Give it better gear? You can rock a Sigon’s set all the way through NM no probs. Just toss it a few unique weapons and an angelic ammy + rings. Some ele charms, and later poison charms help a lot as well.
For weapons your best early weapon is generally Crushflange
stil doesn’t help with damge output… Low damage compard to a sorceress, assassin, pally, amazon, necro, and druid who can aoe kill everything on screen in seconds.
with much flashier and cooler looking skills too.
You’re comparing pure casters/caster melee hybrids to pure melee. Melee sucks. Always did.
It helps a LOT with damage output… Crushflange, then Strength + G-Face + Gob Toes/Gore Riders + charms is all you need to get to hell.
I am talking about normal difficulty basically from scratch. THanks for late to end game build advice though…
NOTICE I SAID EARLY GAME…
Barb’s Early game is called Sorc.
Yes, thrower is pretty powerfull on normal and even nightmare. Max mastery first to like 12 points, then double throw.
Of double swing at lvl 9 with two scepter, in act 2 with flais with some runeword in it or rals.
Yes barbarian is gear dependent, relies on weapon damage outside war cry, is single target until lvl 30, and is mele outside throw. But you have options and exceptions.
And i agree, double swing lvl 9 not even cost mana, you don’t even flinch at duriel, while some others have to run away and try to kite, you kill him even faster i think. So you have options, just don’t expect aoe clear. Gamble (higher lvl than vendors if you are not underleveled) and crafting are useful for SSF, looking for that enhanced damage or defense that caster just don’t care.
You never compared him right, all you said are caster, people that rely on skill damage, not on weapon damage, or hybrids like auradin.
If you compare the leveling vs a zealer, shapeshifter or even phys bowa, then you get a more accurate picture. It’s a different playstyle, it’s not as fast clearing, you need to care about attack rating and moving enemies, but having this style is better than not having it.
Just try to get gear with LL and attack rating. Low lvl runewords for resists.
Normal attack and bash will proll be the main skills here until u get concentrate/ww. Howl ftw too
Yeah.
Fix those for example :
finally got level 30 and respeced into a warcry barb with dual spirits and he now has over 1000 hp… so much better… WAYYY BETTER…
shame you can’t get that skill till lvl 30
You can have leap attack from lvl 18 with skills already in leap. It will do higher dmg then war cry early on.
2x bloodletters or 2x aldurs rhyme and you will pwn everything up Baal NM. Also, enjoy soloing Duriel without breaking a sweat as weveryone else wipes.
In truth though, even the end game is going to be slower than just about any other class - the good news is you can just run in and kill anything. Hell Andarial for example, dont even need to clear the room, just run in and hit.
enjoy not being able to hit anything for 20 levels (:
Double swing with scepters rocks pretty hard act 1 and you can upgrade to grand scepters in act 2 and make some rw after that and get through normal pretty well. Finding some life leech can be tough playing untwinked but it works wonders. It’s a very gear dependent class though, like most melee builds.
Yeah untwinked is always kind of a slog and 1.10 really seemed to shift the balance to casters everywhere.
Melee weapon based barb is pretty bad in playthrough I would say.
Throwbarb on the other hand is pretty easy to start with. I did twice finish 2.4 selffound throwbarb to Hell. Its really easy peasy compared to frenzy barb for example.
The difference in my opinion is that Throwbarb can damage monsters whenever he wants - therefore he has bigger dps output (plus new pierce) and Javelins have higher base damage than melee weapons. Then 145+ Dexterity makes you have 5000 AR so your hit chance is pretty good. No need to invest too much into defenses.
Melee can’t damage monsters whenever he wants. Since if he isnt tanky enough to stand near monsters, he gets wrecked and can’t dish damage out. If he invests too less into Vitality he gets smacked. I think its simple as that.
Maybe if Weapon mastery gives +1 damage per skill would help early game. Add +1 damage to Frenzy too, then you have less gear dependence and linear progress.
Warcry barb seems like a strange being to me. Neither warrior, nor caster. Something stuck between. Some guy naturally born to be bodybuilder and win Mr. Olympia but he decided to start a singing career. Shouting at crowd, they don’t like the song, but can’t really protest and boo him out since he has big muscles to smack them down if they do.
They could increase the hp per level he gets and hp per vitality to compensate, also increase the damage the masteries give.
One thing I tested when modding D2R, I made so all the 2 handed swords gave barb 2 handed damage and not one handed damage, the damage boost was huge. That’s the problem IMO, the 2 handed swords he can wield just deals one handed damage, it sucks.
Some people just don’t get it, man. Sadly they spend most of their lives on these forums too spewing crap and when people suggest good healthy changes they get resistance from them.
I hope they fix the Barbarian situation.
Maybe attack is the answer? Swinging and missing is a real dud - even with full angelics you swoosh all over the place.
Im hoping that boost to attack through weapon masteries has some sort of impact.