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Peter James wrote:
> I'm running a Barbarian in Diablo II with the LOD expansion set.
> His stats are:
> Strength 45: Dexterity 40: Vitality 25: Energy 30: Level 13
> I seem to spend a lot of time in the Rogue Camp as he gets killed
> frequently. I am a newbie at this game, but wondered if maybe I've
> got his stats all wrong. I've also equipped him with a gemmed Long
> Bow. Required dexterity 19: Required strength 22:
> Is this a good bet for a barbarian?
> -
> Peter James
> Remove AT to reply
>
> P F James
Nope, don't need no bows, except maybe a lot later on for some kind of
special reason, and probably not even then. If you want a ranged attack for
some reason you're probably better off with throwing weapons. Give the bow
to your merc.
What you need right now is the highest damage hand weapon you can find, and
for the time being that'll probably be a mace or scepter of some kind. If
you aren't lucky enough to find one right off, buy one from Akara in the
rogue camp.
Regarding stats and skill points, here's a simple stategy--
Don't put any points in energy. Period. Nada points in energy. A barb
doesn't really need mana for a long time, and when you do need it use items
with mana leech to get it.
Only put enough points in dexterity to equip the armor and weapons you want
to use. Even then, keep an eye out for +dexterity items to save you points
there.
As a rule, pretty much the same thing applies to strength--enough to use the
items you want to equip and that's it, although you can fudge a bit and dump
a few extra points here from time to time.
Everything else goes in vitality. You never have enough life--never.
And for the skill points, hold off on using more than the minimum for a
loonnnnggg time, unless you have a very specific reason for doing otherwise.
Probably the earliest skill you might want to invest more than one point in
is Concentrate.
Perhaps the biggest mistake new players make is dumping all their skill
points in the lower level skills as soon as they get them. If you do that
you'll end up with a character who simply won't be able to survive in Hell,
and might even have a hard time finishing NM. And there's no real reason to
spend those skill points early on anyway, since it's not all that difficult
to go a long way into Act 1 without spending any. And once you become more
experienced you'll probably be able to go even farther (although you might
not want to).
A lot of this advice is overly simplified and later on you'll know when to
"break the mold".
🙂 Good luck and have fun with what may be the best
computer game ever!
BTW, it'd probably be a good idea not to spend any points in a weapon
mastery until you're pretty sure you know what weapon class you're going to
stick with. But one of the ways that my barbs always broke that mold was to
always have a few points in mace mastery. I don't think points there are
ever wasted, mostly because you're going to keep running across set and
unique mace-class weapons that are simply to good *not* to use. By the time
my barbs finished up with hell, even if they were sword barbs they'd
probably have 5 or so points in mace mastery, too.
--
chainbreaker
If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it.
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