To elaborate on my post, in my honest opinion 2 handed berserk barb with a point or a few into battlecry and maxed howl can go through the game relatively quickly.
Savage polearm recipe will give you good big damage until you get insight.
Then you just run countess for obedience runes and pits for a 5 socket thresher/cryptic axe, or do the cube rerolling trick for magic weapons. I do that last one all the time to get a study merc weapon for my trapsins and blizz sorcs, average amount it takes like 200 gems but i have gotten 250+ ED 2 socket with as few as five rolls, it's all rng.
20 IAS gloves provide a noticeable increase to attack speed and Farah sells war pikes and ghost spears which can be cube rolled to cruel. They can get up to 2 sockets as well, so 2 shael runes will have you zipping through enemies with like 8k zerk.
Peace armor is great for critical strike until you find a lem or hel lum fal.
Taunt is the single greatest 1 point wonder the barb has for nullifying ranged attackers.
I literally just howled through the entire game, took down elite monsters with battlecry for good experience (you dont do good AOE damage) and then made a run for act 2.
I killed hell andariel with battlecry and an insight bill. I only did 2k damage but it didnt matter, I had like 60% critical strike with peace and weapon mastery and battlecry makes hitting a non issue.
After acquiring a magic warpike by item shopping Farah in act 2, I did lower kurast runs and rolled it with flawless gems until I got 199 ED with 1 socket (didnt even get cruel 2 socket) and proceeded to destroy the rest of the game. Howl allows you to avoid all but the necessary fights, which you do have a range 4 or 5 weapon, battlecry, merc, and pots. The merc gets all your old weapons so it works out.
The cube rerolling trick works with chipped, standard and flawless, FYI.
Eventually I got my obedience thresher, guillames, treachery, ravenfrost, angelics, etc. Very capable 9k zerk damage.and a decentish 11 frame attack.
This post was edited by Dr_Lecter on Jun 6 2021 06:38am