The idea of getting a barb through hell seems to be a bit of a joke amongst the community. Even after this guide, I still feel like its a joke. This is a collection of ideas geared towards helping the Barbarian get through nightmare. It is assumed that a strategy for getting through normal is already been executed/known. I have no idea if any of this will be nearly as effective in hell. Good luck to the next poor soul to try this.

	Why is the barb so hard?
Barbarian is hard because of how damage is calculated and how it must be dealt. With most classes, you throw a spell out, the spell hits a target, and damage is calculated. With the barb, you are essentially forced to use the mechanic of physically hitting your target. Chance to hit your target is calculated on a attack rating vs defense basis as well as your level compared to mobs. So even though an attack is thrown out, it may not hit and no damage will be calculated.
Barbarian also has virtually no multi-hit ability until level 30. So now we are forced to not only to frequently miss, but to frequently miss only 1 target.
Barb damage is based on the weapon you are using. Loot is quite a bit less reliable as skill points are for other classes.
Barb is forced into melee range to be effective, this often involves getting surrounded and overwhelmed. It also put many mobs into range to attack you, forcing you to take hits.


	The build.

Stats
(1a) Strength: “Each point of strength increases your damage by 1% of your weapon's damage.” From what I can tell, this is base damage. This then gets increased by whatever +enhance damage you might have such as mace mastery (not on your weapon, that is for the weapon?) And is also modified by something called “Stat bonus”, based on your weapon (flail) this is str/100. All this then gets modified by skills? Regardless, it seems Strength plays an integral role in damage calculation. Putting 100, 150, maybe even more points here may not be too unreasonable, to counteract the diminishing effects of crushing blow once a mob gets lower on health.
(1b) Dexterity/Attack rating/Level: This stat affects you chance to hit enemies. More dex means more attack rating. Being above or below your opponents level also affects you chance to hit. Your chance to hit seems to formulate out as getting worse as you level up versus mobs of equal level and equal attack rating vs defense. 75% at level 10, about 62% at 30, 58% at level 50, 56% at level 70.
¤Consider a fallen right outside the rogue camp, they are level 36 with 369 armor. Beetles in act 2 start off at level 43 with 887 armor. Venom Lords in the Chaos Sanctuary are  level 57 with just under 900 armor. Overleveling and/or getting quite a bit of Dexterity needs to be considered if you want to keep your chance to hit up. You cannot go above 95%.
(1c) Vitality: As you can see, sacrificing large amounts of health my be needed to keep up the pace of killing. Barbs do have high health gain per level to compensate, as well as Battle Orders.

Skills
(2a) Double Swing/Frenzy, seems to be the popular choice for getting a barb anywhere. With fast hits and incredible move speed its easy to see why this might actually be the build of choice. I suggest 8 to 9 points to make double swing cost zero mana, this helps with mana burn mobs. Double swing also hits a lot faster than frenzy, giving more chances at crushing blows. Double swing does not improve base damage very much.
(2b)Frenzy places a buff on you that increases attack speed and more importantly, run speed. This buff can be applied to double swing for insane attack speed. Just tapping a mob to get the frenzy buff and then just running is the premier way for raw movement. Frenzy also has much better damage and attack rating than double swing, but finding enough mana leech (based on damage) to use it exclusively might be an issue.
(2c) Battle Cry. This ability is probably an absolute must at some point. Halving you opponents defense and quartering their damage is too much to ignore. 3 points into the warcry tree is well worth compared to just getting more frenzy or mace mastery. Eventually this is used as a synergy to War Cry, at level 20 monster do 44% less damage.
(2d) Leap/Leap attack: Is one of the best movement abilities in the game! Leaping out of danger and leaping to safety. Leap over gates in the flayer dungeon, leap over the river in act 3 and in act 4, leap over the maggot lair and the arcane sanctuary. Leap attack starts off with a better radius, Leap attack is actually be the skill of choice here when you can get it.
(2e) Mace Mastery: Giving you 5% damage and 8% rating per level as well as some critical strike, this is a slightly better option than most other skills for raising stats. But lacks the utility some skills provide and doesn't provide any synergy's. How to balance how many point to put here is confounding, but at least 1 point for the huge bonus that first point provides.
(2f) Concentrate: With a rhyme shield you no longer can be frozen, making this skill appealing, Toughening you up and being uninterruptable. This skill is the bread and butter of one weapon builds. Keep frenzy on the switch to get some haste, then swing swiftly with concentrate, mebe. 2hander barb?
(2g) Berserk: This skill leaves you vulnerable to taking hits. This also changes you physical damage to magic, not like your expected to do much of that anyway. This skill also increases you attack rating the most of any skill, giving you a better chance to hit. I think you can still crush with this skill...
(2h)Battle Orders/Battle Command/Shout: Command give you +1 to skills which translates into 7 or more points elsewhere depending on what you consider useful in your build. Orders is a nice 40% more health which is useful. Use shout before tough packs and bosses, it helps, a little.

(2i) War Cry: This ability is AMAZING, for the reason that it is a SPELL! Not tethered to a paltry weapon for damage and with 100% accuracy this ability soon makes quick work of the old style of hack and slash combat. War Cry Hits all targets around you, and with the barbarians habit of getting surrounded this means it frequently hits multiple targets, something flailing about can't do. War Cry also stuns monsters around you, making them near useless to even fight you. With these advantages War Cry quickly becomes the dominating spell of choice, keeping up with even the most geared of combat Barbs. The combat tree is changed from a killing style, to a arsenal of niche tools; Concentrate for chunking bosses down with crushing blow, Frenzy for move speed, and leap for getting past the impossible. The damage on this warcry is not as comparable to a javazon or a Sorceress, but it gets by as long as it hits more than one thing. War Crys biggest upset is it's high mana cost of 29 at level 20. Getting the most out of this spell means either finding +mana loot, or sacrificing vitality for energy and then chugging mana potions as this spell drains the barbs tiny mana pool very fast. Also affected by cast speed.