Before we discuss specific builds for the various difficult modes, I’d like to go over a few of the different approaches to playing a barbarian and examine some of their mechanics in a bit more detail.

The Barbarian has a few important characteristics to note. They can inflict an extra 30% damage and every strength point also increases damage by 1%. They employ the weapon class Mighty Weapon and can utilize two one-handed melee weapons at once. Also, only the Barbarian is capable of wearing Mighty Belts.

Stacking of DoTs

Stacking of dots has the best damage to cast time ratio. By stacking them you create damage over a longer amount of time which allows you to perform other actions in the meantime. The timer will reset to the maximum duration every time the same dot is used on the same target. You must remember that with longer dots you will get lower damage numbers and the effects will not stack either.

Dual Wield

Dual wield can be very confusing for some players because of all the bad information out there. You do not fight with both weapons at the same time. You carry one weapon in each hand and it alternates between them when attacking the enemy.

High damage skills are always generated from the main hand. Dual wield will give the Barbarian a 15 % speed bonus which gets added to the gear speed bonus. You can get a very high attack speed percentage because of the way this is calculated. Builds like Less-Fury can gain the full benefit of this because they can keep hammering their attacks without stopping.

If you have another build however you may notice that with the high attack speed your build-and-burn phases may shorten to the point where it is detrimental. In this case you should try favoring damage and defense over more attack speed.

Resource: Fury

Barbarians power is derived from Fury. There are three primary generators that can be expended without stopping and several others with cooldowns. The minimum amount is 100, and with items and skills is gradually built up. When making Fury calculations, there is a very tiny amount also obtained from receiving enemy damage, but it is so minimal that it should not really be taken into consideration.

After combat fury will decline over time down to zero. At present it is not much of an issue because the time between mob packs is short and the amount is very small. You can break objects with a fury generator which will slow the decline, or use a cooldown based generator which lets the Barbarian replenish at the beginning of battle with a large amount.

Each build can categorized into one of three groups involving fury generation and use: