Patch 1.0.3 has drastically changed the game, to the point that most strategies that have been developed for barbarian are no longer optimal. The focus now is on DPS and clearing speed, not survivability.
First, I'll talk about the optimal farming strategy, and then the builds you can use to complete them. The Nephalem Valor Buff change means that bosses will drop less loot, while elite packs after the 5th will drop a lot more. This rewards a farming strategy that kills as many elite packs as possible in a single run. Therefore I recommend that your farming run consist of entire act farms, maximizing the proportion of elites that are killed with 5 stacks of valor.
Act 4 farming is bad because it is so short. There are only about 10 elite packs in the entire act so only a few will be killed after the 5th stack. Whimsyshire is also inefficient, first because it only has a few elite packs and also because of the magic find change; it does not affect clouds anymore (didn't get a single blue when I tried it.)
Therefore the best farming routes are full clears of acts 1, 2, or 3. Since a full clear involves killing about 30 elite packs and several bosses, it could take up to 2 hours to complete. In the interest of efficiency I recommend you farm the highest act you can while using a dps strategy. The drop rate change means that farming act 1 in 90 minutes using a dps strategy will be more rewarding than clearing act 2 in 3 hours using a tanking strategy. The most efficient farm in the game will be the fastest completion of act 3.
Survivability requirements have dropped drastically. I was able to drop my EHP in half while tripling my dps and still clear act 3 without too many issues. Currently I clear act 3 in about 2 hours, killing 30 or so elite packs and all 4 bosses, which translates to about 4 full backpacks of loot and 50-60 rares. My stats are 7k armor, 700 all resists, 60k hp, and 40k dps, further boosted by brawler and berserker rage.
I was able to get such a high DPS by stacking as much Crit hit chance and crit hit damage as I could. Currently at 46% and 289%, respectively!
Arcane enchanted seems to be the most deadly affix right now, especially when paired with affixes that constrain your movement.
I'll also share the build I use but first I want to talk about build diversity. It is no longer necessary to use a cookie cutter tank build, but you'll probably want Wrath of the Berserker with the Insanity rune and Revenge with Provocation, as they are our most powerful skills. You can satisfy the meager defensive requirements in any number of ways, whether using passives, high EHP gear, War Cry, Ignore Pain, or even using a shield. Yes, sword and board is no longer necessary, 2h and DW are just as viable!
I currently use:
Wrath of the Berserker(Insanity): Once you are over 30k dps you can kill act 3 packs within the 15s duration, which makes this skill amazing.
Revenge(Provocation): Very strong and reliable skill, gives you both sustain and strong aoe damage. Practically a requirement unless you are using a whirlwind or ranged build.
Ignore Pain(Ignorance is Bliss): I chose the lifesteal rune, even though it is nerfed in inferno, because my high dps gives good returns. When I pop Wrath of the berserker I do about 500k aoe dps, which means 4% lifesteal gives me back 20k hps! That's better than an extra 2 seconds duration.
Leap (Iron Impact): One mobility skill is a good idea, and leap doubles as a defensive cooldown. I also like that I can take shortcuts by leaping over gaps and walls.
Frenzy(Sidearm): Still the best single target dps skill for this build. Also provides some bonus aoe damage! Excellent for small packs and boss fights.
War Cry(Impunity): Still a great defensive option, I chose to keep it and replace my defensive passives because war cry is just so good
Passives:
Berserker Rage: I don't have any fury spenders so this is an easy 25% more damage.
Ruthlessness: Ties in well with the crit hit chance/damage build.
Brawler: Being surrounded by enemies is where I want to be. Massive 30% increase, but stops working as you kill a lot of stuff.
I want to replace Brawler with Weapons Master (Axe/Mace) because of the crit strategy and also because Brawler is useless against ranged elites. Just gotta find the right weapon!
Check out my stream for a demonstration or to ask questions
What is your DPS when you have WoTB, Brawler and Bezerker Rage going?
Currently I am ubuffed at 15k DPS, and have found you don't really need Ignore pain anymore and have used instead Battle Rage w/30% rune. This gives me about 20k DPS without triggering WOTB or Frenzy at 5 stack.
I was wondering if I needed to still use Superstition/Tough as Nails/and the Vitality passives anymore. I am a Sword and Board barb right now. Thinking of swapping out one more passive and going with more offensive and see how I do act2-3.
Currently Buffed with War Cry
~850-900 Res
~9500 Armor
~40k Life
~25% Block Rate
~13% DMG Reduction String
After the switch to battle rage, I have been using it as my fury spender spamming it over and over during my WoTB phase. Since I am using the rune for every 25 fury gained adds a second on. I can get it on big packs w/elites at about 30-40 seconds duration now.
I find leap a must have. I've ran into so many elite packs with wall and that fire at your feet affix .. if I didn't have leap I'd be dead a lot more often.
Currently i'm dual wield.. but only 14k dps base. I chose all defensive passives and mostly defensive skills except for wrath.
I can kill belial solo before he enrages but it's close. I take the full 3 minutes to down him.
Last night I did half of act 2 and got maybe 5 AH quality items.. the rest was vendor crap and even with around 10 deaths.. I still picked up enough gold and sold enough rares to make 200k
Oh another tip. I have 58k health. I picked up Inspiring Presence as one of my passives. The other two being the armor boosting ones.
Anyways.. with that much health and revenge procs.. I was healing big time. Inspiring Presence was giving me 500ish health a tick. So if I got low I just kited around a little bit and I was back to full. Plus I didn't have to worry if war cry was active or not during a boss fight.
Yeah I tried act 3 last night but I just dont have the DPS. I'm dual wield and have the same res, armor, and HP as you.. but you have 9k more base dps than me.
I need to get rid of these 750/785 dps swords and get some real ones.
Also, what stat do you prioritize, crit chance or crit dmg? I'm looking for items with both, but if that's not possible, I want to pick the more important one. Is there a rough formula to determine equivalency (ie: 5% crit chance = 40% crit dmg). Thanks for the help, definitely wasn't planning on getting new gear immediately after dropping so much on my tank build.
are you rolling any mf gear while your doing these a3 clears with 50-60 rares ?
Unless mf is already on your regular gear lots of it will drastically decrease your packs killed per time. Imagine trippling your mf while only being capable of killing 1/4 of the packs in the same time.
A3/4 loot seems bugged, i get more way more low ilvl 5x stuff than in A1/2. But you shouldn't look for rares only, you should at all loot that drops. In a full clear of A1 i saw about 20 lvl 63 items including all white and blue ones, magic find only increases the chance that those drop are better quality (read: blue, yellow or orange) not ilvl 63 instead of 62 or lower. In A2 i see a good amount of ilvl 63 drops and in A3 even more, but the spread of ilvl seems way wider.
in full mf gear - after chain pulling 2-3 elites in a1 my bags are full takes me about 90 minutes solo to do the WHOLE act looking for extra dungeons too
got to basically double my dps (20k currently) to do the same thing in a2 to be that efficient
just cleared whole act 3 as well, havent gotten even O-N-E item worth anything.
everything either vendored or salvaged, I think from 50+ rares (cba to count really) maximum 5 of those were ilvl 63, all badly rolled of course.
so it sum it up, 50+ rares, 5 of those ilvl 63 and you have like (from my experience) 0,01% chance for those to roll into something worthwhile.
what's the point in playing this game again? NONE, besides wasting time. I'm personally moving on to something that rewards my time.
Video games are a waste of time all together, that's why they're awesome.
Blizz had a blue post about gear and I'll sum it up. As you play you get better and better gear. As you get better gear most of the gear you find will be useless, just because it's harder and harder to find an upgrade. It's inevitable.
As for the OP, very good post. I like your insight about farming.
Post patch, i've change all my passives to offensives ones, get some real mf gear with str/vit and run the acts for loot.
people tend to neglect that non elite drops items too and that's where the mf kicks in ^^
currently running act2 with 150 passive mf with as much dps and just enough def to stay alive. i don't waste time item swapping blue mf gear in anymore.
Currently I'm using Overpower with the Crushing Advance rune. It is good for two hidden reasons: First, the damage that is reflected is actually a damage reduction. Instead of 100 to you, it's 70 to you and 30 to them. Second, each tick of reflected damage also triggers life on hit. The coefficient is small, but standing in molten (super fast ticks) I was able to regen 4k hp per second!
I dropped War Cry for it, but I think most of you are probably better off changing something else. Especially if you play in groups!
Also, I removed Brawler for Superstition. Brawler is weak against ranged packs and that's mostly what gives me trouble. Meanwhile, I was a little bit too squishy without War Cry, so adding Superstition was the perfect fit. I feel pretty good now during the farm, and I die about 5-10 times over 90 minutes on a full clear of Act 3. (Buffed stats: 450 all resist, 6.2k armor, 60k hp, 60k dps without wrath)
Currently I'm using Overpower with the Crushing Advance rune. It is good for two hidden reasons: First, the damage that is reflected is actually a damage reduction. Instead of 100 to you, it's 70 to you and 30 to them. Second, each tick of reflected damage also triggers life on hit. The coefficient is small, but standing in molten (super fast ticks) I was able to regen 4k hp per second!
I dropped War Cry for it, but I think most of you are probably better off changing something else. Especially if you play in groups!
Also, I removed Brawler for Superstition. Brawler is weak against ranged packs and that's mostly what gives me trouble. Meanwhile, I was a little bit too squishy without War Cry, so adding Superstition was the perfect fit. I feel pretty good now during the farm, and I die about 5-10 times over 90 minutes on a full clear of Act 3. (Buffed stats: 450 all resist, 6.2k armor, 60k hp, 60k dps without wrath)
Why woudl you not pick up warcry with the resistance rune and take a dmg passive. Seems like it would make a lot more sense and give you more dmg and defense.
Zrave, first of all, I love your channel. Your insight in AH stuff is especially amazing and taught me alot.
On the other hand, some nitpicks.
- I am pretty sure you really, really lack 100 dex. You should replace one of your gems in chest with dex one. I didnt calculated it, but it's should net you more EHP, even with your +Life%. And it wont affect Revenge, because you still cant spam it, it cause some sort of GCD. I had 400 dex once, and i still can't spam revenge faster than it procs. I am not even talking about it helping you to offset dangerous spikes of very heavy non-blocked damage.
- Your weapon search priorities. Here I am really puzzled. Last time I checked d2dps.com, sword 15% passive is always better than axe/mace 10% crit, whatever crit%/damage you have already. I checked it on 50/250 I think, can't remember correctly. But maces, not axes, could be actually better than any for revenge/OP/SS spam, because it's slower. Also you always check items with + socket, but 100% crit damage with 50% crit is like +300 extra dps weapon, I am pretty sure 1200+ dps weapon can spawn?
- Last time i checked, LoH was ASpeed normalized, but thats was very way too prepatch and I am not sure if I just not made it up. If it is, slower weapon better in any regard.
Pls, check it and comment in your stream, I love your videos
Since 1.0.3 I've been following this thread because I really needed to change from 1h + shield to 2h or dw. Babatank was boring me more and more and now that I've tried DW I'm having again so much fun!! So thanks a lot for sharing all this info.
Currently I can farm all A1 with no trouble (big deal, huh?) but A2 it's quite harder and A3 quite impossible atm. I guess, like always, need moar gear. So I was hopping a little help from you guys about which stats should I prioritize now with my current gear/stats.
First, I'll talk about the optimal farming strategy, and then the builds you can use to complete them. The Nephalem Valor Buff change means that bosses will drop less loot, while elite packs after the 5th will drop a lot more. This rewards a farming strategy that kills as many elite packs as possible in a single run. Therefore I recommend that your farming run consist of entire act farms, maximizing the proportion of elites that are killed with 5 stacks of valor.
Act 4 farming is bad because it is so short. There are only about 10 elite packs in the entire act so only a few will be killed after the 5th stack. Whimsyshire is also inefficient, first because it only has a few elite packs and also because of the magic find change; it does not affect clouds anymore (didn't get a single blue when I tried it.)
Therefore the best farming routes are full clears of acts 1, 2, or 3. Since a full clear involves killing about 30 elite packs and several bosses, it could take up to 2 hours to complete. In the interest of efficiency I recommend you farm the highest act you can while using a dps strategy. The drop rate change means that farming act 1 in 90 minutes using a dps strategy will be more rewarding than clearing act 2 in 3 hours using a tanking strategy. The most efficient farm in the game will be the fastest completion of act 3.
Survivability requirements have dropped drastically. I was able to drop my EHP in half while tripling my dps and still clear act 3 without too many issues. Currently I clear act 3 in about 2 hours, killing 30 or so elite packs and all 4 bosses, which translates to about 4 full backpacks of loot and 50-60 rares. My stats are 7k armor, 700 all resists, 60k hp, and 40k dps, further boosted by brawler and berserker rage.
I was able to get such a high DPS by stacking as much Crit hit chance and crit hit damage as I could. Currently at 46% and 289%, respectively!
Arcane enchanted seems to be the most deadly affix right now, especially when paired with affixes that constrain your movement.
I'll also share the build I use but first I want to talk about build diversity. It is no longer necessary to use a cookie cutter tank build, but you'll probably want Wrath of the Berserker with the Insanity rune and Revenge with Provocation, as they are our most powerful skills. You can satisfy the meager defensive requirements in any number of ways, whether using passives, high EHP gear, War Cry, Ignore Pain, or even using a shield. Yes, sword and board is no longer necessary, 2h and DW are just as viable!
I currently use:
Wrath of the Berserker(Insanity): Once you are over 30k dps you can kill act 3 packs within the 15s duration, which makes this skill amazing.
Revenge(Provocation): Very strong and reliable skill, gives you both sustain and strong aoe damage. Practically a requirement unless you are using a whirlwind or ranged build.
Ignore Pain(Ignorance is Bliss): I chose the lifesteal rune, even though it is nerfed in inferno, because my high dps gives good returns. When I pop Wrath of the berserker I do about 500k aoe dps, which means 4% lifesteal gives me back 20k hps! That's better than an extra 2 seconds duration.
Leap (Iron Impact): One mobility skill is a good idea, and leap doubles as a defensive cooldown. I also like that I can take shortcuts by leaping over gaps and walls.
Frenzy(Sidearm): Still the best single target dps skill for this build. Also provides some bonus aoe damage! Excellent for small packs and boss fights.
War Cry(Impunity): Still a great defensive option, I chose to keep it and replace my defensive passives because war cry is just so good
Passives:
Berserker Rage: I don't have any fury spenders so this is an easy 25% more damage.
Ruthlessness: Ties in well with the crit hit chance/damage build.
Brawler: Being surrounded by enemies is where I want to be. Massive 30% increase, but stops working as you kill a lot of stuff.
I want to replace Brawler with Weapons Master (Axe/Mace) because of the crit strategy and also because Brawler is useless against ranged elites. Just gotta find the right weapon!
Check out my stream for a demonstration or to ask questions
www.twitch.tv/zrave
Also, I'll be uploading new guides for 1.0.3 content to my youtube channel!
www.youtube.com/zraveX
TL;DR: Blow stuff up
Currently I am ubuffed at 15k DPS, and have found you don't really need Ignore pain anymore and have used instead Battle Rage w/30% rune. This gives me about 20k DPS without triggering WOTB or Frenzy at 5 stack.
I was wondering if I needed to still use Superstition/Tough as Nails/and the Vitality passives anymore. I am a Sword and Board barb right now. Thinking of swapping out one more passive and going with more offensive and see how I do act2-3.
Currently Buffed with War Cry
~850-900 Res
~9500 Armor
~40k Life
~25% Block Rate
~13% DMG Reduction String
Id like to hear your suggestions.
Currently i'm dual wield.. but only 14k dps base. I chose all defensive passives and mostly defensive skills except for wrath.
I can kill belial solo before he enrages but it's close. I take the full 3 minutes to down him.
Last night I did half of act 2 and got maybe 5 AH quality items.. the rest was vendor crap and even with around 10 deaths.. I still picked up enough gold and sold enough rares to make 200k
Anyways.. with that much health and revenge procs.. I was healing big time. Inspiring Presence was giving me 500ish health a tick. So if I got low I just kited around a little bit and I was back to full. Plus I didn't have to worry if war cry was active or not during a boss fight.
Yeah I tried act 3 last night but I just dont have the DPS. I'm dual wield and have the same res, armor, and HP as you.. but you have 9k more base dps than me.
I need to get rid of these 750/785 dps swords and get some real ones.
let's say you do 1000 DPS.
Let's then add 5% and 50% chance/damage that is 1025 DPS
take then after that
another 5% chance would bring it to 1050 but if you added 50% it would be the same 1050. Based on that 1000
Can you post stats to give me an idea of what I'm aiming for in regards to str/vit numbers?
in full mf gear - after chain pulling 2-3 elites in a1 my bags are full takes me about 90 minutes solo to do the WHOLE act looking for extra dungeons too
got to basically double my dps (20k currently) to do the same thing in a2 to be that efficient
Video games are a waste of time all together, that's why they're awesome.
Blizz had a blue post about gear and I'll sum it up. As you play you get better and better gear. As you get better gear most of the gear you find will be useless, just because it's harder and harder to find an upgrade. It's inevitable.
As for the OP, very good post. I like your insight about farming.
people tend to neglect that non elite drops items too and that's where the mf kicks in ^^
currently running act2 with 150 passive mf with as much dps and just enough def to stay alive. i don't waste time item swapping blue mf gear in anymore.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#bVRSkP!ZaY!YcbccZ
Furious charge with dreadnought is a true life saver.
With this build i have around 45k DPs, 900+ resist and 45k life and 6.5k armor.
Currently I'm using Overpower with the Crushing Advance rune. It is good for two hidden reasons: First, the damage that is reflected is actually a damage reduction. Instead of 100 to you, it's 70 to you and 30 to them. Second, each tick of reflected damage also triggers life on hit. The coefficient is small, but standing in molten (super fast ticks) I was able to regen 4k hp per second!
I dropped War Cry for it, but I think most of you are probably better off changing something else. Especially if you play in groups!
Also, I removed Brawler for Superstition. Brawler is weak against ranged packs and that's mostly what gives me trouble. Meanwhile, I was a little bit too squishy without War Cry, so adding Superstition was the perfect fit. I feel pretty good now during the farm, and I die about 5-10 times over 90 minutes on a full clear of Act 3. (Buffed stats: 450 all resist, 6.2k armor, 60k hp, 60k dps without wrath)
Why woudl you not pick up warcry with the resistance rune and take a dmg passive. Seems like it would make a lot more sense and give you more dmg and defense.
On the other hand, some nitpicks.
- I am pretty sure you really, really lack 100 dex. You should replace one of your gems in chest with dex one. I didnt calculated it, but it's should net you more EHP, even with your +Life%. And it wont affect Revenge, because you still cant spam it, it cause some sort of GCD. I had 400 dex once, and i still can't spam revenge faster than it procs. I am not even talking about it helping you to offset dangerous spikes of very heavy non-blocked damage.
- Your weapon search priorities. Here I am really puzzled. Last time I checked d2dps.com, sword 15% passive is always better than axe/mace 10% crit, whatever crit%/damage you have already. I checked it on 50/250 I think, can't remember correctly. But maces, not axes, could be actually better than any for revenge/OP/SS spam, because it's slower. Also you always check items with + socket, but 100% crit damage with 50% crit is like +300 extra dps weapon, I am pretty sure 1200+ dps weapon can spawn?
- Last time i checked, LoH was ASpeed normalized, but thats was very way too prepatch and I am not sure if I just not made it up. If it is, slower weapon better in any regard.
Pls, check it and comment in your stream, I love your videos
Since 1.0.3 I've been following this thread because I really needed to change from 1h + shield to 2h or dw. Babatank was boring me more and more and now that I've tried DW I'm having again so much fun!! So thanks a lot for sharing all this info.
Currently I can farm all A1 with no trouble (big deal, huh?) but A2 it's quite harder and A3 quite impossible atm. I guess, like always, need moar gear. So I was hopping a little help from you guys about which stats should I prioritize now with my current gear/stats.
My stats are: http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/2357/statsdw.png
- 16'5k dps unbuffed. 25k in combat.
- 5'7k armor with cry and enchantress.
- all resis 780-900.
- 46k hp.
This is my gear, any tips about items to change would be awesome! I know I have to change the helm, still wearing Command from 1h+shield. http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7744/geardw.png
And my build, I think I copied from this thread. http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/1131/buildq.png
Thank you!
Is Andariel's worth it? Also, which is your legendary ring? I guess I should increase my crit change & dmg.