Diablo 3 Is Out, The Fire No Longer Falls.

Ahaha, everyone welcome to the world of barbarian. We've actual had a net gain since monster damage is less spiky now. Barbarians have been overgearing for a long time now so we ended up so tough that switching to a more attack oriented build is feasible.

Despite the attack speed bonus reduction, my demon hunter's DPS seems nearly unchanged. Of course, I've been focusing more on getting her gear with DEX bonuses. She has the highest DPS out of any of my characters right now... and she still dies depressingly often in Nightmare. The Butcher slaughtered her a dozen times before I could finally finish him. On the other side, my monk lost a third of his DPS, and even after hitting the auction house for weapons he still has significantly lower DPS than the demon hunter, and yet he waded through Act I of nightmare with a grand total of 1 death, and that was to an elite mob.

My ranged characters definitely seem to die more often than my melee, although my barbarian has nowhere near my monk's survivability. There must be some way to even this out.

This post has been edited by Random Wanderer on Jun 20 2012, 05:43 PM

My DH is in the same boat. DPS didn't seem to be changed that much and she dies very quickly when she runs out of space to maneuver. I did notice tonight that both Public Games I jointed had 3 DHs so I'm not sure what to make of it. If there was a horrible nerf it hasn't change how popular they are yet.

Well, time to invest in balanced stats. It'll just be horrible and expensive like it is for barbarians.

That does remind me: I have only ran into a handful of Barbs in public games? Are they really that rare or rough to play?

Monks already did that but depend on life on hit instead of talents. This nerf destroyed our hps.

They were one of the toughest classes pre-patch once you get into Inferno. I believe the other class, Witch Doctors, actually got even worse after the patch. Guess which two classes were my mains? (I have such bad luck choosing classes).

Barbarians ran using everything including LOH just to be somewhat below par. Even my ghetto barbarian (because I'm poor) still had almost 900 LOH in addition to 600ish regen, 700ish all-res, 7000ish armor and 45k HP.

This post has been edited by ChronoReverse on Jun 21 2012, 10:33 AM

I cannot claim to be an expert, but in my experience the biggest difficulty for barbarians vs other classes is that their most powerful abilities are essentially useless. Because Fury, the barbarian's energy pool, is self-depleting, you will likely not have enough to do anything at the start of a battle. By the time you've built up enough to do something useful with it, you probably don't need it any more. And even if it could still be useful, you've probably got your hotkeyed skills all set to ones that don't use it, because you can't rely on ever having it. So things like whirlwind, seismic slam, earthquake, etc. all get left by the wayside, because it's just not cost-effective to keep a slot dedicated to a skill that you won't be able to use for the first 10 seconds or so of any battle.

So I take it the one passive that makes it not self depleting is too horrible, or you need all defensive passives by the time that one unlocks.

Doesn't unlock until level 55, which I may never reach at this rate. And I'm running with my passives heavily focused into defense already If I make it far enough to gain that option I'll give it a try, but I don't know if that will actually be enough to "fix" a barbarian. I haven't had a chance to test it, so I just don't know.

The problem is that most of the fury spenders aren't worth using an entire passive slot. Plus the fury build rate is really slow.

Most barbarians need to use 2 passives to maintain a high enough defense to do the tanking we're known for.


With that said, there are some builds that use sprint[run like the wind] or whirlwind[dustdevils] in order to both inflict damage and generate fury at the same time.

Combining this with Wrath of the Berserker[thrive on chaos] can inflict a lot of damage while sustaining the wrath until everything is dead.


In any case, it takes some creative combinations but there are ways that are effective (but not super effective).

Also, if you're having trouble with Barbarian in Hell, you can try a build that I used.

Basically you shouldn't really worry too much about all-res in Hell; you simply don't need it yet. Stick with armor and vit in modest amounts and you should be fine... if you don't try to stand and take it.


Pick up a cheap 2H weapon from the AH; they're really low priced for the huge DPS values available. Then you can use this build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barb...;cVa!aZZaZb

The key to the build is Furious Charge[Merciless Assault]. With this, you have unlimited dashes as long as there are 5 enemies. It dash to where your mouse cursor is so aim your charges and reposition yourself if necessary to maximize the targets you can hit. You should easily be able to thin out crowds and then kill off the remainder.

Ignore Pain[Iron Hide] and Leap[Iron Impact] are your get out of jail free cards. Both will give you enough defenses for a few seconds to get out of trouble. Leap in particular is useful because of the huge mobility you get from it (again, it aims at where your mouse cursor is).

Wrath of the Berserker[Insanity] and Earthquake[The Mountain's Call] are you goto weapons for elites. Because you're using a 2H weapon, the damage is twice as strong as a 1H weapon with the same DPS (and you'll have higher DPS since 2H weapons are much cheaper). Earthquake will use no fury so you only need 50 fury to activate Wrath first then Earthquake. It will melt and elite in less than 15 seconds if you properly position yourself and the elites.

Frenzy[Sidearm] is a reliable and high damage single target attack that will be useful for picking off stragglers Furious Charge doesn't kill. It's also one of the best skills to use against bosses. For bosses, combine with Wrath and Earthquake for the best results.

Hmm... I don't know. As of level 39 I have yet to find a 2-handed weapon that works better for my barbarian than two 1-handed weapons. Certainly nothing that will outdo the combined +271 strength bonus I get from the two swords I'm using.

Hmm. Well, I tried that build. It seems workable, and criticals are definitely much higher with a 2H weapon, but in the end I think I'll stick with the higher attack speed of my dual 1Hs. Of course, my build for that is almost entirely different from the build for a 2H user, so I guess there is no absolutely right way to go about this.

This post has been edited by Random Wanderer on Jun 22 2012, 06:35 PM

The build works with the weapons but most things work in nightmare. Hell is a little harder but still not that bad until A3. If you're level 39 you're still better off with whatever you want.

Come now, why are you guys being silly? I'm sure if you just spend $100 or so you can get all the items you need!

Level 43, now. Generally I try to keep a relatively balanced build that will allow me to fight well in a number of situations. In certain battles where I find myself getting my butt kicked repeatedly, I'll switch to a build that's more focused on specifically taking down whatever is giving me trouble, but I can usually make it through with my "general purpose" build. I'm still experimenting, though. Seeing what I can do with different abilities is part of the fun. And some skills are more useful for certain weapons than others. Frenzy, for instance, is quite good when wielding a two-hander, but less useful when dual-wielding. Certain skills that give critical bonuses and heavy single-hit attacks pack a bigger punch with a two-hander as well, but aside from frenzy skills that require quantity of hits over quality are better for dual-wielding. I'm having to play around and see what works, and there are still a bunch of skills I've barely even touched.

If the real money auction house even thinks of getting near my bank account I will rip its throat out with my bare teeth. The gold auction house I've had to use, because item-levels on drops are just too low to be survivable anywhere past Normal, but I'm not letting that thing get anywhere near my actual money.

Frenzy, especially with Sidearm works best with DW actually.

I've found the speed boost to be minimal when dual-wielding, and of little effect when compared to cleave with rupture, or bash with onslaught.

The speed boost is identical. It's pure math, you gain a percentage so the DPS gain is absolutely identical.

But with sidearm, if you're hitting more times per second (and DW adds 15% more speed on top), then you'll chuck more axes for piercing damage. Frenzy will also build up faster since you have a higher base attack speed.


But 2H massively benefits single strike skills like Seismic Slam or Furious Charge. Those are based on weapon damage instead of DPS so they gain big with a powerful but slow weapon of the same DPS.

This post has been edited by ChronoReverse on Jun 24 2012, 12:25 AM

Act 3 in nightmare is... tough. Even some ordinary non-elite enemies can kill me in just one or two hits, and they like to swarm in packs, often with support from other types of demons. It's quite difficult to make headway, at times. Furious charge with merciless assault is a real lifesaver. As long as I aim it right, it's great for taking down whole armies of enemies.

So I managed to beat Inferno with my Barbarian. Met someone who gave me tips as to where to direct my equipment and showed me the Double Tornado build.

Super high risk, super high reward. You don't even have a fury generator and yet this build relies entirely on building unlimited fury. Unlimited Spin Works.