The Ultimate Throwers Handbook v1.01IntroductionIt was another cold and windy day on Mount Arreat; Madawc sat and twirled his axe in his hand as Korlic practiced his leap attack over the great stone pillars. "Another boring day on the mountain, I wonder who we will be able to slay today?" Madawc stated. "Doesn't look like you will have to wonder much longer", replied Korlic. As they looked up and saw the gate from the Ancients Way open, a Barbarian entered the summit dressed in a loin cloth, boots, a shiny silver Slayer Guard that glistened in the mid day sun, and two transparent throwing axes. "Ahh Madawc, this one's yours" stated Korlic. At this Madawc cast his shout to boost his defense and readied his throwing axes, "this should be easy", he spoke under his breath. Just as his last word was spoken, the intruding Barbarian jumped in about 3 feet away from Madawc and released a volley of throwing axes. Stunned and thrown back, Madawc was down to about half life before he was even able to throw anything, but then the amplify damage kicked in. Madawc was defeated seconds late by the deadly Lacerators, his blood staining the pure white snow in a maccabe display from his jagged wounds. In seeing this Korlic became so frightened that he jumped right off the side of the mountain. As the victorious Barb stood in awe of his devastating slaughter, he thought to himself, "Well that was almost too easy, time to find a real challenge." He entered the Worldstone Keep, axes in hand with a fire burning deep inside, not of passion, but fueled by rage in the destruction of his homeland.
Dedicated to the "Great Throwzini" himself, Scott Gracia. Knife throwing in real life and in Diablo 2 are hobbies I have a passion for. This guide is an Encyclopedia of all I have experienced, learned and stumbled upon in my career with Throw Barbs. Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope this guide will be helpful to you and will encourage you to try something other than the boring "run of the mill" character setups.
**WARNING**: If you are looking for a cookie-cutter build then read no further, this build is made for a more challenging aspect of a barb and will not be owning everything left and right. It is made for a more enjoyable and challenging style to PvM and PvP with, so with that in mind please do not complain or be rude posting like "throwing barbs suxor" or anything, if you don’t like it, then don’t play or read it. Thank you. -Penguin-
Hello fellow throw barbs! It’s been a while but i'm back now with an all new guide for Diablo 2 Expansion v1.11! With the release of the new patch there have been some neat new items to have at our disposal as a throw barb, the Hellfire Torch in particular which we will cover more of in the items section. In addition to the new items I have refined my guide and added almost everything I could think of that is needed, I know the guide is LONG, but I wanted to make sure everything was in here so please bear with me. Thank you all for your tips and support in this project, now let’s get down to the good stuff
1.) What exactly is a throw barb?
2.) Skills discussion
3.) Stats discussion
4.) IAS + FHR breakpoints
5.) Weapons discussion
6.) Items + Charms discussion
7.) Build Setups
8.) PvP strategies
9.) Epilogue
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1.) What exactly is a throw barb?A throw barb is a barbarian that uses throwing weapons to attack and kill things. These weapons range from javelins, to throwing axes, to even throwing potions (although throwing potions are pretty much useless after act 2 normal :-P). Anyhow, this barb is not your traditional hack -and- slash barb build in that it doesn't use a fixed weapon. More of a javazon in comparison but you on the other hand can throw two weapons at once which puts you at a greater advantage, or disadvantage depending on the situation. Now let’s take a look at how this barbarian is going to work and see what kind of skills you are going to be using.
2.) Skills Discussion.The core of every character always comes down to their skill placement. Here is where all of our attacks, passive and active bonuses come from. I’m going to go over four basic build types. The Pure Thrower (my personal favorite), PvP throw barb (Caster Killer), PvP throw barb (Melee Oriented), and the Thrower Hybrid. Ok here are some suggestions for skill distribution depending on the build you want to go.
The Pure ThrowerThrowing Mastery: 20
Double Swing: 20
Double Throw: 20
Battle Orders: 20
Leap: 20
Prereq’s
PvP Thrower (Caster Killer)Throwing Mastery: 20
Double Swing: 20
Battle Orders: 20
Leap: 20
Double Throw: 1
Natural Resists: 1-20
Prereq’s
PvP Thrower (Melee Oriented)Throwing Mastery: 20
Double Swing: 1-20
Iron Skin or Shout: 20-40 (Depending if you want to max one or both, for maxing both use one point in double swing)
Battle Orders: 20
Double Throw: 20
Prereq’s
The Thrower HybridThrowing Mastery: 20
Other Weapon Mastery: 20
Battle Orders: 20
Double Swing: 20
Double throw: 1
Other Attack Skill ( IE: Whirlwind, Frenzy, Berserk): 20
Prereq’s
As you can see there are many different routes to take, these are only examples and are not set in stone. As you can see most of them require 100+ skill points, which means you will not be finished till level 90 or so and with all skill quests, my suggestion is to level your least beneficial skill last so that you can do the most damage early on. As far as the builds go the first two are pretty self exclamatory, for the Melee thrower build you can max either shout, iron skin or both, if you max both however you will not have enough skill points and will have to only use one point in double swing, you could only use one point in double throw but I believe attack ratting is more important than the extra damage verses high defense characters. As far as the Thrower Hybrid, Frenzy receives the most benefits due to the synergy from double swing, plus you can frenzy and then have a lightning fast throw attack for 6 seconds. Whirlwind is also viable and berserk can be a fun alternative for a VERY unique build.
3.) Stats DiscussionStrength: Base-118 – Strength is a great stat in that it raises your damage and allows you to wear heavier pieces of equipment. Although not as good as dexterity for a thrower, strength is not useless. Leave it base if you are going to be using enigma and charms, otherwise raise it to however much you need to wear your heaviest piece of equipment. I listed 118 strength because that is how much is needed to wear Arreats Face, the best helm for any barb J so aim for 118 with all of your gear on.
Dexterity: 100-200 – Dexterity is a throw barbs best friend! It increases your damage and attack rating, which makes it a lot more useful than strength. I suggest to put at least 100-200 points into this. Aim for around 200 with all your gear on, more if you want more damage.
Vitality: 200+ - This effect’s your overall maximum life and stamina. As you could guess more life is always better so points spent here can never go wrong. If you want more life throw more points into here, pretty plain and simple.
Energy:
NONE! If you throw any points in here you don’t deserve to be a barbarian! lol.
4.) IAS + FHR BreakpointsOk here are the tables for all you statistic junkies.
Faster Hit Recovery BreakpointsFrame 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
FHR 0% 7% 15% 27% 48% 86% 200%
Needed
86% is the best easily attainable faster hit recovery breakpoint to reach.
Increased Attack Speed BreakpointsSince every weapon is different I’m not going to sit here and list all the breakpoints for every possible throwing weapon. Here is a site which allows you to figure out your frames per attack very easily. But just as a reference, Lacerators when used with double throw hit the 6fpa breakpoint, and 33% off weapon ias is needed to reach the 5 fpa break point. (Off weapon ias refers to ias from armor, gloves, jewels exc.)
Here’s the site with a great weapon speed calculator.
http://diablo2.ingame.de/tips/calcs/weaponspeed.php?lang=englishand another site with all the damage modifiers (crushing blow, exc)
http://wirsz.phpwebhosting.com/General.htmand the Barbarian breakpoints with FHR and the like (props to pvpwest.com for the info)
http://wirsz.phpwebhosting.com/Barbarian.htmEntering the Worldstone Keep, the shadowy barb cast his warcries to prepare for the perils which lie ahead in this dark fortress. Blazing through the Hell Spawn with his axes, he made it to level two of the Worldstone. An Abyss Knight approached him, casting his bone armor and readying his curses. The Knight laughed under his breath at the sight of this barbarian, and quickly cast iron maiden on him because he knew that would take him down. Little did he know this barbarian was no normal one, but a barbarian with a nasty set of throwing knives. The Abyss Knight was shocked to see white knives suddenly flying in his direction with lightning fast speed, the novas casting on strike shocking the knight while the knives left bloody gashes in his fresh. Falling backwards in a heap on the floor, a half a dozen Warshrikes sticking out of his chest, the knight lay void of life. The barbarian continued on effortlessly through level two and three until he got to the Throne of Destruction, where he met someone he was not prepared for…
5.) Weapons DiscussionHere is where the fun begins, this is what makes the whole build, mainly your weapons, but all of your gear in general is driven toward becoming a better throw barb. Let’s take a look at some of the cool items Diablo II has to offer to us.
**Please Read** As far as throwing weapons go, axes and knives have a shorter range compared to javelins and spears. Axes and knives travel about to your screens edge while javelins will actually go off screen about 5 yards. Always take this into consideration when PvPing so you can hit your targets because otherwise you might be too far away and they will not get hit. Also with double throw there is a bug that your stacks will decrease unevenly when you throw real fast. As far as the pros and cons between them, axes and knives have higher quantities than javelins so they are better suited for hunting. Yet you have a shorter throwing range with axes and knives. Javelins have lower quantity stacks but can travel farther than axes and knives. The best thing to look for are rare elite javelins with increased stack size, these can be your best friend.
(The overall preferred items will be marked with an *)
*
Rare Throwing Weapons - Rare throwing weapons (axes, knives + javelins) can have some of the best mods in the game on them. Find an ethereal one with high ed, ias and replenish quantity and you have a god send of a weapon. Look for weapons that have increased attack speed, bonuses to attack rating, high damage, ethereal with replenish quantity, increased stack size (great for winged harpoons) the fool's mod, and plus to max damage.