Help for a Barbarian (dlvl 12 / normal)

[Mechanician]

Okay, first of all I know my editing skills are trash.

Second of all, I have a few questions:

1. How and where do you get gear with specific affixes like "cannot be frozen" along with elemental resistances, lifesteal, chance to hit and so on?

2. Are my primary stats fine?

3. Where would go about getting a high dps 2-hander?

4. Why is Griswold selling absolute crap and not stuff like magical full plate mail as I reach dlvl 13 / 14?

5. What stats should I be aiming for when going against the likes of Doomlord Gam'ar?

6. I tried running through dlvl 13 / 16 with a barbarian before, but I either had terrible gear due to being unlucky with RNG or I'm just really bad at using chokepoints to handle mobs at an individual level, catching those annoying succubi / mages, etc. How do I make it easier for myself to wipe these areas?

[DacianDraco]

1. Later difficulties. Thou some early uniq and sets provide some of them, but you don't really need them now anyway.
2. Perfect distribution imo, but low with what comes from gear. You have like no mana, i think you can't even Town Portal. Get some better gear until you get to Diablo's Terror Domain.
3. I'd say a Great Axe would be best to have, or a Battle/Ancient one but with some % speed affix can also work.
4. Don't buy anything from shops, it's just magic quality stuff and never better than what can drop.
5. You need 75% Magic resist to survive his "Arcane Nova" and Bone Spirit, preferably cast a Golem near him so he takes the dmg until you get in melee with him, and drink a lot of full life pots all throughout the fight. And buff with Rage/InnerFire skills and Insanity spell, for Sacrifice buff you'd need some life leech, but your dmg is very low now that a 1-2-3% life leech won't negate the cost of hits with Sacrifice on, so i wouldn't use it as melee now, but later on you should. And retreat when buffs run out and the negative effects kick in, Warp spell is easiest, it will take you to stairs and you can wait there until you can buff again.
6. By the end of Normal you should be around clvl 27, and now at dlvl 12, you should have been 22 if you hadn't skipped something, so don't skip, just clear everything and get the extra levels and unlock the rest of the skills, with Frenzy you'll handle the Succubi and Mages easier. For better items Bone Chamber chest, Horazon's Sanctum chests and Lost Treasure chests are worth farming.

[Mechanician]

1. Later difficulties. Thou some early uniq and sets provide some of them, but you don't really need them now anyway.
2. Perfect distribution imo, but low with what comes from gear. You have like no mana, i think you can't even Town Portal. Get some better gear until you get to Diablo's Terror Domain.
3. I'd say a Great Axe would be best to have, or a Battle/Ancient one but with some % speed affix can also work.
4. Don't buy anything from shops, it's just magic quality stuff and never better than what can drop.
5. You need 75% Magic resist to survive his "Arcane Nova" and Bone Spirit, preferably cast a Golem near him so he takes the dmg until you get in melee with him, and drink a lot of full life pots all throughout the fight. And buff with Rage/InnerFire skills and Insanity spell, for Sacrifice buff you'd need some life leech, but your dmg is very low now that a 1-2-3% life leech won't negate the cost of hits with Sacrifice on, so i wouldn't use it as melee now, but later on you should. And retreat when buffs run out and the negative effects kick in, Warp spell is easiest, it will take you to stairs and you can wait there until you can buff again.
6. By the end of Normal you should be around clvl 27, and now at dlvl 12, you should have been 22 if you hadn't skipped something, so don't skip, just clear everything and get the extra levels and unlock the rest of the skills, with Frenzy you'll handle the Succubi and Mages easier. For better items Bone Chamber chest, Horazon's Sanctum chests and Lost Treasure chests are worth farming.

Okay, thanks!

Should I continue putting my points into strength or should I spare some for vitality or dex?

[DiabloHIMSELF]

I'm level 31 Barbarian and i can say...The barabrian is quite OP...You need just to stack frennzy and spam ceave and you will be fine....for bosses the spell insanity can help you mby....I would say that you have to go first only on strenght(over 150<)than you mix vitality and strengh...dex isn t important anyway for barbar

[DacianDraco]

Yes i think it's best to just go full STR, for ex if you put 20 in DEX you get (same base dmg as spend in STR), around 2% crit chance (while in STR it would give 10% crit dmg), 4 AC which is nothing really and 10% To Hit (there are affixes that go up to +200% To Hit on weapons, and rings can spawn these affixes too but up to +50% value). Then for 20 pts in VIT you get 50 life, but there are +life affixes on items that give more, and with around 10% life leech and more dmg from STR investment it doesn't matter if you have 50 life more or not.

Now, if those 20 pts are spent in STR besides what i compared over DEX it will also increases skills, for ex Frenzy gets another stack which means +5% To Hit, +5 dmg and +5% all speeds (which is the best thing ever), Cleave does a bit more dmg and InnerFire could increase as well, but you'd need to add 50 pts (or have them from items).

It's generally best to dump point in what increases your character's skills, because nothing else gives more bonuses. It's ok if you spend a few points elsewhere but you don't need to and later on you'll likely regret it, but don't worry after clvl 60 when they reset you can redistribute them and go full STR for the Barbarian.

[Mechanician]

Okay, at clvl 26 and fighting Doomlord Gam'ar, I only have enough power to get him to about 1/4 HP before him and his minions overwhelm and kill me. I've got 75% magic resist, used vitality and strength potions, did the inner fire + rage + frenzy + cleave combo but still can't do it.

I've been desperately looking around for some good gear to replace the stuff I have and I haven't found a single thing so far, aside from Lachdanan's helm.

I'm probably screwed right now since the whole place is filled with infinitely spawning balrogs and the 1 hour timer is still ticking.

[andronnik]

sometimes giving it a new try helps...

[Mechanician]

Nevermind, I beat him!

Turns out that Bloodlord the Destroyer is much harder for me. His buildup of speed effectively stunlocks my character to death.

[DacianDraco]

Congrats, and for Bloodlord the strategy is to just hit and disengage but don't move too far away since he charges and even teleports on you, you have to kind of dance with him, and eventually with enough dmg you could put him in hit recovery. Also Bone Spirit works on him, but in Normal i think his life is too low to take a big chunk out of his life, but in later difficulties it's more effective and will take hundreds off his health.

[Mechanician]

Just tried a hit and run strategy, but it doesn't work at all. How much AC & Hit recovery do I need?

[Mechanician]

I...I just killed Diablo.

[DacianDraco]

Great, now do it in Nightmare.