No one can stop death

Ok, it’s not that grim, but some big changes have happened in real life. Unfortunately, my interest in video games has suffered, and I no longer have the time to devote to them as I did before. This website costs me nothing to leave online, so it will stay as is forevermore. Well, I can’t say I will never be back, but the chances are slim. I hope you enjoy Reaper of Souls and whatever other games you like to play.

The Spike Trap Demon Hunter

The Spike Trap Demon Hunter can stack a ton of damage in a small area, perfect for fighting Elites and Bosses. Place three Spike Traps under them. Then spam Bola Shots while the Spike Traps go off. Additional area damage skills round out the build. You need very good defenses though. You will pretty much be in melee range for the entire battle with this build.

The Melee Wizard

The classic melee Sorceress returns in Diablo 3, this time as The Melee Wizard. Whereas the melee Sorceress in Diablo 2 was only viable through Nightmare difficulty, the melee Wizard in Diablo 3 is viable all the way into Inferno. You won’t be able to high Monster Power levels, but with good gear you can get to the mid levels. It definitely won’t do comparative damage to the top DPS builds though.

When making this build, I was also curious about the Arcane Dynamo passive skill, so I integrated it into the build. You basically use Spectral Blades until Arcane Dynamo procs. Then use Meteor to take advantage of a huge damage bonus.

The Berserker Rage Barbarian

This is a fun little build I thought up while leveling one of my Barbarians. I always like the passive skills that completely change the way you play. Berserker Rage is one of them. It’s far from the best DPS, but it has a fun play style and no gear requirements. You basically build Fury to the cap to get the Berserker Rage buff, then use Rend for high damage over time, followed by more Fury building to get back to the cap. By the time your Fury is at the maximum, Rend is ready to use again.

The Zombie Bears Witch Doctor

The Zombie Bears Witch Doctor was the original max DPS build when Diablo 3 first launched. It lasted until patch 1.0.4 when Blizzard updated many Legendary items, making the Zero Dogs build possible. This build has more of a traditional spellcaster feel to it. Zombie Dogs and the Gargantuan are the main line of defense with the Zombie Bears skill being the main source of damage. The damage is only about half as much as the Zero Dogs build and even less than that compared to the Firebats build. It will still work while leveling and in lower Monster Power levels.

The Archon Wizard

The Archon Wizard was the former max DPS build before players had good enough gear for the CM / WW build to work. This build also uses Critical Mass combined with Archon’s built-in cooldown reduction to make Archon have a near infinite duration. The only time it runs out is when you have run out of monsters to kill. It doesn’t do as much damage as the CM/WW build, but it is a little easier to gear for.

There are some downsides though. Because you are always fighting the Archon cooldown, you many times have to skip a few monsters here and there. You also can’t pick up all the loot if you’re the player that likes to pick up everything. You just won’t have time to do that and keep Archon up for the next pack of monsters. This build is a very fast build best for experience farming runs on Monster Power levels that you overgear. You can clear dungeons extremely fast with the caveat that you will usually only be able to pick up Legendary items and have to skip small rooms with few monsters.

The Whirlwind Barbarian

The Whirlwind Barbarian is the most popular Barbarian build at max level. There are two very good reasons for that: it does the most damage and it isn’t that hard to gear for. The basic idea is to utilize high critical hit chance and the high tick rate of Whirlwind to proc the Into the Fray skill rune. That gives infinite Fury, allowing Whirlwind to be used constantly and making the Wrath of the Berserker buff permanently active.

The Critical Mass / Wicked Wind Wizard

The Critical Mass / Wicked Wind Wizard is the current max DPS Wizard build. It is commonly abbreviated as CM/WW. The build combines high critical hit chance and the high tick rate of Energy Twister’s Wicked Wind rune to proc the Critical Mass passive skill. Several powerful skills then have no cooldowns, which makes them spammable for massive damage and other nice perks.

The Rapid Fire Demon Hunter

I find Rapid Fire to be one of the most popular skills for Demon Hunters. It’s just fun to shoot out arrows or bolts like a machine gun, however unrealistic it is. Rapid Fire in its launch state did only average damage. With the added limitation of not being able to move while using the skill, players drifted away from Rapid Fire once they got to max level. Luckily, Blizzard increased the skill’s damage. The popular leveling skill became popular at max level.

The Zero Dogs Witch Doctor

The Zero Dogs Witch Doctor is one of the most unique builds in the game. It is one of the few builds only made possible by specific Legendary items, the few Legendary items that Blizzard actually succeeded in making into build changers. The basic idea is to reduce the cooldown of Summon Zombie Dogs to 0 with these items, and then leverage that to be able to spam the Sacrifice skill constantly for massive area damage.