LLD101

[Sloxx]

Hi, I'm new to LLD but after making a sorcie - and working on a kicker - I now want to make a really hardy character with what I would consider a fun build. Conc barb seemed to be the obvious choice - no other character can take advantage of high defense items like a conc barb.

The goal of this build is to force other melee characters to switch to 100% AR gear if they aren't already in it - and if they are - to still have so much defense that they won't have a good hit chance.

Currently I am baseing this build on the fact that I will be hell rushed with all skill quests - and level 29 (as far as I can tell - this is West Ladder Tournament legal)


A few breakpoints I will hopefully be hitting:

5 Frame FBR
75% Chance to Block
4 Frame FHR

Notes: I'm not 100% sure how the IAS breakpoints work for conc - so I'll hold off on that for now.


Skill placement:

1 Bash
1 Stun
12 Concentration
1 Iron Skin
1 Natural Resists
1 Axe Mastery
1 Howl
17 Shout
6 Battle Orders

Notes: Points could easily be switched out of shout in favor of axe mastery - or out of shout and into situational skills like leap, increased stamina, and increased speed. Let me know what you think about this.


Stat Placement:

Enough strength to wear gear.
Enough dex for max block.
Everything else in vitality.
Base energy.

Notes: No surprises there really.


Gear Selections:

Weapon: 6 Socket Naga with Max Damage / Defense Jewels and/or shaels
Shield: 15% ED Rhyme Grim Shield
Helm: Eth / Repair / High ED Grim Helm
Armor: Eth / Repair / High ED Ornate Plate (Ideal would be 24% FHR, 2 sockets with double shael - easiest way to hit my FHR BP)
Gloves: Perfect Defense Venomgrip
Boots: Upgraded 60% Goblin Toes
Belt: 24% FHR, +Str, +Life, High ED, Resists
Amulet: Angelic
Rings: Angelic
Charms: 40 x 15 Life / 15+ Defense Small Charms

Notes: Obviously trying to get as much defense as possible here while still retaining a little damage potencial and keeping my basic block / fhr breakpoints. If I don't get a godly FHR / 2 soc armor - I can make the FHR up with a shael in the helm - or in charms. Also I realize getting eth / repair / high def is not very easy - I plan on breaking eth item after eth item until I get my nice ones with repair.


That's the basics of the build. If you think this would be a total waste of time and funds please let me know and save me the trouble. If you think the build could work with minor treaks please point them out. Any advice or comments at all are appreciated. I am still very new to LLD and would love the help.

Thanks for takeing time to read this over.

[TheBigL481]

crushing blow does pretty much nothing in pvp. For gloves and belt, IK, which gives you like 40 str towards being able to wear the ornate, so more stats in life. I think belt + gloves also gives the set bonus of more defense, and 30 ias on the gloves.
Also, sanders for boots, because of the stats they provide. I would probably put 6 in BO, 1 into each non-wep mastery, then split points between conc and axe mastery.
Thats what i would do, anyway. Ill check the ias breakpoints to see how much is necessary.

EDIT:
Okay, so with a Robo Naga (2 shaels + 4 max/ED jewels) plus the 30ias of ik gloves, you get 2.2 attacks per second. This option CAN have more damage than the latter, and is SLIGHTLY faster, but the jewels will cost you an arm and a leg, whereas...
With an Honor Naga (has better stats, 1 to skills, and deadly strike) you can get 2 attacks per second, with 30ias ik gloves (requires the belt)

So, if it was up to me, i would choose an Honor Naga, because to make a Robo outdamage it, you need 4 expensive jewels, and you don't get the deadly strike/replenish life/1 to skills, that you do with the Honor.

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/runewords-original.shtml

That link contains the stats of honor.

[Sloxx]

[Roy]

Sloxx, you already did the job of correcting some of the stuff for me.

1) If you can find a way to get Crushing Blow on your attacks, I'd definitely do it - it does work very effectively in PvP. Pity that you can't use upgraded Goblin Toes - if you can find a nice pair of eth/rep greaves, I think that's a good choice.

Tearhaunch may be a solid temp option while you're waiting to find something with crazy defense. Although I'd consider using Goblin Toes just for the CB - 30 defense is nice on a def build like a Concer, but CB is hard to turn down.

Another option may be the trio of Sigon's Gloves + Boots + Belt. Works great at level 18, but I've never tried making a level 29 conc barb before. The defense may be comparable to what you would get on rares.

2) Yeah, conc barbs are limited to 29 precisely so they can't use the IK combo.

3) Skill placement - I'd max Battle Orders (7) and get a point in Battle Command as well. With dual spirits on the switch, it's not bad having a skill point applied to your Iron Skin/Shout/Conc. I'd also go with the high-defense route - that's going to be your bread and butter. I haven't fiddled around with the skills before, but I'd probably opt for maxing orders first, then going into Conc. If you're building to be a pure melee char, Nat. Res. probably isn't necessary.

4) There should be an IAS speed calculator in the sticky. It can answer your IAS BP questions much better than I could.

[Torrent]

[heprea]

and if he is gonna be 29lvl he cant use battle command since its 30lvl skill

[Roy]

Oh gosh, I shouldn't write that at 6 in the morning. I never make level 29 characters. I nearly suggested upped GToes before I caught myself.

Torrent, barbs can dual weild spirit swords.

[fuh]

no offense pls but:

[KnightXENO2]

Well if your keeping at lvl29 for arena your IAS options... suck but you got to make the best of it. Some of your gear REALLY depends on your ias BP, but conc is already slow and one attack so you want a good ias bp.

Options:
IK gloves/soe/sander boots or Gtoe depending (40stats= 160life pre-bo + more defense but its slow)
Sanders gloves/soe/sanders boots (lower on stats but another 20ias)

Some other gear considerations: A rare weapon is going to be better because you can hit a diff speed BP with it, or possibly also try out a crowbill honor. You make 1 more speed BP with the same mastery but lose some weapon dmg (I found it worked better for one of my conc barbs).

As for skills.... you want to be a tank, but your going to need more of a source of dmg and ar (somewhat). I really think your going to end up splitting points between shout/weapon mastery until you find what you want. BUT if your going to be using all eth gear you could possible go almost max in weapon mastery with left-over points into shout instead (and still hit 8-10k+ def).

Charms are personal preferance. You will have more life and its cheaper this way at first, but you might eventually want max/ar/life..... although since your going for heavy armor max/ar/6str is just as good for you and MUCH cheaper if you start early enough in ladder.

[Sloxx]

First of all - thanks for all the feedback from everyone.

My biggest question at this point would be - what would be a good balance between damage and defense.

Am I going to need to get 3 / XX / 15 small charms?
Would I be better off staying with 15 / 15+ defense small charms?
Shout vs Weapon Mastery - split points? All one or the other?

Are these things I'm basically going to need to test for myself and figure out what combo works best?

On another note - clearly my options at gloves / belt / boots are going to be wide open since there is no clear cut choice - I will probably test out as many options as I can and try to figure out which combo I like. A couple other random questions I would like answered to help me speed up the testing process:

On a scale of 1-10 how useful will crushing blow be for this build?
On a scale of 1-10 how useful will deadly strike be for this build?
If I focus too heavily on defense and my damage suffers - will it lead to duels so long that nobody wants to do me? (I absolutely do not want this)

Again thanks for all the replies so far - you have given me a lot of new ideas that I can try out and incorperate into this build.


EDIT: I just thought of this - what about using an ebug smoke runeword ornate plate? Or is ebug not legal?

[heprea]

deadly 9/10

one option for boots/belt/gloves:
rare eth repair war gloves/boots/belt with high ed + other nice mods

or one could be the 3sigons part wich was earlier said

[Roy]

EBug's are perfectly fine, and they're pretty cheap to replace when you use common runewords.

Upon further thought, Sigon Trio may actually work - it's worth a try, but you lose crushing blow from GToes. But, Crushing Blow isn't crucial.

Deadly Strike isn't really that crucial either if you pump your mastery - but an Honor Naga gives you 25% and allows you to pump Shout (see below).

I'd max Shout first - defense is going to be your bread and butter. But if you can get absurdly high defense without maxing shout, then it would make sense to allocate some points to your mastery.

[Sloxx]

Right now I'm looking at using a 1200 defense ornate plate and a 240 defense grim helm. Those were my best imbues so far (the grim even got repair on it - I was pretty happy about that).

I don't know if I will be to the defense point I want to be with those - the next eth ornate plate I get I will try to ebug and make a smoke out of it.

I will definately try out the sigons trio - decent defense - 30% ias - little attack rating. Not bad the more I look at it. For sure worth trying out and using until I can find eth / repair for each slot.

For my first build I think I will error on the side of too much defense and go with more shout than mastery - if I feel like my damage output is too low, but my defense is overkill, I can easily remake the character. If my defense isn't cutting it even with overcompensating on the side of too much defense - well then I know it's time to scrap this idea.

[Torrent]

[Sloxx]