In this thread we discuss all things Barbarian and also mock whatever other scrub classes anyone else chose to play.

BARBARIAN

FAP FAP FAP FAP

THAT IS ALL

YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sexy baba! Lets do this!!!!

Played d2 on and off for 10 years. 90% of my characters were Barbs.

**** yeah lets do this.

THE power of D3. My goal? Find the biggest ****ing axe with the most sockets.

So right now I have:

Balanced Morning Star with 18 DPS, 10-17dmg, 1.33 APS, +0.13 APS
and
Balanced Fuscina with 16.1 DPS, 10-13dmg, 1.40 APS, +0.20 APS.

When I equip an Exceptional Carver with 18.8 DPS, 13-16dmg, 1.30 APS, +4min dmg my dps goes down by 1.39.

Why?

Is it because of the difference in APS?

Enjoying it so far... but annoys me that when duel wield clubs that the sound effect sounds like a sword and not a wooden club? Seems lazy not to have a different sound effect =/

carried my friend(witch doctor) through act 1 this morning. he was doing **** for damage. i'm sure he'll get some cool **** eventually but playing a barb just feels badass.

Lancer whirlwind was imba in dia2, hopefully theres soemthing similar in 3

I'm loving just smashing through absolutely everything, nothing has been able to slow me down so far.

What is your setup?

LC - RC - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4?

I'm not logged in yet, but I've been mixing it up trying to find what I like.

I think right now I'm pretty set on:

LC - Cleave, RC - Rend, 1 - Leap, 2 - Stomp (or whatever it's called), 3 - the one ability that procs, chance on taking dmg, and 4 - earthquake.

I've tried other things, but nothing else seems to really work well together.

I think before the maintenance I was using the Bash (?) with Onslaught and that was working pretty handily at not slowing me down.

But all-in-all I probably died 15 times and I'm not even in Act 3 yet. -- Also, let it be known that I just jump into the middle of everything and sometimes get 1 or 2 shot, especially when there is enemy AOE on the ground that I don't move out of it.

Just finished Act 1 at lvl 17. My dps is at 94.

LC - Cleave, RC - HotA, 1 - Leap, 2 - Ancient Spear, 3 - Threatening Shout (which I just got at 17).

I basically just use Cleave and HotA. Leap I use just to get around dungeons and I've basically ignored any other buttons and abilities so far. All the trash mobs so far I have been able to 1 or 2 shot. The bigger mobs take 5 or 6 hits, same with elites/champions. Haven't died yet.

Cleave with the explosion rune is ahhhhmuhhhhhzinnnngg.

im at act 3 now lvl 26 or 27 and damn this game is tougher then i thought it would be on normal. i have no clue what build to use im just using random skills.

+1, love that with a 2h weapon.

If you want to see groups of mobs melt dual wield - Frenzy, Rend, Revenge, Groundstomp. Only level 16 atm but man I love this build while dual wielding.

Finally got back in.

Current stats:

Lvl 24
Strength: 222
Armor: 622
DPS: 180.32

I think I'm near the end of Act 2.

Current Setup is:

LC: Bash w/ Onslaught
RC: Whirlwind w/ DustDevils
1: Leap w/ Launch
2: Ground Stomp w/ Wrenching Smash
3: Revenge w/ Vengence is Mine
4: Earthquake w/ Giant's Stride

and Blood Thirst and Weapons Master

Using Weapons Master with a Sword in your main hand makes a big dps difference.

But I've been playing with different combinations, mainly switching out Bash and Whirlwind and leaving everything else the same, along with trying different passive skills.

EDIT: Just started Act 3.

So Cleave+Rupture feels way stronger than anything else I could do as my main spam, am I wrong?

Yeah I think Cleave+Rupture is good because of the dmg to multiple enemies.

Bash+Onslaught is also pretty good, and Punish has the same feel.

I found a pretty OP build for a little bit until I changed it.

Bash+Punish for increased damage
Rend+BloodLust for HP regen
Leap+IronImpact for Armor
IgnorePain+Bravado for knockback/dmg
BattleRage+Marauder's Rage for bonus dmg.

4th ability doesn't matter for this rotation

Passive skills are Weapon's Master with Sword in Main Hand, Berserker Rage if you have time to get to max fury, then Ruthless for more dmg or BloodThirst for HP conversion.

You'll have to play with it. I started mixing it up and forgot exactly what my best build was.

I had some fights where I went from 318 DPS to 558 DPS.

Leap into the group of mobs, pop BattleRage, hit Rend, then hit IgnorePain, and continue hitting with Bash to stack your Punish.

It worked pretty well for me until I switched it up and lost that edge.

yep.

I'm thankful I have this forum, particularly this thread. It'll be a big help whereas back in the day of D2, I didn't really have anything and messed up chars. It's nice that there seems to be no character mess-up possible as a result of the new system.

thanks a bunch for your contributions, ItalianFX. I'll def see how those combos work.


So far, pretty much the only things I use are the one that stuns enemies on #1, the one that absorbs enemies hits' and turns it into life for hero on #2, 'frenzy' for LC, and the one that sends a shockwave for RC. I'm a mid-teens Barb who just beat Act 1. How am I doing so far?? I wish I knew the names but seeing as we can't log in, I dunno what they're called lol

alright since I intend to be the best barb on my side of da big river ill share some builds I have so far.

Currently on lvl 30 barb that I can currently go up to almost 500 dps.

Obv this is only with the available runes so far for my build.


left click: Frenzy with sidearm (throws axes for decent dmg during swings. somehow.o) Right click: seismic slam with shattered ground (mostly for the bigger dmg, the knockback can be annoying but also useful in many situations that theyre just rushing you, sometimes actually knocking them saves you from getting surrounded, and while theyre running back to get at you again, you can line em up for a second sweet shockwave)

1: Leap with impact rune, its meh but the armor is definitely better than just slowing down enemies that you hit. Armor owns everybody. Even ranged attackers that you wouldnt be able to slow.

2: Ground stomp with the wrenching smash rune. Gives a much wider range, and pulls the enemis to you while stunning them. This is very important to setup the AOE fury dump. Great generator combined after leaping into a nice juicy pack of mobs.

3: overpower if you can use axes or maces as main hand weapon. Why? See weapons master passive. It grants 10% critical chance. And why is taht good? heres what this skill does: "deals 165% weapon dmg to all targets within 9 yards(which is actually really short in diablo world), landing a critical hit has a chance to lower the cooldown by 1 second".

Great. What you might be missing is this skill has 15 seconds cooldown, but no cost. Its a pretty high dmg dealing AOE that you can use more and more often if you have critical rates.

If you cant have that, Revenge can be a great alternative in this spot after getting close and adding aoe damage that doesnt consume fury. What I think overpower has in its favor is it doesnt require you to actually getting hit and triggering the rng (which at lvl 30 you can actually stun stuff and kill it before some of them can try hitting you).

4: Battle rage. At this point, I cant see any barb not getting battle rage. +15% dmg for +3% critical chances for 30 seconds for 20 fury cost. Wait, what did you say? the first rune doubles the damage bonus to 30%? Hhhhhokay. The 3% is also a nice little boost for overpower.

passive 1: ruthless, 5% critical chance and +50% critical dmg, no brainer if you dont BADLY need survivabiliy.

passive 2: weapons master, maces and axes will be the most wanted if you plan on using overpower. But theyre all pretty decent. Im not too in love with mighty weapons giving more fury but whatever. 15% damage is still ridiculously high for swords and daggers.

passive 3: very debatable, at this level I believe its a toss up between the 3% life leech (blood thirst) and pound of flesh (MOAR GLOBES N THEY GIEF MORE HP) animosity can seem nice but maximum fury isnt very useful and 10% increase generation isnt too interesting.



So, this is simple. Leap in first in a decent pack, try to get in an area to setup the most monsters for your next skill (while still hitting a monster to gain fury ldo)

2ndly, ground stomp to pull them to you. Overpower for free aoe. At this point you shouldnt have too much fury cause hey thats how it works.

Stack up 5 stacks of frenzy, position yourself to hit your enemies in a cone in front of you with seismac slam, use one or two of them, refresh frenzy so your 5 stacks dont fall off, keep an eye on your overpower that should start refreshing with your many crits, if it does pop it again, if it doesnt keep frenzying and building fury until leap is back, jump to the next back and repeat, this time with more fury and more seismac slams to boot.

Refresh your battle rage right before it swears off, etc. simple.

against bosses replace seismac slam with wrath of the berserker (MOAR CRITS+MORE ATTACK SPEED = MOAR FREE OVERPOWER SPAMMED), unless the specific boss spawns a ton of mobs and shockwave is still needed.


ps: I still think hammer of the ancients with the first rune (cone aoe) might actually be better than seismic slam in a lot of occasions ill have to test it out. The 5% crits bonus is a welcome pretty random addition.

Also considering trying out a pair of bash+frenzy for big bosses. Spamming bash with dmg bonus whenever you can while refreshing frenzy to keep 5 stacks up. Probably cant afford leap in this build tho.

im playing the same build except i prefer leap, stomp, overpower, and then cleavexplosion, with super saiyan in there instead of seismic, switch to frenzy for boss fights

+1

What was the deal about something about changing your skills giving you some kind of penalty? Resetting something? I can't remember what it was.

That only kicks in at level 60.

Oh sweet...ty.

I've been switching my skills constantly to try new combinations and wasn't sure if I was screwing myself in someway that I couldn't see.