Dazling's 5k Favor Hardcore Constitution Barbarian (With a Shield and Everything)

[Blastyswa]

Have you ever thought "I want to play a barbarian with a shield", "barbarians have too much damage, I should reduce that somehow", or "Hardcore is scary, I want to have at least 1000 HP when I'm doing the level 19 grind on hardcore". If so, here's a phenomenal build. If you haven't thought those things, here is the hardcore barbarian build I played to get bloody footprints season 5, in case anyone cares, for some reason.


20 Barbarian

Race: Warforged

Str: 16 + Favor Tome +2
Dex: 12
Con: 20 + Level Ups
Int: 8
Wis: 8
Cha: 6

Feats:
1. Adamantine Body
3. Improved Shield Bash
6. Shield Mastery
9. Improved Critical: Slashing Weapons
12. Knight's Training
15. Improved Shield Mastery
18. Greater Shield Mastery
21. Overwhelming Critical
22. Perfect Shield Mastery
24. Epic Barbarian Damage Reduction
25. Elusive Target
27. Epic Reflexes
28. Harbinger of Chaos
30. Epic Fortitude
Legendary Feat: Scion of Arborea


Epic Feats are negotiable, I didn't go into epics. Adamantine Body is a phenomenal amount of PRR, improved shield bash helps a lot with active bashing, improving crits felt important since criticals are so good on barbarians at level 12.


Skills:
UMD
2 Points Tumble
Intimidate
Remainder into Swim and Jump as you see fit, I did 10 jump and then pushed swim.

Enhancements:
At level 20+, the AP on this build would really like you to have 1 racial AP. I have one from the ravenloft tome. Up to Level 19 for favor it doesn't really matter though, it's just at level 20 you'll have to either drop 8 PRR from Warforged, 60 HP from FB, or the third rank of cracking attack (which means dropping damage).


Warforged 16:
Core 1-5 (+75% fort, +2 Con)
Healer's Friend x3
Adamantine Durability x3
Memories of the Last War: Melee Power
Memories of the Last War: PRR
1 filler point somewhere, I did inscribed armor.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Frenzied Berserker 24:
Core 1-4
Extra Rage x1
Cracking Attack x3
Body Blow x3
Blood Tribute x3
Supreme Cleave x3
Blood Trail x3
Sprint Boost x1
Crazy Strike x3

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Occult Slayer 41:
Core 1-6
Parrying Bond x3
Extend Rage x1
Guarding Bond x3
Lessons of Travel x3
Kinetic Bond x3
Arcane Encumbrance x3
Vicious Strike x3
Bond of Retribution
Driving Force x3
Antimagic Boost x2
One Spirit x2
Occult Metalline
Vampiric Bond x3
Bond of Destruction


Ideally if you had like +3-4 racial AP you could grab stuff like Weapon Bond, One Spirit tier 3, or whatever else, but for a hardcore build you won't have that stuff, and I would not recommend this build on normal servers.



Gearing
I geared up quite a bit. My gear might have even carried me, not sure. But it definitely helped.

Levels 1-8: I equipped random stuff. Got deathblock fortification bracers, that was nice, and a healthy docent (+con and vitality).

Level 9-10: I went and farmed Feywild for
Crown of Butterflies, (Immortality Lessons)
Cloak of Summer, (Wake Me Up Inside)
Belt of the Ram, (Thornwright)
Red Dragonscale Boots, (Thornwright)
and Nocturne Ring. (Frosty Reception)
I also equipped a Hexbreaker I got from my one Witch Hunt run, which put me at 6 items. I probably should have farmed a 7th item, but I didn't end up bothering, if you did I'd either do cold iron bracers (you might get them while going for the Crown), a Docent, or the amber pendant that gives insightful sheltering. I got lucky and got Crystal Cacophony passed to me from Price of Freedom, so I wore that for quite some time. If you farm Immortality Lessons and Frosty Reception, make sure to get the bonus chests there, they're both fairly quick and easy. The wiki doesn't list the basement werewolf in Immortality for some reason (at the time of this posting), but it does drop named loot. Immortality can also drop a heroism augment, I got one of these and put it in my shield from 11-19.

Level 11: At level 11 I did a Menechtarun gear grind, getting a Shield of the Scorpion, Sting, Hyena Claw Necklace, and Blood Stone. I was actually going for Mirage instead of sting, but sting was fine. I also wanted Gloves of the Falcon, but did not end up pulling them. I also pulled a planar gird which was nice.

Levels 12-16: Throughout here I occasionally farmed Chains of Flame (On elite, but going slow and carefully) to try and get Golden Greaves, Unkor's Cleaver, and Ring of Baphomet. All 3 of those items are fairly vital, Golden Greaves flat DR 15 is godly (and you get set bonus +10 MRR if you pull Gloves of the Falcon from slayer), Unkor's Cleaver Con to hit and damage is great, and it has a lot of bonus damage and counts as a set bonus, and Ring of Baphomet PRR and absorption is insanely good, and the Improved Demonic Shield procs constantly. I only went below 90% HP once after getting Ring of Baphomet. I also got lucky and pulled Bracers of the Demon Consort from the raid around here, so I unequipped my deathblock bracers and socketed a deathblock topaz from the store on my hat.

Levels 17-19: I didn't grind for Sharn gear personally, it felt a bit too risky and not enough of an upgrade. Using the above Sands gear I had 3 sands sets, and would have had 4 if I got the gloves. I did specifically make sure to get a Heartwood docent from Search and Rescue though, that thing is absolutely insane, +31 Physical and Magical Resistance is godly. Just make sure and take the quest slow, it can be difficult. By level 19 I had 150 PRR and 100 MRR with 1000-1200 health depending on rage status, it was very nice.

Levels 20+: My barbarian is sitting at 20 atm and might not increase since I finished what I came for, but the build would be fine in epics if you needed to grab a bit of extra favor. Just go US/Shadowdancer and grab sneak attack dice and everything that increases defense and you'll be set, epics are easy currently.



Additional Notes, Tips, and Tricks:
1. Being a warforged doesn't really hurt your survivability in any way as a warforged. At level 1-2 or so I just let a hireling heal me, once I had blood tribute I just would always press that button whenever I didn't have temp HP from levels 3-11. You can carry repair potions if you want, but you're probably not going to take damage running on elite in these levels if you have blood tribute up constantly.
2. At level 12+ or so, you have quite a bit of hamp from barbarian cores, and you can start trying to put 4 points into the warforged enhancement to heal for more. At level 12 I stopped showing reduced numbers on healing, and by 19 I had almost a 2x multiplier to incoming healing even as a warforged. I never once used One Spirit, but when I pressed it once to test at level 12ish it did over 1000 healing to me, which means it would be a full heal for all of heroics.
3. If you're in a big group of enemies, you can put your shield up and just do a combination of bashing and supreme cleaving. That's actually the reason improved shield bash is taken early, retaining your defense while bashing can be nice. Even at fairly high level heroic content I almost always took 0 damage from all attacks while bashing.
4. Take intimidate even if you're solo, it helps to pull enemies off hirelings and keep them bunched up. If you're in a group of other players and you don't want to intimidate because you don't want aggro, don't play this build, play an FvS. You're a barbarian with a shield for a reason, go meatshield.
5. UMD is actually very handy even as a 6 charisma warforged. With ship buffs, heroism, and UMD maxed out, I could cast shield on myself from a wand by level 9-10 or so with good odds, and by level 15 I was able to cast restoration (with about a 20% chance) to take the quick route in amber temple. I probably could have used wands or scrolls to heal others, but I didn't end up doing that any.
6. Do all the usual hardcore things. Take favor rewards for health quickly, carry all the important potions, have shield available, etc.
7. At level 5 I ground out a feywild longsword with a hireling from the slayer. It's a little sketchy, but it's a huge damage increase, the fey bane applies to all enemies for some reason.
8. At level 12 I ground out a resistance +5 augment from gianthold slayer. You could probably go further with this and get a bunch of augments, but resistance +5 is the only one I'd recommend being very worth the time.


I think that's the build, will edit later if I think of something obvious I missed. It was a lot of fun playing though, and it felt cool being a melee surrounded by favored souls most of the time. Again don't play this on live servers, this is very Hardcore specific.

[Mindos]

could have used wands or scrolls to heal others, but I didn't end up doing that any.

Muahahaha. I'm sure you didn't mean it maliciously, but at first reading it just sounds FREAKING AWESOME. Let them suffer!

fey bane applies to all enemies for some reason.

Probably not for long, now!

[YUTANG75]

Thanks for this post, very interesting.
I'm running Strimtom's Barb build atm on Hardcore and am doing well but I feel like it focuses too much on damage. I'll be taking some of your advice on the itemization, that ring in particular seems crazy good. I hadn't really considered going capstone in Occult Slayer because knockdown immunity is neat but having a full heal button along with better defenses is immensely enticing to me. Especially as I keep failing my saves against Hold which can be pretty scary when you don't have the harper pin yet. I do tons of damage and tend to play grouped so its champ casters which are the scariest to me rn.

[Saekee]

with knight's training wouldn't you be better off with an easily farmed Nightforged blade?

edit: where is the werewolf?

[Blastyswa]

Muahahaha. I'm sure you didn't mean it maliciously, but at first reading it just sounds FREAKING AWESOME. Let them suffer!


Probably not for long, now!

Not going to lie, I totally blanked on that I could probably use UMD for others until after I finished 5k. Whoops! I saved one guy with bracers of assistance in Thrall of the Necromancer though, so I technically did my part?

Oops, cats out of the bag. I didn't even intend to exploit it honestly, I didn't realize the ferrocrystal longsword would do fey bane damage to everything, I just wanted a +2 weapon.

[Blastyswa]

Thanks for this post, very interesting.
I'm running Strimtom's Barb build atm on Hardcore and am doing well but I feel like it focuses too much on damage. I'll be taking some of your advice on the itemization, that ring in particular seems crazy good. I hadn't really considered going capstone in Occult Slayer because knockdown immunity is neat but having a full heal button along with better defenses is immensely enticing to me. Especially as I keep failing my saves against Hold which can be pretty scary when you don't have the harper pin yet. I do tons of damage and tend to play grouped so its champ casters which are the scariest to me rn.

Thanks! I saw a few other barbarians on the way with a lot less health, not sure if they were running that build or something else but I definitely felt like having several hundred bonus HP was nice. The ring is absolutely insane, and it's not a bad farm. The cleaver is the only slightly painful item to farm honestly, just because you have to get a bluff item to deal with the key guy.

Occult Slayer is huge, honestly I'd recommend warforged heavily as well. You're immune to hold person, earthgrab, neg levels, poisons... Lots of the stuff that can lead to random deaths on hardcore. And having the action surge MRR is great for when you see scary champs, 41 occult slayer vs. 0 is literally about 50+ MRR with another 20-30 partial uptime from action boost, casters ended up being pushovers by level 12 or so on this build.

[Blastyswa]

with knight's training wouldn't you be better off with an easily farmed Nightforged blade?

edit: where is the werewolf?

I had a nightforged blade around as well, I just used my ferrocrystal to level 10-11 and then swapped to sting. The critical profile was bad on it being a shortsword, but it gives so much con reduction that it would sometimes get enemies to zero con within a few hits, which really carried me until I got the cleaver at level 15-16 or so.

For the werewolf optional, go downstairs from the hall of objects in immortality. It's a fairly straightforward path from there, name is "old granny" or something.