Changes

Ceaseless clan warfare and the constant struggle to survive in the hostile wilderness are reflected in the Barbarian's sturdy and powerful frame. Though perhaps lacking the sophistication of city-folk, the Barbarian has an acute awareness of his surroundings. Because of his shamanistic belief in the animal powers with whom he identifies, the Barbarian is sometimes associated with stories of lycanthropy. In fact, he believes he can call upon totemic animal spirits to infuse him with supernormal strengths and abilities, but these only work to improve his already superb battle-tactics.

Whilst it appears he will not be experiencing too many problems in the early stages of the game he is not going to be able to display as much bravado in later levels where he'll come up against the serious magic-casting monsters. He'll need to watch his resistances as he doesn't really specialise in long-ranged attacks as you'd expect so the chances of him being successfully hit by a spell-caster when going toe-to-toe are touching 100%. Also his 'Natural Resistance' skill doesn't become available until he's reached Clvl 30. The long-ranged attacks that have been confirmed are 'Double Throw' in Combat Skills and of course his 'Throwing Mastery'. However points can't be added to the former until he reaches a Clvl of 12. His starting strength is the highest of all the characters so finding some heavy duty armour ASAP will be his own personal quest. Raising his AC with 'Shout' will only be a temporary stop-gap and as he's not exactly mana-man he'll not be able to do that continuously to compensate for inferior armour.

A varied bunch of skills the Warcries are. There is a lot of variety in this tree indeed, ranging from attack skills to aura-like bonuses to corpse skills. There are actually 7 "War Cries" here, the other 3 are corpse skills, grouped in here by default.

The three corpse skills are very useful as well. Find Item is one of the most powerful skills in the game, in terms of finding good equipment, and Find Potion can be very helpful also, for the more patient Barbarian. Grim Ward is one of the neatest skills in the game in concept and appearance, but it's hardly needed or used in the game, since the Barbarian is so powerful in other areas that it's icing on the icing on the triple chocolate chip fudge cake.

A good plan is to find two echoing weapons, and use them on your weapon switch. Echoing is a prefix that gives +3 to all Warcries, and obviously two of these gives +6 to every skill in this tree. You switch weapons, cast Battle Orders and any others, then go back to your normal weapons. Dual Echoing is very useful for Find Item and Potion also, taking them instantly to Slvl 7 (or higher, with other equipment) which is good odds on both.

Masteries increase the Barbarian's efficiency in the use of weapons such as swords, axes, pole-arms and even ranged attacks with his Throwing Mastery. A Barbarian needs to pick one mastery (or possibly two if you go with Throwing) and stick with it, eventually putting the maximum 20 skill points into it. Bonuses from your Masteries add to your damage with every attack skill, so should be maxed out first. If you are using mostly Whirlwind but with some Berserk, some Leap Attack, and some Frenzy, more points in your mastery will make all of those more effective.

Other than the six weapon masteries, there are four other passive skills in this tree, all of which deserve at least one point. Increased Stamina is helpful, though not mandatory. Increased Speed is the same, basically a luxury, but running faster means you get to each battle quicker, move faster in town, can escape trouble more rapidly, and is just generally more fun. It's hard to resist a point there. Iron Skin is helpful for your defense, and Natural Resistance is one of the most useful skills in the entire game. Certainly the other six character classes would trade most any of their skills to for one that gave them free resistance.

All the Weapon Masteries give a % chance of hitting for double damage, just like the Amazon's Critical Strike skill. This bonus is calculated after all other damage, including bonus from strength and skills, so it doubles the total damage, often a number in the thousands. This has always been the case, but the double damage bonus was not displayed in the skill description before D2X.

The true Barbarian skills, all sorts of "hit things hard" abilities with some classic names such as 'Bash', 'Stun', and 'Berserk'. All very savage-sounding and just what you'd expect a Barbarian to possess. In addition to these single hit skills, there are crowd control attacks that hit multiple targets, and ways to increase your attack speed. More variety than you might expect.

More [[Barbarian Combat Skills]] stats and details.