War Cries

[Clervis]

I read a War Cries Barb guide and it made me wonder about two warcries it didn't mention.

When I look at it I realized that with enough skill points and +skill gear you could get Taunt to give you -101% enemies damage and -101% attack (rating). And Battle Cry can reduce defense <100% and damage -75%.

My question is Does anybody use these skills, because they seem like they could work amazingly?

Imagine being able to nullify enemies attacks to piddly. Or for a WW Barb to take away all of their defense and have a free reign attack.

[SSoG]

I read a War Cries Barb guide and it made me wonder about two warcries it didn't mention.

When I look at it I realized that with enough skill points and +skill gear you could get Taunt to give you -101% enemies damage and -101% attack (rating). And Battle Cry can reduce defense <100% and damage -75%.

My question is Does anybody use these skills, because they seem like they could work amazingly?

Imagine being able to nullify enemies attacks to piddly. Or for a WW Barb to take away all of their defense and have a free reign attack.

I'm one of the dinosaurs who actually builds entire barbarians around Taunt and Battle Cry.

A couple of things you should know. First off, the -% Damage is capped at -90% (I've tested and verified this), so no matter how high you get your Taunt, monsters will still deal 10% of their physical damage. Second, the -% damage does nothing against elemental damage, so get yourself some resists! Third, the -% AR of Taunt isn't capped, but there's no practical benefit to having more than -101% AR. The -% Defense on Battle Cry also isn't capped, which is absurdly powerful- at slvl 26 Battlecry, that's -100% Enemy Defense, and it works on *ANYTHING*. It's ITD, except it works on EVERYTHING, up to and including Act Bosses (actually, "Possessed" monsters are immune to curses, and Stone Skin bosses will still have some defense, but other than that it's ITD against everything).

Some random facts and minutia. PDR + -% Damage is an incredibly powerful combo that I have built several barbs around. With 50 PDR and -80% damage, something would have to deal over 250 damage in order for you to even feel anything. Another fun fact: Taunt is the only way in the entire game to get a positive defensive value while using Berserk- when enemy AR is negative, it drops the AR to zero and adds the extra to your defense, meaning going from a slvl 45 Taunt (-99% AR) to a slvl 46 Taunt (-101% AR) will cause monster's chance to hit you to drop from 95% to 5% (assuming you're both the same level).

The biggest drawback to Taunt and Battlecry is that you actually have to cast them. It slows down your killing speed if you have to use Battle Cry against every monster you run into before attacking. The second biggest drawback is that both Taunt and Battlecry are considered curses, and will overwrite/be overwritten by any other curses. This means no Taunt + Lifetap, no Battlecry + Decrep, etc.

[Clervis]

Thank you SSoG. That's what I hoped and thought, especially its usefulness with berserk. Pretty dang nifty. I bet that could really help a IK Barb, too.