Help With A PvM Barb

[Locke07]

Hey guys I am wanting to make a PvM barb using a maul/Lance, but now I have heard that they are not that good at PvM? So what do you guys think I should make and how should his stats/gear go?

[fredsta54]

They are the best pvm characters(imo) outside cs. High life, high dmg, go anywhere attitude. They make excellent mfers for places other than bosses, as they cannot teleport.

A basic Mf barb setup is
3 p topaz helm or nice tarnhelm
sigons gloves, belt, and boots (50 mf, life steal, resists)
angelic rings, ammy, and armour (100 mf, high fire resist, life, MASSIVE ar, dtm)
and a big damaging 2 handed wepon, socket w/ pskull 4 mana leach and addiitional life leach.

Popular weapons are
Rare Lances with 300+ damage
Rare martels with 260+ damage
Rare ancient axes w/ 230+ damage

try and get weapons with triple the base durabillity (can spawn on rares)

I have built this barb and have gotten into the low 80's by doing flayer// travincal runs in hell//the occasional meoh/andy.

He used this setup w/ a ptarn/// a 233 anceint axe w/ 150 durabilty and socketed w/ a pskull.

basic skill breakdown:
20 ww
20 wep mastery
20 bo
20 shout
1+ nat resist
1 increased speed
1 find item
1 beserk 4 PI's
presquites etc.

enought stats for weapons and rest to vita or.....
if your weapon is very high damaging...
you can try a semi titan build, which i have heard to be very effective
200 vita
rest to strngth
high ll.

I hope this helps you

Fred

[TheCerberus]

Crushing Blow is your friend. Goblin Toes, Rattlecage are good sources for it. In the CS, however, you won't do that well. You can provide BO, but fighting as a WWer is worthless. Berserk can be used, but it's so boring...

Flayer jungle runs and River of Flame are good ways to level without a party. Join questing games in act 1/2 and do Rivers/Flayers. It's a lot of XP until a certain point for Flayer, and Rivers can actually take you pretty far. Not as good as CS, but reasonable if nobody's on.

[BigBearCat]

lance is not a good idea because of its poor dur. And this problem gets
worse when you run jungle in act3: the smith in town is too far away
from ur tp.

[JoeDamned]

Lance is just a terrible idea for PVM, do not try it at all, take cow level for example, your lance will break after about 5 heards of cows.

I would say a 200+ martel or a 170+ executioner sword.

Since not everyone is gg rich in Diablo 2 :mad:

[Palm]

I make all my barbs with lots of vit so I'd never use something like Lance or Exec that requires much dex and str. Battle hammer (100str req)/shield combo works pretty well. As does a -30 req Martel barb (119str req) and a good Steeldriver (uniq great maul ~200 max dmg, 55str req) barb. As you can see I am biased towards mace mastery.

[JoeDamned]

I actually want to know, why NOT choose the mace mastery?

I tried a naga with the whole axe mastery and all the stats right, he was decent but could only hold his own in a duel, I gave him a 188 Ancient Axe for pvm but it didn't help too much.

As far as I see it;

Mace = Most Dmg
Axe = Fastest hits
Swords = ....they look cool?
Spears = Most range
Poleaxes = ......they don't look cool?

And that is how I see it, mace all the way.

[TheCerberus]

Originally Posted by JoeDamned

Mace = Most Dmg
Axe = Fastest hits
Swords = ....they look cool?
Spears = Most range
Poleaxes = ......they don't look cool?

I'd probably go hammers for PvM too, but only because Bonesnap is an awesome, severely underrated weapon.

On a side note, you're confused with something. Axes do not hit any faster than any weapon with WW...

[JoeDamned]

So why do people think that Nagas are all that and a bucket of oranges?

[TheCerberus]

I don't know why for PvM. They have low durability, low damage, and only get a few more hits on monsters in range. But when you're WWing a pack of monsters, I'd rather take as high damage and Crushing Blow as I can get, which is what Bonesnap/Hammer+swordback gives me.

Now for PvP, that's a different story... nagas rule there, in my opinion.