Critique my Frenzy Barb build

[BlueShadow]

Hi everybody,

I was thinking about making new character to toy around with since I am starting to get bored with my other "cookie cutter" characters. At first I was thinking about making a dual wielding dagger Barb, using two 3 socketed Fanged knives (Elite Kris), and making a runeword. This was when I saw the Runeword "FURY" which has +5 to Frenzy, 40 IAS, and 6% life leech. Before I saw the +5 to Frenzy stats on the Fury runeword, I just wanted to make a dagger Barb, but after seeing that a Barb with two Fury weapons would have +10 to Frenzy, I decided to make my Barbs main skill Frenzy.

now for my skill and stat point distribution:
20 sword mastery (do daggers benefit from this mastery?)
1 Inc Stamina
10 Inc Speed
10 Iron Skin
10 Nat Resistance

1 Leap
1 Leap Attack
1 Bash
1 Double Swing
1 Double Throw
20 Frenzy

1 Howl
1 Shout
20 Battle Orders
20 Battle Command

I think that leaves me a few skills pts left over, and I can just distribute the leftovers among Inc Speed, Iron Skin, and Nat Res. For my Stat points II was thinking:

STR: 200
DEX: 150
VIT: all other pts
MANA: base

Now I am still unsure if I want to stay will a dagger barb with 2 FURY Fanged Knives, or if I want to go with a Sword Barb with 2 FURY Phase Blades for the fast swing speed, or 2 FURY Legend Swords which inflict slightly more damage but are a little slower.

Whichever weapon I go with my main killing skill will be Frenzy. As soon as I can make 2 identical Fury Fanged Knives or Sword, my slvl will go from 20 to 30. Of course I can get it up to about 35 maybe even 40 if I equip enough plus to skills items. But I was wondering what is highest level Frenzy goes up to? I saw the Barb guid, and all the skills cap out at 20. Does Frenzy actually stop at slvl 20 or can I go all the way up to 30-40? I want to try getting the highest possible Frenzy level and increased Walk speed to see how fast I can make my Barb.

For my gear I am still looking though all the Uniques, Item sets, and Armor runewords to see which is the best. But the main things I will be looking for are + skills Crushing Blow or Deadly Strike, IAS, FHR, Cannot be Frozen and more life/mana leech. I want to max up on Deadly Strike items, because each FURY weapon has 33% chance to DS, but I dont know if that 33% is only counted when that one weapon is used, or if the 33% is added to the other weapons 33% even though just one of the weapons is swinging.

anyways, that's what I have thought up so far. I dont know if anyone has tried reaching Frenzy slvl 40 with a Barb, or if they have tried it with dual Elite Kris'. But let me know what you guys think of this build, and if you have any ideas about point distro or gear feel free to post em.

TIA

[Superhal]

you can get up to 55 frenzy or so. max possible is 255, but of course, unrealistic. guides generally only talk about points directly put into the skill. daggers have no mastery, so no help there. however, since fury weps have itd, you won't need the ar from mastery. since you are trying to avoid cookie cutters, the only diff i see here from a cookie cutter is not using double swing synergy and putting those points instead into other skills.

[BlueShadow]

you can get up to 55 frenzy or so. max possible is 255, but of course, unrealistic. guides generally only talk about points directly put into the skill. daggers have no mastery, so no help there. however, since fury weps have itd, you won't need the ar from mastery. since you are trying to avoid cookie cutters, the only diff i see here from a cookie cutter is not using double swing synergy and putting those points instead into other skills.


Oh yah, I forgot all about the synergies, I guess I wanted to max out BO and BC to get those bonuses. I also put a lot of points into increased speed to max out my Barbs W/R speed too. My main goal is to see how fast I can make this guy move and attack. The Barb guide had said that Swords and daggers, fall under sword mastery, but another source on D2.net said that they didn't. Too bad I wont be able to get the damage and Crit Strike bonuses from the sword mastery. I guess that does give me an excuse to put those mastery points somewhere else though.

Oh well, I'll give my double wielding dagger barb a try and see how far I can take him. I'll be using dual daggers right from the start as soon as I can find two of them.

[YomoKimyata]

Do not underestimate the power of the Fleshripper. Sure you don't get +5 frenzy, but the rest of the stats are extraordinary. Try a FURY and a Fleshripper together!

[BlueShadow]

Do not underestimate the power of the Fleshripper. Sure you don't get +5 frenzy, but the rest of the stats are extraordinary. Try a FURY and a Fleshripper together!

The fleshripper does have some good stats. I was looking at some of the lower level daggers to see if any of them were worth upgrading to Elite, but the only one I saw were Blackbogs Sharp and The Heart Carver both exceptional daggers.

A dual set of heart Carvers would be cool too, becasue with two of them I'd be getting an extra 8 pts into Grim Wards, Find Item and Find Pot. The dagger itself looks like it has ok stats for killing, 190-240% Enh Damage, 35% Deadly Strike, 150% to AR, Ignore Target Armor.

[BlueShadow]

Hey again guys,

About the synergies that was mentioned earlier, since I cannot put any points into mastery for my daggers, should I go ahead and max out double swing? I figure I'd go ahead and do that to get the added damage bonus that DS gives to Frenzy (8% damage per level) Maybe even put some points into taunt which is also a synergy for frenzy.

I'm also trying to think up ways to increase my overall Frenzy level through + items. I had a question about the barb class-specific helms. It should be possible to find a non magical Exceptional or Elite Barb helm with +3 to frenzy right? I was thinking if I can find one of those I can make a rune-helm which will add another +1 or +2 to skills.on top of the +3 to frenzy that the helm already has.

Now for ammys, it should be possible to find an ammy with +3 to combat skills right? I dont think rings would have any class specific + to skills modifier in them. I'd probably have to settle for a BK or SOJ ring with the +1 to skills