Finally beat the game!

[Karth]

I remember when people complained about how overpowered the Demon Hunter was, and how the Barbarian was the weakest character in the game. This was within a few weeks after release. Oh how things have changed.

The DH is still probably the best SC character on an extremely limited budget... but yeah. Enemy damage nerf and the greater availability of defensive gear helped the other classes more.

[sneakytails]

I disagree...

In the barbarian forum there is a post that describes a inferno budget gear set that costs 300k total in buyout price after all the pieces are added together. Max resists, decent vit, etc, etc. Combined with the defensive ability of the barb and that has to be the best budget toon for inferno.

I don't think you could do this for a DH because dex gear is expensive as we are competing with the monks as well. Only barbs need strength and vit gear.

To make a much more fragile character viable in the late game is very expensive, our bows seem astronomical in price compared to most other weapons as we have much less choice.

I know I have poured every gold piece into my DH since launch, its my only character and just today I finally broke the act 2 gear check.

[Karth]

Did he beat the game with this gear set or something? Start farming A2 effectively with it? Otherwise I'm not too impressed; I could do the same with the DH (or any class) given enough patience to find gear as underpriced as that stuff no doubt was. The DH has the best tools in the game for being able to progress while almost completely ignoring defensive stats; barbs have to buy a certain amount of defensive gear if operating on a low budget. The stuff I used to first get to A4 Inferno with my DH is complete garbage compared to even cheap gear you can find on the AH now.

[celanian]

Having just cleared Inferno with both Barb and DH, I think I have a good perspective. Barb wins hands down and it's not even close. My barb using maybe 1/5 the value in gear, took much less time and had hundreds fewer deaths. And I didn't have to buy specialized tank gear to get through Ghom and Diablo or do all sorts of weird skill combos to beat Rakanoth. The Barb weapon is worth maybe a couple hundred thousand and the DH had a 10M Xbow with a 6.5M gem socketed on it.

A lot of it is that Barbs are much more forgiving of less than perfect play. I could make a mistake or two and still manage to kill a boss or elite pack whereas if I flubbed the DH, I was finished in 1 or 2 hits. The only thing that the DH is better at in my experience is slightly faster farming if you're overgeared for the act, and even that is debatable given some of the posts where barbs have insane clear speeds.