Diablo – As a Barbarian, how to be effective in coop

diablo-3diablo-3-barbarian

I've took a chance to play barbarian during the free open Diablo 3 beta and, while playing solo with it was just fine, I had quite some trouble in co-op. This is slightly concerning, since Diablo doesn't offer so far a true "single player" mode when I can just do things at my own pace.

Even with my boots (+7% to movement speed), I constantly found myself behind the line of other players, both because I have slight OCD about killing and picking up ALL the things and because I'm just not faster than other classes. This means that typically everything is dead by the time I get in melee range and thus I only have barrels to generate rage on.

What can I do to address this? I nokw it's dangerous to just throw myself in there, but I'm a barbarian. Melee is what I do.

Best Answer

There are a few Barbarian skills that charge at enemies and generate fury which should be used often. Leap is one you gain fairly early on, and you can even use it to jump up and down ledges or across chasms where other classes have to run around. You should generally be running ahead of players rather than lagging behind.

Also remember that you can build up Fury just by attacking things like crates. Keep your fury high even without any enemies around so that you're ready to go when you do find something to kill.

Barbarians (and Monks) get a passive 30% damage resistance to make up for their melee natures, and tend to have higher vitality and health than the other classes. Against many enemies, it is the right thing to do to just jump in and start causing havoc. Barbarians are good at distracting enemies while their teammates do damage, so try to focus on that rather than claiming the final blow. You get full experience and drops whether you're the one landing the finishing hit or not.