Well, being immensely disappointed with the sword-and-board concentrate/WW Barbarian build, I ended up deleting him and remaking him as a Frenzy Barbarian, after muling his gear to a Zealot Paladin I'll be making later. He's 28 now, and it's pretty scary how fast he goes through things; literally a human blender.
I'm taking a differerent approach with him, though. Because nothing sucks more than to find a kickass weapon you don't have a mastery for (I found the unique morning star, among a skillion other uniques and set items, which is now waiting for my Zealot), I've decided to do a split swords (swords are still the best simply because of sheer variety) and axes mastery with 5 points in each, with an eventual 10 planned per.
I'm also going to give War Cry a shot this time, since he desperately needs a method of handling large packs of enemies that doesn't involve Battle Cry and several healing potions. I'm hoping the stun duration will get to a point where it'll be useful.
His gear's pretty good, overall. I've got him using a damn fine rare HP leech ring from Ormus and a basic magic MP leech ring, and the same vulpine amulet he's been using since Lv.2. His armor needs some help, being just gothic plate with cold resistance and some extra AC, but I've been gambling ancient armor (at 52k apiece :/ ) to try and remedy. I got very lucky with my Charsi imbue, turning a normal avenger guard into one hell of a hat - +3 to Battle Cry, +2 to Frenzy, +1 to Concentrate (which I'll never use) with two solid 20%+ resistances, some poison damage (was hoping for cold damage, personally), and even 20% magic find. I got a socket added from Larzuk, and filled it with a Sik rune for 10% damage to MP, bringing my total to 20%. While MP leech is handy, the diminishing returns upcoming in Nightmare and Hell are making me look for alternatives, and damage to MP combined with some MP/kill and the occasional MP potion is working well. Boots are just magic greaves with a hefty 32% lightning resistance (capped at 65%) and 17% magic find. Gloves are 15% IAS, 23% more damage, and 55 AR; I'm looking for some good gloves with a strong resistance (my fire res is particularly weak, at 19%) and maybe some elemental damage to replace em. Using a rare flamberge and rare double axe for weapons, plan on gambling great swords soon to see about getting new weapons, though I do have a phase blade with good base damage (max damage scaling with clvl that I added a Ver rune to) and a ridiculous amount of poison damage waiting at 30.
So far, Act V has been pretty rough. In the interests of getting XP and loot, I've done both Hell side areas on my way to the summit, and have consequently died twice; once to a giant ambush of minotaurs, crush beasts, vampires, and a whole ****ton of those annoying little teleporting imps (who do a downright stupid amount of damage), and again to suicide bombers while getting ping-ponged around by cold beam spamming from ice trolls. I also died to Pindleskin's buddies, though I'm not sure how; his explosion dropped me to about 40 HP, and apparently I got hit by an invisible enemy directly afterward, even though all of them were dead for good when I finished the job on Pindleskin. Very weird. Then again, I've had those *******s wallop me for 350+ in a single hit, so stranger things have happened, I guess. I will say I'm glad I've been pumping Vitality, because having 430 HP makes things much safer, even if it does mean it may take longer to use new gear (I've been doing 3 STR/3 VIT and then 3 STR/3 DEX alternating after getting Energy to 30.) I've been enjoying the challenge so far, though you'll get no complaints from me if I never see another of those damned imps or fire enchanted monsters again
