11-15-2006, 02:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-02-2006, 01:44 AM by KlankyKlause.)
All Around PvM Barb by KlankyKlause
Intro:
I have saw a few people posting wolfbarb builds around here but not really very informative, so i thought i'd throw mine around. Whenever i originally made my barb it was to do key runs, however i soon realized that he could sit in the throne room and tank the minions of destruction while i took a piss and barely lose any life. So i started using him on every run imagineable and found that he can easily and swiftly take on any run i put in front of him except chaos for the obvious reasons. Not only that, but he never dies.....ever.....ive leveled from 86-93 soely on doing solo MF runs. So i started to get proper equipment and built another. Here is how i built him.
Skills:
20: Weapon Mastery
20: Shout
20: Battle Orders
[SIZE=2]20: Iron Skin
[/SIZE]1: Battle Commands
1: Find Potion
1: Find Item
1: Howl
1: Increase Speed
1: Increase Stamina
1: Grim Ward
Rest into natural resist.
Start boosting Shout, then BO once available, back to Shout, Iron Skin, then Weapon Mastery, throw in the others as soon as they become available, max resist last (still put one point in as soon as it is available though). Any points left over can go wherever u want them. Find Item and Grim Ward are good ones, Ward makes it easy to get random monsters away from uniques so you can kill easier while Find Item does some major good when you run the pit or keep.
Stats:
Str: Enough for gear
Dex: None
Vita: All you can manage
Energy: None
Gear:
Helm
Wolfhowl Fury Visor
Defense - 332-377
+120-150% Enhanced Defense
+2-3 To Warcries
+3-6 To Feral Rage
+3-6 To Lycanthropy
+3-6 To Werewolf
+8-15 To Strength
+8-15 To Dexterity
+8-15 To Vitality
Level 15 Summon Dire Wolf - 18 Charges
No chance of debating this one, the build is based on it, this helm stops you from having to invest in a combat skill which allows us to focus on being a tank. Get as close to perfect as you can, but they're hard to find, mines a 148% 3/6/6/5/15/13/15 and i gave 3 hr for it on east ladder. Socket it with a Def/Resist/Dmg IAS jewel.
Armor
Definately going to be using Enigma, Archon Plate preferably for higher defense. Nigma gives us a Str boost, Tele, +2 All Skills, 8% Damage Reduction, 5% Max Life, and nice MF. Stash a high Fort, you will need for certain runs.
Gloves
Dracs work best, life tap can really be a life saver when your swamped, and OW helps vs big guys str boost too. If you go with Last Wish then use Steelrends for extra damage and crushing blow.
Boots
Up'd Gores, the damage mods are invaluable, Eth Treks are good too for vita/str mods.
Belt
Verdungos, the vita boost, damage reduction, and FHR on this belt put it well and above the alternatives.
Weapon
The weapon choices are phenomenal with this build, and certain ones will change your choices on the rest of the gear. I will list the better of the viable weapons with this build and explain why it works.
PB Grief - Decent damage but very fast, triggers damage mods and Life Tap more often, only damage mod is 20% deadly strike.
Last Wish Zerker - Major damage, major crushing blow, but with no IAS on the weapon its slower than the alternatives. This is my weapon of choice the crushing blow and high damage plus MF make it better suited for doing runs. Between my shield and helm i get 60 IAS which makes it fast enough.
Ethereal BotD Zerker - High dmg, high IAS, dual leech, +30 to all attributes, but no damage mods.
Beast Zerker - High dmg, very fast, boosts merc dmg, decent damage mods, and boosts lycan for us also, adding 15% to life. This weapon is probably the best all around.
Ethereal Death Zerker - 50% crushing and up to 49 deadly with high damage, mana leech, ar bonus, and glacial spike on strike, but no IAS.
Oath Zerker, Ed/Ias Runemaster, Hellslayer, Cranium Basher, Grandfather, Buriza, Tombreaver, Bonehew, etc etc all work just fine if need be, dont be afraid to use a two handed weapon either, with your defense you should be ok till you can get one of the runewords.
Shield
There are 2 possible choices here, first is SS, it has high defense, damage reduction and str. Use this if you went with a high IAS weapon like BotD or Grief, socket it with a Cham. The second option is Head Hunters Glory, this shield offers the highest defense possible with 3 nice socket spaces, which we will use for resist/defense/damage ias jewels. I have 35ed/15 and 2x 64def/15s in mine. Use this if you went with a slower weapon with damage mods since it can boost your IAS enough to make them more viable. Some would say to use Phoenix to boost damage, but this build doesnt need damage, it needs defense, we want to be untouchable, damage mods and IAS are where our damage comes from.
Jewelry
Angelics if possible for AR, but Ravens Frost is needed if you dont use SS. If you dont use a weapon with mana leech then u need a ring with good mods, that include it. If you need both the raven and a leech ring then go with a Highlords Ammy if you want IAS or Cats Eye if you cant get Highlords. Otherwise go with Metalgrid or +2 Barb Skill %AR, resists, str, etc etc ammy. Find one with Mana Leech and you can use a BK ring.
Switch
Spirit Sword and Spirit Monarch/Ward.......Say whatever you want to, i know HotO gives more FCR and resists but when your teleing with a barb you run out of mana fast, perfect spirits will give you +224 to mana as well as +44 vita not to mention +110 FHR, and you get +35 to fire/cold/light resis. So what if you miss a breakpoint on FCR, you gain a shield, tons of FHR, and a significant mana/life boost. You can keep hotos or Bo Sticks handy for prebuff but i assure you, using spirits is much better if you plan to tele.
Stash/Prerun Items
Btorch, Anni, Gheeds are all musts. I use 20x 25-30 def 5-7mf SCs for extra MF and extra defense you can use WC GCs with life, this once again all comes down to preference, i have WC GCs in stash but i dont use unless im ubering due to the fact that i need space to hold drops. In my cube i keep the following : +3 WC Ammy, 2x Soj, 2x Bo Sticks.
Merc
Act 2 Defiance With Eth Gaze, Eth Fort, and Eth Pride. Pretty self explainatory, you got high defense, leech, concentration aura, and high damage. Boosts both your defense and damage when hes around. And with your lifetap, shout and bo he shouldn't die often at all.
Strategy
The strategy for every run is pretty much the same, since you can just bull charge straight in and not worry about dying. No need to be fancy with where you tele, what you kill first, or any of that, just get close, go wolfie and kill things.smartass2 Be sure that you cast wolf with your spirits on so you get bonus. The only place you should run into physical immunes is when running arcane or nilathak, and you shouldnt worry about killing them then, just tele past them and kill the big guys. Dropping a ward helps.
Notes
These type of barbs are very flexible, and can support whatever it is that you need them to do. You dont have to get godly gear to be able to equip these guys to do random runs. When i first made i had all IK except helm on him to take care of PIs in arcane and vaught and it worked suprisingly well. Make this barb when your poor and he'll still have that godly feel to him. Then build on him from there.
These guys are better party support than most barbs due to high lvl shout also, even if someone has a higher lvl bo, your shout will usually be higher.
You can easily Grush people with these guys too, just be careful when chaosing, use your howl/wards to shew off critters. Also good for helping friends level, i can walk somebody through nightmare in about 15 minutes.
Once you get three hits in with feral rage your looking at something around 200% faster run/walk. This makes you incredibly fast when treading open ground, and when running through a place like the pit, with a fast weapon like a Beast or a Grief makes you nearly as fast a killer as a Fury barb. One really good way to get OS armor is in the pit and any level of the worldstone chamber, and your barb is well equiped to run both. Just get rid of any MF your packing, turn your Nigma in for the Fort and go to town.
The best way to get these guys to lvl is to Grush them, the fact that they have no attack to use until lvl 79 means that they are hellishly weak until you get them built up. Once you hit 65 though you should be good due to the fact that once you can start hosting IboItele baal runs people tend to stick with games where they get a high lvl bo/shout and someone who never dies when they tele, so ur games are always full.
THIS BARB CANNOT UBER ALONE! He gets swarmed too easily, while he can tank the ubers all day long but actually cutting a way through to them takes more than he can muster and teleing up to them will usually put you in a position where you cant transform due to the fact your taking too many hits, and if you do you will have a hard time getting hits off. However you are the perfect aid to someone else running ubers, you can tank/herd all day long and give them a nice BO/Shout. This barb could possibly uber with the right mix of equipment and charms, but for my purposes i dont need him to. If your helping uber, use the fort.
Once you start swinging on something your leeching massive life, once lifetap triggers, your leeching nearly half your life with each blow. You rarely ever have to pot, and having max resists isnt really of a great deal of concern. You have enough life that anything over 15 or so is plenty, all you need is something you can leech off of and your fine, if not, then tele away. You should use very few pots, and regular regen pots are fine since 1/3 of your life is 3 sorcys.
I have timed a 10 minute game where i ran the following : Countess, Pit, Andy, Summoner, Duri, Trav, Meph and Pals, Shenk and Pals, Nilathak, and Baal......then i gambled gold from all drops. I use the equipment i use because it makes my runs extremely fast and efficient, you can sub in more MF gear and this barb will still perform beautifully. War Travs, Goldwrap, 4xPTop Shield, etc etc and you can still complete the runs, just slower. Thats the beauty of wolfbarbs, you can tune them via equipment to do whatever you need to be done, they provide a great base. Throw in a Passion and get a good helm and you got a Zeal Barb! Throw in a Kingslayer and give your merc an Infinity and you have an Avenger Barb! LoL those suck actually.....
This was my first guide, i tried to be as informative as possible, if you have questions or comments just post em. Hope you all enjoy !
Intro:
I have saw a few people posting wolfbarb builds around here but not really very informative, so i thought i'd throw mine around. Whenever i originally made my barb it was to do key runs, however i soon realized that he could sit in the throne room and tank the minions of destruction while i took a piss and barely lose any life. So i started using him on every run imagineable and found that he can easily and swiftly take on any run i put in front of him except chaos for the obvious reasons. Not only that, but he never dies.....ever.....ive leveled from 86-93 soely on doing solo MF runs. So i started to get proper equipment and built another. Here is how i built him.
Skills:
20: Weapon Mastery
20: Shout
20: Battle Orders
[SIZE=2]20: Iron Skin
[/SIZE]1: Battle Commands
1: Find Potion
1: Find Item
1: Howl
1: Increase Speed
1: Increase Stamina
1: Grim Ward
Rest into natural resist.
Start boosting Shout, then BO once available, back to Shout, Iron Skin, then Weapon Mastery, throw in the others as soon as they become available, max resist last (still put one point in as soon as it is available though). Any points left over can go wherever u want them. Find Item and Grim Ward are good ones, Ward makes it easy to get random monsters away from uniques so you can kill easier while Find Item does some major good when you run the pit or keep.
Stats:
Str: Enough for gear
Dex: None
Vita: All you can manage
Energy: None
Gear:
Helm
Wolfhowl Fury Visor
Defense - 332-377
+120-150% Enhanced Defense
+2-3 To Warcries
+3-6 To Feral Rage
+3-6 To Lycanthropy
+3-6 To Werewolf
+8-15 To Strength
+8-15 To Dexterity
+8-15 To Vitality
Level 15 Summon Dire Wolf - 18 Charges
No chance of debating this one, the build is based on it, this helm stops you from having to invest in a combat skill which allows us to focus on being a tank. Get as close to perfect as you can, but they're hard to find, mines a 148% 3/6/6/5/15/13/15 and i gave 3 hr for it on east ladder. Socket it with a Def/Resist/Dmg IAS jewel.
Armor
Definately going to be using Enigma, Archon Plate preferably for higher defense. Nigma gives us a Str boost, Tele, +2 All Skills, 8% Damage Reduction, 5% Max Life, and nice MF. Stash a high Fort, you will need for certain runs.
Gloves
Dracs work best, life tap can really be a life saver when your swamped, and OW helps vs big guys str boost too. If you go with Last Wish then use Steelrends for extra damage and crushing blow.
Boots
Up'd Gores, the damage mods are invaluable, Eth Treks are good too for vita/str mods.
Belt
Verdungos, the vita boost, damage reduction, and FHR on this belt put it well and above the alternatives.
Weapon
The weapon choices are phenomenal with this build, and certain ones will change your choices on the rest of the gear. I will list the better of the viable weapons with this build and explain why it works.
PB Grief - Decent damage but very fast, triggers damage mods and Life Tap more often, only damage mod is 20% deadly strike.
Last Wish Zerker - Major damage, major crushing blow, but with no IAS on the weapon its slower than the alternatives. This is my weapon of choice the crushing blow and high damage plus MF make it better suited for doing runs. Between my shield and helm i get 60 IAS which makes it fast enough.
Ethereal BotD Zerker - High dmg, high IAS, dual leech, +30 to all attributes, but no damage mods.
Beast Zerker - High dmg, very fast, boosts merc dmg, decent damage mods, and boosts lycan for us also, adding 15% to life. This weapon is probably the best all around.
Ethereal Death Zerker - 50% crushing and up to 49 deadly with high damage, mana leech, ar bonus, and glacial spike on strike, but no IAS.
Oath Zerker, Ed/Ias Runemaster, Hellslayer, Cranium Basher, Grandfather, Buriza, Tombreaver, Bonehew, etc etc all work just fine if need be, dont be afraid to use a two handed weapon either, with your defense you should be ok till you can get one of the runewords.
Shield
There are 2 possible choices here, first is SS, it has high defense, damage reduction and str. Use this if you went with a high IAS weapon like BotD or Grief, socket it with a Cham. The second option is Head Hunters Glory, this shield offers the highest defense possible with 3 nice socket spaces, which we will use for resist/defense/damage ias jewels. I have 35ed/15 and 2x 64def/15s in mine. Use this if you went with a slower weapon with damage mods since it can boost your IAS enough to make them more viable. Some would say to use Phoenix to boost damage, but this build doesnt need damage, it needs defense, we want to be untouchable, damage mods and IAS are where our damage comes from.
Jewelry
Angelics if possible for AR, but Ravens Frost is needed if you dont use SS. If you dont use a weapon with mana leech then u need a ring with good mods, that include it. If you need both the raven and a leech ring then go with a Highlords Ammy if you want IAS or Cats Eye if you cant get Highlords. Otherwise go with Metalgrid or +2 Barb Skill %AR, resists, str, etc etc ammy. Find one with Mana Leech and you can use a BK ring.
Switch
Spirit Sword and Spirit Monarch/Ward.......Say whatever you want to, i know HotO gives more FCR and resists but when your teleing with a barb you run out of mana fast, perfect spirits will give you +224 to mana as well as +44 vita not to mention +110 FHR, and you get +35 to fire/cold/light resis. So what if you miss a breakpoint on FCR, you gain a shield, tons of FHR, and a significant mana/life boost. You can keep hotos or Bo Sticks handy for prebuff but i assure you, using spirits is much better if you plan to tele.
Stash/Prerun Items
Btorch, Anni, Gheeds are all musts. I use 20x 25-30 def 5-7mf SCs for extra MF and extra defense you can use WC GCs with life, this once again all comes down to preference, i have WC GCs in stash but i dont use unless im ubering due to the fact that i need space to hold drops. In my cube i keep the following : +3 WC Ammy, 2x Soj, 2x Bo Sticks.
Merc
Act 2 Defiance With Eth Gaze, Eth Fort, and Eth Pride. Pretty self explainatory, you got high defense, leech, concentration aura, and high damage. Boosts both your defense and damage when hes around. And with your lifetap, shout and bo he shouldn't die often at all.
Strategy
The strategy for every run is pretty much the same, since you can just bull charge straight in and not worry about dying. No need to be fancy with where you tele, what you kill first, or any of that, just get close, go wolfie and kill things.smartass2 Be sure that you cast wolf with your spirits on so you get bonus. The only place you should run into physical immunes is when running arcane or nilathak, and you shouldnt worry about killing them then, just tele past them and kill the big guys. Dropping a ward helps.
Notes
These type of barbs are very flexible, and can support whatever it is that you need them to do. You dont have to get godly gear to be able to equip these guys to do random runs. When i first made i had all IK except helm on him to take care of PIs in arcane and vaught and it worked suprisingly well. Make this barb when your poor and he'll still have that godly feel to him. Then build on him from there.
These guys are better party support than most barbs due to high lvl shout also, even if someone has a higher lvl bo, your shout will usually be higher.
You can easily Grush people with these guys too, just be careful when chaosing, use your howl/wards to shew off critters. Also good for helping friends level, i can walk somebody through nightmare in about 15 minutes.
Once you get three hits in with feral rage your looking at something around 200% faster run/walk. This makes you incredibly fast when treading open ground, and when running through a place like the pit, with a fast weapon like a Beast or a Grief makes you nearly as fast a killer as a Fury barb. One really good way to get OS armor is in the pit and any level of the worldstone chamber, and your barb is well equiped to run both. Just get rid of any MF your packing, turn your Nigma in for the Fort and go to town.
The best way to get these guys to lvl is to Grush them, the fact that they have no attack to use until lvl 79 means that they are hellishly weak until you get them built up. Once you hit 65 though you should be good due to the fact that once you can start hosting IboItele baal runs people tend to stick with games where they get a high lvl bo/shout and someone who never dies when they tele, so ur games are always full.
THIS BARB CANNOT UBER ALONE! He gets swarmed too easily, while he can tank the ubers all day long but actually cutting a way through to them takes more than he can muster and teleing up to them will usually put you in a position where you cant transform due to the fact your taking too many hits, and if you do you will have a hard time getting hits off. However you are the perfect aid to someone else running ubers, you can tank/herd all day long and give them a nice BO/Shout. This barb could possibly uber with the right mix of equipment and charms, but for my purposes i dont need him to. If your helping uber, use the fort.
Once you start swinging on something your leeching massive life, once lifetap triggers, your leeching nearly half your life with each blow. You rarely ever have to pot, and having max resists isnt really of a great deal of concern. You have enough life that anything over 15 or so is plenty, all you need is something you can leech off of and your fine, if not, then tele away. You should use very few pots, and regular regen pots are fine since 1/3 of your life is 3 sorcys.
I have timed a 10 minute game where i ran the following : Countess, Pit, Andy, Summoner, Duri, Trav, Meph and Pals, Shenk and Pals, Nilathak, and Baal......then i gambled gold from all drops. I use the equipment i use because it makes my runs extremely fast and efficient, you can sub in more MF gear and this barb will still perform beautifully. War Travs, Goldwrap, 4xPTop Shield, etc etc and you can still complete the runs, just slower. Thats the beauty of wolfbarbs, you can tune them via equipment to do whatever you need to be done, they provide a great base. Throw in a Passion and get a good helm and you got a Zeal Barb! Throw in a Kingslayer and give your merc an Infinity and you have an Avenger Barb! LoL those suck actually.....
This was my first guide, i tried to be as informative as possible, if you have questions or comments just post em. Hope you all enjoy !
