Getting Good Gear

[Stoff]

For every barbarian, it seems it is essential to have awesome gear.
"Equip:
helm: arreat's face + um
armor: enigma AP
belt: verdungos
boots: goreriders
gloves: draculs
amulet: highlords
rings: ravenfrost + BK
primary: ebotz"

how does one go about getting gear like this. This is my first barbarian build and I am a a lv 78 frenzy barb. My gear is total crap and I'll be damned if I can find any half decent gear or trade anything worthwhile to get it.
I don't really want to go to these adbot sites and dropping some serious change on gear either.
Please Help!
Thank you

[Damric]

I don't see why you need any of that for a frenzy barb.

- Guillame's face is better than arreats, especially for pvm frenzy, and cheaper. Need more defensive?> get a rockstopper for even cheaper. I really suggest guillame's face to add extra power to attacks. There is no stronger pvm melee helm in the game. The only reason I would consider arreats is if I had already 100% crushing blow.

- Treachery Armor or Duress would be much more effective than enigma and much cheaper than enigma.

- string of ears is superior for pvm, and much cheaper than Verdungo's. Actually, I can't think of any reason why anyone would pick Verdungo's over string of ears or a nice crafted blood belt.

- dracul's is unnecessary. If you really want lifetap, merchants sell lifetap charge wands. The strongest gloves are laying of hands and 20ias/10cb crafted blood gloves.

- gore rider's are nice, but goblin toes are just as good for pvm at a fraction of the cost.

- highlords is nice, but atma's can be just as, or more effective and much cheaper.

- one low ravenfrost you can probably get for 10 perfect gems on this forum.

- Bk ring is a miserable choice for 99% of barbarians. Craft a blood ring for your 2nd ring and perhaps it will have attack rate and life/mana steal, resists, or stats.

Now the weapons: ebotdz is one of strongest and often the end-game weapon for many. You are level 78, not exactly end-game, so relax. If you are axe mastery, get yourself a normal death cleaver, razor's edge, gimmershred, lacerator, butcher's pupil, runemaster, or whatever you can afford. With enough crushing blow%, your character will kill quickly no matter what weapon you use. If you haven't invested in axe mastery, theres also many awesome and cheap swords and maces, too many great frenzy weapons to list here.

Don't let the adbots brainwash you into thinking there is only one way to gear your character. The barbarians of this forum have been owning diablo since before the age of runewords or adbots, and we will continue to do so with or without the l33t gear that those item farm/dupe sites want you to cookie cut with.

[Croup]

There is always cheap gear that you can get that will at least let you survive in the Pits in Hell. Once you can run the Pits with little risk of dying, you can start accumulating decent drops and therefore the wealth to improve your gear. Here's an example of cheap Frenzy gear, with prices in parentheses according to USEast standards. West is pretty similar, but there could be differences. Europe is probably the same for this low-end stuff, but I could be wrong.

Helm: Stealskull (5x PGem for low MF, Pul TOPS for perfect MF)
Amulet: Best rare you can find, or spring for Highlord's (Pul)
Armor: Skullder's (5-10x PGem), Lionheart (Lem-Pul depending on the armor you use)
Weapon 1: Doombringer (10x PGem)
Weapon 2: Doombringer (10x PGem)
Switch Weapon 1: Ali Baba (5x PGem)
Switch Weapon 2: Ali Baba (5x PGem)
Gloves: Laying of Hands (3x PGem)
Belt: String of Ears (5x PGem, Pul TOPS for an 8/15)
Boots: Rare Boots with Resists (self-found or 5x PGems), War Travs (Lem-Pul for low MF)
Ring 1: Raven Frost (10x PGem for low stats, Pul+ for 20 Dex)
Ring 2: Best Rare Life Leech you can find/gamble

I listed MF gear because it's the best way to start off and build up items/wealth. All of that stuff is pretty cheap, with Pul being the most you'd pay for something, and that's only if you wanted better stats on your gear as opposed to average stats. Very doable and if you got a decent rune drop off of your hellforge, you could pick up a lot of it.

If you've got any questions, feel free to post them.

[Damric]

lol croup, great minds must think alike as you were typing same time as me.

[neno]

I agree on everything on second post except Guillame's... it's great helm, but CB is better for bosses imo, and Arreat in general play. (AR boost, resistances etc)

I heard when CB triggers DS is denied, is that right? If that is so, than DS is definately better in general PvM as it lands more dmg? At least when you play alone or p8 single player?

[Barloc]

CB is does not deny DS. Also, if you were in P8 with high hit-point boosts, Guilliame's damage outshines Arreats noticeably. I use Arreats most of the time, because most of the time I dont feel my damage sucks.

[donshi]

Barbarians are 1 of the most gear-dependent classes and I don't see much point in picking a barbarian without funds to support it.

Like most people I started off with another MF character. My necro does key runs and mini-uber runs and lv85 area runs to collect wealth, and it would probably take me 2-3 weeks before I can accumulate the 16hrs or so to get all those equipment.

But yeah, you have a frenzy barb already. They can be used effectively to collect funds too. I wouldn't recommend area running as WW-ers are more suited for that purpose. That and you lose so much effectiveness without teleport.

If you get a nature's peace and a few PDR equipment, you can run nihlatak pretty easily. Because you can get to nihl so quickly, enigma isn't essential for this purpose.

Another option that doesnt require teleport is gold-finding. Barbs make the best gold-finders in the game. GF equipment is very cheap (though to optimize gf-ing, you need a pretty good merc weapon), and you can gamble some godly equip to auction off for HRs. This method requires some patience though, as not only will it take you long to find good equip, it will take some time to find the right buyer.

And yes, there are other viable cheaper options than those you posted. When you plan to run uber-tristram, you'll want the best of the best, but for general pvm purposes, you have cheaper and better options.

[neno]

CB is does not deny DS. Also, if you were in P8 with high hit-point boosts, Guilliame's damage outshines Arreats noticeably. I use Arreats most of the time, because most of the time I dont feel my damage sucks.

Yes but with more players in game or bigger player settings CB's efficiency is divided I think? Like, not taking 25% of health but less (12,5%) etc or that's only for bosses?

[Stoff]

Thank you all for the help.
I am in USWEST, and it seems people are a lot more chinsey here. Ive tried to trade players for some of this gear you've recommended and all anyone wants is hrs and thats it. Id anyone has any gear that they would be willing to trade me for some pgems and a couple runes it would be much appreciated. Most of my gear right now is complete crap and as I just went hell tonight I'm finding it difficult. Please post below or send me a PM and we can arrange to meet up.
Thanks

[jhtvman]

Stoff, you should hang out in the USWest Trading Forum's channel, op pc_wtf. You can usually find a few people in there and ask around about gear as well as other things. Also, if you need help getting through the game or beating skill quests, one of us is usually up for helping out.

[Damric]

I'll contact people that know people and see what I can do. You probably were just asking the wrong forum traders.

[KremBanan]

how does one go about getting gear like this.
Trade. Thats the key. I started out using my first HF Um to buy 2 Tal amulets in forum and sold them for Um each ingame. This I did maybe 15-20 times..and then I got some funds to buy higher items and sold them for higher ingame. In the meantime, I collected all gems, low runes, junk jewels etc I could find and sold them in packs. And after a while I had decent funds to equip two chars. Buy cheap, sell expensive. Join freegames. Collect packs of spiritpacks and craftpacks.
Ofc, the rates are different now, so Tal amulets might not be the right items for you now, but you will find other items.

After some tiem you will have decent gear. Getting "godly" gear will ofc take time, but those are overrated. For most builds, good items will do just fine.

[sirwhere]

Indeed. It's easy to get pretty decent gear for a mid rune after the ladder gets 6 months old.