Boxing barbs

[Multinoob]

Hi there wonder boxers!

I'm very keen on giving multi boxing a bash for the upcoming S3, my intention being to level a pair of barbs as it's the class I know best by a long way, doing just a pair seems like an easier start to playing multi chars. From my snooping on various forums over the last couple of days I'm getting the impression that melee can be a bit of a pain to do, especially for a complete novice like myself.

Is the movement sync as bad as I've read for Barbs? My main reason for trying multiboxing is to try and increase gearing and levelling speed for the season and if I'm going to be constantly making an arse of it then the levelling at least may end up slower, despite the group buff.

With this season being so whirlwind and pet orientated I thought the actual combat at Tx level probably wouldn't be that bad?

I'll continue to trawl the forums and check out videos but if any of you guys with actual experience, especially with barbarians, could give me a few pointers, do's/don'ts then that would be fantastic.

Cheers!

[Las]

I have been playing with a team of 3 barbs and 1 wd the last weeks trying to come up with a pet oriented build for s3. I would avoid the raekor set and using charge when multiboxing since at least for me it is a bit chaotic. I leveled them from 1 without paragons just to see how leveling for s3 will be and it was rather easy and fast without any actual problems. However, my demon hunter group leveled up significantly faster. Overall the leveling speed was satisfied me and i still intend 3barbs+1wd to be my team for S3.

On the other hand if you only box 2 barbs i think it will be easier to use charge when you get used to it. My advice is to try them now, before the start of season 3 to see if you like it. Also, if money is not an issue i would go to a 4man team instead of 2 since it is much more fun, xp is a lot faster and you can gear up your main a lot quicker.

[thedevilyouknow]

For season 3 (or just patch 2.2) i will be using 4x WW barbs, ive seen gameplay videos and it looks amazing

For barbs if you plan to do infinite wrath, i believe its completely immune to all CC so...couple that with whirlwind which moves through mobs unhindered, you should be completely fine.

I leveled up a few barbs just recently, i dont plan to play season 3 since im not interested in any of the s3 items yet

Leveling speed is completely determined on your skill to keep characters sync'd, after that its just playing 1 character (sorta)
i found WW barb to be the easiest to keep sync of, other than that a leap style barb, hold shift and leap, ground stomp with pull effects, cleave, rend...being a melee character and having to "chase" mobs ends badly for me

With only 2 characters though you should have a much easier time keeping characters sync'd, after that it really is just standard diablo, gearing and progression

[Yelgis]

I had problems keeping 4 WW barbs in sync when I was testing it on the PTR. The issue is keeping the barbs generating the same amount of fury and keeping fury generation high enough to WW non stop. If you ever don't generate enough fury you stop whirling which leads to desync and then if you aren't spending it fast enough you can't keep Berserker up permanently on all characers which due to its movespeed buff also leads to desync.

Now I was testing barbs without the BK weapon set. If you had that on all 4 characters, keeping fury up enough to constant WW should be much easier and the problem may solve itself. Still getting getting 2 good BK weapons for each character isn't going to be easy (you would need 8 of them for 4 boxing).

[Multinoob]

Thanks for the responses! Hadn't thought about the different rates of fury generation de-syncing WW. Sounds like it's still worth a look though.

Cheers for the info.

[Yelgis]

From what I understand the Bul Kathos weapon set fixes the problem entirely, but before then you will have issues. If you stack RCR to get the cost down you can't spend fast enough to cooldown Berserker enough to keep it up permanently and since all your fury generation while WWing comes from COTA ancients hitting targets not all characters ancients all hit at the same rate. It inevitably leads to different rates of fury gain for the characters.

Once you have full BK sets across all 4 chars it shouldn't be a big deal because they passively give 10 fury/sec. That combined with the ancients giving fury even if not always equal should be enough to maintain it on all 4 chars.

I am kinda burnt out on running teams that are that heavily reliant on a weapons though. I had tons of issues with my monk and sader teams in getting weapons for them. When the weapon is build defining you are stuck hoping they drop, at least with other slots they are 3 times cheaper to gamble so build defining items in every slot but weapon is not as painful to acquire in most cases. Trying to get two weapons for each character would be a nightmare if you aren't very lucky.

The real reason I don't want to play barbs though, is that they don't have a CC option that would work with a build. DH, Saders, WD, Wiz and Monk all have a CC skill that could be dropped into a build that makes fighting RG's much easier. Barbs do have CC immunity and very high toughness (especially with Ignore Pain Mob Rule in Round robin and Perma all rune Berserker) going for them so they are still appealing. I just really liked when IK was a pet set early on. That would have been much more playable than the current WW iteration it seems to be on (at least for multiboxxers... I can understand why some Barb fans weren't keen on IK at the beginning of the PTR).

[Las]

Have you considered playing the 4 barbs with the IK set and a HOTA or Seismic Slam build? Or do you think it will be too slow?

[thedevilyouknow]

Ive been playing WW barb with no set items...not having any issues with sync, just when CC comes into play, which...meh cant be helped

[Yelgis]

How are you keeping the fury up to whirl on all of them Devil?

[thedevilyouknow]

shouts
Passive for fury gen
spent a few hours on team, running T1 fine, no deaths
have since swapped some spells

Avalan - Lclick (3 stack x4 murders rift guardians if they dont move)
WW - Dust devils on Rclick

Furious charge - 1 (doesnt really matter what rune)
Ground stomp - 2 pull rune
Battle Cry - 3 Any rune
Earthquake - 4 because too many spins for rift guardian, again any

Passive
Brawler
Unforgiving
Animosity
Superstition

With my current DPS across the toons i dont really need to do much...WW for trash, ava for elites, earthquake cuz why not
currently not using any set items on any barbs (nothing that would really matter)

[Yelgis]

Ahh you are using superstition and animosity. I assume you are playing this at just t6? If not what is they highest GR you have done with that setup?

[thedevilyouknow]

characters are a few hours old, T1 running smoothly atm

After i get set items ?(since i have none) i can probably see GR36 or so max

[Yelgis]

Ah I see so you are still in the gearing up process. Gr 36 isn't terrible from a multibox perspective. Just managing that many characters in GR's is part of the challenge.

Barbs certainly have potential for multiboxing. If I could figure out a spec that could utilize Ground Stomp properly while still doing decent dps I would be all over them, but the way Ground Stomp mechanics work and the amount of CDR needed to get i to work makes it kinda hard to build a dps spec with it.

[Shodokan]

https://twitter.com/_JohnYang/status/585545205744558080

Looks like WW barbs are going to not be AS strong.

[Yelgis]

Yea that is unfortunate that they removed those from the loot table. The bracers added some nice toughness to the IK and Wastes builds. Now you will have to give up damage from Insanity if you want toughness, which is a much harder choice.

[Devile]

I went with barbs on non-season and I think I made the right choice. Wizards are amazing and it was the right choice for S3, but I missed how smooth Condemn Crusaders were, going very fast thru the content with perma immunity and without having to stop much. Just run around killing stuff. U simply can't do that with wizards. U have to stop, cast a kinda complex sequence of skills and keep an eye on stacks, move around to avoid ground effects, etc. Sure they can deal very high damage and clear GR40 fast, but not that fast, not to mention the lack of immunity and how squishy they can be compared to melees. Sure u can add a zDPS Crusader to help improve some of this, but still, is not rushing thru the content.

I want to do back to back GR42 or higher with full exp gear (ruby on helm, leoric/hellfire ring and leoric crown if possible) in less than 5 minutes. Or GR35 with more exp gear but in less than 3 minutes. Basically looking to get the highest amount of exp/shards per hour I can get with the least amount of effort/attention so I can watch TV and relax while doing this. Yeah, I know :D ... but I really wanna hit paragon 1000+ without burning myself from playing D3.

I wanted something that could go as fast as Condemn Crusaders or faster, be able to go thru mobs with perma immunity. Sadly, Crusaders suck right now compared to other classes and the only way to make Condemn do "ok" is to add F&R which means no Leoric's Crown and that kills your CDR unless u stack it everywhere. Doable but will be harder to build to keep 100% AC uptime. Was going to go with DHs but its the same as wizards. Sure, no complex skill sequence but still, u need to stop and cast. Strafe with Natalya's is a good choice and does very high damage, but no immunity and they are still squishy (less than before tho).

So, I tried barbs and man ... I'm glad I did. WW is so much fun!. I have suboptimal items to say the least and I'm destroying T6. I just needed 2 Immortal King's parts and whatever I had left from Crusaders and T6 goes down in like 2 minutes or less depending on density. My toughness sucks, my damage sucks, but T6 melts. Stacking Warcries and simple Ignore Pain round robin took care of survivability. I had perma immunity and pretty much never died with like 6m toughness unbuffed. Damage? My lvl45+ gems did most of it, but besides that, F&R + WW Dust Devil is crazy efficient! Single pass and all whites die. Elites take a couple circles and I'm gone. No Fury issues, pretty much no dsync issues as well. Not even using WotB. Sprint Marathon + Chilanik's take care of the movement speed.

This is my starter build:

http://www.d3planner.com/708585926

The other barbs have pretty crappy gear as well with DEX F&R and random legendaries. Tho they all have T&T, Hexing Pants and non ancient Furnaces, so that kinda makes the whole thing work very good for T6. With this I'm farming stupidly fast and relaxing. Actually too fast and sometimes its a hard to control in close maps.

Now, from what I see, I have 2 clear choices: Go with the 6 pieces WotW or go with 6 WotW + 4 IK. Not sure yet, I have a lot of farming ahead and will have to test. Again, my goal is the highest amount of exp/shards per hour, not pushing GR50+. I'm inclining to 6 WotW with Leoric's Crown + Leoric Ring + RoRG. Sure perma WotB sounds nice, but it also adds dsync if not careful and I can get perma immunity without WotW ... sure I will miss the damage, but as long as I'm hitting a good amount of exp/shards per hour, I'm ok with not doing the highest possible dps. I understand RG can be a pain so I'll have to test a lot before deciding.

Ideas?

PS: Only thing I'm not liking is Waller. Is not a big issue, but still there's no way around it. Illussory boots maybe? dunno

[Shodokan]

I went with barbs on non-season and I think I made the right choice. Wizards are amazing and it was the right choice for S3, but I missed how smooth Condemn Crusaders were, going very fast thru the content with perma immunity and without having to stop much. Just run around killing stuff. U simply can't do that with wizards. U have to stop, cast a kinda complex sequence of skills and keep an eye on stacks, move around to avoid ground effects, etc. Sure they can deal very high damage and clear GR40 fast, but not that fast, not to mention the lack of immunity and how squishy they can be compared to melees. Sure u can add a zDPS Crusader to help improve some of this, but still, is not rushing thru the content.

I want to do back to back GR42 or higher with full exp gear (ruby on helm, leoric/hellfire ring and leoric crown if possible) in less than 5 minutes. Or GR35 with more exp gear but in less than 3 minutes. Basically looking to get the highest amount of exp/shards per hour I can get with the least amount of effort/attention so I can watch TV and relax while doing this. Yeah, I know :D ... but I really wanna hit paragon 1000+ without burning myself from playing D3.

I wanted something that could go as fast as Condemn Crusaders or faster, be able to go thru mobs with perma immunity. Sadly, Crusaders suck right now compared to other classes and the only way to make Condemn do "ok" is to add F&R which means no Leoric's Crown and that kills your CDR unless u stack it everywhere. Doable but will be harder to build to keep 100% AC uptime. Was going to go with DHs but its the same as wizards. Sure, no complex skill sequence but still, u need to stop and cast. Strafe with Natalya's is a good choice and does very high damage, but no immunity and they are still squishy (less than before tho).

So, I tried barbs and man ... I'm glad I did. WW is so much fun!. I have suboptimal items to say the least and I'm destroying T6. I just needed 2 Immortal King's parts and whatever I had left from Crusaders and T6 goes down in like 2 minutes or less depending on density. My toughness sucks, my damage sucks, but T6 melts. Stacking Warcries and simple Ignore Pain round robin took care of survivability. I had perma immunity and pretty much never died with like 6m toughness unbuffed. Damage? My lvl45+ gems did most of it, but besides that, F&R + WW Dust Devil is crazy efficient! Single pass and all whites die. Elites take a couple circles and I'm gone. No Fury issues, pretty much no dsync issues as well. Not even using WotB. Sprint Marathon + Chilanik's take care of the movement speed.

This is my starter build:

http://www.d3planner.com/708585926

The other barbs have pretty crappy gear as well with DEX F&R and random legendaries. Tho they all have T&T, Hexing Pants and non ancient Furnaces, so that kinda makes the whole thing work very good for T6. With this I'm farming stupidly fast and relaxing. Actually too fast and sometimes its a hard to control in close maps.

Now, from what I see, I have 2 clear choices: Go with the 6 pieces WotW or go with 6 WotW + 4 IK. Not sure yet, I have a lot of farming ahead and will have to test. Again, my goal is the highest amount of exp/shards per hour, not pushing GR50+. I'm inclining to 6 WotW with Leoric's Crown + Leoric Ring + RoRG. Sure perma WotB sounds nice, but it also adds dsync if not careful and I can get perma immunity without WotW ... sure I will miss the damage, but as long as I'm hitting a good amount of exp/shards per hour, I'm ok with not doing the highest possible dps. I understand RG can be a pain so I'll have to test a lot before deciding.

Ideas?

PS: Only thing I'm not liking is Waller. Is not a big issue, but still there's no way around it. Illussory boots maybe? dunno

Focus and restraint is too much damage to give up for speed farming.

[Devile]

It's all about efficiency and exp/hour. Sure F&R is a lot of damage, but what if instead I go down 8 GR levels and use full exp gear? Maybe that gives me more exp/h than full dps in a higher GR. That's the point of this for me. I'm not looking for the highest damage, but highest exp/h. I plan to test with different builds and GR level, record all my findings and see what's the best overall. Will take a long time tho since I can't get results from a couple runs. Prolly 10+ runs to get an idea, find trends, etc.

[Shodokan]

It's all about efficiency and exp/hour. Sure F&R is a lot of damage, but what if instead I go down 8 GR levels and use full exp gear? Maybe that gives me more exp/h than full dps in a higher GR. That's the point of this for me. I'm not looking for the highest damage, but highest exp/h. I plan to test with different builds and GR level, record all my findings and see what's the best overall. Will take a long time tho since I can't get results from a couple runs.

Using two exp items ( hellfire ring and leorics) isn't really going to garner that much of a difference. Look at the 1k+ paragon dude. Its a 300 paragon difference but thats with bjorn's, cain's, helm, hellfire.

If you can do a 40 in 4 mins or a 36 in 4 mins with EXP gear it might even out. Hell you doing a 36 in ~2 mins and getting double the rifts per hour you are going to get more exp than with the exp gear still. With how barb setups are working right now you are relegated to 6/2 with any EXP gear usage.

[Devile]

Will have to test different setups on different GR to see whats the fastest exp. So far, I'm having a lot of fun with Barbs. Made a quick video on a GR37, speedfarm. Wrong belt and wrong round robin timings cause of less CDR, but it worked nice anyway:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grysXn7N1iI

Will make a full guide later on. RNG has treated me very well with quite a few ancients so far.