To be honest, you really need to get a softcore barbarian to learn how to handle softcore elites/bosses/normal mobs. No way you should let your HC barb play in hardcore, without first finding out if the similarly geared barb can handle softcore inferno. Otherwise you'll probably just die to the first elite you meet

I've made 2 HC barbs, both times deaths were due to underestimating elites. That's why i'm on SC to learn how to deal with them and to learn what type of gear i need to progress. Having said that, i'm actually enjoying SC inferno after facerolling through nightmare/hell (i still died about 6-7 times but it's really from stupidity more than anything else) because there's actually a challenge now.

You sound like you're playing S+B, so for bosses you need to know if you're going to beat the enrage timer on inferno. Anyway, grats on 60 and good luck in inferno

no no see previous page for comedy 100AR in nightmare comment, your comment is still relevant.

Double Damage is nice, but the best thing about wrath is the immunity to crowd control.

The hair is nice too.

One thing I don't get is that if Rend can now do 903% weapon damage over 5 secs, there's really not much point in using Earthquake which is on 2 min cooldown/105 secs with Mountain's call (free rage cost) and "only" does 2000% damage over 8%.

The only thing which should effect rend damage is weapon damage. If you have a 100dps 1hander and a 100dps 2 hander the slower 2hander will always give more damage.

umm ok, I'll simplify things but in reality there's also damage range to consider.

100dps 2h, attack spd is 1 attack per sec, so each average hit is 100.

100dps 1h, attack spd is 2 attack per sec, so each average hit is 50.

Any tooltip that says damage is based on % of weapon damage will be based on the average hit number.

I'm really liking the new patch. I was a 2hander barbarian in patch 1.3 and i had completed act 2 but act 3 was such a big difficulty spike. I was stuck and couldn't make any progress in act 3 before 1.04 and i refused to go sword and board. Last night i went out with my 2handed mace and killed Ghom and Siegebreaker without skipping any elites (with my current +249 all res.. my profile showing off my cheap ass gear is below)

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Kidicar...7/hero/17019177

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barb...;Zcb!bYacac is my current build, no super saiyan and running with both war cry and battle rage. Still when you seismic slam aoe for anything from 200k to 300k.. the dps makes up for any shortcomings in gear.

For Ghom, I had to change my spec because you can't avoid damage in that fight so i used a healing build specifically for him.. It took me about 10 attempts till i found a spec that worked for my undergeared barb.

I decided to go for Superstition passive for fart damage and war cry for the addition life regen, and rend and ancient spear for which was enough to deal with incoming damage while damage from rend, HoTA (400-500k crits!) were just enough to dps him down. This is what i used http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barb...;Zeb!bZZbab

She still likes to feel pretty every once in a while.

Also there's that achievement for killing bosses in pink.

Btw someone needs to open and maintain Barbarian Discussion version 2. And hopefully there will be more information such as list of active barbarians, list of skill guides, useful faqs etc. I really hope that with the new patch it wont just be whirlwind and tank barbarians.

I just completed act 3 solo on my barbarian and my resistances are at about 300 so you definitely don't need high AR to play a 2h build effectively. I also did it without super saiyan, although i do try to avoid dealing with multiple elite packs at the same time.

I have no choice but to play with low resists, I don't have as much time to farm and I'm just playing casually. I still enjoying math/theorycrafting though.

Personally, I don't think that the 2h sword is that great. As a 2h mace user, i can tell you that the "DPS" number is not as meaningful as the damage range. It's got really strong primary stat rolls but the main problems with the sword is (1) no+ crit damage(1.4 weapons can already get native crit damage rolls of >100%), (2) the dps has already been artificially inflated by the 10%IAS.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Kidicar...7/hero/17019177 As you can tell, my gear is really crap but if you look at my weapon, the damage range and the +crit% is what really helps me regularly crit for 300k damage on seismic slams.. It really depends on what your planned build is going to be like, but i can almost say that sword is not going to be that great in a 2h build.

This post has been edited by Kidicarus: Aug 24 2012, 11:48 AM

in that case, that sword is insane. maybe you should bid on a SKORN!

edit: good god, with your gear, I'm not surprised if you can one shot blues with a 2hander build.

This post has been edited by Kidicarus: Aug 24 2012, 11:57 AM

Man, @30k unbuffed dps and only 300% crit damage, I can already crit HoTA for 400+ K, if you can find a build that works with HoTA you will definitely be critting for anything from 1million to 2million+ without super saiyan. I don't think you'd worry too much about the bleed proc with that.

Firstly, I'm using a 2H build. If i'm just standing still auto-attacking it means that I'm outgearing content and I don't care how many mobs are hitting me. It also means I'm not DPSing effectively because I'm only doing single target dps.

Secondly, I'm really undergeared. If you try autoattacking and face tanking without a shield in act3/4 with <300 all resist I'm sure you won't last long. My playstyle really depends on not getting hit, and killing stuff until they die before they kill me until I'm dead.

With my current spec, I leap into a swarm of scorpions, skeletons or random mob, bash once or twice, furious charge out at full health, seismic slam for 15 rage and I'll typically get a nice "10 killed with 1 blow" message.. if they're not dead i'll seismic slam again. Damage is probably around the range of 50-70k in aoe and 200-300k for crits. I don't have to stand still in one place poking mobs in the eye while waiting for revenge to proc.

For single target face tanking, HotA if specced does 405% weapon damage, considering frenzy does 110% weapon damage and bash does 165% weapon damage, you'd be foolish not to use HotA. I mean what else are you going to use that rage for anyway? Active abilities are there to ensure that you can hit a lot harder than your character sheet dps.

That's low, at my 30k unbuffed dps, seismic slam (SOE Rune) with 2hander crits for up to 300k. Having said that, seismic slam is not rage efficient for single target dps.

edit: @ four-add Soloing Ghom for me was a bitch. I have 0 LOH and maybe about 3% (or 0.6%) lifesteal, i also have about 1800 life regen with war cry which helps a bit because you don't have to be standing in fart and doing damage to regain health .

When i beat him, i used this non standard build http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barb...;Zeb!bZZbab which relies on rend and ancient spear for healing.

Also, ancient spear is the best single target heal in the game for barbarian because it's a self heal, low 10 sec cooldown, healing for 60% of damage done. If you have high enough crit chance, speccing for no escape means every crit will reset the 10 sec cooldown. That's some serious healing.

This post has been edited by Kidicarus: Aug 27 2012, 05:00 PM

Nolah... my gear costs less than 2million.. not including gems, in fact the most expensive thing there is the emerald imma using for crit.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Kidicar...7/hero/17019177

I have extremely bad luck with drops and have difficulty finding proper upgrades on the AH

You're probably right there, it's just that everyone loves being a drama queen on the forums so i thought i'd jump in on the fun.

@stevie I'll probably have a look again, my gold balance is only just above 1million gold currently. The trouble with armour is that i'm finding that as the resident 2h barbarian, there's a direct correlation between my survivability and the amount of damage done. Currently, I'm trying to find a nice 1200+dps 2hander with +100crit damage, socket and primary stats.

On the bright side, I'm getting more and more used to farming siegebreaker/arreat crater/azmodan, so it's kind of on farm and i'm actually getting more ilevel 63 items.

edit: I'm also not embarrassed to have my enchantress who's on 60k hit points to tank for me.

This post has been edited by Kidicarus: Aug 28 2012, 01:48 PM

In agreement with you there on the life leach, the good thing is they effectively double LL on 2handers which now goes up from 3% to 6%(? not sure about exact number now) which after inferno nerf works out at 1.2% damage done which is very decent for healing. Unfortunately, you can only get LL from one other slot which is the belt slot.

This is a bit of a late reply, but i noticed that you're using a scoundrel for soloing. Most barbarians will use the enchantress and that's my preferred choice as well. Have a look at alternate specs below.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/foll...3;0110!0110

basically the rationale is, your followers are not damage dealers they provide useful buffs and to add their magic find/gold find to yours. The enchantress' buffs really do add to your survivability. You do need to get her to level 60 though.

I've also added a spec for the scoundrel that i think has better utility.