So, it’s been a while since I have posted a written guide here or on Reddit. With the end of Season 1 winding down about 3 weeks ago, I reskilled a barbarian I had and threw this mess together. So, I went ahead and dug through my box of extra gear and bought a few staples, and ended up with an extremely effective and versatile build. So, I thought I would share what we have here. Now, to be clear the gear on this build isn’t budget, but it’s reasonably affordable especially later in the ladder. Aside from one or two pieces nobody really wants most of it. So, the price of everything I used for this setup was definitely affordable. It works well and offers the barb a mixed playstyle of melee, ranged and support all rolled into one powerful little package. Let’s take a look.
Stats:
Strength: 165
Dex: 122
Vitality: Everything else.
This setup requires enough strength and dex for gear with the rest in vitality. If you have ethereal weapons the dex can be slightly lower, but this is what has required it you are using non Eth.
Skills:
Combat Skills:
Bash: 1
Leap: 1
Double Swing: 1
Double Throw: 20
Masteries:
Spear Mastery: 1
Throwing Master: 20
Increase Stanima:1
Increase Speed: 1
Iron Skin: 1
Natural Resistances: 1
Warcries:
Taunt: 1
Shout: 20
Battle Orders: 20
Battle Command: 1
Find Potion: 1
Find Item: 1
So, at this point that is 92 skill points spent. You can spend the rest as you see fit. You could up the damage with double throw using double swing, get a point into berserk for physical immunes if you need it, or just pump up any of your other passive skills. Take your pick.
Gear:
Helmet: Wolf Houl: +6 Feral Rage
Armor: Arcanes Valor: + 2 skills
Amulet: High Lords
Gloves: Laying of Hands
Boots: Natalia’s Set
Belt: Trangs-ougs Girth
Ring: Dual Leach with, AR, Life, Resist etc
Ring: Carrion Wind
Weapon: Ethereal Gimmershard
Weapon: Lacerator
Swap: Arioc Needle +4 skills
Merc: Act 2 Might
Weapon: Ethereal Ariocs Needle +4 skills
Armor: Arcans Valor +2 skills
Helmet: Andarial’s Visage with ral rune
Charms: Ani, Torch, Misc small charms for life, Max damage, AR, Resists etc
So, this started out as your typical double throw Barbarian. Etheral Gimmershred has high physical base damage paired with a nice mix of elemental variety damage. Then we have Lacerator which proc’s Amplify damage. Using the critical strike from throwing mastery and deadly strike from Highlords, we pretty much have infinite ammo when throwing them. So we max out double throw and throwing mastery to get our damage output and attack rating high. Not using razor tale leaves our pierce ability a little lacking, but 55% is acceptable for this build. Trang’s belt provides cannot be frozen as well as a welcome boost to both life and mana and leave our ring slots open from needing raven frost. High lords is increased IAS, deadly strike, and one to all skills.
Laying of hands deals good damage to demons provides fire resists, and another 20% IAS all very useful. Natalia’s set boots are lighting and cold resist along with 40% faster run walk. So, filling some resist holes and moving us alone since we don’t have teleport on this build. Not needing raven frost, that left us two ring slots, one for a dual leach ring 8life 6 mana 88 AR and a few other things. Then we have carrion wind. This provides poison resistance, 9% life stolen per hit and a pretty common twister proc. While the damage from it is light. It will stun enemies for a split second giving more time to rain a hail of axes down on them.
So, up to this point, this has been a by-the-numbers double throw barb, minus I didn’t max double swing for the 160% synergy to double throw. Likewise, my choice of armor and helmet is a little off from what you will find in your typical guide to setting one up. However, this is a dual build and it can adapt based on what your needs are. One of the issues I found soloing with this character was when it came to fighting. The Barbarian has no summons so, it’s just you and the merc. This makes distancing yourself from opponents tricky and somewhat pointless and things will close quickly defeating the point of the double throw build in the first place. This is where my hat comes into play.
Wolf howl gives some interesting abilities, the most useful of which is the level 18 dire wolf charges. This means you can summon 3 of them to serve as a mobile meat shield just like a druid giving you some breathing room to hurl your axes. You don’t see many players using them, as on their own they are not synergized since I am not a druid and they are 8,000 gold a charge. This is why we went ahead and maxed out both battle orders and shout. This gives the wolves quite a solid boost to both health and defense and on players 1 to 3 on the hell difficulty they tend to stay alive quite well. Now if we have a bigger group, then I use them as needed. If we have other tanks or summons then I just hang back or go in.
Now, most double throw barbs put a point into Axe mastery and one into frenzy for when they have to fight hand to hand. I found a wolfhowl that had 4 werewolf, 5 lycanthropy, and 6 to feral rage, and that gave me a different idea. I mean why not use a melee skill that costs me no skill points? Now Ariocs needle isn’t the highest damage weapon in the game. But, with my gear, it has an 89% chance of dealing double damage when I attack with it. Likewise, it has ignore’s target’s defense which means against non-boss enemies AR is meaningless. Likewise, it gives +4 to universal skills with another +2 from Arcane’s Valor, one from high lords, and one from my anni. Now, I have level 14 feral rage and level 13 werewolf. Which, stacked up like this is a really healthy boost to AR, IAS, and moderate damage along with both a ton of life steal and mobility. So, we get the best of both worlds. With Battle orders and Shout in this setup, we max out at 18k def and 5500 health in wolf form. Along with max resist, that’s pretty hard to kill especially when you are stealing 70% life per hit.
Arioch’s needle also gives +4 to all my warcries which is a nice boost for the wolves and the merc. It’s not the best weapon or buff stick in the game. But it’s a nice compromise that offers me a second form of close-range combat and a healthy boost to life and life steal if that is more useful than the double-throw axes. My merc is somewhat budget. Yeah, pride with fortitude would be better. But, Acrane’s valor, Andarials, and Ariocs needle give him an extra 8 levels to his might Aura. Paired with my battle orders and shout he is pretty tanky and has a 50/50 shot at dealing double physical damage along with a level 25 might Aura.
Beyond the skills above we have leap for some mobility when in throwing Axe mode or if I need to cross a river. Likewise, find item is nice to have on a barb if you can spare the two skill points which we clearly can. Likewise, carrion wind has a level 21 poison creeper if you want an extra 350 poison damage over 4 seconds. Not fantastic, but it’s there. I will warn you the charges can add up to a hefty repair bill. But the wolves usually survive a few areas and when you have 12 million gold you really just don’t care that much. Anyways, if you want to try something different this build works well and I thought I would share it. I didn’t bother with berserk as gimmershred has pretty good elemental damage and the lacerator procs amplify damage one out of 3 hits. So, physical immunes really are not a problem with this setup. But there are plenty of skill points to work with if you want to go in that direction.
Thanks for reading.