Diablo III- Skills Article XXII: The Barbarian, Rage Skill- Call of the Ancients

Call of the Ancients (Cooldown 120 seconds, 50 Fury): Summon the three Ancients for 15 seconds to help you in battle.  Each of them deals 60% weapon damage per swing, and has additional abilities.  Talic uses a sword and shield, and Whirlwind.  Korlic uses a long polearm and Cleaves.  Madawc has a pair of axes and uses Weapon Throw.

Call of the Ancients is perhaps the hardest skill available to Barbarians to actually use- not because it’s bad, not because it’s only useful in certain situations, but because, being a summon skill, it’s next to impossible to tell when is the right time to use it.  There are a few obvious situations (look, twelve more enemies just showed up!), but when fighting an extended battle, especially with a boss or champions, it’s difficult to know whether to send the Ancients out right away and risk them getting beaten on, or hold off until you’ve got the enemy worn down and focused so that they will stick around to deal out more damage.  That said, these old men are pretty awesome.

The Council Rises (Cooldown 120 seconds, 50 Fury): Summon the three Ancients for 15 seconds to help you in battle.  Each of them deals 66% weapon damage per swing, has double normal Armor, and has additional abilities.  Talic uses a sword and shield, and Whirlwind.  Korlic uses a long polearm and Cleaves.  Madawc has a pair of axes and uses Weapon Throw.

The Council Rises pretty much just serves to make the Ancients even more incredible fighters, helping to ensure that they’ll survive for the duration of the summon.  This makes picking when to summon them a lot easier and less stressful.

Duty to the Clan (Cooldown 120 seconds, 50 Fury): Summon the three Ancients for 20 seconds to help you in battle.  Each of them deals 60% weapon damage per swing, and has additional abilities.  Talic uses a sword and shield, and Whirlwind.  Korlic uses a long polearm and Cleaves.  Madawc has a pair of axes and uses Weapon Throw.

Duty to the Clan will keep the old men active for longer than other forms of this skill, which is amazing as long as they stay alive anyways.  If they tend to lose out in the fighting already, though, you should forget this rune and turn to The Council Rises.

Korlic’s Might (Cooldown 120 seconds, 50 Fury): Summon the three Ancients for 15 seconds to help you in battle.  Each of them deals 60% weapon damage per swing, and has additional abilities.  Talic uses a sword and shield, and Whirlwind.  Korlic uses a long polearm and Cleaves, and can Furious Charge for 200% of your weapon damage.  Madawc has a pair of axes and uses Weapon Throw.

Korlic’s Might, as might be expected, improves Korlic, making him into a raging bull in addition to his decent Cleave attack.  Of course, there’s always the possibility that all this rune will achieve is letting you know how annoying it is for your allies when -you- knock everything they were fighting away from them.  This is really a tossup.

Madawc’s Madness (Cooldown 120 seconds, 50 Fury): Summon the three Ancients for 15 seconds to help you in battle.  Each of them deals 60% weapon damage per swing, and has additional abilities.  Talic uses a sword and shield, and Whirlwind.  Korlic uses a long polearm and Cleaves.  Madawc has a pair of axes and uses Weapon Throw as well as Seismic Slamming for 180% of your weapon damage.

Madawc’s Madness is madness indeed- while it makes the Ancient more potent against large groups of enemies and distant enemies (as if he wasn’t good against them anyways with his ax hurling), it also grants him the dreaded Knockback.  Once more, this can make him more awesome- but it can also leave you frustratedly chasing down that thing you were about to kill.

Talic’s Anger (Cooldown 120 seconds, 50 Fury): Summon the three Ancients for 15 seconds to help you in battle.  Each of them deals 60% weapon damage per swing, and has additional abilities.  Talic uses a sword and shield with Whirlwind, and can Leap, dealing 250% of your weapon damage to enemies in his landing zone.  Korlic uses a long polearm and Cleaves.  Madawc has a pair of axes and uses Weapon Throw.

Talic’s Anger has the most potential of the three ‘this Ancient is stronger’ runes.  Leap is an amazingly useful skill, and since it doesn’t inflict Knockback, it’s hard to be bothered much when he uses it.  What’s more, his Leap is immensely better than your Leap- the damage is ramped up almost out of the ballpark.  If you don’t want The Council Rises or Duty to the Clan, but you like Call of the Ancients, this is probably going to be your favorite rune.