Full Barbarian Skill Trees

[Flux]

Finally went through all the notes and images and put them together. There are about 18 skills per tree, and we've got names and detailed descriptions for almost all of them. I'll be posting a full barbarian play report later today, which will also include some more general barbarian skill discussion. I'm just putting the trees up here now, so the real barb fans can get first look.

http://www.diablowiki.net/Berserker_Skill_Tree
http://www.diablowiki.net/Battlemaster_Skill_Tree
http://www.diablowiki.net/Juggernaut_Skill_Tree
http://www.diablowiki.net/Fury

A few interesting tidbits.

There are no barb skills that boost Attack rating. Zero. There are about 20 that boost damage. So is there no AR in D3? Or it all comes from equipment? Or it's just not implemented yet in a way that requires skills to boost it?

The barb is really designed to be a combat character. He's got a ton of skills that only work when in combat, and you have to be in combat to generate Fury, which you need to use most of his skills. He gets all kinds of bonuses, from landing critical hits, including +strength, +hit points, +life regeneration, and more.

He's got a skill that cuts his damage taken when he's low on health, and a skill that can actually cause spontaneous resurrection. That'll be an interesting wrinkle come HC time.

I'll check this thread before I finish/post the larger barb write up, so if you've got questions or observations or requests, this is a good place to post them.

[Matora]

I think I speak on behalf of everyone here stalking the forums at diii.net when I say thank you and the other contributors for you efforts, both past and future.

Now hurry it up with the Witch Doctor!

On a serious note, do you have much for the Witch Doctor or is it still pretty limited?

[stillman]

Many of the skill names are nice.

I'm sure Death Proof will cause some huge debates in the near future.

I so jealous. I can't wait until the skill tress for an archer class are released!

[Sylvanite]

Haven't worked my way fully through all trees yet, but I will say that I am liking what I see. The Barb seems to have a lot of skills that will actually take SKILL to use. Even more so than I saw in the Wizard's tree, it looks as though just simply looking up a build online and leveling it will not make you the best at playing a Barb. I really like the focus on actually having to get a feel for when to use certain skills (like the increased Fury gained but also increased damage taken skill) and learning when to use your Fury and how to build it.

All that said, I am seeing a lot of ideas that seem to have been taken from the Warfare skill tree of Titan Quest. The idea of percent procs for certain attacks while dual wielding and the like was, in my opinion, one of the cooler things TQ had. It's good to see Blizzard taking what works from similar genre games and implementing it in their own style.

[Telzen]

Why do you keep putting that active skills will allow more than one point in the final game? Have you heard something or are you just guessing? It seems to me that all active skills are only one rank because the passives boost them like further points would have boosted them in d2. Like with all the active spells for the wizard, they all have passive skills that increase their damage and effects to make up for them being one rank skills.

[Gigashadow]

Have you heard something or are you just guessing?It's been officially stated. Just because you can't keep up with the news doesn't mean you can go harp on people.

[konfeta]

Lame. I liked the whole only "1 point in active skills" thing.

[Telzen]

It's been officially stated. Just because you can't keep up with the news doesn't mean you can go harp on people.

I haven't seen it anywhere. If they are going to be more than one rank why is there passives to increase the damage of every single active skill?

[Gigashadow]

I haven't seen it anywhere. If they are going to be more than one rank why is there passives to increase the damage of every single active skill?I noticed that you haven't seen it, I got a link to it from a guy on Diablofans, I believe it was on a Blizzcon panel.

It's also written on THIS website: http://diablowiki.net/Juggernaut_Skill_Tree
"All active skills in the BlizzCon build were capped at 1 skill point (or rank, as skill levels are called in D3), while most passives went up to 15 points. This will not be the case in the final game; active skills will allow more than 1 point, and passives may have different maximum ranks, to allow better game balancing. Know that skills will be modified, that some will be removed, that others will be added, and that the numbers are almost certain to change. "

Why are there synergies in DII?

[Sylvanite]

It's a shame really....if actives have many ranks as well as passives it is seriously going to limit the amount of maxable skills......unless.....

Does anyone besides me think maybe we'll get two skill points per level? It seems like its possible that it is shaping up this way. Or maybe 1 skill point, then 2 the next level, alternating like that? Is that a stretch?

As it stands right now you would be able to max about 6 passives and that would leave you with 9 extra points for actives....give or take depending on quest rewards. If you have actives that take many skill points to max, it is seriously going to limit the amount of skills that are maxable...4 active and 3 passive maybe? looking at these trees that seems very, very harsh....

[Gigashadow]

Does anyone besides me think maybe we'll get two skill points per level? It seems like its possible that it is shaping up this way. Or maybe 1 skill point, then 2 the next level, alternating like that? Is that a stretch?Possibly. I think that would make it interesting.

[Flux]

On a serious note, do you have much for the Witch Doctor or is it still pretty limited?

I don't think you're allowed to ask about the WD in the Barb forum?

And sadly, the WD was very limited. There were only 10 skills in the 3 trees, all tier 1 and 2. And we already knew 8 of them. Here's the full list:

Locust Swarm
Firebomb (now skull flame)
Soul Harvest
Horrify
Mass Confusion
Wall of Zombies
Summon Mongrel
Detonate mongrel

firebats
plague of toads

The last 2 were the only 2 new ones, and both are seen in screenshots, and both are quite self explanatory. There weren't any passives for the WD, just these active ones we'd mostly seen already.

[Flux]

Why do you keep putting that active skills will allow more than one point in the final game? Have you heard something or are you just guessing? It seems to me that all active skills are only one rank because the passives boost them like further points would have boosted them in d2. Like with all the active spells for the wizard, they all have passive skills that increase their damage and effects to make up for them being one rank skills.

Active skills were listed with multiple points in them in the WWI gameplay. WW was at lvl 4, IIRC. They just capped them for this build, for unknown reasons. Also, I think the game would be incredibly boring if we only had passive skills to put points into, and all the actives were one and done.

Besides that, I asked about at the 3rd panel when I asked if higher levels in skills would get different/improved graphics, to make it obvious we were throwing a level 10 magic missile, instead of lvl 1. They said it wasn't in yet, but it was something they were definitely planning on implementing.

[Flux]

It's a shame really....if actives have many ranks as well as passives it is seriously going to limit the amount of maxable skills......unless.....

Does anyone besides me think maybe we'll get two skill points per level? It seems like its possible that it is shaping up this way. Or maybe 1 skill point, then 2 the next level, alternating like that? Is that a stretch?

I wouldn't read anything into what the skill caps are at this point. I think they'll do it something like WoW (or HGL) with different skills capping at different levels. some will go to 3, some to 5, some to 10, etc. They have said they don't want to make all of them go to lvl 20, and they don't want to repeat the D2 system of many skills having no reason to add more than one point to, while others are mandatory max-outs. That promotes cookie cutters.

Also, they have said repeatedly that they want high level players to regularly use 6-8 skills. That's what the interface is designed for (6 belt/skill slots + RMB/LMB/Tab) and they're balancing towards that. Also, there just aren't that many active skills. Each tier has 1 or 2, but none had more than 2, and there were a few obvious replacements at higher levels.

As for skill points, I'm expecting that we'll see a lot of skill points from quests. I never got to ask that question specifically, but the way the requirements are set up now, with 10 points in one tree by level 10/tier 3, sounds to me like we'll have more than 10 points by that time, to stick a few into useful low tier skills in other trees.

[Hellspawn]

Flux, dunno if you can answer these but I will thow them out there:

1. Is there some kind of cooldown timer on Furious Charge (or any other skills?) or can you basically charge back and forth through mobs, which I assume keeps your fury filled for a self-sustaining charge fest?

2. Can any random monster that catches part of furious charge get critted?

3. Does Slashing strike only affect regular melee attacks, or can it affect active skill attacks as well? (some?/all?)


Thanks for all the work dude!

[Flux]

only the tier 1 and 2 skills were usable at Blizzcon, since while you could get a character to level 10 if you cleared out absolutely everything in the dungeon, you wouldn't have 10 skills in any tree since they started out at level 6 and had some skills already assigned in all 3 trees. So there was no way to try out furious charge, seismic slam, WW, or other very fun looking skills.

The documentation for those higher level skills isn't very thorough yet, so whatever limits them from being spammed endlessly for free isn't listed. Besides, balancing is one of the last steps in game production. Blizzard likes to make the fun skills and see how well they work, and then once everything is in they figure how to dial things down to make them fair and reasonable. (And then continue that effort in patches.) They're not dumb enough to make a super powerful skill with no fury cost and no other limitations on how it could be used.

[Hellspawn]

True enough!

[zero]

thanks for complete the info

[Apocalypse]

great info thanks flux. after going through most of the info from the show it seems they do indeed have alot of work left to do, so my second half of 2010 prediction could unfortunatly be true

[zero]

only 4 skill requiere fury???? rest of skill are free???? very powerful barb!!!!

[Hellspawn]

Just to get clarity, when you reach a certain level and the next tier of skills opens up, ONLY the next tier of the tree which you have points invested in opens up, not the next tier of all trees, correct? So you have to put a minimum of 1 point into tier one of a tree if you wanted access to the second tier?

[Hellspawn]

Also, in Flux's new article on the Barb, it says several times that there are skills which increase the odds of getting crits, but I see none, only skills that increase the damage of crits... did I miss something?

[Keighvin]

There appears to be no requirement for Tier 2 other than level, but after that its is number of points invested in a particular tree. Tier 3 takes 10 points, Tier 4 takes 15, and once Tier 5 is implemented, that should take 20.

[Hellspawn]

Hmm, so you are saying that if you invest the required points in one tree at each different tier and are the required level, then all tiers of all trees will be open to you without any points invested in those trees?

[Keighvin]

No, it's like this. If you have 10 points in Conjuring, you open up Tier 3 (Level 10 set of skills) in the Conjuring tree. Then when you have 15 points in the Conjuring tree, and are level 15 or higher, depending on what build you want, you open Tier 4 of the Conjuring tree.

[Hellspawn]

^Gotcha, thanks for the clarification! Just wanted to double check.

[Keighvin]

No problem, happy to help.

[Flux]

Also, in Flux's new article on the Barb, it says several times that there are skills which increase the odds of getting crits, but I see none, only skills that increase the damage of crits... did I miss something?

I wrote the comments and notes from memory of writing out the skills in the first place, and it was very late at night. Looking now, I guess you're right. lots of skills increase the damage of critical hits, but I don't see any that say they increase the odds of critical happening at all. Maybe there are some wiz skills that do increase critical chances and I combined the memories?

Also, as you asked elsewhere, the skills require X points in that skill tree. You can see how it's presented on the blurry Death Proof image (http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6864042&postcount=11) from another thread. "requires 10 points in battlemaster."

[Flux]

only 4 skill requiere fury???? rest of skill are free???? very powerful barb!!!!

I'd say it's more about the design and documentation being incomplete/in progress. They're not going to make a bunch of powerful skills be totally free to use, after all. It will be interesting to see how the higher level abilities are handled though, in terms of Fury. Skills like Seismic Strike look most useful from a distance, against an attacking mob. But if you have to have Fury to use them, and if Fury drains out between battles...

Probably at higher levels the Fury bulb will be large enough that you'll get it up to 500 in a big battle, and then by the time you pick up items and find the next group you'll still have 200 or so; enough to use some skills at the start and then build it back up again during the melee... ?

[Hellspawn]

Thanks again Flux, you are the man, as always.

[Apocalypse]

i can see many barbs investing a few points into the passives that boost the fury ball, slower drain faster gain.