Thanks for the help. Where would you suggest we could get more crit chance? I don't want to spend a ton of money on her because she plays very sparingly (she's at 40k kills whereas I'm at 400k) but I find a lot of loot and I can keep an eye out for better equipment for her.
It looks like the 5 piece bonus on IK would help considerably, but I don't even have that kind of money
She seems to be doing a pretty good job with mobs and most elites (I think she just needs some more practice with how to avoid certain affixes) but the big thing is the uber fights. I'd like her to be able to just spin around the boss the entire time, but her fury generation doesn't seem to be high enough. Any suggestions as to how to help out with that? I'm guessing faster weapons will probably help.
If you have mighty weapon in the main hand and use weapons master passive you gain 3 fury per hit this is great for keeping it up on single targets. On second inspection your crit should
Be fine as it is. Replace the offhand wep with a fast dagger or sword around 700-800dps with life steal , str , crit
Damage 60-100% and open socket and stick gem in . If you hang on until the weekend I've got a few offhand weps in storage ill let you try them out for free as they are Not of any use to me. Also try get boots with 12%
Movement speed aswell
If only he were on EU for you to be generous with. Swapping out weapons master for animosity will also give her free dps . To expand on what he is saying, you want a dagger in the offhand with (at her gear level) high strength, some LOH, lifesteal, and an open socket for now, as 800+ dps ones that have crit damage in addition to lifesteal/strength/socket tend to be way overpriced right now. Since yall are on US servers, I have a great offhand weapon i can let go of for really cheap (its like a 700 dps dagger with the stats i mentioned). With the offhand, dps really doesnt matter that much unless she is using whirlwind as a main source of damage output, which is not recommended until she has enough dps to make lifesteal better than LOH, threshold on that is around 60-70k dps. Switch to either a mace or an axe in the mainhand (you can use mighty weapon, but i find that the 10% crit from weapons master makes things much smoother). You can get her a decent 900ish dps mace with strength, crit damage, and an open socket for under 10 million pretty easily. Be sure that when you look for a mainhand weapon, that you look at the damage range for the weapon itself. A 1000 dps mace (assuming no IAS) with a damage range of 650-1030 will be outperformed by a 934 dps weapon with a damage range of 516-1046. The reason is that the tornadoes from sprint are based on mainhand damage, and the higher top end damage means that the tornadoes have a higher damage potential.
She can get a really nice set of fire walkers dirt cheap on the AH right now, as well as a set of IK boots, but it would be best for her to grab some fire walkers with high Str (140ish), and high vit (120ish) with little to no AR due to her lower health pool. Since she would lose some AR from the boots, you could purchase a decent rolled IK gloves with 80+ str, maybe some vit and AR, 9-10% crit for under 10 mil, and this would not only give her a bonus 60 AR from the 2 set bonus, but also 6% melee damage reduction that all IK gloves have(and you also get 4-5% from fire walkers too). If getting IK gloves proves too expensive right now, look into replacing her belt with a Lamentation as it would be a good DPS upgrade for her. Lamentations are extremely cheap for ice ones on the AH right now, though they may end up not having as much AR, but right now she needs a larger lifepool. Replacing her helm would for sure be a great idea (though the one you have is decent), mainly because she needs more vit at the current moment. Ill help look a little later, but you can get a really nice set of shoulders for a great price on the AH if you know how to look. You should be able to find shoulders with over 150 str, 80+ vit (or more), AR, and life% for pretty cheap. I have a ring laying around that would be a very nice replacement for her antique victor that I can give yall if you like.
As for the bracers, while Lacunis are really nice, she would see more benefit from a set of bracers with 100+ str, any vit, any AR, and 5-6% crit. The runspeed from them is nice, but since you are going to swap to runspeed boots, it will cancel out. Overall, I believe that IAS is somewhat overrated for WW barbs until they have towards the higher end of gear, so the swap to IK gloves without IAS that I mentioned earlier may be a dps loss on paper, but it will result in a more important survivability increase.
As far as the spec goes, its pretty standard, except I would recommend that she switch out Frenzy-vanguard for Bash-instigation once she switches out weapons as it will allow her to generate the fury needed to start spinning through mobs much faster. With instigation, you only need 2-3 hits to get enough fury to use Battle rage, only 1 hit if you use war cry. Like I mentioned earlier, swapping animosity for weapons master will give her a very nice dps boost, especially when she swaps to a mace/axe in the mainhand.
Feel free to add me in game, and I can help yall out some more (id be more than happy to help you look through the AH for great deals). I actually really enjoy helping the community, and it would be fun to help a new WW barb out. Fallactic#1486
Thanks for all the help. Just a little background:
She is using whirlwind as the main source of damage right now because she's playing with me when she plays, and I do more than enough damage to take care of anything but uber bosses. When we do uber bosses, she switches over to a different build, but this is what we do when we are key farming or just farming in general. The animosity was chosen over the dps bonus from weapons master because I felt it was more important to keep her with high fury and spinning the whole time (sad to say she's having so much fun spinning that I really don't think she cares about her dps so much as how much fun she's having running circles around the map!).
I'll take a look through my inventory and see if I have anything I can swap out with her. She was using firewalkers before but we swapped them out because of the AR and Vitality she has on her Kicks. The helm she has is a throwaway I gave her, so that's definitely on our list to replace. As for the bracers, she only gets MS from those and the weapon (which should get replaced anyway, so we'll lose that move speed there). I think I have a set of Inna's pants that have move speed on them, but if I recall correctly the stats on it were terrible. Isn't 24% MS pretty crucial to the build as a whole?
You dont honestly need 24% movement speed, but if you really did, than you would just need to replace the spear with a dagger, and get her some fire walkers (or any other boots with 12% runspeed). I run with 12% runspeed, and clear really fast as it is. I tried out using a similar lacuni bracer to hers when one dropped, and I really didnt notice that much of a difference versus 12%. I moved a bit faster, and maybe hit an extra mob a little quicker, but i really saw no discernable benefit.
If you swapped her mainhand spear with a mace with the same str, IAS, dps, socket, but with no LOH, and 50% crit damage, she would gain 6100 dps. If you swapped her offhand spear with a 738 dps dagger with 115 str, 2.6% lifesteal, 500 LOH, and a socket (with a 70% gem in it), she would gain 5400 dps. Even though she would lose a net 180 LOH and .3% lifesteal between the two new weapons, she would end up gaining 400 more life per second (not including the life regen from the shoulders) because of the difference in her damage overall. The dps gain is in large part due to the 10% bonus crit that she would get from swapping to weapons master and having a mace in her mainhand. With above 45% crit (after battle rage), WW barbs do not need animosity due to how fast they gain rage (especially with her having 55% crit now that she would have weapons master).
If she were to swap the shoulders for ones with similar(or more) str, no +armor, no regen, maybe slightly less AR, but with at least 26 vit, she would net gain survivability (26 vit is equivalent to the +265 armor in terms of survivability). For another big upgrade, you can grab her an IK helm that has on the lower end of strength (under 100 ), 5% crit, 10%+ life %, and a socket for extremely cheap. You can also just find a similar helm (that just isnt IK for probably under 1 million and may even have AR or vit). The nice thing about getting the IK helm is that you not only get the 2 set bonus (netting you 60 AR for free), but the helm also offers 5% less damage taken from melee.
I uploaded her character to d3rawr and swapped in the gear that I suggested with around the stats that I said. Set 1 is her normal gear, with nothing changed at all. Set 2 is with a new helm, shoulders, bracers, and the two weapons. With those 5 items, she would gain 20k damage which is actually gaining 90k true dps. True DPS is the actual DPS that she will be doing with her sprint tornados + the whirlwind damage. She goes from 158k tDPS to 249k tDPS. Her EHP would also increase by about 100k, as well as her actual HP by around 9k.
For some reason I cant change the text back to the color its supposed to be on the following paragraph.
http://www.d3rawr.com/d-sniAc Here is the profile with two sets of gear on a barb. Set 1 is her current gear, unchanged. Set 2 is her gear with those 5 items that I mentioned replaced. The dps for set 1 is a little bit off because I cant turn off weapons master for 1 set but not another. This shows a lot of information, but on the right side column under the attributes box there is a tab called "tDPS and life gained per second" which shows true dps as well.
do we need life on hit and life steal as a WW barb?
Depends on your dps. Ideally, you can get both. Once you get past a certain dps threshold (around 70k), LOH becomes less effective than lifesteal. Just today, I swapped out my dagger that had 500 LOH, 2.8% lifesteal and a socket for one with 3.0 lifesteal and 61% crit damage. Since LOH doesnt proc as much from tornadoes anymore, it has lessened in value versus LS. What this meant for me is that even though I lost 500 LOH, because of the gain in DPS that I got, I only ended up losing a total of 340 life per second (according to d3rawr). At ~130k dps, 1% of lifesteal = 541 LOH for me, which isnt really noticable unless I farm higher MPs than I do (5-7 usually).
But to fully answer your question, Try to gather both if at all possible. If you are under 70k dps, I would try to stay around 900 LOH or more with 6-9% lifesteal, or around 1400-1600 without any lifesteal. It really all depends on what difficulty you farm, and your playstyle. If you have higher dps, then using whirlwind aggressively works really well with the lifesteal as LOH only procs off of the first hit of whirlwind (as far as I know).
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/GrayWorm-1278/hero/3952412
We will be switching the shield out for a 3% LS/Crit dmg weapon and the helm will be replaced with something that has Str/RA/CC.
Abilities are obviously still on her old build, but the passives are the same.
It looks like the 5 piece bonus on IK would help considerably, but I don't even have that kind of money
She seems to be doing a pretty good job with mobs and most elites (I think she just needs some more practice with how to avoid certain affixes) but the big thing is the uber fights. I'd like her to be able to just spin around the boss the entire time, but her fury generation doesn't seem to be high enough. Any suggestions as to how to help out with that? I'm guessing faster weapons will probably help.
If only he were on EU for you to be generous with. Swapping out weapons master for animosity will also give her free dps . To expand on what he is saying, you want a dagger in the offhand with (at her gear level) high strength, some LOH, lifesteal, and an open socket for now, as 800+ dps ones that have crit damage in addition to lifesteal/strength/socket tend to be way overpriced right now. Since yall are on US servers, I have a great offhand weapon i can let go of for really cheap (its like a 700 dps dagger with the stats i mentioned). With the offhand, dps really doesnt matter that much unless she is using whirlwind as a main source of damage output, which is not recommended until she has enough dps to make lifesteal better than LOH, threshold on that is around 60-70k dps. Switch to either a mace or an axe in the mainhand (you can use mighty weapon, but i find that the 10% crit from weapons master makes things much smoother). You can get her a decent 900ish dps mace with strength, crit damage, and an open socket for under 10 million pretty easily. Be sure that when you look for a mainhand weapon, that you look at the damage range for the weapon itself. A 1000 dps mace (assuming no IAS) with a damage range of 650-1030 will be outperformed by a 934 dps weapon with a damage range of 516-1046. The reason is that the tornadoes from sprint are based on mainhand damage, and the higher top end damage means that the tornadoes have a higher damage potential.
She can get a really nice set of fire walkers dirt cheap on the AH right now, as well as a set of IK boots, but it would be best for her to grab some fire walkers with high Str (140ish), and high vit (120ish) with little to no AR due to her lower health pool. Since she would lose some AR from the boots, you could purchase a decent rolled IK gloves with 80+ str, maybe some vit and AR, 9-10% crit for under 10 mil, and this would not only give her a bonus 60 AR from the 2 set bonus, but also 6% melee damage reduction that all IK gloves have(and you also get 4-5% from fire walkers too). If getting IK gloves proves too expensive right now, look into replacing her belt with a Lamentation as it would be a good DPS upgrade for her. Lamentations are extremely cheap for ice ones on the AH right now, though they may end up not having as much AR, but right now she needs a larger lifepool. Replacing her helm would for sure be a great idea (though the one you have is decent), mainly because she needs more vit at the current moment. Ill help look a little later, but you can get a really nice set of shoulders for a great price on the AH if you know how to look. You should be able to find shoulders with over 150 str, 80+ vit (or more), AR, and life% for pretty cheap. I have a ring laying around that would be a very nice replacement for her antique victor that I can give yall if you like.
As for the bracers, while Lacunis are really nice, she would see more benefit from a set of bracers with 100+ str, any vit, any AR, and 5-6% crit. The runspeed from them is nice, but since you are going to swap to runspeed boots, it will cancel out. Overall, I believe that IAS is somewhat overrated for WW barbs until they have towards the higher end of gear, so the swap to IK gloves without IAS that I mentioned earlier may be a dps loss on paper, but it will result in a more important survivability increase.
As far as the spec goes, its pretty standard, except I would recommend that she switch out Frenzy-vanguard for Bash-instigation once she switches out weapons as it will allow her to generate the fury needed to start spinning through mobs much faster. With instigation, you only need 2-3 hits to get enough fury to use Battle rage, only 1 hit if you use war cry. Like I mentioned earlier, swapping animosity for weapons master will give her a very nice dps boost, especially when she swaps to a mace/axe in the mainhand.
Feel free to add me in game, and I can help yall out some more (id be more than happy to help you look through the AH for great deals). I actually really enjoy helping the community, and it would be fun to help a new WW barb out. Fallactic#1486
She is using whirlwind as the main source of damage right now because she's playing with me when she plays, and I do more than enough damage to take care of anything but uber bosses. When we do uber bosses, she switches over to a different build, but this is what we do when we are key farming or just farming in general. The animosity was chosen over the dps bonus from weapons master because I felt it was more important to keep her with high fury and spinning the whole time (sad to say she's having so much fun spinning that I really don't think she cares about her dps so much as how much fun she's having running circles around the map!).
I'll take a look through my inventory and see if I have anything I can swap out with her. She was using firewalkers before but we swapped them out because of the AR and Vitality she has on her Kicks. The helm she has is a throwaway I gave her, so that's definitely on our list to replace. As for the bracers, she only gets MS from those and the weapon (which should get replaced anyway, so we'll lose that move speed there). I think I have a set of Inna's pants that have move speed on them, but if I recall correctly the stats on it were terrible. Isn't 24% MS pretty crucial to the build as a whole?
Again, thanks for the help, both of you!
If you swapped her mainhand spear with a mace with the same str, IAS, dps, socket, but with no LOH, and 50% crit damage, she would gain 6100 dps. If you swapped her offhand spear with a 738 dps dagger with 115 str, 2.6% lifesteal, 500 LOH, and a socket (with a 70% gem in it), she would gain 5400 dps. Even though she would lose a net 180 LOH and .3% lifesteal between the two new weapons, she would end up gaining 400 more life per second (not including the life regen from the shoulders) because of the difference in her damage overall. The dps gain is in large part due to the 10% bonus crit that she would get from swapping to weapons master and having a mace in her mainhand. With above 45% crit (after battle rage), WW barbs do not need animosity due to how fast they gain rage (especially with her having 55% crit now that she would have weapons master).
If she were to swap the shoulders for ones with similar(or more) str, no +armor, no regen, maybe slightly less AR, but with at least 26 vit, she would net gain survivability (26 vit is equivalent to the +265 armor in terms of survivability). For another big upgrade, you can grab her an IK helm that has on the lower end of strength (under 100 ), 5% crit, 10%+ life %, and a socket for extremely cheap. You can also just find a similar helm (that just isnt IK for probably under 1 million and may even have AR or vit). The nice thing about getting the IK helm is that you not only get the 2 set bonus (netting you 60 AR for free), but the helm also offers 5% less damage taken from melee.
I uploaded her character to d3rawr and swapped in the gear that I suggested with around the stats that I said. Set 1 is her normal gear, with nothing changed at all. Set 2 is with a new helm, shoulders, bracers, and the two weapons. With those 5 items, she would gain 20k damage which is actually gaining 90k true dps. True DPS is the actual DPS that she will be doing with her sprint tornados + the whirlwind damage. She goes from 158k tDPS to 249k tDPS. Her EHP would also increase by about 100k, as well as her actual HP by around 9k.
For some reason I cant change the text back to the color its supposed to be on the following paragraph.
http://www.d3rawr.com/d-sniAc Here is the profile with two sets of gear on a barb. Set 1 is her current gear, unchanged. Set 2 is her gear with those 5 items that I mentioned replaced. The dps for set 1 is a little bit off because I cant turn off weapons master for 1 set but not another. This shows a lot of information, but on the right side column under the attributes box there is a tab called "tDPS and life gained per second" which shows true dps as well.
Depends on your dps. Ideally, you can get both. Once you get past a certain dps threshold (around 70k), LOH becomes less effective than lifesteal. Just today, I swapped out my dagger that had 500 LOH, 2.8% lifesteal and a socket for one with 3.0 lifesteal and 61% crit damage. Since LOH doesnt proc as much from tornadoes anymore, it has lessened in value versus LS. What this meant for me is that even though I lost 500 LOH, because of the gain in DPS that I got, I only ended up losing a total of 340 life per second (according to d3rawr). At ~130k dps, 1% of lifesteal = 541 LOH for me, which isnt really noticable unless I farm higher MPs than I do (5-7 usually).
But to fully answer your question, Try to gather both if at all possible. If you are under 70k dps, I would try to stay around 900 LOH or more with 6-9% lifesteal, or around 1400-1600 without any lifesteal. It really all depends on what difficulty you farm, and your playstyle. If you have higher dps, then using whirlwind aggressively works really well with the lifesteal as LOH only procs off of the first hit of whirlwind (as far as I know).