The TLDR 2H Barb

aerial wrote:Axe comes from trade, didn't find it. It is regular SU, so it is the most common version of unique labrys to find, but ethereal makes it ofc extra rare.
Skills on axe are nice to have, but here damage gain compensates for it, also 50 ias isn't dead mod.
I'm gonna experiment with this once im done with final bosses, which btw none of them even require high damage weapon it is all purify stuff.

As for the axe it is good, but I wouldn't get ahead of myself, it wont 1-shot bosses, you need good pierce, axe was also nerfed, in m17 it had 100% chance to proc stormblast (down to 50). You need to stack pierce for both, axe skills are cold, storm blast is lightning, its not easy to do. Much easier to focus on 1 element. If you for example could use stormblast with that axe, went all in with lightning pierce then we could talk.
To put it in perspective, tankiest bosses have about 70% elemental resist. If you get it to -100 (so -170 from gear), your damage goes up by about 6x (six times..). That is huge.

yes i remember playing this build in median omega5 , when barb had stormblast for any weapon, i 1 shoted every boss i game

Captivation wrote:what should i put on merc besides t4 ring mal yul rw ?! im pretty much starting so can any 1 indicate me any good weapon for it or rw ?! gloves boots ?!

anyone ?! any other good TU to use on gloves , belt , boots ?! crafts ?! with what shrine ?! not really sure what how to improve my merc

Cold pierce isn't that importat, only 30% of deathgaze is cold damage, you will not get that much value from cold pierce.

As for merc gear, these minor armor pieces are kind of optional, you can use same as you. light gauntlets for even more/faster defense reduction.

If you are rich, find one of these su belts with 10% slow target, then thats great, krys rw gloves (30% slow target, buffed in sigma from slow melee target). This adds massive slow to merc tslam nova, pretty neat. But these things are highly optional.
Biggest upgrade for merc is Quarak's Will sword, adds crapload of weapon damage to bloodlust.

Thats also option for our own switch once you get better gear. Ideal combo is quarak + berserkerr, so you can self cast strong bloodlust and strong motw. problem is berserkerr sword is very rare and expensive, but quarak's are cheap, so you just ditch motw weapon, get 2x quarak's will, and just swap this once crowd dies, or kill few monsters to proc bloodlust. You gonna get level 36 bloodlust with 500% enhanced damage bonus, pretty sick.

I've been playing around with eth labrys and some boss kills. If you go full lion stance, on maxed str build, not even use bear grin, I used TU4 helm for 300ewd more to lion. Just ignore negative phsy res and run with it, most bosses it doesn't matter.
Numbers I got in d2stats fully buffed, 33-38k physical damage, 5-7k magic damage. Then you have some lightning pierce from weapon to boost stormblast proc and tfury.
Something like this if you jump with colosseum, kills xazax in 5s

Astrogha killable with iceburst can die in one good burst if you are lucky, usually few charges, 20-30s. Kabraxis you can melee him hit and run few times, about 30s, depends on luck.
Damage is pretty nice, still miles behind good caster boss killers, but nice to see barb being able to kill some bosses fast.

You guys are the best! Thanks for all the help!

aerial wrote:Cold pierce isn't that importat, only 30% of deathgaze is cold damage, you will not get that much value from cold pierce.

As for merc gear, these minor armor pieces are kind of optional, you can use same as you. light gauntlets for even more/faster defense reduction.

If you are rich, find one of these su belts with 10% slow target, then thats great, krys rw gloves (30% slow target, buffed in sigma from slow melee target). This adds massive slow to merc tslam nova, pretty neat. But these things are highly optional.
Biggest upgrade for merc is Quarak's Will sword, adds crapload of weapon damage to bloodlust.

Thats also option for our own switch once you get better gear. Ideal combo is quarak + berserkerr, so you can self cast strong bloodlust and strong motw. problem is berserkerr sword is very rare and expensive, but quarak's are cheap, so you just ditch motw weapon, get 2x quarak's will, and just swap this once crowd dies, or kill few monsters to proc bloodlust. You gonna get level 36 bloodlust with 500% enhanced damage bonus, pretty sick.

I've been playing around with eth labrys and some boss kills. If you go full lion stance, on maxed str build, not even use bear grin, I used TU4 helm for 300ewd more to lion. Just ignore negative phsy res and run with it, most bosses it doesn't matter.
Numbers I got in d2stats fully buffed, 33-38k physical damage, 5-7k magic damage. Then you have some lightning pierce from weapon to boost stormblast proc and tfury.
Something like this if you jump with colosseum, kills xazax in 5s Astrogha killable with iceburst can die in one good burst if you are lucky, usually few charges, 20-30s. Kabraxis you can melee him hit and run few times, about 30s, depends on luck.
Damage is pretty nice, still miles behind good caster boss killers, but nice to see barb being able to kill some bosses fast.

Is there any chance you could edit your #1 post with this more expensive version of the build so it's possible to have a view at where you are now, item-wise?
Also grats on the eth axe, that's a decent piece.

And thanks a bunch for all the comments and guidance throughout the thread.

Whyred wrote:Is there any chance you could edit your #1 post with this more expensive version of the build so it's possible to have a view at where you are now, item-wise?
Also grats on the eth axe, that's a decent piece.

And thanks a bunch for all the comments and guidance throughout the thread.

Sure I can add it, but I'm going to beat everything (except samael) with cheap gear first.
Already done witch with full vit setup, healer build, killed it 3x in a row, avg time 7min.
These last bosses it is worth to respec for them but still use cheap crafts.
Thers gonna be pure healer spec for witch + void final. Hybrid slow/melee for uldyssian (its doable without but pain in the ass takes too long).
For laz tank with throw slow setup too.

At what HP should i just pump everything into strength for damage?

Like 13-15k should be enough. You gain that life from belial/astro charms, and ofc levels too.

I've been struggling at 120 with my iron spiral barb.. nice to see a different option to explore since i made this char to help do bosses and farm trophys.. i noticed on your video that it was informing you of certain item drops in the upper left hand corner.. could you point me in a direction to make that possible for my play? its a pain having to stop everything to show items on ground since you can't left MB target while showing items .. thanks

Have you tried A1 merc? I found TU short war bow and this merc carried the whole game for me, does good dmg and has very good miasma proc on striking. Gave her cathedral RW (this alone buffs the proc damage by like 200%) and that was enough to chain kill most stuff in the game. This bow also has carpet of spiders on kill, which can chain proc off itself too and has high aoe coverage.

Issues came on bosses and in a5 hell when the merc started getting 1 hit killed.

Any ideas how to ensure merc survivalability?