Gold Find Barbarian Guide

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

Gear/Base Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have a superscript that refers here.
1) Arachnid Mesh is recommended for the use of farming with Warcry and if you lack other options.

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to immunities or bad layouts. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter or Budget Variant.

Act 3

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Breath of the Dying, Might

Might Aura provides us with a significant damage boost to our Physical Damage attacks.
[Breath of the Dying War Pike has a lot of Increased Attack Speed, damage, and a great source of x% Life stolen per hit. This combo can help take down your foes with great speed and have great survivability at the same time.

Mercenary Gear Options

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

General

• At the beginning of each run buff you and your Mercenary by swapping to whichever Weapon Swap that gives you more + to Warcries and cast Battle Command 2 times, Battle Orders, and Shout. Make sure that these buffs stay active all the time, they are essential to your survivability.
• Use Battle Cry on the enemies to make the whole fight easier for both you and the Mercenary
• Before your targets die, be sure to swap to your setup with more x% Extra Gold From Monsters if possible and use Find Item as well to gain additional Gold.

Leap variant

• The main playstyle is using Leap to keep enemies pinned so that your Mercenary can deal damage. We are aiming for small leaps, leaping on top of your own location.

Berserk and Concentrate variant

• Another playstyle uses a combination of Berserk and Concentrate to assist your Mercenary in speeding up the run.

War Cry variant

• Use Warcry to stun enemies and if you're playing the damage variant of this Skill than just keep screaming at the monsters!
• If you do not have Teleport you can enter Durance of Hate Level 1 to reposition your Mercenary when you enter and leave the area.
• Leap Attack can be a great way to move from place to place requiring larger distances until Teleport becomes available.

Whirlwind variant

• Use Whirlwind to spin through as many Council Members as possible.

Late-Game

• Use Teleport from Enigma to move from place to place, reposition yourself, and reposition your Mercenary. Your Mercenary stands a better chance of staying alive with you in control. Your Mercenary can act as a first line of defense after you Teleport, catching incoming damage you would have taken otherwise.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Faster Cast Rate (FCR) For Warcry Setup

Faster Cast Rate speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for at least the 105% FCR Breakpoint. Note: FCR only controls the animation speed of the Character, and not any internal Cooldowns spells have.

Increased Attack Speed (IAS)

Increased Attack Speed speeds up your attack animations. Weapon bases have different IAS breakpoints. Values for recommended weapon options provided below. Consult the d2planner for other bases.

Grief Phase Blade

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

Our primary goal is to use Leap thus avoiding being hit with the distance of you and the enemies.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary concern is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build is Hardcore viable. If you are unaccustomed to this playstyle, we recommend trying this build on Softcore to gain experience on how to successfully pilot it.

• Teleport instantly moves you to a selected square on the visible screen in which you can stand. The game will try to to place you within a small radius around your cursor even if it would be impeded normally.
• Teleport is not obstructed by walls or other impediments but can fail if your cursor is not completely passed those impediments when cast. Your Mercenary and Minions will be teleported with you, Traps will not.
• Certain Minions in large quantities can become “stuck” in position after teleporting. Move away from that position to give them the chance to spread out.
• You can “extend” the visible screen by opening UI-windows like the Inventory or the Character screen. Continuously cast Teleport and drag your mouse to the edge of your screen.
• The Mana cost of Teleport decreases with additional Skill Levels down to 1 Mana per cast.
• You can use “ESC” to open the menu in single player to pause the game after a Teleport to determine if you are safe.

• The % increase applies to base Life/Mana. This is calculated including the Bases Character Life per level, Vitality Points, and any + xx Life from items. More flat +xx Life on items equates to more bonus Life after the buff.
• Can be applied to partied Players, Pets, and Mercenaries.
• Any new application of battleorders replaces any active buffs. If battleorders is applied with additional + to Skills from any sources (i.e.Skill Shrines), recasting the Skill after the effect has run out will lower the overall effect to the current Skill level.

• Able to leap over all objects including "vented" walls (i.e. jail bars, and grates in sewers) but not over solid walls. Your landing zone can be a maximum of 20 yards away at max level.
• Melee attacks and Ranged attacks fired while the Barbarian is directly overhead can hit. Normally Ranged attacks will miss otherwise.
• The Inventory, Belted Potions, and Weapon Swap are not available while leaping.
• Leap Knockback and Hit Recovery are always applied to any monster within range of the radius.
• Activating Leap while hovering the mouse directly over the Barbarian without any monsters targeted will initiate a "short hop" which moves the Barbarian less than 1 yard and still applies the maximum knockback.

• Applies a complete incapacitation to normal and Minion monsters. Has a 10% chance to apply to Elite monsters.
• When successfully applied, the monster is incapable of taking any actions for the length of the stun. This has a maximum length of 10 seconds.
• The stun can be applied every 6 frames or .24 seconds.
• Can be blocked by monsters with Chance to Block.

• Converts 100% Weapon Physical Damage to Magic Damage. This occurs after +% Damage and Critical Hits whether it's through Mastery, Critical Strike, or Deadly Strike. Conversion also occurs prior to Resistance. Damage Reduction will not affect converted Magic Damage but Magic Resist will.
• Reflecting damage will not occur for things such as with Thorns, Iron Maiden and Spirit of Barbs. In addition, this means that there are no forms of leeching, Life or Mana in any circumstance.
• Defense debuff is applied on attack, regardless of whether that attack is successful. With continuous attacks the debuff will stay on you throughout the combat.
• Defense debuff is applied to user after +% Defense but before + Defense vs Melee and + Defense vs Missile, therefore your defense is not 0 when equipping items with those bonuses.