What should i socket my IK Soul Cage with? ED Jewel? Or rune for lower STR req and rest into vit?
Lowering the requirements on the chest is pointless because you still need 225 STR for the weapon.
If you want to lower the requirements of the weapon as well, that’s not a good idea imo. You need +30% IAS socketed in the weapon to reach the max WW frames (either 2x 15% IAS/ED jewels or 15%IAS anything else… or 2x Shaels if you’re on a budget). If you’re hoping to do ubers, you really need an Um in the weapon for open wounds, and probably an Eth is a good second rune. For the record, you don’t need open wounds to kill uber Diablo. I have done it with full IK and angelic rings/amulet. You’ll burn him down faster than he can regenerate with the maul’s CB. But it’s going to be a little more necessary for keys/Ubers.
Anyway, for the soul cage, the best rune options IMO are:
EDIT: #1 Sol - See my most recent post below. Possibly best use case for survivability. Huge impact on your effective hit point pool if 2x helm + 1x armor.
#2 Um/Ort - Make you more resilient against Conviction Aura + Uber Mephisto
#3 Ber - Very strong but very wasteful when you could make an Enigma Pitzerker
#4 Cham - Removes reliance on Raven Frost for Cannot be Frozen mod
#5 Ist/Ptopaz - If your IK barb is a MFer of some sort
#6 Shael - To reach the 86% FHR breakpoint. However it is common to put 2x Shaels in the helmet to get this, (50% from set +40% from 2x Shaels = 90%.) or to use charms or a combination of the two.
And then there are all kinds of crazy jewels with %ED. The IK barb’s weakness is not really defense, unless you want to do Ubers, and more offense is probably the best for general purpose.
I play Hardcore though and I like to be extremely tanky and safe, so I have an Um in my chest, and 2 shaels in my helm. If I can get 3x good charms with 12% FHR + combat skills or max dmg/AR, then I can replace the Shaels with something else. Not sure what, but as you can see there are lots of options. But again it kind of depends on what you plan to do with your IK barb, whether you play SC or HC, etc.
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Personally i put ED’s on my head piece and chest. As already mentioned, IK doesn’t lack survivability so aim for offense.
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I remember playing ladder in original DII with IK and I ended up using Sol runes, 2 in the hat and one in my armor. I did this because it helped to negate some of the bugged serpents attack damage while running Nilithak for keys. Seems small but it made a big difference. Um would seem a good option otherwise. Couldn’t imagine doing Ubers/Hardcore with full IK though. Yikes!
Cool idea, yeah stacking Sol runes for integer-based damage reduction can really stack up. I wonder if that would be better for hardcore in some ways?? You got me thinking now.
Also yeah Ubers is totally not recommended with full IK but it’s possible I’m sure, with the right jewelry options, sockets, charms, etc. and by playing smart.
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Coming back to this thread because I just did a little bit of research pertaining to the above post about Sol runes.
Apparently if you put x2 Sol runes in the helm and 1 in the armor, and then wear a nature’s peace ring, you can get 28-32 flat damage reduction.
Doesn’t sound like a lot but it really adds up and makes your barb’s effective HP pool exponentially larger. With the relatively low damage you’re taking already it will reduce that a significant amount further.
People seem to commonly use this for Nihlathak key/loot farming, as Tankjr said, without having to worry about getting instakilled by the bugged vipers. Very useful for Hardcore especially, which is the game mode I play. The damage reduction almost nullifies the bugged poison damage apparently. The viper bug does about 50 damage or so per frame, so if you mitigate that by 30ish, + your 20% damage reduction from the set bonus, brings that damage number down to a much more trivial amount. It should be enough to keep you relatively safe down there. You can also put 3x Sol’s on Griswold’s armor or something like that for your merc and this will allow him to survive with you too.
I will be trying this out with my IK barb.
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3 Sol’s sounds like an overkill for just one farm location on Softcore. Maybe use one on chest and the ring + Oak Sage, which is immune to poison in Hell. 3 Sol’s For HC makes sense.
I dropped topaz in everything and had babas on switch for find item. He had decent mf and was my pit farmer for a minute there.
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Yeah PTopaz’s are always a very solid option. Can do the 2x alibabas / gulls on switch, and 1 point in find item for some higher yield MFing. I’d say PTopaz is the go-to option if you are maxed on resists and aren’t playing hardcore, or farming Nihlathak keys.
I like the Sol option, I may have to try that out.
I found some semi-decent ED jewels, threw those in, and found a high AR+ something else jewel (think it was 93?), threw that in as well for the extra hit.
The nice thing about it is it’s flexible, the only real mandatory ones are the IAS jewels/Shael in the weapon for the breakpoint. I keep a few hel’s around if I want to swap out for something else, but the jewels I have in there atm are so nice I think at this point I’d rather just find another helm instead. It’s cheaper then the chest, and has 2, so it’s the easiest to swap out. One for DR, another for pure damage, and another for GF!