The TLDR 2H Barb

What sort of setup did morphed use in his ridiculous S22 Barb video? Is he even using the Thunder King? Or DW Wizardspike with an extremely strong 1h weapon? I’m not aiming to go full glass cannon like that, but it would be helpful to know what the base of his build was

Didn't use kraken stance, it is physical + ele hyrbid, so neph spirit, ton of enhanced damage, capped pierce, and dual wield setup, so stat stick for offhand, most likely for pierce, and big damage main hand. Most likely shitton of umo, and very high deadly strike.

Wait. Single wield only? Can I use a shield then? Or nothing at all in offhand?

It’s cool how there are so many ways to build the Barb! Do you think the axe build is stronger than a sword build?

1h sword + shield still counts as single wield. Just doesn't work as dual wield setup. This sword is pretty weak to balance things out. If you put very good dps as main hand and +1 stormblast as offhand just to get double stormblast, thats what was op, and doesn't work anymore.

As for your question, you mean specifically for samael with endgame items, or for untwinked run this guide is about?
For crazy gear memes dual wield is better, lot of those showscase videos use absolutely insane gear, umo projects, you can get more stats and damage off 1 item than whole gear this guide features. These is next level stuff, and two weapons are superior.

When it comes to untwinked run, here is some of my thoughts:
viewtopic.php?p=355987#p355987

Sword + shield is very viable after numerous little buffs to sword, shield helps great deal too. It is very competitive, much more than initially when this guide came out in 1.0, or even earlier before sigma where deathgaze absolutely stomped iron spiral.
I may even create alternate tree and gear section for sword+shield variant because it is just good.

EDIT -- Answered my own question. Please ignore!

I'm thinking of using Steppe sleeper boots in nightmare and start of hell, no requirements to wear except lvl 80, massive str % bonus and a nice cold perce

later was thinking of using wondrunner boots, what are ur thoughts on those boots for this build?

I wish they could make it so stances can be on left mouse button so we can just hold right mouse button when farming.

New patch new changes, ill try to do little summary how it affects our barb:

► Show Spoiler

Now, lot of these buffs to thrower, makes building a melee barb questionable.
What happens here is, throw speed goes from 9 to 8 frames (super easy to max as balanced axes have great wsm).
Throw skills got all buffed, snake stance buffed, remember that patch ago there are also 3% poison pierce per rune, makes it great source of such valuable stat.
Another thing that comes to mind is using poison as single target, loaded with spell damage on gear, delivered via skill such as windform.

Interesting thing from oskill list:
TIME WAVE: projectile - every nearby enemy is hit with a timed strike, causing delayed damage
Now also spawns on 2 Handed Barbarian Axes and Barbarian Helms
Fuse delay reduced from 3 seconds to 1.6 seconds
Weapon damage increased from 40% to 150%

huge aoe, 150% wdm, only 1.6s delay, looks quite decent, especially for melee poison

TLDR: Overall not many changes for physical melee (wolf stance based), thrower, especially snake thrower gets major buffs.
Big elephant in the room is fact that bear stance will work with all builds (ranged and caster), also ghal rune got 200% buff (15% EF on weapons => 45 per rune, and barb can use 12 in those slots). That paired with bunch of spell oskills, makes me think caster barb is gonna be strong.

Are you indirectly announcing TLDR Throw Barb?

I guess it would be the way to go, changes seem to be making new competition for current barb meta. Especially in matter of gameplay, 2h barb wasn't a dream build for farming.

Ywinel wrote:Are you indirectly announcing TLDR Throw Barb?
I guess it would be the way to go, changes seem to be making new competition for current barb meta. Especially in matter of gameplay, 2h barb wasn't a dream build for farming.

I mean if you can get it to state where you 1-shot screens with poison stampede, just facerolling areas, then yea, melee skills stand no chance in terms of clear.
As for foolproof slower paced character that pushes through content and goes from charm to charm, not sure if poison would be route to chose.
There are some negative synergies with approach to bosses. A runemaster version, will lack spelldamage for poison single target for instance. Alternatively if you focus on that, all spelldmg you collect will go to waste vs crowd, because AOE attacks don't carry spell damage bonus to snake stance.
Block route is never ideal untwinked because you need farm your signets first.
And finally melee scales with poison for that single target.
Take windform, which hits for 150% wdm, adds its own poison that is about half of what maxed snake stance does, AND on top of all of it, if you equip caster gear, because windform counts as direct melee hit, its gonna multiply poison damage. 500% poison spell damage, means its gonna hit that target 6x as hard ans if you used 150% wdm throw skill (which btw doesn't exist, they have lower wdm).