This guide describes a Goldfind barb that does not kill himself, instead he relies on his merc to do the killing. Many people may argue that you get better results and faster runs if you do it yourself, instead of relying on the merc, but that's their opinion, and this is mine. If built right, you can have full stash and inventory in about 4 - 5 runs. I don't see the necessity in making it faster, so I'll go by this.
MOTIVE: This build is meant mainly for goldfinding, and magicfind comes as an added bonus. Now you may ask me, 'Are you nuts? Why the heck would I want a pile of gold?' The answer might seem strange but IMHO, gold is the best thing in the game. Reason, you can gamble with it. While a unique item may fetch you a good value, a great rare item would be several times worth its value. This is because EVERY player in the game can find EVERY unique. If you bot for a couple of months, you'll have every unique in the game. But truly godly rare items have to be gambled, and this build is meant for that. Also, as the ladder season progresses, unique items tend to lose their value, but rare items retain their value throughout.
PLACE: Where else, go for HELL Travincal. The Council drop piles of gold, and you can get upto 800k - 1 million gold per run. My personal best was 1.1 million in a run.
WHY A BARB: Several Reasons.. One, he can DUAL WEILD, meaning more goldfind items can be equipped (honestly, there is no shield in the game that has decent goldfind.. splendor or whatever, that runeword has 50%, but that's too low for us).. Two, he has this awesome skill called 'Find Item' which can potentially DOUBLE your drops.. More drops mean more coins and more coins mean more gambling
FIRST STEP: Make a Barb and give him a good sounding name. Mine is GodOfWealth_FU Feel free to choose an appropriate name for your wannabe Midas.
STAT ALLOCATION:
Str: Equip yourself with a decent stat barb torch. Slap on an anni if you have a spare. And make it such that you get 103 in total. This is required for an Archon Plate, which you will be using. (coz it looks cool. If you want to use some other armor, go for it, but your str should be statted based on your heaviest piece of equiment)
Dex: 0 - That torch and anni must give you enough dex to dual weild the 'echoing weapons'
Vit: Yumm.. Everything goes in here.. More life = more merry.. And your resists may not be PERFECT in this build, so you will need all the life you can get.
Nrg: If you put even one point in this, change your account password and forget it.
REMEMBER, YOU WILL NOT BE DOING THE KILLING. YOUR MERC WILL BE DOING IT. SO THESE SKILLS AND GEAR SELECTION ARE COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED AND HE GETS GF FROM YOUR ITEMS, SO GO AHEAD, FTW
SKILL ALLOCATION:
Battle Orders - 20 (MORE LIFE!!!!!)
Find Item - 20 (50+% of finding those double drops)
Shout - 20 (Awesome boost to BO and it also provides a nice defense boost)
Battle Command - 1 (Just a point to increase the level of your BO)
War Cry - 5 - 6 (Pump this till you get a reasonable stun duration, really useful for stunning the mobs)
Leap - 1 (Useful in tight situations, and to separate a conviction aura member, if one is present)
Natural Resists - 5+ (Put points into this till you have maxed resists in hell)
Increased Speed - Optional, but if you want faster runs, put points into this AFTER you are satisfied with your resists.
Rest of your points can be distributed between Increased Speed and WarCry, based on personal preference.
GEAR:
Helm - IK Helm with high MF%. (Some people may argue that a 100%goldfind Crown of Thieves is better, but as I said earlier, MF comes as a bonus in this build. With 2 lems in the IK Helm, you get 137%GF, which is 13% lesser than a 150% lemmed CoT, but the 40% MF is great). If you want to ignore the MF, and build a pure goldfinder, the best choice would be an "Artisan's Tiara of Wealth", which is a 3os tiara with upto 80% base goldfind. Socketing this with 3 Lem runes gives 230% GF. But this is so rare that you might want to settle for a CoT if you want pure GF.
Weapons - The hardcore goldfinders recommend lemmed dual crystal swords, I prefer alibabas. Have two dual lemmed ali babas. You get good enough goldfind, but the boost to your MF is awesome. With this build, you'll find yourself leaving piles of gold untouched, just because you're full of gold, so the difference in gold find is negligible imo, but the MF boost is pretty significant.
Switch - Get a couple of 'Echoing Glaives/ThrowingSpears/Whatever' for the extra BO.
Armor - Wealth Runeword Armor, made in an Archon Plate, works best for the 300% goldfind and the 100% MF. Archon Plate because of the high defense/low strength tradeoff. Choose an armor of your preference if you don't like an Archon Plate.
Gloves - Chancies. Any random ones will do, coz they all have 200% GF, but I wear a 40%MF ones, just to increase the MF too.
Boots - This is the good part. You need to get yourself a nice rare pair of 80% GF boots, preferably with the mods FRW and Fire resists on them. Till you manage one, use a pair of high GF infernostrides. These have 40-70%GF.
Belt - I use a perfect goldwrap (80% GF and 30% MF) and I strongly urge you to get one. The goldfinder pros would recommend rare belts with 24% FHR and 80% goldfind with other mods, yes, they're extremely useful too, but imo you shouldn't be getting physically hit much with this build, so I choose the goldwrap for the extra MF and I am doing great with it.
Rings - 2 X DwarfStar - These have 100%GF each and are awesome. Fire absorb too.
Amulet - Find/Gamble/Trade a good goldfind ammy, preferably with + barb skills. The max goldfind on ammys is 80. I use a +2 barb skills, +27 life, + 30 cold resist, 76GF ammy.
Charms - A High GF Gheeds is absolutely essential (I have a 159/40/15), other stats immaterial, but if you have a high MF one with high GF, go for it. Have the cube in your inventory to pick up stuff, put a Tome of TPs under it.
Try filling the rest of the space with 40%GF gcs and 10%GF scs. The best choices would be +1 warcry gcs with 40% GF, and 10% GF scs with 5 all res or 11 fire res. But if not, plain 40 GF gcs and plain 10 GF scs work fine too.
MERC:
A2 might mercs work best in my experience. Don't choose defiance. The defense boost from your shout is good enough. As well go for might so he can rape the council faster. And if you choose a HOLY FREEZE merc, well good luck using Find Item on those shattered corpses.
Weapon:
1. Get him an EBOTD War Pike. I tell you, this works WONDERS. And if you don't want to spend so much on a merc weapon (which is perfectly justified imho), go for the 2nd or 3rd choices.
2. Some people recommend a Reaper's Toll for the DS and ctc decrepify. It works extremely well too, in combination with a guilame's face helm for the crushing blow mods.
3. Another nice merc weapon is a Hone Sundan Yari socketed with 3 Lems. Nice goldfind mods and awesome crushing blow mods. The drawback of this weapon is the lack of lifeleech, but that can be compensated by socketing it with Amn runes instead of Lems.
Armor:
1.Standard. EBugged Fortitude. Don't go for an Eth Wealth. It's not worth spending 100k each run to resurrect your merc and the chick with those sparse clothes that resurrects the mercs in A3 is so far away from the waypoint. Go for the eth fort and he'll be a killing machine.
2. Treachery is another good armor. With the ctc fade, your merc's res will be pretty decent.
3. Duress is another option for the extra CB, OW, but it's a better armor for an uber smiter rather than a goldfind merc.
Helm:
1. Here, you can afford to get some GF on. Use a high GF Crown of Thieves. An Ethereal one adds class, but a normal one works fine. Socket it with a lem for potentially 150% GF. The lifeleech on it is extremely good too, helps to keep the merc alive.
2. Another option is Guilame's face. Gives DS and CB.
A small calculation of this merc's survivability and killing speed. The EBOTD War Pike+ the enhanced damage from fort gives him 3k - 11k damage, on an average, say 6k - 7k. Well, take the lower end, assume it is 6K. He will be dealing 6K damage every hit and the 60%IAS from the EBOTD rules.
For the survivability part, the EBOTD+CoT gives him 18-27 % life leech. Try getting a decent EBotd (13+ll) and a decent CoT (10+ll). This will give him nearly 25% lifeleech, which is 1.5K, since he hits 6K each hit. With a 1.5K life per hit life regen, he'll be regaining life faster than uber meph.
Another Merc option that I am currently trying out is an A5 merc, equipped with Eth Fort, Eth LW CB and Eth CoT. This can be a suggestion too.
