Diablo III- Skills Article IV: The Barbarian, Primary Skill- Bash

Bash: Deal 150% weapon damage with a 20% chance of Knockback.  Generates 6 Fury.

Bash is probably going to be your least favorite Primary skill.  While it is a fairly hard hit, Bash’s main side-effect is Knockback, which is not something you want to do- you’re trying to keep the things you hit -in- your striking range.  It’s possible to Bash things and then haul them back in over and over, but that gets very Fury-expensive, so it’s really a no-go.  As soon as you get a new Primary skill option, you should probably switch out of Bash.

Runes are where Bash becomes useful, and the skill has a number of interesting ones.

Clobber: Deal 150% weapon damage with a 35% chance of a 1.5 second Stun.  Generates 6 Fury.

Clobber is thankfully available at level 6, making it a nice early rune.  Clobber replaces the Knockback with Stun, making Bash an excellent option for solo bosses and other tough monsters that you want to stop from hitting back.  While not your favorite choice for heavy combat, especially not with multiple targets, Clobber makes it a lot easier to use Bash while managing your fight.  Also good for stopping things that want to hit your less-protected allies.

Onslaught: Deal 150% weapon damage with two ‘reverberations’ that cause 22% weapon damage each (total 194% weapon damage).  Generates 6 Fury.

Onslaught is a strange sort of a rune- rather than changing the side effect of Bash, it essentially drops it in favor of adding some damage that hits shortly after the initial strike.  While the increased damage is nice, there’s a lot of potential for wasted damage there, and ‘more damage’ as a rider is a lot nicer when it’s straight-up rather than over time.  At the same time, increased damage is increased damage, and if you’re fighting things where you don’t care if they hit you back or not, Onslaught will take them out loads quicker.


Punish: Deal 150% weapon damage and increase the damage of your skills by 6% for the next 5 seconds, with a 20% chance of Knockback.  The damage boost stacks up to three times.  Generates 6 Fury.

Punish is an interesting Bash variation that basically acts as a wind-up- when you use Punish to hit things, you’re not treating your Primary skill as your main way of dealing damage- you’re using it to set up harder hits with other things.  If you’re focused heavily on your Secondary and support skills, this can be startlingly useful, and if nothing else, you can use it to set up subsequent Punishes to deal more damage themselves.

Instigation: Deal 150% weapon damage with a 20% chance of Knockback.  Generates 12 Fury.

Instigation is a tool for people who don’t mind occasionally chasing enemies around but have trouble building up enough Fury to support their other skills.  With the sheer capacity of the Barbarian for constantly generating a stream of Fury, I don’t see that much need for this, but there’s probably someone out there with a lot of support skills and a Secondary skill that are all on short timers and eat lots of Fury, so this could be used for a setup like that.


Pulverize: Deal 150% weapon damage with a 20% chance of Knockback, and deal 38% weapon damage to all enemies in a 26-yard line behind the original target.  Generates 6 Fury.

Pulverize is probably one of the three most useful runes for Bash, alongside Clobber and Onslaught.  This one tacks on a long shockwave to your Bash, extending damage beyond your original target along a line that, while not crippling, is still useful and can be interesting to play with.  If you like lining a lot of stuff up and then wounding all of it, say in preparation for a Seismic Slam or an ally with a line-damage effect, then this is the rune for you.