Q u o t e: Cleglaw's gloves have knockback and 25% slowdown. I suppose I could try snagging a kelpie snare for my merc, though I know it's capped at 50% for bosses.
I 'm thinking that with cleglaws/kelpie snare and strafing arrows with a high cold charm would debilitate him to the point of making him a decent pincushion, like I would with my necro. I notice that with the golem/decrep and some cold casters that he's a !%***cat, even if it is a !%***cat that takes a long, long time to defeat.
I also had Guillaume's, Laying of Hands and a pair of Goblin Toes. Perhaps a bit more crushing blow would be in order, but a better bow or dropping some more of my spare points in Vitality wouldn't hurt either. I may try more out after a few days of rune/magic find runs.
Golem item slow works the same as slow target. Actually I believe they are the same code, and as such, they never will stack. So yeah, cold damage and slow target will get you similar results as using cold magi and clay golem. Perhaps a holy freeze merc to act as your decrip? Or you could just equip a reaper's toll and get a real decrip.
I find that trying to outlast anything in the game never works as well as intended (High defense/phys resist barbs, for example) and it is almost better just to spam potions and get a quick kill. This remains true in Baal's case.
I don't mean to stray from the Zon topic, but I have a good example of this just recently. It has been a while since I messed around with the Barbarian class, so I recently leveled a Conc Barb. The first time through, I went with a high level shout thinking that it would be good to try and take advantage of the defense on both shout and conc. I was also using a 1h and shield. I struggled quite a bit with him, and I didn't take him far.
Then I tried another Conc Barb, but this time I just went all out on damage. I put a lot of points into Bash and a few into a weapon mastery, both of which carried over to Conc at level 18. I also equipped him with a large 2hander. I finished normal with ease, because I was one shotting almost every enemy I came across, often killing everything before they even had a chance to do any damage to me. I imagine a Zerker would play similar, but I prefer the synergies for Conc. The only two issues he ran in to were Diablo and Baal. He could survive Diablo's lightning attack, but it drained his life so much that I had to run away, else I'd die from a second attack. I ended up using the corner trick to kill him. High level life leech would have also solved, but I was playing untwinked.
Baal, I ran into the same situation that sounds similar to you. I end up taking such a long time to kill him, that I ran out of pots and I had to go back to town to refill in order to kill him (something I loathe doing, and avoid as much as possible) I also had zero crushing blow though.
Anywho, Barb off-topic rant aside, your best bet for killing Baal is to just up your damage, and spam potions. Goblin Toe and Guillaume's is plenty enough CB, so perhaps your AR and base damage is a bit low?
