Barbarian: Resists/AC Def bonus/ Passive 2hander/axe bonus?

[Wendigo]

It's a tricky issue, and a little sad. Barbarians do swing 2H axes faster than other classes, as you say, and even beyond that their class abilities (namely Frenzy and Mortal Strike) want the heaviest, hardest-hitting weapons available to counteract the debuffs the abilities give, so yes, axes are good for barbarians.

The problem is that those advantages are quickly overshadowed by the advantages of using the good ol' sword and board. Having your shield slot open lets you take advantage of the increased AC, block chance, and affixes on that shield, and while barbs do have absurd hit points you're going to need those to stop getting stun-locked. Then there's just the fact that all the unique, powerful weapons the game gives you on standard difficulty just so happen to be one-handed weapons with speed boost affixes, which are really rare on axes, so even with your 'faster' speed on axes you're still swinging more with one-handed weapons, and since each swing is another chance for crits, leech, and stun lock, there's just no contest even in raw damage. Every once in forever you find an ax that might out-power a sword/shield combo (usually with an absurdly good life leech so you can just wade in without caring about your HP), but it's rare and usually pretty short-lived.

So short answer, yes barbs are better with axes than any other class but axes generally suck so ignore it. If the mod were still in development it would likely get balanced but se la vie.
Also, you can find the documentation for the game in the link in the first post in this thread (the mediafire one). It details each character's weapon specializations.
http://awake.diablo1.eu.org/diablo-1-hd ... t1211.html

Edit- having now re-read this thread I seem to have said all this better already and more succinctly too. Sorry, I'm a wordy kind of guy.

[Kosiciel]

Thank you very much for your answer, Wendigo. I saw the documentation yesterday, very useful one! A pity that individual weapon speeds for all classes aren't listed there, or if any IAS breakpoints exists (like in Diablo 2 and going for 7 fps bow etc.)

I guess sword&board is the way to go, but if I would like to play this one variant, I would just make a warrior - which I played A LOT during old Diablo days. I wanted a change, so 2h for barbian is a must (considering s&b on weapon switch). I will make a new topic about weapons (and gear in general) to choose for him