Animosity: Increase your Fury generated by 10% and your maximum Fury by 20.
Many Barbarians will like this skill. Few will need it enough to let it supplant other skill choices that are more build-specific. That said, it -is- possible to build a barbarian entirely around generating and dumping vast amounts of Fury (via Fury runes and the combination of Dread Bomb and Thrive on Chaos) and if you happen to have built such an unusual Barbarian, you’re going to love this skill like a sibling (only with less rivalry). Also, like Bloodthirst, this skill is a good choice for anyone- so if you’re stuck for what to put in your third slot, this can always do about as well as Bloodthirst. It’s not like it’s hard to switch Passive skills after all.
Superstition: Reduce non-Physical damage you take by 20%. Each time you are hit by a ranged or elemental attack, you have a chance to generate 3 Fury.
I would imagine that this skill was created for the sake of Barbarians who, for whatever reason, have eschewed not only both Spear of the Ancients and Throw Weapon, but also Seismic Slam, Leap, Sprint, and Furious Charge. The fact of the matter is that while this skill seems like it might be occasionally useful for fighting bosses who focus heavily on elemental damage (Diablo and..... uh...... Magda...... and.......... hmm.), it’s simply not competent. The fury gain is less than you get from Animosity, the damage reduction is nice but the restriction to non-Physical damage and the condition on the Fury is such that unless you’re constantly being barraged by things with Mortar, things with Arcane, and a ridiculous number of ranged attacks, this skill simply doesn’t do anything significant enough that you’re going to notice it. A sadly very meh sort of a skill.
Tough as Nails: Increase your Armor by 25%. Increase your Thorns (When an enemy hits you) damage by 50%.
This is a premier tanking skill, and goes up there with Demoralize in the You Want This Now And Forever list. This can also be useful for Barbarians that don’t lean towards criticals, tanking, or massive Fury flows, but above all it’s a tanking skill. Not only does it increase your survivability as the main person in melee, it improves your retributive damage- damage that then draws more aggression and helps keep the enemies focused on you and not that Wizard over there about to rain meteorites down on their head.
No Escape: Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear deal +10% damage. When Weapon Throw scores a critical hit, you may generate 14 Fury. When Ancient Spear scores a critical hit, the cooldown refreshes.
This skill would be awesome for critical hit Barbarians- if not for the fact that Weapon Throw and Ancient Spear share skill slots with Battle Rage and Overpower, respectively. Sadly, both Overpower and Battle Rage have much more potential for a critical hit barbarian than either of those skills, and nobody else is going to be scoring critical hits reliably enough to count on either benefit of the skill. The 10% damage isn’t bad, though, and if you’re running a Fury river with Dread Bomb, that 10% increase in damage can get pretty big. Even so, there are better things to choose.
