D2R 2.5 MF Berserker Barbarian Build Guide: Best Skills, Stats, Gear, Gameplay Tips in Diablo 2 Resurrected

D2R 2.5 MF Berserker Barbarian Build Guide: Best Skills, Stats, Gear, Gameplay Tips in Diablo 2 Resurrected

12/21/2022 11:35:41 AM

The Berserker Barbarian can be a fairly fun B-tier build for going through the game, with a proper shield and D2R item - though it often gets rates as an S-Tier build for magic find due to its unique/champion hunting abilities - and the ability to essentially get 1.5x the drops by "Horking" (Find Item) - though due to its limitations on farming, we have never liked that almost every site and guide shows this as "S-Tier" (it's godly for farming pindle/alvl85 uniques/superuniques - but anything else and it's entirely out of its depths, unlike other S-tier builds).

Skill Tree

Combat Skills:

The core ability of all the mentioned versions of berserker, obviously are going to be berserk, a powerful skill that ramps up damage while transforming it to the least resisted damage type, pure magic, the hybrid versions will often take advantage of the fact that berserk provides smaller versions of this damage conversion to some of the more popular alternate skills like concentrate and frenzy, to have what essentially amounts to a One-Stop shop for a main attack, though Whirlwind and leap attack barbarians will also invest in it a bit to deal with physical immunes as well, even though it doesn't provide a direct benefit to them.

Warcries:

For the pure Berserkers, though you'll instead be focusing your points into the berserk synergies themselves namely howl and battle orders which both are actually viable skills for this build and kind of vital skills for this build, with Howl providing you the time and protection to focus on the uniques and Champions since it will chase most of the non-elites away with the exception of certain enemies like Oblivion Knights and minions of Destruction which are immune to fear, and you also have battle orders which is the new Synergy and resurrected as opposed to shout which can be used to bump your life and mana exceptionally high, so you can survive the oncoming onslaught of damage that usually comes with playing the Berserker, though whenever we get to the Gear end of things, you'll see some ways to you can mitigate this at the cost of magic find, the other big thing you might grab in the war cry tree and this is more for the post game is find item, though due to how the diminishing returns work after the first few levels of find item itself, it becomes better to put points into its Synergy find potion for one percent per level which also works out well with grim ward if you're using it for a more normal play through of this build, since the Berserker is notoriously squishy and Grim Ward can actually provide some fear effects that help out quite a bit, and the slow is not bad either.

Combat Masteries:

For masteries, it depends on the weapon, you're using for today's we're using blade Mastery or if you're doing Lord Of Destruction that would be sword Mastery, this is because we're using grief phase blade, though for a normal play through you'd choose the weapon that you want to use along the way with swords having the best end game, but axe is generally being the easiest to find a balance of damage on, and mace's pull arms and Spears generally being geared more towards your two-handed builds, and you also of course want to pick up your one point wonders increase speed and natural resistance since there's really no downside to dropping the spare points into these for a massive bump to resist and a decent bump to movement speed.

Gameplay Tips

Progression wise the Berserker in terms of being a magic finder is an end game build only something that you tend to have the kit for and then respect into or get someone to rush them then leech experience to level up on, but it is possible to build one to go through the game normally with gear you find along the way, but you generally want to go for one of the hybrid flavors such as the frenzy concentrate war cry or Whirlwind Barb with berserk acting more as support, that said if you want to take this build from zero to the 90s without resetting anything, you can, but you need to take some things into consideration, such as in normal, you'll mostly just be using your synergies and basic stuff to get up to your 30s, so you can kind of get your chosen Mastery if you want to preserve synergies as well are kind of nice, but maybe some points into find item skills to give you an extra chance it drops, though we wouldn't invest a lot in them just yet, since they don't really help with your progress that much, as you get in a nightmare, you should be working your way up to level 20 berserk as kind of like your main goal and while doing so you'll want to go the shield route, this means axon Shield or sword and shield as your main tool for making progress, since while berserk does Rob you of your defense for a chunk of time, it does not impact your block rate and this will be your primary source of survivability while goaling solo self found, in Hell difficulty you should have Max berserk, Max Mastery for your chosen weapon and usually one of your berserk synergies maxed, we personally prefer battle orders since the duration of the fear effect is decent enough on Howl with just a few skill points, even if you wanted to focus on that rather than berserk, it is worth noting as you're progressing through hell the use of a shield is even more important, even if it's something super cheap like a rhyme for cannot be frozen, just to have that chance to block and if made in the right shield it can be fairly easy to get a decent block with it as well just thanks to the naturally having increased block chance and resist too, personally we like kite Shields and their exceptional or Elite versions.

Stats

Stat wise, this means you're going to deviate a bit from the usual just enough strength for your gear and Resident Vitality model that most builds do instead favor enough strength for gear enough dexterity for Max block and then the rest into Vitality, one thing you might also consider if going solo self-hound is actually investing one point into leap attack, even though it's not standard to the build, since you won't have teleport, it can help a ton with mobility, and since it will probably be a question, if you go with one of the hybrid variants, you usually invest in the other skill first and then come back and pick up berserk later on, since his primary purpose on those builds is for dealing with physical immunes, not really primary killing like it is for this build.

Gear of 2.5 MF Berserk Barbarian Build

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Weapon 1: Tulwar (Blade of Ali Baba)
Weapon 2: Phase Blade (Grief)

Phase Blade[5S & 15 ED]

Sale [5 Sockets]
Sale [15 EDmg]

Phase Blade

1H damage: 31-35
Base speed: -30
Class speed: Ama, Asn, B, D, N, P, S - Very Fast
Adds range: 1
Req Strength: 25
Req Dexterity: 136
Req level: 54
Quality level: 73
Treasure class: 75
Max sockets: 6

Dagger: Gull
Shield: Monarch (Stormshield)
Chest Armor: Wire Fleece (Enigma)
Body Armor: Dusk Shroud (Fortitude)
Belt: Goldwrap
Boots: War Traveler

War Traveler

Defense: 120-139 (varies)(Base Defense: 39-47)
Required Level: 42
Required Strength: 95
Durability: 48
Assassin Kick Damage: 37-64
+150-190% Enhanced Defense (varies)
25% Faster Run/Walk
+10 To Vitality
+10 To Strength
Adds 15-25 Damage
40% Slower Stamina Drain
Attacker Takes Damage Of 5-10 (varies)
30-50% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (varies)
(Only Spawns In Patch 1.09 or later)

Gloves: Chance Guards
Head Armor: Shako (Harlequin Crest)
Amulet: Rune Wing
Ring: Wisp Projector