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I'm just about to start inferno on my barbarian, and I've heard that you need + Resist All Element gear, As the elite mobs are super rough to deal with. I was just curious as to how much do you need, and how important is it over armor/main stats such as strength for a barbarian like myself?

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  • Pretty important, I can't survive like halfway through Act I on inferno as a Barb :(
    – Emerica.
    Commented Jun 11, 2012 at 19:30

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Resistance is super important. I recommend about 300 all res for inferno act I. 500-800 for act II, 800-1000 for act III and 1000+ for act IV. Be prepared to let your hp drop at first when you gather resistance gear. I cleared act I inferno with 24k hp but around 500 all resistances.

Warcry with the Impunity rune helps a lot to get to those resistance goals.

Then also don't neglect armor, I'd say 6000-7000 armor with Warcry up is a good goal for act I. DPS isn't that important, but 10k sure is nice to have, but lets say 7k is the lower bound.

Edit: As a follower use the enchantress and train the skill Powered Armor. This will also help with your issues.

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  • my monk with 1k Loh 1.2k res 9k armor still can't stand in a puddle of plague on inferno ponies without melting. :(
    – l I
    Commented Jun 12, 2012 at 1:49
  • It's a good thing you can move out of it though, unless you melt in one hit :)
    – Philipp
    Commented Jun 12, 2012 at 8:52
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Technically, resistance (well, resist all) is always important, it's just that you really don't see "resist all" gear showing up in the early game, and you can certainly get away with not having any. The armor that most gear already has on it will do fine... until Inferno.

The game really doesn't do a good job of explaining it, but armor and resist all do the exact same job. This is unusual, as most games have armor for physical damage and resistances for magical. In Diablo3, armor mitigates all damage, and every damage type also has a corresponding resistance (including physical).

As a stat, resist all is ten times more powerful than armor, so ideally you want to keep your resistances at around one tenth of your armor. This is the mathematical 'sweet spot' where you're getting the most bang for your item-level buck.

Specific values depend on exactly which act you're on. I've been doing fine with 500/5000 in ActI, but that just won't cut it in ActII. Bear in mind that Blizzard are aiming to ship a balance-patch this month, so I'd be wary of blowing 10M gold on getting your stats up to par, only to find yourself broke and overgeared.

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500-800 resistance will work in act 2 if you are willing to die a lot. Until patch 1.03 unless you have 50,000,000+ to spend you will have a ridiculously hard time in act 2.

With 900+ resists, 7k+ armor, 22k HP, and 11k DPS and I am getting melted by white mobs. It's not that fun to zerg white mobs in my opinion.

I have experimented with quite a few builds and have yet to find something that allows me to play through act 2 with any kind of certainty.

It seems that unless you have a ton of gold the current economy requires you to farm for a really long time as a barbarian. Ranged classes can get to act 3 and 4 with shit gear because they can kite.

Kiting is possible as a barb, but I'm not a big fan of this playstyle as the class is geared around melee play.

It is a very depressing place to be as a Barbarian and is due in large part to ridiculously priced items on the AH.

Note: I have tried a very very high dps build with about 500 resist and 20k+ DPS. Killing the mobs faster didn't help because my health still melts like butter.

The balance is way off. I can do act 1 inferno easily with a good portion of my gold finding gear on. But in act 2 full defence spec and full defensive gear I still get pummelled.

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  • While your resist and armor are great, you've sacrificed far too much vitality. At around 500 or so resist, you start gaining very small percentages at the cost of a large amount of health.
    – Domocus
    Commented Jun 11, 2012 at 20:11
  • Agreed. I have been switching sooo much since I got to act 2. Perhaps I'll trade up some resists for some vitality and monitor the effects.
    – Robotsushi
    Commented Jun 11, 2012 at 20:16
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    @Domocus Effective Health>>> Actual Health... Also he was referencing HP for act 1 only with that number. But don't stop at 500, get to 800+ for noticeable tanking. As a monk with self buffs up I could start tanking Ponies at 800 resist, 10k armor, 35% chance to dodge and 37kHP. I'm Up to 1050 resists, 10.8k armor, 46.6% chance to dodge and 39kHP, and I can tank ponies pretty well. I'm also at roughly 1k life on hit too, that helps a lot!
    – Dave
    Commented Jun 11, 2012 at 20:18
  • @Dave I understand that, but you obviously missed my point. He is sacrificing a large amount of actual HP for a small increase in Effective Hp, which is in fact, a lower increase. Having a large amount of resist and other stats requires a large amount of money, especially when the question is for a person just starting inferno.
    – Domocus
    Commented Jun 11, 2012 at 21:20
  • @Domocus He's just starting inferno so it's not like her nerfed himself from 60kHP, probably more like 30k, and gaining that 300 resistance is huge. And as a tank I found it more effective to look for resistances, armor, and vit on my starting gear, then worried about my main stat once I could actually tank, because yes, tank stats with gear on it is very expensive.
    – Dave
    Commented Jun 11, 2012 at 23:55
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If just starting inferno, then yeah i cleared act 1 with 250 all resist 32k hp and 8k dps sword and board armour at around 6k all unbuffed, then using warcry it was around 400 res. I did find better gear from doing loads of Butcher WardenN 1atchtower runs.

I would say stick with those stats and a 26% or higher shield and 750 + dps weap and you can comfrtoably farm good gear, especially as the new patch comes in tomorrow. Finally be able to get gear to progress to act 2 without spending millions on AH!!

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