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I haven't made a lot of barbs in my playing career because I always considered them too straight forward: buff up and let the click fest begin. No variations in skills needed, just whack stuff with big weapons.
But on the other hand, I always wanted to make a sword frenzy barbarian with two very specific swords: Crainte Vomir and Vile Husk. When I look at the mods this pair offers it's a very nice bag of tricks: huge IAS in a very fast weapon, faster run/walk, damage reduction, slows target by whooping 35%, chance to cast amplify damage and huge skill ED against undead on the Vile Husk. On paper it looks great, the only thing that could be a problem is mediocre on-weapon ED on both weapons that simply doesn't compare to Oath/Death combo. I thought that the other tasty mods, and some tweaking on other equipment could balance things out. Was I right? Not sure yet, but I liked playing this barb very much, that's certain
So, let me introduce you to Patriarch Uggh:
Stats and skills[LCS]:
Equipment:Code:Name: Uggh Level: 84 Naked/Gear Strength: 281/300 Dexterity: 65/100 Vitality: 159/159 Energy: 10/10 HP: 817/817 Mana: 93/133 Stamina: 309/334 Defense: 16/1000 AR: 310/310 Resits with Fade active: Fire: 75 Cold: 67 Lightning: 75 Poison: 75 FR/W: 50 FHR: 50 IAS: 135 Double Swing: 1/2 Frenzy: 20/21 Berserk: 1/2 Sword Mastery : 20/21 Iron Skin : 1/2 Increased Speed : 1/2 Natural Resistance : 5/6 Howl : 1/3 Taunt : 18/20 Shout : 1/3 Battle Orders : 20/22 Battle Command : 1/3
Helm: Guilly
Wep1: Crainte Vomir legend sword (Amn)
Wep2: The Vile Husk balrog blade (Amn)
Body: Treachery Dusk Shroud
Amy: Highlord's
Gloves: Laying of Hands
Belt: String of Ears (15% DR)
Boots: Gore Riders
Ring1: rare ring with 4% mana leech, 113 AR and 28 LR
Ring2: ravenfrost 20/199
Switch: two echoing throw spears and Demon Limb in stash
Charms: sharps of dexterity, fines of strength together with my 1.07 trophy charm: Sounding of Maiming (20 max damage)
Mercenary:
Azrael; Might Merc
Weapon: eth 1.07 Cryptic Axe Obedience (sick damage on this one)
Armor: Dureil's
Head: Vamp Gaze
Azrael did all right
So what was it like playing him:
Normal was easy, a bit slow until I could equip double Bloodletter swords that carried my until the Crainte and Husk became available. Later on I used those swords which got upgraded to elite versions at level 60.
Nightmare was really a breeze, but I had many deaths due to FE monsters corpse explosion which would simply wipe my whole life bulb. Other then that no real problems in Nightmare.
Hell is where things started to get interesting, and it didn't happen until Act2. Lots of unleachables means lots of NDE's and some deaths. This barb is a leech beast, he has no other "defense" strategy except to hit them hard and leech. Well, he has one. Taunt. And Act2 was the place I learned to use it. I changed my play style a lot. Now I had to retreat, Taunt, wait, kill. No more just kill. It added some thinking to the process, but not much. And it slowed me down a lot. Plus, often my Fade faded away when tiptoeing around monsters simply because I wasn't getting hit often. No Fade means lots of problems for Uggh. So yeah, unleachables are the bane of this character.
Later on I added a point in Howl, as I got swarmed frequently in Act3. Lowish life, lots of flayers and interuptable attack equals some embarrassing deaths to "knife bigger then body" flayers. One point in Howl sorted things out. And watching slowed monsters trying to run away while I hack them with a sword in the back is sweet, sweet vengeance
Boss fights were easy, Uggh packs 50% CB at 5 fpa, and Azrael 40%, so bosses were not a problem.
Mana burners in Act5 were very annoying. Especially if some PI boss spawns with mana burn, then I have to resort to mana pot chucking and using slower Berserk attack. An "interesting" thing happened in Throne of Destruction. The spawn was horrible: souls, vipers and OK's. At one moment my merc died to IM, I was Amped and thought it was safe to frenzy the nearest Doom Knight. In the last moment I noticed the IM red whirls around the Amp cloud. Two curses active(not the best picture), that can't be. It was some sort of bug I guess, because Mallah cleansed me of IM, but Amp animation was still there after talking to her.
Baal dropped all yellow, nothing worth mentioning. Other drops weren't really exciting either, including forges.
The future of this character consists of some MP games and probably retirement when I get bored with him.
Thanks for reading this, sorry for the lack of pictures
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