I’m level 72 with OK gear. I’m in act 1 hell and getting my butt kicked. What can I do to help?
The usual strategies (in no particular order) are:
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Spend the points to get 1 point in the Berserk skill, which transforms all your damage into magic damage. That requires you to spend 3 points (Stun, Conc, and Berserk) so can be a tough pill to swallow on a build that’s already pretty skill point limited, especially now with the patch 2.4 changes, but it is a reliable way to down PIs, and depending on weapon speed and damage, usually pretty fast. Large packs of them can still be rough though since you’re not leaching while you’re zerking. Some people throw a point in WW for the ability to WW out of danger/pass through enemies, so if you go that route, you’re getting conc and stun anyway. Between leap and howl I’ve never found the need personally though.
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Load up on elemental damage weapons on weapon switch. Things like Baranar’s Star. Switch the elemental damage weapons and frenzy away. This means you can’t have MF or +warcry weapons on switch though, and can be pretty slow going.
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Wear (or have Merc wear) something that procs decrepify, which lowers physical resistance enough to break most PIs. Reaper’s Toll on Merc is a popular choice with good reason since it’s an all around great merc weapon anyway. Law Bringer runeword also allows you to shred PIs with decrep and the Sanctuary aura helps against undead, which many of the native PIs are.
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Wear something else that procs Amplify Damage curse. Same deal with decrep but trades the slow for even more damage amplification. Something like Atma’s Scarab comes to mind, although there are definitely better amulets for a Frenzy Barb.
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Get a wand with amp curse charges. Same as the last two, but it’s a manual process to swap to the wand (either using weapon switch or manually) and casting amp then swapping back.
I have a lot less experience with Frenzy Barb, but made one on D2R that’s lvl 86 now. I’ve used a combination of #1 and #3.
His progression was Oath eth Balrog Blade and Law Bringer PB until I got a Lo for Grief. Now I wear Grief in main hand and use the Oath or LB in off hand depending on what content I’m doing. LB downside is cold damage and slain monsters rest in peace, so for Council runs (or anywhere you want to “hork” (find item)) the shattered corpses from cold, or the slain monsters rest in peace proccing means you can’t do anything with the corpses. Now that they’ve made Grim Ward worth using that falls into the same bucket. Only happens if the LB actually makes the killing blow though, which since it is often out damaged by the other weapon isn’t super common, but common enough to be annoying. Reaper’s Toll also has cold damage, but same deal on if you kill things before the merc does, then you don’t lose the corpse. Downside there is you have to wait for merc to catch up to you and then attack enough to proc decrep, but it does proc pretty often.
So when I don’t have LB equipped, I just Berserk PIs to death. When I do have LB equipped, he just shreds PIs like everything else.
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i use 1, 2 and 3 tactics. the lightsabre and azurath are good enough for lvl.72 barbs to frenzy through hell. and i always set the left click attack for berzerk for my frenzy barb. also i equipt my mec with the Reaper’s Toll.
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Lawbringer offhand for me. If using axes, swap to a Lacerator. Berserk is poo in my opinion but if you cant go witht he above thats the best way around it.
Elemental damage from Gimmershred/ Azure/ Lightsabre is not sufficient - for me anyways.