Diablo 3 Barbarian Inferno Offensive Build Guide

Diablo 3 Barbarian Inferno Offensive Build Guide by Rhaloz

After writing tons of info about skills and character design I decided to make a showcase Character to show different ideas I metioned in my postings.

For this I will use the SPLATTER build.

As I have posted several high defense builds before today it shall be a offensive build. Not to worry it is still intended to go into inferno.

The build is theme build and as such not completely optimized for damage or survival but to satisfy my need for massive and bloody explosions.

First: Idea:
Basic Idea was to create a build with as much blood and bleed effects as possible with grp battle in focus. This already settled a great amount of skills and runes for me.

Cleave-Rupture: Splash! You’ve got guts on your face! The right skill to start with. Enemies explode on death by Cleave. This effect can chain and so mess up the whole mob grp. Cleave is also an excellent aoe skill on its on.

Rend-Bloodbath: Rend alone fits the description but Bloodbath ads a real gore factor to it. Big groups will produce bleed effects over and over while I rip through them. The “passive” Rend bleed is also a good addition for the weak single target damage of Cleave.

Battle Rage-Bloodshed: Big messy blood explosions on critical hit? I take it! With Cleave hitting many mobs each swing this should happen over and over. But to use this I had to accept a new condition for the setup —>High crit rate and high crit damage.

Besides the blood and bleeding I wanted a more brutal feeling for this char. No hiding behind shields and no toothpicks. A big fat two handed weapon must be used! From this concludes that no high base defense can be reached! As we do need defense we have to accept the second condition –> Tactical defense skills needed.

Build so far:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#bc..i!!ac..c

Second: Meeting Conditions!
The basic idea brought us three skills with already choosen runes and two new conditions.
Next step is to meet these conditions if possible.

First Condition: High Crit/Crit Damage
For high Crit/Critd we need of course the correct gear. Besides this we can use active or/and passive skills to enhance our crit. As we have the need to use tactical defense skills I chose to use passive slots to enhance the crit. The good point is that those skills are always active. —> High Crit/CritD on items

Ruthless: A no brainer. All we need and all we ever wanted.

Weapon Master: If I use a axe or mace I can gain 10% additional crit! Good, but this does impose a new condition on us, even so it is a gear choice —>With the basic Idea of two handed, only two handed hammer and axes are viable weapon choices.

Build so far:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#bc..i!ZY!ac..c

Second Condition: Tactical Defense
Tactical defense is a combination of mobility with stun effects or short time cooldown damage reduction. We have several skills at our disposal. So far the build is a fury supported build with low fury need and low fury consumption. Let’s not change that.

Leap-Iron Impact: My first choice. Good overall mobility with a 4 second damage reduction buff. The short cooldown allows use in every encounter or several times in long fights. leap also satisfies the need for mobility in our build. It is a fury generator and so does not strain our smal fury generation. The dr buff is most useful if we have a high base armor. As we do not use a shield this could be a problem. —-> Increase in base armor needed!

Iron Hide-Ignorance is Bliss: No fury cost and a good situational damage reduction. I choose this one over Ground Stomp as I fear stun reduction on boss mobs in high diff and I like overall damage reduction. Ignorance is bliss gives very good healing in all kind of situations. Tactical defense check! Healing check!

New Third Condition: Improved base Armor
To improve the Iron Impact effect we need high base armor. Besides stacking armor on items there are only limited ways to do so! But there is one!

Nerves of Steel: Extra base armor from vitality. With this our third and last passive slot is filled. —> High vitality on items for more defense.

Build so far:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#bcX.iR!ZYb!aca.cb

Third: Balance Check
Now all our slots are filled but one.Time to check the balance.
AOE damage? Very strong, check!
Defense? Acceptable, check!
Mobility? Okayish, check!
Healing? Good but not great, check!
Single Target dps? Cleave+Rend+2handed weapon… pretty okay, check!

Seems like all is at least in the green. Now we have one active slot to give the build an extra push. Hmmm. I think the damage is fine. I’m more concerned with surviving, especially hard hitting boss mobs in inferno. We need more time to kill them and they hurt us pretty hard more if the tactical skills are on CD and the mob is not dead yet. More defense? Or more healing?

Ancient Spear-Dread Spear: A two handed weapon is the best choice for this skill and it heals very good in high crit setups. In addition it can be used from range so tactical retreat with ranged heal is possible. Alternatives were War Cry-Hardened Wrath (better with shields not fitting style of build), Revenge-Best served Cold (only helps in grps and damage is okay); Threatening Shout (very nice, fitting the style, made it to second place); Wrath of the Berserker-Slaughter (very fitting and strong against single enemy but too long CD)

Complete Build:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#bcXdiR!ZYb!acabcb

Now we finished the skill setup lets look at the item requierments:

– two handed axe/hammer
– high vitality
– high crit/critd
– armor increase (every barb needs this)

We should ad high strength for more damage + armor and skill boosts for Cleave or Rend.

Basic Play Style:

Leap right in into a group – drop Rend -Cleave like mad -after 4 seconds use Ignore Pain- Cleave like mad and ad Rend- after another 6 seconds Leap again…..Use Spear when low on health or battle is nearly over to get back to full. Most mob groups should be dead after the first 10 seconds. Try to tackle champion/bosses first to use full defense against them. The more enemies are around you the stronger your aoe gets.

I hope I was able to show how to creat a character build. This my own believe and you are free to choose and think otherwise. No dogma.

…now I’m going to spill some blood. SPLATTTTTTER!