Index - Page One

1. Foreword - a foreword.
2. Some (Ok, Quite A Lot) Abbreviations - a list of common abbreviations you'll find in D2 and on fora like the LL.
3. An Overview - a general look at the Barbarian, what he does, what he doesn't.
     a) The Basics
     b) The Finer Points
4. Equipment - what you wear.
     a) About Weapons
     b) One-Handed Or Two-Handed?

1. Foreword

(Note: MMAgCh has retired from the scene and did not wish to have his email address listed.)

Well, hello there. :^) As you may've noticed from reading the heading, 'tis a guide to the Barbarian, yer friendly head-smashin' demon-bashin' melee fighter extraordinaire from the North. Be warned, it will be a long guide.

Reason for this is that there are many, many playing styles. You can go W/S (weapon/shield), use two weapons at the same time, swing a mighty pole axe, wreak havoc from afar using throwing or shooting weapons, whatever you desire...and then there are the skills. There are the War Cries (with three skills which aren't really cries), Combat Skills, and Combat Masteries. As with all characters, this makes for a total of 30 skills and a helluvalotta ways to distribute your precious (*gollum*) skill points. And of course, there are many stances on how to distribute your stat points. All this and more will be covered in this guide.

Of course, this guide has also been written with the intention to counter the many bad Barbarian guides on the net (e.g those who deem people to "suck" when they do not choose to use Whirlwind as their main attack). While my guide certainly is nowhere near perfect, I have tried to consider as many things as possible in it, even (and perhaps especially) those that aren't "mainstream" and henceforth have not ever been really considered by many players on battle.net. (Can you say Grim Ward, for example?)

Please note that this is only a GUIDE. It is, in NO way, meant to show the "ultimately-set-in-stone"-styles for the Barbarian. There are no such styles. Basically, most of the stuff in here has been collected by the author (from his and others' experiences) and put into text form, including typos and really bad grammar, fixed by Bolty. :)

While I have usually been trying to remain as objective as possible, you will also find stuff here that worked for ME, or which expresses MY opinion.. It needn't apply to YOU. So please don't go complainin' that my guide's wrong unless it's a matter of fact. It may not match your playing style, but that's not the point. Perhaps it's wrong for you, but it ain't wrong for me; else I wouldn't write it, would I? Feel free to disagree. Don't like it, don't read it. ;Þ

Everything in this guide is said under the assumption you are going to fight monsters, not other players. There are no PvP strategies to be found here. If you want that, go somewhere else, you won't find it here. I hate PKers and I don't like dueling or whatever you call it. Any eMails asking about such things will be ignored.

Finally, please note that this guide deals with vanilla Diablo II, not with any mods. Comments about changes etc. in v1.03 are found all over the guide.

2. Some (Ok, Quite A Lot) Abbreviations

There's a number of abbreviations in this guide with which you should be familiar; they are listed here for easy reference. Some abbreviations may, on occasion, also be capitalized (or not) - this has no effect on their meaning, it is merely an indication that the author was terribly bored, or the CapsLock key on his 'board was broken.

AR - Attack Rating
DR - Defense Rating
clvl - Character Level
HP - Hit Points; Life
Str - Strength
Dex - Dexterity
Vit - Vitality
En - Energy
slvl - Skill Level
XP - Experience Points
WW - Whirlwind; an offensive skill
LA - Leap Attack; another offensive skill
dam - Damage
res - Resistance(s); often followed up by the type of resistance (e.g. res fire, res all) or vice versa (lightning res).
HtH - Hand-to-hand (combat)
1H - One-handed
2H - Two-handed
H-L - high-level (item, mastery, character...)
Exc - Exceptional (item)
WP - Way Point
FP - Find Potion; a skill on the War Cry tab
LEB - Lightning Enchanted Boss
3DS - Socketed shield with three (usually perfect) diamonds, for the best possible resists
GW - Grim Ward; a skill on the War Cry tab
LOS - Line of Sight
TP - Town Portal
FI - Find Item; a skill on the War Cry tab
InSt - Increase Stamina; a skill on the Combat Masteries tab
InSp - Increase Speed; a skill on the Combat Masteries tab
CD - Classic Diablo, the original, sans-mods-one.
BO - Battle Orders; a skill on the War Cry tab
BC - Battle Command; a skill on the War Cry tab. Could also stand for Battle Cry, but commonly it is used for Battle Command.
MD - Magical Damage. Usually found in conjuction with items/affixes that reduce such damage taken.
LBoD - Lightning Blast (Breath, Beam) of Death; Diablo's lightning attack, a most feared one.
CS - Chaos Sanctuary, The. Could be either Blizzard's D2-guide or the last area in Act IV.
AoE - Area of Effect; something that doesn't affect only the monster it's targetted at.
IS - Iron Skin; a skill on the Combat Masteries tab
IM - Iron Maiden; a curse which reflects damage back at you.
NR - Natural Resistances; a skill on the Combat Masteries tab
Amp - Amplify Damage; a curse that doubles the physical damage you take
OK - Oblivion Knight; a rather nasty spellcaster/cursing monster in the CS
CB - Charged Bolt(s) or Crushing Blow, depending on the situation.
FPM - Full Plate Mail.
DvM - Defense vs. Missiles; an effect only found on a few unique items. It is quite pathetic outside of Normal diff.
YMMV - You Make Me Vomit... :-) Commonly interpreted as Your Mileage May Vary, though.

Note: referring to "gems" includes skulls as well. Another note: should you stumble upon other abbreviations you think are important but are not yet listed here, contact me so I can add them.

3. An Overview

a) The Basics

Who exactly is the Barbarian? As far as the manual goes, they live in the North, where they guard some mysterious source of power inside Mount Arreat, important for the welfare of all humanity (simply put). Hmm, hoom.

From a player's point of view, the Barbarian is a very strong character who excels at melee combat (although he has some skills which can be considered ranged attacks, or support thereof). He has five masteries dedicated to those forms of attacking; sword, axe, mace, pole arm, and spear. He has a mastery dedicated to throwing weapons, too.

Ah yes, masteries...they are what makes the Barbarian such an easy character to play. What do his masteries add? Let's see. AR, critical hits, damage, resists, defense rating, stamina, running/walking speed...and they are *passive*, we're not even talking about active skills yet. One bloody skill tab full of passive skills. What other class can do this? NO other class.

On the other hand, while it may seem that the Barbarian is a primitive character, only focused on stupidly smashing his way through the dungeons, this is not the case. Indeed, simple "hacking away" will bring him nowhere, especially later on, and versus some certain nasty monsters. There's a time and a place for WW, but there's also a time and a place where it will fail miserably. So what does the Barbarian need to be successful?

Attack Rating. He's going to spend a lot of time trying to make monsters go "ow," so he needs to make sure he hits them. Thus, he needs AR. And plenty of it. The most obvious source for this is Dexterity; however, masteries can also significantly substitute AR. Also, bonuses to AR can be gained through magical items and through certain gemmed helms/weapons.

Next, Defense Rating. Monsters will spend a lot of time trying to make him go "ow," so he needs to make sure they don't hit him. Thus, he needs DR. And plenty of it. That is, unless he stays clear of the baddies until they can be safely disposed of (ya, that's doable, too). Again, you can gain more DR by raising Dexterity or wearing armor (which includes body armor, helms, shields, gloves, belts and boots). There are also passive and active skills which increase your DR; and last but not least, some special non-armor items can increase your DR, too. Of course, seeing as how shields' blocking percentage reduces ANY monster's overall to-hit% by that value, there's no real reason to bother with DR much unless you don't use a shield for some reason.

Damage. He wants the monsters to be dead asap (who doesn't?), so he needs to do much damage. An increase in damage can be achieved by raising Strength, or simply by wearing bigger (or enchanted) weapons; many skills increase damage, too.

You also want to have enough life and mana. Every now and then, you WILL be hit, no matter what your stats are, thus it's good to have a fair amount of hitpoints so you don't go down after two blows. You need mana to execute skills, which should be self-explanatory.

You need Resistances, too; many monsters use magical attacks, usually based on Fire, Lightning, Cold, or Poison, and it's good if the amount of damage you take is decreased, because some attacks really hurt.

This was a lot of stuff and yet only a brief overview. It takes time to consider it all, and it is virtually impossible to master the Barbarian. Let's start off with the basics: your initial attributes.

As you can see, Str is the most prominent stat, followed closely by Vit. However, Dex isn't less important; in the beginning, you should mainly increase Str, to keep up with items' requirements. Later on, Dex will become more and more important (for item requirements and AR). Certainly a high Vit stat can't hurt either, as you get four hitpoints per Vit point. Don't worry too much about En; increasing it isn't too beneficial (as the En ==> mana rate is 1:1), and you will likely find that acquiring mana-increasing gear is more effective (and we're not even talking about mana-stealing yet). So, don't consider raising it; it won't matter, and those stat points are better spent on the other attributes.

Your stats don't ever max out; you can go on pumping them as long as you want (and can). Keep in mind that some high-end (and I DO mean high-end) items carry extremely high requirements, so you should meet them in time or you may find yourself unable to use these items.

Of course, one of the most important choices is the weapon(s) you will be using. There's three general ways of warfare for the Barbarian.

a) Using a weapon and a shield. This is probably the safest method; the shield gives additional DR and the chance of blocking an attack among additional goodies (read: magical effects). Since you can only use one weapon, your damage will not equal those of 2H-weapons (at least not without major damage modifiers), so you will need additional levels in weapon masteries and more points in Str to keep up with them. It's also possible to use a throwing weapon and a shield at the same time. As you can block almost any kind of attack, shields are a somewhat cheesy substitute for DR, seeing as how a good shield will keep you safe from about 50% of all attacks. Now try that with DR. Isn't possible as easily, is it?

b) Using two weapons. You forfeit the DR and blocking of a shield here. Keep in mind that the effects on the weapons usually affect only the weapon they're found on; e.g. life/mana steal will only occur when that particular weapon scores a hit. 2H-swords can be used 1H'ed by the Barbarian, but their damage will be lower. However, you have quite a damage potential when using two weapons; skills like Stun are very effective, considering you can stun an enemy with one weapon and immediately follow up with the second weapon. Of course this way of playing can also mean wielding two throwing weapons at the same time. Double Throw can prove effective here.

c) Using one, 2H-weapon. This includes 2H-swords as well as 2H-axes, pole arms, spears, staves and even bows. You'll most likely have slower swing speeds here, but it just looks so damn cool. :^) Ok, so this was not a real advantage. H-L 2H-weapons can do significant amounts of damage; combined with skills like Leap Attack and/or high-level masteries, this can get plain vicious. Of course this does not apply for bows; they have other advantages.

Weapons will be discussed in the equipment section. Let's consider the stats in more detail now.

b) The Finer Points

Strength - Str is needed for two things: wearing/wielding items, and increasing the damage of your melee weapons. It's obvious that a high Str is required for high-end items. Ornate Armor, the very best (base DR-wise) armor you can hope to find, requires 170 Str to wear; that's a whole lot. For increasing damage, simply think of Str as a percentage that adds to the weapon base damage. E.g. 100 Str would double the base damage, and so on. Pumping Str is never a bad idea unless you're short of AR or hitpoints.

Dexterity - Dex increases AR/DR (though the increase in the latter is minimal) and is also needed to wield some weapons. If you find your ToHit-chance isn't that good, it's a good idea to pump Dex, though some people advocate to try and find items that increase AR instead...to each his own, however, those people do have a point. Alternatively, you can also allocate skill points to skills that affect your AR; masteries, for example. Bows use Dex to determine their damage, and it works just like Str in that regard. As long as the weapons you use (or plan on using) require no Dex, you might be better off putting points in Str or Vit and getting AR through items and skills.

Vitality - Vit is a nice stat. The Barbarian gets four(!) HPs per point assigned to Vit - that makes a total of up to 24 hitpoints per level-up, and it's thus relatively easy to reach a high amount of life simply by adding a lot of points here. Vit also increases your Stamina, and finally, when drinking a health potion there is a (Vit/5)% chance that it will heal twice as many hit points as it says, this chance being capped at 95% (but no normal being would have 475 Vit anyway).

Energy - I dare say that pumping En is, in most cases, an utter waste of points. The returns are bad (1 Mana per En point). Many items (especially rares) you find along your way will often increase mana, and of course there's also mana-stealing items (or those that add some points when killing a monster). If you concentrate on melee combat, you should have no problems stealing back the mana you spend.

Attack Rating - this determines your chance of hitting a monster. Obviously, the higher, the better. You can get this through raising Dex and via items, which could be magical (including set, unique, rare) or socketed with certain gems. Also, many combat skills and masteries further enhance your AR.

Defense Rating - this determines your chance of avoiding being hit by a monster. The higher, the better, BUT (and this is a big but), all monsters have four times the AR they are originally supposed to have (some monsters even more than that). That means that the "chance to be hit by a L x monster" pop ups on the char screen are BS, simple as that. This is where the so-called advantage of using a shield kicks in. You could see the blocking percentage as an actual decrease in monsters' final to-hit chance by just that amount, no matter how much AR they have. Thus, a shield with 50% blocking keeps you safe from 50% of the attacks at all times. As you can imagine, this is a serious drawback when you don't want to use a shield. Add in the AR-issue and you are forced to have a really large amount of DR to have any chance of surviving on higher difficulty levels. That means 2000+ on Hell diff. Yep, it's a cruel world. Also, make sure to stay clear of Vulture Demons: nothing hits more often that those *!"&$%& bastards.

Damage - as you've probably noticed, damage is expressed as min - max. Many weapons with high max damage have relatively low min damage. But what is better to go for? High min damage or high max damage? From my utterly biased POV, I'd go for min damage. Reason for this is that you need to inflict a certain amount of damage to stun a monster (1/12 of their hitpoints), and the higher your min damage, the better your chance of reaching that amount. Min damage is what you're guaranteed to inflict (before non-player modifiers kick in, that is), max damage is what you might inflict if you're lucky. In general, it's rather bad if min and max damage differ greatly (it's what makes the Sorceress' Lightning spell so bad, for example). Just take your average bardiche: damage 1-27. Great, sometimes you inflict as much as 27 damage, sometimes it's only one bloody point. For this reason, items with increased min damage should be preferred over those with increased max damage.

Hit Points - whether you like it or not, you'll be hit quite often, and hit points are what keeps you from biting the dust after the first hit. You get HPs through your Vit stat and through items; Battle Orders, a skill from the War Cry tab, can also boost your max HPs. It is not unusual for a Barbarian to have HPs well in the 700+ range even without the increase by BO.

Mana - all active skills use some of this when activated. You get mana through your En stat and through items; Battle Orders can also boost your max mana, and there are precious few items that increase your mana by a percentage (Frostburn and Stone of Jordan, for example). Skills' mana cost ranges from 2 (FP and most melee combat skills) to 40+ (H-L WW). The mana orb always takes two minutes to recharge fully, regardless how much max mana you have, and without effects that speed it up. So if you have to decide whether to use a mana-increasing item or one that increases the recharge rate, pick the first!

4. Equipment

Simply put, you'll eventually end up using mostly rares with perhaps an unique or set item in-between; thus, I won't give any equipment examples here but instead point out a few items that may be of interest for each category. However, in just about any section, a good rare outclasses all unique items by far. Behind the items' names is the amount of gold it takes to gamble for the respective base item.

Helms

• The Undead Crown (105,812) - unique Crown; choose this if you desperately want lifesteal; otherwise it's not that great.
• Tarnhelm (7,012) - unique Skull Cap; choose this if you really have nothing better. Its +skills comes in handy (as do the additional gold and magic item chance).
• Wormskull (80,537) - unique Bone Helm; the only reason you'd use this over the Undead Crown is that Wormskull featured 5% Lifesteal (instead of the Crown's 4%...whee!), and to annoy Necromancers. >:) Apart from that the Undead Crown is clearly the better choice.
• Coif of Glory (20,975) - unique Helm; often used in conjunction with Rattlecage and/or Goblin Toe (see below for both). Its only really interesting property is "Hit Blinds Target", which greatly reduces a monster's awareness when you hit it (similar to the Necro's "Dim Vision" skill).

Body Armor

• Silks of the Victor (800,000) - unique Ancient Armor; definitely harder to attain than Frostburn, simply because gambling for Ancient Armor is, ahem, a bit more expensive than gambling for Gauntlets. There was a time when Silks were the most desired item in the game, but that holds true no longer; anyway, they are not a Barbarian's first choice for armor. +1 to all skills and 5% mana steal may be nice, but the fact there is no enhanced DR (~220 really doesn't cut it) make the Silks a poor choice for any DR-reliant Barbarian. Both +skills and %manasteal can be found on other items (e.g. %manasteal on weapon or ring, +BarbSkills on amulet), so there is not much reason to bother with the Silks of the Victor IMO - except to keep them for trading.
• Rattlecage (71,475) - unique Gothic Plate. As this features 25% Crushing Blow and "Howling", it is excellent when you do little damage. Add the Coif of Glory (see above) and you basically disable a monster when you hit it (it gets blinded, is ready to run for it, and could have its health reduced dramatically).
• Iceblink (195,112) - unique Splint Mail. This is neat since you freeze monsters when you hit them. Keep it mind, though, that the monsters you kill while wearing Iceblink are shattered, thus no corpse for GW/FP/FI remains...unless you use LA.
• Goldskin (591,400) - unique Full Plate Mail. It has good resists (+30% res all) and nice DR (for Normal diff), but it is not very easy to get a hold of. If you don't need it, it makes excellent trading bait.
• Arctic Furs (3250) - set Quilted Armor. Useful only very early on, for a DR boost (45-50) and 10% res all.

Gloves/Gauntlets

• The Hand of Broc (2,500) - unique Leather Gloves. They give both 3% life and mana steal, so if you have some fair damage capabilities to boot, these can relieve you of any restocking worries. As this item adds 20 to mana as well it is a nice choice for Barbarians in need of life and mana steal.
• Frostburns (38,550) - est-ce que vous les connaissez? Everyone's favourite unique gauntlets. But why? Well, first of all, they increase your mana by a whopping 40%. The more base mana, the more the increase, which is why Barbarians don't get as much out of Frosties as a Sorceress or Necromancer could (that's not to say the bonus isn't nice, though). Second is their defense rating; ~45 isn't too bad for non-exceptional gloves. "Enhanced damage" really doesn't do much, however. The cold damage (however little it may be) is nice to have though for the chilling duration (which lasts a good deal even on NM diff). So, do you want to use those? Why not. Personally I'd rather have some nice rare gloves with modifiers such as +resists, +dex/+str and slightly increased attack speed on them, but that's probably just me. In any case, Frostburns are a nice trading object. =)
• Cleglaw's Pincers (12,237) - set chain gloves. As they knock back your target and slow it by 25%, they're good to incapacitate enemies briefly.

Shields

• Sigon's Guard (54,612) - set Tower Shield. It is used for both its increased blocking chance (69% for Barbarians) and +1 to all skills.
• Wall of the Eyeless (41,187) - unique Bone Shield. It has 3% mana steal *and* it adds five to mana after each kill, so if you're especially mana-hungry for some reason, try this.
• Umbral Disk (6,625) - unique Small Shield. Basically this does the same as the Coif of Glory ("Hit Blinds Target"; see above), with some additional goodies.
• Bverrit Keep (54,612) - unique Tower Shield. Mainly known for its whoppin' -4 MD, use this if you have trouble with stuff like firewalls or the LBoD.

Boots

• Vidala's Fetlock (21,875) - set Light-Plated Boots. They have fastest run/walk and add 150 (!!) to max stamina, so you can run much longer when wearing those. Naturally, the Treads of Cthon (see below) are probably more effective when you have more than 150 base stamina.
• Treads of Cthon (12,175) - unique Chain Boots. Among some other effects (Fastest Run/Walk, +10 HP, +50 DvM), they drain stamina 50% less when running, thus effectively doubling your stamina (and being superior to the Fetlocks in most cases).
• Goblin Toe (21,875) - unique Light-Plated Boots. Commonly used because of their CB capability, sometimes in conjunction with Rattlecage/Coif of Glory (see above for both).

Belts

• Death's Guard (2,300) - set Sash. With its DR of ~22 it can provide quite a reduce in your be-hit% chance early on.
• Arctic Binding - (3,900) set Light Belt. Some more DR than Death's Guard and nice cold resists. It is also one of the few items which sell for more than it costs to gamble for them. :-)
• Nightsmoke - (7,687) unique Belt. As the Barbarian usually takes quite a lot of damage, this belt's "50% Damage taken goes to mana" property might be helpful when you have to refill a lot of mana quite frequently and have no or little mana steal for some reason.
• Goldwrap - (13,537) unique Heavy Belt. It's mainly of interest because of its "Slightly Increased Attack Speed" property (not found on any items besides weapons and gloves, and no, it does not work on Twitchthroe), but it also has some nice DR and the +30% chance of finding magical items can prove useful, too.

Jewelry

• Stone of Jordan (48,000) - unique Ring. To the Barbarian, it's just another trading bait item. +25% max mana, +20 mana, some lightning damage, even +1 to all skills - all those are effects you have little use for (safe the last, perhaps), let alone on a ring. You are better off using those precious ring slots for a good rare. If you decide to gamble for this, make sure you already have the Nagelring and Manald Heal.
• The Eye of Etlich (63,000) - unique Amulet. Some people like this because of the lifesteal, +skills and cold damage/duration on it. Be aware that the life steal percentage here ranges from three to seven per cent. The cold duration varies as well. If you decide to gamble for this, make sure you already have the Nokozan Relic.

Weapons

• Bonesnap (44,250) - unique Maul, cherished for its high damage and Crushing Blow capability (40%!). It's obviously a good choice for a maul-based Barbarian until they get their hands on more powerful stuff.

Enchantments you'd look for on rare...
...Armor: enhanced defense, resists, +hp/+mana, -MD, fast(-er, -est) hit recovery, +str/+dex.
On gloves also: slightly increased attack speed.
On boots also: fast (-er, -est) run/walk.

...Weapons: enhanced damage (on bows +min/+max damage, please!), +AR, increased attack speed, cold damage, +Barbarian skill levels, life/mana steal.

...Jewelry: resists, +hp/+mana, +str/+dex, +AR, life/mana steal, +gold%/+magicitemchance%.
On amulets also: +Barbarian skill levels, the "Prismatic" effect.

On all items, requirements -20%/-40% can be useful if you don't meet the initial reqs. Also, "Prismatic" can occur on rings as well, but it has a higher level, thus being more rare and having a higher level requirement as well.

Please note that some effects which initially belong to certain categories (e.g. resists on armor and jewelry) can also appear on an other category (using our former example, weapons), but they may have unreasonably high level requirements then. A simple, not-too-good sword could have a level requirement of 40+ just because it features some (mediocre) cold resists!

But for now, on to one of the most important decisions for any Barbarian: weapon choice.

a) About Weapons

First of all, this section isn't meant to tell you which weapon to use. It merely tries to sum up the advantages and disadvantages of each weapon type so you can decide on a personal base.

Swords - swords are interesting weapons because they balance damage, speed and range fairly well. However, even the large two-handed swords don't deal as much damage as the heavier weapons of other classes.

Two-handed swords can also be wielded one-handed, though their damage suffers quite a bit then. Using a shield to block attacks and dealing less damage in return seems to be a fair trade. If you want to inflict massive havoc, why not try out some of the other weapons?

Pro:
   - balance damage, speed and range nicely
   - using a shield is always possible
Con:
   - not your #1 damage dealing weapon class

Axes - compared to the other weapon classes they lose horribly. Why? Simple, they have nothing the other classes don't have as well, in some way. Swords are commonly faster, polearms/spears have greater range, mauls do more damage. Axes are slow, have short range, don't do as much damage as some other weapons. If you are going for efficiency there is no real reason to use axes. This would probably be different if axes did 150% damage against demons as they are supposed to, but as this is not true, they are no valid choice from an efficiency-POV. The only real reasons to use axes are "because they look groovy" and "to hell with the mainstream, I do My Own Thing".

Pro:
   - look great :-)
Con:
   - have no real advantage over the other classes

Maces - all maces come with a built-in +150% damage modifier vs. undead. The living dead are found often enough, even during the second half of the game, to make maces a good choice throughout the entire game. Anybody who's played CD knows that there were no more undead monsters after ~dlvl 7 or so. This doesn't hold true for D2. Yay, an improvement! 1...2...3...hurray! Uh, yeah. Some of the most badass monsters in Act IV (Knights) are undead, so choosing a nice big maul to bash their skulls in can be a nice idea. =)

In the beginning, there are mainly 1-h maces. The two-handed mauls won't appear before Act III, so your damage potential is going to be a bit low (compared to other weapons) before you acquire those.

However, if you do acquire them, rejoice. The Maul and Great Maul deal large amounts of damage, especially with H-L mace mastery, enough Str and against undead. The exceptional Great Maul ("Martel de Fer") has the highest base damage of any weapon!

On the other hand, bear in mind that this damage potential does not come without a price: you have to invest much in Str to be able to wield the big weapons in the first place, and they swing pretty slowly.

At higher clvls, maces are the choice for those who want to hurt stuff really much, with an edge over the undead. As maces/mauls do in general have a short range, they are not the best choice for WW; otoh, their damage potential when used with LA is unparalleled.

Pro:
   - high damage on the two-handed maces
   - very effective against undead
   - shield can be used with one-handed maces
   - no dex requirements
Con:
   - slow
   - short range

Bows/Crossbows - when using a bow, all combat skills except for Leap become useless. You should thus put a fair amount of points into it to get good ranges. Since there's not that many skills to invest into, anyway, this shouldn't be an issue.

Weapon masteries won't do anything either, of course. Leaves you with the War Cries, Leap, and IS/NR/InSt/InSp. You need those to make the best of it.

Don't expect to match the Amazon's power. She's got Multi Shot, Strafe...all those nifty skills. You don't. You have no Critical Strike, no Decoy or Valkyrie to keep your enemies at bay (though Grim Ward is a bloody good replacement)...this isn't meant to scare you away from trying a Bowbarian; indeed, it's fun playing one. I'm just telling you that you should (at least partially) forget about your Amazon playing style, because it isn't the real thing. Then again, this isn't CD, where a warrior (let alone a mage!!!) was little match for even the most arthritic rogue. :)

What you want to be: fast. Since you're only able to fire normal, non-multiplyin' arrows (and can't strafe monsters into oblivion, either), you'll be running a lot of the time. This is a good time to pick Increased Stamina/Speed. Naturally, any boots with fastest run/walk speed are really nice, too. Being able to fire elemental arrows is even more important for the Barbarian, after all, he can't simply produce an Ice Arrow out of mana. Dealing cold damage will slow down enemies and be generally helpful for you. Apart from that, the rules for the Amazon can also be applied here: pump Dex, but don't forget about Str for bows and other items. Also, Vit may actually be a good idea to put points in occasionally, as you get much better returns out of it than any other other character. The same can't be said for En, sadly, but then again you'll probably not be using skills as much, anyway.

This is a good example of a challenging style of playing, as you mostly have to rely on your playing skills (and wise use of the few char skills available, as war cries are shunned by many, many players) to get you through.

Pro:
   - on average, good attack speeds
   - ranged attack, thus preventing direct contact with enemies
   - needn't be repaired
Con:
   - no combat skills (except Leap) and -mastery for this one
   - ammo-dependant
   - all bows/crossbows are two-handed

Polearms - you couldn't have a better average of range and damage, and what's even better, polearms have fairly nice attack speeds. And: scythes look soooo groovy! That being said, it's obvious that polearms are the perfect weapon for WW - while they'll never reach the damage output of a good, rare Martel de Fer, they make more than up for it (IMO) with their incredible range. You hit enemies earlier and more often with it (as you have a larger radius in which attacks are attempted), which is a Good Thing (tm). Skirting the edges of a pack carefully allows you to do serious damage without getting hurt much yourself. And even in "normal" HtH-combat, their range can sometimes ("sometimes" because of the messy engine) lead to slaying monsters which can't even reach you.

Pro:
   - ok attack speeds
   - long range, especially with Whirlwind
   - good damage
   - Scythes rock!
Con:
   - less damage than mauls, for example
   - all polearms are two-handed

Spears - they are the other good choice for any Barbarian who wants to combine long range and fair damage. Now that Lances can be dropped by monsters, they are capable of bringing severe damage. But hell, even a good rare pike can do some serious damage, so don't worry too much. If you aren't only into WW, though, you might want to give polearms a shot - while they may not do as much damage, they are usually faster, which is a good thing.

Pro:
   - pretty much the same as pole arms
Con:
   - a bit slower than pole arms on average
   - all spears are two-handed

Throwing Weapons - they are the next step from using a bow. As has been proven, playing a "Throwing Barbarian" can be very fun. Sirian demonstrated this well with his chronicles of a throwing-mastery Barbarian which you can read here. It is, however, rather challenging, as throwing items can never be magical, and even their superior versions can't have their throwing damage boosted. That's somewhat bad (and another Bliz screw-up, imo) since you need the damage. Also, though these weapons can be used in melee, too, their damage isn't anywhere near impressive then. But well, just you try and see! :)

Pro:
   - quick to throw
   - ranged attacks, thus direct contact with the enemy can be avoided
Con:
   - ammo-dependant
   - no magical throwing weapons exist

Other Weapons - namely, daggers and staves. Well, obviously daggers are useful only for their high attack speeds. Neither their damage nor range matches anything else you could possibly get your hands on. Staves...well, yeah. I must admit that I have never tried them. (What range do they have, anyway?) Certainly they won't be as useful as other two-handed weapons, so they're mainly variant food. Also, neither daggers nor staves have any mastery to support them.

b) One-Handed Or Two-Handed?

That's a question which is asked pretty often, and I'll try and cover the basics here.

First of all, in this section, going the "two-handed" way doesn't necessarily mean using one two-handed weapon; it can just as well mean using two one-handed weapon. "One-handed", respectively, means using one 1h-weapon and a shield.

The advantage of using a 1h-weapon? Being able to use a shield. As D2 works right now, that is clearly an imbalancing factor. As you know, all shields have a certain chance of blocking. This chance ranges from 25% for bucklers to 69% for Sigon's Guard, a set tower shield (probably the most commonly set item used, too). Now why is this imbalancing, you ask? It's quite simple. Even the most simple buckler will already shield you from 25% of all attacks. ALL attacks. You'll be hit 25% less often in Act I/Normal AND you will be hit 25% less often in Act IV/Hell. Difficulty or monster tohit doesn't make ANY difference. That means: as long as you have the right shield, you needn't give as much as a flying fish about your defense rating. Shield-less characters need to have unholy DR ratings just to be reduce their be-hit chance on Hell diff below 60%, while a shield-using character need only use ONE bloody shield (perfectly attainable in normal diff, I might add, and yes, this is the infamous Sigon's Guard again) to get to a PERMANENT 31% be-hit chance WITHOUT giving ANYTHING about DR yet. Let's say it together...one, two, three...IMBALANCE!!

What do non-shield-using chars have to do? They have to pump Str like crazy to be able to wear those high-level plates (Ornate Armor, ideally), just to find they still need Shout and Iron Skin to have any reasonable decrease in be-hit. Chars who don't have those skills (non-Barbarians except mayhaps Paladins) can either forget about the higher difficulty levels altogether (Spearzons, for example) or are forced to use a shield.

Now perhaps you'll argue that in CD, perfect (as in, 100% of the time) blocking was possible. Well, of course it was, but there are some major differences to D2:

• a) blocking chance was dependant on the character's Dex, NOT on the shield. Warriors actually had to WORK towards perfect blocking.
• b) there was a blocking animation, meaning that you could only block ONE attack at a time. Non-warrior characters also blocked much slower, meaning they needed a fast-block shield first (Stormshield or Holy Defender). There was no head-on diving into monster hordes without taking some serious scratches.
• c) you had to stand still to block attacks. No running around.

All this doesn't apply to D2. Your shield alone determines how good you are at blocking. You ONLY get a blocking animation when blocking ranged attacks while standing COMPLETELY still (not attacking, doing nothing). Blocking STILL works perfectly when running, while DR gets NULLIFIED.

Yes, Low-AC-warriors (or No-AC, even) were perfectly possible in CD. They are possible in D2 as well. The difference? You actually had to WORK towards being able to achieve good blocking in CD. You had to be a good PLAYER to exercise that playing style properly. What do you need in D2? A "good" shield, that's it. Block-lock? What's that? 3/4 of the monsters' attacks will simply miss me anyway!

To sum it up. On one side, shield-using characters are majorly favoured, while non-shield using (and thus much much more relying on DR) characters are handicapped by the 4xAR bug. Of course you should use two-handed weapons in spite of those who take the cheesy way by using a shield! (That last phrase being utterly subjective.)

Oh, and just so you know: Diablo is using a shield, too. Any attack which involves physical damage has a 52% chance of missing him, as mentioned below, too.