I decided to do a complete playthrough from level 0 with no gear to Uber Tristam on Battle Net.
I made videos for important parts of the walk through with some comments/tips with them.
I also made separate videos showing only a particular manner.
I am not a speed runner by any means; I will never challenge the likes of Slimo, Leo and Mr Lama to name a few!
That being said I did watch some of their videos in the past and that helped me to make this possible.
I took the path of javelin then strangling potions / double swing to do a lot of tower runs before proceeding to act2.
I got bored and did not have 3 x TAL ready to make a TAL+TAL+TAL flail later.
I use a steel scimitar with a malice flail for a while.
Tip: always glitch the double swing to get more attack speed and don't weapon swap afterword.
I switched to a RAL + TAL scimitar and Malice to get to level 25.
At which point I bought a static wand from a vendor for 1-112 lightning damage to assist the Malice flail... 2 static wand would be probably better.
Note : Getting to level 30 is pretty painful as a barb in ssf!
TIP : get a offensive merc as soon as you get any pike. He doubles up the damage... Might triple it when I think about it!
I also bought a teleport staff and 2 wand with 20 fcr and 30+ lightning resist which were used a lot as a singer.
So at level 30 I converted to a singer barb (War Cry barb) and the game suddenly became fun again!
Singer is pretty safe and does ok damage with crap gear until act 4 hell.
TIP : Don't make Myth because Stealth is just too good. That nef rune should be kept to gamble a 10% crushing blow glove later.
Another tip: mana is very important. Plain rings with mana are actually good... so spirit is godly on a singer!
I got a lot of nice drops especially in act 3 nightmare just questing: I got 4os 2h sword for spirit, frost burns, magefist, trang-ul glove and Blackhorn face!
Before that act I got a nice 20 resist all helm with another 25 cold resist on top of that. I got a Bill with 4 open sockets too for insight which is a blessing.
To anyone wanting to do this: Keep that merc alive using a teleport staff you need that mana from insight!
Once in hell difficulty I patched everything up by just putting 3 perfect diamonds in a shield.
My drops in hell consisted of fal, mal, woestave and a Shako!
I did not do any magic finding... well I did key runs.
Tip : get Leap asap to save on teleport charges when farming hate keys
In hell the game is pretty easy since I pretty much just howled everything away and just killed boss as I proceeded.
The act boss were killed using malice, a strength scimitar, double swing and Battle Cry.
The crushing blow accelerates the kill against act boss with tons of hp... sort of...
I have mix feeling about this. Killing Baal with this shaved a lot of time since he has humongous amount of hp but I was hitting so rarely that it took forever against other boss and War Cry would have been probably faster.
I actually went back to war cry at ancients and just stun them individually and let the merc down them with his crap insight.
My Final Gear as a singer can be seen in the gearing up video bellow.
At level 72 I had farmed all the keys! Finished Baal at level 76 and that was enough singing since I had a last task for him :
UBER TRISTAM!
As one could expect with sub-optimal gear: killing organs downer and the big 3 in Tristam takes a lot of time!
I had no set combos to boost my attack rating... As expected. So Battle Cry was going to be used along with Malice.
Howl needs to be used to get rid of stuff! That is the beauty of the barb he can solo all his fights!
A combo of Double Swing and concentrate was used. I used Double swing when things were going great and Concentrate when the incoming damage was too much.
I think it took me between 2 and 3 hours to complete the organs and tristam! I lost track of time at that point!
35 minutes video from 0 to ubers :
https://youtu.be/iFqKYJDTuyAOnly uber tristam fight related:
https://youtu.be/K1YbuKNTzI4The act boss in hell as a singer:
https://youtu.be/Kuyp-ehcQBQGearing up video :
https://youtu.be/s0uy-LAoLyIKey running example with this character (was rusty I messed up the wallpaper thing at dkey) :
https://youtu.be/tgYm4XUiF1U