So I’ve decided to revisit my Barbarian, again. I have one setup as a gold farmer, and wanted to go back to a Frenzy Barbarian, so I used one of my mule characters to do this. I’ve gotten to Level 45, and am absolutely crushing NM mode ATM, but I have some build questions.
I’ve seen some discrepancies on the amount of weapon mastery I should have. I’ve seen some say to just put 1 point in, and others say to max it out. I’m not sure if this is just a preference, or something else. The annoying thing is that I started off with Sword Mastery, but now that I’ve been able to equip Aldur’s Weapons, I wonder if I need to respec. If I respec, that is a little annoying because I’ll have to do it again when I can use PBs.
That said, I threw 1 point into Mace Mastery, and am still whipping NM mode with ease, but I suspect maybe it’ll be more of an issue when I get to Hell mode.
On the topic of weapons, I mentioned I switched to dual Aldur’s. Both of my Aldur’s have been triple-runed for IAS, so they both have 90% IAS on them. Is that overkill here? I did that a long time ago when I didn’t understand the IAS calculation (not that I fully grasp it even now anyway). My other weapon choice was dual Bloodletters. The dual Aldur’s seem that might be doing better, but not by much. The huge downside to them is the massive repair bills for them - 60k to repair both of them when they get down far enough.
In the end, once I find another Lo and Mal rune, I can make a second Grief PB, but until then…
The next thing is Warcries. Again, with this, I’ve seen some say just 1 point in Battle Orders/Battle Command is enough, whereas other time I see to max Battle Orders.
And the final note is Double Swing/Frenzy. I’ve seen some say to max both, others say to not go over 10 Frenzy, but to still max Double Swing, and yet even others say to not even use Double Swing.
In the end, I don’t know that much of this is going to matter in NM mode, but I do worry about when I hit Hell.
For a pure frenzy barb max out the mastery you are using, battle orders, and double swing/frenzy and dont forget about taunt. You want the most damage output possible. Putting one point into anything that is a main skill is not the way to go. That is for hybrid, niche builds. (as an example I put 1 point into berserk for my throw barb, just for the phys immunes which you can do as well)
Bloodletters would do for ww, otherwise for frenzy dual aldurs is better as you saw
Barb is pretty resistant so you can max these out without fear of resistances or defense. You put the remaining points into these.(natural res, speed, defense, battle command and shout)
Careful with the respecs, stick with mace until you switch to grief.
The way weapon masteries are structured is absolutely super annoying for barb progression. You either get locked into a single item type and then are unable to make full use of upgrades, or you waste points, etc.
So some of the strategies people do to mitigate that are:
Put a point into each 1h mastery. You end up wasting some points, but the first level of mastery gives you the largest “bang for your buck” in terms of Deadly Strike and a good damage/AR boost which you can take advantage of. Note that lvl 1 of sword mastery is 28% damage, but all subsequent levels is only +5%. AR got a boost for D2R, but similar situation. Once you get end game weapons, you’d max out whatever mastery that makes sense (and ideally respec to save wasted points).
Avoid putting points in mastery until you know what weapons you’ll use. You lose out on the DS damage/AR from mastery, but you can put those points into Frenzy and synergies instead, still growing damage/AR bonuses. Maxing them “last” means you avoid wasting points in the mastery. As I said in option (1), the mastery is only 5% damage per level, but Frenzy gets 8% from Taunt and Double Swing.
My understanding is that you’d eventually want your relevant mastery maxed in an ideal finished build. The fact that the damage bonus is larger on the synergies than points in mastery or even frenzy itself, means that in terms of progression, it is sometimes better to max those first, but keep upping Frenzy some to keep the AR up.
I did some twinking on my Frenzy barb, but still played him through solo (with the exception of the popular leveling spots in groups along the way). Before I even started I was able to make Oath in an eth BB and Law Bringer in a PB, so I was confident going swords from the beginning, which definitely helped.
I was high enough level to equip both in Act 4 NM and it felt OP as all get out. Before that I had used a collection of rare and unique swords I had kept that other characters had found. I definitely recommend the eOath/LB setup as a progression step on your way to Grief!
Eventually I was able to get a Lo, so now he uses Grief PB and then trades either Oath or LB off-hand depending on how much horking I plan to do. The RIP and cold damage on LB makes corpses unable to be used for Find Item, but the decrep shreds things, removes PIs, and the sanc aura means undead (even PIs) get shredded super fast, even before decrep procs.
I chose to max battle orders, 1 point in BC and shout.
I kept DS and Taunt in sync, I think they both have about 10 or 11 hard points in them at this point.
Some people switch to DS after charging up Frenzy, I’ve never seen enough of a benefit to make the extra “micro” worth it, personally. Having DS is a nice option if you find yourself out of mana though, since around lvl 7 or so it becomes free to use.
BTW if you’re on PC, one cool trick is to put frenzy on right click. You can hold it down and use that to move, and your barb will just run through the map “attack move” style, auto-attacking any enemies in his path. I used to have it on left click to keep RMB open for cries, DS, etc., but have since converted!
Taunt/Howl are also nice to have in your arsenal for situational use to either get space around you if you’re taking too much damage (Howl) or pull annoying kiting enemies back to you (Taunt).
The issues you’ve mentioned are why many people advocate buffs to melee characters. They are so item dependent that progression is much harder, leading to the popular “meta” of sorc/caster first, then get your end game items before even playing the barb. For someone that would rather play Barb directly, it kinda sucks.
Similarly, people have suggested reducing masteries to simply 1h, 2h, and throwing/ranged to help progression and reduce the feeling that you can’t put points into mastery until you know your end game gear, or feel you’re wasting points, etc.
I also chose to put 1 point in Berserk (which requires wasting points in Stun and Conc as well, so takes up 3 hard points). Since my other method of dealing with PIs is proccing decrep with LB, but sometimes I use oath, having Berserk at the ready to deal with PIs is really nice. I’ve even found that packs of PI Succubus are nice to just zerk to death without waiting for the decrep proc, since it seems faster sometimes if RNG isn’t on your side getting that proc quickly.
I also like to hork with mine, so I’ve got some points into FP and FI, so mine is more of a jack of all trades than fully optimized. He is lvl 89 now, so I am about done. Damage is overall quite good (for melee haha), even in higher player games, so I think I’ll put most of the rest of the points into FI/FP to get that where I want it to be, but I would love to be able to fully max both taunt and DS.
Frenzy barb certainly is very skill point constrained compared to some builds. I suppose in retrospect I could have reduced some of the BO points to get more damage, since he’s pretty tanky as is, but I think I ended up with a pretty nice balance. I already feel weird having Ali Babas on swap rather than echoing weapons and taking that 6 point hit to BO, so not maxing BO on a barb is still just foreign to me!
Thank you @ALDO and @insidious. Both of your comments were super helpful. I’m onto Act V of NM, and crushing it pretty well. I respecced into maces for the moment, shifted a few things around according to your comments - and things are going just as, if not better than what I had before. I have 1 respec left in Hell mode that I will save when I get my second Grief…assuming I ever see a Lo again LMFAO.
Of course, I can always farm tokens to respec, but of course, Baal and Mephisto do not like to drop their essences.
Glad things are going well! If you’ve already got 1 Grief PB, I’d say building a Law Bringer or Oath for off hand with that will be extremely capable until you can build a second Grief. Understood on not wanting to use up respecs unnecessarily though!
Man’s right. Use the grief you already have in combination with another sword like Lawbringer which is cheap to make. (respec to blades for good in this case) This is 10x better than dual aldur’s
I’m considering making a CoH as well…with the 1 and only Ber I have…which is why I’ve not done it yet. Still running with Smoke, and I can feel it in Hell mode now.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a Mal or Lem rune to make either of those other swords ATM.
My Frenzy barb used Treachery in a mesh armor until I ended up being able to trade for a nearly perfect Fort. The IAS and fade proc are pretty awesome, and that got me through Hell just fine. No Lem rules that out though I guess. May be worth spending some time on Countess to see if you can’t get her to give you some Mal or Lem. Certainly CoH would be pretty awesome as well of course.
In terms of other cheaper progression armor if you decide you don’t want to use your Ber for that:
Lionheart doesn’t have as high res as smoke, but comes with a huge life bonus, nice bonus to all stats, and nice damage bonus.
Duress is also more offensively oriented, but still has some resistance bonuses (especially cold). My first D2R character was a Barb that ended up transitioning into IK Barb (just the way the gear drops/trades worked out), but I raised up mostly solo questing with trading, so definitely “untwinked” and didn’t have good gear to equip along the way. I used Duress for quite some time and beat Hell using 5 pc IK and Duress on him.
I eventually was able to get the runes I needed, and made a Lawbringer…and I went ahead and made that CoH. The game changed at that point, lol. Still awaiting that last Lo now to make a second Grief.
I would never bother with a second Grief. The decrepify alone removes 50% physical resist, and every mob in hell mode has at least 50%. It also helps your crushing blow. The benefits to undead are massive - just huge.
You dont lose that many corspes to hork, as your Grief kills almost everything. Lawbringer makes Grief much better than it already is.
That is an interesting point. On one hand, I don’t like losing corpses to use find item on…but on the other hand, it really isn’t too many, and the thought of losing that decrepify has me thinking it would be best to just keep it.
I’ll probably make a second Grief at some point anyway…not to be used on my Barbarian, but so I don’t have to keep swapping the one Grief I have between my Barbarian and Paladin.
Yeah I plan to build another one at some point if I get another Lo, but like Mizzo says, the Grief PB with LB PB combo just does so well I’m not sure I’d bother with dual Grief with Frenzy. The Sanctuary aura really does shred undead, even before decrep procs. In places like Arcane and Chaos it’s annoying when it pushes ghosts off the map, but you can mitigate it with weapon swaps and such. I’m a big fan of taunt in general but lately I find myself too lazy to use it, just go crazy with Frenzy hah.
