**DISCLAIMER** If you don’t like walls of text, better leave now. This guide is not meant to be a prediction of how things will be in the final game. Lately (like many others I am sure) I find myself doing a lot of imagining when it comes to Diablo 3. In fact, I could say my favorite game to play right now is just imagining what the game will / could be like. To that end, what better way to do that than just pretend the game is already out? This guide is written from the perspective of well after release and makes some WILD assumptions about some things like Rune Effects, Traits and some general mechanics. The only reason I am posting it is that I figure some people on here may have as much fun reading it as I had making it. Enjoy it or tear it apart, it’s up to you.
Notable Assumptions
Some things to keep in mind as far as “general” assumptions that I make: You can max a skill at 5/5, 10/10 or 15/15 and are able to increase any skill to the next “cap” but it takes a quite a bit of time/resources to do this. You can only advance a skill to the next “cap” after you complete a difficulty. So to go from 5/5 to 6/10 you need to have completed Normal. Obviously you don’t have enough skill points to max all skills so there is no need to do this for every skill. I also “assume” that because of the nature of raising the “cap” mechanic for each skill the next point after the cap (6 and 11) makes a fairly large difference. In general these next levels can hit a wider range of monsters (bosses, uniques) or just do more damage / have increased effect more than a standard point does. I also assume that as a reward for starting the next difficulty (nightmare and hell) you start the new play through with 1 skill point and 1 trait point to spend. This brings the total Skill points possible to 61 and Traits to 21.
The Bloodletter Barbarian Build
This guide will show you how to make your Barbarian able to cause the maximum amount of pain and suffering to the minions of hell before you dispatch them for good by taking full advantage of Bleed effects. Taking the right traits and runes to augment your skills will increase the potency of your bleed effects to huge levels, especially when you have some top end gear. You will also have a good amount of survivability with this build as being able to stay in the thick of things for long periods of time while applying your bleed effects is paramount to your success. Like most builds, this one has a downside. If you are facing just a single target, or a boss without a lot of targets to hit at once, it will take you a while to kill it. But the survivability you will have makes killing tough, single targets more than possible, if just a bit slow.
Skills
Cleave * 6/10 * Crimson
This is the most popular tier 1 Barbarian skill, and with good reason. Even those Barbarians that don’t use it late game usually take it for the play through of Normal. The standard effect of cleave is a very satisfying way to slay the hoards of demons that will be in your way. However, the main purpose of cleave for our build, and the reason we can use it all the way through the game (even in Hell) with just 6 points, is the Bleed effect that it applies with the Crimson Rune. The 6th point will give a hefty increase to the range / hit area of Cleave making it a little easier to hit more monsters at once. The Crimson rune in cleave causes every monster you hit with Cleave to Bleed for an additional % based on weapon damage. A higher level rune causes the bleed effect to do a bit more damage, but most importantly, increases the length of the effect. If you can get your hands on a level 8 crimson Rune, you can make the effect last up to 20 seconds. This makes your life MUCH easier as your main goal will be to apply as many Bleed effects, to as many monsters as possible. Cleave is your “spam-able” way to apply bleed effects. The more Bleeds you get out, the better your primary attack / nuke will be; Revenge.
Ignore Pain * 6/10 * Golden
Your primary survivability skill, Ignore pain allows you to stay in the thick of things even when the toughest Monsters are hitting you. We chose the Golden rune to Increase the duration and lower the Furry cost. The 6th point will reduce the damage you are taking by enough to survive most tough situations. Of course, with-out investing more heavily in Ignore Pain, you will run into situations in Hell when it isn’t enough, but you have Taunt which will be your other “get out of jail” card to compliment this. Your ignore pain has no cool down, but the furry costs keeps you from just always keeping it up. The Golden Rune helps with that however, both with the lower cost, and with the longer duration, making you need to use it less often.
Revenge * 15/15 * Indigo
Revenge is the heart of the build. You will be taking this all the way to 15/15. The Indigo rune changes the way the damage is computed in a really fun way. Instead of dealing damage to all monsters in the area of effect, the damage is just dealt to monsters in range that have an active bleed effect on them. However, rather than dealing damage to these targets based on a % of weapon damage, it deals damage to them based on a % of all active bleed effects. To help explain further, if you are fighting 5 monsters, and you cleave them all, which applies the Crimson Cleave bleed effect to each one, there are now 5 active bleed effects. Let’s say each bleed is going to deal a total of 100 damage over 20 seconds (with a maxed Crimson Rune in Cleave). Now, because your build excels at being in the thick of things, you will get hit plenty of times to count on Revenge activating. When you use your revenge, it will deal a % of the total bleed damage active (which is 500 right now) to each target with a bleed effect on it. So if you have a level 1 Indigo rune in Revenge, it deals 15% of the total bleed damage that is currently active (it does not matter how much damage has already ticked on your bleed, the full amount is always calculated). In this example, with a level 1 Indigo rune in Revenge, you will deal 75 damage to each target. Now, if you have (in late game) a level 8 Indigo rune in revenge, which deals damage based on 50% of the total active bleed effect damage, you would do 250 damage to each target in this example! Hopefully you get the idea of this mechanic. It results in a play style that tried to get as many Bleed effects, on as many targets as possible. Then get in Revenge range, and hit Revenge, causing mass pain and destruction. Of course we have more ways to augment this damage (Rend) later on.
Sprint * 2/5 * Obsidian
Sprint acts as a second way (along with ignore pain) to get out of tight spots and in general, take less damage while running around applying cleaves. The obsidian Rune effect gives you immunity to most movement impairing effects for the first 2-5 seconds after you cast Sprint (based on Rune level) and for the entire duration of Sprint (10 seconds with 2 skill points) Obsidian gives you a bonus to damage reduction. With a level 8 Rune you can have an additional 35% reduction, which combined with Ignore Pain can make you really hard to kill. The reason we only spend 2 points on Sprint is because there are just better ways to spend you points in this build. More points in Sprint only slightly increase the duration (10 seconds is plenty) and greatly increase your movement speed. For what we will use it for, we don’t really don't want to move TOO fast, as it makes controlling your character for Cleaving / Rending a bit difficult.
Rend * 11/15 * Indigo
Rend is the Skill you will use RIGHT BEFORE you are ready to unleash your Revenge bomb and is what takes your Indigo Revenge from “cool” to “OMG” . The standard effect from Rend does a 360 degree slashing attack that deals decent damage on its initial hit, but does VERY nice damage over a short time after the hit. This damage is applied as a Bleed effect, but it only lasts 3 seconds and that number never increases. The 6th and 11th skill point increase the range of Rend (which is what we want the most) so you can hit Monsters that are a decent distance away from you at 11/15. The cool down is either 10 seconds or 6 seconds (depending on if you take quickening, which you should) and this really is fine, as you won’t need to spam the ability, but rather just use it to set up your Revenge strikes after you have spent a good chunk of time applying Cleave DoTs to everything. The indigo rune just applies the Bleed effects to additional nearby targets. It doesn’t stack with things that already have the bleed effect from the initial Rend strike, so it basically increases the range of the Bleed effect without increasing the range of the Initial hit. PERFECT for what we want. Let’s look at another example: You are fighting 5 monsters. You cleave them all which will apply the Crimson Bleed effect. Each monster is now bleeding for 100 total damage over 20 seconds. Now, your Revenge triggers. Before you hit Revenge, you use Rend which deals decent damage initially, but also applies ITS bleed effect which deals 100 MORE damage over just 3 seconds. Each monster is now taking a total of 200 damage in bleed effects (there is now 1000 total damage in bleed effects in range of your revenge). Now you hit Revenge, which will deal 50% of all bleed damage in range to each monster with a bleed effect on it. Each monster takes 500 damage. These numbers are simplified for math’s sake, but you get the idea. The more monsters you hit with Cleave and Rend before using your Revenge, the more damage you do. Once you have good gear, good Rune levels and master the style, you will be rolling through most packs of monsters. The more monsters, the faster they die.
Taunt * 6/10 * Obsidian/Golden
Taunt adds to the survivability of this build, but more importantly will gather everything up around you for easier Cleave / Rend hits. You have a choice of runes here as either Obsidian or Golden will compliment your build nicely. Golden shortens the cool down, and with a high level Golden rune and Quickening, there will be barely any down time for Taunt. However, if you take Obsidian, you will GREATLY increase the damage reduction aspect of Taunt. Plus the eye candy of turning into a Molten Rock version of your Barbarian is AWESOME. The down side to Obsidian is 1: it will have a down time as even with quickening you can’t get rid of the cool down and 2: you will move slower while this is active. My personal vote is Obsidian here. We are using Sprint actively in this build which will nearly negate the slow effect that comes with Obsidian Taunt. Golden is just as viable though, it all depends on how you want to play.
Wrath of the Berserker * 15/15 * Crimson
Just when you thought your Barbarian couldn’t get any more awesome, enter Wrath of the Berserker. The first time I used this skill, I was in shock at the amazing spell effect that comes with it. Talk about feeling “Awesome”! With quickening the cool down is only 80 seconds, and with a full 15/15 the effect lasts a full 30 seconds. Believe me, it is worth the cool down. Blizzard really didn’t miss a beat here either as the size increase / visual effect of WotB combines amazingly with the Taunt effect. Anyway, as far as actual game play, you basically will own everything when this is active, your bleeds bleed for more and and can individually Crit, your Revenge strikes will be nearly be guaranteed to crit with WotB active, not to mention the huge bonus to your regular Melee swings. This is the ability that makes killing one single target (like some of the bosses with no minions, and some uniques that refuse to die in tandem with their buddies) less of a headache. This is my favorite Barbarian skill without question.
Traits * More than most builds, there is A LOT of freedom in your Trait Selection. Other than the first trait listed, Blood Sport, you can almost take anything you want. I chose to focus on survivability traits for this build as it helps A LOT while you’re running around applying bleeds
Blood Sport * 3/3 * Increases the damage done by your Bleed effects by 8% per point
This is the only “no brainer” of our build. You are focusing on applying Bleed effects and this is the only trait the DIRECTLY improves them. It may be worth pointing out that Alabaster Revenge Strikes do include this extra damage in its calculations now. For a while it incorrectly did not, but Blizzard has since fixed this (1.13a).
Bad Temper * 5/5 * Increases the rate at which you gain Furry and Decreases the rate at which you lose Furry
A mainstay in most builds, this is no exception. We will be cleaving A LOT (to build Furry) but we also have some huge Furry sinks that we need to use, Rend, Ignore Pain, Sprint, Wrath of the Berserker, Taunt; some of the more expensive skills the Barbarian has in terms of Fury. We don’t use the cheap ones like Weapon Throw, Hammer of the Ancients, Seismic Slam and the like. Bite the bullet and spend all 5 points here.
Weak Spot * 1/1 * Increases the Barbarians Critical strike damage
Any build that focuses on Wrath of the Berserker needs this trait. It only costs 1 point so no reason at all not to take this one.
Quickening * 3/3 * drecreases the casting speed and cooldowns of all the Barbarians Abilities
This trait is great for speeding up your plystyle. However, if you prefer to play more methodically, you can skip this one with out hurting your self too much. I highly recomend it however.
Toughness * 2/5 * Increases the Barbarians vitality by 20% per point
This is such a great Trait to improve your survivability. I highly recommend putting some points into this trait because of the amount of time you will be taking hits, both to trigger Revenge and while rounding monsters up to apply your Bleeds.
The Wall * 3/3 * Decreases the physical damage taken by the Barbarian
Again, I go for maximum survivability with the Bloodletter build. This one is great! Take it.
This leaves you with 4 points to spend
I would suggest going for more survivability, but a fan favorite is always to pump your chosen weapons specialty. Dual wielding can greatly increases your damage, but you will also take much more damage. I usually go for a weapon and a shield, so a possibility may be to take 2/3 in Shield of Iron and 2/3 in your Weapon Specialty. It is up to you!
NOTE** I will likely not make a Demon Hunter guide as the Crazy-ness of the assumptions I would have to make would be a bit overwhelming. I may make more guides for the Wizard, Witchdoctor, Monk and Barbarian and if I do I’ll just add them to the above list on each post.
Maybe you should wait with the guides until we have the game, then I would take time to read them and it really have fun!
I guess it won't hurt anyone to speculate
Maybe you should wait with the guides until we have the game, then I would take time to read them and it really have fun!
I guess it won't hurt anyone to speculate
Hey Baracuda,
Certainly these are not for everyone. And not meant (obviously) as something to use for the real game. Just a fun way to speculate and imagine the possibilities.
And if nothing else, a way to pass the time while waiting!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Notable Assumptions
Some things to keep in mind as far as “general” assumptions that I make: You can max a skill at 5/5, 10/10 or 15/15 and are able to increase any skill to the next “cap” but it takes a quite a bit of time/resources to do this. You can only advance a skill to the next “cap” after you complete a difficulty. So to go from 5/5 to 6/10 you need to have completed Normal. Obviously you don’t have enough skill points to max all skills so there is no need to do this for every skill. I also “assume” that because of the nature of raising the “cap” mechanic for each skill the next point after the cap (6 and 11) makes a fairly large difference. In general these next levels can hit a wider range of monsters (bosses, uniques) or just do more damage / have increased effect more than a standard point does. I also assume that as a reward for starting the next difficulty (nightmare and hell) you start the new play through with 1 skill point and 1 trait point to spend. This brings the total Skill points possible to 61 and Traits to 21.
Links to other (For Fun) Guides
Wizard Guide: The Controller
Witch Doctor Guide: The DoT Destroyer
Monk Guide: The Sponge
The Bloodletter Barbarian Build
This guide will show you how to make your Barbarian able to cause the maximum amount of pain and suffering to the minions of hell before you dispatch them for good by taking full advantage of Bleed effects. Taking the right traits and runes to augment your skills will increase the potency of your bleed effects to huge levels, especially when you have some top end gear. You will also have a good amount of survivability with this build as being able to stay in the thick of things for long periods of time while applying your bleed effects is paramount to your success. Like most builds, this one has a downside. If you are facing just a single target, or a boss without a lot of targets to hit at once, it will take you a while to kill it. But the survivability you will have makes killing tough, single targets more than possible, if just a bit slow.
Skills
Cleave * 6/10 * Crimson
This is the most popular tier 1 Barbarian skill, and with good reason. Even those Barbarians that don’t use it late game usually take it for the play through of Normal. The standard effect of cleave is a very satisfying way to slay the hoards of demons that will be in your way. However, the main purpose of cleave for our build, and the reason we can use it all the way through the game (even in Hell) with just 6 points, is the Bleed effect that it applies with the Crimson Rune. The 6th point will give a hefty increase to the range / hit area of Cleave making it a little easier to hit more monsters at once. The Crimson rune in cleave causes every monster you hit with Cleave to Bleed for an additional % based on weapon damage. A higher level rune causes the bleed effect to do a bit more damage, but most importantly, increases the length of the effect. If you can get your hands on a level 8 crimson Rune, you can make the effect last up to 20 seconds. This makes your life MUCH easier as your main goal will be to apply as many Bleed effects, to as many monsters as possible. Cleave is your “spam-able” way to apply bleed effects. The more Bleeds you get out, the better your primary attack / nuke will be; Revenge.
Ignore Pain * 6/10 * Golden
Your primary survivability skill, Ignore pain allows you to stay in the thick of things even when the toughest Monsters are hitting you. We chose the Golden rune to Increase the duration and lower the Furry cost. The 6th point will reduce the damage you are taking by enough to survive most tough situations. Of course, with-out investing more heavily in Ignore Pain, you will run into situations in Hell when it isn’t enough, but you have Taunt which will be your other “get out of jail” card to compliment this. Your ignore pain has no cool down, but the furry costs keeps you from just always keeping it up. The Golden Rune helps with that however, both with the lower cost, and with the longer duration, making you need to use it less often.
Revenge * 15/15 * Indigo
Revenge is the heart of the build. You will be taking this all the way to 15/15. The Indigo rune changes the way the damage is computed in a really fun way. Instead of dealing damage to all monsters in the area of effect, the damage is just dealt to monsters in range that have an active bleed effect on them. However, rather than dealing damage to these targets based on a % of weapon damage, it deals damage to them based on a % of all active bleed effects. To help explain further, if you are fighting 5 monsters, and you cleave them all, which applies the Crimson Cleave bleed effect to each one, there are now 5 active bleed effects. Let’s say each bleed is going to deal a total of 100 damage over 20 seconds (with a maxed Crimson Rune in Cleave). Now, because your build excels at being in the thick of things, you will get hit plenty of times to count on Revenge activating. When you use your revenge, it will deal a % of the total bleed damage active (which is 500 right now) to each target with a bleed effect on it. So if you have a level 1 Indigo rune in Revenge, it deals 15% of the total bleed damage that is currently active (it does not matter how much damage has already ticked on your bleed, the full amount is always calculated). In this example, with a level 1 Indigo rune in Revenge, you will deal 75 damage to each target. Now, if you have (in late game) a level 8 Indigo rune in revenge, which deals damage based on 50% of the total active bleed effect damage, you would do 250 damage to each target in this example! Hopefully you get the idea of this mechanic. It results in a play style that tried to get as many Bleed effects, on as many targets as possible. Then get in Revenge range, and hit Revenge, causing mass pain and destruction. Of course we have more ways to augment this damage (Rend) later on.
Sprint * 2/5 * Obsidian
Sprint acts as a second way (along with ignore pain) to get out of tight spots and in general, take less damage while running around applying cleaves. The obsidian Rune effect gives you immunity to most movement impairing effects for the first 2-5 seconds after you cast Sprint (based on Rune level) and for the entire duration of Sprint (10 seconds with 2 skill points) Obsidian gives you a bonus to damage reduction. With a level 8 Rune you can have an additional 35% reduction, which combined with Ignore Pain can make you really hard to kill. The reason we only spend 2 points on Sprint is because there are just better ways to spend you points in this build. More points in Sprint only slightly increase the duration (10 seconds is plenty) and greatly increase your movement speed. For what we will use it for, we don’t really don't want to move TOO fast, as it makes controlling your character for Cleaving / Rending a bit difficult.
Rend * 11/15 * Indigo
Rend is the Skill you will use RIGHT BEFORE you are ready to unleash your Revenge bomb and is what takes your Indigo Revenge from “cool” to “OMG” . The standard effect from Rend does a 360 degree slashing attack that deals decent damage on its initial hit, but does VERY nice damage over a short time after the hit. This damage is applied as a Bleed effect, but it only lasts 3 seconds and that number never increases. The 6th and 11th skill point increase the range of Rend (which is what we want the most) so you can hit Monsters that are a decent distance away from you at 11/15. The cool down is either 10 seconds or 6 seconds (depending on if you take quickening, which you should) and this really is fine, as you won’t need to spam the ability, but rather just use it to set up your Revenge strikes after you have spent a good chunk of time applying Cleave DoTs to everything. The indigo rune just applies the Bleed effects to additional nearby targets. It doesn’t stack with things that already have the bleed effect from the initial Rend strike, so it basically increases the range of the Bleed effect without increasing the range of the Initial hit. PERFECT for what we want. Let’s look at another example: You are fighting 5 monsters. You cleave them all which will apply the Crimson Bleed effect. Each monster is now bleeding for 100 total damage over 20 seconds. Now, your Revenge triggers. Before you hit Revenge, you use Rend which deals decent damage initially, but also applies ITS bleed effect which deals 100 MORE damage over just 3 seconds. Each monster is now taking a total of 200 damage in bleed effects (there is now 1000 total damage in bleed effects in range of your revenge). Now you hit Revenge, which will deal 50% of all bleed damage in range to each monster with a bleed effect on it. Each monster takes 500 damage. These numbers are simplified for math’s sake, but you get the idea. The more monsters you hit with Cleave and Rend before using your Revenge, the more damage you do. Once you have good gear, good Rune levels and master the style, you will be rolling through most packs of monsters. The more monsters, the faster they die.
Taunt * 6/10 * Obsidian/Golden
Taunt adds to the survivability of this build, but more importantly will gather everything up around you for easier Cleave / Rend hits. You have a choice of runes here as either Obsidian or Golden will compliment your build nicely. Golden shortens the cool down, and with a high level Golden rune and Quickening, there will be barely any down time for Taunt. However, if you take Obsidian, you will GREATLY increase the damage reduction aspect of Taunt. Plus the eye candy of turning into a Molten Rock version of your Barbarian is AWESOME. The down side to Obsidian is 1: it will have a down time as even with quickening you can’t get rid of the cool down and 2: you will move slower while this is active. My personal vote is Obsidian here. We are using Sprint actively in this build which will nearly negate the slow effect that comes with Obsidian Taunt. Golden is just as viable though, it all depends on how you want to play.
Wrath of the Berserker * 15/15 * Crimson
Just when you thought your Barbarian couldn’t get any more awesome, enter Wrath of the Berserker. The first time I used this skill, I was in shock at the amazing spell effect that comes with it. Talk about feeling “Awesome”! With quickening the cool down is only 80 seconds, and with a full 15/15 the effect lasts a full 30 seconds. Believe me, it is worth the cool down. Blizzard really didn’t miss a beat here either as the size increase / visual effect of WotB combines amazingly with the Taunt effect. Anyway, as far as actual game play, you basically will own everything when this is active, your bleeds bleed for more and and can individually Crit, your Revenge strikes will be nearly be guaranteed to crit with WotB active, not to mention the huge bonus to your regular Melee swings. This is the ability that makes killing one single target (like some of the bosses with no minions, and some uniques that refuse to die in tandem with their buddies) less of a headache. This is my favorite Barbarian skill without question.
Traits * More than most builds, there is A LOT of freedom in your Trait Selection. Other than the first trait listed, Blood Sport, you can almost take anything you want. I chose to focus on survivability traits for this build as it helps A LOT while you’re running around applying bleeds
Blood Sport * 3/3 * Increases the damage done by your Bleed effects by 8% per point
This is the only “no brainer” of our build. You are focusing on applying Bleed effects and this is the only trait the DIRECTLY improves them. It may be worth pointing out that Alabaster Revenge Strikes do include this extra damage in its calculations now. For a while it incorrectly did not, but Blizzard has since fixed this (1.13a).
Bad Temper * 5/5 * Increases the rate at which you gain Furry and Decreases the rate at which you lose Furry
A mainstay in most builds, this is no exception. We will be cleaving A LOT (to build Furry) but we also have some huge Furry sinks that we need to use, Rend, Ignore Pain, Sprint, Wrath of the Berserker, Taunt; some of the more expensive skills the Barbarian has in terms of Fury. We don’t use the cheap ones like Weapon Throw, Hammer of the Ancients, Seismic Slam and the like. Bite the bullet and spend all 5 points here.
Weak Spot * 1/1 * Increases the Barbarians Critical strike damage
Any build that focuses on Wrath of the Berserker needs this trait. It only costs 1 point so no reason at all not to take this one.
Quickening * 3/3 * drecreases the casting speed and cooldowns of all the Barbarians Abilities
This trait is great for speeding up your plystyle. However, if you prefer to play more methodically, you can skip this one with out hurting your self too much. I highly recomend it however.
Toughness * 2/5 * Increases the Barbarians vitality by 20% per point
This is such a great Trait to improve your survivability. I highly recommend putting some points into this trait because of the amount of time you will be taking hits, both to trigger Revenge and while rounding monsters up to apply your Bleeds.
The Wall * 3/3 * Decreases the physical damage taken by the Barbarian
Again, I go for maximum survivability with the Bloodletter build. This one is great! Take it.
This leaves you with 4 points to spend
I would suggest going for more survivability, but a fan favorite is always to pump your chosen weapons specialty. Dual wielding can greatly increases your damage, but you will also take much more damage. I usually go for a weapon and a shield, so a possibility may be to take 2/3 in Shield of Iron and 2/3 in your Weapon Specialty. It is up to you!
NOTE** I will likely not make a Demon Hunter guide as the Crazy-ness of the assumptions I would have to make would be a bit overwhelming. I may make more guides for the Wizard, Witchdoctor, Monk and Barbarian and if I do I’ll just add them to the above list on each post.
I guess it won't hurt anyone to speculate
Certainly these are not for everyone. And not meant (obviously) as something to use for the real game. Just a fun way to speculate and imagine the possibilities.
And if nothing else, a way to pass the time while waiting!