MXL 2017 1.1.2 Barb Need Uber help

hello guys,

I am playing barb this ladder. I kind of have hit a wall right now. I am trying to start doing the heroics IE: xazax, astro Kabraxis etc...

for xazax my dps doesnt seem high enough and i just get swarmed with penitent. This fight is usually cake for me but i am having some big issues atm.

for astro the new arena makes it very hard to get up to him in melee range she just spawns a sea of spiders and i just desync and accidentally hit a statue healing him. Very frusterating. i have cfs charm but took it off for this fight

have not tried kab yet

I have been talking to a few barb players and i hear ancients hand is pretty nice for bosskilling and watching aerials videos of zorun tzin and his deathless astro kill made me want to try it. What am i doing wrong? how can i get more damage without spending a metric fuckton of tg? Is there a way to do these bosses using crafted/rw gear? I have access to an auhe and a ghal rune atm but no other great runes yet I got a lucky Yaggai drop so i am using that now but i was thinking a crafted weapon might be better? I usually like to use easily attainable gear and not fancy sssu. PLY HALP!

my gear and skills are below.

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skillplan

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You simply need more damage. I didn't record those videos at day 3 of ladder, I had pretty good gear (1min astro gear was ok gear, zon turin gear was very good).
170 pierce (to whatever element you use).
Use slow, screaming eagle should be still doing something, combined with slows target, I don't think it was nerfed to 0.
Overall it is matter of raw dps, that comes from gear and signets. Scaling is way slower than some casters.
I remember my first astrogha kill last season took me about 1 hour, with bad items and crappy pierce. Ofc it was extra painful because I had to run and rejoin game.

As for kabraxis, I feel he got buffed vs previous patch, seems much tankier.

edit: I just noticed, you are using some weird build. Max wolf companion?
2h axe also has some problems, can't use with stormblast, hard to get high pierce, slow attack sped.
Focus on damage, maybe get crane stance. Block passive grants still good deadly strike. Craft 1h sword with +max damage and room for max ed and DS mo. Deadly strike is extremely powerful. Doing bosses with max block also helps a ton, solves your survival problems.
As for build look at d2stats enhanced damage line and focus on getting that high. Before when shamanic trance had better damage per point, that was one of the things to get, now prolly not worth it.

Thanks aerial do you mind sharing your gear /skillplan you used for those vids so I get a good idea of what to be aiming for? Im still a bit lost when it comes to barb builds.

aerial i was looking at the rw list and maybe i should use

Tonatiuh

Tonatiuh
Barbarian Shields
'IgnQor'
Runeword Level: 100
20% Chance to cast level 36 Flamefront on Melee Attack
+2 to Barbarian Skill Levels
Adds 63-438 Fire Damage
-(25 to 35)% to Enemy Fire Resistance
2% Deadly Strike
Weapon Physical Damage +(30 to 50)%
+(115 to 143)% Enhanced Defense
5% Chance to Avoid Damage

? seems like an ideal item for an ancients hand build? I feel like my helm atm is passable but maybe ill try to craft better gloves and boots and maybe a crafted belt since im gonna use the auhe for the shield. for socket fillers should i go for p ame since i guess im going to be trying to max out block? will i be able to hit high block without abandoned gear or should i do i need to do some fasc/abandoned hybrid crafts or something? are there other easy ways to get decent fire pierce that i am overlooking?

for the skill plan im assuming max gladiators dominance 1 pt in all melee skills 1 pt in all stances then max daedalus? you mentioned screaming eagle but if im using a sword how do i make use of this? do i weapon swap to throw to slow bosses or something?

thanks again for the help

edit:

Snowsquall

Snowsquall
Gloves
'GlaIu'
Runeword Level: 105
+1% Maximum Cold Resist per 80% Cold Resist
+1 to All Skills
20% Hit Recovery
Adds 100-200 Cold Damage
(3 to 5)% Innate Elemental Damage
-(7 to 10)% to Enemy Cold Resistance
Slow Target 20%
+200% Enhanced Defense
+(21 to 25) to Dexterity
Cold Absorb (3 to 5)%

looks pretty nice as well but is the slow capped at 50% against bosses? also i lose some pierce from my glove spot here. Toraja on the summon spec is pretty easily doable so i can probably rely on getting a krys

edit:

Lysra

Lysra
Belts
'MalCham'
Runeword Level: 83
15% Combat Speeds
-(8 to 10)% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
+(141 to 171)% Enhanced Defense
5% to All Attributes
+1.5 to Life (Based on Character Level)
Maximum Mana +2%
+(10 to 20) Life after each Kill
+(10 to 20) Mana after each Kill

also looks promising however its not signicantly stronger than a fascinating belt though.

Slows melee target only works with melee swing vs that single mob you hit. And is overwritten by slows target if you have for example triune charm. Not so good, it only could be good in ubers like laz, but proc ruins this item.

Overall, check crafting mods in docs, you can get plenty of pierce from shrines and some slots from rare mod + shrines. You can craft way better belt than firefire.

Heroics are about stacking one type of damage, as high as possible, scaling it through deadly strike, and pierce, but you want to focus on one element, because this is only way you can reach high pierce. Keep that in mind while chosing skills, don't pick things that are not increasing your main damage, but add some other elemental or magic damage. Scale that one powerful element that you have pierce for.

6x fire sword offhand for fire pierce, annoying to farm but well worth it

Id rather get crafted shield or crane stance shield than that. Loss of DS from block passive hurts your damage by quite a bit.

This is assumption but.. can't you still use gladiators dominance and be shieldless while benefiting from the DS? I assume you really want runemaster for defence though.

On a side note and obviously not the greatest idea but vs a fight like astro, could run in and hit and wolf stance to get out. I really wanted to try max glad dom with same 6x fire rune sword with zod xis barb weapon for the crane stance while throwing in auhe runes every slot for near if not 100% DS. Fascinating crafts for pierce to ancients hand like a glass cannon freight train. It came to me last ladder but I never got around to executing it. Problem is obviously the lack of defence as bear stance would have been your savior but you wanted to use crane stance for MOARDAMAGE.

Block is really almost as good as defense if not better.
You are tankier with 300k defense and max block than with 2mil defense.
Overall to me initially it seemed like fire sword is op, 60 pierce from 1 item, but when you realize how many other sources of pierce there really is, mainly crafted armor pieces, you realize it isn't really worth using.

aerial wrote:You are tankier with 300k defense and max block than with 2mil defense.

Can you block an attck while you already in block recovery animation?