HC Barbs!.. How are you guys doing?

[Valmy]

Thanks guys all.
I currently leveled more, I'm level 30, 3 passives, 1500 armor, 4250 life, and 210 DPS. I also bought a +15 resis fire item with some good mods, so now only poison is the problem. Fire I resist fine and I can actually keep advancing

[Praxys]

am I the only 2-handed barb out there ? I got this baby early on fairly cheap and decided to make a 2-handed WW barb for old times sake.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...eenshot000.jpg


with weapon mastery passive (+3 fury on each hit) and +fury rune on cleave WW becomes contionous pretty much... gameplay comes down to Leap+Threating shout+ 1 Cleave and then WW until everything is dead. As soon as I get decent life-leech going this is going to come as close as possible to classic Lancebaba I think.

So far level 28 on last quest in act4... but gotta level/gear up a bit more before going further i think.

[oOmpie]

Currently lvl 23 fem barb using 1H/shield approaching the A2 boss fight.

Build is as follows: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#bZXViT!aY!aZaa

Playstyle is aggressive, especially in groups. Leap in, rage and cleave away mixing in hammer and revenge when available. Quake only for champ packs, etc. Tried Rend instead of Hammer, didn't seem to really work for me. Went for safety gear mostly so am not doing too much damage, but so far it kills fast enough.

Was originally expecting the Spears to be 2handed, but found out they are actually 1handers in D3 and since this is my spearzon tribute character I went for 1H instead of 2H
Didn't find a decent spear yet, though, so might have to start browsing the AH.

[omgmir]

am I the only 2-handed barb out there ?

Pretty much.. shields are gonna end up pretty much mandatory for every class, not just barbs. Not so much in normal mode but the farther you go the more necessary it will be, trust me.

[DeluksZ]

am I the only 2-handed barb out there ?http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...eenshot000.jpg

I do think so I miss the 2 handed massacre also so I geared my SC barbar to WW. And tbh you can easily find 1 handers with the dmg of the 2 handed weapons. I don't really know why. So for me it's a bit disappointing. But shield is definately will be the way to go later.

[Patraquashe]

Pretty much.. shields are gonna end up pretty much mandatory for every class, not just barbs. Not so much in normal mode but the farther you go the more necessary it will be, trust me.

Friend is playing a melee Wizard without a shield. He's doing really well. Then again his Spectral Blades heal a lot.

[ZappaFan]

am I the only 2-handed barb out there ? I got this baby early on fairly cheap and decided to make a 2-handed WW barb for old times sake.

For now. In D2 I was very die-hard "anti-sword". My barbs always either dual wielded or used 2H weapons. I don't I had a single build that used a shield. I tried that with my first barb in D3 and switched to a shield shortly after killing SK.

But I will definitely experiment with some no-shield builds once I've played the game a while. I am compelled to do so!!

[Cerzi]

Am level 47, have yet to really come close to dying. 1k dps and 25k hp with buffs, I genuinely think this is the best HC barb build that you can have. I can't imagine swapping anything out, except warcry if youre with another barb who has it. If anyone thinks they can improve on this in raw survivabilty/tankability, please say so.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...1aY!bVe!ZbaabZ

Superstition can be swapped out for a dps passive in most cases.

Gearwise you want a chunk of str and vit in every slot, and a fast 1-hander. Secondary stats, you want to stack +hp on hit, or +hp/sec as a second choice. Crit chance is also nice to have, but not essential.

Keep 5 stacks of frenzy up at all times - this (with lots of +hp on hit gear) is your most reliable heal.

Burst whirlwind if you have fury, but always stop to refresh your 5 stacks of frenzy. In big packs of mobs, the +1% hp on crit will actually heal you a lot.

Spam revenge whenever its up - this will heal you to full if youre right in the thick of it.

Use leap as much as possible for the huge armor buff, with good gear it'll easily put you into the 80%+ DR range.

Ignore pain if youre taking a lot of damage - try not to stack it with leap's armour buff (if you use them one after the other you can gain 4 + 7 + 4 = 15 seconds of very very high DR (by the time ignore pain has faded you can leap again).

Always keep invigorate up, this is the BO of D3.

My barb has very strong gear but I can happily leap into huge packs of mobs in Act4 NM with this build (at level47). The only champ affix I have to be really careful about is the Arcane, which really hurts in tight (eg indoor) areas. Most everything else (plague, desecrate, molten etc) i can just sit there and tank along with all the mobs.

Is there possibly any better build than this for pure survivial? I should note also, with 1k dps this build still kills fast enough. I can solo well, although the build is most suited to a well organized group.

[Dreadbringer]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WhXVkR21aY!bVe!ZbaabZ

Looks solid for normal and nightmare but I think you need more dps and/or more stuns for higher difficulties. To burn champs down.

[Cerzi]

I phased out stuns just because it seems counter productive to having retaliate skilled - I want it to proc as often as possible, as long as I know I have the gear to tank it. You're probably right though, although I honestly don't know what I could get rid of in order to include a stun - everything in the build feels so essential.

I do run with a group 90% of the time though, so my concern is more about surviving and increasing the survival of the rest. I tend to make up for the build's lack of dps skills by making sure I'm always using a high-dps weapon with a high-level ruby.