Barbarian - Epic Cooldowns

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Many of the classes this time around for Diablo now feature many more skills that trade long cooldowns for extremely powerful effects, usually meant to be used in emergency situations. The Barbarian in particular features a diverse trinity of varied yet ultimately destructive high level abilities that can greatly shift the shape of any conflict. Utilizing particular passives to aid in cooldown reduction and fury generation, you too can shake the very foundations of Sanctuary:

Active Skills

-Unleashed

As a Fury generator, Bash unruned is probably second only to Frenzy. By throwing in a Golden Rune, you'll be able to top off Fury very easily, while dishing out some great damage to boot. Handy considering you'll be going through that orange globe like candy.

-Invigorate

An Alabaster here not only makes you more durable, but the rest of your party as well. The final effect is a mixture reminiscent of a D2 Barb's Iron Skin and Battle Orders rolled together in one package. Better yet, you'll see a nice buff to passive life regeneration, as well as a solid 30 Fury to boot.

-Smash

Excellent single target nuke at a pretty cheap price, Hammer is great for dealing with bosses and uniques. If you manage to sync this up with Wrath, you should see a plethora of crits off this bad boy.

-The Mountain's Call

The first in our trifecta of super skills, Earthquake is going to be your main way of taking out large packs of enemies. For 40 Fury and a 20 second cooldown, you'll be able to dish out what is essentially 14 weapon swings to all enemies in a 15 yard range over the course of 8 seconds (dunno if I put enough numbers in that last sentence).

-Thrive on Chaos

An all around awesome self-buff for the Barb, Wrath will let dish out and take more damage over the course of it's duration. With a Golden Rune slotted in here, every Bash will add at least a second to the duration. War Cry during this skill three seconds. Like the Hammer, it's best usage is going to be on Bosses and Uniques. Expect about a minute on average for the cooldown when all is said and done.

-Duty to the Clan

Everybody remember the Rite of Passage quest from Act 5 of D2? It's like that except these bruisers are on your side now! During the duration of this ability, you'll basically be quadrupling your weapon damage, extra nice if your beating down a lone target. Boon plus Gold will mean the extra Barbs are up nearly all the time, the dead zone lasting only 5 seconds. Assuming they also benefit from the effects of your War Cry as well, they should be able to hold their own with ease.

Passive Skills

-Boon of Bul-Kathos

This alongside all your runed cooldown reduction is going to make you an explosive powerhouse. Keep your barbs up, quake in large packs of enemies, and Wrath when you see a boss.

-Unforgiving

This is a very heavy Fury spending build. Your going to have to top off your resources in as expedient a fashion as you possibly can in order to quake, wrath and call. Being able to carry over spare Fury from your last engagement, as well as passively generate more Fury between fights is going to go a long ways in making this possible.

-Animosity

The other great Fury passive, Animosity is going to make you much quicker in not only getting your big skills going, but also sustaining Wrath's duration.

The first 3 skills in the build are actually very modular when it comes to keeping the spirit of this build intact. If your having trouble with AoE, you can drop the Hammer or it's rune for something with a little more reach. Switching Hammer for another Fury generator with a long Cooldown is probably the best solution if your having trouble getting topped off, that or throwing a Gold into War Cry. Mix and match to find what works best for you.

Monk - Kickpuncher

Skill Calculator Link

Time to dish out some hurt with our favorite holy warriors. We're going to be building around the Monk's level 30 passive whilst specializing in Lashing Tail Kick, effectively turning us into a beefy single target DPS machine. Lets have a look:

Active Skills

-The Flesh is Weak

This is the first part of a nice little preliminary 2 piece combo that will help us set up some major damage onto a solitary foe of our choosing. The bleed and explosive death damage are only secondary to the buff provided by the Runestone. The first two hits of the combo are going to set up a very nice stacking damage buff, up to 80%. The third hit is actually less important, and can effectively be substituted out with...

-Breaking Wave

Back for round 2 from last week, this variant of Crippling Wave is very similar to the Palm, only all at once. For maximum effect, your going to want to use the wave as the 3rd strike of your spirit generating combos and set up, so you'll be applying both damage buffs at the same time, adding up to 160% extra damage. Don't forget that Crippling Wave has an AoE component that can be used in a tight squeeze.

-Spinning Flame Kick

This is going to be your mainstay for putting out some pain. Ideally you should be able to get a few kicks off with a topped-off Spirit reserve and no cooldown on the skill. This version of Lashing Tail Kick also has the potential for some AoE as well. If you do end up knocking your target back too far, you've got a trick to help close the distance fast.

-Pillar of the Ancients

The coefficients on this skill are pretty absurd. Assuming the entire skill connects, you'll be dealing a total of 900% weapon damage over the course of 3 seconds. It's impossible to say how difficult this skill will be to land until we can see some actual footage of it, but with no cooldown attached to it, the skill already has potential. At the very least, it'll empty your spirit like crazy.

-Quicksilver

Dashing Strike is pretty amazing when it comes to mobility, but socket a Golden Runestone into it and it can be straight up abused! Close the gap on your foes, dodge attacks, or just get to your destination faster.

-Overawe

Free extra damage is always nice. Take note now that all Mantras now have a doubled effect in the first 3 seconds that you use them, so if you can manage to use this before you unload your Spirit spenders, you can a really nice bonus for the small burst window.

Passive Skills

-Beacon of Ytar

The build-around-me passive of this particular spec, the Beacon changes your play style up a bit, favoring a bit more strategy of when to unleash some burst damage. The good thing is that you prep both of the Kick and the Pillar with your spirit generators putting the passive damage on, and unleash it all in the narrow window that they are applied. Expect heavy burst and reload phases.

-Transcendence

A pretty cool survivability passive that actually has a really cool interaction with the Beacon. You'll see larger amounts of healing in a smaller period of time due to the increased spending of spirit. Feel free to drop a Pillar if you need an emergency heal post-haste, or increase your passive regen between fights by spamming on your Dashing Strike

-Chant of Resonance

Double time on your Mantras can let you spend more attention on the fight and the extra spirit will help you top off a little faster.

The biggest change that can probably be done with this build is swapping out Chant of Resonance with something like The Guardians Path. If your using a two-handed weapon and managing to hit Overawe with regular frequency to get the new bonus damage, the increased Spirit generation would pretty much outstrip Resonance in every way. Another good substitute would be Exalted Soul, allowing two extra kicks or one extra pillar, both providing more health through Transcendence. Whatever way you go, you should get some solid burst damage out of this build.

The only thing beyond the reach of the Monk's fists, is humanity...

Wizard - Fire Wizard (a.k.a. Tim the Enchanter)

Skill Calculator Link

So in the most recent update, we not only got a lot of revisions to Demon Hunters and Skill damage, but the Wizard got a brand new passive! At the time of writing, the actual number of skills that deal fire damage seems to be woefully lacking, but there's still a build to be found. Lets take a look at roasting some enemies:

Active Skills

-Surge of Power

Lots of footage of Electrocute recently has shown it to be a very effective spam skill, capable of hitting lots of targets and putting out a lot of damage in a short period of time. All of this is going to be gravy on top of the actual purpose we'll be using this skill for: Regenerating Arcane Power. A Golden Runestone plus a particular passive is going to turn this into a resource generating machine.

-Molten Impact

An extremely damaging skill, Meteor with a Crimson Runestone has a HUGE coefficient of 990% damage, and thats just on impact! We'll be combining this with a few passive to turn this into an even more horrifying main nuke of a spell. Your probably going to want to space out the casts a bit to let the dot from this and your passive run their full course, assuming of course that the dot goes off of a replacement effect as opposed to a stacking effect.

-Brimstone Serpent

Buffed up fire monster, this Hydra aims to be your main AoE support. Walls of fire have proven in the past to be very damaging on old-school Fire Sorcs, with the downside of being a little bit complex to use. Having a buddy do this for you allows you to spend your time micromanaging other spells and getting even more damage onto the board. Drop this beast in the middle of a pack enemies and watch the fireworks.

-Energy Tap

A deeper reservoir of Arcane Power is going to let you line up a Hydra and a Meteor or two in pretty quick succession, so this Armor wins out for the Wizard. The extra defense is also nothing to sneeze at.

-Mirror Mimics

The only thing better than you raining down fiery death on your foes is two more of you doing it. Even at 70% strength of your spells, this spell functions mainly as a dps cooldown, but has the added benefit of possibly drawing away enemies away from you.

-Sparkflint

Little bit of damage from yet another buddy, that's cool. An extra 40% damage on top of all your spells? That's pure win.

Passive Skills

-Conflagration

Pretty much what this build is built around. 15% damage over 3 seconds is a very solid increase, depending on how well it will interact with passives. Once again, if the dots are replacement effects (the timer goes back up to 3 seconds each time the target is hit with a spell) as opposed to additive effects (3 seconds get added to the dot each time the target is hit with a spell), then your going to want to space out your casts of your meteor spells to get the full effectiveness of your spells compared to how you spend your Arcane Power (throw some Electrocutes in between). Now if they would just fix the icon...

-Glass Cannon

If your good at keeping your distance and dodging projectiles, Glass Cannon is always going to be a go-to passive to increase damage output. As always, feel free to switch out in tougher difficulties if the enemies just become too overbearing.

-Prodigy

This coupled with Surge of Power and Energy Tap should be enough to sustain your very costly Fire Spells. A 12 AP gain minimum per cast while dealing out good AoE damage is pretty darn awesome.

With any luck, some of the Runestone effects in the future will be changed around to add fire damage and give this passive a little bit more variety, but in terms of flavor and some burst dps, this build is actually looking pretty solid. Some changes that could be made to the build would include adding more passive Arcane Regen, using Arcane Dynamo to charge up even larger Meteors, or some shifting of desired support spells. Here's hoping a thematic passive for cold spells gets added soon!

Demon Hunter - Rocketeer

Skill Calculator Link

Well I'm glad I saved the Demon Hunter for the end of the week, as our fair rogues just got a large number of changes to their skill structure allowing for some skills to start generating Hatred on their own. There are some runestone effects that are out of date, but they shouldn't matter for this build. Demon Hunter's probably have the quirkiest passive out of all the classes in Ballistics. Start throwing in runes that add rockets, and then double the effect for a lot of extra damage. I wouldn't be surprised if a Ballistics build of some kind were to become the norm for end game, at least in terms of damage output

Active Skills

-Rocket Storm

Strafe is unique in that it lets you constantly move around and deal damage to random enemies. With the recent change, your also going to be generating a little bit of Hatred for as long as your strafing. Throw in some rockets that are going to be hitting for 240% damage with the passive and you've got a quasi-aoe-movement-regen skill.

-Fire Support

This is going to fill the role of single target DPS, and it's going to do it with a vengeance! Essentially you'll be able to hold down this attack to turn yourself into a minigun. The damage output on this is high, but so is the cost, so your usage of this skill will probably break down like this:

-Find an opening

-Drain all your Hatred on a marked target

-Dodge and evade while you build your hatred supply back up

-Rinse and repeat

The extra rockets coming off this skill are going to add a whopping 700% weapon damage onto this skill, the only stipulation being that they seek their own targets. For maximum damage on a single foe, your going to want to isolate said target.

-Shooting Stars

Go-to for target aoe, this skill has a pretty large hatred cost, but is much more controllable than Fire Support or Rocket Storm. If there's a specific group, and it's just got to go, this Cluster Arrow is the skill for you.

-Death Toll

This nifty permutation of Marked for Death doubles as a DPS buff for your group, as well as adding some survivability to everybody else attacking the target. You can probably top yourself off by using this in conjunction with Turret and Fire Support

-Spitfire Turret

More punishment for tough foes, this stationary turret has a lot of damage output at a pretty hefty Discipline cost. As with Fire Support, the more you can isolate your target from lesser threats, the more you can direct the damage to a single target.

-Battle Scars

Between Death Toll and Spitfire Turret, this build actually eats up a ton of Discipline. Preparation is the perfect support for this setup. A Golden Runestone here has the added bonus of being a sort of Emergency Potion for when the going gets tough. If you can anticipate needing to use the heal, drop a few turrets to empty the Discipline pool first.

Passive Skills

-Ballistics

This is what brings the pain! There are a few other skills that also use rockets in their effects, so you can add more damage if you feel the need.

-Fundamentals

Helps a ton when it comes to regenerating Hatred, a series of regular attacks after a full usage of Fire Support can have you "reloaded" fairly quickly. It gets even faster if your using a pair of Hand Crossbows. Can't argue with the extra damage either.

-Archery

If you've got a bow, then you'll get a flat amount of extra damage. If you've got a ton of crit, then go for a crossbow. If your using hand crossbows, you might want to try a different passive.

Lots of room for interpretation here. Runestones in Preparation and Marked for Death is where I'd start looking for some variance, followed by the Archery Passive.

With the update to the talent calculator, some of the links may now be busted. When I get some time, I'll go through and try to update them, but the images should still work as a guide if you want to throw the build in on your own!

Monk - Group Combat

Skill Calculator Link

If you feel like being a real team player with a Monk, this build will be right up your alley. Your goal here is going to be buffing up your groups damage output, while putting out some solid numbers yourself. This rundown is sort of a jack of all trades focus with some minor healing in here to boot, so it should work pretty well if your the only Monk in the group. If you find grouped with some other spiritual compatriots, you might want to think of switching out some skills so you can specialize a bit more.

Active Skills

-Hands of Lightning

Your single target nuke for dishing out the pain, hundred fists gets an extremely large increase in damage by upping the number of hits, and then multiplying each of those hits by whatever damage buffs you manage to stack on top of those. Great for bosses.

-Breaking Wave

A seconds spirit generator that fills in all the gaps from your first skill. Crippling Wave on it's own is a great Cleave variant, throwing in the Alabaster Rune throws in a great damage buffer. 80% for 9 seconds gives you plenty of time to use the ability every now and then by weaving it into your attack sequence as opposed to having mash it constantly. Extra damage and an aoe, very versatile.

-Several Sided Strike

This "spirit spender" holds the same principles as your Hands of Lightning skill: Lots of damage by lots of strikes. This ones also great for putting some hurt on groups, just make sure you throw out your damage buffs to the enemies before you let those fists fly.

-Blazing Wrath

Tons of utility with this skill. The group heal on it's own is about as unique an ability as the Monk gets, and everybody will love you for it. Even better yet, an extra 20% damage for 33 seconds after the cast. There's no cooldown on this skill, so you probably want to keep a reserve of 25 to 50 spirit as often as you can so you can either refresh the damage buff or save somebody if need be.

-Many Monks

More utility here, Decoys can help your or your buddies get out of a bind. Extra decoys from the Indigo Rune will help attract more foes and gives you a greater potential to save some people. Another nice bonus is that Decoys will also gather up the foes to let you hit more foes with Breaking Wave.

-Overawe

Every Monk needs a mantra, and this one is going to let you dish out the most damage, 'nuff said.

Passive Skills

-The Guardian's Path

A nice buff for spirit generation as long your walking around with a big stick, speaking softly optional.

-Chant of Resonance

Lets you spend less time worrying about your mantra and more time hitting things. All of your spenders are relatively expensive as well, so the passive spirit generation is welcome.

-Guiding Light

Adds even more damage on top of your Breath skill. It's a small amount for 10 seconds, but stacking it with everything else can really add some nice damage on top.

This build gets more valuable the more people you add, and summoner doctors will probably want to have your babies. You've got some room for variance here, largely in your passives and support skills. Guiding Light can probably be supported with more ally healing skills, like Gold Runes into Sanctuary or Lethal Decoy. Switching out Guiding Light for Exalted Soul so you have a larger Spirit reserver is also a very attractive option.

Barbarian - Critical Magic Find

Skill Calculator Link

This build is all about two things: getting lots of critical hits and getting lots of loot! Lets dive right in!

Active Skills

-Maniac

Frenzy variants are solid all around. They build up fury fast and dole out lots of damage for single targets. The damage buff coupled with the Crimson Rune helps empower all of your other skills, as well as feed right back into Frenzy. Feel free to switch the skill out for something like Cleave if you find yourself in need of more aoe.

-Birthright

Probably the single most solid skill in terms of generating extra loot, Hammer of the Ancients gets an additional chance to crit, and has a greater chance of dropping extra loot with the Golden Runestone when you do manage to get the kill. Hammer has a small aoe at the smash, so you can use this as your main method of dealing with large groups of enemies, and hopefully generate large piles of loot in the process!

-Terrify

Defensive shout that will help you live through an onslaught of enemies, and makes them more likely to drop more loot. Simple and to the point.

-Killing Spree

Keep an eye on this button, every time you see it light up, make sure you mash it! Getting a crit activates the option to use this free aoe skill. To add insult to injury, the Crimson Rune in this skill buffs up your crit chance by a huge amount, making it more likely that you'll be able to activate this skill again. If you've got the fury to spare after an overpower and the enemies in front of you, try to finish them off with Hammer of the Ancients while you have the extra crit chance. Space out the sprees and use them to soften up large swaths of enemies.

-Best Served Cold

Revenge is very similar to Overpower in that it's conditional to when you can actually use it. This time around, you have to take a hit before you can serve up this dish. Revenge has a lot of roles, it deals aoe damage, so it can be used to soften up groups of enemies. More importantly, each enemy you hit heals you for 5% of your life, which is just borderline criminal! Finally, Alabaster Rune in place, you get a very substantial buff to your crit rating for 10 seconds. Remember that both this and Overpower are free of a fury cost, so hit them whenever you can manage.

-Swords to Ploughshares

Very nice passive buff that you need to feed with a bit of Frenzy every half a minute. Extra damage, crit chance and extra chance for loot with crits. Once again, very straight forward.

Passive Skills

-Ruthless

This is what really makes this build sing! Extra crit chance is par for the course, but all of your crit damage being increased by 50% is just phenomenal! Crit as much as you can and melt some faces!

-Weapons Master

Optimal weapon choice here will help a lot in making this build successful. A mighty axe or mace here is going to be the best choice, providing extra crit and extra fury for every swing!

-Tough as Nails

Keeps you alive and lets you get in the thick of things. This skill works well in conjunction with revenge, letting you survive in the front lines and dish out all killing blows you need for the extra loot.

As with all the builds, there's a lot of room for customization. At first glance, this build probably runs a little light on the fury generation. This can be most easily circumvented by dropping Revenge and Tough as Nails and replacing them with Furious Charge (Gold Rune if you need the fury) and Unforgiving. Fiddle with it and find what works for you!

Wizard - Arcane Lasers

Skill Calculator Link

After looking at a little bit of early theorycrafting for the Wizard, I've come up with what looks like to be a fun build that will have some real challenge to play, especially in higher difficulties like Hell or Inferno. Like the blog itself, this is all early conjecture, tweaking of numbers here and there can greatly alter the validity of any build, buts lets take a look at this one anyway:

Active Skills

-Intensify

The key to this build revolves firstly around getting your Arcane regeneration high enough to the point you can effectively sustain this variant of Disintegrate indefinitely. With later active and passive skills, this infinite laser is a real possibility! This version will eventually ramp up to dealing huge amounts of damage per section, along with other extra benefits

-Disruption

Arcane Torrent on it own serves as another spell that has a constant casting cost that is easy to maintain with this set up. Better yet, this runed version allows for disruption in the targeted area, more than doubling the amount of damage from any incoming Arcane spells. So either your torrent is going to ramp up extra damage, or your Intensify is going to hit even harder.

-Time Warp

This skill serves twofold, firstly as a survival cooldown, but with the Crimson Rune socketed in, the time bubble will also increase the damage of foes inside by 140%. Stacking this up with Disruption allows for a nice cooldown for dealing with bosses while still maintaining functionality as a escape tool.

-Wormhole

This version of teleport serves not only as another survival cooldown, but as a method of quick transportation. An Alabaster Rune here allows teleport to be effectively spammed, so long as each subsequent teleport is used within 2 seconds of the last. Better yet, with the extreme Arcane regeneration present, you will generate more power than spent, so long as you allow for at least 1 second between each teleport.

-Arcanot

The first part in a trifecta of skills to give you enough power to sustain usage of all your abilities. As is common with a lot of Golden Runes, this skill now provides a large return in your resource system, namely 270 Arcane power over the course of a minute. Keep an eye on your buddy, as it will last for a minute before it needs to be recast.

-Power of the Storm

Armor spell for this build, a Golden Rune here takes a whole 7 power off the cost of all your abilities so long the armor is active! The actual amount of defense offered by the armor is unfortunately negligible. 2 minute uptime, so make sure you refresh when you get a breath

Passive Skills

-Temporal Flux

As all of your damage abilities all register as Arcane damage, this passive helps to keep foes at bay, whether its with a single target laser, an area targeted torrent or even with the help of your familiar.

-Glass Cannon

The go-to option for more damage, as long as you can dodge projectiles and stay out of melee range, this skill should be gravy. If you find yourself unable to deal with the extra incoming damage, a good alternative would be Galvanizing Ward, giving you some much needed hit point regeneration and making it so you have to refresh your armor less often

-Astral Presence

The last piece of the Arcane puzzle, this passive should push your regeneration over the edge, allowing you to maintain all your abilities with little effort.

There's a lot of room in this build to swap in different skills for survivability or even extra damage, and the amount of regeneration might actually be a bit overkill, so mess around with variations!

Witch Doctor - Summoner Doc

Skill Calculator Link

Lets start out with something a bit simple

After reinstalling D2 this past weekend, I've rediscovered my love for a pure Skelly Necro, that is to say, a character that barely does any work! Running around and building up an army of skeleton minions while other players get free reign isn't exactly the most demanding playstyle, but it gets the job done. This build seeks to replicate that play style.

Active Skills

-Dire Bats

A pretty basic nuke that gives you something to do with spare mana. This choice has a lot of alternatives based on how much you want to help yourself or your minions

-Burning Dogs

Zombie Dogs make for your first summon, and you can get quite a few on screen to do your bidding. These dogs deal extra damage just for sticking around the enemy! Life Link from the Indigo rune makes your dogs take 70% of your damage if your looking to be a bit tougher

-Humongoid

The Gargantuan is essentially taking the place of a Necro's Golem this time around. Indigo rune here adds a lot of consistent aoe damage through a cleave ability. Crimson rune here probably makes better for dealing with bosses.

-Hedge Magic

Turning enemies into chickens every 10 seconds is already hilarious. Add in a Golden Rune and the little Fetish Shaman will start throwing heals every now and then, great for sustainability.

-Rain Dance

Increased attack for all your buddies, alive for undead! Better yet, if you find yourself in need of mana, Golden Rune here will get you back in your game. Big Bad Voodoo on its own will have it's cooldown cut down to 90 seconds with an upcoming passive.

-Devoted Following

Lots of little ankle-biters with very sharp knives. With the right passive and another Golden Rune here, its possible to put the cooldown at 38 seconds. Use the little guys often!

Passive Skills

-Fierce Loyalty

This ones going to be dependent on exactly how good thorns auras on equipment turn out to be. The more your guys get hit, the more that will get reflected back. Lots of alternatives here.

-Zombie Handler

Pure cake here. An extra dog and your main summons all get more health? Sign me up!

-Tribal Rites

Lets you summon the little guys more often. Hex and Voodoo with the right runes will help you with any sustain you need, and the Army looks like one of the more powerful skills for the Doctor

I'll probably be rolling something like this earliest chance I get. It looks like it practically builds itself and probably won't take much gear. A good starter candidate to get a feel for the acts and to start building up that shared stash.