IK Question

[Phalmos]

I had an IK barb a few months ago, cookie cutter WW build. I enjoyed normal and nightmare, but even at lvl 85 in Hell I was barely able to kill anything. I survived easily enough, but when it takes half an hour to run Andy, something's wrong. Not enough damage I figure. Anyway, my question was, is it because I didn't have enough ed jewels in the set? (I had maybe a total of 20 ed due to being poor). I'm thinking of rebuilding, because the build looked great and performed well, until it came to hell killing. Is there something I'm missing here? I figure it's GOT to be something with my socketing job, because the stats, skills, and equipment were perfect cookie cutter standards.

[sirwhere]

You're not missing anything. It's just that hell monsters have a bucketload of hit points and physical resistances, especially from travincal onwards. IK isn't fit to deal with those monsters quickly. You'd need stuff like highlord amulet, laying gloves, gore boots, fortitude/duress/chains of honor armor, guillaume's helm, etc. to kill quickly and consistently.

[Leohappy]

what you experience is nothing special really, bosses and physical damage don't go well together since the 1.10 patch, because bosses always have high block % AND high DR % which means they have TWO resistances against physical damage (elemental damage can't be blocked), that means bosses are hard to kill with melee/ranged chars

just a quick glimpse at andys stats reveals the source of your frustration:
40% block & 66% dr

still i've found that a merc with reapers toll polearm (cast decrepif) helps my damage a good deal vs everything and slows down bosses aswell

crushing blow on the set weapon (40%) really helps the damage here - provided you cut down their physical resistance beforehand

[Phalmos]

So then using the IK set = NOT very fast killing? Even when the build is complete?

[prostuff]

maybe if u put 2ber's into the maul that might help

[sirwhere]

IK kills fast in acts 1 2 3. Still ok for early act 4, but from the river of flame onwards, monsters have a lot of hitpoints...

[Eilo Rytyj]

maybe if u put 2ber's into the maul that might help

That's the one thing you should NOT do to your IK Maul.

IK Maul needs another 30% IAS on top of it's inherent 40% to reach maximum WW speed. This is where your killing speed comes from, getting to the fastest WW speed it the very first thing you should do with the IK set before anything else.

2 Shael runes are the cheap option, and suffice just fine. But they are superceded by IAS Jewels if they have good second mods. IMHO the best would be the infamous 40ed/15ias Jewels, increasing the weapon's damage from 231-318 to a more respectable 292-402.

As for Helm and Armor sockets, I've had great success with Sol runes. 3 Sol runes means 21 damage reduced. I use my IK barb to run Nihlathak a lot, and the 3 Sol runes along with the 20% damage reduction on the Belt negate about 75% of the bugged Tomb Viper poison cloud damage. Ber runes come in second place, giving a total of 44% DR with the whole set. Monsters rarely deal more than 100 physical damage, even in Hell (IIRC highest is ~140 for Frenzytaurs). Sol runes are cheap, and very effective.

If it's more damage you want, then 40ed/9str Jewels (or just plain 40ed Jewels) are the most damaging option. 40ed/15max or min aren't as good, since they're bugged to only boost the min or max damage rather than your whole damage.

The Angelic Combo is a great one to use on an IK barb. Since you're not spending ANY points in Dex, you'll need to get AR from other sources, and there's no better source in the game. Angelic Ammy/Ring and 1 Raven Frost are what I use, and I have ~13k AR, or 14k when Enchant procs, which is enough to hit consistantly. A higher level means a better chance to hit as well, so keep levelling as high as you can. As you can probably guess, a higher chance to hit means more hits, which means faster killing.

Otherwise, Highlord's Wrath is probably the best option in the absence of Angelics. You can then throw in a second Raven Frost to make up the extra AR. The 20% IAS helps a little when you're Concentrating or Berserking, bringing them from a 13 frame to a 12 frame attack.

Hope all this helps!

[Leohappy]

So then using the IK set = NOT very fast killing? Even when the build is complete?i can do pit, flayer, travincal in 8player games while soloing and the killing is quite fast

i've also beat diablo clone 3 times

imho 9-10k ar is totally enough for pvm (i have 2x good frost, 1x 1xx ar/life gc and ias/ar jewel in weapon), angelics combo and metalgrid should only be used in ik vs ik duels

any yeh, you NEED reapers toll on merc, this is very important if you run travincal or of you bump into mana burners or DC :starry: