Gear my Monk or Barb?

[Alilei32]

Trying to figure out which one to focus on as trying to gear out two melees for Acts III-IV would take until Diablo IV comes out. All the forums for both classes are just filled with "Help Im stuck in Act II or III" posts but pretty much the only answer is get more gear. So between monk and barb if similarly geared who will farm better? I have tried ranged classes, which seem to be easier farmers without needing insane amounts of gear. But I fail horribly at at kiting in this game so sticking to melees.


Also why do barbs have such low Damage when using sword/shield. I have seen streams of monks with 25-30k damage using 1 hander/shield but then watch Barbs farming same stuff with only 10-12k Damage. How can they even kill anything with Damage that low especially in Acts 3 and 4.

[Bigbazz]

Monks can gem dexterity and they gain massive defense (armour/dodge) included in their damage gains. Barbarions stack vitality to gain armour and health, a big reason being that revenge/charge/overpower heals etc scale off your maximum health. More health = bigger heals. That naturally leaves a barbarion much lower on damage stats from not gemming strength

Next up, a Monk doesnt really have any damage based passives, Barbarions do and when they use them they have exceptionally high damage, but when they don't use them they have low damage.

I was running through Inferno on my Barb last night with my friend on his Monk, I was at 19k damage (berserker rage, ruthless + 100% vit = armour passive) and he was at 22k, playing with mantra of evasion allows me to switch my passives to more damage friendly ones. I switched out my gear further for bosses and goblins to hit 26k, still maintaining decent enough survival and health pool.


When I was playing alone though through act 3-4 I was at around 12-13k, the point is that you need to be able to survive long enough that you can stay alive inbetween survival cooldowns and revenge usage, once you are sustainable you can push damage up, the problem is that it takes a lot of survival stats to reach that level in act 3 + and getting those stats often means losing damage, through both gear and spec (defense passives instead of damage).


Barbs can kill stuff with 12k because revenge hits extremely hard, is a 360 AOE and has no cooldown.