For the most lucrative approach, play the auction house. Buy and sell to make profit. It's important to note though that the AH market will be turbulent for a few weeks while it adjusts to the new drop rate and the new loot coming in and out 1.0.3 from players who can now venture into higher acts.
If you're not as AH savvy, you're just gonna do loot runs and hope to get a good item to sell. This can take a lot more time and isn't a sure bet. Though, if lucky, you could make some significant coin. Don't forget to sell your salvages and limit your deaths because that is a great way to maximize income.
You can also do gold find stuff but I'm not a large fan of that. Doing so would require you to go back into easily farmable content with a gold find gear set on and kill things for money. That's mind numbingly boring for me, so I'll not tote its usefulness though I'm sure others would.
Too much of this 'mandatory' talk. Stormshield nor String of Ears is not mandatory, it just depends on the build you are going with. I started off assuming that to progress through the later acts in Inferno you had to go full survivability. Nowadays you start to see some barbs increasing their DPS while maintaining that survivability. At least things are becoming a littlem ore diverse as the weeks go bye.
While I personally play a Moderate Survivability / DPS barb and I'm going through endless Siegebreaker runs in ACT 3, I've since moved on from String of Ears. 17%+ melee reduction is great, undeniably. However, I picked up a belt with 70+ res all, 180+ str and 140+ vit for a 2 million or so. I was reluctant to do so but I noticed no survivability issues afterwards, just much faster DPS.
As far as Stormshields being mandatory, I disagree. The strength of a stormshield is simply its high block capacity and its reduction of damage on elites or melee by 4%. The Resist to All can be found on any shield as well as the other stats. Stormshield is a great shield to tell someone to 'go buy that! you can't go wrong!' and outside of buying an extremely low block value, it'll be a good purchase (though very expensive). You can find higher resist all shields with as much block and better stats for half the gold of a Stormshield. I paid 3m for mine and its comparable to a higher block stormshield, not better but hey, 3 million isnt much.
I think you get more mileage out of the full survivability barb but there is a massive overhead to get it itemized to the point where you can do the stuff you're gearing him to do. I personally think the highbreed DPS build is the way to go and once the 1.0.3 hits and melee gets buffed, you'll want to shed some of that survivability for more damage output.
What people don't seem to realize is that the gear of some of the barbs that are out there completing 5 stack diablos are probably in the area of 50m or so. I've easily got 30m or so into mine and I wouldn't consider my barb to have GREAT gear, just strong gear that is capable to get through Inferno content. It's all about maximizing the gold vs loot intake (if you farm for gold). Don't go off that master list that people tote is the only way to play, read between the lines a bit more.
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If you're not as AH savvy, you're just gonna do loot runs and hope to get a good item to sell. This can take a lot more time and isn't a sure bet. Though, if lucky, you could make some significant coin. Don't forget to sell your salvages and limit your deaths because that is a great way to maximize income.
You can also do gold find stuff but I'm not a large fan of that. Doing so would require you to go back into easily farmable content with a gold find gear set on and kill things for money. That's mind numbingly boring for me, so I'll not tote its usefulness though I'm sure others would.
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While I personally play a Moderate Survivability / DPS barb and I'm going through endless Siegebreaker runs in ACT 3, I've since moved on from String of Ears. 17%+ melee reduction is great, undeniably. However, I picked up a belt with 70+ res all, 180+ str and 140+ vit for a 2 million or so. I was reluctant to do so but I noticed no survivability issues afterwards, just much faster DPS.
As far as Stormshields being mandatory, I disagree. The strength of a stormshield is simply its high block capacity and its reduction of damage on elites or melee by 4%. The Resist to All can be found on any shield as well as the other stats. Stormshield is a great shield to tell someone to 'go buy that! you can't go wrong!' and outside of buying an extremely low block value, it'll be a good purchase (though very expensive). You can find higher resist all shields with as much block and better stats for half the gold of a Stormshield. I paid 3m for mine and its comparable to a higher block stormshield, not better but hey, 3 million isnt much.
I think you get more mileage out of the full survivability barb but there is a massive overhead to get it itemized to the point where you can do the stuff you're gearing him to do. I personally think the highbreed DPS build is the way to go and once the 1.0.3 hits and melee gets buffed, you'll want to shed some of that survivability for more damage output.
What people don't seem to realize is that the gear of some of the barbs that are out there completing 5 stack diablos are probably in the area of 50m or so. I've easily got 30m or so into mine and I wouldn't consider my barb to have GREAT gear, just strong gear that is capable to get through Inferno content. It's all about maximizing the gold vs loot intake (if you farm for gold). Don't go off that master list that people tote is the only way to play, read between the lines a bit more.
Grats to the OP.