So I like my barb and he is at a decent point with almost 1100 res all and roughly 55K health 12K dps, so what I want to know is, is it normal for a barb with these stats to not be able to beat most of the packs in act 3 and still get killed by minions from time to time, or am I just not cut out for playing barb. Im tempted to sell all my gear and try to get a decent 2H set together becuase it just plain looks more fun. Or simply roll a dif character. I hit the act 2 brick wall and made it through but I mean this seems even rougher with so little to progress in terms of all res. Also does block make that much of a difference? I have about 27% atm I could easily get it up to around 35% but over that will cost a lot. What do you guys think?
You are not alone sir! My barb has almost the same stats and I have had the same problem. I do not have the recommended 1k life on hit, nor do I have the stormshield/string of ears that give flat dmg reduction. I have spent 10mil to get into act3 and i can not see spending another 20mil to get stormshield/string of ears. Just start a new toon or do some farming, because I think our current stats will be fine in a couple weeks when they release 1.0.3
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B.Net Profile Don't feed the trolls....they will bite your hand off.
I certainly hope so I mean I spent countless hours on the AH trading. Buy/selling is somewhat fun but I would rather just play the game. I mean I bought d3 and didn't sign up for ebay lol, or so I thought. Anyway I just cannot see spending much more time buy/selling, it feels like a mini job. And I just want to play a game and have fun. I also only have about 500 loh and I tried a 17% string of ear ..... it did literally nothing, and I lost all res and vit/str..... not worth it whatsoever.
I got to this same conclusion last week and powerleveled a wizard... 1.5mil and 2 days later.... my wizard is farming the first half of act3 without skipping most elite packs and 0% resist all. Tank/spank barbs have to almost outgear the content to keep NV stacks. They will do some mob balancing/nerfing and we should be fine. I almost tried the tornado build, but it just didnt fit the playstyle I want out of my barb.
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B.Net Profile Don't feed the trolls....they will bite your hand off.
1. you will need about 65-70k HP
2. if you have over 1k resistance drop superstion its useless and replace it with inspiring presence (1% hp regen persecond ( so your getting about 650-750hp back a second)
3. LOH is NOT needed but if you have it at your desposal use it
4. 10k armor around res around 1k is a nice threshold
to get you hp up get your vit around 1500 ( chest and pants can occupy 225-250 (300 max) each ) and smash life % on helm ( socket needed and life % on ur shield can get up to 14). so if you want around 30% life
just to show what melee reduction stuff can do with string of ears (19%) i was swapping out on a seigebreak farm this morning and noticed if i swapped it out i was taking 6k -7k hits - swapped it in i was around 3-4k hits (running a stormshield with 19% block 4% melee reduction), swapped it completely out with a normal belt and a blue sacred shield with 25% block (nothing else) it was hitting me for 9k
just to show what melee reduction stuff can do with string of ears (19%) i was swapping out on a seigebreak farm this morning and noticed if i swapped it out i was taking 6k -7k hits - swapped it in i was around 3-4k hits (running a stormshield with 19% block 4% melee reduction), swapped it completely out with a normal belt and a blue sacred shield with 25% block (nothing else) it was hitting me for 9k
I totally get that string of ears/stormshield is amazing and at this point damn near mandatory for act3/4 tank and spank barbs.... but I realized that after they were already 5-10mil a piece for the good versions of them hahaha GG auction house GG lolz
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B.Net Profile Don't feed the trolls....they will bite your hand off.
Im currently farming Cydea and Azmo with 5 stacks and i dont have a string or a stormshield. I replaced my string late act2. The sheer lack of high armor/str/vit/reists just doesnt cut it for me. Most of the time melee hits dont do dick to me anyway.
Of course i do my fair share of dying but i am able to do the run with current gear. I feel a high block/life%/str sacred shield is better served than a stormshield.
Current stats/build-
64k HP
14k Dps
1100 Phys resist
1300 Fire resist
1018 Remaining resists
10.1k armor
300 LoH (currently tyring to triple this stat for single target heals)
9% crit chance (currently looking to increase this as well)
140% Critical hit damage
Always room for improvement, i will slowly begin to drop resist all for more crit/crit hit dmg as i feel comfortable. Being able to kill half a champ pack during Wrath is the goal im trying to reach dps wise.
Also i find in act3 the affixes are not nearly as deadly as the mob types with their innate abilities.
I came to the same conclusion on the SS, with only 2900-3800 block and of course % block matters but the amount a sacred shield blocks is 3800-4900 so I think that is much better for the price as well and have been looking at several for under 2 mil. Perhaps I just need to take the deaths avoid certain packs and see how far I can actually get =/. I apprecaite all the feedback, but I was simply frustrated as I see my demon hunter buddy basically laugh his way through Act 3. =(
im only using my string of ears on the hard hitting mobs like p2 diablo (adds), pony level, and opressors (spelling ?) oh and the champion pack big fat dudes in a3
52K hp, 14K dps (25% more with berserker rage), 900 all res/1K fire res/1200 phys res/~10K armor, 400 LoH/20% block with sacred shield. Doing 5NV Cyadea/Asmo runs in under 1hr time, skip some retarded packs from time to time.
P.S. Damn bored of this repetive farm, especially when you aren't getting decent items in 5+ runs in a row.
I'm on a barb as well, quite frankly i think a lot of players are stuck in this fallacy of trying to gear up a tank. Don't argue, you're not gearing for solo play, you're plain gearing a tank. I went that path as well, and i did get past act 2 as well with 9k DPS, it sucked.
That brought me, personally, to realize that you want a balance of DPS vs defensive stats. Put it this way, even if you get hit for only 500 per hit by every mob with 50k HP - you are still going to die...unless they die before you do.
I think a lot of people tend to follow the 'sustainable' barb idea, in which you see a pack, you don't read what they are, you just charge in and outheal the dmg you take with the LoH / LS, revenge, etc. Realistically - i don't see this working, the elite packs are designed to break any character = you will NEVER attain a completely sustainable character that will not die on anything and can always stay in with 10k DPS (for the next 5 hours) until that pack is dead.
The global idea of how to play a barbarian in D3 needs to change a little. Personally, it is FAR easier to go for a 'blow them up' build, demolish the pack before they hurt you. Mainly because getting a 2 hander right now is 10x cheaper than 1 hander, getting high STR+CRIT items is 10x cheaper than all resist / high armor / LOH etc.
I've switched to the throwing barb 2 weeks ago, and since i've been raping whimsyshire solo or with a party, getting loads of loot, selling it on AH and making a killing. Look at this:
tanking 9k dps LOH build: i've spent over 20 mil, and yet i can't do anything easily in A3/4
'blow them up' build: i've spent <2mil and i kill any pack within a few seconds now in solo with 60k DPS (zero IAS)
Ultimately Blizzard is doing the right thing by tuning down the damage done in A2 onwards, because of that exact gap - if you gear survival to take small hits, your DPS will never breach 20k, not matter how many billions you spend. If you gear pure demolition - you will get one shot by everything, unless you drop a LOT of DPS to gear up defensive stats. Tuning down that damage will allow both sides to move more towards the middle where you can find a balanced gear build and stats with at least decent 30-40k DPS and yet can stand in the midst of a pack without being torn apart in 0.5 seconds.
Bottom line is - i keep seeing all the "i have 1100 resist, 10k armor and 1k LoH and i still can't do anything" threads, of course you can't do anything with 12k DPS, Here's a simple math:
pack of elites = 4 mobs (sometimes 3, some named ones & horde have load more)
each mob hits you for 2k (just about right with those stats)
each mob has 1.5 attack speed (random approximation)
4x2=8k damage taken every 1.5 seconds
Now, lets say you have LoH = 1k per hit, you attack 1.4 times a second, which translates into 1.4k HPS, so the bottom line is:
you are eating 5.3k DPS and you are healing for 1.4k HPS, say you have 40k HP, with the deficit of - 3.9k HP every second of combat you will be dead in about 10 seconds...
Of course you can factor in the heals from revenge (if it procs at the right time), and you will give yourself a little more time to live. However, unless you can hit 5.3k HPS based on your attack speed, say 1.4 translates into 3.7k LoH (GL HF reaching that) you will not have a sustainable build no matter how you look at it.
No matter how you look at it, you can play with that kind of math / logic and see the numbers for yourself, building something that would work in such a premise is going to cost you hundreds of millions of gold with BIS items, and you are still going to end up having 12k DPS and taking 5 minutes to kill a single pack of elites with 1.5-1.7mil HP.
Alternatively you can kill that pack in 10-15 seconds, collect loot, and even kill another pack in that same 5 minutes but only have enough defensive stats to survive 2-3 hits so that you don't rack up ridiculous repair bill in the end...
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Don't feed the trolls....they will bite your hand off.
Don't feed the trolls....they will bite your hand off.
1. you will need about 65-70k HP
2. if you have over 1k resistance drop superstion its useless and replace it with inspiring presence (1% hp regen persecond ( so your getting about 650-750hp back a second)
3. LOH is NOT needed but if you have it at your desposal use it
4. 10k armor around res around 1k is a nice threshold
to get you hp up get your vit around 1500 ( chest and pants can occupy 225-250 (300 max) each ) and smash life % on helm ( socket needed and life % on ur shield can get up to 14). so if you want around 30% life
just to show what melee reduction stuff can do with string of ears (19%) i was swapping out on a seigebreak farm this morning and noticed if i swapped it out i was taking 6k -7k hits - swapped it in i was around 3-4k hits (running a stormshield with 19% block 4% melee reduction), swapped it completely out with a normal belt and a blue sacred shield with 25% block (nothing else) it was hitting me for 9k
I totally get that string of ears/stormshield is amazing and at this point damn near mandatory for act3/4 tank and spank barbs.... but I realized that after they were already 5-10mil a piece for the good versions of them hahaha GG auction house GG lolz
Don't feed the trolls....they will bite your hand off.
Of course i do my fair share of dying but i am able to do the run with current gear. I feel a high block/life%/str sacred shield is better served than a stormshield.
Current stats/build-
64k HP
14k Dps
1100 Phys resist
1300 Fire resist
1018 Remaining resists
10.1k armor
300 LoH (currently tyring to triple this stat for single target heals)
9% crit chance (currently looking to increase this as well)
140% Critical hit damage
Always room for improvement, i will slowly begin to drop resist all for more crit/crit hit dmg as i feel comfortable. Being able to kill half a champ pack during Wrath is the goal im trying to reach dps wise.
Also i find in act3 the affixes are not nearly as deadly as the mob types with their innate abilities.
P.S. Damn bored of this repetive farm, especially when you aren't getting decent items in 5+ runs in a row.
That brought me, personally, to realize that you want a balance of DPS vs defensive stats. Put it this way, even if you get hit for only 500 per hit by every mob with 50k HP - you are still going to die...unless they die before you do.
I think a lot of people tend to follow the 'sustainable' barb idea, in which you see a pack, you don't read what they are, you just charge in and outheal the dmg you take with the LoH / LS, revenge, etc. Realistically - i don't see this working, the elite packs are designed to break any character = you will NEVER attain a completely sustainable character that will not die on anything and can always stay in with 10k DPS (for the next 5 hours) until that pack is dead.
The global idea of how to play a barbarian in D3 needs to change a little. Personally, it is FAR easier to go for a 'blow them up' build, demolish the pack before they hurt you. Mainly because getting a 2 hander right now is 10x cheaper than 1 hander, getting high STR+CRIT items is 10x cheaper than all resist / high armor / LOH etc.
I've switched to the throwing barb 2 weeks ago, and since i've been raping whimsyshire solo or with a party, getting loads of loot, selling it on AH and making a killing. Look at this:
tanking 9k dps LOH build: i've spent over 20 mil, and yet i can't do anything easily in A3/4
'blow them up' build: i've spent <2mil and i kill any pack within a few seconds now in solo with 60k DPS (zero IAS)
Ultimately Blizzard is doing the right thing by tuning down the damage done in A2 onwards, because of that exact gap - if you gear survival to take small hits, your DPS will never breach 20k, not matter how many billions you spend. If you gear pure demolition - you will get one shot by everything, unless you drop a LOT of DPS to gear up defensive stats. Tuning down that damage will allow both sides to move more towards the middle where you can find a balanced gear build and stats with at least decent 30-40k DPS and yet can stand in the midst of a pack without being torn apart in 0.5 seconds.
Bottom line is - i keep seeing all the "i have 1100 resist, 10k armor and 1k LoH and i still can't do anything" threads, of course you can't do anything with 12k DPS, Here's a simple math:
pack of elites = 4 mobs (sometimes 3, some named ones & horde have load more)
each mob hits you for 2k (just about right with those stats)
each mob has 1.5 attack speed (random approximation)
4x2=8k damage taken every 1.5 seconds
Now, lets say you have LoH = 1k per hit, you attack 1.4 times a second, which translates into 1.4k HPS, so the bottom line is:
you are eating 5.3k DPS and you are healing for 1.4k HPS, say you have 40k HP, with the deficit of - 3.9k HP every second of combat you will be dead in about 10 seconds...
Of course you can factor in the heals from revenge (if it procs at the right time), and you will give yourself a little more time to live. However, unless you can hit 5.3k HPS based on your attack speed, say 1.4 translates into 3.7k LoH (GL HF reaching that) you will not have a sustainable build no matter how you look at it.
No matter how you look at it, you can play with that kind of math / logic and see the numbers for yourself, building something that would work in such a premise is going to cost you hundreds of millions of gold with BIS items, and you are still going to end up having 12k DPS and taking 5 minutes to kill a single pack of elites with 1.5-1.7mil HP.
Alternatively you can kill that pack in 10-15 seconds, collect loot, and even kill another pack in that same 5 minutes but only have enough defensive stats to survive 2-3 hits so that you don't rack up ridiculous repair bill in the end...