Improvements

[diabloplayer45]

Yes - so magic triangle give me the skillpoints because im too lazy to figure them out myself.

Max BO and ?? C'mon.

[magicrectangle]

Pretty simple:
20 war cry
20 battle orders
20 howl
20 taunt
1-20 battle cry
1 battle command

1 leap (if not using enigma)
1 increased speed
1 natural resist

teleport into the middle of mans, spam war cry, easy peasy.

Typical caster gear, +skills and FCR. Shop up +3 warcries weapons to dual wield. Either 63 or 105 FCR depending on how much you're willing to give up for gold find. I wouldn't drop below 63 FCR. Delightfully, barbs have fast casting, 63 FCR on a barb is the same teleport speed as 125 on a pally.

[FredOfErik]

Well, since you've been pretty concerned about optimizing efficiency, I would just make sure that you knew.

But in this case:

Find item all the way. It has some diminishing returns but you can look at the stats and figure out how much you want. But that doesn't take care of all the skill points.

Since you don't want your war cry to kill, you don't need to optimize synergies. You could invest in taunt and battle cry to actually use them - that would most likely make it easier for your merc to kill or survive. Other than that you can always choose to max shout to give your self and merc a lot extra defense. Investing in beserk to be able to deal with the occasional PI. Other than that I don't see many options. Last option: natural resistance if you aren't maxed. Increased speed will probably also be nice, since you won't be wearing enigma. A point in leap and leap attack will work as poor man's teleport.

Edit: if going for a damaging and not just stunning build, then just ignore what I said and go with magicrectangle.

[Greizer]

You shouldn't try to kill with WC. Even with lvl 50 WC and Decrep it still kills too slow imo (yes, even in 1-player games). Not to mention you'll lose too much gf% and have mana issues with the high lvl WC.

I tried a stunning WC build before I quit out of boredom; skills were
20 BO
20 Shout
20 WC (stun length)
10-20 in Find Item (why not max it, although the diminishing returns are horrible towards the last points)
1 BC
1 Increased Speed
1+ Nat Res (however much you need, you'll have huge life though so not many points are needed imo)
You can pump Iron Skin with the rest, but I wouldn't bother; it's better to make Wealth in a low req armor and have gg life instead.

Gear was something like this iirc:

IK helm 2xLem (good balance of +WC and gf%)
2 x 15 mdr Dwarf Star (13 is fine as per onderduiker's post)
Chance Guards
2 x Lem'd Crystal swords (you could go with HotOs, but as the aim is to stun only, you don't need fcr if you keep spamming WC)
2 x BO sticks on switch
Infernostride boots (or nice rares ideally)
Perf up'd Goldwrap (rares are better)
'Wealth' in MP
+3 WC / gf% ammy (as high as you can get)
Gheed's + gf% charms, some res charms if you need them
and ofc Anni + Torch (high res >> stats)

Merc: Eth Reaper's (Lem'd), eth Treachery, eth CoT (Lem'd).

Stats all Vita ofc; you should have something like 4,5k. You will still need to drink potions as there's no leech or dr%, but there's no real danger of death.

It's your standard Leap Barb basically, only with WC instead of Leap. Your stun lasts for ~6 seconds, so if you spam it constantly (what else is there to do? ), then you don't need fcr gear on this Barb. Ofc casting speed helps with Find Item, too, so you may want to use Arach instead of Goldwrap, but I wouldn't bother.

This build wasn't nearly as much fun to play as my Berserk goldfinder; iirc I linked to that thread earlier. Not much efficiency is lost at all, and it's wicked fun to kill monsters by yourself, instead of chaperoning the braindead Moron. I counted ~40 seconds per run, BO included, so it's quite a bit faster as well.

[FredOfErik]

You shouldn't try to kill with WC. Even with lvl 50 WC and Decrep it still kills too slow imo (yes, even in 1-player games).

Quite OT, but singer can actually be a quite powerful MF build. But I'll let you take that discussion with kestegs one day

Also, does the WC also stun unique monsters everytime? That's not how I recall it - it's however worth noting that my only ever singer deeded in NM CS and it was a while ago, so I migt be wrong.

Edit: I would also imagine that the radius of war cry would be inferior to leap in travincal. Thoughts?

[Greizer]

You are correct that the range is abysmal compared to Leap (which is the whole screen basically). You'll have to keep spamming and move around to keep all the Council members stunned. I didn't use my WC spec for very long so I could be wrong, but I think it does stun uniques, it just takes a few cries, unlike with regular Councilors.

How do you stack mf% and get lvl 50 WC? Tbh I may have been thinking my gf setup when I recalled the dmg... I had maybe 38 WC or smth with the 'killing' singer setup, not nearly enough. But even with 50 it can't be too efficient, compared to Sorcs and whatnot. If you only run Travi for HRs and charms then it might work out I suppose.

[FredOfErik]

Nothing to do with trav but here is kegs' singer. Awesome pit runner. A bit slower than Fabian's tele zerker but definitely a viable MF build should answer your (Greizer) questions.

[Greizer]

Nothing to do with trav but here is kegs' singer. Awesome pit runner. A bit slower than Fabian's tele zerker but definitely a viable MF build should answer your (Greizer) questions.

His WC does ~700 dmg and the Merc doesn't have Reaper's. I wonder how that can be enough dmg? Sure, he has 105% fcr so it's 8 frames per cast as opposed to 13 with none. I guess it might be that the monsters in the Pit have a lot less life than Councilors; I haven't tried it and I can't anymore since I gave away my chars. I will try this if D3 is total fail and I pick the game up again next Ladder; otherwise I guess I'll have to take your word for it.

[onderduiker]

OK. I don't remember exactly how it works, but when you use war cry on unique monsters, etc. you won't necessarily stun them right away. There's some %chance to do that.

There's only 10% chance of stun length applying to Champion, Unique and Super Unique monsters, but when it applies it's unmodified.

I guess it might be that the monsters in the Pit have a lot less life than Councilors; I haven't tried it and I can't anymore since I gave away my chars.

In Travincal in Hell, all Super Unique Council Members have 23,348-40,858 life while their minions have 17,511-30,643 life; all have Damage Resist 50%. Without the Stone Skin bonus, the toughest Unique in the Pit Levels 1-2 is a Unique Bone Warrior with just 8,654-12,364 life, DR 33% and 20% chance of blocking when it has a shield.

[diabloplayer45]

IK helm 2xLem (good balance of +WC and gf%)
2 x 15 mdr Dwarf Star (13 is fine as per onderduiker's post)
Chance Guards
2 x Lem'd Crystal swords (you could go with HotOs, but as the aim is to stun only, you don't need fcr if you keep spamming WC)
2 x BO sticks on switch
Infernostride boots (or nice rares ideally)
Perf up'd Goldwrap (rares are better)
'Wealth' in MP
+3 WC / gf% ammy (as high as you can get)
Gheed's + gf% charms, some res charms if you need them
and ofc Anni + Torch (high res >> stats)

With this setup and the skills magic triangle said:

20 war cry
20 battle orders
20 howl
20 taunt
1-20 battle cry
1 battle command

1 leap (if not using enigma)
1 increased speed
1 natural resist

Will this be the correct build? Please confirm so i can respec and put skill points into the above.