Long story short:

Computer broke--literally broke, not malfunctioned or fried, a cooling
fin inside somehow got disconnected(I suspect it was initially
defective as a remanufactred unit and waited to break until the
warranty expired) and the brainiac Dell tech support person from New
Delhi sent me a new heat sink and fan (45 plus US$) which did not fix
the problem so I have been without a decent fast comp since just after
Thanksgiving.  AOL, in its infinite wisdom discontinued Usenet service,
and all the decent newsreaders I have investigated dont support my pre
OSX Mac. Hence the post via Google.

This old Mac has serious issues--I "helped" Orion get the Hell soldiers
quest on my first time back on Bnet in over a month and I could see
about every tenth frame with my necro and a full compliment of skels,
so even after playing around with res and memory drainers I still found
the Bnet experience trying.

So...I decided to build a conc barb, Dobby, in honor of my family's
love of the HP books, in SP and take him all the way to the bitter end,
which is the hardest D2 gameplay I have had since I soloed a sorc
through HC (pre 1.10).  Remember, Macs can't use ATMA, so its all play
with what you find, and you are limited to one stash.  You are
basically limited to what you're wearing, one set of MF gear,
(fuhgeddabout MF gear for the merc) your highest runes and a few odds
and ends.  You pick up every bit of gold, every flawless gem, and every
decent piece of gear you come across, and gamble, gamble, gamble.

Right now, I am in Act 5 Hell, but I have spent the last several days
doing Pit runs to find some better gear for the slog towards Baal--I
can't seriously imagine trying to take on the Ancients until I imporve
my weapon speed, damage, block rate eetc.  My act 3 NM merc Hassan is
in pretty good shape, since I found a unique ccryptic axe (Bonehew?)
that I have shaeled, but I am only dealing C+ damage with the barb.
The Mac has a bad habit of crashing at the most inopportune moments,
this morning I found a stormshield on  level 2 of the Pit and was
checking the stats and boom!  I almost cried.

Here's the stats and gear:

Battle:

Cryptic sword with slightly less than 200% ED to max plus a AR boost
(unacceptable min damage)
Sigons shield with P diamond (one of my three socket Qs, I am saving
the other two)
Sigons gloves
Sigons belt
Rockstopper helm
Nats boots
Duriels shell (can't be frozen mod is a godsend)
+3 mastery ammy, 2 res all rings w/ AR boost.
2 echoing swords on switch

MF
Tals belt (12 mf woot!)
30 mf circlet
35 mf ammy
27mf nagel
26mf ring
3 ptopaz boneweave waiting to find two more flawless topes to fill last
hole
35 mf wyrmhide boots
35 mf yellow war gauntlets (but they seriously slow down my wep speed,
so I keep on the sigons on most runs)

Merc

Crown of thieves
Yellow dusk shroud with 25% fast hit recovery and res
Bonehew with shael and amn

Stats

Max BO, Shout, Cconcentrate
points in all prereqs (duh)
extra couple points in Battle cry
going towards maxing Sword mastery
couple extra points in Berserk for PIs
Points in increased speed, Iron Skin, and Natural res
Enough str to equip
Enough dex to keep block rate over 60% (really could have used that
Stormshield : (  )
couple extra points in mana to handle drain from warcry and taunt
Everything else in vit

Misc stats

66% FHR (hat plus charms)
75 LR, FR, CR
38 PR (yuck, but the best I can do at the moment)

6k AR
15k DR (using conc)
slightly over 2k life
lvl 29 BO, 11 Battle command, 29 Shout, provided I put on a Peasant
crown and +3 warcry ammy, run out of town, yell, and run back to stash
for Rockstopper and +3 masteries ammy : )

I know this is long, but I haven't posted for a long time, so I needed
to gab.

BTW, I found a Gul on my hellforge.  Now WTF am I gonna do with
that??!!

Sean

Unklbarb and the rest