@Pax1990 If we are talking about farming Nihla with barb, i can add some stuff to the conversation i think.
iDR is king, but %DR is usefull too. I got the idea of using iDR gear from
@Bewitch and built my barb as tanky as i was able too. You can check my thoughts on barb in my write-up here:
Write-up, but i will also share some thoughts in this post, cause why not.
I don't have like a big pile of numbers when it comes to exp/h, but my AVG runtime was 24,22s over the whole 98-99 lvling. It should get you about 3,3 mill exp/h assuming 22164 exp from nihla only on p8. That AVG runtime was decreasing during the lvling as i was getting better and better with the build. I think i was able to run with like 23-23,5s AVG at the end. That's with: going max life build with as much iDR as possible, without any exp shrines, with picking up many items and playing with sound. Nihla S&E times are terrible no matter what, but you can still cut them a little bit with "-ns" command. I assume you can get like sub 22s runs with that build which would give you about 3,6mil exp/h. Switching to gface or highlord's or both would make the runes shorter by about 1-2s.
I decided to go for max life, cause it looked better in my mind than going full DMG. Don't know about mixing those 2 up, but i still think iDR circlet > Gface. You can get up to 25 iDR on a magic circlet and it can roll up to 2/3 sockets depending on the base or you can just larzuk it for 1/2 sockets. It can easly become over half of your total iDR, even if you have a good amulet. With my build, i had 59 iDR total and over 5k life. It's quite hard to get killed by some random vipers. Might/fana ones can be pretty much insta death, but what's interesting is that your merc will be less tanky then you, so he will die quicker and when he dies, the bug with the clouds won't happen, so you are fine in theory. I've seen that many times during all those runs i did. Also had that one situation when merc was dead and i teleported to some random spot and my life just disappeared in a blink of an eye, that's why i wrote "in theory"... (XD) but yeah, that was a big benefit of going full iDR. Here is a video of my barb if anybody is interested:
Nihla barb (some other nice clips of vipers dealing massive DMG in the playlist too).
You can also boost your tankiness with equipping more items with leech. My barb had like 17% life leech at some point and he was getting that health back fast as heck. I even decided to switch from String of Ears to Dungo's, cause i didn't need that much health regeneration.
Accodring to
@Luhkoh's Nihla simulation, gface + Highlord's kills regular Nihla in ~4s, gface + iDR amu in ~4,65 and iDR circ + amu in ~5,7s. Stone Skin Nihla should be like 8,6s vs 9,9s vs 10,8s respectively. That's with might aura proc and without decrep proc. Maybe Luhkoh can check those numbers and improve his simulation if needed ^^ If we assume 1s difference between mixed setup and full iDR setup, it results in like 3,5 hours saved by going with gface. A single death with picking up the body is about 2 hours with ~24s runs. The are many variables like the aura and decrep proc, so it's hard to get the exact numbers.
Worth mentioning is the fact that my barb had many close calls at the start when i was trying many different things and getting used to the playstyle. He died once at about 45% of the lvl and it was my stupid mistake. You aren't suppose to run around like a madman to get to nihla when there are fana vipers in the area XD You loose your focus for half a second and you are dead. The clip:
Nihla death
I think it's enough info in this post. Wasn't that much active in the forum lately, cause i am playing different games at the moment. That's probably why i wrote quite a lot ^^