Max life Barb

[Frag]

If you're HC, then just stay in Hell and don't even think about Inferno, unless you have a tonn of friends giving you items.

Inferno (A1 at least) was EASY on my barb, despite being very trepid about it due to claims made by those like yourself. I had no AH gear, no twink gear as Swirly & I were the highest level people in our play group and heavily relied on the blacksmith for our lacking slots (which he was great for, fwiw). The game actually felt like the overall difficulty curve went down in A1 Inferno compared to the last few levels of A4 Hell for me, Swirly may have felt different.

Fwiw, every single person posting stats even for those in A2 Inferno had worse core stats than Swirly & I had before we did Hell Diablo, after which we jumped straight into A1 Inferno. If you're playing Hardcore, you're going to be overgeared by nature, and they have provided enough options that it doesn't mean it has to be twinking or AH'ing.

Erik: With 400 resists, I'm sure it did. We were around 90 (for me) to 170 (for Swirly, iirc) resists, and his dogs/garg lived a lot longer with the Health/Regen/Armor shout, and I didn't notice a drop in survivability for doing so.