Sir, I was wondering if you have tried soloing Inferno with your gear and a different skill set?
I vaguely remember that playing in a group in Infernal gives an exponential scaling to monster damage and HP. Would playing solo with your gear and a more balanced skillset be viable?
I'm only at Act 3 Normal myself, having only had the chance to play the game for about a day.
I've read many instances where a lot of people have expressed frustration in the Barbarian's relative lack of prowess in going through Hell and Inferno.
Seasoned players, I have a few questions for you:
1. What are your skill builds like? I feel that for Barbs to be viable you would need a powerful ranged skill. Seismic Slam or Weapon Throw comes into mind.
2. How long did it take you to farm up gear for you to be viable in Inferno?
3. How difficult to you are the average champion mobs in Inferno?
Makes sense what youve posted in terms of mf, but what about the rest of your build?
I'll figure it out as I play. The inferno landscape will be hellish. It'll probably be a crit based build to activate hammer's ability more often though.
I would optimistically assume the healing effect stacks. Otherwise the passive's kinda bad.
Yeah the crit build doesn't have much defense. I can imagine Life Steal as an option for pseudo-defensiveness. Of course, we can always stick with 3 crit granting skills (I'd choose Hammer, Revenge and Overpower) and go for defensive skills after.
So my theory is that a lot of great, inferno-ready builds revolve around carving out a particular strength or synergy with your Barbarian while adequately addressing weaker areas.
I've been lurking around the forum lately and have noticed that most builds revolve around some particular "idea" or "theme". Something that your Barbarian focuses on and does better than other Barbarian builds.
So this thread is dedicated to listing as many of these "themes" and narrowing them down until they are the absolute basic shell which represents its core idea.
Relatively straightforward. The build uses all three shouts and the Inspiring Presence passive, which doubles the duration of these shouts and lets you regenerate 1% of your max health per second over 60 seconds.
Assuming this effect can stack, this skillset would give you incredible defense and life regen, and you have 3 more skill slots and 2 passive slots to customise.
Uses 4 skill slots and 2 passives to give a consistent boost to crit chance. Cleave can be easily slotted in to make the best use of this. Rune Hammer of the Ancients with Birthright and you got yourself an amazing boost to your Magic Find.
Admittedly with so many slots dedicated to increasing crit chance the build may be a little too squishy and may have trouble in Inferno due to Crowd Control or lack of lifesteal.
I don't know. Lifesteal never struck me as that strong of a perk to be honest.
Given the choice I would go for more armor, health and magic resist instead of stealing back life. The reason being that Life Steal only works when you are dealing damage. And there are certainly situations in which you cannot deal damage for some time. Anyone who played WW Barb in D2 knows that if you miss your Leech or you get crowd controlled you are basically dead.
I also feel that with Health Globes, Lifesteal is even less of a necessity.
If Inferno doesn't require you to go for a Lifesteal build, I would always choose more utility over Lifesteal. And if Inferno requires you to take a build which invests heavily in Lifesteal, something is wrong with Barbarian's design.
Great, thanks for the info guys. Why do you think Barb has the treasure finding abilities? Are they just continuing on from Find Item in D2? I initially thought they've given him that to compensate for being a less effective MFer, but I just read about how all the classes will be fairly equal MFers in D3.
Might have to do with the fact that he puts himself in much more danger in order to kill stuff. Then again I thought that was what the damage reduction was for.
But then again, it's only 3 skills that offer such advantages, 1 of which (Battle Rage) provides really minimal Item Find stats.
That's a good question. Truth is I don't know. If i were to hazard a guess though it would be that it's independent of the magic find from items, since the wording is different (one is chance to drop additional items and the other is chance to find magical items).
15% of dropping additional treasure means that, in a long run, you're killing 15% more monsters, having more chance to drop good stuff.
So I gather it's actually better than Magic Find, assuming it follows the D2 model of diminshing returns for items higher than magic.
This build looks really good (although I'm still a D3 noob so I'm not critiquing it). The idea of 40% and extra MF might be bringing me around to the Barb camp.
How does the increased chance to drop "treasure" work though? Is it the same stat as magic find, like does it just stack on top of your current MF? Or does it make it more likely that drops will happen, without effecting magic find?
That's a good question. Truth is I don't know. If i were to hazard a guess though it would be that it's independent of the magic find from items, since the wording is different (one is chance to drop additional items and the other is chance to find magical items).
Basically a build that uses Battle Rage, Threatening Shout and Warcry along with the Inspiring Presence passive.
This leaves you three skill slots and two passive slots to build for damage or anything else, since the shouts gives you great regen through the passive and two of them gives you boosts to defense.
This is the most straightforward way of maxing out on crit chance and magic find on the Barbarian.
The crit chance comes from Hammer of the Ancients, Overpower and Revenge skills, which all increases Crit Chance to some degree. A combo of Revenge -> Overpower -> Hammer gives Hammer a 25% chance to crit.
For passives, Weapons Master (Axe) and Ruthless gives a combined total of +15% Crit Chance and +50% Crit Damage.
This totals a fully setup Hammer combo at a 40% crit chance. Pretty good odds.
And when Hammer crits it has a 10% chance to cause enemies to drop them items. Threatening Shout adds an additonal 15%, totaling 25%. The Shout plus Tough As Nails also buffs the character's defense to an acceptable level.
Set up for the full combo would require 15 seconds in between (Threatening Shout and Overpower both have a cooldown of 15 seconds), which I feel is a small weakness in the build. However I think Frenzy, Hammer and Revenge is more than enough to handle the stragglers you did not kill with your first combo.
Please leave some feedback about the build and how we can improve on it.
EDIT 1: Changed Battle Rage to Revenge as per Denka's advice.
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http://us.battle.net...XVki!bYZ!YZcaba
I mean, if this doesn't work I think it's safe to say Barb is completely broke in Inferno.
I vaguely remember that playing in a group in Infernal gives an exponential scaling to monster damage and HP. Would playing solo with your gear and a more balanced skillset be viable?
I've read many instances where a lot of people have expressed frustration in the Barbarian's relative lack of prowess in going through Hell and Inferno.
Seasoned players, I have a few questions for you:
1. What are your skill builds like? I feel that for Barbs to be viable you would need a powerful ranged skill. Seismic Slam or Weapon Throw comes into mind.
2. How long did it take you to farm up gear for you to be viable in Inferno?
3. How difficult to you are the average champion mobs in Inferno?
I'd assume something like this:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#bZSVgQ!YZd!bcYZbZ
Yeah the crit build doesn't have much defense. I can imagine Life Steal as an option for pseudo-defensiveness. Of course, we can always stick with 3 crit granting skills (I'd choose Hammer, Revenge and Overpower) and go for defensive skills after.
So my theory is that a lot of great, inferno-ready builds revolve around carving out a particular strength or synergy with your Barbarian while adequately addressing weaker areas.
I've been lurking around the forum lately and have noticed that most builds revolve around some particular "idea" or "theme". Something that your Barbarian focuses on and does better than other Barbarian builds.
So this thread is dedicated to listing as many of these "themes" and narrowing them down until they are the absolute basic shell which represents its core idea.
1. Inspiring Presence Builds
http://us.battle.net...rbarian#..gik!X
Relatively straightforward. The build uses all three shouts and the Inspiring Presence passive, which doubles the duration of these shouts and lets you regenerate 1% of your max health per second over 60 seconds.
Assuming this effect can stack, this skillset would give you incredible defense and life regen, and you have 3 more skill slots and 2 passive slots to customise.
2. Crit
http://us.battle.net...an#ZViQ!ZY!.Z.Z
Uses 4 skill slots and 2 passives to give a consistent boost to crit chance. Cleave can be easily slotted in to make the best use of this. Rune Hammer of the Ancients with Birthright and you got yourself an amazing boost to your Magic Find.
Admittedly with so many slots dedicated to increasing crit chance the build may be a little too squishy and may have trouble in Inferno due to Crowd Control or lack of lifesteal.
Full build sample: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#bZSVgQ!YZd!bcYZbZ
Will think of more in the meantime. If you think of something, please post!
Given the choice I would go for more armor, health and magic resist instead of stealing back life. The reason being that Life Steal only works when you are dealing damage. And there are certainly situations in which you cannot deal damage for some time. Anyone who played WW Barb in D2 knows that if you miss your Leech or you get crowd controlled you are basically dead.
I also feel that with Health Globes, Lifesteal is even less of a necessity.
If Inferno doesn't require you to go for a Lifesteal build, I would always choose more utility over Lifesteal. And if Inferno requires you to take a build which invests heavily in Lifesteal, something is wrong with Barbarian's design.
Might have to do with the fact that he puts himself in much more danger in order to kill stuff. Then again I thought that was what the damage reduction was for.
But then again, it's only 3 skills that offer such advantages, 1 of which (Battle Rage) provides really minimal Item Find stats.
Agreed for both.
So I gather it's actually better than Magic Find, assuming it follows the D2 model of diminshing returns for items higher than magic.
That's a good question. Truth is I don't know. If i were to hazard a guess though it would be that it's independent of the magic find from items, since the wording is different (one is chance to drop additional items and the other is chance to find magical items).
This leaves you three skill slots and two passive slots to build for damage or anything else, since the shouts gives you great regen through the passive and two of them gives you boosts to defense.
Thoughts?
Will change in a sec.
This is the most straightforward way of maxing out on crit chance and magic find on the Barbarian.
The crit chance comes from Hammer of the Ancients, Overpower and Revenge skills, which all increases Crit Chance to some degree. A combo of Revenge -> Overpower -> Hammer gives Hammer a 25% chance to crit.
For passives, Weapons Master (Axe) and Ruthless gives a combined total of +15% Crit Chance and +50% Crit Damage.
This totals a fully setup Hammer combo at a 40% crit chance. Pretty good odds.
And when Hammer crits it has a 10% chance to cause enemies to drop them items. Threatening Shout adds an additonal 15%, totaling 25%. The Shout plus Tough As Nails also buffs the character's defense to an acceptable level.
Set up for the full combo would require 15 seconds in between (Threatening Shout and Overpower both have a cooldown of 15 seconds), which I feel is a small weakness in the build. However I think Frenzy, Hammer and Revenge is more than enough to handle the stragglers you did not kill with your first combo.
Please leave some feedback about the build and how we can improve on it.
EDIT 1: Changed Battle Rage to Revenge as per Denka's advice.