Throwbarb playthrough feedback

PTR Feedback
1

So I did it. I beat All quests in order in Hell difficulty, beat the game as 2.4 PTR selffound Throwbarb.

Here is what I noticed and experienced:
Pros:

  • Quantity is fixed - I had no issue with by the time I got around 10-15 level in Throw mastery. Haven’t run out of Quantity even on Hell Ancients. (I got around half the quantity left).
  • Grimward is too safe of a tool for Throwbarb. Without GW ard I think I will be having hard time killing mobs and finishing Hell.
  • Throwing Javelins have greater base damage numbers than 1-handed swords, etc.
  • Leap attack is great movement skill now. I haven’t used Teleport charge staff at all.

Cons:

  • Grimward fear is annyoing to play with, fast monsters run away quickly, and its too safe for throwbarb making game easier, which I don’t like. Rather have it Slow+dmg taken everything in radius, even bosses, similar to Conviction aura, but no fear. Corpse requirement is justified.
  • Grimward doesnt but should work on corpse of Undead monsters that leave bones behind like Doomknights, Skeletons, etc. Shouldn’t work on Ghosts, Fly swarms, etc.
  • Leap attack mid air I get hit by monsters - I think I shouldn’t be hit.
  • Chance to hit is still pretty bad/always was. Even with high Dexterity and full offense skill investment (just maxed Throwmastery, Doublethrow). Having 4000 attack rating means nothing. Attack is still blocked. Neither I like the level difference in chance to hit equation.
  • Find potion synergy is great, but skill itself offers nothing. Maybe some 5% more heal potion power per level would justify putting points there.
  • Range of Throwing axes and Throwing knives is quite short. I would like them to be same as Javelins.

Bugs/others:

  • Doublethrow sometimes weirdly stops attacking and my barb did quick back-and-forth animation without throwing. Happened multiple times.
  • Holding Doublethrow button nonstop but sometimes I stopped attacking, not sure if getting hit caused it, but throwing stopped.
  • If mana burned/out of mana I expect Doublethrow to do a normal throw rather than nothing. Similar to Frenzy,etc. doing normal attacks instead Frenzy.
  • During Duriel fight when I Leap attacked away over Duriel, he sometimes stun me and I do a short jump on one place instead jumping to end of screen - is that normal game behaviour to stop Leap attack?
  • After death Doublethrow skill doesn’t stay as active skill selected, which is annoying to always select it. It should stay selected, be red and cannot attack with until you retrieve corpse or get 2 weapons.

All in all I was satisfied with my playthrough with 2.4 changes with exceptions mentioned above.

Here is a longer story and some details:
At the end I was a level 69 barb:

  • 20 Throw mastery, 20 Doublethrow, 1 BO, 1 Battlecry, 1 Leap attack, 1 Berserk, 3 Natural res, around 5 Grimward, 10 Find potion.
  • 115 str, 145 dex, 170 vita, 10 energy
  • I bought and dropped: Blue winged axe 23-202 dmg +100poisondmg, Blue flying knife 63-152 dmg in act 2.
  • Armor 4os 2xRal, 1xOrt, 12maxdmg jewel, Helm 3os RalEthEth, Natalyaboots, Belts: crafted blood, Nosferatu, gloves: gleglaws, venomgrip
  • Noticable drops: Gleglaws gloves, Nosferatu belt in Act V, Gface helm in Act III. I decided not to use Gface since its too good of an item and will spoil the playthrough, just used on Baal after he was 40% health left.

Story:
Normal difficulty playthrough was pretty easy, early game throw weapon damage is too good. I went on full theme of throwing, so once I got throwing weapons I used Throw attack until i got Doublethrow. I put all skills in Throw mastery, then some 1 point wonders along the way.
Notable things: Except getting Stealth armor for quickness of feet, Countess does not need to be run for anything. Andariel is melted. Maggor lair is awesome for Throwbarb. Leap attacking on other side of room and throwing (then repeating) was my tactic against Duriel. Mephisto is moattricked same as blizzsorc does. Diablo easy, Ancients easy kited from range. Baal waves can be dealt with ranger easily (but takes time). Baal easy but takes time.

Nightmare difficulty: ranged barb is more squishy if he is to deal damage, so caution and good positioning, using Grimward, Leap attack is essential. There are good enough Blue throwing weapons one can buy from Anya,Fara. Andariel kill is about Leap attack and kite her over the pool of blood. Not much different from Normal difficulty.

Hell difficulty: now it was pretty hard to progress. It was slow and difficult. Lot of monster/area rerolls and deaths occured. Using of Grimward was essential, without it it would take way more time to kill mobs. Tactic was usually to get some Fallen corpse and Grimward from there. The damage amplification is great! Most dangerous areas I skipped with Leap attack. When I visited shops I always checked for throwing weapons, and bought and used some 40-80 dmg blue javelins till I bought the final pair of weapons in Act 2 with 23-203 dmg, and dropped from chest a Flying knive with 63-152dmg. From this point forward the killing of white mobs was decently fast.
Progress was hard and slow still, carefully killing one mob a time when situation demands it (Travincal, before Mephisto). Andy, Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo were not that difficult. More difficult parts were areas with lot of unique boss packs, etc.
Hardest “boss” was actually Hephasto on Hellforge - it took me several rerolls to not spawn physical immune or might aura or monsters around were not Maggots. I needed spawning little maggots used for Grimward and clear the area, to fight alone with Hephasto hit’n run tactic. Anyways he was 2-shoting my healthbar.
Second hardest part of Hell was to get over Crystline passage, Frozen river, Glacial trail, Ancients way and Worldstone keep. That took multiple rerolls of monsters I could kill and grimward or skip. They killed me mid-air many times trying to leap over everything.
Now the unexpected part: I dropped ton of health potions to fight Hell Ancients. Rerolled some Fireenchanted, Holyfire Talic, Coldenchant Teleport Korlic, Stony skin, Light enchant Madawc. And I didnt expect it will be one of the easiest fights for me!! I just hit them from range and run until they all died. Used just 1 single health potion, 0 mana, 0 rejuvs. I got 0% crushing blow. 25% slow from Gleglaws gloves. Poison dmg from charm and 6% open wounds on crafted belt. Damage on char screen was around 1000max, 1400max. Was enough.
I got to Throne room after 4-5 attempts. There were Souls, Death lords, Venmlords. But luckily just one bossgroup of Venoms, one group of Souls. I took them one by one with Taunt.
Then out of sudden DClone spawned on first baalwave (stupid system to rely on other group of people to spawn it and at time you dont want it to). I somehow got him out of the room. Wave 2-5 fall slowly but surely one by one or with Grimward a bit faster.
Now Baal took an eternity to get to like 40% health (“X” symbol of not hitting is amusing to watch really…). I was running out of gold for potions. So I made a decision to use the Gface at last to finish him. Still it took quite a time.

The end. Happy end. Now to wait for Ladder to do the Throwbarb playthrough again.

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2

This is great feedback!
I’m glad you tested SSF 0-Hell. I didn’t have much time this week so I was only able to test endgame throw build.

My testing goes along with the same basic things you noted.

I feel this is the biggest issue for Throwing barbs currently. I really hope it gets fixed by launch of 2.4!

Second biggest issue, IMO. Even with really good endgame gear, AR is an issue for an endgame throwbarb in the PTR and in current live.

I actually only used Grimward a little bit, so I can’t comment too much on its effectiveness. I do concur that the fear is more annoying than useful as is the fact that we can’t use it on many corpses. Perhaps have it grant decrepify instead of terror?

Did you notice the ammo regenerating even when you didn’t hit anything? At max Throw mastery I was able to fully regenerate non-replenishing weapons (including ethereal) simply by throwing them - with no target on screen.

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Awesome feedback on the throw barb

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Hey very good feedback, good job dude.

It made me kind of sad that you didnt use that gface.

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Thanks.

Grimward with something like Decrepify and working on all bosses would be great.

Well It does regenerate, but I think at level 20-21 Throwmastery you still end up losing quantity eventually. At least from mathematical standpoint. More points in Throwmastery and/or +15% Crit chance should make ammo practically infinite.
And Throwing in the air - the calculation whether to consume ammo or the missile doing critical strike is done at animation of throw, not at hitting target. I for sure used like Quantity 80 javelins and had no problems. I think ethereal would run out of ammo eventually.

Heh well… it was too lucky of a drop and using that 35% crushing blow 15% deadly strike would carry me through the game too easily. So I wanted to experience more unlucky-hard playthrough.

But when I will do this again I think I will stay in nightmare and farm for more items, such as Gface, LayingofHands/Gleglaws (other slow source), Death sash+gloves + Gorerider/Wartravs + Ravenfrost/Duriel shell/SpiritShroud (cant be frozen).
Or make a crafted Deadly strike helm, Crushing blow gloves, Open wounds belt.

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awesome feedback! Thanks for this post.
I only played through normal SSF with the throwbarb yet. And it played great.
What Merc were you running? I think act 3 fire merc is pretty neat because of Enchant (%AR Bonus) and aoe damage.

You raised valid fixes/points. I do like the fear on grim ward but not when the monsters run away (if they have extra fast they are not slowed). But I can see it being better especially for melee builds if there was no fear involved.

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Thanks. Throwbarb is a great playstyle!

I was running Roque merc → Blessed aim → Iron wolf cold for freezing → Frenzy barb merc for tanking. Then Holy freeze merc from act 2 to act 5 in nightmare.
But in Hell I was 99% of time without merc, he died too fast.

Sure Fire merc enchant is good alternative. I found its % ar and fire dmg bonus a bit lacking. He deals nice enough damage though.
Grimward fear against Extra fast was really a pain in the…

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Great feedback and well thought out.

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Awesome feedback! Sounds like its somewhat balanced but still challenging! I have some questions.

  1. What is the synergy with find potion?
  2. What mercenary did you use? Did you try lawbringer in the Act 5 for decrep procs? What about Act 3 fire - enchant on your weapon? What about the taunt on the A5 merc?
  3. Can you make the obedience runeword, proc enchant, and then swap to throwing weapons?
  4. Is there a reason why you didn’t buff BO more? (too low level?)
  5. Do you think its possible to make a throw barb/item find barbarian for early ladder?
  6. Do you think you could utilize frenzy as your main attack (for move speed) instead of double swing? (despite the fact that you need to max double swing for synergies).
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…somewhat balanced but still challenging!

Exactly that.

  1. What is the synergy with find potion?

Grimward recieves +5% damage taken synergy from Find potion. In my opinion its better to synergize % dmg taken after you have around 5 points in Grimward with decent radius+ decent slow effect.

  1. What mercenary did you use? Did you try lawbringer in the Act 5 for decrep procs? What about Act 3 fire - enchant on your weapon? What about the taunt on the A5 merc?

I was running Roque merc → Blessed aim → Iron wolf cold for freezing → Frenzy barb merc for tanking. Then Holy freeze merc from act 2 nightmare till end.
In Hell I wasn’t using merc 99% of time.
Lawbringer is no cheap runeword I could make in that time. I did not overstayed and farmed for anything. I just progressed through the game with what dropped or I bought.
Iron wolf fire merc seems to me having low enchant buff to be worth. Haven’t used him.
Taunt is not that useful. Battle cry is better.

  1. Can you make the obedience runeword, proc enchant, and then swap to throwing weapons?

You can.

  1. Is there a reason why you didn’t buff BO more? (too low level?)

Since I was ranged char, safety tool for me was my distance from monsters. So I focus more on offensive. Thats how I like it. More speed for clearing mobs.

  1. Do you think its possible to make a throw barb/item find barbarian for early ladder?

Its possible. Sorcs, paladins will be faster though. I myself will start with Throwbarb and probably barb only Ladder + mules.

  1. Do you think you could utilize frenzy as your main attack (for move speed) instead of double swing? (despite the fact that you need to max double swing for synergies).

I got 1 point in frenzy and using it to speed myself to run faster. I did not synergize Doublethrow with Doubleswing. I would not use frenzy or doubleswing for attacks, only doublethrow. Not many skillpoints to use and lot of good skills to invest as barb. Need to calculate properly what is effective. For me -5% physical res from Grimward’s Findpotion synergy is better than +8% enh. damage from Doubleswing.

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You’ve inspired me to start ladder as a throw barb for the challenge and the lol’s.

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Ahh, both checks are done at throw? That explains it. I had around level 30 Throw mastery, thus 75% chance to not consume and ~30% chance to crit. I then had Gores and Highlord’s for another ~45% Deadly strike. I’m thinking deadly strike activates the replenish as well, hence why I was regenerating more than I consumed.

If the check is done at throw, does that mean the projectile itself gets the double damage from critical/deadly strike? Meaning when it pierces it does 2x to all it hits? Does the pierce check function the same way?

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Heh I am by no means an expert on throwing.

But I assume once you throw weapon - the flying missile is set to not/have deadly strike, or not/have crushing blow, not/have open wounds. Piercing probably doesn’t work that way and its calculated when hitting monster.
I would like some actual expert to comfirm this though.

With 30 Throw mastery its 75% not consume and 31% crit strike. So from mathematical standpoint you had:

  • 17,25% chance to Consume quantity -1
  • 59,5% chance for Quantity to stay the same
  • 23,25% chance to Increase quantity +1
    So you had more chance to increase than decrease. So in the long run you would never get Quantity to 0. Safely to use Ethereal weapon without replenish mod.

Now whether deadly strike works with replenishing I am also not sure. It should work in my opinion. In the case of deadly strike also replenishing quantity, then you need level 20 Throw mastery, +1 Battle command, and +30+% deadly strike from either Gface, Highlord, Goreriders, Warshrike/Deathbit to safely say you will never run out of ammo.