Barbarian Builds

[deepr]

Let's compare our builds.

Mine is centered around Hammer of the Ancients (HotA).

- Passives: Weapons Master, all the rest benefits FURY: Unforgiving, Animosity, Superstition
- Further increase maximum fury with gear and Paragorn points, so HotA has a higher crit chance!
- As usual increase crit chance and crit damage with gear (ideally with gems in both weapon slots)

- Primary: Cleave + Reaping Swing (for extra fury generation).
- Secondary: Hammer of the Ancients + Rolling Thunder (for bigger reach)

- Furious Charge + Stamina: Use wisely to get massive fury boosts when charging into large groups.
- Avalanche + Volcano: Massive nuke and nice ranged attack (places the volcano at mouse location)
- Rend + Blood Lust: Nice dot damage + healing. I don't care for healing stats on gear.
- Wrath of the Berserker + Thrive on Chaos: Ideal for elite fights, spam HotA like crazy + heal like crazy.

[Bigbazz]

I use

Passive : Weapon Master, Rampage, Unforgiving, Bloodthirst

Primary : Frenzy : Smite
Secondary : Whirlwind : Wind Shear
1 : Overpower : Killing Spree
2 : Warcry : Invigorate
3 : Battle Rage : Marauders Rage
4 : Avalanche : Tectonic Rift


Passives explain themselves mostly, Rampage adds both a really nice damage and toughness boost so long as oyu can kill fast enough to stack it up, farming Torment 4 at the moment and it works great. Overpower doesn't break the animation of Whirlwind making it the perfect pair, it also increases my crit % and triggers the Shard of Hate lightning proc, and the crits made by Whirlwind contribute to lowering the cooldown of overpower, making it a really strong pair.

Avalanche is always nice to have, I throw it over an area as I'm about to whirlwind in, it does a lot of damage and with this build you almost always have at least 1 charge ready to go. Battle Rage is just a passive damage boost, Warcry just a passive toughness + healing bonus.


I don't like WOTB builds because when you're in downtime you're pretty useless, If I had the gear to realistically keep it up with a high uptime I'd take it for sure. My build in my gear is not good for anything above T4 due to survival, but T4 is really fast.. As an example I can clear 140+ monsters during an average 100 monster cursed chest challenge.

[Spray]

Thanks for the insight, looking forward to more builds!

I have used this for a long time:
P: Frenzy + Sidearm
S: Revenge + Blood Law
1: Overpower + Storm of Steel
2: Earthquake + The Mountain's Call
3: Call of the Ancients + The Council Rises
4: Wrath of the Berserker + Insanity

Passives:
Weapons Master
Berserker Rage
Brawler
Rampage

I am playing Diablo only for 3 weeks or so, which is why this build doesn't seem very thought out.

I figured that I may use the bonus from Berserker Rage along with removing all the Fury-spending abilities to maximize my damage. It worked well, but I didn't feel particularly effective while clearing huge packs. Also, as Bigbazz pointed out, outside of CotA/WotB cooldowns, I have been doing shit on bosses.

As far as I'm concerned (I'm playing for 3 weeks, mind you) Barbarian doesn't seem very customizable. There are many builds, of course, but half of them is generally considered as subpar (Throwbarian for example, which I had a lot of fun with until 70). I see A LOT of theorycrafting especially about DHs, Wizards and Monks, but Barbarian doesn't seem so popular - why is that?

I hope to see more from you, guys, because I'm genuinely interested in the game and very eager to know Barbarian a lot better.

[Deleted]

Call of the Ancients with Ancient's Fury.
Whirlwind with Volcanic Eruption.
Battle Rage with Bloodshed.
Overpower with Revel.
War Cry with Impunity.
Wrath of the Berserker with Insanity.

Superstition, Brawler, Bloodthirst and Rampage passives.

Fire damage oriented build with Call of the Ancients for fury builder, IK four set is disgustingly strong.

[Kuntantee]

Can't remember the rune names so sorry in advance

1: Rend with radius enlarging rune
2: Avalanche with volcano rune / T4+ replamcent: Iron Skin with life per fury spent rune
3: Battle Rage with increased crit chance per enemy around you
4: Wrath of the Berserker with life per fury spent rune
L: Cleave with lightning damage rune
R: WW with lightning damage rune (which also grants fury per crit)

Passives: Weapon Master, Unforgiving, Brawler, Rampage

here is my barb:

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Genghis-2737/

[cFortyfive]

A but Barbarian doesn't seem so popular - why is that?

Don't know builds aren't really interesting when the only thing that matters is having a shard or a maximus.

[Frumpy Frumpy Frak]

Torment 2 is easy, I almost never die unless I'm up against something like 2 packs of Molten, Fire Chains, Electrified dudes with Succubi support. If I took a few more defensive abilities I can do Torment 4 with it but the going is too slow for my liking.

P: Frenzy - Smite
S: Whirlwind - Wind Shear
1: Overpower - Killing Spree
2: Avalanche - Tectonic Rift
3: Battle Rage - Bloodshed
4: Wrath of the Berserker - Slaughter

Passives: Tough as Nails, Unforgiving, Weapons Master, Relentless

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/B...3/hero/1093301

I have no idea if it's optimal or not, I just got a decent Fulminator and had a ton of crit, so I decided to go with an AoE lightning build.

[Bigbazz]

Don't know builds aren't really interesting when the only thing that matters is having a shard or a maximus.

Thunderfury is better than shard if you're not playing a lightning based Whirlwind spec, that Mad Monarch weapon is really nice if you're clearing at a decent enough pace to make it work, with 2handers Stalgards Decimator has a really strong proc (it's like the frenzy sidearm rune, only it hits much much harder), Schaeffers hammer is also really nice.

There is a lot more to the game than just having Shard or Maximus.

[Coldkil]

I really want to try something like this http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...kT!YSWi!ccYZcZ

Might actually level up the Barb just for it.

EDIT: the idea is to also get the set with Earthquake/Leap bonuses.

[Cyrops]

Back in D3 vanilla I played my barb a lot, but with life steal gone I just can't see a way to get life back as barb, I played my barb to 70 in beta and was insanely disappointed by lack of "you got a huge hit, fill your health", was I playing him wrong? I used to play 2h wota later switched to seismic build. Been playing monk in ROS, since they are very nice at life per hit healing.
I notice people don't use the rend+0.5% life steal, so how do you get life back?

[Deleted]

I see A LOT of theorycrafting especially about DHs, Wizards and Monks, but Barbarian doesn't seem so popular - why is that?

It's because the effectiveness of a barbarian's build is extremely dependent on the items they have, specifically the "endgame" weapons available to them that will catapult them from "meh" to "GODLIKE".

[Spray]

It's because the effectiveness of a barbarian's build is extremely dependent on the items they have, specifically the "endgame" weapons available to them that will catapult them from "meh" to "GODLIKE".

Yeah, I hear that a lot... I'm running dual legendaries, but nothing really special - Devil Tongue and Genzaniku, which summons a ghostly warrior.
He's pretty bitchin' though and has a knockback, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

I'm waiting for Thunderfury, I've got used to Lightning type runes, so at this point I will just try to get as much +% Lightning as I possibly can for Thor-mode.

Also - is there ever a reason to NOT go +125-130% Crit Damage in a weapon socket? Is +dmg Ruby worth anything? I feel like any other choice (except maybe LoH on Hardcore) feels extremely subpar.

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/F.../hero/31065556

[Rixis]

1 - Avalanche - Lahar
2 - Revenge - Blood Law
3 - Warcry - Impunity
4 - Wrath of the Berserker - extra damage run (forgot name )
L - Bash - Onslaught
R - Rend - Blood Lust

For Torment 1 I use all damage increasing passives and for Torment 2 I swap to one or two defensive passives, don't see much point in T2 though, takes longer for little extra reward.

[Spray]

don't see much point in T2 though, takes longer for little extra reward.

I guess that will change quickly for you, since I see Barbarians in my friend list running T6 solo with absolutely no problem. It's impossible for me to even imagine something like that, but well... Seeing how much a single Thunderfury changes and in the same time knowing that it's nothing compared to some full set bonuses... Ugh.

I've spent a week after hitting 70 just to achieve 300k dps.
Then I increased it to 760k over 40 minutes - yeah. It's insane how quickly things change.

[Rixis]

I gained 119k character sheet DPS just from dropping a 130% crit gem in my Azurewrath

[Bigbazz]

From what I can gather, the biggest bonus to being able to run T6 solo is to run a dual unity setup (one on your follower). I run T4 comfortably, but T6 puts me in a position where I either have to sacrifice damage or die, and sacrificing damage means playing much slower, which is not worthwhile.

If you have a dual unity setup with your follower though, that all changes.

[Spray]

From what I can gather, the biggest bonus to being able to run T6 solo is to run a dual unity setup (one on your follower). I run T4 comfortably, but T6 puts me in a position where I either have to sacrifice damage or die, and sacrificing damage means playing much slower, which is not worthwhile.

If you have a dual unity setup with your follower though, that all changes.

Wow, just noticed what Unity does. Is it 60-level only, no 70 level version? I guess that doesn't really matter much, but... It'd be great if I could get one spamming Kadala...

[cFortyfive]

There is a lot more to the game

Don't see any other barb dw builds without shard come even close to it in terms of strength. Tf obviously though isn't bad but luckily you have two hands.

[Pwellzor]

Don't see any other barb dw builds without shard come even close to it in terms of strength. Tf obviously though isn't bad but luckily you have two hands.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/P.../hero/40816092

I play a heavy fire build. I dread the day i get TF or shard of hate. I've got the lightning gear ready for it, but reenchanting everything else is gonna be a bitch.

I, like others, hate that my performance is tied almost directly to 3-4 weapons/set bonuses or i'm a hindrance. I perform really well on t2, but further than that seem hard without a significant survivability/damage boost.

[Deleted]

Unity does drop at level 70 yes, and it works having one on your follower and one on yourself, just make sure your follower is a massive tank, because if he/she isn't, you'll get one shot from your follower being hit.

currently running:

Warcry - impunity
overpower - killing spree
avalanche - tectonic rift
wrath of the berserker - thrive on chaos
rend - bloodbath
whirlwind - wind shear

superstition
weapons master
bloodthirst
unforgiving

Farming t4 using a very mediocre odyn son and sun keeper as weapons, stacking lightning damage (89%) and spinning to win, using wotb mainly as a defensive cd. Rend is mostly for a little sustain and the big heals it yields from life on fury spent. trying to get health globe bonus as a secondary on every piece it can possibly roll on