[HOWTO] New Tank Barb Build

[Knightmare55]

This guide was updated on 10/16/2012 for patch 1.0.5!

- Some skills were changed from the original build to make farming MP10 more efficient
- A video was added to show you the effectiveness of the build (MP6 was used since MP10 can be boring to watch)


Introduction

Since this site won't let me post links, you will just have to visit the site manually. The video can be found on YouTube at the following address: watch?v=yV3RnWdc8qU (ex: youtube/watch?v=yV3RnWdc8qU)

I have been messing around with barbarian builds for a while and have tested out most of the popular builds. However, I still felt that they did not compliment my personal play-style. Coming from a background in MMO's since my departure from Diablo2 in 2003, I have become use to tank roles and always try my best to play such a role when possible. So, I fiddled with skills until I created a new tanking build that I believe to be original.

I call this build the "Blade Dancer", because between rend, revenge and your shouts - it looks like some sort of tribal dance of death.

Please refrain from making fun of the build if it has been done before or even if you feel like it is a bad build. This has been working for me, and even though I have terrible gear, I feel extremely durable and still have good damage output. I have been literally just standing in all kinds of junk while battling elite packs, and while my health does dip because I am so under-geared, I don't die. With that said, no build will make you invulnerable and your success with it has a lot to do with the player. I am only sharing this to help others that might have a mindset like my own, and are tired of the usual builds.

Tank Barbarian?

While you can't actually fill a role of a traditional tank, you can become quite beefy and support your party. Don't expect to see record shattering damage output. However, do expect to be an extremely durable barbarian with respectable damage output, and the ability to take one hell of a beating.

Required Reading

Blade Dancer does have a few disadvantages compared to other builds. However, these minor annoyances are easily overcome with efficient execution of your skills and good resource management. Here are a few tips for maximizing your success with this build:

1) Due to not having a fury builder, you will often find yourself with little to no fury when initially going into battle. War cry will provide you enough fury to use either rend or battle rage at the beginning of the fight. After this you will naturally gain fury through combat. Honestly, fury becomes a non-issue when dealing with large groups of enemies, so there is nothing to really worry about.

2) Your performance is greatly tied into your buffs and correct timing of your cooldowns. Keeping your buffs up 100% of the time is rather simple; if you use war cry to generate enough fury to cast battle rage then you will be able to cast battle rage again when it reaches about one second left on its duration since the entire duration of battle cry is about the same as the global cooldown on war cry.

3) You will lack mobility. If this truly bothers you, replace battle rage with either sprint or leap. You will gimp your damage output if you decide to do this.I do not recommend this approach because the overall loss of damage really is not worth the mobility you gain. In all honesty, I do not find the lack of mobility to be a problem at all.

4) Make good use of revenge and rend. Time these abilities correctly for optimal healing and damage. It may take you a little while to become familiar with effective positioning if you have never used them before. However, once you begin to use them effectively, it increases your overall effective health and damage dramatically.

5) When gearing up make sure to get a shield with the highest possible crit chance. Doing this allows you to switch out your battle rage rune to bloodshed, and with a good bit of crit, will increase your overall damage by a large margin. It is also important to place emphasis on strength, vitality, and resist all as your primary stats. Strength ensures your damage is maintained at respectable levels while vitality and resist all will increase your durability. Important abilities used in this build are based on a percentage of your overall health so it is important to not neglect vitality, as it will be crucial if you want this build to succeed. This is a big reason why the build is effective with poor gear and becomes extremely powerful with even minor gear improvements.

6) Player reaction is extremely important when using this build. If you miss a key ability at the right moment, you will die. Become more familiar with positioning and correctly timing your abilities before you complain. Due to this margin of player reaction, some may not find this to be enjoyable. Just to repeat myself for clarity: Slow reaction time will almost always result in your death or horribly inefficient farming.

The Build

Left-Click: Rend with the Blood Lust rune.
When you spam rend on a group of enemies you will quickly gain large portions of your health back. This is your primary attack, and you should use it as fury permits. The larger the group, the more effective it is. I am unsure if there is a limit to the amount of enemies it can affect at one time.

Right-Click: Revenge with the Provocation rune.
This will be your secondary ability which you will use to keep yourself alive during semi-difficult encounters. The rune will allow revenge to heal you for large chunks of health upon using it. Use this on cooldown, and never miss a chance to hit enemies with it.

Bar1: War Cry with the Impunity rune.
This will be one of your primary buffs. It will help increase armor and resistances. With the Invigorate rune it will also increase your overall health, which is a really import part of this build, you to gain a lot of extra health without sacrificing damage output. Since this will also apply to party members, it is a very strong group buff. You will gain more overall damage reduction if you choose to use the Impunity rune. However, in 1.0.5 that rune will be nerfed and I suspect Invigorate will be superior.

Bar2: Battle Rage with the Maurauder's Rage rune.
Well, this will increase your damage by a lot, and this is the part of the build which helps you maintain respectable damage output. Feel free to swap out the rune if you would like something more useful than a flat damage increase. I recommend using bloodshed if you have decent crit chance, because I believe it help increase overall damage even further. However, the original rune selection is a valid choice, and I used it when I was not even geared enough to be doing the content I was progressing in.

Bar3: Overpower with the Revel rune.
This ability was added to replace threatening shout with the falter rune that the original build used. I found in higher MP levels the added damage from overpower was a far greater asset to the build. Also, the 8% heal from the revel rune more than makes up for the lack of attack speed reduction in most cases.

Bar4: Ignore Pain with the Ignorance Is Bliss rune.
This will absorb a huge amount of incoming damage while also rapidly increasing your health on each successful hit. I find that in conjunction with the previously mentioned buffs, this ability is truly strong. With your other buffs maintained 100% of the time and your debuff being effectively used, ignore pain is a huge boost to effective health when it is truly required. I suspect that when doing ubers with friends that I might switch to the mob rule rune, but that really is yet to be tested.

Passive 1: Nerves Of Steel.
Gain more armor through having more health. This is a key passive, please do not replace it.

Passive 2: Bloodthrist
life steal has been significantly more valuable in 1.0.5, and I find this quick 3% boost to life steal is one of the best passives that can be utilized until you can afford to purchase more life steal gear. When you get better gear and can afford to lose this 3% LS, feel free to replace it with either inspiring presence or something to increase your damage. It is up to you and how comfortable you feel trading more damage for less durability.

Passive 3: Superstition
This is an extremely important passive, as it flat out decreases magical damage by 20% and gains fury upon most ranged attacks. This is a very key talent, please do not replace it.


Conclusion

You don't need a lot of gear to farm Monster Power 6+. In really terrible gear (0 LoH, 6% LS, 700 res all before buffs, 32k buffed damage) I can clear MP10 without too many problems. In MP10 I can actually die some, but it is not that difficult to survive in for me unless I simply don't play smart. The only bad part with MP10 is that I can't kill things fast at all. However, that is more of an issue of my really crummy gear than this build. If anything, this build is the only reason I can kill anything in MP7-10.

I would have loved to post this on the official forums, but my account has been banned on Battle.net's forum system for over a year. If someone would like to post it there for me, I would appreciate it. Just give credit to Knightmare (Battle Tag: Knightmare#1653) so I can get the love/hate/questions directed to me personally.

[OrcsRLame]

Hmm, interesting build. I like the idea of giving an HP tank a try. Right now, I don't see much of a point in a tank build, but it could be very strong for key farming at MP10 after the patch.

I'm not sure how good invigorate is right now, as the 50% resist buff from impunity is so great, but after the patch when Impunity gets nerfed, I'll definitely be trying that out.

How do you feel about swapping out superstition for inspiring presence after the patch? Since inspiring presence will give 2% health per second, instead of 1.

Edit: Just tried this build out, and it's kind of retarded, and I mean that in a good way. Nothing can really hurt me. Kind of awesome.

[Knightmare55]

Edit: Just tried this build out, and it's kind of retarded, and I mean that in a good way. Nothing can really hurt me. Kind of awesome.

I am glad the build is working out for you. Yeah, I have a feeling it will be nerfed before PvP is introduced. I mean, I have literally no good gear, and I am easily farming acts I shouldn't be able to do yet without too many problems.

Hmm, interesting build. I like the idea of giving an HP tank a try. Right now, I don't see much of a point in a tank build, but it could be very strong for key farming at MP10 after the patch.

I'm not sure how good invigorate is right now, as the 50% resist buff from impunity is so great, but after the patch when Impunity gets nerfed, I'll definitely be trying that out.

How do you feel about swapping out superstition for inspiring presence after the patch? Since inspiring presence will give 2% health per second, instead of 1.

Thanks for the feedback. I will address these issues in the upcoming guide update.

[Knightmare55]

The guide has been updated. Bumping for more discussion. I am hoping to get more feedback.

[Deleted]

Similar to the old Barb tank builds before WW came storming through. Only real difference is having rend as a constant damage output.

That, and runes are different. Like Provocation for Revenge etc.

[Grogo]

The problem is going to have the dps to get through the higher MP levels which will have huge health pools.

You will need a balance of dps and effective health. It will be about balance I am sure

I have tried them all, seriously have and i believe I am at a good place right now (with a shield) I can't see giving up frenzy. A solid build ive used for a month now:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...kRS!bZY!acZcac

[Knightmare55]

Similar to the old Barb tank builds before WW came storming through. Only real difference is having rend as a constant damage output. That, and runes are different. Like Provocation for Revenge etc.

So.... what you're saying is, that it is different? Haha. That is like saying a Toyota and Mustang GT are identical.... except for the design, engine, fuel efficiency, performance and different types of use.

You make it sound like I ripped off old tank builds, but then go on to say that most everything is different, except for the selection of a few of the same skills, but with heavily different variation of their use, performance output, etc.

You should really try this build out before having a misconception that is has the same performance output as those older builds. This will yield higher damage, more durability, and the ability to farm harder acts in very little gear. That is just based on my testing of those same builds, so I am sure experiences will vary. However, most everyone that has tested my build out so far seems to agree with me. Granted, that is only about 15 to 20 people that I know about, but it is a start.

If you know of something that can yield amazing results in little gear, and also scale incredibly well to the point of borderline overpowered when you get moderately good gear, with the only real major drawback being limited by player reaction and awareness, then fill me in.

[chadwix]

Provocation > vengeance is mine. You gain 8% health instead of 5% but it procs at half the frequency. So your doing less dps and 2% less leech.

Your build is very defensive minded and the extra dps could be handy. It is similar to other tanky builds but there is no way around that in d3.

[Knightmare55]

The problem is going to have the dps to get through the higher MP levels which will have huge health pools.

You will need a balance of dps and effective health. It will be about balance I am sure

I have tried them all, seriously have and i believe I am at a good place right now (with a shield) I can't see giving up frenzy. A solid build ive used for a month now:

DPS shouldn't be an issue with this build. While your character sheet might be lower than others, the sustained damage is usually higher. In MP10 you will be able to spam rend and revenge almost non-stop, and this will net you a huge amount of damage which is not account for in the character sheet. Especially the bleeds from rend; they are rather significant. In MP10 I changed out Tough As Nails with Inspiring Presence, since I am always using my attack reduction debuff on cooldown, which effectively keep you rolling as 2% health regen a second. This with revenge and rend will keep you up forever, while also dealing significant damage through constant bleeds and revenge spam. I think you are under valuing the raw damage increase from near 100% revenge spam while your bleeds tick away at everything around you. You also have 100% combat time compared to other higher damage builds that require you to retreat to survive - especially when dealing with a bad elite pack.

I'd honestly take the ability to survive anything in MP10 with 100% combat uptime, and solid scalable damage. At the end of a long fight, this build will pull ahead of raw DPS builds in damage just because of the 100% combat uptime and not having to run out of stuff, etc.

Take this build into MP10 and give it a shot. You have nothing to lose. However, make sure to replace Tough as Nails with Inspiring Presence for MP10, it makes a huge difference.

---------- Post added 2012-10-01 at 09:10 PM ----------

Provocation > vengeance is mine. You gain 8% health instead of 5% but it procs at half the frequency. So your doing less dps and 2% less leech.

Thanks. I will look into Provocation and see how that works out for me.

Your build is very defensive minded and the extra dps could be handy. It is similar to other tanky builds but there is no way around that in d3.

That is why I call it a tank build. I consider the others out there to be DPS hybrid builds that happen to utilize a shield. This is probably the closest thing to a real tank build that one could create in Diablo3. Also, the damage is not bad at all. Most of the damage scales, and you have 100% combat uptime, which really evens things out compared to DPS builds that require you to avoid incoming damage, disengage until a cooldown is back up, etc. Being able to just stand in combat, spamming efficient and scalable attacks in something like MP10 really ends up making the fights a lot shorter. Especially when you have an infinite life and fury resource if you play smart.

I will agree that this might not be everyone's cup of tea in softcore mode, but I can see this build being absolutely amazing in hardcore mode.

[Grogo]

Out of curiosity Knightmare55, what is your dps at?

---------- Post added 2012-10-02 at 02:57 PM ----------

I feel a good number to shoot for (as Barb) is:

Over 10k armor (with shout)

75k health

900-1000 Resists (with shout up)

80k dps (with shouts)

[Knightmare55]

Guide updated. A video was added to demonstrate the efficiency of the build with really low gear levels. I decided to record myself in MP6 because in MP10 I take a long time to kill things considering how terrible my gear is. I sit at 35k damage buffed right now, but that is a lot more to do with my horrible gear than anything else. However, using this build, I am still killing elites in MP10 with minimal deaths.

Video: watch?v=yV3RnWdc8qU on YouTube.

[Deleted]

About the hardcore part i have to disagree with you. While your build is very nice and efficient in terms of heal, this will not be enough for hardcore.. Take a look at my build with which i reached level 60 hardcore yesterday. Only problem i had with it was in a 3 men party ( barb, dh, wizard) while being attacked by 2 groups of elites, standing in desecrater and top of arcane laser and only the dh to help ( the wizard was afk ) and he was targeting other mobs. My life dropped to half but only for 2 sec.
Now i can stand in no matter what combo they have ( yes, this will be true when i will get to inferno because i will improve gear until then) can kill things even in 4 men party while being alone on one side.

Since i can't link anything i will make a resume of my build.

frenzy+triumph, leap+iron impact
revenge+vengeance is mine
rend+blood lust
war cry+hardened wrath
wrath of the berserker+insanity

Passives : nerves of steal, superstition, tough as nails ( there is no need for bloodthirst) Stats:

how it works: War cry ( it's active almost all the time), leap in the middle of mobs ( iron impact makes you almost invulnerable for 3 sec -got the armor to aprox 20k+ in a large group once), rend and then kill the remains with frenzy and/or revenge. WOTB is for elites only. You can stand in anything they can throw at you, even in full party.
1488 str
927 vit
7406 armor
DpS 21k (with WOTB it goes to 50k+)
Life 32.7k
Crit chance 16.5
ASI 18%
Crit dmg 35%
LoH 180
Life leach 2.9


Yes, i have a lot of stuff to upgrade if i want to go to inferno. So far I am at act 2 before Belial hell difficulty and started farming in order to get better stats in order to kill him faster.
In my situation, and on hardcore, your build will kill me instantly. You rely on rend and revenge for dps and that will get you killed in hardcore.