Barbarian Beta Gold Farming Skill Build

[Markco]

I came up with the following start to a Barbarian Gold Farming Build:

NxAWk5jt6Y8

I have ideas for how to finish it off, such as taking +chance to crit and +rage generation skills/runestones. How would you finish off this kind of build? I think it depends more on your gear than anything else, especially since it is mostly an auto attack setup.

You get +crit and +rage abilities, then use roar to open and spam standard attacks.

Am I giving up too much in your opinion for the +treasure?

By the way, what does +treasure mean? Gold and/or items?

[Doppel]

Lot's of people have theorized about this concept, check out the Barbarian forum (i've made a thread about this to) and also some threads in the beta forum.
Good vid, although a bit boring visually. :P
What would be cool is if someone could make a montage with footage of the Barbarian using these skills, although that might be a lot of work. Guess we'll just have to wait for the game to really find out how effective all this will be.
Also don't forget Hammer of the Ancients also provides a treasure bonus with one of the runes.

[Neinball]

NxAWk5jt6Y8 Is the code for embedding youtube videos.

I don't think you're really giving up to much for goldfind on the barb, with just those two rune effects since you still have the base effects of those skills.

[Markco]

NxAWk5jt6Y8 Is the code for embedding youtube videos.

I don't think you're really giving up to much for goldfind on the barb, with just those two rune effects since you still have the base effects of those skills.

Thanks I updated it.

[Unstable]

Sounds like a legit build - thought time will have to prove you right or wrong.

I'm guessing that the passive skills in such a build should also be centered around critical hit and fury generation. Ergo: Ruthless & Weapons Master (Mace/Axe).

Perhaps:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#bYfgcP!bYh!ccabYY

[Sealock]

I've been thinking a bit about the question of optimizing gold find for the barbarian using these kinds of skills, and it's an interesting one. Here are some thoughts I've had:

Can Swords to Ploughshares activate the additional drop twice on the same enemy? If not (ASSUMPTION ONE - NO STACKING PLOUGHSHARES), then a barbarian in search of gold would want to be killing monsters in a way that maximizes the number of different crits he can get on different monsters, to maximise the number of additional drops. This is notably different mechanic from something like "x% additional gold from monsters", which is a simple multiplier that becomes more valuable the more gold that is dropping (before applying the multiplier), regardless of whether it's dropping in large piles or lots of small ones.

Assuming you can't get two bonus drops from the same monster, then what exactly do you do to maximize the number of unique crits? The first thing that comes to mind (as someone who has watched some of the beta gameplay but obviously not enough) is this: can you get multiple crits in a single blow with attacks that do AOE damage, when you hit multiple monsters? If not (ASSUMPTION TWO - NO MULTI-CRIT AOE), I guess the best bet for a main bread-and-butter skill would be something like Frenzy. Although its damage output is low, I would envisage the barbarian playing in an area where his build allows him to one-shot the monsters, especially given ASSUMPTION ONE, which states that it's not useful to crit twice on the same monster.

Now, this kind of reasoning could continue, but given how conjectural this stuff is, I don't know if that would be useful. Here are some things I do know:

1. Area selection will be a key factor in farming gold efficiently. Not only will barbarians prefer lots of weak mobs over a few strong ones (because of ASSUMPTION ONE, if it's correct, and probably for other reasons), but once they've chosen an area with lots of weak mobs, should they farm it in Hell or Inferno? Farming in Hell ought to allow allow a max-level character to kill faster and simultaneously have a greater emphasis on "additional gold from monsters" gear.

2. With the Swords to Ploughshares mechanic, crit chance will be an important variable for barbarians to consider. If I recall correctly, it can be increased by wearing gear that adds points to Precision. So, the process of optimizing gold find includes balancing between Precision gear, gold find gear, and gear that helps kill things faster. And it all depends on how tough the monsters being farmed are. As far as I'm aware, crit chance increases linearly with Precision, so it might be ideal to get it up to 100% if possible. If Diablo II is any guide, gold find mods don't have diminishing returns either, but 100% crit seems likely to be the first priority, because it also helps with killing speed.

3. In developing any build, the various complicated mechanics and sheer number of items ensure that the solution space is vast. At least with gold find, it's easy to pin down what the objective is: maximize the amount of gold found per hour. For now, anything beyond that is little more than wild speculation.

EDIT: Of course, if AOE just rolls for crit once, and applies it to everything that gets hit, which seems much more likely than critting just one monster (ASSUMPTION TWO is sounding silly to me now), Hammer of the Ancients with a golden runestone (Birthright) begins to sound quite attractive.