Hi guys i’ve been farming for a while now and i’ve found a lot but the difficulty hell is pretty hard, if act one went well act two is almost impossible i quickly lose all my life even if i manage to do good damage. what I wanted to know is what to find to improve and if I should still farm in nightmare. Like I said damage is good but life drops to zero fast even if I have quite high resistances. I’m a level 72 frenzy barbarian, this is how I look:
weapons
runeword passion - 1500 damage
aldur’s rhythm 1200 damage
helm vampire gaze
amulet all res +14
runeword armor duress
tearhaunch boots
immortal king’s detail belt
rings all res +10 and lighting res +13, poison res +17
chance guard gloves
2870 defense with battlecry
life 1613 always with battlecry
fire resistance 48%
lighting 64%
cold 71%
poison 47%
(the resistances are in hell with -100%)
The monsters in Act 2 Hell start at lvl 74, your still lvl 72. Before any discussion of gear I’d recommend going back and farming the Countess and Andy for a while to put on a few levels. Try to at least get to lvl 75 before moving to Act 2. This will help your ‘to hit’ ratio. If you are missing too much, you won’t leech, if you can’t leech you die.
You should be able to get by on your current gear. It’s not the best but I’ve taken melee through Hell on worse.
To Hit (simplified): your level vs the monsters level is an important aspect of the ‘to hit’ calculation. When you are under the monster level you miss more. Being over-leveled for an area helps you hit monsters more, thus for melee it’s common to ‘over level’ a bit so you don’t run into needing to get large AR bonuses (2 angelic pieces) just to hit things.
Life Leech is what keeps you alive as melee, you will get hit, you will take damage but your ability to heal through that damage is what keeps you alive. Leech is an aspect of your gear, Vamps has a good 6-8% duel leech and Aldurs has 10% life leech/5% mana leech. You can check your total leech values on your expanded character sheet.
Leech matters nothing if you can’t hit your target. When you miss too much because your AR is low or you are under leveled you can’t leech and thus you lose life and constantly chug pots just to get by.
I am not really talking about gear as you should use the best you have. A nice rare might be better than what you currently have at this point thus telling you to go find a particular item IMO isn’t helpful. Go hit up the NM boss Slots or Countess/Andy slots for a while. Get some levels and ideally some better gear drops.
I will say that different items serve different ‘jobs’. Chance Guards are an MF set of gloves. This won’t be as good for a melee char as a set of gloves with Increased Attack Speed, Leech or resists.
Try to collect 2x 6 open soc swords, double unbending will, very easy to farm Countess for that. These swords are awesome for melee on a budget until you can drop a Lo for Grief.
Smoke armor instead for the res, Lionheart is good too, cheap and good boosts.
IAS and Lifeleech for a frenzy are a must.
Folks have given good useable, advice in this thread.
Your armor and helm are good for where you are. IK belt is a good one too. You will probably eventually change it out for one of the uniques with life steal if you can keep resistances high enough.
You may also look at shopping for blue belts at some point if you have resistances covered but don’t have access to something like String of Ears unique belt. You can get +100 life plus a resistance, or something else nice. Note that +Life prefix/suffix modifiers scale with Battle Orders
High attack ratings mean a lot in Hell. As stated by others, the basic idea is to maximize attack speed, attack rating, lifesteal and damage. Order of min/maxing is a matter of preference.
Attack rating is relatively difficult to get to high values compared to some of the other classes, but it’s doable nonetheless with proper gear choices. I won’t starting throwing out numbers. It will just lead to ‘you suck, no you do!’
Things with Ignore Target Defense, and Attacks lower Defense by X stats are good to have. (Note neither will make you hit every single time…see the post earlier by someone that gave you the simplified version of To Hit.
Modern guides are terrible. They just say ‘put the best in show on, and everything else sucks’.
Your life total is a bit low, especially for things you will face in act 2…just a lot of nolifesteal munsters (minus lifetap), and you’ll need to make sure you know which is which so you can be hitting some that give you life back as well. This knowledge of what to whack at first, and where to attack them from takes time to get right.
I would probably start sinking virtually all, if not all into Vitality.
A lot of the later parts are a bit more friendly in this regard, but have other dangers a well.
Good to see new players trying to learn the actual mechanics of the game. Best of luck.
Edit: Oh and Crushing Blow. More is better in almost every single case. If you wonder about those cases I can elaborate, but it’s another discussion in and of itself.
More importantly for a melee character: being over-leveled also helps the monsters miss you more
Having said that… I have never had great success with a frenzy barb I guess I get to excited and push myself into more dangerous situations than every other barb type I have played. It sure is fun to go fast, though.
BTW you may get more response in the Barb forum, but I suspect you’ll still get good answers here too.
As Rondel stated, 72 might be a bit low level for melee to start Hell, if you’re running “untwinked” (gear you find along the way). I often will stay in NM Baal runs until 76-78 for that reason, since the XP is still quite good until then, and it really helps with chance to hit and chance for monsters to hit you.
What base did you use for Passion?
How many sockets and what (if anything) are in them? This is a pretty good choice for NM but definitely starts to run out of damage by Hell.
Relatively affordable RW options that help are Unbending Will (ladder only) and Oath (ideally made in an ethereal item since the RW gives you “indestructible” so the downside of ethereal is gone and the upside is more damage.
Ideally you want to have 2 of the same class weapon (sword, mace, axe, etc.) so you can get full benefit of a single weapon mastery, that will influence your RW’s somewhat. Some people leave Mastery points until they have a better idea of final gear.
Pretty solid choice for the DR%, MDR, and leach until you have something like Arreats or Gface
Since your resistance seems pretty good and that’s the “only” thing the amulet gives you, it would be good to try to get Highlords or even something with IAS like Cats Eye if possible. Crafting blood amulets can help as well, and the Angelic ammy+ring combo can be useful if your chance to hit needs improvement. A good rare is also an option.
Very nice armor, I got through all of Hell with it on my untwinked Barb
Decent option until you find better. Pairing with IK boots and gloves will help get some useful partial set bonuses.
Decent option but runs out of steam by where you are. Most run Goblin Toe or Gores for damage, but something like Waterwalk can also be useful.
Res is definitely useful, damage and AR on rings is also very helpful. Leach as well but you’re set with leach between Aldur’s and Vamp.
Great for MF but at this point you’re just trying to get through the game, so there are better options, IMO. Crafting blood gloves can be a good way to get some crushing blow, leach, and life, with possible cool bonuses like IAS.
Laying of Hands is usually BIS for Frenzy
This seems pretty low, but I guess could be the case considering your gloves/boots. What base did you use for Duress?
This seems ridiculously low to me for a Barb.
In both Defense and Life you say “Battlecry”, but Shout increases defense, and Battle Orders increases life, do you mean those, or do you actually mean Battlecry? Battlecry is great for decreasing monster defense/damage, but it won’t help your defensive stats directly.
Overall resistances seem pretty good since they’re with the Hell penalty.
What does your skill point distribution and stat point distribution look like?
Typically a Frenzy barb (and most classes/builds) will get enough str and dex for gear, then put the rest in vit to maximize life.
Frenzy barb has lots of things to spend skill points on depending on your goals, but Frenzy and BO tend to be sure bets to max. If you’re trying for a decent level of Find Item, you may end up skimping on Mastery or Taunt/Double Swing (Frenzy synergies) to get there, but that’s typically more feasible with end game gear that lets you still deal enough damage without those.
I’d recommend 1 point in battle command to raise your skill points. Cast that twice first, so your second cast is 1 level higher and thus has higher duration, then cast BO and Shout (if you got points in shout, for Frenzy barb I’ll often leave it at the 1 point that was required to get BO and let +skills gear do the rest). You can re-cast Battle Command, Battle Orders, and Shout again before Battle Command wears off and only have to cast Battle Command once, since it will already get the bonus from Battle Command if you don’t let Battle Command wear off.
You can shop weapons in NM Anya/Malah (and other vendors) that will give +2 warcry that you can put on your weapons witch to use when you cast Battle Command, Battle Orders, and Shout, in order to get you more life/defense. Need to be in Hell difficulty for +3. Other decent options are dual spirits. On the expensive side you can get dual HOTO or CTA as well.
What’s your play-style? Are you using Battle Cry to debuff the monsters, Howl to scare packs away to keep from being overrun, and Taunt to pull ranged characters in close to you, depending on situation?
Farm the pit in act 1, follow the road from outer cloister through tamoe highland until you get to the pit, it branches in two directions at some point, so if you end up in the black marsh take the other way the fork went.
It’s a level 85 area and can drop some nice gear if you play and kill enough monsters.
You should invest in angelic amulet and ring, I’d get 2 rings, or you could opt for a Raven Frost with one ring.
The biggest problem with melee is you need a weapon that deals damage and you also need attack rating to hit stuff.
If you find a 6 socket Colossus blade you can make an unbending will. It would be a nice upgrade from your current weapons. The highest rune in it is fal. It allowed me to farm in single player until I made a grief. Grief is your bis endgame weapons.
I would switch to swords for those, maces generally have the lowest minimum damage.
Hell actually can be difficult for new players, once you learn more( this will take a long time) you will know more.
You should get might merc from act 2 if you don’t already have one. Just give it a life leech helm, and make an obsession for high damage, or insight for mana and decent damage. If you find a reapers toll, that’s a solid choice for a barbs act 2 merc. And it makes the gear more flexible for him.
Diablo 2 is hard. To progress through hell expect to run/leap past most stuff to complete quests. If you want to level up, create game, kill a small pack next to a wp, then exit game and repeat.
I think you will give up before you actually beat the game (like most people do) unless you get carried through.
The Pit is a lvl 85 area. It’s good to farm for gear because it is a lvl 85 area…See my comments above on level of area vs your level.
Pit is a popular farm area for every one, but when your melee you need to be about lvl 86 to start farming it. Casters can get away with farming it at a much lower level because they don’t have a ‘to hit’ issue. Everything they do auto-hits.
colossus blades require an absurd amount of strength for a barb that equate to like 480 Life in less
surprisingly no one suggested ya to play sorc in this whole thread(farming gear would be literaly 10 time easier)
for easy to get weapons(if you absolutly insist to keep going as Barb)
only this 1
Unbending Will(Fal io Ith Eld El Hel) 6 Socket Sword(Colossus Blade)(can’t be made on an ethereal one)…it come with the huge downside to have to sacrifice 480 life(60 Vit lost)(Battle Order is counted too)…another problem with it is that Colossus Blade is a ilvl 85 Item…basicly the sword only drop from lvl 85 Areas//Monsters…lvl 85 Area are mostly Act 4 onward…but there some pre-act 4…idk if the wiki site updated for the new mlvl 85 areas…but you would know where you can farm for it pre-act 4
a bit more expensive but better
Oath(Shael Pul Mal Lum)…4 socket Berzerker Axe(Ethereal if possible but non-eth would do for first weap)…Berzerker Axe is also an ilvl 85 item…so you would have the same issue as the above to farm it
and lastly best 1 that dont require an expensive set of gear but cost the most to make
Grief(Eth Tir Lo Mal Ral)…5 socket Phase Blade…most sought weapon(nothing extremely expensive needed to wield it)…Phase Blade are ilvl 73 but the Lo rune require for this runeword is not easily farmed
can’t remember if “Death” runeword become bis with super expensive set-up
if you play multi-players i heavily recommend that you go Blizzard Sorc build to make the farm way easier(Durance 3(Mephisto,Chest behind Meph, Trav guys down there),Travincal(Ismail,Geleb if they’re not immune to cold),Andariel,Pindleskin mass slaughter)…Andariel has the less value but she’s the only 1 with high chance to drop ring with skills points,
Alternatively the spider den next to spider forest wp in A3 if you seek to power up your Blizz sorc with Death Fathom Orb(Blizz sorc best weapon)(although i can’t remember if qlvl 85 treasure class is enabled for it…so someone would have to confirm)
other builds you may want on your list
Lightning Sorc(rush ppl, key farm purpose)(note that Blizz sorc with Sunder charm entirely kill a light sorc purpose)
Hammerdin(they become ALL purpose once they have Enigma)…but pre nigma they’re only lvling rooms carriers, Travincal, Pindleskin farmers…they’re super tanks so once they got nigma almost never die even if you play poorly
Smiter(to kill Ubers)…Kickers died in a nerf assault
note, Barbarian get double drop from Travincal with item find, once you got 1 well geared they’re solid for runes farm…but are horribly bad as first character due to gear needed…not only that but you need like lvl 96 for optimal hit rating…90-99 grant like 5% extra hit chance…but lvl 96-99 are absurdly tedious…personnaly i rather quit at lvl 95
here chart for 90-99(amount of baal runs)…cut by 10% if you have a 10% exp bonus annilus
90-91 ----- 30 runs
91-92 ----- 45 runs
92-93 ----- 87 runs
93-94 ----- 145 runs
94-95 ----- 257 runs
95-96 ----- 503 runs
96-97 ----- 765 runs
97-98 ----- 1628 runs
98-99 ----- 4546 runs
Yeah that guy before said it- Smoke Nef - lum 2 socket armor is economically the best for warrior. I almost always save 2 socket armors early on and make smoke in Nightmare- even if it is just a low defense gothic plate it is still better than most all rare drop yellow armor you will find
I guess I get to excited and push myself into more dangerous situations than every other barb type I have played. It sure is fun to go fast, though.