I did two full games where I do most zones and killed all heralds. I'd say about 20 tier5 heralds all together. This is with an endgame abyss warlock with 400mf and TZ level 96, warlock is 94. Not a huge amount but enough to get a "feel". Honestly, I haven't noticed any difference to before the patch :( is it possible that the changes are not working in non-ladder? It still feels like regular champion packs have better drops (in terms of color). Also found zero sunder charms (not enough heralds to judge that).

Hello fellow Barbarian enjoyers.

I see this mostly as an addendum or expansion to the regular guides from Maxroll and co. They are not bad at all. But:

1. They go from "Budget" with starter rune words and blue stuff to "Standard" with dual Grief and Enigma, with nothing in between.
2. They are often a bit generic not giving you the important tips and tricks on how to make this character shine.

So here we go, I have three sections: Gear / Gameplay / MF-Farming

Gear

- To make this character work in Hell and be fun, just as with most melee chars in D2R you need a Grief. Does it work without it? Absolutely, but making ethOath and/or ethDeath is not cheap either and can be complicated, finding the correct bases, getting your attack rating up... So personally, I see Grief and any item with cnbf (cannot be frozen) as the entry point for this character.
I will expand on this in the gameplay section: Until you have Enigma, Lawbringer in a Phaseblade goes in to your offhand and is best in slot (Alternative: Dreadfang).

- Arreat's Face is pretty common and solves a lot of your problems like leech, resistance, AR, stats, has a socket... It's a bit OP and you should prioritize getting it asap. If you find or trade it you can switch to Guillaume's Face for bosses, no need to choose, you don't have your inventory filled with good charms yet anyway, just carry it with you.

- Treachery is great. But most likely you don't need the IAS (increased attack speed) and Lionheart is an amazing budget runeword for a frenzy Barb. It's like a mini Fortitude and in most cases better than Treachery. Remember: Strength also increases your damage!

- The other slots are pretty straight forward, there aren't many options and the best in slot items are obvious and not that expensive. The last one I want to talk about is the Belt slot. Most guides recommend defensive options and I'm not a fan of that. Do you really need phys. damage reduce? I argue it's useless (see Gameplay section). So either get your (mandatory) mana leech from Gloom's Trap so you can be flexible on your rare ring slot (the other is most likely occupied with a Raven Frost). Or what I consider best in slot: upped Goldwrap. IAS is nice to have and 30%mf is much better than any defensive stat you could get here. IMHO.

Gameplay

- First of all, with keyboard and mouse Frenzy is extremely enjoyable to play. You put Frenzy/Double Swing on buttons (I use W and Q) and then you simply hold that button down to make the Barb move and attack as soon as you meet a mob. You steer with the cursor and feel like a plow going through snow. Sometimes you have to hit the button again if you get stuck, which happens rarely. On Controller it's a bit different: you move with the stick and only hit and hold the Frenzy button when you actually meet a demon.

- This is important and something most guides miss: minus enemy resistance is very powerful in this game. So Decrepify curse, which reduces and even breaks physical resistance is your number one damage multiplier. With the crazy move speed bonus from Frenzy combined with Leap Attack you are one of the fastest and most mobile chars in the game, so having Decrepify on your Merc with Reaper's Toll is completely useless. Unless you can position him with Enigma. That's why you NEED to wear Lawbringer runeword yourself until you have tele. Otherwise you lose your biggest damage boost because your Merc will never catch up with you. He will always attack the wrong mobs and you end up running behind Emilio instead of plowing through demons... Grief + Lawbringer is an amazing combo and after many tests I consider it superior to any other weapon combo IF you don't have enigma (even dual Grief). Getting Decrepify on the mobs is the biggest damage AND defensive boost. Alternatively, you can use Dreadfang for Amplify Damage. Even greater damage boost but without the defensive part.

- Finally, Frenzy is super safe and chill if you play it right. Put one point into War Cry and here's the gameplay loop: Jump into a big crowd. Use War Cry to stun your surrounding enemies, Decrepify will proc, chop chop away. As soon as most mobs and the champion boss is down, leave the rest for your merc to clean up (which can use some of the really powerful merc weapons like Obedience) and switch to your +3 Warcry Spears/Glaive which you can shop from Anya and start screaming at corpses with Find Item until those Bers and unique Shakos start to fly out (best feeling in D2R). Keep Frenzy charge up and zoom to the next pack.

MF-Farming

- This is a short section. Yeah the Berserk Barb works. It's efficient. But I don't consider that fun in any way... Frenzy is better in every way. He can farm and kill every area in the game easily, it's very fun to play and is just as good in terms of MF. With the above mentioned strategy you can wear full MF gear (Goldwrap, Chance Guard, War Traveler/Cow King's Hooves, Skullder's Ire / Wealth, manaleech mf ring) easily get to 250-300%mf and have amazing clear speed in P1. Without enigma. You may have slower kill speed than sorcs, palas and warlocks, but you easily make up for it with Find Item. Remember, you will loot almost every mob twice! So if you take 4-5min to clear Chaos Sanctuary instead of 2-3min, you are most likely still just as efficient or better at finding items than the other mentioned chars.

- The ultimate MF Frenzy barb I currently play uses Enigma and Last Wish (with Blessed Aim Merc and Reaper's Toll), gets up to 400%mf and can still farm P3 very fast and efficiently. Which is enough for me since I play online and use three accounts.

cheers, have fun

Since we are in the era where they make actual changes to my beloved D2, here is the one thing that I think NEEDS to happen.

Spirits (Wolverine, Sage, Barb) always get one shotted even with BO. At the very least they need to be tuned down in the aggro table, sometimes mobs ignore my druid/merc and go straight to the spirit... But why not just make them not attackable? They are not that op or anything. Paladin auras also just work all the time. You can't kill BO of a barbarian...

I'm playing Fury for the first time and it's actually fun with Metamorphosis helm! I'm smashing colossal ancients and I enjoy it a lot. But I think I'm gonna respec heart of the wolverine and put the points into other pets or wearbear because even maxed out the stupid heart of the wolverine needs to be recast all the time and especially in crucial situations like bosses where I actually need it for attack rating, it's never there and instantly dies again.

Thoughts?

Maybe you can relate... I play D2 every few years. Last time I played it was like three years ago. And every time I eventually make a fast tele sorc and start farming keys. And I always think cool let's get some torches. And then nothing drops :D multiple runs with just nothing. I even end up checking if they changed something because in my memory I found keys all the time. Frequent double drops. But nope, in reality it's just super rare...

oh btw is there any tell in which direction to go in arcane sanctuary?

https://preview.redd.it/qoj2znd29gfh1.png?width=3828&format=png&auto=webp&s=0568936a7ab0f7d61b69124ab816aede27bb9ffb

Can't believe it :D I've been playing all my life, never had such a rare drop! Any suggestions on what build I should play with it?

I've been a long time D2 enjoyer and I'm playing warlock update for the first time. Just wanted to give the new class a quick test and now I've found an OHM and the class is kinda fun... Guess I'm hooked again :D

Here's the question, it has been like half a decade or more since I've last played and I have now idea how the game has progressed. And I'm missing a MAL for CTA... Where do you guys go for trades these days? Looking for a shop with some sort of price guide or something.

I always enjoyed Rally since the early days (mostly RBR VR these days). I also played other racing games, but since I have a psvr2 recently I got a copy of GT7 and I heard there is also rally in it (there is not, it's just off road track racing with really bad physics). Anyway I'm doing some multi-player track racing and this is some of the most boring and frustrating experience you can imagine... Maybe it's just this game, but as soon as there are cars in front of you (which is most of the time) it's misery. You can't drive your line, they block you, brake too much in front of you, then they ram you and you're the one flying off the track.. Attacking is super risky too, because all the cars are pretty much the same, so it's a game of waiting until others make mistakes. But then also, it's so boring! 10? 15? laps of the same track with 3 corners and one hair pin? What is that! I'm half asleep after three laps because it's always the same corners with the same speed and the same line :D

I'll finish the trophy for this game but then it's back to rally for me. I really miss the feeling of being 20min into Ouninpohja and debating if I'm gonna push the last sector or play it safe while being fully focused, feeling the gravel and speeding around corner after corner.

Just finished Foundation and it answered a lot of questions. Definitely something you need to play it you want the full picture of what is happening in Control.

It has a weird tone though in the dialogue, especially with Pope/Jesse. And some things straight up don't make sense to me. Maybe someone can explain it to me? (spoilers obviously)

You find out/get confirmation that at first Directors got voted in by a "board" of human beings just like any other human group or company that needs to appoint a leader. This is heavily critized by Jesse and Pope explaining to the camera that method is antiquated and somehow bad? But then the new methods seems to be that an alien astral entity (the board), of which we know basically nothing and is very likely having a hidden agenda, is just choosing random people for "reasons". How is that in any way better than actual people from the bureau choosing their leader? I don't get it... And that is just one example.

https://preview.redd.it/rj1t3tfcveyg1.png?width=2078&format=png&auto=webp&s=526e7478d5d4beb1a60970be0e2c5d17f8a8be39

They got me. I order my first month of gamepass because there was a good promotion, there was a cool game I wanted to try. Even though I hate subscription. They do everything right. I install their app, everything works fine, I play the game. FIRST update I ever do. Store breaks, it won't download, it gives me cryptic error codes that don't give me any information, I try youtube for fixes, nothing works.

I'm sorry but that is just unacceptable in 2026. In my 20+ years of using Steam I never had an issue and when something is going on I was at least informed with helpful information. Microsoft you had your chance, you blew it.

I know you can feel my frustration, but I'm not just ranting, they need to know this. It's not just the xbox app, this stuff happens all over Windows. Please Microsoft improve your user experience. Make it a priority.

Hi, in the near future I wanna try out this amazing flight sim game! I play a lot of sim racing games and I wanna branch out :D I'm mainly interested in VR and I wanna start just casually speeding around sight seeing etc. Controller gameplay? At least with many assists and easy planes.

Here's the main question, I use psvr2 headset these days so I can't decide which version will give me the better experience. I have a 4080s (and a 9700x cpu), can I get to 90fps with decent settings? Otherwise I would rather get the ps5 version and live with less resolution.

Does the pc version have Dynamic Foveated Rendering? DLSS?