Meelee useless in higher lvls..

[Jersovic]

Your saying, that your kiting as a barb? Build tank or very tanky. I play as a DH, and I die fast as hell at nightmare with duo. So, range = kite, melee = destroy.
Barb is overrated, they never die !
Well, they do but w/e
If you watch Kripp, you'll see he did butcher inferno post enrage.

I'm not exactly pro, but I'm nerdy enough to consider myself fairly good at this game. I have to kite constantly as a Monk, and my friend does the same thing on his Barbarian. This is incredibly hard too, because when I can't hit an elite mob because he has molten fire all around him, and they drop 80% of my health off everytime I get near them it is really hard for me to get spirit. But yeah, even being built as tanky as I possibly can be I still spend about 90% of the fight running around kiting.

[Nilinor]

After stacking my resists up to 400, it went back to 5k and everything suddenly became doable. (except for some of the nasty elite pack combinations like fire chains, and fire chains, and fire chains)

Dont forget votex,wall, molten, fire chains.

[jvbastel]

Yes in hell.. Now try inferno =p

that's what i said, even with a tanky build,act2+ inferno just destroys barbarians

[Deleted]

Your saying, that your kiting as a barb? Build tank or very tanky. I play as a DH, and I die fast as hell at nightmare with duo. So, range = kite, melee = destroy.
Barb is overrated, they never die !
Well, they do but w/e
If you watch Kripp, you'll see he did butcher inferno post enrage.

I could be wrong , or things have changed.. but i watched the race to world first alot.
and kripp was getting 1shotted by EVERYTHING..

Building tanky will not help..

[Tuskcat]

I love my barbarian even in inferno of course it sucks against certain mobs like (molten, plague/desecrate, fire chain, vortex) but use terrain and the map to your advantage using natural choke points like stairs or collapsed bridges granted act 2 will be retarded with mini wasps hitting for 20k each but that's why my group is farming for the gear to take them on
we run two 2h Barbs, WD, and a tanky Monk and besides a few sucky RNG rare/champ packs we breezed Act 1 even reached a point where we 1 shot with no deaths at all about 7 rare packs in a row

The biggest problem I have with the Melee classes at higher level is the fact that they HAVE to play tanky. Jay Wilson bragged about how there was going to be so many "viable" builds, rather than "optimal" builds. The truth is, if you are playing anything but a tanky melee character you will fail hard in Hell, and Inferno mode.

Sorry I can't let this go though
That is a flat out lie I ran Hell no problem with a 2h the entire time, YOU may need to be tanky for Hell but not everyone does

[cywang86]

I'm not exactly pro, but I'm nerdy enough to consider myself fairly good at this game. I have to kite constantly as a Monk, and my friend does the same thing on his Barbarian. This is incredibly hard too, because when I can't hit an elite mob because he has molten fire all around him, and they drop 80% of my health off everytime I get near them it is really hard for me to get spirit. But yeah, even being built as tanky as I possibly can be I still spend about 90% of the fight running around kiting.

molten/fire chain are only scary when they're on melees, but only if they also have desecration or arcane enchanted.

If they do, trust me, every class would be running for their lives, not just the melees.

Not sure what you're using, but crippling wave, breath of heaven, serenity, mantra of healing, and one with everything, transgression, seize the initiative are essential for a tanking build. The last two skills I recommend sweeping wind as spirit regen and the vortex thing for the dodge/round up.

Use mantra of healing as spirit dump/healing spell, and breath of heaven/serenity/pot when dip below 50%.

Remember, mitigation means everything, since the amount of heal per second you can dish out is limited, which makes very high hp pool useless in most situations.

Don't hesitate to buy some cheap but much better gears off the AH to make your life less miserable.

[nwo]

I haven't played Diablo before and the first toon I rolled was a barb. Now that I'm almost done with nightmare, I realize I made a mistake and I re-rolled demon hunter. Soloing blue/yellow groups is a pain because they all have melee or ranged abilities that are hard to avoid (because you have much less time to react than ranged dps) if you are dpsing them in melee range (and 99% of barb dps comes from melee)... Barb is fun, but I feel like it would be a lot easier and faster to level as a ranged class, especially solo.

[Tuskcat]

I'm not exactly pro, but I'm nerdy enough to consider myself fairly good at this game. I have to kite constantly as a Monk, and my friend does the same thing on his Barbarian. This is incredibly hard too, because when I can't hit an elite mob because he has molten fire all around him, and they drop 80% of my health off everytime I get near them it is really hard for me to get spirit. But yeah, even being built as tanky as I possibly can be I still spend about 90% of the fight running around kiting.

You can hit mobs from outside the range of even plague you don't have to be in their face. Fighting mobs that drop nasty stuff on the ground is more like tanking Grobbulus than kiting. DPS, mob drops more plague/desecrate/molten, take a step back, repeat

[Deleted]

Fighting mobs that drop nasty stuff on the ground is more like tanking Grobbulus than kiting. DPS, mob drops more plague/desecrate/molten, take a step back, repeat

This guy. Also you have to use chokepoints to your advantage and not just stand midfield.

[nwo]

You can hit mobs from outside the range of even plague you don't have to be in their face. Fighting mobs that drop nasty stuff on the ground is more like tanking Grobbulus than kiting. DPS, mob drops more plague/desecrate/molten, take a step back, repeat

I know it's completely feasible to play as barb (up to a certain point), but I choose not to because for me, it would be much faster to play a ranged. I don't like kiting more than half the mobs for 10 seconds and dpsing for 1 second.

[Jersovic]

I guess I make it sound like I struggle more than I do. In most of my public games I never die at all even when my team members die and have to res 3-4 times in a single fight. Point still remains, Monks have very limited uptime. Saying things like "just step back and keep hitting" is a lot easier said than done when you are being constantly surrounded by 3-4 mobs with plague, desecration, etc. Not to mention walls, fear etc.

Granted if I were to spam Mantra of Healing I can easily tank a mob all day long (which is what I do). If I do try to play more DPs based, I can still clear through content but I die on encounters I likely wouldn't have dropped below 90% health at any given time if I had been spamming Mantra of Heal : Boon of Protection the entire time. When one type of play style greatly outshines the other ones, I don't consider the other ones to be viable. lol.

[Tuskcat]

which is why you use choke points to prevent being surrounded you can build a wall with 2-3 melee standing in line if a corridor is a little too wide
and I promise I'm not saying this to be a d!ck or brag or nonsense like that this is 100% to be constructive, but it is as easy as saying it I know because that is my groups strat, maneuvering the mobs can be difficult and extreme cases near impossible(teleporters) but staying calm and resetting them will take you far as for wallers use them to your advantage they just GAVE you a narrow corridor if there wasn't one before as for other abilities run out when you need to run out then get back in and beat face also playing with a group of friends with voice chat instead of public games can be an immense help
if you really just don't enjoy melee there's not much I can tell you to change your mind nor would I want to try really all this is just suggestions from my and my groups experience

and NWO my strat doesn't say run for 10 seconds it just says step out of bad stuff and go back to dps yeah sometimes you might have to run around to reposition but that's it

[Difuid]

Playing tanky works well in hell (although you'll still be a lot slower than a wizard) but inferno act 2 will just molest you.

Can't speak for monk, though.

Seriously once you get to Inferno with your idolized wizard since you can't post without mentioning wizard this.. wizard that, you will be shocked how useless it actually is. Force armor looks good on paper and on forums but fast hitting monster packs will still kill you in a blink of an eye.

[jvbastel]

Seriously once you get to Inferno with your idolized wizard since you can't post without mentioning wizard this.. wizard that, you will be shocked how useless it actually is. Force armor looks good on paper and on forums but fast hitting monster packs will still kill you in a blink of an eye.

I don't idolize the wizard, whatever that may mean. However, I use the class as an example because it's just the most effective solo class at the moment. There's a reason method used one to kill that boss on act 4, or why the world first solo kill was done by a wizard.

From what I've been reading, and from friends' experiences, witch doctor and demon hunter do pretty fine in inferno as well. The difference between melee and ranged classes is just massive at the moment, which actually makes me more happy about being a barbarian, since I like a challenge

[Deleted]

Was going to start inferno act 2 with my monk last night but think i need to gear up abit more. 600 resistance and 5k armor is ok and all with 11k dps but 25k hp is not. Its doable you just need to stay longer in each act to get to next i think. You cant just rush through it once and then do the next one. unless your rich as hell.

Thats the main difference between melee and ranged.

[Cairhiin]

You cant get hit in inferno.. no matter what gear you have.. you will ALWAYS have to kite.. and kiting with a meelee is kinda rly boring..

In inferno you WD his pets will become useless.. they will get 1shot

Can confirm that Gargantuan went from awesome to useless in Inferno. He gets killed in 3 hits by a Zombie in act 1.

---------- Post added 2012-05-22 at 03:07 PM ----------

Seriously once you get to Inferno with your idolized wizard since you can't post without mentioning wizard this.. wizard that, you will be shocked how useless it actually is. Force armor looks good on paper and on forums but fast hitting monster packs will still kill you in a blink of an eye.

Yea but Wizards definitely have it better than melee classes even without said force armour. Melee is just really punishing in inferno.

[JonasSK]

http://youtu.be/UDSPXz8gVKo nuff said.

[Deleted]

I'm still going through hell act 3 and I have yet to encounter any problems what so ever on my barb.
I play him as tankyish dps, going berserker with dmg glyph and earthquake with fire on ground glyph on elite mobs and with the +life armor shout, revenge with increased proc rate, ignore pain with life on hit glyph, frenzy with sidearm, vitality=armor passive, life on hit passive and the 25% increased dmg when at full rage passive.
You can't really die in hell with that build.
Though it looks like I have to change it completely in inferno act 2...

[Deleted]

ATM inferno act 2 and above is near impossible as a barbarian. hell is still pretty easy, but inferno feels like a brick wall.
levelling a wizard now for MF'ing so my barb will get better gear.

Yep, im doing this atm aswell.

[Riboe]

I played barb for funzies in normal. But i expected it to get "unfun" realy fast..
My reason for this is.. kiting with a meelee class..

It seems to me you will have to do alot of kiting as meelee in the higher lvls / bosses what makes it rly not fun to play a barb or monk.
In inferno no matter what gear you have you will be running around doing 1 hit and then kitting for ages..

I switched to a ranged (dh).
I think of you have the ambition to play inferno meelee is not the way to go..

Plz do correct me if i am wrong becaus i do LOVED playing barb.

In my experience, it depends almost entirely on the build you're using. I'm playing a Barbarian, currently solo farming Skeleton King on Inferno. Haven't attempted Butcher with this build yet, as it's probably not bursting enough.
Previously, I could only take down maybe 1/10 special packs and I tried all kinds of different build, including different ranged ones. None of them worked well for me. Then I came across an amazing build and now I'm taking down almost every single special pack... And that's without dieing.

I'm using:

Revenge with Provocation.
War Cry with Invigorate.
Frenzy with Maniac.
Wrath of the Berserker with Striding Giant.
Ignore Pain with Iron Hide.
Threatening Shout with Falter. In public games, you might want to use Demoralize instead.

For passives, I use:
Inspiring Presence.
Nerves of Steel.
Relentless.

You basically just jump right in there, pick out a target and focus it down. You just use all of your abilities as often as possible. Most of the time, Revenge is gonna be enough to take down eventual adds, without you having to focus on them. That's basically it.
Of course, there's times where it's better to wait a few seconds before you use some of you abilities, either to hit more enemies with Revenge or Threatening Shout.

I previously said that I'm able to take down almost all the special packs. The ones I've got trouble with are fast moving mobs with the Molten suffix.