View Full Version : My frenzy barb idea
I was thinking of ways to build a very high dmg high speed pvm barb and this is what i've come up with.
Using lvl 92 barb with lvl 91 nightmare act 2 offensive merc
barb gear (assume all perfect)
gulliame face (throw a 40ed jewel in),sacred fort,steel rend,gore riders,high lords ammy,frost raven to prevent freeze,you're choice of other ring and belt,dual grief pbs
merc gear (assume all perfect)
shako, chains of honor, pride rune word
merc might lvl = 10/32*91 + 4(from gear) = lvl 32 might aura
merc conc lvl = 20 + 4 (from gear) = lvl 24 concentration aura
We're interested in enhanced damage, deadly strike, and crushing blow, and the numbers turn out as follows
Enhanced dmg to barb (ignoring +skills from any equipped barb gear)
505% from fully synergized frenzy
300% from fort
232% from str required to wear sacred fort
123% from sword mastery
60% from steel rend
40% from jewel in helm
350% from merc might aura
405% from merc concentration aura
--------------------
2015% enhanced dmg
Deadly strike
15% from gore riders
34% from high lords ammy
15% from guilliame face
20% on grief
--------------------
84% chance of deadly strike
Crushing blow
35% from gulliames
10% from steel rends
15% from gore riders
--------------------
60% chance of crushing blow
So thats 2015% ed, 84% deadly strike, 60% cb. Assuming perf griefs this crunches out to 9094.5 - 9200.25 dmg per sword swing, with a 84% chance of doing 18189 - 18400.5 dmg per sword swing. High speed ofcourse given that pb's are fast weapons.
Giving up life tap cuts off your shot at immortality but I've never had any problems with this build. I currently use a 11% life leech ring with a 7% life leech. The little life leech % i get after drain effectiveness seems to be sufficient on most monsters given the dmg being dealt.
Any thoughts?
thats a nice barb to impress the idiots in baalruns that always ask "zomg whats the dmgz noob?"
but, with how fast frenzy barbs run you just lose your merc way too much with fort imo, which means bye bye might and concentration. i've done the math in the past and decrepify alone adds more dmg than fort+concentration, so sticking a reaper's toll on your might merc and using enigma to tele him in the middle of groups with you would be much more effective imo. enigma also allows you to wtfpwn the mini-ubers in record time.
you can just use coh for uber trist since they're all demons anyway. coh has much more res and paired with enigma it allows you to save 20 str, among other things. gloves wise, i'd rather have the whopping 350% ed to demons and 20 ias of laying of hands than the puny 60% ed to all of rends, especially with ubers in mind.
that 20 ias is also just what you need (or 15 ias in helm), cuz given 34+ ias on your main hand grief you still need ~35 offhand ias to swing at 5 fpa all day, instead of having to charge up i.e strike a few hits in order to get it.
I've been using the build for hell cows so far, and I rarely lose my merc cuz there's always another batch of cows near by, I've lost the aura a few times while doing pit runs but every time I encounter a large mob the merc reappears and the might and concentration kick in.
What I proposed would be suicidal in trist but I was thinking of it as a general pvm strat. Also if your using a thresher doesn't the merc need to strike your enemies for decrepify to kick in? Is it really better than recieving the radius effect of concentration from your merc?
I've thought about curse casting as well to increase damage but the best idea I could think of that I haven't tinkered with is the atma's scarab with a 5% chance to cast amplify dmg. Wouldn't this be better than relying on merc to trigger decrep?
With my current build in game which chalks up to about 1700 ed because I don't have perfect gear, I can take out a hell cow after one instance of frenzy attack. Would your method with thresher be able to provide this or would it be even better?
Totally agree with you about the laying of the hands bit though I'd only use that if I was going to tackle demon monsters. Also personally I prefer draculs grasp in trist for the open wounds.
I'm still doing testing to see if I can move the damage higher and the next phase I'll probably experiment with an atmas scarab...unless someone can lend me a reapers toll to experiment with.
merc conc lvl = 20 + 4 (from gear) = lvl 24 concentration aura
No skill points are added to aura from item
Deadly strike
15% from gore riders
34% from high lords ammy
15% from guilliame face
20% on grief
--------------------
84% chance of deadly strike
Crushing blow
35% from gulliames
10% from steel rends
15% from gore riders
--------------------
60% chance of crushing blow
You are wrong. It should be calculated another way, but I cannot explain calculation method. My English is not sufficient and I was not very carefull in school when my teacher explained difference between covariatins, variations etc.:scratchchin:
Ref. ED, I do not know how it is exactly calculated but looks on Aldur set:
http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/sets/sets4.shtml#aldurs
350ED = 210-325 total damage. I never checked but I think that damage from non weapon equip is calculated similar to Aldur's dammage. Anyway I'm not sure and I can be wrong.
For all mercs, only the mod "+X to all skills" will work by raising their existing skill level by the equivalent of X entire levels of the equivalent player characters skill. While merc skills do improve with each level, it isn't in the same way as that of player characters, so + to skills can really benefit mercs. E.g.. the Iron Wolves magical skills are capped at lvl 18 so + to skills here can lead to a significant improvement. - taken from strategy compendium~ this is why i believe the +skills will boost merc aura
I don't see what it is about the enhanced damage on aldurs that doesn't correspond to the way I treated enhanced damage? All sources of ED for this setup come outside the weapon. Therefore they all stack?
Also if your using a thresher doesn't the merc need to strike your enemies for decrepify to kick in? Is it really better than recieving the radius effect of concentration from your merc?
yes and imo, yes. reaper's toll is ITD and the chance to cast decrep is 33%. a thresher is also a fast pole, so with decent ias on the merc it pretty much triggers like crazy, and the range isnt bad either. when i tele into a group i barely have the time to start swinging before its on almost every monster.
damage wise decrep blows any aura or fort out of the water. it does -50 physical resistance, so on a monster with 50 damage reduction, it doubles your damage. if we take out the 405% ed from concentration in your setup, double damage basically means another 1610% ed, for a total of... 3220 ed. its not as big on monsters with less damage reduction, but still huge. the advantage of this "method" is also that you never lose your merc's might aura, not to mention that it slows and weakens enemies by 50%, and takes care of immunes. oh, and your merc will deal a lot more damage himself, since he's always in the action.
I've thought about curse casting as well to increase damage but the best idea I could think of that I haven't tinkered with is the atma's scarab with a 5% chance to cast amplify dmg. Wouldn't this be better than relying on merc to trigger decrep?
imo highlords is just too good... and 5% isnt much, it wont trigger all the time, far from it (just like draculs).
With my current build in game which chalks up to about 1700 ed because I don't have perfect gear, I can take out a hell cow after one instance of frenzy attack. Would your method with thresher be able to provide this or would it be even better?
well thats an interesting question because too much damage can be overkill in solo games really. my barb's raw damage is nothing special with enigma and ar charms (i think ar > max/ar for ubers and they are the priority for me). even then, i still one hit a lot of stuff WITHOUT decrep. my damage is something like 6.5K per weap (botd/death, dunno if thats with might or not). WITH decrep i one hit a cow, thats for sure lol.
so in a way, the ultimate solo pvm barb would be one that does enough damage straight up to one hit stuff without "needing" decrep, might and/or concentration to do it. that would be something like your build, but then you lose a merc a lot... do you still one hit most stuff without his auras?
you probably do more often than me. then again, i think i get the decrep and especially the might from mine probably more often than u get the two auras from yours, so i dunno.
for multiplayer games or uniques/bosses, enigma+decrep is probably best for damage output. i've never tried a fort setup to be honest (i just "need" enigma for the mini-ubers), but the numbers speak for themselves.
as a side note, i think a setup like this could potentially be pretty deadly for pvm: combat skillers or max/ar charms (whatever is the best for dmg), 2xBK, cham somewhere for cbf, blessed aim merc to make up for the crap ar. now im not even sure whether all those +skills add more dmg than might, but if they do, well there you go.
finally, are you on east ladder? i dont have a reapers toll but my merc does, if you wanna try it out :P.
- taken from strategy compendium~ this is why i believe the +skills will boost merc aura
I don't see what it is about the enhanced damage on aldurs that doesn't correspond to the way I treated enhanced damage? All sources of ED for this setup come outside the weapon. Therefore they all stack?
concentration will be at the level it is on the pride. +skills on merc dont do anything because the aura isnt one of the merc's skills, its granted by an item. +skills do add to might though, and its not capped at 20 like i've once read somewhere, so the more the better.
if +skills worked that way infinity-carrying lite sorcs would be totally insane in pvp, lol.
[QUOTE=Shocker;6917926I don't see what it is about the enhanced damage on aldurs that doesn't correspond to the way I treated enhanced damage? All sources of ED for this setup come outside the weapon. Therefore they all stack?[/QUOTE]
Aldur was only example (see the bottom of set where * is explained). I do not know which way game calculating your damage. Another example. My pala zeal damage without any aura 1636-2354. When with lvl 24 fanatism 2178-2980. lvl 24 fanatism = 440ED. I know that part of damage shown in stats window was elemental damage. Fana does not affect ele dmg but even 1000-1500 phisical dmg with fanatism should give over 4K+ele not 2178-2980.
Last ladder I had nice frenzy torch hunter. Beast + LW in BAxes. Do not remeber damage but was sufficient to kill ubers in less then 1 minute. Anyway he was completly useless. He got 1 torch. Another runs were "connection interrupted" (I must finish it with smiter). Too many auras + ubers animation effects is too much for Blizzard servers. Even baalruns were difficult.
not quite sure what you're saying there shuy, would you be able to give me your input on the expected dmg of my gear?
drake, there's no such thing as too much dmg :thumbup: my goal is to do as much damage as possible, knocking out as many monsters as fast as possible. Without the merc around yes I can one hit most little monsters in the game (not 8 player ofcourse). The only explicit testing i've done with big hp monsters is the hell cows (15khp i believe). There it takes me 1.5 frenzy attacks (3 sword swings) to kill each cow without the merc.
With hell cows I don't think I've ever lost the merc aura simply because I can't get too far away from the merc without running into another mob of cows.
I'll test for this explicitly outside the moo moo farm as well to see how often I lose the mercs auras.
Also find it interesting you use botd and beast. Max damage is nice but average dmg trumps all doesn't it? I do believe grief has highest average dmg, and two griefs make for a better combo I'd think. Better to have two strong killing weapons than one aura enhanced powerful killing weapon and a weak weapon which provides the aura.
I'm aware of what decrep does and now that you mention your tactic, teleing will gauarantee the decrep on monsters wont it? certainly something i'd like to tinker with .
and yep I'm on east ladder~
and thx for the info on the +skills to merc, the way they worded it was quite misleading on the strat compendium~
Also find it interesting you use botd and beast. Max damage is nice but average dmg trumps all doesn't it? I do believe grief has highest average dmg, and two griefs make for a better combo I'd think. Better to have two strong killing weapons than one aura enhanced powerful killing weapon and a weak weapon which provides the aura.
I'm aware of what decrep does and now that you mention your tactic, teleing will gauarantee the decrep on monsters wont it? certainly something i'd like to tinker with .
you misread i use botd/death for pvm (beast/death for ubers; the speed, ar and cb of beast is very nice in there). only axes for me since i really want to use beast against ubers; and for pvm a griefz would be a bit too slow in main hand imo (30-40 ias vs 60). botd has all that leech too. a griefz would be nice in offhand though, but i dont have any stash space for it anyhow :P. also, death is indestructible and probably just as mean as grief (or almost) when u consider the mods on it.
about decrep, it will be all over the place if you tele in the middle of a group. on top of what i said, theres also this phenomenon with mercs when u tele on a monster: they seem to hit like... instantaneously. people who have played summon necros know what i'm talking about :)
i replied to your pm; lets kill some shtuff.
I've just checked on A1 merc. I'm not sure if I'm right but I'll try to explain whole experiment.
First I've checked dmg of merc without weapon 75-80.
Later I gave her "lionheart" armor 20ED +15dex. Dmg 84-91. Difference 9-11 It is not 20% of 75-80 (should be 18,5-20) moreover that damage should increase because of 15 additional dex. Here I do not understand calculating. Maybe Blizzard use very small percents ;)
Anyway later I use WW bow which has pure physical damage.
Damage was 172-306. With "Lionheart" 194-345. Difference 22-39. I think in this moment 15 dexterity affected higher dmg and difference is bigger. I'm not sure but after this experiment I think that damage from non weapon stuff is calculated according to base dmg.
For example your barb has base non weapon 100-200 dmg (just for easy calculation ;) )
Fortitude armor add 300-600 dmg. If your barb with weapon has 1000-2000 dmg fortitude always add only 300-600.
I hope that my explanation was clear even if I did misstakes. If you have any item which has pure EDmg (for exaple forty or biggin's bonnet have no str/dex/ele dmg) try to check it again. I have no idea how EDmg from armor affect EDmg from skills. I can only predict that:
total dmg = (Weapon dmg) + (base dmg*EDmg from stuff) + (base dmg*EDmg from skills) + (base dmg*EDmg from auras).
Anyway highest dmg in game has melee sorc :D
I had 12-55K but I think maximum could be over 70 000. It was elemental damage ofc.
the mercs str is ed in itself shuy, i think you might have overlooked that.
I used A1 merc - rouge with bow. Bow damage is increased by dex not str.
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