Hi there, I’d like to share with fellow barbs a spec of barbs not well known around here. Daggers have got a special property. By stating strength and dexterity, you get 0.75% enhanced damage per point spent.
What it means:
If you have stated 100str and 100dex the ed from stats alone are going to be 200 * 0.75 = 150ed
So what’s interesting about the spec? Well, daggers didn’t have a barb mastery for exactly that reason. Patch 2.5.3 introduced blade mastery, so we get enhanced damage, critical hit chance and huge boost to attack rating from the mastery on top of the dagger ed mechanic. There is a variation of the barb called titan barb. You put points into vita until 2k-3k life (whatever you feel comfortable with) is reached then dump the rest of the points into strength. For example, a grief pb, a sword, would gain 1% ed for every point spent into strength. There are however two problems: strength doesn’t increase chance to hit. While using grief pb 136dex are required so little is left to dump into strength and still have acceptable vita value. You still have to have at least 110/118str for guilli or arreats which leaves you with even less points for a titan barb spec.
Enter the dagger territory, specifically, fleshripper. They offer 50% open wounds, 25% CB, -50% enemy defense, prevent monster heal, slows target by 20%. If you combine them with nosferatu’s coil, you slow down everything you touch by 30%. With a reaper merc telestomp, you slow down everything around you by 80%!!!
The huge downsides are that you need to zod an ethereal one to achieve acceptable base damage and that they have range 1. Not everyone is comfortable with doing short range tri WWs. In the past, it wasn’t possible to reach last WW ias BP with fleshrippers. That has changed with 2.5.3, too. You could of course use them for frenzy. They’re awesome weapons allowing to achieve 75% CB and 100%DS with guilli and gores but WW is in my opinion faster with enigma.
Now, you can go titanesque by dumping ALL of the points not needed to wear gear into dexterity after reaching 2k-3k vita. By doing so, your hit chance is going to be 95% against any target in the game after you reach acceptable level (85+). Huge amounts of AR and -50% targets defense make you a never missing powerhouse. On top, for every point spent in dex your get 0.75ed (applied to max damage charms from inventory, too, they get double ed from strength and dex), so those points aren’t wasted.
Some demonstration of what you could do with him:
but otherwise a very cool and well thought out build. the 80% slowdown is freakin awesome. GG