My Act 1 Inferno viable 2H dps build.

[Magrim]

After having slowly struggling through most of hell as a pure tank barb with shield I initially thought it was impossible to be using anything but sword and board in Inferno. And indeed first time stepping foot into Inferno was a harsh experience.

After toying around with various builds and trying to improve my gear with (stacking up on resist all gear) I am now however at a point where I'm consistently farming act 1 boss packs.

My current stats are:

14000 damage (bought a 900 dps twohander on AH)
25000 life
~350-450 resist all (with impunity from War Cry) ; this translates to about 45-50%+ damage reduction, and has made a huge difference in terms of survival.
~4200 Armor (War Cry)


This is the build: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...kRTP!ZY!ZYcbbZ

• Bash (Onslaught) : Not sure about fury generator yet, but this one seems to do the job, also been experimenting with Frenzy
• Seismic Slam (Strength from earth) : This is the bread and butter skill you spam against white mobs, can spam it decently with the -15 fury rune. It's good AoE damage and knocks em back = you don't get hit as much.
• War Cry (Impunity) : Chose this one to increaes my survivability, adds 50% to all my resists, 20% armor, and generates fury on demand for seismic slams or berserker.
• Ignore Pain (Ignorance is Bliss) : Key ability for killing boss packs, the 20% life steal is also crucial to survival and is huge when you have berserker up.
• Earthquake (Mountain's Call) : Boss pack dps burst ability. Chose this rune so I can easily chain berserker and Earthquake together without having to have full fury. Always try to pop Berserker before this to maximize damage.
• Wrath of the Berserker (Insanity) : Second boss pack dps ability. 100% damage means muchos damage.
• Ruthless/Weapons Master : DPS increases.
• Bloodthirst: 3% Life Steal with the massive damage I'm doing heals for alot.

Here's a video to showcase the build: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAzor...ature=youtu.be

Regular mobs I simply destroy with Seismic slam and some Bashes to generate fury. Sometimes use Ignore Pain too to get some life back or to get those first fury generating hits in.

On Boss packs I usually just run straight up to them, pop Berserker immediately followed by Earthquake (try and bunch them up) and as soon as my hp gets to 50-60% I pop Ignore Pain. The damage output during this is insane, and you can usually keep yourself up with Ignore pain followed by a potion.

I'm still unsure about some of the skill choices, passives and fury generator in particular, but so far it seems to do the job for me.

At lower gear levels this might be tricky, but it's well worth trying out if you can find a decent 2hander along with some resist-all gear. I do however still die sometimes against certain bad boss packs, but most of the time the pack is dead or almost dead when my cds are over.

This is also easier to do when soloing, because in co-op games you'd need someone to do similar burst as you or you'll end up with mobs at 20-40% hp after cds.

This has only worked for act1 so far, trying act 2 with this I just get gibbed. Perhaps with some more gear.

EDIT: Added a video link.

[MonTy]

Thanks for your report. I'm eager to make two-handers work, but switching to a sword/shield has saved my *** in hell (I don't use AH, so gear is mediocre). I've been using a build without burst DPS, and Champion packs are pretty brutal.

See what I mean in a video I just put together of my barbarian in Hell: http://youtu.be/saxXrFva3Tw?hd=1 - http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...SYQ!Zbd!YZbZZZ)

[galzohar]

Surprisingly I've done something similar in order to stay away from the monsters that kill you in 2-3 hits while doing crazy damage to them (since increasing your damage seems easier than increasing your HP/armor/resists so far and monsters seem to have high damage and low HP).

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Rki!ZYT!YYbbba

I still prefer battle rage because you don't always have your cooldowns up (and it really helps seismic slam damage) and it's a giagantic damage boost, plus I like my "oh-!@#!" button (EQ+IP) not costing fury.

It really does seem like I hardly have to generate fury, since you get almost enough from damage taken when you use a slow 2h weapon, and slow 2h weapons seem to give highest DPS by far anyway (just check AH for level 60 weapons and see what I mean). I've been using cleave (with fury regen rune) for a while but noticed that most of the times I use it either on the first enemy that comes up and run before I can hit multiple enemies with cleave, or just use it to finish off a straggler, so bash's 1 extra fury and a bit of extra damage seems to win out here, even if very slightly (since you won't use your generator much).

EQ+IP really seems like an "I win" button, at least as long as enemies stay in the EQ area. Instantly fills my HP from 0 to full and keeps it there.

Juggernaut is the big surprise here. With all the CC champions/bosses do, it's simply an amazing passive. Instead of getting chain-CCed and killed, you get chain-CCed and healed to full.



tldr: Invulnerability button (EQ+IP) + mostly using seismic slam with slow weapon taking good advantage of fury generated from damage taken.

[MonTy]

That build is working out well for me, thanks for the post Galzohar. Late Act 1 Hell near Northern Highlands has so many Champions, and I couldn't beat them all with my build. Used yours tweaked a bit and it went smoothly: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Rki!beV!YYbbba

We only have six spell slots, so I can't bear two of them being on cooldown (if I use wrath of the ancients+earthquake). Will try this out more, but so far so good! Thanks again.

[Kblavkalash]

How are you guys even staying alive without revenge? I am in hell, and revenge is the only life saver for me. 30% chance to heal is a lot and without revenge i would be dead in 3 seconds vs. pretty much everything.

[Magrim]

How are you guys even staying alive without revenge? I am in hell, and revenge is the only life saver for me. 30% chance to heal is a lot and without revenge i would be dead in 3 seconds vs. pretty much everything.

The point of the build I'm using is that I'm not tanking at all, unless it's 1-2 mobs or I have ignore pain ready. Seismic Slam keeps em at a distance, and I use three cd's to take down boss packs that keep me up.

Galzohar: I'll have to test implementing juggernaut in this build.

[Ilandalar]

I've been using a build very similar to yours (the main idea at least is the same).

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...RTP!ZYd!ZbZZbZ


My main attacks are Cleave (Reaping Swing) and Whirlwind (Hurricane/Blood Funnel/Wind Shear). I picked out Cleave because of the increased fury generation when I hit multiple mobs. WW is a personal choice with Seismic Slam (Strength from earth) being very close to it.

My boss killer is the same as yours: WotB (Insanity) and Earthquake (Mountain's Call).

For defensive abilities I feel Ignore Pain (Ignorance is Bliss/Iron Hide) is definitely a must have. For my other defensive ability I've been switching around but I mostly use Ground Stomp (the runes are meh but I use Wrenching Smash to help position them better in the EQ). The Iron Hide rune is used because it makes Ignore Pain cover the cooldown of Ground Stomp and the whole combo (GS->IP->GS) also covers the WotB duration. The other abilities I'm trying are War Cry (Impunity wins out) and Threatening Shout (Falter wins out).

[Zarniwoop]

I get it, and thanks for sharing that, but if I want to play a kiter, I'll roll a demon hunter.

Does anyone have a standard barb tank build working, and I mean REALLY working without full bought AH gear in late act 3 hell?

[galzohar]

I also initially thought that there's no way I'll live in inferno without revenge, but fact is for revenge to heal you have to be in the thick of things, and with this build you just keep your distance and basically play a "ranged barb", making revenge not only un-needed but also quite weak. 1/2 the boss champion/boss packs I'm afraid to get close to even for just a single bash to get enough fury to continue the seismic spam. With enough damage taken and a slow weapon, you don't need much more than 1-2 bashes to get back to spamming, and you can't really afford more than 1-2 bashes anyway because any half-decent champion/rare pack will kill you unless you're out-gearing the zone.

Just downed skeleton king on inferno without too many deaths on the way. I think I'll be keeping this build for a while... I just don't see myself getting a true melee build and surviving without out-gearing the content. Makes me wonder why I picked a melee class (though really, Blizzard did promise ranged classes will take plenty of damage too, but they don't take all that much really). At least we have the 30% damage reduction for being melee even though we are using (mostly) ranged attacks

The defensive passives just seem sub-par for me. less than ~10% EHP bonus for the armor passives as opposed to 10-20% DPS bonus for the damage passives, at least with the kind of items I've been using. And with 20% life steal for 5 seconds on a 30 second cooldown and an "I win" button every 105 seconds that really depends on having high single-attack damage, boosting damage is just better than an equivalent relative boost to EHP.


As for kiting, like I said unlike DH we get 30% damage reduction. And well, we can only blame Blizzard for allowing us to kite effectively.

Even with kiting you'll need AH gear to do well in hell. Nothing expensive, but if you don't want to farm your !@# off you'll have to use the AH. 5k-10k is a good amount to spend on a big upgrade before level 60. I've seen some people double their damage and HP by just replacing a couple of items for similar amounts of gold. If you want to actually take the monsters on in melee, you'll have to use the AH even more...

[Zarniwoop]

Self found gear will be absolutely unacceptable if you expect to compete in hell.

I'm at 60, near the very end of act 3. Soloed the Siege Beast and I can turn normal packs of mobs of any size into trash without effort and its beautiful.

But, I cannot do anything without taking a half hour and a ton of deaths with boss packs that put out very heavy damage AND freeze/stun/jail/etc...

If I hadn't found a 600+ dps 1hb I wouldn't be able to play in hell at all really. My armor is abysmal, and my resists are non-existent.

I'll say this, they absolutely made certain that EVERYONE would use the auction house.