WW TRAV BARB

[bondcho]

Greetings.I have ww barb for travincal my items are: 2x death cleaver eth/eth, areat(soc?), loh, string, gore, enigma, metalgrid, rare ring 5ll 6ml 34life 22lr, crafted ring 11ll 4str 13life @7 21fr 8mf, 7x wc skillers 20life sc gheed and 2 hoto for bo and tp.My question is can i improve something and what should i put in the helm?I dont use RWM so no greef and my merc keeps dying with kira/guardian angel/eth bonehew amnamn

 

[mir]

You should get reaper's toll for merc, it will keep your merc alive and improve your killing speed. I don't use ww barb so I'm not sure it will work but here some ideas:

• Replace one of the axes with beast
• Replace metalgrid with highlord's wrath, get resists from arreat+soc and from charms, maybe you can replace one hoto with heart carver

 

[bondcho]

You should get reaper's toll for merc, it will keep your merc alive and improve your killing speed. I don't use ww barb so I'm not sure it will work but here some ideas:

• Replace one of the axes with beast
• Replace metalgrid with highlord's wrath, get resists from arreat+soc and from charms, maybe you can replace one hoto with heart carver

I was using reaper's toll but cold damage shutter corpses and no need more ias or ds from high lord(i got max breakpoint for ww with ba and 76% ds).Why heart carver +1 find item will not change the % but only will lower my bo level?

 

[mir]

Beast will help the merc deal more damage and apply decrepify faster, you/he will shutter 1-2 corpses but your runs will be faster. With beast you lose ds from 2nd DC so highlords will come instead.
Without metalgrid you have -30 to fire (the rest are less important but still should be ~40+), so it will have to come from arreat or from charms. If it's SC then 2-2.5k life is enough and you should change the charms from skillers to AR/AR&damage charms. If you remove more then 2 skillers heart carver will help a bit with find item.

 

[bondcho]

Beast will help the merc deal more damage and apply decrepify faster, you/he will shutter 1-2 corpses but your runs will be faster. With beast you lose ds from 2nd DC so highlords will come instead.
Without metalgrid you have -30 to fire (the rest are less important but still should be ~40+), so it will have to come from arreat or from charms. If it's SC then 2-2.5k life is enough and you should change the charms from skillers to AR/AR&damage charms. If you remove more then 2 skillers heart carver will help a bit with find item.

I play hardcore and i've got 4k life with bo now and still i was close to death 2 times today(conviction + massive lighting) despite my 75 lr.So safety first and i put more point into vitality and hit 79% also placed 40% ed jewel on areat's face.I will try beast when i find ber, thank you for your answer.

 

[Loot Skywalker]

Your setup is solid enough, but do consider the suggestion for Reapers toll... It's an amazing must-have in Trav. Yes, you'll shatter some bodies with it, which cannot be avoided. But on the Positive side, RT will allow you to kill enemies at a much faster rate, more than compensating for the few bodies you lose. Best of all, decrep will (mostly) keep your merc from dying.

And Keep metalgrid. High lords is overrated for ww .

 

[krischan]

CB is good, but it isn't everything. The closer to 100%, the better, of course, but from a certain point on, it pays off more to invest into damage instead. Weapon mastery + 2x DC + Goreriders are too much IMO. Therefore I would replace one of the eth DCs. You had the Zods for them, so you probably have another Zod for BotD. That will also add lots of leech. Another alternative would be a BotD GPA, a reach 5 weapon which hits the final WW breakpoint. Keep on your Goreriders then or perhaps even Goblin Toes.

I think you don't need any damage reduction versus councils. If there's something which might kill your barb, it's a combo of the explosion from fire/cold enchantment, conviction and lightning enchantment (edit: which you already mentioned ), something which DR won't help at.

Against conviction, you can put charms with fire and lightning res into the inventory. You don't need warcry skillers in PvM.

If your merc uses Reaper's, a couple of corpses will shatter and then you cannot hork them. You better don't make him good at killing then, but at surviving. A Tomb Reaver is awewome at that. I suggest 2x Amn and perhaps Shael if he can reach an IAS breakpoint with it. That weapon woll also max his resists which is essential in this case.

Or even better, you respec him into a frenzy barb . I suggest BotD + Death in colossus blades as weapons. BAs look girlish on a barb while CBs have much more of a badass look and make cool WHOOSH sound when being swung.

 

[japanzaman]

I agree about ditching the skillers. Stack your lightning resists to +90% or so and that will keep you out of trouble. You could also swap one of your rings with a Wisp Projector that has good Labsorb and mfind.

 

[NoisemakerArrow]

I think he meant his Death Cleavers were socketed with Eths.

 

[krischan]

Even when HRs aren't an option, I would still use a different second weapon, simply to add further useful effects, e.g. the Crescent Moon runeword.

 

[Loot Skywalker]

Summoning spirit wolves would certainly help your survivability , but doesn't the recharge get expensive?

I was going to suggest ebotd simply for the prevent heal--I hate it when the council heals-- but it can get a bit exoensive, zod rune and all. Death Cleaver is great for pvp. Remember that a ww barb needs 34+% on-weapon ias to hit their breakpoints, when using a zerk axe.

 

[Gripphon]

I was using reaper's toll but cold damage shutter corpses

Now I don't know are my testings relevant for all barbs out there, or does result depend on how high your own damage is, but here is result of my tests where I counted how many times do Reaper's Toll really shatter corpses.

Runs done: 200
Total number of bodies: 2200 (200*11)
Corpses shattered: 50
Average bodies available for hork per run: 10.75

So, my testings indicate that roughly every 4 runs you shatter 1 corpse. That is almost like there are no shattered corpses at all. Almost. However, it is known that 20% of chilled targets will shatter, which means if your merc kills all minions in Travincal, you will at average shatter 2.2 corpses per run. Obviously I killed many minions merc didn't have time to attack at all, but that's why I think damage output is important. The lower the damage, more corpses will shatter because merc will have more time to attack more minions to chill them. Also chill duration is very short on hell, minions will be chilled for a very short time (short like only a part of a second), so it might be possible to kill minion when he is not chilled even if merc is attacking him.

Reaper's will double your damage output (considering minions have 50% physical resistance) which is huge, also will make you running much safer for both you and merc. In reality Reaper's will shatter only very few corpses, especially if you whirl through minions when they are cursed, then you will kill most of them before merc even touches them. You can almost totally ignore corpse shatter from Reaper's Tool in other words, unless you let merc attack most of minions before you kill them. You will still see corpses get shattered due to Reaper's Tool, as I do notice it when I run even though it happens once per 4 runs, but do your own testings to see how often corpses really shatter.

 

[Espr]

Arreats, Enigma and Highlords is enough to give 55% hork which is good enough really. If you want to go the 105FCR route and use Arachnid's mesh (+10%FCR ring), then your skill shout is enough to give 56% hork (with double HOTO). I might be undervaluing metalgrid a bit, but levels and sharp charms cures the need for its AR. And if you wanted it for the resistances, mara's would probably be a better choice; still even, then I would also recommend highlord's and finding res elsewhere (such as charms).

I would third(fourth?) the drop the skillers plan, in particular, for your best Sharp charms. I use sharp charms that give life and strength as a secondary affix mostly, though one or two gives a massive chunk of lightning damage (which is mostly useful for giving a visual queue as to the range of WW, and a negligible boost to zerking down PIs).

As to the socket you asked about, I put a Diamond Jewel in my arreat's for yet more damage, but um or fire/cold resist is a good choice too if you're feeling your resists are lacking. In my case, fire resist is the only resist I over buffed (to keep the pretty much a non-issue even under conviction), while getting what cold I could to avoid issues with cold death explosions potentially taking me out. I ended up with good LR by accident, but it's occassionally helpful when something spawns PI and is Lightning enchanted.

For my merc I went with Reapers(Shael), Kira's(15% IAS + Fire Resist), and Guardian Angel(15% IAS + AR). I tried other armours like Treachery and Gladiator's Bane, but I found they allowed the merc to get himself into trouble more often, and I didn't really want to babysit him while running so I just went with the tried and true Kiras+GA combo. The fire resist portion of the jewels is mostly to help overbuff his FR for conviction packs.

 

[pharphis]

I'll add to the reaper's discussion though I have little exp in trav 1.13....

Reaper's also has variable cold duration (iirc), so aiming for the lowest duration reaper's for the merc might help reduce the number of corpses made. Combine that with low ED and high leech and it's probably the best merc wep for council for horkers

 

[Korlic]

Hmm my Merc uses Eth Reapers, NW if I should ditch that. On the other hand he rarely dies, so that would prolly change if I nerfed his damage and LL output.

 

[pharphis]

I slightly doubt decreasing dmg by 50% and leech by a tad makes a big difference in survival for mercs. I find that as long as they can leech from something they can leech fast enough to live with a few exceptions being a tough frenzy pack or maybe lister

edit: though as I've mentioned, little exp with trav runs

 

[Korlic]

Phar: I find it to be of more importance in trav than elsewhere. in Trav you often get nasty packs with Fana, might and maybe conviction or HF.
I remember it made a difference when I got an eth one, but to be fair I cant remember how much it helped exactly.