The king of close quarter combat, they don’t come more vicious than the savage Barbarian. The Barbarian has more weapons and armour options that any other character. There isn’t much subtlety to this class, as it basically revolves around being in a position to get close enough to something to hack it open.

Therefore, Strength is obviously the stat you want to beef up on. At every level, three points should go into strength, with the defensive Dexterity coming in as the second most important. Like the Amazon, when Strength reaches about 60, you are assured use of almost every item in the game.

Unlike the Amazon, the Barbarian does not require a high level of specialisation. Indeed, one of his advantages lies in his capacity to pick up anything damaging and go wild on evil with it. Axes and swords are the default setting of weapons, but don’t discount the Anti-Undead Mace or the rare but powerful Pole-Arms.

Barbarian specialty skills are many. They can be combined in many thousands of ways. Choose one weapon specialisation, such as Pole-Arm or Axe and drop every bit of skill into it. Keep pumping up your strength and you’ll be easily taking out daemons with each hit. Take a few points in Leap, a few points in Two-hand Attack, a few points in Bash and suddenly you have a hit-and-run warrior. Mana and life stealing weapons can turn a high-level Barbarian into an unstoppable foe. An essential skill for the Barbarians is definitely Leap. This is a skill that can utterly change your combat strategy. Instead of simply being a war machine, this turns you into a whirling dervish. It can get you in and out of combat, allow you to pick out specific targets and is of especial use against Diablo himself.

The Warcries are an underrated Barbarian skill. The Warcry itself at level 30 is basically the best weapon you’ll have. Nor should you ignore Bash. A simple level one skill, even a few points put into it will give you an extra strong punch that can give you the edge against the powerful Super Unique creatures

- Spitfire

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