It brought so much attention it was even posted in the HLD melee Discord a few times and discussed there. To add to its popularity, D2R streamer Cooley included it in one of his "trophy room" Youtube videos which garnered over 115k views (see screenshot below).

Even HLD people or people who did not have an LLD character at the time were bidding on it in its initial FT thread here so that they could build a barb around it





I believe it was bought and resold 2-3 times since that thread, and I ended up buying it for the same price of ~20k fg from whoever most recently had bought it at that time, making it my first LLD item I had ever purchased, and one step closer to making a LLD conc

This post was edited by Koston on Aug 4 2023 01:19pm

2. Second item

My next step was to acquire a good rare weapon that would clearly beat Honor and/or a robo Naga. I kind of told myself that I would not make an LLD conc unless I could get such a weapon, so it was a wild goose chase trying to find it.

At the time, most LLD barbs were using Honor or some such cookie-cutter weapon. There weren't really too many "godly" LLD rare melee weapons at this time, so I didn't go into my search feeling too optimistic about this. I was able to quite easily find weapons that were close but not quite what was I was looking for. These included things like erep Nagas that unfortunately had some sort of elemental damage that bugged the weapon, non-eth 2os weapons, etc. I was mostly interested only in a very solid high-end erep Naga or Zweihander (obviously without elemental damage) with as close to 30ias 165ed as possible. The 30ias is really important for IAS breakpoints for conc, and the high ED was very important so that it could beat Honor and/or a robo Naga. I was told by several people right off the bat that this was nearly an impossible ISO and could take months (or longer).

After finding a couple of weapons that missed the mark, I was given a "lead" on an erep Naga with absolute insane stats. I was told that it might be very hard to acquire and to message the owner about it. There were 1-2 people that told me that they hadn't seen it in game and didn't even believe it existed (or else they would have heard about it or seen it).

The Naga in question was 30ias 163ed erep. This is pretty insane for LLD as it is a nearly 100% perfect IAS & ED roll (only 2 ED off perfect). The only way it could have been improved was if it had 2os, but such a weapon would be insanely rare for D2R. This was basically as close as you could get to a perfect LLD melee weapon. Eventually, I realized it kind of had a "unicorn" status and many people knew of it and talked about it (and several ppl had offered on it and tried to buy it too, I think, but I'm still pretty unclear on the details of what was happening with it before I purchased it).

After a lot of back and forth (I'll spare the details) with several people, I was able to buy it in a private trade. I had to talk to several people to make it happen but I felt it was worth it. In particular, I bugged the person who first gave me the "lead" on it for days, asking if he had any info about it or heard anything new (sorry to that person for being such an annoyance, lol). This purchase definitely solidified my LLD conc barb project and was the beginning of my attempt to build a "trophy" LLD conc, no matter how much he was going to actually be used. In other words, it sort of sent me down an insane rabbit hole that I'm still in, lol



This post was edited by Koston on Aug 5 2023 02:01pm

3A. Helms!!

After acquiring both a really cool weapon and armor, I was ready to start looking for other pieces of gear. In the meantime I had also purchased pretty basic stuff I won't write about here, like IK pieces and 40 pcs of 3/20/15.

I wanted to find a really nice 2os rare helm. Based on the advice of others (mostly the people I thanked in the first post above), it was pretty clear I needed some combo of barb skills, +BO, +Iron Skin and/or Shout, +life, 2os. Surprisingly, I found out pretty quick that CTC Frost Nova is a very useful mod in LLD, particularly in gm melee duels. There's not an easy or direct way to implement Cannot Be Frozen in LLD (compared to HLD melee where you would simply wear a Raven Frost or put a Cham in something..) This was a little counterintuitive for me since most CTC mods in HLD melee are banned or don't really do anything at all other than look cool ;p

Based on advice, it seemed like the perfect conc barb helm would have been something like CTC Frost Nova, +1 Barb skills, +3 BO, +3 Iron Skin and/or Shout, at least 80 ED for some more defense, +40-60 life, 2os. Big bonus would be to have it eth rep and/or in a Rage Mask for optimal defense (hypothetical Maxroll pic below)



I think the odds of such a thing dropping would be astronomical so I honestly didn't want to put that much effort into finding something like that.

My first helm I started out with was this (Shadow Brow, soc'd with 2x 24 max jewels here):



I went with this because, well, it was for sale when I was building my conc barb initially and it had the basics (+1 Barb, +3 BO, 30+ Life, 2os) on top of CTC Frost Nova. Although I ended up winning quite a few duels with this, I wasn't super happy with it overall. It felt kind of boring and I didn't like relying on the CTC Frost Nova to win (it felt kinda strange to have to slow your opponent to have a good chance - many types of Slow moves in HLD melee are banned for this reason). I also hated that it was blue with my red armor, although that was kind of a minor and trivial thing ;p

My HLD melee instincts told me to rely on simply a better statted helm with no CTC Frost Nova. So, I tried to hunt down a helm that looked more like: +1 Barb, +3 BO, +3 Iron Skin or Shout (too rare to have both), 40-60 life, and 2os. I also had made up my mind at that point that it had to be red, preferably Arreat style.

Interestingly, finding a helm like this proved to be more difficult than finding the weapon or the armor. I guess they are quite rare. It also felt like every single helm I did find didn't even remotely hold up to LLD conc barb helms in LoD which were able to spawn shit like +3 Concentrate and other stuff (no longer possible in D2R).

The first helm that I found that was even remotely close to what I was looking for was this (Fiend Brow):



This was still a decent ways away from what I actually wanted but it was headed in the right direction. It was a red Arreat!! style for one, but it had a lot of stuff I wanted: +1 Barb, +3 BO, +3 Shout, +57 Life, and some good ED. The +2 Natural Resistance was cool too to help with being frozen. The biggest issue here is that it was 1os which, no matter how good the stats were, still made it a temp. But it was my first helm that I actually liked... and not to mention it was kind of an easy painless buy via d2Jsp for ~4k or ~5k fg (forget exactly how much), which was nice after the fiasco of chasing down the Naga.

...to be continued lol

This post was edited by Koston on Aug 5 2023 07:54pm