There’s an achievement for the prisoners, if you get them all.
I don’t think there’s any exp or gold bonus for it, though.
Yeah, but that’s for getting all 13 of them, not for the 8 that the quest objective says.
At this level you need to start concentrating more on survival and less on damage. I recommend the Leap ability with the Iron Impact rune and Furious Charge with the Merciless Assault runes (switching to the Dreadnaught rune at level 56). They will give you excellent manoeuvrability. Ignore Pain (IiB or IH rune) is extremely valuable and helps you mitigate expected spikes in damage. War Cry (Hardened Wrath) will increase your armour by 40% and you can have it up permanently. Healing over time is nice but taking less damage is better.
For the main attack the choice is between Frenzy (Sidearm rune) and Cleave. I prefer Frenzy as staying alive in groups is much easier than against tough single targets. We really have no decent secondary abilities and so you might as well go ahead and put Revenge on secondary.
None of the skills I mentioned use Fury so using the Berserker Rage passive is pretty much a permanent 25% DPS bonus. If you really feel you don’t need the extra DPS then Superstition is great. Nerves of Steel and Tough as Nails are pretty much essential.
So I’d recommend something like this, it should help you survive a lot longer.
Is the noise the skeletons make when they die (sounds like bree-yark to me) a nod to the old D&D module “The Keep on the Borderlands”? I think it was goblin or kobold in the module. Could just be my imagination.
MJinks, I’m surprised not to see Ground Stomp in that lineup. Is the duration just reduced too much to be worthwhile in Hell and Inferno?
And it wouldn’t have occurred to me to use both Leap and Furious Charge, since they serve such similar purposes. But I guess mobility is pretty important, after all. And I would have put one of those on right-click with Revenge on a number, to make it a bit easier to aim them.
There’s also not all that much damage there. Do you count on partying with higher-damage classes, or just take a long time to kill things?
Ground Stomp is certainly nice but my problem with it is that I actually want things to hit me, just not for much damage, so I can use Revenge.
Mobility is very important but if you take a look at the last rune on Furious Charge you’ll see why a lot of Inferno Barbs use it. It heals you 8% for every mob you charge through. It’s as awesome as it sounds. Furious Charge also gets you out of Jailer, which is nice.
I remapped all my action buttons to the mouse but I think you’re right about putting something else on right-click. Leap would be a good choice. I actually have Revenge mapped to mouse-wheel-down, Charge on mouse-wheel-up, Leap on RMB and the other two on the side buttons.
Damage is certainly an issue a lot of defensive Barbs have to deal with but it’s not as bad as it seems. The Berserker Rage passive helps but isn’t really needed until Act 3 IMO. The 75% attack speed bonus from Frenzy adds a ton of damage. It’s very hard to judge your actual DPS because the character sheet doesn’t update when you have a full Frenzy stack (because it only applies to Frenzy and no other attack). My character sheet currently shows I have 15k DPS when at full rage with the Berserker bonus and all my research tells me that’s enough to complete the game. I’m more worried about my survivability at this point.
AFAIK the only Act boss with an enrage timer is The Butcher and he’s ridiculously easy for a Barb to kill anyway.
One thing I forgot to mention. The Sorceress companion gives you a 15% armour bonus and for not much money you can really increase her DPS to respectable levels. Try and get her a weapon with as much DPS and Intelligence as you’re willing to pay for and concentrate on pure Intelligence for her other items. I spent 400k and she now has 4.3k DPS. It helps. I have her with Forceful Push, Powered Armour, Erosion and Mass Control. Her AoE abilities do a surprising amount of damage.
So far I’ve made $8 (after fees) on the real money auction house selling rares I farmed in act 2 inferno for $2 a piece. They weren’t even all that good–they had maybe 1 or 2 decent stats. I had no luck selling them for 20k gold each, but people are willing to paying $2 for them. Boggles the mind.
I had a lot of fun playing with Explosive Blast and Teleport (Wormhole). Fire up the Explosive Blast, chamber a meteor, teleport right into it in time for the Blast, and port out in less than a second.
Trust me, this is very satisfying. And you don’t even need Diamond Skin.
This is definitely an ecclectic build. What are your passives?
MJinks, a million thanks. Sometimes it just takes a little thinking outside the box.
To all of those who tried to group up with me last night…my apologies for falling asleep at the keyboard…I am not ignoring you!
As an aside, I think that Iron Man has gone into the crossbow-manufacturing business. A few days ago, I was searching the Auction House, and found a couple called “Stark Arc” and “Stark Avenger”.
Last night Hirka and I killed Asmodan in NM (my lvl 49 wizard and his 47 monk). We both died, then on our 2nd attempt I died, he eventually revived me, and we finished him off. After Hirka took off I tried to take him on myself and I got my ass handed to me several times until I changed up my skills.
Today I did the first quest of act 4. Got my ass handed to me again, then changed up my skills to the Disintigrate that goes into a cone and a couple other changes. Now I run to the back corner and use diamond skin and ice armor, and alternate between Disintigrate and CL, with the occasional Explosive Blast and Wave of force to make the stutter-step necessary to grab health globes… I’m running this Q over and over. I estimate about 17 - 20 runs to get from 50 to 51. That’s what I’ll be doing for the next while.
And after having a lot of trouble with Hell Rakanoth yesterday, I breezed past him today. The trick was to realize that he’s basically the same as Duriel: He’s a melee guy, but his killer attack is one that he makes from a distance. So if you stay close to him, he doesn’t hurt you nearly as much. Now only D’ himself stands between me and Inferno.
Inferno Belial is slowing me down a bit. I think I am adequately geared, but perhaps I just need to practice on Hell to dodge his attacks. I hardly have time to launch attacks of my own; I am just going to try to stay alive and let the hydra wear him down. This might be a project.
Not that big of a delay, evidently. He died like everyone else. On to A3. at last.
Strange, isn’t it? I’ve made $13 so far after taxes and all that jazz. Sold about 7 rare items for $2 a piece, one unique for $5, and a really good rare for $4 or $5.
Yeah. I regeared entirely from penny-ante sales in the RMAH. It took ten little sales to buy a 1150 DPS weapon, whereas it would have taken more like 100 sales on the gold AH. Now I just work both of them.
I’ll be honest, at first I thought people were idiots for buying intangible items with real life money (a la WoW, TF2, etc.) but seeing as how they set up the auction houses, I’m with you in that it’s way easier to get some dimes here and there by selling stuff and then buying better stuff with real money, then to sell for gold and then bid with the gold. I will never have the amount of gold people ask for the items I really want/need, but people like myself are always selling good stuff for cheap money. I’m at about $14 now so I can either save it up and earn the money back I spent buying Diablo 3, buy some better gear like you did, or take that money and go out for a dinner with my bf. 
Still…I think I will always feel cynical because Blizzard set this up specifically to benefit the company and siphon more money from people. Imagine how much money they must’ve made so far.