Note that all the recommendations are mainly for Solo leveling. Your skill set might look entirely different in coop mode, and some may not be required at all.

1. Pets – Zombie Dogs, Gargantuan

Pets are very important. They do all the tanking for you, allowing you to stand back and nuke.

2. Grasp of the Dead

Another very important area damage + slow (crowd control) skill. This will save your ass countless no. of times. Use this to engage battle with big mobs. Not only it slows them down by 80% (rune), it also deals a lot of area damage.

Use Firebomb on this area for added damage output (unlocks at level 21).

3. Horrify

Horrify is another amazing skill that helps when enemies get to close. Your pets will do first level tanking for you, but some mobs will just try to rush and melee you.

That’s where Horrify helps. I’ve used it many many times to save me from a melee rare champion trying to attack me. Note that these champs can kill you in like 2 shots if you don’t pay attention. Thus if you see them getting really close to you, just hit Horrify and they will run away.

This is like kiting, but the other way round where monsters run away from you.

We also saw Error 37 during beta. It’s surprising that Blizzard hasn’t learned from beta problems.

Even if you get past the login screen, you will get stuck on char creation screen as even those servers are extremely busy.

Good luck getting in! I’m about to hop off, get some sleep and try later.

Unlike ranged classes in Diablo 3, melee classes have abilities that generator their resource which can be used for casting more powerful skills. For Barbarians it’s Fury and for Monks it’s Spirit.

All the primary skills found in this Diablo 3 Barbarian skills section are your Fury Generator skills. There are few more skills that help generate Fury, but not as much as you can from these Primary skills.

Here’s a list of all Fury Generation abilities available for your building your Barbarian:

• Primary Skills
• Bash – 6 Fury per attack, 12 with Instigation rune.
• Cleave – 5 Fury per attack, 9 with Reaping Swing rune.
• Frenzy – 3 Fury per attack
• Other skills that generate Fury along with cool down values
• Ground Stomp – 15 Fury, 12 sec.
• Leap – 15 Fury, 10 sec.
• Ancient Spear – 15 Fury, 10 sec.
• Furious Charge – 15 Fury, 10 sec.
• Threatening Shout – 15 Fury, 15 sec.
• War Cry – 30 Fury, 30 sec.
• Whirlwind – 1 Fury for every enemy hit

Just going by the numbers and other skill attributes Bash is the best Fury Generator skills of all generating 12 Fury for you per attack. This allows you to spam your other skills much faster increasing your overall DPS.

With Instigation rune Bash could very well be THE BEST ability to have on your primary slot. You might think that Cleave is more viable against mobs, but think again, if you have extra 70% Fury generation, how frequently you would be able to spam other skills like Rend (20 Fury), Seismic Slam (30 Fury, 15 when runed), Whirlwind (16 Fury), Hammer of the Ancients (20 Fury). Everything else has a cool down and cannot be spammed with the Fury pool.

Among all, I’m not a big fan of Bleed since enemies are still alive and capable of dealing you damage. Thus Rend is strictly not a viable option against big mobs. Whirlwind has comparatively lesser DPS compared to other two secondary skills.

Hammer of the Ancients is a pretty good option with 200% weapon damage to all in front of you, 5% chance to Crit and 100% chance to stun all enemies in 10 yards for 3 seconds.

The next best Fury generation skill is Cleave but with all the exploding enemies you will have very less no. hits even if there are just mob of 3 monsters around you when you don’t want to trigger an area skill. Bash with HotA combo gives you flexibility over when you want  to cast area spells allowing you to generator more Fury over time for other powerful abilities.

Make sure you keep an eye on Diablo 3 Barbarian builds section where I’ll be posting some sample builds soon.

Wizards are mainly for nuking. However, compared to other games what makes Wizards fun in Diablo 3 are their survival, escape or evasion abilities. Skills like Teleport, Diamond Skin and Slow Time make Wizards very hard to kill making them an unstoppable force of Arcane.

To make a perfect Diablo 3 Wizard build you need to classify and pick skills across following categories:

• Free Spell – You need at least one of these. It’s a MUST!
• Single Target – Important to take down bosses, mini bosses and other tough monsters.
• Area Damage – To deal with mobs.
• Crowd Control – To save yourself from getting mobbed.
• Defense – Armor boosting skills. You have plenty of these skills as Wizards.
• Escape/Evasion – To quickly get out of the heat just when you are about to die.

We will try to keep it simple and start with basic categories of Wizard Builds in Diablo 3. Overall you can classify into three main categories – Solo, Coop and PVP. Let’s start with Solo builds.

Solo Wizard Leveling and Item Farming Build in Diablo 3

For Solo leveling you need skills from all the categories I described above. Here’s a good build for solo leveling.

• Magic Missile – Free Spell and your primary attack. It’s free and has better range compared to others. Go with Charged Blast rune until 31 and then switch to Penetrating Blast.
• Arcane Orb – Very powerful area skill. Spam on groups and clear rest with Magic Missile. Good runes in order you get then – Obliteration, Arcane Nova and Tap the Source.
• Frost Nova – When you get mobbed this one is a good skill to deal damage and escape.
• Slow Time – Good for solo leveling to save you from ranged attacks. These are the ones that hit you the most.
• Meteor – Very powerful especially if you pull of proper combo. For example, mob a lot of enemies, freeze then with Frost Nova, strike with Meteor and trap them in slow time. Imagine the damage you’d be doing.
• Archon – Powerful charge up and situational skill. Use when fight gets tough to clear out all the enemies.

Diablo 3 Wizard Builds for Coop Leveling and Boss Runs

Unlike Solo since here you will have company, take more offensive skills and increase your damage as much as possible.

Electrocute – Powerful free spell. Chain Lightning is a good rune followed by Lightning Blast. But this requires that you align your enemies before casting.

Arcane Orb – Again good spell for coop leveling as well.

Meteor – Very good area spell with high damage output. Must for power leveling in coop mode. Blizzard is another spell that can replace Meteor.

Magic Weapon – Increases damage by 10% for 5 mins. This makes one of your slots as almost passive.  Force Weapon and Venom are good runes.

Explosive Blast – Inexpensive high power area damage skill. You will have to learn to time this properly as you have to go close to enemies to make most out of this skill. Also timing is important as the explosion occurs after 1.5 seconds.

Archon – Try to kill more enemies so you can increase the duration of Archon. A good skill to have in any Wizard build for Hell and Inferno modes in Diablo 3.

Diablo 3 Wizard PVP Builds

More on PVP builds later as we get close to PVP patch release. Until then hope you liked this Diablo 3 Wizard builds guide.

Stay tuned for more updates. A whole series of new guides are coming up!

I got hands on one of the first few few review copies of Inferno Codex guide along with the concept design and I bet you that it’s worth every penny to you put into it. Here are my thoughts and recommendations.

Site reviewed: http://infernocodex.com

Diablo 3 Inferno Codex Review

I will write my comments and evaluate the guide from several important points that will explain what makes Inferno Codex the best Diablo 3 guide out there.

Content – Review of content offered in Inferno Codex

The first and most important thing is content. Inferno Codex covers everything – it includes quest info, random dungeon info, class strategies, level by level skill rune and builds, artisans and crafting guides, gold guide, etc. All the important topics of the game are covered. It also has videos and live shows where you can watch the team in action every day.

Team and authors of Inferno Codex

Inferno Codex is written by the same team that brought to you the best selling Aeon SWTOR guide. They are well known and reputed for their previous fansites and achievements in other top games like WoW, Rift, SWTOR and Tera. You can rest assured that you will get nothing less than top quality and very well written guides.

Quality of the guide

The guide is in-depth, well organized, easy to read, follow and has a friendly tone. It covers almost each and every question you might have as a beginner. They are accompanied with videos, images, builds and strategies where ever necessary to complement. In short the guides are designed to cut short the learning curve and give you a competitive edge as if you were playing Diablo 3 since several years.

Verdict – My recommendation on Inferno Codex

If you are looking forward to playing a lot of Diablo 3 then I highly recommend that you check out Inferno Codex. There’s nothing to loose as you get a 60 days money back guarantee. If you build your character right and if you are backed by industry leading professional players then I’m sure you will save a lot of money on real money auction houses too. Visit http://infernocodex.com to learn more.

While the Demon Hunter and Monk spotlight didn’t live up to the Barbarian spotlight, this one surely does. You get to see a lot of powerful skills in action, and that too on mobs of Monsters.

I’ve been a huge fan of Witch Doctors ever since I got a chance to play one in beta. Personally I felt that leveling with Witch Doctors, at least up to level 13, was fast and easy. They just seem to have right set of skills good enough to keep you going on and on.

One of the things I loved about Barbarian’s spotlight was the skill effects. But I thought that Witch Doctor’s was even better. All those summons and skills simply look amazing. Can’t wait to try it out when Diablo 3 ships. What do you guys think?

Note that both of these guides are actual tangible books and not electronic guides. The cover images look pretty slick and descriptions tell us that they are loaded with all juicy info about Diablo 3 that you have to read!

The two Diablo 3 Guide books are almost similar when it comes to the content. The limited version has few fancy features that one can easily live without. I’d stress on the fact that one of these books is must for beginners, especially those who are new to Diablo series.

Diablo 3 Guide Book # 1 – Signature Series Guide

The signature series Diablo 3 guide book is a basic soft cover guide that covers almost same content as the limited edition book. It’s, however, cheaper and costs approximately $13. Visit my detailed post on Diablo 3 Signature series guide to learn more about this book.

Diablo 3 Guide Book # 2 – Limited Edition Hardcover Book

The Limited Edition Hardcover book on the other hand is a bit expensive and costs approximately $22. It covers more art and graphics compared to the Signature series guide. One of the important features that this guide seems to cover is the PVP guide which first one seems to be missing according to the description.

Visit my article on Diablo 3 Limited Edition Strategy guide to learn more about this book.

Note that both of these guides are actual books and not digital ebooks. The Signature series guide is a lot cheaper compared to the limited edition book.

Click here for more info on Diablo 3 Signature Series Guide

Diablo III Signature Series Guide – Product Info

• Publisher: BradyGames
• List Price: $21.99
• Amazon Price: $13.74
• Availability: Available for preorder

Diablo III Signature Series Guide – Product Description

The BradyGames’ Diablo 3 Signature Series Strategy Guide has an impressive list of features just like the limited edition hardcover book. Here’s a list of the features that this guide covers.

Click here for more info on Diablo 3 Signature Series Guide

• In depth and complete quest walkthroughs that covers all the four acts
• Details of each and every monster in the game. Would be good to have info and insight on all the bosses before hand! A feature to look forward to!
• Detailed info on all five classes along with strategies on how to master each. Good for beginners.
• Professions guides for Artisans that teach you how to effectively utilize these features. This guide can be very useful as other players will take a while to get used to this feature, while with this guide you can have it all right from the day one.
• Details on all the items, drops, equipment and strategies on how you can farm loot. I’d rather use sites like Diablo 3 Database for all this info.
• Official guide to Blizzard’s new Real Money Auction House that teach you how to make best use of this feature. This can be good as it can help you master this system faster than others.
• Screen shots of game. I bet nobody really cares about this.

Click here for more info on Diablo 3 Signature Series Guide