EquipmentGoals for equipment will be to keep you alive and help you do more damage. Your natural tendancies to increase life, defense, resistances, damage reduce and absorb will all help you.
I will try to outline some of the better gear choices, not just by how easy they are to come by, but also how effective they are. Please note that some equipment is required for fast paced play styles and that there may very well be other choices that will work well. Please visit the arreat summit for all your gear choice possibilities:
http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/Helmet, there is really only two choices here, both are pretty cheap, this can be a good place to make up ias or res with socketing
- Guillaume's Face, large amounts of cb, some ds and a little str and fhr make this the prime choice. It is simply the highest damage helm you can get
- Arreat's Face, offers skills, ar, dex, ll, and res to what guillaume's has to offer. purely a safe choice but looses the most important feature, the cb and crit
- Steelskull, ias, dual leach, and mf built right in, not a bad choice
- Vampire Gaze, dual leach, %dr, mdr and good looks
Amulet
- Highlords Wrath, offers skills, ias, lr, and lots of sexy crit. First choice for a frenzier
- Atma's Scarab, ctc amp, and ar are great. if you don't need the ias or have no other means to kill pi's this is your ammy
- Metalgrid, pretty good choice if you need resistances, also has def and ar
- Angelics, to be combined with rings for dex and life bonuses, i think it adds some ar too if im not mistaken
Armor
- Enigma, expensive but if you want to be doing rushes, mfing bosses, and key running you will pretty much need this armor, it also makes you be able to place your merc to maximize his effectiveness
- Fortitude, probably the best armor a frenzy barb can get, tons of res, def, freeze opponents, and damage make it an ideal choice
- Duress, cb, ow, resists, damage, and actually a decent amount of cold damage, all round good cheap armor choice
- Lionheart, resists life attributes and damage, really good mods for a bargain
Gloves
- Laying of Hands, ias and 50fr are nice, but 350% damage to demons make these gloves shine. I've heard it said that 1/3 of the monsters in the game are demons, and it is worth noting that some of the highest life monsters are demons, including act bosses and ubers. clearly the best choice
- Dracul's Grasp, you'll want these for dealing with the ubers, it is the best source of ctc lt available, and not by coincidence they also come with ow to stop their massive life regen. not needed for most pvm situations tho
- if you can't find or afford loh, I have to recomend giving up on building a physical based melee character
Belt
- String of Ears, simply the best belt, you need some ll, dr is nice, mdr is great.
- Nosfuratu's Coil, if you need ias go for it, having ll too, but also slow target and str make it a very close second to soe
- arachnids mesh, its nice for +skill and slows target, fcr might be useful too if you teleport or warcry a lot
Boots
- Gore Rider, best damage boots you can get with all the magic effects you could dream of
- War Traveler, good source of mf, also adds damage
- Goblin Toes, good cb boots
Rings
- Ravenfrost, face it, you need cbf, dex is nice, and a little extra mana and cold sorb never hurt anyone
- Rare ring with ll, ml, ar, fcr (if you use enigma)
- Angelics ring, to be used with amulet, gives life and life replenish and maybe a little ar too
Weapons
This in itself could be an entirely different section of this guide, there are simply tons of possibilities. I will simply give you some of the things you will want to look for on a weapon, and you already have the information to do calculations on how much ias you need. and provide a couple of my favorite setups.
You will want to pick a weapon that are fast, have high damage, and chance to cast magical effects and spells. ll and ml are nice but you can get them from other sources. It should be noted that if you attempt to kill the ubers, some source of -% to target defense (like the eth rune) is extremely useful, this will allow each sucessive swing a better chance of landing.
Personal favorite weapons
This is a nice well rounded setup
(main left) Grief pb - extremely fast and high damage, some crit, has eth rune, ctc venom and has -enemy poison res, ITD and indestructible!
(right) Death cs - highest damage weapon you could ask for, has tons of cb and ds, ctc glacial spike freezes enemies, only source of ml you need, nice ar mod, indestructible makes it a prime choice for an eth weapon. too bad its slow
Stormlash and Sheaffers can be used with great success, high ctc static field with some cb and decent damage takes down lots of enemys very swiftly
Azurewrath, deserves mentioning, combined with a high damage weapon this will be the best for killing any undeads and also does reasonable damage by itself
Insert other expensive runeword weapon here, because obviously the harder it is to get the better it is. just kidding, thats a lie but here are some things that you will want to look for
- high damage, more damage faster killing more fun yay!
- high speed, one of your weapons should be fast so you can attack more frequently doing more damage over time
- high chances to inflict magical effects like deadly strike, crushing blow, even ow is nice, or to cast high damage spells or curses or anything that makes your enemys take more damage
- -target defense, you will want this for boss battles especially, as it gives you a better chance to hit them over time
- ignore target defense, lets you forget about ar for normal monsters
- ar, helps you land more successful hits
- life and or mana leach, nice for keeping those bulbs full
Switch weapons
this is where you can put what you want to have. I personally wish i could equip more than 2 sets of weapons at once with this character, he has so many useful weapon switches.
- lacerator, great to throw for ctc amp, removes pi and gives huge damage boost vs bosses and others
- wizzard spike, get two of these and they will let you reach the blindingly fast 105 fcr bp and give a lot of mana for teleporting
- stomshield, put this on with a grief when you go berserking or teleporting through dangerous areas. useful for hardcore players or those berserk barb hybrids going for 99
- hoto/cta/+3 warcry sticks/spirit/any +skills item, use these to make your bo stronger
- heart carver/gull dagger/6 ist sword/6 lem sword/ali baba, switch to these and use find item with your mf barb. thats whats great about mfing with a barb, you find twice as many items as other characters could.
- a different weapon setup altogether, you have a weapon switch for different weapons entirely if you want. i would often run around with death + grief on main, and lw + azurewrath for vs undeads (like soulds and such, lt is nice cuz you cant leach from them and don't you dare say lw doesnt do any damage, with sanctuary vs undead you will own with a broken short sword)
some equipment info from the old thread...