The basic strategy would be to keep Battle Rage up at all times. Lead with overpower as it buffs your critical hit chance or you could save it after you get your frenzy bonus for more whirlwind critical hits, but I doubt you'd get the full bonuses worth that way. You frenzy 5 times then transition into whirlwind to increase the attacks and damage (increasing the likelihood of your whirlwind critical hitting/healing). Wrath of the Berserker whenever you feel like it, but preferably early since it's free with a long cool down.
When Battle Rage and WotB are both up you have two separate aoe blood attacks that happen on crit (bloodshed and the much more powerful slaughter). This combined with whirlwind's Blood Funnel led me to label this topic appropriately.
Passive wise I have Ruthless (extra crit + damage? sign me up!), Unforgiving (I feel that Battle Rage/Whirlwind are going to leave me running on empty more often than not), and Weapons Master (for the 10% crit for axes/maces).
48% crit through sheer abilities... holy... Add a scoundrel for 51%
I might do something along those lines. I don't get your whirlwind though. You have both overpower, revenge, and a crit chance of good blood splatter aoe. Do you really need more AoE damage? Might consider dropping that and Unforgiving, which opens up for Brawler/Endless Rage. You've a lot of crit, but without balancing it with at least some damage, you're not gonna benefit that tremendously from it.
The incredibly fast attack speed coming off of Frenzy combined with the already fast attack speed of whirlwind is designed to be an engine to feed into bloodshed/slaughter activations. More hits = more crits = more bloodsplosions. If whirlwind's crits don't activate those runes, then yeah, it's probably not worth it. I also don't see revenge/overpower as being full time abilities, because of their conditional usage (damage/cooldown). This build uses them more as crit buffs, one of them with some healing stuffed in. I'm not familiar with Endless Rage.
To add survivability/damage it'd just be a matter of switching out unforgiving to something a bit more to your taste. Brawler would be excellent with this set up. Thanks for the suggestions.
That would be a good skillset for early difficulties. Later on, like in Hell and Inferno, you're gonna want more defensives, both through actives and passives.
I never was a big fan of Unforgiving though. Fury generation never seems to be a problem for me. I'd rather have something like Bloodthirst, because I looove self-healing. I think even Animosity would be a good replacement for Unforgiving if you're set on having lots of Fury. Brawler is good for just flat-out damage, though.
That would be a good skillset for early difficulties. Later on, like in Nightmare and Inferno, you're gonna want more defensives, both through actives and passives.
I never was a big fan of Unforgiving though. Fury generation never seems to be a problem for me. I'd rather have something like Bloodthirst, because I looove self-healing. I think even Animosity would be a good replacement for Unforgiving if you're set on having lots of Fury. Brawler is good for just flat-out damage, though.
Don't forget that a build can be made more defensive simply through gear choice. A one handed axe/mace with an amethyst based gem socketed in there (+life on hit) and a big beefy shield would make this build far more survivable. The more I look at unforgiving the less satisfied I feel with it. Bloodthirst just feels like it's too little of a leech%, but we'll have to wait until release to know how rare of a modifier it really is now. Brawler seems a nice choice considering how much this build is leaning towards AOE.
Keep in mind Frenzy only increases your Frenzy attack speed, it does not affect other skills like WW.
Not enough healing in this build, I would do the following (but in the end its all personal choice):
-Switch Frenzy for Cleave with Rupture
- Drop Unforgiving for Bloodthirst
-Switch Rune on Revenge to Provocation
- Not a fan of WoTB unless in a Frezy Dual Wield Mighty weapon build with Thrive on chaos
-Would switch WoTB for Rend with Bloodbath
Cleave + rune and rend + rune should deal massive damage, not to mention throwing in the blood explosion from Battle Rage. I may actually use this variation, as it's very safe, has great consistent damage, and defence. This can be used with a 2h or 1h + shield effectively and support the use of Mighty weapons OR maces / axes. I like it a lot.
I wasn't trolling on endless rage, I must have missed berserked rage when I looked over everything again. I don't know how the attacks are allocated, but yeah, whirlwind seems to hit pretty quickly. I'd probably only ever stop to Frenzy when Fury is all gone, or to allow myself to be surrounded to get more AOE hits in, but a 75% attack speed and 20% damage buff (even if it is only for 5 seconds) might be worth stopping for. It might be worth it to mention that Frenzy's stack is refreshed up to five with a single hit, so you could just stop every 4 seconds, hit once with frenzy, then keep it going.
Yep whatever fits your play style! I like to not have to worry about such factors like stacking buffs because I move around a lot to reposition so there are definitely times I won't be in combat or at least directly attacking.
Keep in mind Frenzy only increases your Frenzy attack speed, it does not affect other skills like WW.
Not enough healing in this build, I would do the following (but in the end its all personal choice):
-Switch Frenzy for Cleave with Rupture
- Drop Unforgiving for Bloodthirst
-Switch Rune on Revenge to Provocation
- Not a fan of WoTB unless in a Frezy Dual Wield Mighty weapon build with Thrive on chaos
-Would switch WoTB for Rend with Bloodbath
Cleave + rune and rend + rune should deal massive damage, not to mention throwing in the blood explosion from Battle Rage. I may actually use this variation, as it's very safe, has great consistent damage, and defence. This can be used with a 2h or 1h + shield effectively and support the use of Mighty weapons OR maces / axes. I like it a lot.
OH wow, thanks for telling me that. Definitely not taking frenzy then. Oddly enough, your change makes it better thematically. Cleave makes the enemies explode, showering everyone with blood. Rend causes enemies to bleed, and makes everyone in a huge area bleed as well. Not to forget bloodthirst. What's more bloody than that? This started as a what-if build. I wanted the highest theoretical chance to crit from abilities while having abilities that had synergies with criticals. That being said, I like your variation better. It's seems like a much more consistent build.
Keep in mind Frenzy only increases your Frenzy attack speed, it does not affect other skills like WW.
Not enough healing in this build, I would do the following (but in the end its all personal choice):
-Switch Frenzy for Cleave with Rupture
- Drop Unforgiving for Bloodthirst
-Switch Rune on Revenge to Provocation
- Not a fan of WoTB unless in a Frezy Dual Wield Mighty weapon build with Thrive on chaos
-Would switch WoTB for Rend with Bloodbath
Cleave + rune and rend + rune should deal massive damage, not to mention throwing in the blood explosion from Battle Rage. I may actually use this variation, as it's very safe, has great consistent damage, and defence. This can be used with a 2h or 1h + shield effectively and support the use of Mighty weapons OR maces / axes. I like it a lot.
OH wow, thanks for telling me that. Definitely not taking frenzy then. Oddly enough, your change makes it better thematically. Cleave makes the enemies explode, showering everyone with blood. Rend causes enemies to bleed, and makes everyone in a huge area bleed as well. Not to forget bloodthirst. What's more bloody than that? This started as a what-if build. I wanted the highest theoretical chance to crit from abilities while having abilities that had synergies with criticals. That being said, I like your variation better. It's seems like a much more consistent build.
Ya i wasn't kidding when I'm now seriously considering replacing this as my inferno build.
Single Target bosses make up like... .005% of the monsters you face, I'd rather gameplan for the others, and let my teammates be the ones to pound on bosses.
This is all speculation but I'm pretty sure on most boss fights there are usually add mechanics now,, so either way the AOE will come in use. Also spamming overpower, rend, cleave and revenge does produce great damage. WW on its own on bosses will probably hit 4-5 times if you look at the skill video on the website and apply it to a bosses hit box.
Overall very very solid build, daddy likes.
EDIT: Plus anyone who uses this build can be the hip few that actually use Rend. Still one of my favourite barb abilities.
I found rend to be practically useless at it's current default range (practically touching the enemy). Runing it with bloodbath should mitigate that problem.
I found rend to be practically useless at it's current default range (practically touching the enemy). Runing it with bloodbath should mitigate that problem.
There's a ton of practical uses that Rend has over a lot of other abilities that are fury spenders. First and foremost it's a completely mobile skill like WW and it doesnt need to be aimed. You can simply build up a lot of Fury from cleaving and then WW > Rend> Revenge into a pack. This combo has no cooldown and is extremely efficient at killing. 36 Fury required.
The build in the first post is basically my build, except that i use 2x movement skill instead of WoTB and Overpower, and my fury spender is Seismic Slam (but, if WW hits multiple times per use, as it looks like in the videoes, i'm going to take it instead).
Why would you need Unforgiving, though?
Originally I was thinking I'd need it to keep my Battle Rage up at all times. A few posts in and it was readily replaced by Brawler or Bloodthirst.
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http://us.battle.net...QiPV!ZhY!cbZcbZ
The basic strategy would be to keep Battle Rage up at all times. Lead with overpower as it buffs your critical hit chance or you could save it after you get your frenzy bonus for more whirlwind critical hits, but I doubt you'd get the full bonuses worth that way. You frenzy 5 times then transition into whirlwind to increase the attacks and damage (increasing the likelihood of your whirlwind critical hitting/healing). Wrath of the Berserker whenever you feel like it, but preferably early since it's free with a long cool down.
When Battle Rage and WotB are both up you have two separate aoe blood attacks that happen on crit (bloodshed and the much more powerful slaughter). This combined with whirlwind's Blood Funnel led me to label this topic appropriately.
Passive wise I have Ruthless (extra crit + damage? sign me up!), Unforgiving (I feel that Battle Rage/Whirlwind are going to leave me running on empty more often than not), and Weapons Master (for the 10% crit for axes/maces).
Let me know what you guys think.
I am using brawler for a passive
The incredibly fast attack speed coming off of Frenzy combined with the already fast attack speed of whirlwind is designed to be an engine to feed into bloodshed/slaughter activations. More hits = more crits = more bloodsplosions. If whirlwind's crits don't activate those runes, then yeah, it's probably not worth it. I also don't see revenge/overpower as being full time abilities, because of their conditional usage (damage/cooldown). This build uses them more as crit buffs, one of them with some healing stuffed in. I'm not familiar with Endless Rage.
To add survivability/damage it'd just be a matter of switching out unforgiving to something a bit more to your taste. Brawler would be excellent with this set up. Thanks for the suggestions.
I never was a big fan of Unforgiving though. Fury generation never seems to be a problem for me. I'd rather have something like Bloodthirst, because I looove self-healing. I think even Animosity would be a good replacement for Unforgiving if you're set on having lots of Fury. Brawler is good for just flat-out damage, though.
Don't forget that a build can be made more defensive simply through gear choice. A one handed axe/mace with an amethyst based gem socketed in there (+life on hit) and a big beefy shield would make this build far more survivable. The more I look at unforgiving the less satisfied I feel with it. Bloodthirst just feels like it's too little of a leech%, but we'll have to wait until release to know how rare of a modifier it really is now. Brawler seems a nice choice considering how much this build is leaning towards AOE.
Not enough healing in this build, I would do the following (but in the end its all personal choice):
-Switch Frenzy for Cleave with Rupture
- Drop Unforgiving for Bloodthirst
-Switch Rune on Revenge to Provocation
- Not a fan of WoTB unless in a Frezy Dual Wield Mighty weapon build with Thrive on chaos
-Would switch WoTB for Rend with Bloodbath
Cleave + rune and rend + rune should deal massive damage, not to mention throwing in the blood explosion from Battle Rage. I may actually use this variation, as it's very safe, has great consistent damage, and defence. This can be used with a 2h or 1h + shield effectively and support the use of Mighty weapons OR maces / axes. I like it a lot.
http://us.battle.net...QicV!ZdY!abZccc
OH wow, thanks for telling me that. Definitely not taking frenzy then. Oddly enough, your change makes it better thematically. Cleave makes the enemies explode, showering everyone with blood. Rend causes enemies to bleed, and makes everyone in a huge area bleed as well. Not to forget bloodthirst. What's more bloody than that? This started as a what-if build. I wanted the highest theoretical chance to crit from abilities while having abilities that had synergies with criticals. That being said, I like your variation better. It's seems like a much more consistent build.
Ya i wasn't kidding when I'm now seriously considering replacing this as my inferno build.
Overall very very solid build, daddy likes.
EDIT: Plus anyone who uses this build can be the hip few that actually use Rend. Still one of my favourite barb abilities.
There's a ton of practical uses that Rend has over a lot of other abilities that are fury spenders. First and foremost it's a completely mobile skill like WW and it doesnt need to be aimed. You can simply build up a lot of Fury from cleaving and then WW > Rend> Revenge into a pack. This combo has no cooldown and is extremely efficient at killing. 36 Fury required.
Originally I was thinking I'd need it to keep my Battle Rage up at all times. A few posts in and it was readily replaced by Brawler or Bloodthirst.