f13.net

The circle is now complete. I am dabbling in barb but dual wielding sickles looks and feels disgustingly satisfying.

So dual wield or sword and board? 2h seems gimped at the moment, IMHO.

I'm going shield for now. 2H is really gimped for some reason atm, but maybe it improves at higher levels. With frenzy it was better, but not great.

I do love the stomp.

I'm hit 23 last night and I've never seen a reason to do anything but 1h and shield yet.  I have yet to find a 2h weapon that does significantly more damage then the best 1h weapons I find with a good shield.  Once I started finding good +str shields with sockets I do MORE damage with my best blue 1h then any yellow 2h I've found so far.  But I guess the gap between 1h and 2h weapons gets larger later on.  I think dual wield just works out to your two weapons averaged +15% attack speed or so.  So a really minimal gain for giving up a shield and if your off hand is worse then your main it can gimp special attacks.

I'm really, really enjoying barbarian though.  Find the biggest group in the room, jump into the middle and splatter gore everywhere.

Not sure wtf is up with the 2h stuff. The DPS on those seem about the same as 1h but at the cost of both weapon slots. I got two sickles off SK for some reason so I used both of them, one poison and one fire and I pretty much wreck shit. However, with shields looking much better in the later levels, I may store one of those sickles and strap on a shield... frankly, I haven't been in danger of dying so I dunno what difference a shield will make - until I start moving into my late teens.

I'm 30 something, and I dual-wielded/life leached the shit out of everything on normal.  Only things that gave me problems were 'plagued' and the one with the fire trails.  But you know.  I stood in the fire.  Nightmare, ho.

Do shields count as weapon or other when gems are concerned?

2h just LOOKS so goddamned cool though! Started a barb last night with a buddy who just installed, and we ran up to the Fields of Misery. Got a yellow sickle drop off the SK, but it was barely better that what I already had, then got a nasty flamberge from my blacksmith, so I had to switch to that for a bit. I completely forgot about dual wielding though... that is the next experiment!

Yeah, I'm 22, 1H+Shield, about 450 DPS, (please please socket big red gems into your weapon: by far biggest DPS increase for the money)

Current skill set is a bit for AOE farm times:

Cleave (rupture)  for instagibs
Hammer of the Ancients (+dmg, - radius)
Leap (+armor)
Ground Stomp (+vortex)
Revenge (+extra heal)
Furious Charge

Leap, Groundstomp for the suck in, then revenge or cleaving will just wipe entire groups in instants. When I run into rares, I just dump all my fury into Hammer, which blows them up quick.

Furious Charge isn't really there for any good reason, other than the extra "move quick" spell is kind of more handy than it seems, and makes getting around faster.

Whether it's optimal or not, dual wielding scythes is badass.

Other.


Same except for rend with heal instead of hammer and I switched over to the +fury on cleave last night.  Starting running the passive that is +25% damage with full fury and really noticing it.  Tried whirlwind for a while and was very unimpressed, but I can see it being better with a good 2 hand and some rune options.  For now it felt like my cleave was just better and didn't use fury.

My ideal build is heavy lifesteal and NON fury using. 

Primary attacks being: frenzy/revenge/overpower, maybe having ignore pain/ground stomp for defensives, up in the air for last choice.
Passives would be extra damage at full fury, lifesteal and maybe brawler or nerves of steel for survivability.

At level 27 I'm noticing my two hander is not doing bad at all but maybe it's because I haven't found any one handers close to the same dps.

Yeah, whirlwind is just  :ye_gods:. I guess it's what you're forced to use if you're not cleaving or rending.

I've tried rend, but haven't gotten the hang of it, although I see how it's useful if you're doing a Berserker Fury build, it's kind of a nice cheap way to add some extra damage. But I've always found it useful with to Hammer (Smash) to just jump in and melt a boss-type.

This is one of my few gripes with the game right now, but no idea how it scales to later levels.

I have my built setup for jumping into huge groups, fighting huge groups and inflicting aoe damage.  So at boss fights I feel like I need to change all of my skills for that one fight and then change them all back after since I want high single target output vs a boss.

I see my two-hander ability damage pulling way ahead in act three. I'm not sure if they get a bonus or what but things like revenge hit like a truck using two handers, will try whirlwinding later.

There is something wrong with the on item dps shown for 2h, you will do a shitton more damage once you equip it your damage rating will go up even with a 30 dps 2h versus two 30 dps 1h's. I can't tell you why because I haven't stopped to try to piece it out yet.

For barb I haven't been able to get away from leap and stomp, stomp is just too powerful and its your oh shit button or your free kill everything button in a lot of situations. You must have leap. In fact you must have it and keep track of its cooldown. You cannot engage many types of boss packs without leap off cooldown. Being able to give yourself +300% armor for many of the Quest bosses is icing.

So with leap, stomp and a basic attack we're left with 3 open slots. I've been using spear, stagger slam and revenge. I'm looking to replace revenge.

What's the spear for? I tried it out early and didn't really see the point.

You need two ranged attacks mainly.

Spear also breaks down double boss packs with nasty abilities even if you are in a group with ranged -wall or vortex plus a big damage boss type has gotten a pair of WD's in games I've been in. It deals with a ton of annoying mob types (ranged goats, bees that shoot bees, suicide bombers, anything weak that runs).

The single target spear is a big fury boost (instantly gives you the fury to stagger slam) and that combo can be nice.

Spear isn't amazing in terms of effect but it has really good utility and it feels amazing to use if you liked Pudge/Blitzcrank/Scorpion as much as I do.

I gotta admit, I swapped out the dual sickles for some yellow limbless tree with spikes and now I run around one-shotting the simple mobs. Got three yellows off the Butcher for some reason - but the tree was the only thing I could use.

I really wonder about the dps numbers on 2h stuff. They do not seem that far above 1h stuff, but using them is a completely different story.

I've been having fun stomping into packs with a shield and dagger, and then going STABSTABSTABSTABSTAB

One of the most important reasons I've started use spear, it works on the greed goblin guys where most other stuns apparently don't.

I have a 2h build going. Taking into hardcore nightmare soon. L34.

Frenzy w/ life regain on death = LMB. All the frenzy runes are potentially good but 2h because of the longer time between swings and the longer time to get rolling during the start of fighting each pack needs max healing. I find myself losing 20% life much more regularly than I ever did using my dw cleave or 1h + shield bash/cleave builds.

Overpower w/ not sure yet = RMB. This is usable every pack basically (15sec CD) either at the start to make up for not having frenzy/fury engine going or as a finisher or as an oh shit depending on the pack composition.

Furious Charge w/ Merciless Assault = Q/1. So this is my bnb skill on this build. Against a big pack I can sometimes charge 3 times back to back doing hilarious aoe damage. Its very dangerous to do this though against anything but the weakest packs. Mainly I use it for positioning utility and sometimes aoe finishing damage.

Leap w/ Iron = W/2. I can't get away from it. Its huge in boss fights (avoid attack into big armor buff) and I don't know how to survive against a lot of mob types without it. I don't think I'll ever drop leap.

Revenge w/ not sure yet = E/3. This is just for the healing. Basically with a 2h'er I spam it every time its up because it does insane damage. Also I can charge into Revenge and its basically going to one shot most things if I do it right.

R/4 undecided. There are a lot of ways to go with this.


Thoughts so far:
This build wants to go crit, it might be so strong w/ a crit plan. But for now I'm not doing that because already I feel like I'm taking a huge risk running it. I get hit a lot more with it. Mainly I'm much much weaker for much much longer while getting to max fury and getting max frenzy. Once I hit those things the build is very strong.

The build feels like it requires a lot of micro. Instead of only using most abilities as "oh shit!" and only using mouse for almost all of the fight I'm constantly hitting keys. There are a lot of abilities and a lot of decision trees on when/where/how to combo them. That and the slow start are both big weaknesses and I'm worried its going to get me killed. I would totally suggest it for anyone playing in normal if you want to try some 2h out.

If people want to know and I don't get myself killed I'll post more when I finish Act1 NM.

I love 2H

I'm curious about stacking +weapon speed and seeing how that goes. derr

How is that build going Hoax? Died yet =p? Also, you didn't list which Passives you were running, so I'm curious as to that.

I'm just into Act3 SC, and the following layout for a two-hander Barb work really well for both single and four-player games. I can tank three/four screens worth of mobs in four-player (only up to Act 3 at the moment though), and am very much capable of herding large quantities like that together and blowing them all up very quickly.

1 is keyed to Stomp /w the vortex thing that sucks people into you.

2 is Leap with Iron Skin.

3 is Revenge specced to heal 'more' iirc. Great skill to spam, huge damage, great heal, etc...

4 is keyed to the Furious Shout or whatever the one is that increases damage dealt, runed for the 30% increase.

LMB is Cleave with the explode on death rune.

RMB is currently Whirlwind, although I'm beginning to suspect that Rend may be more efficient, because it looks to do more damage per Fury cost. The problem with Whirlwind (which I find is otherwise really good, because of the ability to reposition and not get cornered) is that this particular build has a bit of trouble generating Fury quickly.

Passives are Nerves and Inspiring Presence.

Overall strategy is to find large enough groups, Leap in and Stomp to pull as many as possible. Cleave away for a couple of swings to build some Fury, Whirlwinding/Rending as needed, then follow up with any Revenge which may have procced and into Cleave again to start the chain-reaction.

Sustain comes from Nerves (with ~2000 hp I end up with a fair amount of Armour) and Presence allowing for the war-cry to heal 1% of max hp over time.

I swear to god I can't seem to quick this class.

I been using for swarms:

1. Leap w/iron skin
2. Stomp w/ wrenching
3. Threatening Shout w/ intimidate

then RMB Whirlwind w/ dust devils and LMB Cleave w/ reaping

And when I MUST have everything dead, 4. Earthquake /w giant's stride right before Whirlwinding around.

Fuck that is gratifying.

Earthquake is aaarjhgahghaghaghrgargahraljsrjhagarl

Pity it takes so much time to recharge.

Just dropping this here but wrath of the berserker makes you entirely immune to CC for the duration.  Even though it's not in the tooltip, I just pop it and stand on frost bombs all day long.

I like using Cleave (Reap), Hammer (Devil's Anvil) as my main attacks.

Ground Stomp (Wrench), Revenge (Vengeance), Threatening Shout (Falter), and Earthquake (Giant) fill out the rest.

I wander into large packs. Throw on the stunning ground stomp, then the shout, cleave cleave cleave, Earthquake. WIN!

Basically my entire play time revolves around sucking groups in, and popping revenge for max healts when it's procced if Quake is on CD, then hammering my fury away on anything close.

It didn't kill me but it wasn't working. However I am convinced that Barb can farm maybe faster than anyone if you were doing pure gold farming. The furious charge repeatable rune lets you basically demolish camps in seconds and if you had gold drop + gold pick up gear you would basically get all the monies in the process in theory. I'm going to look at that at some point.

Here's the thing about the build before. Going for the max fury = +25% damage is stupid when you can run the shout that gives you plus 30% damage w/ rune. Once I noticed that it was time to rethink.

I'm currently working on gear (I'm 2-3k hp short of what I need) before I start challenging myself again on the Barb and I'm going with 2h axe crit build. I've had to give up Charge and I miss it and I'm not sure its worth giving it up. The more I work on this though the more convinced I am that shield + 1h is easier to work with.

My crit engine is Overpower, Battle Rage and Revenge with the obvious runes. The big yellow numbers are cool  but I need more tank, lots more tank. I may try to gear to 9k hp before I go for a Act2 complete NM run.

Have you tried runeing cleave for the extra fury per target hit?

Pound of flesh seemed so worthless but in late nightmare/early hell it is invaluable as a passive.

So my friends and gf finally nagged me into getting this, and barb is the only class I'd play. I've glanced over this thread and it seems two one handers are the way to go over a two-hander. Any other tips on how to race this guy through the first difficulty setting to get up to their mains?

Two one handers? Where do you get that? I got the impression that most people went sword and board.

The fastest way is twink weapon(s) with red gems and pretty much 2.5 sets of armor for levels 1-30 and the first difficulty.

What you'll need:
-1 really high level red gem, preferably two since you might as well start out going dual wield during the first 2 acts.
-Level 0, level 5, level 10/11, level 15/17, level 2X weapon(s). From level 15 onwards they must be socketed though if you get socketed at 10 its an even bigger joke. Nothing matters but socket and highest dps number.
-The armor sets. You should be wearing a full set of twink by level15 or so. The second set and maybe some choice great pieces should come into play around the level 22 to 28 mark depending on how low level/armor the first set of stuff you picked out is. You can hold off on buying the second set until you get there and then just hitting the ah for best available. What the armor needs to have:
-helm should have a socket if you don't skip out on the high level topaz (more later). Also str.
-every other major piece should have vit/str and anything else you can get on it without paying too much on the ah.
-the rings and amulet should have +damage in fact the more sets of these you have starting at 2-4 then 3-5 etc. The better this damage gets added in before anything else it seems and makes a huge difference in your final numbers.
-the boots should have movespeed and vit/str.
-don't forget you can wear mighty belts and in a fit of idiocy despite being able to sort by class usability they are in their own fucking section and wont show up with other belts.
-big fucking topaz, because getting drops is more fun and slotting it into a helm will go a long way to increasing your fun

That should pretty much get you there. If you wanted to be crazy about it you could go for a full L2X set of Vit/Str/Xp per kill but honestly it doesn't take that long to finish normal. I'd say you would have gold left over with 200k and probably you need way less if you are doing a normal character as I imagine the prices are much lower on that ah.

I realize this may be a very specific piece of information that most people won't necessarily care about, but Inferno Act 2 and on, you're gonna be using a one-hander and a shield.

Looking at the gear that exists in the game, it seems incredibly unlikely that you'll ever have quite the perfect set of gear that would allow that to happen.

I, of course, could be wrong, but there are already people farming Act 4 items very cheesily, and the outlook is relatively grim.

The Fury comment was more or less directly in relation to Whirlwind upkeep. Otherwise, the build is very low-Fury friendly and cooldown efficient. You are right though, it is a relatively small change to enable better Fury generation; but it would work better in a different build overall, I think.

I've since tried both Rend and Furious Charge instead of Whirlwind, and have so far settled on Charge as the RMB alternative. Rend takes too long to do its damage, whereas Charge give you both the benefit of having another positional skill, and after slotting the to 285% damage increase rune, it becomes an incredible aoe damage dump.

After the first night of playing I am liking the class so far. It feels very...visceral. We just finished Act 1 (everyone rolled an alt to level with me til I reach their mains), and it's been a blast. I know it's probably not the best spell for later, but right now I am digging Frenzy. The faster attack speed is just darn cool.

Once you get the revenge %30 chance rune around level 50 that skill becomes VERY viable as dps and survival.

Hmm. Maybe it's been playing my DH so much, but I've been rolling with Wrath of the Berserker a lot: CC breaks seem kind of necessary for surviving elite packs.

Fact: Barbarian attacks are the most satisfying thing in Diablo 3. It is impossible to not enjoy watching a skeleton or goblin blow up and fly across the screen in pieces. Even breaking barrels is more satisfying on a barbarian. My monk has more interesting abilities, but it can't really compare to how destructive barbarian feels.

I just can't get over the squishiness of being melee in later levels without going sword and board. Being unable to use a two hander as a barbarian makes me very unhappy.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I keep getting killed.  Level 24 barbarian, I've got okay gear and the boss of 2nd act Baeil keeps killing me when he gets his second wind/form.  I get killed a lot from random crap, where I'll be kicking ass, then bam, I'm dead.  I guess  I could always play with other people, but I wanted to leisurely level up and read the story plot.

Try to get more life steal type stuff into your build for that fight maybe?

Is your Templar with you? And is he trained for the healing skills? That's kept me alive a few times.

It was gear.  I went and got level 25ish gear that I could afford that had +vit, +life on hit, and +str, from the auction hall and steam rolled him with it.  Feels like cheating though...in diablo ii could have done it with gear I had found.  Is it common to get drops so low bellow your level?

Yeah, low level drops are very common. It's one of the main complaints in the bitch thread. I twinked myself out on the AH as well. It really does make loot you find less exciting when you know you can buy something 10 times better for a couple thousand gold.

Once I started playing Hell I felt like I can't live without revenge, I need to life steal to even survive.  Kinda sucks actually, it's a good skill but I hate living or dying by the RNG off of being hit.

I am being very conservative (paranoid) in Hardcore and taking more skills that heal. Pound of Flesh passive is insane when it procs. Was in a scrum of 30+ minor trash mobs and had no less than 10 globes at the end of the 10sec melee scrum (ty, earthquake +whirlwind). I also gave Rend + the heals rune for a spin or two. Might be worth it on bosses, but trash groups - it is kind of a waste. Revenge is nice, but I hate abilities that need a proc to activate. I hardly notice the ability when it becomes available and by the time I do, its timer has just ran out.

Any tips on fighting Diablo in Nightmare mode?  I do fine in corporal form, but the dream world is rough without heals.

I recommend trying to do it in a team. Barring that I recommend using Revenge with the heal restoring glyph to fill in the gaps.

Been using that, but it's just not enough with only one target to get heals from.  Perhaps getting a friend to help will do the trick.

My staple is using the improved warcries passive & a warcry of your choice. This gives you a %heal based on your hp, which is relatively cheap to cast and stays up for a while.

The answer to every "I'm having problems with X" question in Diablo 3 is "use the AH". I kept dying solo to Nightmare Diablo in the dream world after killing the second clone. After failing 3 times, I bought a new axe and 1-shot the fight. Upgrading from the item I was using to one of the lvl 48-50ish weapons I could find in the AH doubled my dps.

I managed to defeat him solo with only gear obtained through drops.  I guess that I get to farm Hell level for gear now as a reward? 

There is a serious jump from 49 to 51 in armor rating and dmg that I have noticed. My old 48 piece that I had just bought at 47 had 170ish armor... new piece is 200+ with extra amor as a stat. Same with weapons... I upgraded my lvl 47 sword from 127 dmg unsocketed to 190+ unsocketed in the same bracket.

Lifesteal is trash.  Life on hit however is godly.  Stack this as much as possible (if you really want to go for broke use it with frenzy).

There is a video of a Barb soloing inferno diablo and he did it by stacking a massive amount of life on hit.

Here it is:  http://www.youtube.com/user/Kripparrian

Kripparian's site in general is a terrific resource for hardcore players, he really understands the mechanics of itemization very well. He inspired me to roll a bar for hardcore. I'm a bit burnt out on my Necro, and depressed about how weak my pets feel.

In nightmare you can just chain-stun diablo with bash using the clobber rune. Does feel a bit like cheating but...

Not that I'm playing a Barb, but that was really useful. It's annoying that effects such as the lifesteal reduction by difficulty are not spelled out anywhere ingame, I had no idea about that.

Nightmare Diablo was quite possibly the easiest fight I have had in the game to date... and I owe it all to Frenzy with the Smite rune. Fucking stunlocked his ass for both fights. Anytime he would wind up his fire breath or ring of fire ability, ground stomp stun if Frenzy didn't proc. Can't say enough about it in boss fights...

Once you get to hell, proc-based stuns don't work on bosses anymore, sorry.

Rocking out the HC stuff, thanks in part to Kripparian. I'm 43 and just beat Belial Nightmare, didn't have to move out of the way of the green meteors.

Just one thing to note that was totally non-apparent: Wrath of the Berserker (Insanity) increases all damage by 100%, which includes Earthquake, which on top of the DPS buff you get from the extra attack speed, means Earthquaking under Wrath does about 5000% damage. It's a kind of "I win" button every two minutes on elite packs.

Going to watch his videos later. After my WD bit the dust, I was going to hit up monk since I have one waiting that's already past the Butcher on Normal/HC. But I think I'll go Barbarian instead. Played one through Normal once and rather liked it. Plus, the items on the AH for HC are far cheaper so far with STR gear than DEX. Not sure why. Are there just far more people playing DH and Monk? Or is it because only the Barb uses STR? Either way, I'm all about cheap upgrades.

Sadly I played my Barb all the way through hell without knowing I could set up with two rage skills and what not.  Thanks for making me actually look at least now I can set up my WD differently.

Tempted to swap out Threat Shout with this.

I finished NM mode at level 49 last night on my barb.

25K HP with a Legendary 2H putting my DPs at over 1500dps

LMB = Frenzy (Vanguard)
RMB = Whirlwind (Windshear)

1 = Ground Stomp (Trembling Stomp/Foot of the Mountain)
2 = Revenge (Vengeance Is Mine/Retribution)
3 = War Cry (Invigorate)
4 = Wrath of the Berserker (Insanity/Slaughter) - still trying to work out which is a better staple

Passives:
Bloodthirst
Nerves Of Steel
Superstition

It seems to work - not pure DPS and I hate relying on the passives for defence but I can usually stand up to most large packs - WW is a get out of jail card for mortars etc and I find that if the packs are big enough I can sit and spin forever chaining WW and Revenge.

I have a feeling this will fail in Hell (when  I hit 50) in which case I will shelve the barb because I want to have fun, not play all defensive  :heartbreak:

What's your crit percent? Unless you've been stacking it hard, then you just want insanity, because if you need AOE damage, you just whirlwind/revenge at 100% damage.

But yeah, slaughter at maxed crit? That seems hilarious.


Also, this build, do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ci1pRxzYwDs

That's my build for inferno. It's extremely gear dependant though. You need enough resists to survive and enough Strength/DPS on your 1Her to make it not suck.

No Leap? Gah... I dunno what I'd do with myself without it.  :ye_gods:

Leap doesn't work in Inferno.

It just...doesn't.

My Inferno build (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WkRYVP!eXc!ccYZcZ)

Switch Ignore Pain w/ Mob Rule for Battle Rage w/ Marauder's Rage if solo.

So... anyone recommend any strategies for taking down Diablo in normal...?  I've given it a few tries with different skills but always end up pretty much stomped on.

Well, I think the first question is: how bad is it if you're caught in a bone prison?

If the answer is: it nearly kills me, then you probably want to buy more +vit gear.

Go defensive, and go stunning.
Bash/Clobber
Leap +armor
Ground Stomp +range
Revenge +life for heals
Two of: War Cry / Threatening Shout / Ignore Pain

For passives:
Nerves of Steel / Superstition / Inspiring Presence (if you're not 30, then Berserker Fury, since you have no fury dumpers in this build)

Your goal is to efficiently rotate your cooldowns, combining with stuns, to get as little damage as possible. So when you leap in, you've got 4 seconds of very low damage. Save your ground stomp for being low on life or more frequently, when he starts bone prisons / electric breath.

Try to keep in front of him (south). This way, when he starts bone prisons, you can just run south, and you can see them on the ground. If you're obscured by him, you'll get caught more often.

By rotating all those defensive skills, and stuns, you'll have a lot of time to let potions and your life regen from the shout kick in.

Stay out of prisons, rotate between the two health pits, and when you get to terror mode, do some kiting in between cooldowns.

I'm 31.  Biggest problem is the fire aura that essentially drains my health to nothing that I can't exactly seem to do anything about.  I avoid the prisons pretty well and avoid the fire that branches out in a 360.

So, shelving my Barbarian. Got to Hell mode, almost exclusively through co-op mode with some friends, and fuck it is simply not worth playing him any more. I had to dump all my fun moves and passives just to survive. Oh well, good thing I'm having a blast on my baby monk (who will likely suffer the same problems when I get to hell with him).

Amazing how changing the passives and using war cries actually makes Diablo easy...  Down in the 2nd try.

So I made it to Inferno with my barbarian. Upgarding your gear in the AH once in a while really makes the game trivially easy; I didn't die at all on Nightmare, and only a couple of times on Hell. But for some inexplicable reason I'm hooked. I mean, sure, it's nice to be able to progress without stopping at all - at least until now - but there really isn't anything at the end of the rainbow, and the fact that the game requires very little skill is sort of silly. Or is it/does it?

Anyway, I expect my enthusiasm to wither away soon. But that's not a big deal, since the ride thus far has easily been worth the cover price.

What got me here, mostly solo:

Frenzy (Sidearm)
Leap (Impact)
Wrath (Insanity)
Stomp (Smash)
Revenge (Provocation)
Earthquake (Mountains)
Nerves
Superstition
Brawler

The Wrath/Earthquake/Brawler combo from Kripparian's video made even the harder elite/champion packs easy to kill within seconds.

I haven't upgraded my gear since Act II/Hell and I've got 53k HP, 9.1k DPS and 6.2k armor unbuffed. I assume my resistances, or lack thereof, will get me murdered on Inferno.

I looked this up after reading this and watched a few of his vids. That combo is awesome! I spent 250k on a -13 level req dagger yesterday and then proceeded to take my barb from level 47 to 52 in about 2 hours with it. Hell elite/champ packs just *melt* when you pop Father Christmas & Earthquake together!

In fact, I wouldn't be overly surprised if it got nerfed soon :(

I didn't start farming, just bought a bunch of upgrades, worth maybe 500k (while selling their predecessors for more) and did act one without any problems. My build is a bit more defense oriented, but wrath+earthquake still pretty much destorys elites and champions. I ended up clearing everything from Leoric's mansion to act two three times with five stacks of NV and the loot was all sorts of awesome.

SO I started a HC barb, and up to level 30 it is by miles the fastest leveling and killing class I've played. I decided to go full balls DPS, with a little vitality.

Cleave (exploding people- 85% of huge crits is gibfest)
Seismic Slam - Extra damage and knockback

Ancient Spear - 3 spears
Leap - +armor
Battle Rage - +30 damage
Sprint - +dodge

Passive - Ruthless, Weapon Master, Bloodthirst

I use scoundrel with 3% crit buff.

(Bosses I switch Cleave to Frenzy, and spear or sprint to ignore pain)

I use 1H's , with main hand being Mace or Axe (with +crit damage). I run A Purple and green gem in them. My crit rate is at around 30% buffed, and the bonus crit damage is like 250% or something stupid.

Cleave with exploding things is insane. I just leap/sprint everywhere, spear/rage/seismic blast things. I cover a map so fast, and obliterate groups. I run +exp gear and a shiny red gem in my helm. Hit level 30 after 6 hours played. I think that's pretty strong.

Got my resists to mid 500's with a couple in mid 600's without buffs.  Facerolling Act I now- looks like that last 50 points has made a humongous difference (I was solo'ing elites in a 4 man party left and right.  To the point my group would run and just let me crush some of the harder ones).

I think I am about ready for Act II.  Oh, and tried one of those fancy whirlwind insanity builds- but did not suit me.  I may go dual wield (but would need to uprade a couple pieces of gear to add the loss of resist from my shield).

Next stop- Act II and hopefully getting a nice upgrade to my 700 DPS weapon (s).

I went Sword and board through Act 2 recently, and now I can adequately farm it solo for gear.

Here's what I'm using so far. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Paelos-1244/hero/5141137 (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Paelos-1244/hero/5141137)

I >think< I can dual wield it by upping my resist a bit with a couple pieces of gear I have stashed away.  My only concern is loss of armor and block- especially since I wield a 18% block shield at the moment.  If I can figure out how to get a URL for my dude will share shortly.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Cheddar-1540/hero/6234329

Switched back to shield for Act 2.  With my current gear I wtfpwn Act 1 as duel wield but a wee bit to squishy for Act 2. 

I mean, I can duel wield act 2, but death repair cost just isn't worth it.

DW becomes very possible if you can get 600 AR on the rest of your gear and a solid WW spec.

You'd need about 600 AR, 800+ vit, and 1500+ strength.

Also, crit damage has become really epic in the last patch. You'll see barbs stacking it now wherever they can within reason.

I can do it once I boost AR a little.  I was actually hanging in there- but a couple deaths here and there is just too expensive to keep it up (for now).

Huge part is I need a better weapon. 

Barbarian is so fun to play now. It's also apparently FOTM, because in every public game I'm playing in, it's the most common class.

I've seen a few others, demon hunters and witch doctors and wizards, maybe one monk.

I don't know what I'm doing in terms of mechanics and spec (cleave? I think and whirlwind and earthquake with fire and leap and something else), but I'm only in Nightmare so it doesn't really matter yet. It's very very fun to hulk smash.

Equipment wise, picking up things with str and vit, attack speed when I can, crit hit chance when I can, and life leech stuff. Using a one hand and a shield.

One thing is that I have gotten more legendaries on this character than any other. Either barbarians get a cheat on legendaries or the drop rate has been upped since last July. I had found 2 legendaries total when I quit last July. I found none on my 38 DH on the way to 60, none on my 58 wizard on my way to 60, none in Infernal on my WD (soloed to Diablo), but I have so far found 3 legendaries on my Barb who is now about level 40.

I have been playing more public games, maybe that's why?

You do get a magic find bonus per group member since patch... whatever.

Yeah, they've also upped it significantly.  None at all when I used to play the Bullshit version, about 5 now on the new patch.

Picked up a pair of pants I can actually use! Hammer Jammers.

On to Hell level. First thing I realized is that I have to go steal someone's spec because whatever I'm doing now isn't working so well. 2k dps or so, things are dying slowly, and some things are killing me. Need to find the magic spec, since I don't have hundreds of millions of gold and I refuse to spend real money.

Just to bring the tone a bit back to reality, less than 100k gold (which is a more than reasonable sum for somebody slogging around hell difficulty) should take care of hell quality upgrades for you to slaughter everything in hell. Hundreds of millions on hell level gear would be silly.

I seem to have really good gear then, since replacing any of it really would seem to cost more than 100k. There is a heck of a lot more gear for 60s than 50; the closer I get to 60 the more choices I should have.

Probably my spec needs changing. Certainly my gear is as good as any of my other characters when I hit hell level, except maybe rings and amulet, which are expensive no matter the level.

You can STILL pick up cheeky wee bargains if you look.  I recently purchased 3 items with Reduced Level Requirements for mere thousands.  These things are total dynamite and should sell for a fuckload more.

I agree that you don't need much money to get yourself a really kick ass kit before 60.  It's only once the sorta 'still levelling at 60' slog comes in that you get real inflation problems.

I think level 50 gear is tougher to come by. There is so much cheap gear at 60, compared to what one can get at level 50. Actually the closer I got to 60 the cheaper the gear got, to a point.

So I just played through inferno once on my wizard, and found 0 legendary/set items. Either my wizard has really bad luck or Barbarians have special luck, because I have found 8 legendary/set items on Barb just getting to 60 on her (no inferno play yet at all). Certainly seems suspicious, although maybe rng is just being random.

I have games where legendaries drop 3 in a row in a matter of 2 hours, then go for 7 days seeing nothing.

I think its bad luck. I all the time I've played my wizard I have found 5 legendary items. I have logged plenty of grind hours too.

How do you actually set the different MP levels?

You select it when you choose a quest.  I think you may have to turn it on in the settings somewhere for it to show up, because apparently blizzard thinks it would be too confusing for newbies or something.

Yeah, make sure you've ticked the box in options.  While you're there, tick the box for 'advanced tooltips' also, so Blizzard doesn't treat you like the fucking clueless console dribbler that they think you are.

Thanks guys.  I'm giving it one more try since I signed on yesterday and checked out the AH. I discovered that I can get way better equipment for not very much money. I've only got like 50k gold but I figure if I go through Act 4 Hell once or twice  I'll get enough money to do an equipment upgrade and maybe be able to survive in Inferno.

Unrelated side-note: When did "doesnt" lose it's apostrophe? Earlier I had the spellchecker complain when I spelled "doesn't" like I have been for like the last 45 years. Is this an American thing? Or is it some newfangled rule like not putting two spaces after a period? I checked dictionary.com and they seem to think both spellings are right when they clearly ARE NOT!! I'm outraged and shaking my cane at this point.

Language and writing evolve.

It also deteriorates.

Man! They've stolen the apostrophes from "isn't" and "wasn't" too!  Thank God that "can't" has so far remained uncorrupted.

I believe a revival of the pet peeves thread may be in order, especially since I agree.


Just as a starting reference point - I did inferno on mp0 incredibly easily with a barb running 25-30k hp and about 65-70k dps with awful mitigation. So farming in Hell may not even be needed at all if you're over 20k hp and around 30k dps to get started in Act 1 Inferno at a comfortable level.

I'll check that next time I'm on. I'd forgotten that they made Inferno easier a while back.

If I were you, I wouldn't bother farming anything. There's a ton of cheap gear at 60 that is likely better than what you last played with a year ago. Buy some pieces and play public games. The drops are more frequent and the leveling is much faster.

Oh yes I know. I saw some awesome equipment for 50k or less. But I only have 48k. I figure I'll need at least 100-200k to outfit myself again. I don't mind. It's been so long since I've played I can use some practice in a relatively easy area.

You can get awesome stuff for much, much less if you look.

2 Skycutter legendary blades for 2700 each.  Seriously.  And if you look at my profile you'll see the dps they can put out.

Also, Angels.  ANGELS GANDALF.

But I don't want to look at the AH!  /whine

Well, sure, but that's not the case here.  Bloke is saying 'I looked, shit is expensive'.  I'm saying 'You didn't look hard enough.'

I'll look again.  :awesome_for_real:

Also, be aware that I was operating under the assumption that you're a filthy, filthy Eurofag, which was clearly wrong.

It's possible that your AH is more expensive.  I really don't know.   :why_so_serious:

Whether it's 50k or 2k it's not the 500k I spent for my last upgrade before giving up on the game.

It's usually not. Several legendaries exist in the 25k range.

Make sure that when you look, you look at what auctions are ending soon.

I don't know why, but some people toss stuff up there and don't put in a buyout. I picked up several great pieces that got me through inferno for under 5k.

The gold drop seems to double between hell and inferno (although maybe not quite double, it's a lot more). And playing public games has bigger piles too.

Best advice given in any Diablo 3 thread on this forum.

Well.

Looks like I capped out my Barb.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/tankstar-1170/hero/6915563

Everything else takes a whole bunch extra.

Also have an echo+1h axe that give me about 130k dps w/ life steal.

Not sure what to improve.

You can get a better yellow ring for relatively cheap that would give you more crit chance. Getting close to 30% crit would give you a very large boost to your damage.

Otherwise, yeah it gets expensive fast.

He's MP7 now pretty steady too.

So, just a wee boast here because Barb is so fucking fucked to play mostly, but I have this gear and with all the lightning, things just die.  And die really, really quick.  My Char sheet is simply NOT a good indication of how quickly things are melting....

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ironwood-2511/hero/35732679 (http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ironwood-2511/hero/35732679)

Anyone else managing any fun with the Barb ?

Yeeaaaaargh, I still can't get my barb to work. Don't know what I'm doing wrong (apart from not farming enough epixxxx), but he just seems to melt, compared to anything else.

The game is very melee unfriendly, and as I recall, barbs do not have a lot of the defensive shield abilities that mages and monks do.

I'm dying a lot. I like my barb but I don't like dying. I'll try your build and see if it works better for me.

Mine ?  I don't see that working terribly well without all that gear....

That said, Bloodthirst is crazy strong, especially when stacked with Paragon points.  If you're getting low on health, hit Ignore Pain and spin until you're at full health.

But make no mistake, Barbs are second only to the Demon Hunter in 'Oh Shit, This Class Sure Can Eat a Bag of Dicks.'

Getting some LoH and switching to faster Dual-Wield weapons was what I found made the most dramatic improvement for survivability on my barb. You can also try running Warcry with Impunity if you aren't already. It's a dramatic increase to your defense stats and a nice Rage source. It turns into a move speed increase if you can pick up a Chilanik's Chain (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/chilaniks-chain). I blew all of my blood shards from RoS release until last week to get a level 70 version of the belt. It's that big of a QoL improvement, and the bonus extends to group mates too. If you are in a particularly strong group, you can also sub a damage ability for Sprint with Forced March. The two abilities stack and make it feel like playing with a permanent movement speed shrine enabled.

Last suggestions to boost survivability would be using Rend with Bloodlust (heal 0.5% HP per second for every mob hit) and always use Superstition as a passive.

Here is my build (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WZkYcl!hgeV!cZcZZc)

Yeah, it doesn't. I went back to my build. I have super crappy gear, although Kadala gave me a set piece and 2 usable legendaries yesterday.

Still, it's just... not fun. WD is more fun, but pets.  Feels broken next to wizard.

Melee crusader in Torment is more fun than my warrior and has a lot more survivability (admittedly I have 50% block before skills kick in and heal on block) and my monk with similar gear to my warrior can wade through most packs and survive (again admittedly stacking resist all to 1000+ via talents helps). The warrior just seems to have nothing by comparison and his only saving grace is the shoulders that stop all my gear from being damaged when I die. It's nuts that a crusader that doesn't have the 33% mitigation (and is classified with the ranged classes) that warriors and monks both have can face tank better than the warrior that has this mitigation.

Crusaders got 15% mitigation and a viable shield though.