Issues with the Barbarian play style in 2.0

[Coldkil]

Well, i tried to roll a different kind of barb from pre-2.0 to have a different approach and look at new solutions for the "rage starved" issues so many are complaining about.

I ended dropping both thunderfury and fulminator while leveling and basically it's the way of the game to tell me to roll a WW build.

And it turned out pretty awesome. Lightining damage everywhere, zero rage problems (maybe a little on bosses because only one guy to hit) and i don't even use a primary - only shout and charge. I'm nearly level 60 now, annot wait to craft some gear and jump up difficulties.

[Keile]

Honestly...I tried out that "Lightning Barb" spec they posted on diablofans a few days ago. It works really well, imo. HIGH fury generation, and it relies on the 25% more damage at max fury passive (it has no fury dumps other than Battle Rage). Your heavy hitter is your Earthquake (runed to cost 0 fury and shorter CD. Coupled with Boon of Bul-Kathos you can get it down to a 35 second CD or so. Pretty short CD where you can use it liberally).

I can dish out a lot of damage quickly, though I was also lucky and just so happened to ALREADY have equipped items with + lighting damage +frenzy +cleave and + earthquake...all of which are perfect for that spec. You can still use it without those items however.

I can farm Torment 3 with that build. I haven't tested T4 yet, however. But this spec is amazingly fun in a group, especially if you have a monk with Cyclone Sweep who can pull things in where you can just cleave away.

[Bigbazz]

I've been using

Frenzy (Sidearm)
Rend (Blood Lust) - 0.5% max health heal per target, per second
Ground Stomp (Trembling Stomp) - 4s stun plus 575% weapon damage as fire, AOE.
War Cry (Invigorate) - 10% health + 1651 life per second
Battle Rage (Into the Fray) 1% crit per target within 10y
Furious Charge (Battering Ram) - 760% weapon damage as fire.

Brawler, Weapons Master, Tough as Nails.


It has amazing survivability, good burst damage from ground stomp + charge + excellent sustained damage from rend. Class seems a bit more diverse with the changes that have gone in but it is still very very powerful... So an overall success from my point of view. Not tried these lightning specs but mostly because I had so much success with my current spec that I didn't need to, its arguably better than the old whirlwind spec, survival wise it most definitely is.


I've been doing a lot of PvP too and this ring - http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/item/rogars-huge-stone Is both very interesting and very powerful, I think the link still shows the old pre loot 2.0 version. PvP saw me migrate to a weapon throw and ancient spear spec, using call of the ancients as a dps cooldown... worked really really well.

[darklogrus]

Well, i tried to roll a different kind of barb from pre-2.0 to have a different approach and look at new solutions for the "rage starved" issues so many are complaining about.

I ended dropping both thunderfury and fulminator while leveling and basically it's the way of the game to tell me to roll a WW build.

And it turned out pretty awesome. Lightining damage everywhere, zero rage problems (maybe a little on bosses because only one guy to hit) and i don't even use a primary - only shout and charge. I'm nearly level 60 now, annot wait to craft some gear and jump up difficulties.

did you roll with a brand new Barb after 2.0? Something I noticed on my Wizard is the pre 2.0 eats up more mana then my post 2.0 wizard, same spec, same level/zone. The only difference is the gear, the 2.0 gear is a downgrade on stats compared to my older Wizard, but it seems to out perform the better geared Wizard.

[Durandro]

Replaced Whirlwind with Rend.

That's the only real difference now, other then I self heal like an utter beast right now.

[Aelfin]

destroying T6 with http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/A.../hero/38555430

[Deleted]

destroying T6 with http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/A.../hero/38555430

Solo? Also, when you say "destroying", how often do you die to elites?

I'm asking because besides the damage, that character seems very, very fragile. Extremely low health, toughness and healing. It feels like a huge glass cannon to me, but I guess the damage is enough to offset the lack of durability.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

My Barb is never fury starved. Then again his build is....unique.


http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/A...1/hero/9776862


Yeah go ahead and criticize it. I deal just fine.

[Holtzmann]

It's interesting how folks are coming up with their own builds. I guess the re-balancing worked as advertised and really shook things up. Let's see if it lasts until 70.

[Aelfin]

Solo? Also, when you say "destroying", how often do you die to elites?

I'm asking because besides the damage, that character seems very, very fragile. Extremely low health, toughness and healing. It feels like a huge glass cannon to me, but I guess the damage is enough to offset the lack of durability.

actually, my char stats are way off on web site. i'm over 325k dps and 1.3M toughness, before buffs. armor is over 8k, resists are close to 800 and health is around 80k.

basically, i don't think those numbers take into account any paragon points (over 250, spread across str/vit, atkspd/crit, armor/resists, area damage/loh)

as far as dieing to elites, nothing really hurts except arcane beams. if i get horde + frozen + arcane beams, pretty good chance i am dead in tight areas, less in open areas. i'd estimate 1 out of 10 runs i die?

edit: looks like superstition is still on there, playing last night with ways to mitigate the arcane beam issue. normally that is brawler.

edit2: yeah, web page is WAY off. looked at my monk and it's stats on site are also ridiculously low. monk is closer to 250k dps and metric tons of toughness, like 1.5M toughness.

edit3: lol, dh toughness is not zero. tho it feels that way quite often.

[Belmorn]

Been playing my hardcore barb more lately than my softcore one.
This has been the build Ive been using :

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/B.../hero/19760108

I prefer the non fire glyph on the HOTA because of its AOE it provides. This forces me to use sidearm as well instead of frenzy-maniac.
Im just too stuck to frenzy so I had touse hammer more as AOE and frenzy more as single target for that reason.

I feel a lot of people are just staring too much on the stats on the char screen real dps isnt properly expressed as damage such as +physical or +frenzy isnt shown into it.
This makes people ignore the possiblity of very good builds just because the sheet doesnt show it right away to you.

As about the fury starvation : I really dont feel all that fury starved ( takes about 5 seconds or so to build up a full yellow bar from 0 ) eventhough I miss key legendary items which makes this irrelevant.

Does it feel slower than WW barb ? Well yes it does , then again I never really liked that playstyle personally , especially not on hardcore
Anyway what this patch has done is that it has opened a TON of viable builds for barbs atm instead of all forced into ww barbs or just doing it wrong in terms of effeciency.

[Baelic]

Cleave (Rupture) + Rend (Blood Lust) + Wrath of the Berserker (Wall of Arreat and Cooldown passive) = GG

For single target I go Frenzy (25% damage rune) + Rend (Blood Lust) + Revenge (+crit) + Overpower (+crit) + Wrath of the Berserker (+50% damage, cooldown passive) = things melt at my feet!

It's easy to switch between the two if you know when the situation calls for it beforehand. Not sure why people are having problems.

[kail]

the big nerf was the removal of indefinite sprint and WotB, which was needed. Otherwise, rage shouldn't be much of an issue.

[Stormspellz]

Except on my barb I'm never fury starved, and I'm using Boulder Toss as a spender.

I don't really know what the barbs are doing that claim that they are 'Fury Starved'.

that can't ww to victory across an entire zone anymore so they are broken.

[Novar]

I"m still WW too victory except on single target. Fury is a little tight there.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/b.../hero/21082938

running this build switching out ruthless for unforgiving.

Been monster trucking everything on t3

[Bigbazz]

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/b...623/hero/65304

This is mine as it is now. I'm farming Torment IV, Torment 5 doesn't seem worth it in terms of killing speed wise and I havent't tried T6 on this char, I tried T6 on my tank barb (3.8million toughness, 130k damage buffed) and it was a very slow experience with mobs doing a massive ammount of damage even with my high survival, did not die once but elites were taking a long bloody time to kill, reminded me of vanilla launch Inferno though not quite so brutal.

My damage shows as only 183k unbuffed on bnet, when it's infact 205k unbuffed (edit : apparently I remembered wrong, it's 222k unbuffed), same with the toughness its actually 1.1mil unbuffed and not 700k. I've dropped some old gear to take advantage of the new % damage modifiers, with physical damage bonus on my wrists and helmet and a Frenzy damage bonus on my legs, also dropped my old Vile Ward shoulders for a new set of crafted Seven Sins to take advantage of the massive stats, though I sacrificed on slightly more strength for a set with 10% area damage.

I've gone 2hander and that is by choice, a lot of people don't seem to have noticed this but dual wield shows more tooltip damage while doing way less actual damage on instant abilities based on weapon damage, that means with abilities like Charge, Ground Stomp and Rend you're really not doing that much damage with dual wield compared to a 2hand, while you may get higher tooltip damage by stacking more stats/crit damage dual wielding and that will benefit your pure single target attacks and fury regen, it means that those big hitter attacks do less damage because they are basing it off of your main hand weapon damage, which is a 1hander.

[Darsithis]

I used Ignore Pain for a bit. But ended up sticking with Leap for a few reasons; 1. It builds fury so it's easy to use as a "get me going" skill. 2. Engage/disengage potential. I found IP runs out quicker than I expect and end up nearly dying a lot.

I think WW with Wind Shear, Overpower w/ Momentum and Warcry are the real key skills. Using Revenge or Leap are sorta optional and you could replace them with like Ground Stomp or Ignore Pain. Though I enjoy the "free" damage + healing Revenge offers.

Ruthless, Berserker Rare and Nerves of Steel can also be used in place of Inspiring Presence too.

I ended up getting rid of ignore pain and leap. I'm running, for now, rage + revenge + war cry + overpower. 80k and 27% crit for someone in pretty crappy gear means master is very easy. I'm just trying to get a good socketed legendary with LoH so I can gem it with crit damage.

[Deleted]

I can run t2 easily, t3 with attention with this: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Z...9/hero/3760444
My DPS sucks and I need more gear until I will be more comfortable with higher difficulty.

Do not mind that WotB too much, though it was an experiment, that slot is free to use depending on what I'm gonna do

[darklogrus]

Once I found 30% increase damage on my Fury builder and 30% on my Fury spender, Fury was no longer an issue. It still feels like it builds up a lot slower then my DH or Wiz

[deepr]

OK. I've been experimenting with builds and IMO Hammer of the Ancients (with Rolling Thunder) is the way to go. I have shitty gear (only recently started playing again), but when starting at max Fury I feel I bring more to the table than some barbs with twice the DPS I have, but with shitty whirlwind builds.

As passives use both Animosity and Unforgiving. Use paragorn points to increase maximum fury. Also use gear to increase maximum fury.
Use Furious Charge with Stamina rune, to get a lot of fury when charging into groups.
Battle Rage (Into The Fray) for even more damage and crit chance.
Cleave (Reaping Swing). Have to use it sometimes to gain a bit of fury when Furious Charge in on cooldown.
Rend (Bloodlust) for dots and healing.
WotB (Thrive on Chaos) for Elite battles and healing.