Your Barbarian and You: Part I

Meet the Meatshield

If you ever played Blizzard’s flagship, World of Warcraft, then you will be familiar with the term Meatshield. If not, this term refers to the class or specialization that gets the (un)glamorous job of bearing the brunt of the damage. In essence, this is the Barbarian. With high damage/armor/health, and low avoidance and self heals, the Barbarian qualifies as the meatshield of Diablo III. However as I will soon explain, this class is still quite enjoyable despite some lacking mechanics.

The Barbarian hero is your classic warrior type, which basically boils down to this: high damage output, but a high damage intake. Unfortunately this tends not to work in our favor, as enemy damage far outscales our own. However, this only becomes true in the latter parts of Hell mode onwards; much of the leveling experience can be done with a strong offensive build.

First things First:

The most important piece of gear for your Barb is your weapon(s), without a doubt. A new weapon will change your DPS more than any other piece of gear (assuming of course you’re not using inferior quality armor). Continuing with weapon importance, one of the larger decisions is to use a 2H weapon, 2 1H weapons, or a 1H and a shield. This decision affects Fury generation the most, as dualwielding produces more than a 2H which produces more than a 1H and shield. To be honest, this decision is usually most influenced on what weapons you find or are able to afford, so be flexible while leveling. Also, Fury, while an important class mechanic, is not necessarily our largest source of DPS, but more on that in Part II. Finally, understand that Barbs are more gear dependant than Ranged heroes, and have a little higher learning curve. Barbs can be frustrating, but they can also be incredibly fun to play. Stick around and see for yourself in Part II: Let’s get active! Ability overview for the Barbarian’s 22 active skills.

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’][/author_image] [author_info]This article was written by Eric N. Eric has been a hardcore gamer for all his life and plays a Barbarian in Diablo 3 and he is currently having lots of success in Inferno.[/author_info] [/author]

Belial is in my opinion the most difficult encounter in the whole game. Mainly because his attacks hit REALLY hard and it’s really easy to get one shot if you don’t move out of the way of an attack.

Here’s a video guide of the encounter if you don’t feel like reading.

Belial Phase 1:

Phase one is straightforward. Belial will just summon a whole bunch of small minions that you need to kill. Just don’t get surrounded and you should be fine.

After you kill his main wave of minions “mini Belial” will jump down.  This again is pretty simple.  He’ll run around the map and summon small adds.  Just focus on Belial an let the adds come to you.

Belial Phase 2:

Phase two is the difficult part of the encounter. Belial turns into his true form and brings you to his hellish realm.

He has three main attacks during phase 2:

1. Combo #1, the “jab, hook, cross”
• This ability does large damage and can take you down to 1/4th life very easily in one shot and kill you outright if it crits, so it’s critical to dodge.  You’ll know he’s about to use this attack when the green spinny globe appears on the ground.  When you see this STOP ATTACKING IMMEDIATELY and run away, preferably toward the center of the ledge and not the outsides so that you have more room to dodge his subsequent attacks.
• I call this ability the “jab,hook, cross” because he will follow up his initial attack with another blow from his other arm, and follow that attack with an attack from both arms.  Once you see the first circle appear run away and keep moving.  Don’t even worry about DPS during this portion, your job is to avoid getting hit by the three attacks that are coming.
2. Fire breath
• After Combo #1 Belial will usually perform a fire breath that damages all players standing in a the middle of his platform. You can avoid this damage by running to the sides but I found I was able to tank it just fine and didn’t need to worry about dodging it.
3. The “Good luck, you’re f*cked” ability
• After a few rounds of combo #1 and fire breath Belial will dig both of his arms into the ground on the east and west side of the platform you’re standing on and proceed to rain green fire on your head.  This is by far the most difficult part of the encounter to survive.
• I probably died a good half dozen times to this fire before I figured out that it wasn’t random.
• The fire is not random.
• The fire is not random.
• One more time.  The fire is not random. The green globes indicating where the fire will land spawn at your feet and pulse and grow for about a second before the actual damaging portion of the attack will land.  So don’t panic and move methodically. If you panic and just run flat out around the map you’ll ensure that the entire map gets filled by fire and that you have no room to left to stand on.
• However if you take small steps just barely outside the radius of where the fire will land you should have enough “fire-free” room left to stand in and survive through the barrage of fireballs.

 

Key abilities of the Monk to surviving this fight:

• Serenity with the 4 second invulnerability rune.  Pop this when you can’t move fast enough to dodge one of his big attacks or when you get stuck in the middle of fire with nowhere to go.
• Deadly reach with any rune you like.  The range of deadly reach is invaluable when you’re fighting Belial as you’ll be running around a lot and don’t want to have to run right up next to him in order to DPS.  This will also make it easier for you to dodge his attacks.
• Other then those two skills the rest are up to you.  Find what works for you and try different things out!

Click to move

Click to move is a crucial keybind that you need to use in order to survive this fight. What the click to move button does(it’s under your gameplay keybinds) is that when you use this button it acts as a movement command for you to move wherever your mouse is. Normally you can move OR attack with the left click/right click buttons, and this is determined by whether your mouse is on an area of the screen without a monster or targeted on a monster.

Since Belial’s hitbox ix huge it is extremely easy to misclick when you’re trying to dodge his attacks and therefore rather than running away you’ll often end up standing and attacking him if you don’t use click to move.

I have click to move bound to my spacebar. Play around with it and see where you like it.

Belial is a challenging fight but very doable when you learn his patterns.

That’s all I have for this post, stay healthy, stay active and go get that legendary loot! You can find more Monk guides here. Click here to read my Act 2 Inferno Zoltun Kulle solo guide.