PvM WW: IK > BOTD.. personal experience

[Frenzied Bovine]

This is not intended to start a flame war, just to post my personal experiences from someone who has sampled the grass on both sides of the fence.

I've played both barbs extensively and I have to say that the IK set just freaking totally owns BOTD.

I'm not even going to bother talking about the pros and cons of a zerker/concentrate build, since I find killing once monster at a time insanely tedious. It's just not my thing, sorry. No, i'm not going to talk about PvP either, though I imagine BOTD > IK in that arena.

First, some background. I spent a lot of time collecting this gear to make the godliest non-IK barb I could think of. I had a 392% eth BOTD Ghost Spear. Fastest whirl around, godly range, crazy damage, 150-1141 two handed. I had people try and tell me a War Pike was a better weapon; I just laughed in their faces.

I put this evil little spear on a barb wearing Arreats, Chains of Honor, LoH, Gore Riders (there's a story behind that), Verdungo's, Nature's Peace, Highlords and a Raven Frost. I'd say he was pretty godly. He tore through demons like nothing i've ever seen, one-whirl killing hell Travincal pretty much, 10+k Berserk and 9.5k whirlwind with a might merc.

I probably could have had a better setup with dual eth BOTD CB's/Zerkers, but in a pinch, a Ghost Spear was a good trial run and didn't cost me quite as much :) Zerker's would definately have had better resale value, though.

At the end of the day though, for me.. IK set totally owns BOTD in PvM. I sold the spear yesterday for sojs, and am not afraid to say that I am TOTALLY happy that I went back to the IK set for all my whirlwind needs.

Why?

--> IK set is pure str/vit. You never have to worry about allocating points to dex, ever. That means more damage (str) or more life (vit) depending on how you want to play it. You hit just fine anyway. My BOTD spearie had less life even though he wore a 39/12 verdungo's. I'll take my 4k life IK barb any day, thanks.

--> IK set has Crushing Blow. You really don't know what this means until you try and do the clone with your BOTD ghost spear and NO CB. My IK barb kills the clone WAY, WAY faster, and believe me, I fight the clone regularly. I was forced to remove my very high MF war travs and replace them with gore riders just so my ghost spearie could compete with my IK barb in killing speed.

--> IK maul has insane elemental damage. Often times I would whirl through PI's, kill them, and then go "hey, that took a second longer than normal" and realise i'd just butchered a PI. With BOTD, you really, really, really notice PI's, because you have no elemental adders to kill them "accidentally". My biggest pain as a BOTD spearie was a pack of PI mana draining ghosts. With IK, I just whirl through freezing, chilling and killing with elemental damage even though they're PI, cause they have such low life. With BOTD, I HAD to use Berserk, which meant I got mobbed, could only handle one at a time, and in some situations had to drink some potions.

--> IK maul freezes targets. This leads to shattered targets, which means no resurrection, which means you can do away with Nature's Peace. My BOTD barb pretty much HAD to wear Nature's Peace to take on huge packs of ressurecting minions, they were too annoying for words. With the IK set, half of the stuff is smashed, and the rest is immobile (HFT + 2 means you freeze almost everything you encounter except bosspacks).

--> BOTD's "poison nova when you kill an enemy" doesn't activate from deaths caused by WW. thx, gg.

--> No magic find. Whatsoever. IK gives about 100mf almost incidentally from the helm (with ptopaz) and the boots (partial set bonus). If i'd tried to cram MF on my BOTD barb I would have had to give up CoH (bye bye +2 skills/damage to demons/65 resists), boots (bye bye CB/DS), amulet.. you get the idea. MF is pretty much included in the IK set.

--> IK set maxes your resists without even trying. With just a single pt in Nat resists, you pretty much get there once you've equipped the full set. An Annihilus pretty much maxes out the rest of your resists. I don't even want to think of how my BOTD barb would have worked out without CoH, it was pretty essential to getting my resists to max. And CoH is not cheap.



So what was good about my BOTD?

Absolutely insane damage. But that's it. If that's all you want, good for you (BOTD strikes me as extremely well suited to PvP). Oh, the ghost spear looked GREAT on paper for me. But my IK set just added so many crazy bonuses, so many crowd control features, helpful PI things, magic find etc that I ended up regretting the day I ever socketed those runes in that damned ghost spear. A BOTD spearie probably would have been okay if I hadn't already had a IK barb for all my whirling needs. But since I had IK, another whirlbarb was just redundant, and he wasn't even as much fun. He also almost never found any uniques, as opposed to my IK baba for whom things seemed to drop constantly with just 100 MF.

You don't notice all the little things about the set until you don't have them.

Considering that IK armor is about 1000000 times easier to get than a good ethereal BOTD in a godly weapon.. i'd say go with IK every single time, folks. Of course, that's just my opinion, and it's largely based on my experience playing whirlybarbs (and ONLY whirlybarbs) PvM.

Trading away my BOTD Ghost Spear I must have seen some of the stupidest BOTD sockets ever (eg, non ethereal BOTD colossus blade.. BOTD phase blade.. BOTD in exceptional ethereals..). In the end, I sold it to someone who needed it for their merc, and i'm damn glad it's gone.

Feel free to post your experiences here, too.

[Cold493]

I totally I agree I've got an 86 IK ww barb and he rips stuff apart. Only thing that can kill him is IM. IK barb is by far one of the best builds in the game becuase it is fairly cheap compared to other builds and will give you a super good character for low cost.

[asdfghjkl]

I suppose IK ww barbs could rip. But from my experience, a ww barb with a botd gp, gt, wp, gs rips just as well, or even better. If you went with a great poleaxe instead of a ghost spear you would not have needed any points allocated to dexterity. There is a thread about this on the same page.

The bonus from the complete set is rather nice, but not the best in my opinion. I find the ogre maul's range pathetic. Crushing blow is definitely a plus for pvm. The bonus elemental and magic damage is also a plus for pvm.

Only reason I would ever make an IK barb is for the aura. It looks mighty sexy.

[All Wheel Drive]

I have a ww barb with eth Tmaul BOTD ; I realy don't have problems killing stuff.

- 400 str
- 140 dex
- 250 vit
- 2.5-14k ww dmg
- 3-15k berserk dmg(1 point)
- 75 res all
- 17k def

I don't regret spending 1 Zod (Vex nearly come for free). I have realy a lot of fun; all the people come with "Wow" or smth like this when I'm in the middle of the cows and killing and not dying.

I'm sure IK set has its advantages, but my Botd makes a lot fun...

[Dodgy_geezah]

Thnx frenzied. I think I'm going to have to go remake my IK barb now though. I thought pure zerk would be a clever idea..... WW, always WW. It looks the coolest too. :)

[tl998]

So WW still is a viable skill tog o in 1.10? Does it work without good equipment like IK set? (I'm ridiculously poor, and can't even do baal mf runs, so no godly itmes for me) That's not to say I wouldn't like to own an IK set tho :lol:

[Royal_Paladin14]

botd is good mainly for pvp reasons.

[royalsego]

but botd just looks so much cooler

[Halciet]

So WW still is a viable skill tog o in 1.10? Does it work without good equipment like IK set? (I'm ridiculously poor, and can't even do baal mf runs, so no godly itmes for me) That's not to say I wouldn't like to own an IK set tho :lol:

WW is much more item-intensive in 1.10, so you really do need a really good weapon and gear to perform well in hell. Berserkers and Conc barbs don't require high-end gear as badly, by comparison.

-Hal

[GranHexen]

hey since you guys are talking about the IK set what did you guys put in the sockets? I finally got the whole set on the ladder but I dont know what to put in it.

[Cold493]

For sockets I got two shaels in the weapon to get to the last ww breakpoint, if you can afford 40/15 jewels these would work alot better. In the helm and armor I threw in two 37edjewels and one 40ed jewel seems to work fine for me. You dont need any resists at all with IK set.

[KaesarSosei]

I have just started playing my IK Titan and have to report its extremely good. My only problem is vs mana drain and others with Amp Dmg and an aura which can be painful. But these are problems for all melee chars.

I also have NO points in Vit yet still have 1.6k life at level 77 with Max BO. I think by level 85 and with a few better charms I could get to 2k + which is more than enough IMO. I put a couple of 15% IAS/****ty other mod jewels in the maul and so far 2 40% ED jewels in the armour and 1 helm. Not sure what to put in the other helm socket yet, but if I find another 40% ED then that will do.

WW dmg is almost 6k max, almost 7k with my level 70 might merc. If my merc gets to level 85 along with me, and I get another nice ED jewel, I think my WW dmg will be 8k+

At the minute I think I will keep my other stat points from lvling up in case I 'chicken-out' and decide to add to Vit :). But so far I have only died once and that was in Act 1 vs Andy and a double boss pack of mana-burn, Might and Amp Damage - ouch! Funny enough, after I went down, the rest of the party seemed to go too...lol

The quick hits of 60IAS WW and the freezing, along with the aura is spectacular too!

But I'm glad to hear that the uber-BOTD is not quite as good as made out.

[All Wheel Drive]

But I'm glad to hear that the uber-BOTD is not quite as good as made out.

I think that the botd Tmaul that I have is very good.

Anyway, I don't think that the guys here say that the a botd isn't good. They just say that the IK set is better for ww than a botd can be. It could be, but I say that if u ever have the chance to make a good eth BOTD, make it!!! U won't be sorry. The IK set can be found more easily, so if u don't want to run after parts for a botd, get the IK. If not, a BOTD will be better fun; a botd barb can have both 5k life and real high dmg (max and medium).

[Smackhard]

Well I've also tasted both sides of the fence. I can't not argue that the IK barb is very very good but he is more killable then my botd barb cause I used a cb instead of a 2 hander.

In my mind the botd barb was and is better then my ik barb. I'll list the reasons.

1. botd barb 50%ll/22%ml, ik barb 18%ll/16%ml
2. botd barb +5 all skills +2 combat, ik barb basicly +6 all. but botd barb has a higher wc with sticks, since you lose +3 skills on ik if you use a weapon switch.
3. botd barb 4k 1h ww, ik barb 4k 2h ww
4. botd barb 4k life/75% block/16k def/50%dr, ik barb 4k life/13k def/20%dr.
5. I still have 30 stats and 6 skills to spend on the botd barb, the ik barb I don't.
6. botd barb has pervent monster heal, ik barb doesn't unless you sacrifice gear.
7. My botd barb could have 200mf and has alot more gear options then my ik barb but I mf'ed with both.
8. Both killed DC at the same speed for me but I would drink less pots with botd barb using concentrate and laying of hands.

Both barbs were built the same. Max mastery, Max WW, Max BO, Max shout. Both have maxed res in hellmode.

Just my 2 bits

Cheers
Smack

[KaesarSosei]

Well I've also tasted both sides of the fence. I can't not argue that the IK barb is very very good but he is more killable then my botd barb cause I used a cb instead of a 2 hander.

In my mind the botd barb was and is better then my ik barb. I'll list the reasons.

1. botd barb 50%ll/22%ml, ik barb 18%ll/16%ml
2. botd barb +5 all skills +2 combat, ik barb basicly +6 all. but botd barb has a higher wc with sticks, since you lose +3 skills on ik if you use a weapon switch.
3. botd barb 4k 1h ww, ik barb 4k 2h ww
4. botd barb 4k life/75% block/16k def/50%dr, ik barb 4k life/13k def/20%dr.
5. I still have 30 stats and 6 skills to spend on the botd barb, the ik barb I don't.
6. botd barb has pervent monster heal, ik barb doesn't unless you sacrifice gear.
7. My botd barb could have 200mf and has alot more gear options then my ik barb but I mf'ed with both.
8. Both killed DC at the same speed for me but I would drink less pots with botd barb using concentrate and laying of hands.

Both barbs were built the same. Max mastery, Max WW, Max BO, Max shout. Both have maxed res in hellmode.

Just my 2 bits

Cheers
Smack

Sounds good, but your WW dmg with IK seems too low. How much Dex did you put into the BOTD barb? Stick thats straight onto Str and you get a lot more ED...also your BOTD is obviously much better PvP but for PvM using a one hander is a total waste in BOTD (IMO).

[Smackhard]

Sounds good, but your WW dmg with IK seems too low. How much Dex did you put into the BOTD barb? Stick thats straight onto Str and you get a lot more ED...also your BOTD is obviously much better PvP but for PvM using a one hander is a total waste in BOTD (IMO).

I have less base str on my botd barb (around 90) but with gear the str is equal, the botd barb has the benefit of using enigma that gives str based on clvl.

Like I said, I have 30 stats left on my botd barb but none on my ik barb.

Cheers
Smack

[Venomous_Marci]

LMAO..I just sit here reading and laughing at all your posts. In my 3 yrs of playing this game I havent ever found IK armor nor have I ever seen zod or vex drop. It's amazing how everyone and their dog has BOTD weapons or IK set and proclaims the godliness of any given item.

LOL..my level 81 concetration barb (based on Haclet's guide) is stuck in act 1 hell, totally useless and running for his life most of the time. Yes, he is untwinked, ladder and hardcore and he has to fend for himself (no party play for him).
He uses what he has found, which isnt much and that being skullders and headstriker along with rhyme grimshield and handful of rares for crying outloud. If not for deadly strike he might as well be poking monsters with a stick.
I'm sorry, I guess it's just my very sarcastic nature when I look at a thread such as this where weapons are being compared that have no refrence to any average, real player.
Please dont take my comments in any personal way, I dont mean to offend. I just sit here and laugh...IK set great, BOTD ...sweet.
I'd take either one and be happy about it..just my perspective:)

[Smackhard]

LMAO..I just sit here reading and laughing at all your posts. In my 3 yrs of playing this game I havent ever found IK armor nor have I ever seen zod or vex drop. It's amazing how everyone and their dog has BOTD weapons or IK set and proclaims the godliness of any given item.


Well too bad for you. Both my barbs are softcore ladder, and I have found 2 IK armors in ladder. I also found everything on my botd barb except the ZOD, JAH and BER, those I had to trade for ><.

I would suggest that you build a strong mf character and do some items runs to help your barb.

Cheers
Smack

[CyberHawk]

Same here, I've mf for 2 yrs now, never got closer to a IK armor, than thru the trade screen, droolin over the thoughts of my future mace barb.

But Marci..lol, man we were all there once.:) Well hell, i aint where alot of these guys are now, but one day, always, one day.

[All Wheel Drive]

Well, man about not finding good gear. I never did... either. The best I've found were some SS and in the past 1.5 years I've played 8hours a week except for summer time.

But try to use ur mind a little. Look at the game and try to get some profit.

I have a BOTD Tmaul from scratch and also an Enigma. How?

Looked in the trade channel and speculated.

Also got like 70 soj in 1.09, when they were nearly worthless. Now, some people bought them as they thought the D2 clone will appear. I got an Ohm for 14 soj, an Arkaine for 16, a Shaffer for 12 and so on. For the Ohm I got a Jah, a Zod and a Sur. The Zod and the Sur were traded for a Ber.

I got the eth Tmaul cheap in 1.09 when people didn't know much about 1.10 runewords...

See, I have good stuff from nothing. Don't tell me it's not possible.

Either than play I learnt to do good trade.

[Frenzied Bovine]

I have found two IK armors in the pit, as well as three trang belts and two tal armors.

All you have to do is get to Hell Act 1 and have someone give you the outer cloister waypoint. The pit really isn't that hard to clear, folks.

Let me respond to a few questions:

Whirling BOTD Thundermaul: I can only wonder what the point is of that, as you don't hit the last WW breakpoint. You do a staggering 3-4k more per hit than my BOTD Ghost Spear dude did, but my spear has (had) a range of 5 and hit the last breakpoint. Personally i'd think we were about even.

And yes, my BOTD ghost spear could handle being targetted by every hydra in Travincal and still win. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying BOTD is "bad". But where you think BOTD rocks, my opinion is that IK rocks almost as hard, and there are a whole bunch of incidental adders that BOTD simply doesn't have. Let me play the listing game for a moment:

1) Hit Freezes Target +2
2) 20% DR (yes, you can beat this on a BOTD setup with good gear)
3) 40% Crushing Blow
4) ~ 100% mf if you ptopaz the helm (yes, you can beat this on a BOTD setup.. with Enigma)
5) The elemental damage adders on the maul.

I'll agree that I probably should have used a Great Poleaxe instead which would have allowed me to pump Strength over Vit. *shrug* Alternatively, I could have gotten a 1h BOTD (eg, Colossus Blade).

Bear in mind also that my BOTD barb was wearing Chains of Honor and Laying of Hands. Combined with BOTD's natural bonuses, you're looking at +550%ed to Demons and +300%ed to Undead.

But here's my key point. If you want to make a BOTD barb, BOTD isn't your sole goal. You also have to assemble some godly equipment to go along with it - in the example provided by Smackhard this included an Enigma, and my BOTD barb was wearing Chains of Honor. Neither comes cheap. I would suspect Arreats was the choice of helm in both cases as well, and that Smackhard's belt was either a perf Verdungo's or a perf String of Ears. There's also a Stormshield to consider.

I could go on but the bottom line for me was this:

You want to make a good IK barb? Get IK armor. The rest of the set is easy.
You want to make a good BOTD barb? Get BOTD. Then get Chains of Honor/Enigma. Then a Stormshield and a perf String. Then an Arreats. Then.. (etc)

IK armor is, for all intents and purposes, just as good, far more convenient, and I can't stop raving about that damn Hit Freezes Target + 2. And for the record, Prevent Monster Heal has never and probably will never be an issue for him.

The monsters aren't really going to know the difference one way or the other. They'll still be dead. It's just a question of whether they're shattered into ice or just plain dead. Do you NEED 10k whirls as opposed to 4k whirls? Do you NEED 50% life leech as opposed to 10%? Do you NEED 50% DR as opposed to 20% when you kick that much ***?

Suffice to say, once I was done making my BOTD "perfect", I was very angry to realise that he basically did exactly the same thing my IK barb did, for massively higher cost, and left me with a number of headaches I never had wielding IK. Some of my personal experiences with particular annoyances (eg PI manadrain packs) are outlined in my original post. For this reason, and this reason alone, I say IK > BOTD - because when you get down to it, from a PvM perspective they do the same thing, but the IK does it so much cheaper (and in some ways, better!).

Socketing the IK Maul: Two shaels. I tried Shael Eth and it was stupid. If you're uber rich, two xx/15ias jewels.

[Venomous_Marci]

I feel a bit better today. Last night a unique ghoul dropped my barbo a tals armor in the mausoleum so things are starting to look up.
My only concern with IK set is the lack of shield and being hardcore dying is just not an option. I'm concerned with no shield and no blocking i'll get taken apart from ranged archers as did my summoner necro with no blocking in the pit.
Sure you can taunt them but the initial risk is still high. That is why I decided to go S/S barb setup.
Now since I never used IK set I wonder how is AR affected by usually such a low dext builds as IK barbs seem to be.

[Frenzied Bovine]

Ah, hardcore. I'll just swear off any sort of testimony on that. My IK barb, while quite godly, is NOT totally immortal and has died a number of times.

So if you want to play hardcore... yeah. Look for someone's opinion OTHER than mine. I'm probably the worst person to ask :)

Although I do think it's worth mentioning (again) that my IK barb has no problems hitting in Hell Ladder Act 5 with base Dex. The IK set has some impressive +AR bonuses on it, and Mace Mastery + WW/Conc/Berserk did the rest. When all else fails, judicious use of Battle Cry lets you hit reliably, though I really only bother with it vs Diablo/Baal/DClone.

[Smackhard]

I feel a bit better today. Last night a unique ghoul dropped my barbo a tals armor in the mausoleum so things are starting to look up.
My only concern with IK set is the lack of shield and being hardcore dying is just not an option. I'm concerned with no shield and no blocking i'll get taken apart from ranged archers as did my summoner necro with no blocking in the pit.
Sure you can taunt them but the initial risk is still high. That is why I decided to go S/S barb setup.
Now since I never used IK set I wonder how is AR affected by usually such a low dext builds as IK barbs seem to be.

gj on the drop, it's always nice to have something that good drop for you.

As for the IK ar issues, you shouldn't have any. My IK barb has base dex as all IK barb should have and he has about 9k WW AR. The set itself gives +450 to AR and with a few rings like raven and some AR charms it's not a issue at all.

About the no shield part, being base dex lets you pump alot of points into vit so 4 or even 5k life is fairly easily achived.

Cheers
Smack

[tl998]

Well, man about not finding good gear. I never did... either. The best I've found were some SS and in the past 1.5 years I've played 8hours a week except for summer time.

But try to use ur mind a little. Look at the game and try to get some profit.

I have a BOTD Tmaul from scratch and also an Enigma. How?

Looked in the trade channel and speculated.

Also got like 70 soj in 1.09, when they were nearly worthless. Now, some people bought them as they thought the D2 clone will appear. I got an Ohm for 14 soj, an Arkaine for 16, a Shaffer for 12 and so on. For the Ohm I got a Jah, a Zod and a Sur. The Zod and the Sur were traded for a Ber.

I got the eth Tmaul cheap in 1.09 when people didn't know much about 1.10 runewords...

See, I have good stuff from nothing. Don't tell me it's not possible.

Either than play I learnt to do good trade.

Don't make me laugh. You got good stuff from "nothing?" Don't tell me 70 SOJs is nothing. Try getting BOTD and Enigma on ladder. How many people can actually afford to to have those kind of items? I had 2 SOJs back in 1.09, and I treasured them dearly. Tell me, how is your average player going to scrape together 70 SOJs to trade on ladder?

[GranHexen]

Well I can say for sure IK set can get you past Hell diff. I was able to do it last night from act2-5 solo with no problems at all, and I was only lvl 81. about the AR issue I notice with the 5%chance to cast lvl5 enchant, my AR went from 9k to 10+k I believe, I had 0 problems hitting anything.

gogo IK set :worship:

[All Wheel Drive]

Don't make me laugh. You got good stuff from "nothing?" Don't tell me 70 SOJs is nothing. Try getting BOTD and Enigma on ladder. How many people can actually afford to to have those kind of items? I had 2 SOJs back in 1.09, and I treasured them dearly. Tell me, how is your average player going to scrape together 70 SOJs to trade on ladder?

Well, in fact yes, from nothing. I was doing some mf runs in 1.09 and had stuff like shafts, shakos, skulders and things like these. Once I stumbled upon a guy that lost his playing accounts because he did some dirty bussiness on b.net. But he still got his mules with plenty of SoJs.
So I traded my stuff I mentioned above for SoJs, assuming that the value will raise. I got smth like 60 SoJs.

Finally I was right. I'm pretty happy with the stuff I have now, and I don't realy play much, as I don't realy have time.

[Frenzied Bovine]

Don't make me laugh. You got good stuff from "nothing?" Don't tell me 70 SOJs is nothing. Try getting BOTD and Enigma on ladder.

I have Enigma on ladder, and have had BOTD on ladder (that's why I even posted the thread).

I wouldn't say it was easy, but if you know what you're doing, it's not impossible.

The real wealth to diablo 2 is trading. Any idiot can MF until their hands fall off, or bot until they're banned. Only a smart trader can turn that into a profit and the items that they want.

In case you're wondering, I got a Jah and Ber for an Annihilus early on in the whole dclone thing. The Zod came in a trade for a 15% IAS / 15% all resists jewel that I found in Travincal, and the Vex dropped in the middle of a Nightmare Baal's Minion pack.

How other people got the runes they trade me really isn't something I care about. All I care about is whether they'll vanish or not, and to this day, they haven't.

You have to get lucky with your finds, and know what to trade them for.

[All Wheel Drive]

[QUOTE=Frenzied Bovine]
The real wealth to diablo 2 is trading. Any idiot can MF until their hands fall off, or bot until they're banned. Only a smart trader can turn that into a profit and the items that they want.
QUOTE]

He's right. It's all in the mind... don't trade big stuff for more low staff u don't actually need, keep it for the moment u'll need, and above all, speculate the market.

The only usefull things I've learnt on D2 is to be patient as values can go up and down, to trade and to dissimulate. Rest is more like cliking on the mouse and become a couch potato.

[phatlewt]

Hmm...

I'm a little confused, should I max STR or VIT (after reaching 170~ STR) on my WW IK Barb?

[All Wheel Drive]

Hmm...

I'm a little confused, should I max STR or VIT (after reaching 170~ STR) on my WW IK Barb?

That depends... what act and lvl are u it and how are u surviving and killing stuff?

I'd say, go with vit... if u have no troblems killing...

[FiNaLoRgYkKzOn]

Tell me, how is your average player going to scrape together 70 SOJs to trade on ladder?
You really should read the posts before replying, he didn't say it was on Ladder, I don't believe anyone has 70 SOJs on Ladder so quit getting all worked up. :)

[phatlewt]

Since I plan to MF hell Baal, by pumping VIT or STR, how much damage would I expect to do?

[Frenzied Bovine]

Well I have strength up around 250ish, and do over 3k whirl IIRC.

It's enough - unless you run into OK's in the throne of destruction.

Just as a side note, an IK barb (as well as the BOTD barb) made for really good Enigma users for tele-baal. With a 158 mana circlet and two wizardspikes, I had over 1100 mana and 3k hp while teleporting through the worldstone keep. It's what i'd call "safe".

That 158 mana circlet is simply a perfect "Bahamut's Circlet" (120 mana) socketed with a psapphire.

[ThaRiddler2002]

Personally, i find i dont really have any problems killing in hell with my eth botd ghost spear. My barb is a titan and does 12kww 18kzerk, with a little life and mana leech is really very easy. But like you said, i did notice a problem when i ran into physical immunes. When that happens, just divide and conquer, it really isnt all that hard.
I cant wait till i get past the cold plains...great exp there at my level...lol