Inventorythere is no need to spend a lot on your inventory, but everyone has their own ideals, depends what you want to do the most with your barb
-torch
-anni
-gheeds
empty space, its great for picking stuff up
-resistance charms will probably fill most of your charm space. cheap 15@ grands and w/e you need to hit max res will help
-Ar charms
-Lifer charms
-max/min damage charms
-poison damage, serves as prevent monster heal, but duration will be limited when venom is active
-mf or gold find charms if you like that sort of thing, i prefer to have more space to pick things up
charms with a combination of any of these things
-Tome of Town Portal, useful for getting back to town, some prefer scrolls in their belt, but you don’t have to pick them up/buy them as often if you have a tome
-Tome of Identify, ID the items you have picked up on the spot instead of making many trips back to town, especially useful if you mf in PvP games, since you will make fewer trips to town and thus attract less attention to yourself from those who want to kill you and take that massive stack of gold.
Additional Notes IMPORTANT!
- Weapon range is a factor! when you click on a monster with frenzy, you will run up to it and swing with your fast hand weapon first then the other weapon follows suit. If the first swing is with a longer weapon than the second, the second weapon might not hit if you are out of range with it, it is important to use a same range or longer weapon on the second hand to ensure they both hit, or alter your play style to ensure you are close enough so they both have the chance of landing.
-Deadly strike from items and Critical strike from skills do the same thing in that they both double your physical damage. However they are counted separately. So your chance to do double damage would look something like: DS + (1-DS)*CS or CS + (1-CS)*DS, they are the same through the transitive property.
-Monsters physical resistance will limit the damage you do, and the damage that Crushing Blow can do. Using a curse like Amplify Damage, or Decrepify will reduce the monsters physical resists by 100 or 50, respectively. Note that when breaking immunity, these curses works at 1/5 of their effectiveness, just like lower resist curse does for elemental resistances.
- you will want cbf from something in your equipment to help you stay fast, being frozen is annoying and can even lead to your death if you cannot hit fast enough.
- Find a balance between damage and safety be that from equipment, stats, skills, or player skill. But more damage is more fun of course
- put frenzy on your right click skill and hover the cursor around
- make use of all the warcries and you should be invincible, howl and taunt your way through dangerous scenarios
- use your merc's treachery to prebuff fade before venturing to uber tristram
- Even though you do not have a shield, if you have high end LOD equipment you will have lots of defense, and more may not help you get hit any less as the floor for chance to get hit is at 5%
- Walking allows you to utilize your defense, While running you have 0 defense, so walk when you’re outside of town facing monsters who can hurt you with physical attacks.
- Fast run speed is a huge advantage, the times spent between monsters is almost negledible, even when walking!
- two swing attack allows for easy to control attack, while still able to finish the sequence and get another hit in if your mana has be drained by mana burn monsters
- find item allows you to come up with far more items/gold than any other character with the same amount of kills
- enjoy killing everything
- Keep in mind that if you choose to use a frenzy barb to mf, you should not be spending much on his equipment, after all the purpose of mf is to gain wealth, reducing the fixed costs will maximize your profits, you dont necessarily need the most expensive gear to be good
- I've tried to keep this brief, so if there is anything left out feel free to post and I or others will try to help you
Basic StrategyClick and hold, wave the mouse, watch everything fall down, grab the loot, repeat
okay, maybe that was too brief, lets get a little more specific
this will be dependant of what gear you use
Increase Speed is useful for getting from place to place faster, in town and out. You can remain in walk mode out of town and still move quickly. Wearing enigma and gore riders and having frenzy charged up and a single point in this skill make it so that walking between monsters takes virtually no time at all! So when comparing to other melee builds, you effectively spend more time attacking than they do since you can get in range of your enemies sooner. Plus it is a lot of fun to run ridiculously fast!
Even with the best of gear, you should keep Howl on an easily accessed hotkey to disperse large groups of dangerous enemies, they run away from you. Howl works like the terror curse being cast on an area around you that gets bigger and lasts longer with more points, some monsters are not affected though.
Battle Cry is very useful to increase your ability to hit high defense enemies. I keep it on a hotkey for use against bosses. Battle Cry works like a curse that affects a small area around you to lower enemy defense and damage.
War Cry stuns monsters around you and can be useful if you don’t have very good gear, howl is not working, and you can’t leap to safety. This can be very useful when playing in groups where you don’t want to send monsters running at your fragile team-mates, but you are starting to be overwhelmed with all the monsters.
Grim Ward requires the corpse of a non-undead monster and has similar effect as howl except it works over a radius of the ward itself instead of a curse duration. Grim Ward is very useful when trying to kill a strong monster when there are many weaker monsters around them, since you won’t have to be constantly recasting Howl.
Weapon Mastery deserves 1 point for the added bonus you get from having +skills items. If you do not have good equipment it would be wise to max this as it adds a fair amount of critical strike, but if you can afford good equipment then it is likely that you will have lots of deadly strike from that, they do the same thing but are not the same, this is explained in the end notes.
Find Item is well worth the point, you can feasibly get twice as many items as any other character when you MF. This is what makes up for the slower killspeed when comparing to all of those cookie cutter overpowered casters. Find item is also a quick and easy way to defile corpses so they cannot be revived or exploded.
Dangerous monsters: these are the class of monsters that will give you the most trouble, everything else is a pushover in comparison. Most of these will have a lot of bite taken away in v1.13.
Oblivion Knights - cast iron maiden among other curses that will make you susceptible to killing yourself or dying quickly, berserk them as soon as you can. This will not be a problem in v1.13.
Bone Fetish - these pop when they die and do a lot of damage, you have no shield so you cannot block it, best bet is to let your merc kill them, if no merc then kill them one at a time and heal accordingly, killing several in rapid succession will likely do you in
Physical immunes - you cannot leach life from physical immunes, they are dangerous if they deal a lot of damage such as the frenzy-taurs and succubi found in act5 hell, dropping all your defense is usually a bad idea but berserk can work, just dont get hit by the blood star spell, it hurts especially when amped which you will probably be, but they fly slow and you run fast so problem solved, just dont get hit too much.
Willowisps - often called souls, these are a problem for a lot of characters, tho if you have enough litning resist, any litning absorb, and an azurewrath, they are really quite easy
VS Bosses: If your only goal is to kill a boss, then use wizzard spikes on switch to get to them fast, cast battle cry, if you have them use lacerators to cast amp using your highest AR attack or let your merc cast decrepify, use high CB and AR gear to do the most damage the fastest
Chaos Sanctuary/Woldstone with Oblivion knights: equip azurewrath if you have it, use howl to make everything run away (this wont work against the oblivion knights themselves), leap or teleport to the oblivion knights and quickly berserk them, do not use another attack you could be im'd mid swing and die, if you have im cast on you and all the oknights are dead either keep howling till its gone, keep berserking, or go to town and have it removed by the healer
It is important in the Worldstone that you kill the Greater mummy class monsters next, they can revive oblivion knights, if there are many of both this would be a good place to use grim ward so you dont have to keep casting howl
It is suprisingly safe and fun to clear chaos with a grief pb and an azurewrath on a max berserk built frenzy barb, be that just the seal bosses or killing every monster along the way, i would not suggest trying to level large partys this way as you must kill the oknights quickly and sparatic movements leave your party in danger
Throne: stand back from baal a little ways so he does not cast decrepify on you, this might not work for the first 2 waves very well as they revive their minions, but setting up some safe space just outside of the room baal is in where ther are no monsters, this will give you some space to lead the waves toward where you wont get interupted by monsters you dont want to fight all at once
baal removes the corpses in his immediate vacinity before he sends out a wave of minions, but wont remove the ones in the back of the room, if there are corpses of willowisps, ratman dolls, or in the worse case scenario oblivion knights near the back of the room, the greater mummys in wave 2 may revive them, to prevent this defile the corpse with find item/potion, grim ward, or use slain monsters rest in peace, the last thing you want is to be hit with im when you think all the oknights are dead
cast warcry as the monsters spawn so that they are immediately stunned, giving you a chance to get frenzy up to speed without being bothered, or just keep them stunned if you like, warcry will work against monsters who cant be howled away
Nihlithac: two ways to do this, just teleport/leap on top of him, use warcry or howl if you wish, and then use concentrate/berserk/stun and kill him, dont kill anything else till he is dead, this works great, you're like a big burly loud assassin
or you could use natures peace and clear the area like normal
be careful of physical immune succubi and especially of the tomb vipers, get maximum poison resists and carry some antidote potions if you plan on doing this often
Areas: Kill the most dangerous monsters first, if a unique monster has an aura (particularly conviction), howl and abolish the bastard
be mindful of fire enchanted monsters, their pop can do a lot of damage in the presence of conviction and or amp damage
if you come across mana burners just use some mana pots, its not a big deal and they usually will drop some to refill your belt
familiarize yourself with the areas of the game so you know what to expect where
Rushing: whip out the wizzys and fill half your belt with mana potions, easy peasy you're as fast as a sorceress
Ubers: prebuff fade with treachery, a good rule of thumb is to have max res in hell before you buff treachery, that way you know you'll have plenty
make sure the game is permed (been open for at least 6 minutes) before going into uber tristram, all the spells that diablo casts can cause the game to crash, have a friend with you who you know can beat them if it is your first time
there are many guides for ubers, follow their instuctions and you should be good
lure out meph first preferably, fight them 1 on one
cast lifetap with a wand first, use draculs for their ctc to recast lifetap, should work as needed
dont attempt with shoddy gear
Options for Leveling Your CharacterIf you have already established some wealth on these forums, or have very useful friends the fastest option would be to
1 - get a classic rush, go to the classic trade forums of your realm, post that you need a rush stating if ladder or non, and core you need it. and then convert to expansion when that is finished
2a - pay for uber leveling, fastest way to get to 85+ and at that point you can use all the gear needed if you have it (likely won’t be available in v1.13)
2b - leach in chaos games till 60, then leach in hell baal runs until your desired level is reached and or all of your equipment can be equipped
3 - offer to be a bumper for or actually do a grush yourself, make back more than all of the fg you spent because you can rush 7 people at once and the character you're doing it with is the bumper (Rushing 7 people will take a bit of time)
The typical way, being rushed by friends
1 - bust out the gates of the Rogue Encampment and play the game like it should be played, kill monsters with gear you find. save cain and then go on into the countesses tower
2 - do countess runs till you are level 14
3 - get rushed through by a friend (can do this first if you want or any time in between but now it's important to have done)
4 - do tomb runs till level 21
5 - do normal cow runs till level 24
6 - have normal ancients killed for you
7 - leach in normal baal runs until level 40
8a - get a nm rush for doing baal quest
9a - leach in nm baals till level 60
10a - get a hell rush for doing baal quest
11a - have ancients killed and leach in baals till the level you want
8b - get payed to be a bumper and get rushed through nm and hell
9b - do chaos runs till 60
10b - have ancients killed and leach in baals till the level you want
Low level equipment/skillssword mastery - first point
subsequent points go into prereqs you you know you'll need (1 each)
double swing - this is a synergy you will probably max eventually so put several points in it and use it, it wont take much mana after a few levels, 0 at slvl9, and replenishes your mana after that
killing things at the beginning is not difficult with the gear you find, but there are a few items that will make it extraordinarilly fast
if you like to do tristram runs the others, they will go WOW at how powerful you are with really cheap items, you just have to know what
if you're killing countess like i'de suggested, this will speed up your runs exponentially
envy jewel - this adds 20 poison damage over 2 seconds without a level requirement, stuff a short bow with 3 of these and pop it on your character, you'll be able to save cain with this alone
tir rune - mana after each kill, put this in a helmet or armor and you can kill all day once you're level 13
cathans rings + ammy - these will add lots of str, ll, and fire damage to your attack, the damage reduce and attacker takes damage are very nice too
sigons helm + armor + boots - nice 3 piece combo, the lr on the armor will protect you from scarabs, frw res and mf on boots are nice, and the mana and large ar bonus from the hat are very nice too
deaths set + extra deaths sword - high requirements on the sword but its worth it, -req jewel them for best use, the added resistances, ias, ll, plr, cbf, and lots of damage and tons of cold damage make this the ideal set for low levels
charms - stat charms if you dont want to spend points, these are very useful, otherwise get +elemental damage charms that have low requirements
im sure you find these items all the time with your higher level mf characters, dont throw them out, they're great for starting new characters
with these items you will be able to easily and quickly beat your way through act2 and tomb yourself in full games, and will even be able to beat your way all the way to nm with this gear
tho as you start getting a little higher level, a cleglaws sword and gloves will do more damage than 2x deaths
as you level through baals start upgrading your equipment if you want to be able to kill anything, there are tons of possibilities here
start using frenzy when it becomes available, max it first but dont neglect at least getting the other skills in doing so
this isn't rocket science, you dont need laser precision for a 1 picometer finish, this is a videogame so have fun with it!