Diablo III: Barbarian Guide

[News Portal]

Concluding our series of class guides is the Barbarian, that rampaging giant of a man (or woman) whose sole aim is to bury his (or her) axe as far as possible into the skull of evil. Tim is an unwashed giant of a man in real life, and so he seemed like the best candidate.

Read full story →



Read full article by Tim Colwill

[Sathias]

Good stuff, you've taken quite a different approach to how I've been playing the Barb. I looked at Bezerker Rage and thought it could work for a build but I haven't tried it.

[aetherfox]

Tim, what are your thoughts of playing in Inferno as a Barbarian? I've heard many Barbs are having major struggles in Act 2.

I've given up on playing a pure melee Barbarian in Act 4/5 in Hell - it's just not worth it. Maybe it's my gear, or level, but there seems to be a good chance that in any level at least one champion / elite spawns with prefixes that are nearly impossible to beat in melee range, so I have to skip them. Something like ranged mobs with molten+fast.

I've now decided to basically reserve one slot for the Weapon Throw and use the Relentless talent, so if I'm having trouble with champions / elites I have the option of getting out of range, and then throwing infinite axes at them since they cost no Fury below 20% hp. I feel it's a good compromise since it only takes up one slot, and the passive that enables it is a good all rounder as well. The snare effect is invaluable as well for ranged attackers which have AI that makes them kite you.

[Tim Colwill]

Unfortunately I'm not up to Inferno myself, I'm too weak That part of the guide was written entirely through exhaustive hours of video-watching, livestream-viewing, and forum-thread digging! It seemed like a lot of people were making headway in that regard, so I thought it was worth sharing.

[aetherfox]

Unfortunately I'm not up to Inferno myself, I'm too weak That part of the guide was written entirely through exhaustive hours of video-watching, livestream-viewing, and forum-thread digging! It seemed like a lot of people were making headway in that regard, so I thought it was worth sharing.

Your comments on the matter seemed spot on, though, so your research paid off!

Theoretically at least, it seems like most of our life-return is % hp based (Revenge = 5%, Dreadnaught = 8%) so the only determinant to whether you beat the encounter is, can you survive long enough between Revenge and Dreadnaught procs? If you can, you win. If you can't, you lose. Hence the logic of stacking Vitality / Resists and ignoring DPS, I think.

[RaTTuS007]

my barbs at 58 and i've shelved him until they get a bit of a fix up, they are the weakest feeling class of all atm, hell my demon hunter can at least take a hit or 2 without being gibbed.

[Avant]

Playing barb in HC hell ATM @ 58 and I have to say I haven't really experienced many issues. I have spent a lot of time being careful and experimenting with builds. I think my biggest problem with the class so far is that the fury dumps are average.. revenge is my AoE of choice and I use either super saiyan mode or ancestors on right click.

As for passives.. tough as nails kinda looses out to many other neat ones like Juggernaut or superstition. =/ 25% armor is not a whole lot of DR at the end of the day.

[MuscularTeeth]

no one uses whirlwind?
you can be all spinny spinny like a dervish or morris dancer. thats got to count for something.

[Bronze_D]

Whirlwind is to put it simply... bad, no one expect the D2 whirlwind but the one we have here is just plain bad.

even more useless in higher difficulty where exposing yourself in contact range with the enemy without doing high damage or life replenishing from them quickly is essentially suicide.

and on "What of inferno with barbarian??"

you will not survive inferno with barbarian in general until you get massively decked out

with my barbarian sitting at 70% armor mitigation and 65% resist all around (some higher like physical than others) i can handle most of the regular mobs in act 1 inferno. (bosses are ridiculously weak, like leoric or butcher, even on inferno)

however most champions and elites with bad mix will still pulverize me, that includes:

jailer, desecrate, arcane enchanted, vampiric, illusionist, invulnerable minions, mortar

take any combinations of 3 of the above on a champion/elite, and your barbarian hope of killing them in Act 1 even is essentially single digit percentage with most builds except for ranged build.

Bosses are not a problem in general, but any one of the champions/elites in the way with bad mix? Well, you either bypass them somehow or you reset and pray for a better one next time or if you are feeling patient you chip them maybe killing the minions first for each live you have and respawn continuously till it dies (yeah it's going to be one hell of an expensive venture).

Act 2 is out of the question for melee if you can't handle Act 1 comfortably since the difficulty jump between Act 1 and Act 2 is essentially like a separate difficulty level in itself. Belial's serpent minions that you fight regularly in Act 2 alone hits for 5 digit damage unmitigated (almost 6 digit) from single hit of their skills and since your armor and resist is even less effective than in Act 1 thanks to their higher level in Act 2 you take even more massive damage.

Act 3...

well...

i am farming Act 3 to an extent but i can't say i am fighting them effectively with my barbarian, rather i am just exploiting their AI before they fix it.

My current build is in fact ranged, but uses neither the spear or the axe throw...

[neferseki]

Me and my friends are up to Azmodan in act 3 inferno currently.

One of them is a barb, he can survive and tank act 2 inferno quite easily but is still kinda getting minced in act 3 inferno with his 8500 armor and 800+ resists. Hes kinda our tank but he focuses more on drawing mobs attention and kiting with that knockback move of his than actually taking the hits while me and the other demon hunter just shoot from a distance.

[Tera]

So the only two Barbs that can actually do Inferno are Ranged and Kiting builds.

The polar opposite of what the Barb actually is.

[TheBard]

Bard is hard but I am in love with my side kick the Templar I know its scripted but its pretty good lol

[Bronze_D]

So the only two Barbs that can actually do Inferno are Ranged and Kiting builds.

The polar opposite of what the Barb actually is.

that's because you can't actually 'tank' inferno Act 3 and 4 without gears from Act 3 and 4 of inferno itself (and even then most champions/elites with bad mix will still chew you to pieces).

Act 1 is still easy enough to tank with at least 50-60% armor and resist at lvl 60, Act 2 60-70%, and Act 3 is pretty much ignore pain or die if more than 1 enemy touches you. (normal mobs and bosses only, champions/elite not taken into account)

Hence why barbarians resorted to crit and ranged build,

there are only 2 ways you can survive in inferno:
A. kill it before it kills you
B. don't let them hit you ever (which is what my barbarian is set for farming in Act 3)

That is why DH and wizard are faring much better than barbarians even after the nerf to their godlike defensive abilities.

The crit build barbarian is essentially like the DH and wizard build, glass cannon to the maximum designed solely to kill them before they kill you, differing only in the method of dispensing the damage output and effective range.

[Marius]

It's still possible to do later inferno acts with early inferno gear... you just have to get good RNG results to get level 60 gear.

If an RNG has a 1% chance to drop level 60 gear, you can farm for a long time in an easier area to get gear good enough to do later acts. It will just take you more than a week.

I really don't get why people are drawing so many conclusions after less than two weeks of item farming. D3 is a long term looting game. It's not designed to drop what you need in the space of a few days.

[Bronze_D]

The problem with that of course is that these gears were flooding the AH already courtesy of players that farm inferno either with the prior godlike DH and wizard (now nerfed) or via other... uhmmm.. "methods" that may or may not involve the game's AI.

the other problem is that the other classes can do inferno with MUCH better effectiveness with comparable gear than the barbarians can do.

Pre nerf, there was basically zero question that barbarians were just inferior to the other classes for inferno.

Post nerf, barbarians are STILL not as good as the other classes EXCEPT possibly monk because monk have been nerfed to oblivion.

We may postulate that after the barbarian is decked out in the gears needed it will be comparable to the wizard or DH effectiveness for inferno, but that's pretty pointless since the DH and wizard will then get their gears as well and would be even more effective till they get nerfed again (wizards and DH still have a few tricks up their sleeve that we are using to farm inferno that i can see being nerfed in the future).