Blizzcon Barbarian Observations

Here's an excerpt from a sort of general audience D3 @ Blizzcon article I wrote for incgamers.com. (Not yet online.) I'll get into some more detailed gameplay reports this weekend, once the rush of getting the skills articles online is past. But here's something for now.


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The Wizard, Witch Doctor, and Barbarian were all playable as well. (Cleverly, only those three characters were visible to select when the show first began at 10am, but around 12:30, when the opening ceremonies ended, the Monk was suddenly added to the character selection screen.) Each of the other three characters were improved and refined from last year's version, with huge changes to their skill trees and the order of their skills. This year's demo characters were higher level as well, allowing players to experiment with a wider variety of spells and techniques. "New" characters started out at level 6 last year. This year they started at level 12, and could be leveled up to 14 or 15, in the much larger "dungeon" area.

The Barbarian, like the Wizard, will be immediately familiar to any experienced action RPG gamer. He's the archetypal warrior, huge and crushing, a master of brute force attacks. He can dual wield weapons, use a weapon and a shield, or confidently use the largest two-handed polearms and axes. Even his basic Attack is impressive, not that you'll want to settle for that very often, with a variety of melee attacks such as the mega-damage Bash or the multi-target striking Cleave, or... well actually, those two were pretty much it, at Blizzcon. The Barbarian has a surprising number of low level passives and defensive skills, virtually none of which were of any use or need in the Blizzcon demo. Playing the Barbarian was actually somewhat disappointing, if you'd seen him demonstrated in panels or gameplay movies, since those always show off his awesome higher level offensive skills, none of which were usable in the Blizzcon demo.

The most interesting thing to experiment with on a new Barbarian was his Fury resource system. Fury replaces mana for the Barbarian (the Monk and Wizard will also have alternate mana-like resources, but these were not yet implemented) and it works something like the Warrior class's Rage, in World of Warcraft. As the Barbarian deals damage, his Fury meter fills up, enabling him to use his special attacks, which expend various amounts of Fury when they are used. Fury is meant to limit the Barbarian's ability to constantly use his most powerful attacks, but the developers want players to have fun and the Barbarian to be awesome. So they're constantly tweaking the Fury refill rate and the spell costs. The idea is to let players use Fury non-stop in big battles, providing it's being used wisely. Any special attack that hits multiple enemies, or does big damage to a single enemy, will usually restore enough Fury to pay for itself. Some attacks, such as the swiping, multi-hitting Cleave, could quickly fill more Fury than they cost to use. Higher level skills will presumably be even more damaging, leading to a faster Fury refill. There are also passive skills that increase Fury gain and/or reduce the rate at which is seeps away between fights.

In effect, the Fury refilling system encourages the Barbarian to find large mobs of monsters and powerful single targets (like bosses), since he can go all out on those, while weak individual monsters will cost him more Fury to kill than they're worth in return. While playing, I found myself regularly running off and leaving the last survivor or two in large battles, always hungry for another big mob upon which to expend my Fury. I just needed some lesser, girlie-man character in my party to pick off the stragglers for me.|||Thanks for that Flux!|||Wow, so he feels much more like a 'Barbarian' I suppose, looking to throw himself into battle.