Does anyone have any guides for solo playing through the game as a melee barb? I've seen plenty of endgame guides, with high powered weapons/armours, but are there any general guides for budget barbs to solo the game (ladder runewords enabled)?

I've done it speedrunner style using War Cry, which was quite fun but would like to try something a bit different like a Concentration barb but cannot find any strategies that don't focus on using HRs.

Thanks

Atti

Check pvm forums for similar walkthroughs, many of them have useful tips or atleast you can check their progress to get an idea

I would say frenzy is your best bet solo.
Beserk for immunes
There are many cheaper weapon combinations that can work.
I think most other builds are also a lot slower unless you get enigma and all the high end gear.

lawbringer is GG also that decrep cast is very nice and its super cheap obviously there r other cheap weapons u can make oath death

For untwinked play, I recommend either a double swing barb or a 2 handed berserk barb. Of course, you can also go with your concentrate barb. Double swing rules normal and nightmare mode though.

The double swing barb gets very little love compared to frenzy, but frenzy really only outshines it once the barb has dumped a ton of points into synergies, whereas double swing is completely effective after only 29 skillpoints (level 9 DS for zero mana cost, max Bash).

Double swing also grants an innate 50 IAS, so even bad weapons like a Black Tyrant club (only has 15 IAS on it) hit a 6.5 frame double swing (3.8 attacks per second). If you have a phaseblade as your primary weapon and anything else in the other hand, no onhand or offhand IAS you'll hit a 5.5 frame double swing.

Berserk is an obvious choice, as you could simply go with Double Swing in normal mode, switch to berserk in nightmare once you find the runes for an insight polearm, then farm nightmare countess until you find all the runes for Obedience. Then go mf in the pits for a 5 socket or plain thresher/cryptic axe and proceed to wreck the rest of the game with a weapon that has FHR, enchant, 30 res all, 40% crushing blow and 370% ED.


For your playthrough, you have a few options that don't require high end runewords.


The garbage runeword route

You could farm Countess in Normal for Steel, Malice, or a TalTalTal flail (just stack a ton of poison damage lol) and this will get you through early nightmare.

For nightmare mode, you'll want Strength weapons so farm nm countess (Amn Tir).

For hell mode, two Black weapons (Thul Io Nef) will work fine. 40% crushing blow and 120% ED is plenty, assuming you have at least one reasonably fast weapon and one big one (like a scourge and a legendary mallet). Your main source of damage after early Nightmare is going to be crushing blow, as double swing is quite fast.

Honor is also another notable choice if you happen to find a 5 socket weapon. Use it in your offhand as it grants no attack speed.

I'm not even going to include runewords like Oath, Crescent Moon or Lawbringer, although I do recommend you use them if you get lucky with Nightmare forge or rune drops in general.

The garbage unique weapon route

Prioritize find item and magic find, this one is pretty self explanatory. Google "weapons that hit the last whirlwind breakpoint" and if you happen to find a bonehew or an IK maul for example, shael it and respec to whirlwind.

Crappy weapons like headstriker can be awesome when they're upped. Same with Ribcracker, and mace mastery applies to it too. Granted, the runes aren't easy to get on your own, but if you get lucky with runedrops and unique items you might as well. Stuff like Butchers Pupil, headstriker, the vile husk, and plenty of other uniques are good candidates.

Take what you can get, this method is not reliable unless you really like magic finding with a character that relies solely on weapon damage and has no teleport. You'll probably end up running nightmare trav and mephisto until your eyes bleed.

This will help you figure out where the likelihood of uniques (and everything else) will drop, as you can't simply roll with Stealth armor, a 20 FCR wand and cast rings and just frozen orb your way through hell.

http://dropcalc.silospen.com/item.php


The magic weapon rerolling route

This one involves saving every single chipped, standard, and flawless gem you can find and cubing a weapon with a quality level over 75.

The arreat summit can help you find the weapon you're looking for for quality level.

A colossus sword, for example, has a quality level of 80 and can be shopped from act 3 Hratli. Shopping for your magic weapon is way faster than attempting to find one in the wild.

You need an item with a quality level of 75 with the chipped gem recipe in order to have an affix level of 51, which is required for the Cruel prefix (200-300% Enhanced Damage).

Here is the shopping calculator to find when and where those items can be shopped.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~dcarson/shopcalc.html


From the arreat summit.

3 Chipped Gems + 1 Magic Weapon = Socketed Magic Weapon
This adds sockets to a magic weapon. The original magic weapon properties will be removed (rerolled) when the new weapon is created. If you use this formula with a weapon that is not normally socketed such as a Javelin, this recipe will create a new magical weapon without any sockets. ilvl=25 magic weapon with 1-2 sockets.

I rolled this one the other day on single player. It wasn't the luckiest roll (cruel goes all the way up to 300% ED) but it gives you an idea of it's viability. My merc will be happy with it, at least.



Sure, it doesn't stack up to high end runewords but it's way better than any exceptional garbage unique you could have found in Nightmare, and a half decent roll even stacks up to elite uniques.

It's one more way to get a decent weapon and you could get lucky and get something like 280% ED with the Evisceration suffix (+60ish max damage).

The general idea is, once you find your magic item, you just pick up all the chipped, standard, and flawless gems and cube them with the weapon (3 chipped, standard or flawless). All three recipes do basically the same thing. If you want super easy mode you could just farm act 1 normal over and over again for chippies.

On my old zerker playthrough, once I rolled my cruel berserker axe of evisceration (2 sockets), I shaeled it and proceeded to zerk everything in my path all the way to hell Baal.


Here are some general tips

Battle cry, even 1 point in battle cry, makes boss fights so much easier.

Taunt turns Gloams and summoner monsters into a much smaller threat.

Howl is extremely useful for running areas like Countess, Mephisto, and chaos seal bosses and it makes a great panic button.

Identify every charm and prioritize the max damage ones. If you're in the neighborhood of 3 damage for small charm, 5 for large charm and 9 for grand charm, you're on the right track.

Keep every jewel with 15 IAS or 15 max damage on it, plenty of uniques spawn with sockets and it can be used to hit a critical breakpoint or beef up your damage.

Your build can change in the blink of an eye depending on what drops. If you happen to get a Bonehew, shael that sucker and go for Whirlwind. Google "weapons that hit the last whirlwind breakpoint" for the list, as this guide is already going to be quite long. Likewise if say, The Grandfather drops, you're going to go for Sword Mastery and use it in your offhand, you'd be a fool to waste that weapon.


For normal mode, Stealth armor is easy to get and it will last until Nightmare.

In nightmare mode, get Peace armor (for you and the merc) as it will grant Critical Strike. This skill stacks with your weapon mastery and even a modest amount of plus skills (lore, battle command, etc) will give you upwards 70% critical strike chance.

If you get a Lem from nightmare forge, make treachery. If you get Um, make duress. Any Lems or Ums after that get made into Lawbringer or Crescent Moon as they are awesome and hell viable. Phaseblades are highly recommended.

Use a might merc.

Once you hit nightmare act 5, start shopping malah for +3 to warcry weapons, These will be useful for not only battle orders, but find item as well.

Anya can be shopped for IAS gloves, which can help you hit a critical breakpoint. You likely won't have anything better for gloves unless you spent a lot of time farming nightmare Trav.

what he said, and this:
wsm bug is epic for double swing/frenzy and double throw.
this makes u able to use 1 heavy dmg slow wep in combi with a fast wep to easier reach breakpoints or to reach breakpoints otherwize not possible

also, if hardcore it can be nice to try to get death gloves + belt by this mf route:
darkwood treehead woodfist
stony field rakanishu
tristam himself
cow king

all of those can drop those 2 items.
sometimes i find both in like 3 runs, last time it took 350 runs xD
cnbf/15@/8ll/30 ias by those 2 items is godly.

andy got a decent chance as well

Frenzy Build in my mind with 2 weapons basic build if its your first run though first time in game. Getting to know it as my self is the best. Only saying this from xp from my D3 xp but I'm finding Barb is very similar in D2 and D3 in most areas. Check the forums out I find going on Twitch is helpful to, DarkHumility is a good player to watch and helpful; teacher.

You can do UT with gear like this



If you take some time to farm Butchers, Oath or Lawrbinger etc, then it will be fairly simple. Nightmare Mephisto can drop items like Gulli, Gores and Raven etc. You can run him easily with 2 x Black weapons and good map with tele staff on switch.

This post was edited by piatek on Jan 1 2020 11:27pm

Barb , best char in the game