3 sockets, for goldfind jewels or Lems + Amn, etc.
It's not a GREAT weapon but it works fine!

It's sorta funny because I abhor Crushing Blow on the Council & minions due to their low HP & bigger vulnerability to raw damage/deadly strike, but if the trade-off is that we free up 3 sockets for utility/goldfind, it's not as bad.

This post was edited by Exokek on Nov 27 2021 04:34pm

What about 3 amns in there to create the cheap lazy build with 30+ LL

I mean that's possible haha, just really need Demon Limb to confirm the hits

is there any benefit to run p3 instead of p1? clear time will obv be slower, but does the lower chance of 'no drop' affect your GF/hork?

nope!

nodrop doesn't matter for horking or Super Uniques (which are the most valuable), but you CAN technically get more drops from the minions (white mobs)

thanks! ya i was testing it a bit and the increased difficulty and the time it takes to get my alts into the server, makes the runs inefficient.

i also noticed the super uniques had conviction more often (sometimes 2 of them would have conviction).. could just be anecdotal tho..

Yeah I tried the same experiment; I can still clear p3 before the reset timer, but having to join manually got a little tedious.

What FCR are we shooting for here?

Back! Let's try to be constructive once again and add a bit of personal insight to this post.

ATM I'm playing the classic eg WW barb since I do think is (way) better at p8. The killing speed of grief is unmatched and I do honestly prefear the playstile.

It is also true that eg WW barb lost a couple of major toys vs d2l, mainly enigma of wealth and pride of XXX (to get rid of that impossible to play with frozen mode, a real deal compared to rtoll "mere" chill effect).

The "problem" that I feel while I play at p1 is that I kill trav way TOO fast, usually within 20sec from the start of the game - I start at a3, mind you- and I lose 1k eg on killing side.

At the same time, I do hate the gimmick of the merc based barbarian. The nature of the "on budget build", the fact that you have so many points (both skills and stats) and nothing to do with it. And, especially, the hipster ways used to kill stone form spawns.

Enter the WC "Berserker"

The idea here is pretty simple, I just had to move around my points from WW into shout and my str/vit ratio a bit.

The result is:

- a classic pet build vs trav with hork weapons on and merc killer

-an "on switch" 1 point wonder berserk / 20 point weapon master barb vs stone form. You can either use scourge cta plus demonlimb to achieve 5k DPS berserk (I didn't even remember Berserk had sinergy from shout ) or a classic dual grief or grief/whatever for a gazilion DPS on zerk side.


With this "hybrid" I obtain:

-a barb that actually make use of statpoints/skill points/ inventory past lvl 80 this for me is a MAJOR consideration. In your theorycraft brainstorming as a group, I saw most of the people try to upgrade the merc more and more when, the 1st slop of the build, imo, it's that you are simply not using your "main" char enough. this could be overall a better fix (?) rather then optimizing with 10k,20k, XXK FG a "build" that, at the end of the day, it was born to work on a budget.
- a "pet based" barb that can get rid of immunes fast and easy by it's own at p1 without messing with a 3 charges 2h weapon at the low cost of losing eg side weapons vs that specific kill (and gaining up to plus 7 BO couz of that while retaining demon limb buffer w/out inventory switches).
-a ""pet based" barb that doesn't need to repair often, my standard road is just a3 start>drop gold in chest>kill trav> loot>reset and I keep going till gold is full.

On the enigma vs wealth we can discuss forever at p1 set up. I prefear enigma (especially with a trash medium armor base couz look >> light armor ). You NEED enigma anyway if you want to level push unless u just leech /get carried at p8. So it's up to the player if u want 300 extra eg with limited tele charges or the best utility armor in the game. You NEED an enigma, even if u stash it at p1 for Wealth or you will be forced to be carried/leech at p8 level push while playing the MOST level dependant PvM char of this game, BOTH for gambling affixes /gold stash / Merc base level.

This is literally my eg WW barb, I just switched the grief/ebotd cb side with an avarage ED rolled 6bo scourge (plain base) and a avarage rolled ED/Fire Res Demon limb to check a realistic berserk DPS in this given set up and moved base stats around a bit.


https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/lo0106ls

It is just one direction, but if we move to "endgame" budget builds with High Runes / anni / proper builded inventory I honestly think you can do much better then being 100% merc dependant while retaining the only real "upside" of a merc baba: the vast majority of your kills are done by merc with yourself holding EG weapons.

But why restrain yourself to 100% merc kill when you can have a much better playstyle past that?

This post was edited by Banjoco on Nov 29 2021 04:24am

I mean I have about a dozen different templates saved up, some of which are meant as Pitzerker-esque Goldfind Barbs, or even pure support 54BO/45Find Item on MF swap (58% success rate) for group play.
I think it might even be optimal to do a WolfBarb with a Shael/Lemmed PB, honestly.

Enigma is useful because you can just use it on any template: whether you're doing P8 leveling, or P8 BO Support/Horking since it gives you MF/Skills, etc. It's just not part of the "Trav farm" baseline, but you CAN use it.
I know a couple people who play this build a lot that use Enigma, and I get it. At the end of the day, past a certain point, you're always left with extra time if you know what you're doing & are geared fine.

The reason you have 20s left now is because when this guide was written, you would've had 0 seconds left, but they increased the timer duration by 20-30s Kind of a bummer, and I'm a bit bummed out by that.

And yeah, you can do something "better" (= more versatile) than a Merc setup, but that's definitely beyond the scope of the guide.