Bowbarb- Help and Suggestions please

[Captaincatharsis]

Okay so here goes. I've been trying to make some more unique characters recently, and for a long time was trying to figure out some way to use a bow effectively on a non amazon character. after Having made a couple singers (both a warcry singer and a throwing/support singer based on the Ancient), I decided to look up information on a bow wielding barbarian. I found one guide here, and while it's somewhat outdated http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=316298 , it definitely helped me to seriously think about how I want to do this. Below I will post my ideas for Skillbuild, and then the possible items I am considering. I'll give some reasoning behind each item, and hopefully we can get some good discussion.

Skill Build
------Warcies------
1 Howl (more?)
1 Find Potion
1 Taunt
20 Shout
1 Find Item
1 Battlecry
20 Battle Orders
5 Grim Ward
20 War Cry
1 Battle Command
71 total for tree

1 Increased Stamina
1 Iron Skin
6 Increased Speed
10 Natural Resistances
18 total for tree

1-5 Leap

90 Grand total (finished early 80s)

I think the build is pretty explanatory. Besides shout/bo/bc which are easy to understand, the other 2-3 used skills in the warcries tree are Grim Ward, warcry and possibly howl. They are all meant to help keep the barb from getting overwhelmed, and act as crowd control. I'm unsure as to the effectiveness of Howl, and wonder if that would be overkill. Conversely, I'm considering replacing warcry with it. The damage for warcry is negligible and the manacost is quite steep. It might be better to go 10howl and ten warcry, so that both are usable, but not obnoxious.

As to the masteries, these should be pretty simple to understand. Stamina and skin are not so needed (Shout is taken over skin for party effectiveness, as well as synergies), and Speed Resistances both lose effectiveness soon on. With a couple +Skills, they will be well over the needed place. Leap is just fo positioning and fun.


On to the items. First off, I don't have all of these, but have enough of them. Also, I have enough wealth to get what I don't already have.


---Weapon-WitchWild String/Ice/Faith/Buriza
I'm very unsure about this still. The Two runewords offe some very usefull auras, as well as some great other mods. Both of them have ITD. Faith has much nicer damage values, and the bonuses of Firedmg and Reanimation are welcome. Ice has lifeleach and deadly strike.
Now before you jump to these being the best, hear me out on the other two.(I would up them both to elite versions) Witchwild fires magic arrows, giving magic damage and no need for arrows, it has 2 sockets for customization, +40 resistance,scaling deadly strike(up to 99%!) and a chance to cast amplify damage. Buriza simply has massive damage, decent cold damage and freezes, piercing (negligible I hear) and a large dexterity bonus.

In Short I really can't decide. I'd rather not have to accumulate all and experiment to find which I like most, but if it comes down to it, I will. (I've considered using faith/ice on a merc, to fee my own bow)

--Swap-demon limb/hut sticks(echoing)
Pretty simple, two echoing spears for mastery bonus, and then a demon limb in inventory to enchant with (ar bonus is niceeee)

---Armor-Duress/CoH
These Both offer some great bonuses and are covered in The Mungodai guide linked earlier. Duress gives geat hit recovery, CB and OW, decent resists, and enhanced damage as well as cold damage. Chains of Honors gives massive resistance, enchance demon/UD dmg, dmg resist, and lifesteal. I think this will depend on the bow, but I think I have an extra of each and plan to experiment with them.

---Helm-guillaumme/arreats face/stealskull/crown of thieves/vampire gaze
Okay, Indecision 2009. All of these helms offer various goodies. Guillaumme for its ever loved crushing blow, arreats for +2skills, and everything else nice(res, fhr, lifesteal, +str,dex).
Stealskull is very intriguing with dual leach, fhr, and ias. Crown of thieves gives great lifeleech and dexterity, and finally vampire gives dual leech, cold damage, and damage resist. I'm definitely leaning towards stealskull, but I'd like to hear opinions.
---Gloves-Lavagout/Draculs/Soul Dainer
All three have their benefits, with Dracs helping out greatly with survival, and Souls helping with that and mana issues. For Witchwild, both of these having a ctc curse is somewhat sad but not groundbreaking. The lavagouts I'm pretty interested in. IAS and the chance to cast enchant is temping. Of course, a set glove may replace them.

---Belt-Nosferatus Coil/verdungo
I think this is pretty simple. Nosferatus coils gives lifesteal and IAS, while vedungo makes you tank even better. String of ears could be a final option.

---Boots-Gorerider
Really no other choice, CB, DS, and OW.

---Amulet-the cats eye
This actually gave me some time to think, but I feel the IAS on this is more useful than almost any other amulet. Resistance is not too critical on barbs, and +skill is mediocre at best. I'm welcome to suggestions with reasoning.

---Rings-Ravenfrost/ravenfrost/rarecrafted
One ravenfrost for CBF, and the dexAR. A second would be a backup until I run into a great ring with dexterity, lifesteal/manasteal etc.

As for other items, an anni and a Btorch will be available, and I won't really need any grand charms. So most likely just +dex and +res charms, which shouldn't be too difficult to get.


I hope that some people can spend the time really looking into this, as I find it to be an interesting problem. Since you have most likely already read through the items, and hopefully formulated opinions, I'm going to give you a quick rundown of my top pick at the moment.

Wep-WWS(upped)
Arm-Duress
Helm-Stealskull
Belt-Nosferatus
Boot-Gore
Amy-Cats Eye
Ring-2xRaven

Merc would have faith, for fanatacism. and guiilaume with CoH for booster Fant and great resistance.

Let me just say a couple words about how I hope this would work. With your warcries skills, you would boost your party immensely and have massive crowd control, being able to constantly keep non uniques away from you. Your attackspeed would rival good bowazons and with your massive lifegain per point, you can dump more into dexterity, boosting damage.From what I have read and seen, it seems this would be very viable, and with your massive hp, even the uniques who charge you should fall quickly due to crushing blow and other mods.


Lets start a good discussion, and happy new year!

[DH Amazon]

Okay so here goes. I've been trying to make some more unique characters recently, and for a long time was trying to figure out some way to use a bow effectively on a non amazon character.


I made one bow char for each class for this ladder. And bow barb was my 5th bow barb so far.
As barb is 2nd fastest char to shoot arrows try to use that and give max speed for barb. And by looking your items, you are planning to do it.

Bow barb is one of the safest bow chars, so plenty of points can be used for dex. Around 800-1000 life is enough before BO. And life leech is not needed, you rarely get hit and can howl monsters away when needed.
And you have huge defense compared to all other bow chars, so you don't get hit often and so you have time to regerate all life you lost at battle.

Haven't found use for that Grim Ward, with good items Barb can survive just fine.
But you have plenty of points, so couple points there don't hurt either.
And faith (merc) gives those black skeletons quite often, those are nice moving meatshield, and usually enough.

I like to have more points in howl, as its easier to start using it at start of hell. At lvl 90 you can howl all with lvl1+skills anyway.
Reason I like good lvl Howl is that I like to kill kill champions/group boss first then deal those cowards that runned away. And they stay little longer away with good lvl of howl (around 10 hard points and 3-4 from items).

Leap is nice, test leap lvl in river. Try to get lvl that you can leap across those gaps. Around 3-5 hards points should be enough.

Even maxing howl is nice as Bow barb is strong/safe char, you can start doing hell pits around lvl65...70 and there good lvl howl is nice.


I comment those items later, looks good. That WWS is nice for barb, gives good damage and no arrow problems.

I recently made Wrath for bow-assa, and it worked so nicely, needed to test it with barb too. After field testing with other char, it feels little better than upped WWS. Gives solution against PI, gives more life leech than your char/merc ever need and great against end bosses.

Happy new year.


edit:
About those items.

I like to have prevent monster heal item for 'weak' chars that need to take monsters one by one. Works against poison immunes and 4th wave in baal is always poison immunes.

Three options (Blackwings helmet, nature piece ring and Wrath)
Blackwings helmet is very good for bow-barb. Slow, prevent heal, lightning resist and absorb (make almost immune to souls). And open slot for ench or ias jool if needed.

Nature piece ring is best ring if doing pits (boss cant revive minions), or against 2nd wave baal. Works great too near Nihlathak.
Raven is better allaround, but keep nature piece in stash for some areas.

That lava gout is nice for bow barb, that enchant triggers quite often. At least best option for nmare, maybe later prebuff with enchant charges.
But prebuffing is annoying, so I like to use those lava gouts.

Bow barb and Rogue merc have same breakpoints, both can shoot at 8frame speed, at those should be your 1st priority. Rogue needs (if great bow) around 30...35 ias for 8frame and Barb needs around 50ias with WWS. Depends lvl of fana aura.

Threachery is good armor for both merc and barb. Duress is good option for both too, then ias needed to take from other items. Good option is to make Threachery for merc and Duress for Barb. Then you can borrow mercs armor for couple of seconds and trigger venom for barb too. Lvl 15 venom last 176s, gives 315 poison over .4 seconds. That .4s is good, as you shoot 3 arrows in seconds and target only one char.

Thunderbelt is one of best belt for this bow barb. Gives immune against lightning and some life. And some lightning damage.

As those ravens makes you almost immune against cold and Thunder against lightning its easy to survive almost everywhere.

Getting too long...
Maybe better just list items for my next bow barb.

Blackhorn's face (15 ias jool ...)
Highlords wrath amu (20 ias), total 35 ias give 8frames speed
Wrath (great bow)
Fortitide armor (Enigma at stash if need to fly)
Cleglaw gloves (slow, knockback)
2x Raven (nature piece at stash)
Thunderbelt (gives +str boost to use demon limb, 133str req.), Arach at stash for tele and extra slow.
Gorerider boots

Demon limb and hoto at switch. Hoto just for BO and fcr when nigma is on.

Faith (great bow), Threachery and Giant skull(ench. jools)
gives 8frame speed too, and life leech she get from life tap

And elemental damage charms with resist/fhr or +max grand charms.


Helmet and gloves slot not sure. Those current ones are targeted against 4th and 5th wave in throne as those are hardest for bow barb. And against that one seal boss near diablo. Those are usually hardest for bow barb. And that slow helps against bosses too, those are quite hard for bow chars.

And all act bosses are easy to take down if enough slow.

edit2:
Finally hell baal down. Soloed whole hell. Wrath was very nice bow, actually worked better for merc and faith for barb.
Char is lvl70 now, around 15 skill points saved.

[SnickerSnack]

Merc would have faith, for fanatacism. and guiilaume with CoH for booster Fant and great resistance.

Aura granting items grant the aura itself, not the skill. So +skill items do not affect such auras.

You're not even considering Razortail?