DOUBLE SWING HARDCORE BARBARIAN BUILD, Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction

Double Swing Barb D2

This will be a record of my Hardcore run of Diablo 2. It's a work in progress, and I'll add to it as I see fit.

Parameters of Play

Vanilla Version 1.14d. No mods. That means no PlugY for twinkage. This is a legit vanilla run with all the limitations that entails.

Hardcore mode. If I die, I stay dead. Pretty simple. All items are lost upon death. Doesn't matter if you're 85th level, your character and everything it had, is gone. Death is no longer a minor inconvenience. This will give you a shot of adrenaline sometimes.

Offline. This is a single-player run. No Battle.net, no 3rd-party servers. That means no trading and no Ladder-only runewords. It also means I can't blame an internet connection if I die (lag, dropouts).

/players8 is employed whenever I fancy it. Makes the mobs bigger, harder and less boring, but also gives me more drops, more gold and more XP. I switch back to /players1 when farming the Countess because the vital early rune drops are not affected by the  /players command.

Completionist. I delve all optional dungeons (e.g, The Pit). However, I won't waste my time killing every single thing and exploring every nook and cranny. Just the bosses, boss chests and whatever tickles my fancy. If I can't kill something, I move on. I'm not going to spend 15 mins hacking away at Ghostly Hungry Undead at eighth level, when I'm lacking in power and gear.

Pro-tip. Never get cocky. Never play when tired. One lapse in concentration is all it takes for your run to end.

Character selection: Barbarian. Specifically, melee Barb. This is one of the toughest builds to play in Hardcore mode because the aggro is almost always trained on you. Sorceresses and Necromancers are EZ mode in comparison. Plus, Barbs are much more reliant on items. Don't have the right items? You're dead in the water until you get them, it's that simple. Initially, I'm confident enough to eschew a shield in favor of dual-wielding (Double Swing). However, you can respec once per difficulty level. Remember that you can quickly switch between weapon wields (W-key). You can have a second dual-wield on switch, sword and board on switch or a two-hander on switch. Hell, you might even like to go part-throwing Barb. Variety is the spice of life. I tend to have a second dual-wield on switch, but it's safer to have a shield on switch.

Please note that this is just the way I have chosen to approach Hardcore mode as a Barb. I do not claim that my course of action is the most efficient, but it's fairly efficient so far, and quite safe... for a melee Barb.

For the first 20 or so levels (Act One), it's all Strength and Vitality. I recommend a very deep hit point pool for Hardcore mode.

Also for the first 20 levels, I neglected to focus heavily in a weapon (Masteries). I chose to runeword Axes and only put one point into Axe Mastery (for a solid one-off boost). The vast majority of my points went into Double Swing. By 20th, I still had 95% chance to hit Radament, but I wasn't happy, and this was a mistake, so I respecced. The screencap on the left is pumping Double Swing (and not Axe Mastery) whereas the screencap on the right is pumping Mastery to 20 (and only dipping into Double Swing). As you can see: a big difference in both damage and attack rating for the new Barb. Also, what those stats don't show you is that I also have a 29% chance of Critical Strike, thanks to Mastery. While it would have balanced out in in several levels (Double Swing and Mastery are both going to be maxed, anyway), I didn't want to wait that long.

Why Double Swing? Don't have to be concerned with IAS so much. Also, don't need mana-leech.

Why Axes? Axes have no Dex requirement, have decent reach and it's easy to find two and three socket axes in the early going. Go with whatever weapon you like, though.

Be on the lookout for specialist Barb helms. If you're lucky, you will find something like this:

Note the socket. A nice bonus. This is a very powerful level 3 item. I found this item while doing a few Countess runs after I'd reached Act 4.

Note that it is possible, even in the early-going (8th level), to encounter extremely difficult foes, such as Ghostly Hungry Undead. Avoid.

otoh, Don't waste your time killing soft-ass shit. If the XP bar isn't going up quickly, move on. Don't waste your time on mooks when you start powering up: beeline to enemies that actually reward XP points and items because they are a threat, namely: super-uniques, champions, fanatics, possesseds and ghostlies. Mooks are in your way? Leap over them. Again, go for the XP bombs.

Act One. Well, it's the first act, and it's Normal mode first, so it's a bit of a doddle even in Hardcore mode. I didn't run up against too much that made me extra careful, and I didn't have any close shaves. I would say the Pit and the Cave level 2 could be deadly for rusty players. Be careful of the archers down there. With /players8 on I was 5th for the Den of Evil, 8th for the Burial Grounds, 14th for Tristram and about 19th by the time I faced off against the act boss, Andariel.

You need 32 Strength to wield an Axe and 36 in order to wear Ringmail. These are both sold by the Blacksmith, Charsi, but they may need to be vendor-farmed. Start looking for 2 socket Ringmail and 3 socket Axes as soon as you get some cash flow going (for Stealth and Malice runewords). They are dead-easy to vendor-farm.

Don't forget your Act One mercenary. They are not utterly useless, only relatively useless. They may only add 5% to your efficiency but when you're taking a breather (say, sipping your coffee), it's nice that they continue mowing down the stragglers. Go for the Rogue Sister who fires cold arrows. Cold is great because it slows the enemy down. Socket weapons with chipped sapphires for on-hit cold. Also be on the lookout for small charms that bestow on-hit cold. This makes a huge difference. With Double Swing, you will slow down entire mobs.

Before you hit the Underground passage, your sister should have a bow like this pretty easily:

Humble but effective. You could also be dual-wielding axes like this (again, easy vendor-farm from Gheed/Charsi):

However, at around fifteenth level, you want to start farming for runes from the Countess. Your choices are Malice (Ith-El-Eth) and Steel (Tir-El).

Early armor runewords are limited to Stealth (Tal-Eth). You want this great armor runeword ASAP for 25% FHR (faster hit recovery) and +movement rate (facilitates more efficient farming). I wouldn't bother with Stealth for your merc but if you're keen on doing extra Countess runs, go for it.

It doesnt take long to farm runes for Malice, Steel and Stealth runewords. The Countess drops up to four runes per kill (confirmed by me), from El up to Ral. Maybe ten runs and 1 hour of your life gone. You will get a good feel for your character doing Countess runs. If you're really keen, go for the helm runeword, Nadir (Nef-Tir). Here it is:

Once you are dual-wielding runified axes and are wearing Stealth, you should be set for the remainder of Act One, and Andariel should drop like a sack of shit.

Did I find any notable loot in Act One? Not really. You  barely have any magic find so it's just blue items. I did find a few rares, but nothing good for the build. Also found the Axe of Fechmar unique but threw it away. You can't keep everything with limited stash space. Your stash should be full of runes and gems. So Act One loot is basically about getting a few runewords going.

Act Two. Ok, so here's my Barb in the early stages of Act Two. Yep, I haven't died yet!

As you can see, I upgraded Stealth into Splint Mail, which requires 51 Strength. Now, note that great Defense rating. That is due to Barb Shout and Defiance from the defensive Desert Warrior merc. Give that merc Stealth Splint and a Malice Polearm if you want to make him more useful, but it isn't necessary. You mainly want him for his Defiance buff/decoy.

Once you have the Horadric Cube, you will get some inventory management relief. Start cubing aka uptiering aka transmuting your gems in order to further free up inventory space (3x chipped ruby = 1x flawed ruby, and so on, up to Perfect).

Remember that you can uptier runes in the same way (3x El = 1x Eld). This allows you to fast-track to Ort, Thul and Amn runes (Amn is very rare in Normal). Which means you open up weapon runewords such as King's Grace (Amn-Ral-Thul) and Strength (Amn-Tir) along with shield runewords such as Ancient's Pledge (Ral-Ort-Tal) and Spirit (Tal-Thul-Ort-Amn).

It depends on how you're finding your killspeed and survivability (and how many Countess runs you want to do in order to fund the runewords). You need to be 25th level in order to equip Strength, King's Grace and Spirit, anyway.

Now, Act Two itself. You will note that elemental resistances are a lot more useful in Act Two, but they are still not necessary, so I wouldn't go out of my way to get them at this point (shield runewords), because you should have a deep hit point pool and lots of healing potions. Buffed with Shout and Defiance, my Barb is feeling very solid at this point. I think I'd have to go out of my way to get myself killed, in order to be killed.

Ok, so here is my Barb that beat the Act Two boss, Duriel:

No probs. Just used Double Swing. And yes, I just sped-run Act Two. I'm not into playing Normal mode at all; it's a total bore for experienced players and the enemies fall like leaves in autumn. Nightmare is more exciting and Hell is where it's at for the experts.

Act Three. Here you will find glorious Double Swing even more useful. Basically, against the midget hordes. You will also note the useless vendors; it's all blue magical crap and no baseline stuff with sockets for Strength. Thus, since there is no way to transmute magical garbage into normal, you need to farm your baseline if you really want it (weapon racks). That said, those Malice axes that you crafted back in the midway point of Act One? They will still tear Act Three a new asshole. Well, Meph will take some beating but you can still push through at 25th level, and that's exactly what I did.

Yep, still not dead. Let's see how we go in Act 4. It is possible that at this point you won't be feeling confident. I mean, Act 4 is a big step up. If that's the case, I recommend doing Trav runs.

Act Four. Here we are at the start of Act Four. This is with Shout, Battle Orders and Defiance active:

If you haven't done so already, it's time to dump your Malice axes and upgrade to Strength ones. Strength is a huge, huge step up from Malice. 25% crushing blow is badass. Your Barb will feel reborn. Also, crushing blow stacks. Thus, you want to dual-wield with two Strength axes. As a bonus, you'll also get a nice raw boost to Strength and Vitality (40 and 20) and some decent life leech for added survivability. Again, badass. One Strength is what made the Chaos Sanctuary and Diablo himself much less of a headache in this run, since I found no awesome rares for my build.

Thing is, the Amn rune is not easy to find in Normal mode. There is only a 10% chance that it drops in the Hellforge. Well, I got lucky. But cubing up an Amn from lesser runes from Countess runs would be possible, though it would take ages.

And yeah, I just runeworded a plain old two socket axe bought from Charsi in Act One. It isn't easy to find a war axe with two sockets. And if you find a normal white war axe and have Larzuk socket it, then it's going to come out with 6 sockets (the max for the item). Which is useless to you because the Strength runeword requires exactly two sockets. And while it's possible to socket a white weapon in the Horadric cube, it's random how many sockets you come out with (1-6). And that requires Ral, Amn, Perfect Amethyst and a white war axe each time you attempt to get two sockets! So I just said "To hell with it" and got the boost I needed from a crappy Act One axe. It'll do for now. Also, I'm not concerned about spending an Amn because they're common in Nightmare mode, coming up next. And in Nightmare I might find an appropriate Naga (exceptional version of the war axe). (The elite version, found in Hell, is called the Berserker Axe).

Act Five. Here I am at thirtieth level. Buffed with Battle Command, Battle Orders, Shout and Defiance. I'm just about to take on the necromacer, Nihlathak.

Your enemies in the Act Five finale are stunlock, freeze and decrepify. Taking on Baal's minions at the Throne of Destruction is not easy at 30th level. You may have to break up the packs. Baal wasn't so hard for the above-pictured build, he was just a bit tedious. Took about 10 mins to lay the smackdown.

Next post: A break from Hardcore mode: Hell-proofing a Frenzy Barb.

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