Diablo II: Patriarch Atlas

Up to this point I've never patted a Barbarian. I had an IK barbarian in Nightmare at one point before I deleted all of my stashes/characters and restarted in Single Player. So it's about time I got one all of the way through Hell. To that end Atlas was born. He will be a Whirlwind barbarian, however I'm not sure what type of weapon he'll wield quite yet. As with all other builds the only items that may be twinkled on are weapons, and that's only because he relies on physical damage to do his dirty work.

Atlas started out as everyone else, whacking away with his starter gear. Very quickly Bash became available and while somewhat mana intensive it allows him to deal a large amount of damage. As a result this skill is what is used to get Atlas all the way to level 30, which twinkling on weapons such as the Chieftain. While progress was somewhat slow until Whirlwind became available, Atlas made up for that by being ridiculously safe. His high amount of life, 1k at the beginning of Normal Act V, meant he could take massive amounts of punishment and still keep on trucking. As a result all of Normal was fairly simple and not very noteworthy.

At level 30 I equipped a pair of Bloodletters onto Atlas. With their plus to WW and Sword Mastery skills they gave Atlas a significant amount of damage dealt and he cruised through the rest of the difficulty. However I did notice the repair cost of these items is absurdly high. This means they definitely aren't endgame material, nor can they remain on Atlas for a long period of time. By mid-Act V Normal he's almost out of gold. As a result I have to pick up every piece of expensive equipment I can to sell for repair costs. Pretty much broke even for the rest of Act V.

No real difficulties encountered in Act V. Baal's minions waves took a while, especially Lister. With their very high life pool and regeneration concentrating on one or two to take out at a time was time consuming. Would be a good idea to get some poison damage for Nightmare so I don't have to go through that again.

Apparently poison damage was the least of my worries for NM. Staying with the gear I had suddenly it took Atlas four WWs to eliminate a single normal Fallen. That doesn't bode well for the future. In attempting to tackle Blood Raven Atlas ran into a brick wall. She could summon more minions faster than Atlas could deal with them, soon he had a virtual army chasing him around the graveyard. This lead to his first death. Seeing as things were just going to get worse for this build I relented and twinkled him up to his eyeballs by equipping an Iron Pelt, Arreat's Face, String of Ears and a few other odds and ends. The weapons stayed the same for the moment but now he can deal with monsters at a moderate pace.

Atlas was slowed down in Act II with all of the unleechable monsters roaming around. This lead to frequent mana potion consumption and lots of trips back to town to restock on said potions. Still, he progressed nicely and while large packs of monsters take a while to whittle down due to WW damage being distributed evenly among all of the present monsters, Atlas is a very sturdy character. In Act III Atlas learned a good lesson for WW, don't specifically target any monster that may run away. He did this one a few Flayers and Zakarum and when they run, Atlas WWs after them until he catches them. This lead to Atlas waking up massive packs of monsters in succession and a bit of running away to string out the packs afterwards. From then onwards I was very careful to only target empty land when aiming WW to ensure that didn't happen again.

Act IV didn't have the massive slowdown I expected with the increased Hit Points of all of the monsters. In fact it went by so well that Atlas was feeling brave and WWed himself right through the Chaos Sanctuary. He targeted the Oblivion Knights first and while he did get IMed a few times, those same OKs cast something else on him before he attacked to much so he didn't suicide himself a single time. By the time Atlas reached Act V he was level 65, so I equipped a pair of Baranar's Stars on him to see if those could be endgame material. He completely owned everything in Act V, most within one or two WW cycles. Which is surprising since by getting rid of the Bloodletters Atlas lost +6 to WW and Sword Mastery. Now I need to decided between them and a pair of Lightsabres as my final weapons.

After trying out the Lightsabres my mind was made up, they would be my final weapon. Couple the lightning absorb from them with the fire absorb from the Dwarf Star and Atlas was pretty much running around being healed by all the elemental damage thrown his way. That and the Lightsabres helped him deal with physical immunes all on his own, as well as physical resistant monsters such as the Frenzytaurs.

Oddly enough Hell went very much the same way as Nightmare. Atlas WW all over the place and half the time didn't even see what mods the boss had before it was dealt with, or didn't even realize a boss was present until I was checking out the dropped loot. This was very similar to the Fury Druid I completed just recently. Very odd how the physically damaging builds are doing so well in Hell and yet my understanding was they suffered there instead.

Still Atlas cruised right along through pretty much all of Hell. Having near 3600 life and maxed resistances does make one almost invincible. Almost, as Atlas did suffer his one and only Hell death in Act IV when he got caught in a long WW cycle inside of a huge pack of monsters. That was when I realized I couldn't die while WWing and only once the cycle was over would Atlas suffer the consequences. After that though nothing stood in his way. Even Baals minion waves didn't last as long as against my fully decked out Meteorb.

A few notes about this build. Whirlwind is quite the fun skill, but not so easy against large packs. The damage gets spread out so much that it takes forever to clear out a twenty monster group. That is why I ended up spreading out the monsters as much as possible and WWing groups of 5-6 instead. With so much life, lots of life leech, maxed resistances and absorb in the main two elements this character is about as indestructible a character as I can make. He could run the World Stone Keep, and has, without much difficulty. If Oblivion Knights spawn he'll just use the single point Berserk to wipe everyone out in no time flat. To top it off Lightsabres aren't the most damaging weapons he could use. Most of the other Patriarch threads in the SPF have higher end equipment, which is scary as to how damaging those characters could be. Overall, a fun build to play. Not sure exactly why I put of patting a Barbarian for so long, but now I have one completed character for every single class, which just so happened to be one of my goals in DII for this year.

Stats:
Level 83
Strength - 91(146)
Dexterity - 84(136)
Vitality - 310(330)
Energy - 10(20)

Life - 1419(3693)
Mana - 459(1022)

Lightning Resistance - 75
Fire Resistance - 75
Cold Resistance - 75
Poison Resistance - 75

Skills:
Whirlwind - 20(24)
Berserk - 1(5)
Sword Mastery - 20(22)
Natural Resistance - 3(5)
Battle Command - 1(3)
Battle Orders - 20(22)
Shout - 20(22)
Battle Cry - 1(3)

Equipment:
Weapon1: Lightsabre (Socketed: PSkull)
Weapon2: Lightsabre (Socketed: PSkull)
Armor: Lionheart (Great Hauberk)
Boots: Goblin Toe
Belt: String of Ears
Gloves: M'avina's Icy Clutch
Helm: Arreat's Face (Socketed: Ort)
Ring1: Dwarf Star
Ring2: Nature's Peace
Amulet: All resist 30%, MD reduced by 3

Mercenary (Might Desert Warrior)
Helm: Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest
Armor: Shaftstop
Weapon: The Reaper's Toll

Hellforge:
NM - Dol
Hell - Pul