Helm: Immortal King's Will Perfect 40MF 2x P Topaz
Chest: "Wealth" Great Hauberk 500 Defense (Near perf base, non superior because superior eats up stupid amounts of gold. Best looking barb armor imo)
Belt: 55/80/30 Upp'd Gold Warp (Nearly 100% Perfect, missing 5ED)
Gloves: Perfect Double Upp'd Chance Guards 40 MF
Boots: 159/70 Upp'd Infernostrides (1%ED off Perfect)
Rings: 100% Perfect Matching Dwarf Stars
Amulet: +1 Barb Skills 6 FCR 19 Mana 7 Mana Regen 12@ Res 9% Damage to Mana Level 2 Teleport 25/25 Charges (Teleport amulet on merc based GF barb is required for positioning merc)
Weapons: 2x Ali Babas 2x Lem (Both 15Dex, 114% and 119% ED) I prefer Ali-Babas to 6x Lem CS, 90% MF>>70% GF imo
Weapon Swap: Perfect 160% ED Gavel of Pain Hel'd (Boosts damage by 3x and breaks immunes)
Merc:
Weapon: 100% Perfect Eth +4/230% ED Arioc's Needle Shael'd (Was going to 40/15 this but the extra damage is honestly not needed. More DPS than 400% EBOTD WP in most scenarios, shown below)
Chest: "Wealth" in 875 Eth Superior 10% ED Hellforge Plate
Helm: 200/12/99 Eth Upp'd Crown of Thieves Lem'd (1% GF off Perfect)
Inventory:
20/17 Barb Torch
All GCs and SCs match, obviously
137/36/15 Gheed's
4x 40 Gold Find GC
1x 3 Max Damage 40 Gold Find GC
1x 17 Fire Res 40 Gold Find GC
1x 17 Poison Res 40 Gold Find GC
1x 7 Cold Res 10 Gold Find SC
1x 11 Mana 10 Gold Find SC
1x Lightning Damage 10 Gold Find SC
5x 10 Gold Find SC
I use a TP scroll in my belt slot to fit in an additional GC, up to you if you want to do this. You get used to it pretty quickly.
Extra's
Demon Limb (Can enchant merc to vastly improve his AR, takes 2 seconds and saves considerable time. Not necessary)
"Edge Bow" (15% Vendor Discount, necessary for optimal gambling)
2149 Gold Find 480 Magic Find on Barb + 449 Gold Find 100 Magic Find on Merc
2598 Gold Find 580 Magic Find TotalYou could get an additional 100 if you swapped the P Topaz in IK helm for Lem's, so the total would be
~2700/532. I know the amulet's missing GF but people ask for comical amounts for Barb Skills/Teleport/All Res/GF on an amulet, the extra 50-80GF will barely make a difference, promise.
Arioc's Needle has 50% DS and +4 skills, the +4 skills impacts both your merc's Might aura and Jab skill. 50% DS is obviously insane. I have done extensive research and testing on this with both D2Planner and ingame testing using hero editor, it has more/same DPS as a 400% EBOTD WP, while being cheaper and most customizable. You do lose some leech but CoT has 12% Leech and everything is stunned anyway.
The ITD is also very useful for the white council members. "Ideally" a 40/15 (realistically 35/15), or even a Lo, would be more damage but I didn't find it necessary tbh.
You can swap the Wealth for a Treachery for even more damage, but 300% GF/100% MF is quite a bit.
You could also Amn the Arioc's and put on a G Face, with a 35+/15, for maximum council slaughtering. Andy's is another option I have tried, would likely want to use Treachery there just to make sure your merc has capped Fire Resistance.
Ignore the Blessed Aim aura, visual bug. He's a Might Merc from Nightmare. I know the damage seems low compared to an EBOTD setup, but you have to remember he has 50% DS and +4 skills.
Basic gameplay is go to Trav WP and BC/BO/Shout, you can also improve your kill time even more by sacrifing one GC for a Demon Limb and quickly enchanting your merc. Go to the temple and teleport on the pack of counciln, stun them with WC. Swap to Gavel and cast Amplify damage, watch your merc annihilate them. Gavel brings their phys res from 50% to -50%, which literally triples his DPS.
You do not need to have the gavel equipped after casting Amp, so quickly swap back to Ali Babas for the GF/MF. After he is done killing them, hork all the bodies, going to town when your gold fills up. After you get all the gold (council also drops a TON of jewelry, charms, jewels and decent bit of uniques), go to Act 4, repair, restock on pots, and save/exit/repeat.
Many players prefer Leap and you can do that too, it just makes getting maximum value out of your Amplify casts a bit tougher. Warcry keeps them all bunched up and lasts for 6.2 seconds.
And just because I know people won't believe me about the Arioc's since it's not a mainstream choice like EBOTD or Tomb Reaver/Bonehew (these two are fucking shit btw lol):
These are versus the "Target Dummy". I used Toorc Icefist for most of my DPS testing, as he is typically the tankiest and where your DPS matters. The relative difference in values is the same for him, IE Arioc's is still better, it's just smaller numbers as he has Stone Skin lol.
These are with Amplify Damage and BC/BO/Shout, but no Enchant. Enchant would also favor Arioc's but I recognize that not everyone want to prebuff their merc so I left it out for more honest data.
Again, you could drastically bump up the DPS by subbing in Treachery/Fort (wouldn't recommend fort despite the massive DPS increase because chilling armor can shatter corpses) and Andy's/G Face (the dps calculator doesn't seem to properly factor in CB, so G Face will be better than it apepars on paper).
I included an Andy's/Fort setup with 2x 35/15's for people who like to see big numbers lol. Arioc's blows EBOTD WP out of the water in this case too btw, try it out yourself if you don't like me:
https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner/2a0106tzAs you can see I likely have some form of OCD given the inventory and nearly perfect items in every slot.
I have done way too much testing/research on this, so I can also help you out with any questions you may have. I have tested nearly every weapon, both popular and not, including things like Bonehew, Tomb Reaver, Hone Sundan, EBOTD WP/GPA. Fuck I even tested an A5 merc with Grief and EBOTD, was awful lmfao.
I am not splitting this, I'll just keep playing the character. Mayyybe if someone wants a large chunk of it I'll consider it, but this setup is too good to piece it out.
Bin: 6500Tags: GF Barb, Goldfind Barb, Gold Find, EG, Extra Gold, Merc Barb, Barb, Gold, Trav, Travincal, Trav Farmer
This post was edited by Celidion on Oct 16 2021 07:13pm