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woot, what a feeling. i think this charm can really screw up dueling but im not pvp so it doesnt concern me that much. it was the journey that counts. i think blizz got it right by having a quest that is available to everyone instead of the elusive diablo clone quest. this quest is harder and everyone can do it with time and skills. so, first i wanna say cool idea. it was a blast collecting pieces and fighting new challenges.
the build:
this barb is quite imperfect because he was actually my first ladder character (i started about 7 weeks ago). he was building towards an oath balrog blade, which was the best item i figured i could make. basically he has too many stats outside of vitality. just goes to show that you dont need a jesus build to get the job done. its not a build, but rather an existing character that i re-equipped with some favorable items.
here is a pic of my character window as i am fighting diablo:
http://img275.imageshack.us/img275/3...twindow3tj.jpg
as you can see my damage, AR, and life are unimpressive. my right hand has a lot of deadly strike but my left hand is very weak.
gear:
death berserker axe
lawbringer legend sword
155/5 arreats with 15% ias / +5 max jewel
dusk fort
gores
IK gloves
IK belt
highlords
2 x ravenfrost
thats right, im such a big noob im actually using IK stuff.
right hand
deadly strike: 90 + critical strike
crushing blow: 65%
left hand:
15% crushing blow
*warning, im about to start preeching about lawbringer*
lawbringer is awesome. it did exactly what i thought it was going to do when i incorporated it into this setup.
lawbringer has level 18 sanctuary. this makes skeleton mages/archers do the knockback shuffle and renders them unable to swarm you or attack you. it completely dominates one of the more dangerous aspects of tristram. and before you can say "any pally has sanctuary" or "azurewrath," level 18 sanctuary covers the whole screen, unlike azure or a pally with one point in the aura.
lawbringer casts decrepify on striking. decrepify slows down the uber bosses and also weakens their physical attack tremendously. at level 15, it lasts 12 seconds which means you have plenty of time to re-trigger it without it wearing off. decrepify lowers physical resist which leads to crushing blow ownage.
lawbringer has -50% defense so it has a pretty decent chance of scoring a hit even against the uber bosses, although chance to hit is more affected by the fact they are level 110.
lawbringer costs practically nothing.
for more information see my post i the barb forum
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=372465
many people have probably noticed the "death effect" by now. i hit join on bnet and i see 8,000 games that say "botd for death" and i also see people asking for it in the trade forums. did something change? i thought it was a good weapon before this patch and was rushing to create it before the ladder reset which never happened. now people are clamoring for it. must be because it does more physical damage than any other weapon in the game after the deadly strike is applied. the 50% crushing blow isnt bad eitheri have also noticed people asking for exiles, probably to make smiters, which is a much better build for this task.
now im not going to lie to you: i drank a lot of purples to beat these guys. in fact, barbs have a real advantage that way. barbs can scare up a full belt of potions in a matter of minutes unlike other characters. without life tap you will have to drink a lot. but you dont have to have life tap. red potions sufficed against diablo and baal. meph needed purples though.
experiences:
i still have yet to face uber duriel. i got two izual portals and traded a brain for an eye to make a tristram set. so i cant comment on that.
i can confirm though that izual is really easy. he dies very quickly and doesnt do much damage. this is likely because almost everyone wears a ravenfrost and he is a cold themed boss. when he landed he did over 500 damage but he wasnt particularly aggressive (might have been the decrep though). the furnace is pretty difficult for a melee character, especially a barb because of the mages.
lillith is a lot harder and will kill your merc in about .5 seconds if you give her the chance. against a player though she only has one attack that does much damage. its kind of like regular andarial: one of her poison attacks does nothing and the other one drops your health really fast. she dies easily also. her level was very easy because the hallways prevent any kind of large monster clumping unlike the furnace.
tristram:
my first assault on meph failed. the problem was that most of my output was crushing blow and so when i got to the end of the life bar i actually couldnt beat the regeneration. ugh! according to RTB meph regenerates 16k life per second, so when you have 60% chance to hit and the target has about 1/2 chance to block, its hard to do that much damage per second. half of the first assault on meph was spent with his life bar at a sliver. i couldnt finish it and eventually ran out of pots.
fortunately the day before i had begun muling lightning resist stuff onto my barb so i actually had the choice of having 80% resist lightning (due to fort) *after* the conviction aura. this was contingent on a 17% light resist rare ring. i decided that i would use a second ravenfrost instead to make myself virtually immune to cold because i found that the cold damage is also very threatening from meph and also the horror archer's arrows. so i had about 65% res light, negative fire and poison, and 40% absorb cold. meph went down faster in the second attack and i think i was just getting unlucky on the first attack because i would often perform 5 frenzy attacks in sequence without a single hit (thats 10 swings and misses...pretty unlucky chance to hit and blocking draws).
baal and diablo were difficult together because i could not lure them apart. but their damage output just cant compete with meph's. i managed to lure baal away from diablo eventually and attack him alone, without a double. he seemed to suffer a bit from decrep the same way he suffers from slow target normally...he becomes very lethargic or totally inactive. he seemed harder to kill than the others but i believe his stats are the same. repeated crushing blow triggers or lack thereof can give the impressive of high or low health when in fact it is the same.
diablo was a pain. i actually has to use leap to get away sometimes. his fissue attack and also his bone prison seem to trap you in place, which can be dangerous. otherwise though his attacks were totally ineffective, like baal's. they just dont do much damage if you have good res.
in retrospect this would not have been possible if they had all mingled together in the center of the map. diablo and baal together is enough to make it impossible to kill them, not because they dish out damage, but because baal + twin + diablo's bone prison makes it extremely difficult to sustain an attack. as i said before about regen, its basically impossible to kill them without several sequential strikes at the end of their life. if you run away from them, they will heal right before your eyes. its very fast. you have to commit and stay on them until they are dead. if it looks like you might not finish them off, you might as well stop and regroup (by yourself, hehe).
strengths of this build:
-having sanctuary is a huge benefit. there is no amount of mages that sanctuary cant disable by causing knockback. it also helps keep diablo's ghosts off you. as a frenzy character, you cant have other targets interfering with the primary target or you will not hit them enough, so pushing folks away is just the ticket. it also adds damage if you actually decide to manually kill the undead minions.
-you may not have life tap, but you have decrep. decrep keeps you safe by slowing the bosses and also any minions around you and also drops their melee damage. it also increases vulnerability to crushing blow dramatically.
-as a barb you have the ability to have very high lightning resist if you choose to.
-using duress, goblin toe and crafted 10% blood gloves, you could get the CB on this setup really high.
-with frenzy charged, you can go anywhere you want in tristram, meaning escape or run to a safe corner, because your foot speed is super high.
-easy to get purples before the battle.
weaknessess:
-no damage reduction or shield means you are very vulnerable to the melee attacks of the bosses. this was the hardest part for me.
-poor finishing ability because of very low chance to hit and a blockable attack. a smite paladin is always going to be way better than any other melee build because smite always hits. thats all there is to it.
this build is far from the best but it is probably one of the better barb builds. the point is that you can finish this quest even without a super specialized build. in fact, i preferred to do this quest alone as when i had accompanied others (for a small fee) on other tristram runs, the crushing blow becomes severely weakened with too many players in the game. alone, i had all 3 bosses to 1/4 health within 20 seconds or so. but it took a long time after that to finish the job.
one thing i want to say is that i dont think this build would be improved that much with life tap. what makes smiters and life tap work is that smiters do a reliable amount of damage. like a said before, i often had dry spells where i couldnt score a hit, which makes life tap somewhat moot. with decrep i can get the bosses to half health faster than a lot of other builds (assuming its players 1). but smiters will kill much faster overall. all i can say is that i didnt die once while in tristram, either this time when i was solo or any of the other times i was in a group. i died in the furnace because of IM though.
the spoils, a sweet 19/19 assassin torch:
http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/373...ire19197wd.jpg
cant wait to do it again!
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Originally Posted by Sharaz
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