I would like to ask/state something. Correct me if I'm wrong but a Skorn is a step backwards from duel wielding unless you have the attack speed to make it worth while. Is that accurate? I used a skorn for a while and got about 20-30k dps upgrade but the attack speed was so slow that I was killed more often MAINLY because the slow attack speed wouldn't allow for efficient skill execution. I would find myself rending far after the time I need it by then I would be about dead and would try to run away but swinging the damn weapon took so long I was dead by the time I started moving. Along with that I was mobbed way too easily and would find myself killed by immobility rather than straight stat deficits. Anyway it just seems like an attack speed reliant build unless you have decent gear to allow a buffer zone for such slow swinging. Which right now I don't believe I do. I am comfy with WW on MP5 for Keys and MP2 for gear/xp farming. Any suggestions or corrections from some more experienced players? Thank you.
Also, my character sheet needs to refresh before anyone gives gear advice. I have about 5 new pieces compared to what you may be looking at at the time of my post and possibly a few hours later. I'm now wearing IK Chest/Gloves, Ice Climbers and got rid of Strongarm/Depth Diggers.
I tried using skorn myself and found very big issues with fury generations. Although I had around 20K more DMG, runs were in fact slower, due to not being able to generate fury fast enough to use sprint all the time. I guess that you can make up this with AS items, but I also consulted my friend who at that time was around 90 Paragon, and just bought a new skorn. He also said it was not worth it.
I would stick to dual wield.
I'm agreeing with the consensus here although I'm sure a Skorn defender will come soaring in soon to let us know why we're wrong. I am, however, with arms open for someone like that as the Skorn HOTA build is pretty bad ass minus it's inferiority to duel wielding and it does kind of bum me out that it's just not up to par. I understand it is definitely a viable option, however I tend to be elitist and as of right now WW is the hot topic from what I can see. Any case, thanks for the opinions so far.
skorn is cheaper (a lot cheaper) then making a dual wield barb, and it's essentially just as effective
Pretty much this. I got my attack speed skorn (1430 dps, 165cd) for 28 million. If I wanted to get any where close with two one handers I would need to spend about 500 million.
I will be making the switch to two 1h's when that gold becomes available however.
IMO it depends on your build, your gear setup and your pockets:
If you are using tornado WW build - a very significant portion of your total DPS comes from the tornado ticks - which uses only MH damage, using Skorn produces far heavier ticks with the tornado than any 1 hander setup could
If you are using skorn for a tornado build - you do need IAS on your gear - base 1.0 APS will not generate enough fury from the tornado ticks - you need to increase it to approximately 1.4 APS to be able to sustain WotB on a single target with a skorn.
For farming low MPs with a skorn you could easily drop life steal passive or even one of the DPS passives and take animosity for extra rage generation which would alleviate the rage starvation to a certain degree, however one of the biggest issues with skorn in low MPs is that mobs die from tornadoes you leave behind too fast - tornado does not tick enough times to generate any rage at all oftenly if mobs die from 2 damage ticks of it
If you are going with another build HOTA or throw - you are by far better off with 1 handers - skorn is far too slow for either of these to keep your WotB up.
Rend - if you are using this to just heal yourself while main bulk of DPS comes from somewhere else - then 1 handers are better as the APS will increase the response time and you basically save yourself from death by having faster response as OP mentions, if you are using rend as one of the main damage dealers - then you are better off with a skorn (builds that use rend to one shot all white mobs - single cast and move on to the next pack)
In terms of the prices - if you are looking to farm low MPs - then you do not need high DPS 1 handers and you can get 200-400k gold cost 1 handers with 1k DPS or so with CC / OS. If your aim is to go for rankings on diabloprogress (some of us laugh at the idea, some people actually take it seriously and invest loads of USD to get there) then you are better off sticking with a skorn because the paper sheet DPS of it will produce the same result as a pair of 1 handers would for about 1/4th the cost: If you are looking at a good high end skorn with 14XX DPS 500 STR and 180+ CD the equivalent you'll need in 1 handers is about 150 STR each + OS + CD>80% + 1180 plus plus plus DPS and we all know the prices for those
End of the day this comparison is equivalent to comparison of a blonde vs brunette, which is sexier???
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Appreciate the effort Demokin it definitely sorted some shit out for me, thank you. I'm feeling an AS duel wield HotA build in the making. Thanks all as well.
IMO it depends on your build, your gear setup and your pockets:
If you are using tornado WW build - a very significant portion of your total DPS comes from the tornado ticks - which uses only MH damage, using Skorn produces far heavier ticks with the tornado than any 1 hander setup could
If you are using skorn for a tornado build - you do need IAS on your gear - base 1.0 APS will not generate enough fury from the tornado ticks - you need to increase it to approximately 1.4 APS to be able to sustain WotB on a single target with a skorn.
For farming low MPs with a skorn you could easily drop life steal passive or even one of the DPS passives and take animosity for extra rage generation which would alleviate the rage starvation to a certain degree, however one of the biggest issues with skorn in low MPs is that mobs die from tornadoes you leave behind too fast - tornado does not tick enough times to generate any rage at all oftenly if mobs die from 2 damage ticks of it
If you are going with another build HOTA or throw - you are by far better off with 1 handers - skorn is far too slow for either of these to keep your WotB up.
Rend - if you are using this to just heal yourself while main bulk of DPS comes from somewhere else - then 1 handers are better as the APS will increase the response time and you basically save yourself from death by having faster response as OP mentions, if you are using rend as one of the main damage dealers - then you are better off with a skorn (builds that use rend to one shot all white mobs - single cast and move on to the next pack)
In terms of the prices - if you are looking to farm low MPs - then you do not need high DPS 1 handers and you can get 200-400k gold cost 1 handers with 1k DPS or so with CC / OS. If your aim is to go for rankings on diabloprogress (some of us laugh at the idea, some people actually take it seriously and invest loads of USD to get there) then you are better off sticking with a skorn because the paper sheet DPS of it will produce the same result as a pair of 1 handers would for about 1/4th the cost: If you are looking at a good high end skorn with 14XX DPS 500 STR and 180+ CD the equivalent you'll need in 1 handers is about 150 STR each + OS + CD>80% + 1180 plus plus plus DPS and we all know the prices for those
End of the day this comparison is equivalent to comparison of a blonde vs brunette, which is sexier???
I would go for Unforgiving passive, with this I can keep sprint up at all times while farming. Stacking some IAS to get it closer to 1.30-1.40 is also going to gelp a lot.
i like skorn better and have survived longer than DW barbs in MP8+, especially in ubers. almost all the time im the last guy standing. i think using skorn is more challenging. looking at most of the DW barbs i see, they only have 35k life or so and low armor (6k-7k). my barb has 76k life and 10.3k armor (without enchantress). my damage is 161.4k dps using battle rage and not WOTB. resists are 980 to 1200, 42.5% crit chance, 427% crit damage, 51% life bonus, and only 3.00% life steal. my crits are between 500k and 700k consistent. Today i added more strength, attack speed, and vita. im now at 3025 strength, 1538 vita, 181.2k dps, 10.1k armor, 81.7k life, same resists, damage reduced from elites 7%. skorn is more fun and hits harder. i use cleave (broad sweep), rend (blood lust), ignore pain (ignorance is bliss), war cry (impunity), battle rage (marauders rage), furious charge (merciless assault). passives are ruthless, nerves of steel, and weapon master.
This is my video, so I wanted to chime in here a bit. As I think the video shows, farming with a skorn can be very effective, but the standard WW is not really optimal for it.
Beyond that, the downside to Skorn is just the lower fury generation from the slower attack speed. If your character sheet lists a higher DPS with the skorn than with DW, you WILL do more DPS with the skorn than with DW IF you can maintain your fury. I have a pair of 1 handers but since buying a lifesteal skorn I only use them on the ZK/siegebreaker fight where maintaining fury is difficult. For key farming and for any of the other ubers I just use by Skorn with the standard WW spec, because its more damage and I don't have any trouble keeping fury up in the other two fights.
Anybody saying that you do more dps with DW and a lower character sheet damage because of the faster attack speed are wrong. The only difference is fury generation, which is much slower with the 2hander. If you don't believe me, check the "true DPS" calculator here http://www.d3rawr.com/d with both item sets. It's explained here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6864416737?page=1 and its a formula that account for the tick speed of the sprint tornadoes and whirlwind.
Also, "bmiha" posting above who said he guarantees he does more damage with his DW setup: You're using a 1200 DPS 1hander. If you're going to compare that you a skorn, you need to compare it to one of relative value, i.e. 1500dps+. Also, I do MP10 ubers and I don't die, because I have 8.4% Lifesteal without having to use bloodthirst.
I dropped a fairly decent Skorn about 2 months ago. I was a big DW proponent so it took me a while to switch over. The extra DPS finally sucked me in however.
I found that I really needed to re-gear and re-skill my Monk to tailor her to the weapon. The loss of Spirit generation was a huge problem at first but now I am farming at experience/hour rates that are much higher than ever before.
One thing that has not been mentioned is that many offensive skills are keyed to weapon damage. A well rolled Skorn will absolutely improve damage output from these skills vs dual wield. For example, my seven sided strike routinely lands single critical hits over 1.3 million dmg and always pours 6 million total damage into the boss I am fighting.
Thanks OP for bringing up this topic into discussion because I'm also having trouble deciding which route I should be taking.
Personally, I think a players decision on whether they should use a skorn or be dual wielding depends on many things. Such as their gear, their build and what their intentions are, that is if they want to farm for xp and items or keys. I will use my barb as an example of what a person that wants to maximize both loot opportunity and xp gain would look like.
Edit: I can't post URL's yet but if you search Zeto#1125 on the diablo site then you could find me.
At the moment, I farm MP2 because as I've said, I want to both gain a good amount of xp in a short amount of time and get a better chance at good loot (hence why I don't do MP1 instead). Now, as to the reason why I choose to farm MP2 as oppose to MP3 or higher, with my current gear and build, I can basically oneshot white mobs with WW in MP2 thus allowing me to continue on the move. For my playstyle, a person who likes to be constantly on the move, I don't like having to backtrack just to kill a mob with a low hp bar. Which, is something I find myself having to do in MP3 since the mobs have more hp and I can't oneshot them like in MP2. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but if a mob doesn't die you get neither xp or loot.
Now back onto the topic of whether you should be using a skorn or be dual wielding. I agree that dual wielding may be the way to go. While with my gear and build I've completely eliminated the idea of "being fury-starved", I think the majority of players will have that problem of not having enough fury because a skorn is so slow. And from that slowness, several other problems may arise, such as losing survivability because LoH or LS isn't as effective. Sure for my intentions this isn't a huge problem because MP2 is fairly easy, but if I were to farm say MP5, I'd get put in my place fairly quickly.
So ultimately, I think that if say you had 500m (just to throw a number out there) to spend on weapons, buying two good weapons for dual wielding is the better option than buying one good LS skorn, since you can stay alive better, have a better fury gen and keep WoTB up.
I have been running with a Skorn to try it out lately (as per profile), and it does do a shit ton of damage, but if you have decent LoH and dual sockets, DW is a better option. (even more so if you have CC or other nice effects on both weapons)
If going for max damage, DW would be the way to go. (my Skysplitter/Blade of Warlord combo does slightly less "paper" DPS, but faaaaaaar more damage in actual play)
I do wish the Grandfather had a better range of stats available though, because that shit is sexy as hell.
In terms of xp /hour. Dual wielding is far superior to a skorn. Max performance is done on mp1-3 depending on gear. And at those mp levels its imposible for you to maintain 100% uptime on wotb with a two hander. Which hurt your xp gain per hour alot.
And before you say it. No running mp5 or 6 cannot reach the ammounts of xp, you get doing on low mp dual wield.
http://us.battle.net...76/hero/3629826
Also, my character sheet needs to refresh before anyone gives gear advice. I have about 5 new pieces compared to what you may be looking at at the time of my post and possibly a few hours later. I'm now wearing IK Chest/Gloves, Ice Climbers and got rid of Strongarm/Depth Diggers.
I would stick to dual wield.
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Pretty much this. I got my attack speed skorn (1430 dps, 165cd) for 28 million. If I wanted to get any where close with two one handers I would need to spend about 500 million.
I will be making the switch to two 1h's when that gold becomes available however.
If you are using tornado WW build - a very significant portion of your total DPS comes from the tornado ticks - which uses only MH damage, using Skorn produces far heavier ticks with the tornado than any 1 hander setup could
If you are using skorn for a tornado build - you do need IAS on your gear - base 1.0 APS will not generate enough fury from the tornado ticks - you need to increase it to approximately 1.4 APS to be able to sustain WotB on a single target with a skorn.
For farming low MPs with a skorn you could easily drop life steal passive or even one of the DPS passives and take animosity for extra rage generation which would alleviate the rage starvation to a certain degree, however one of the biggest issues with skorn in low MPs is that mobs die from tornadoes you leave behind too fast - tornado does not tick enough times to generate any rage at all oftenly if mobs die from 2 damage ticks of it
If you are going with another build HOTA or throw - you are by far better off with 1 handers - skorn is far too slow for either of these to keep your WotB up.
Rend - if you are using this to just heal yourself while main bulk of DPS comes from somewhere else - then 1 handers are better as the APS will increase the response time and you basically save yourself from death by having faster response as OP mentions, if you are using rend as one of the main damage dealers - then you are better off with a skorn (builds that use rend to one shot all white mobs - single cast and move on to the next pack)
In terms of the prices - if you are looking to farm low MPs - then you do not need high DPS 1 handers and you can get 200-400k gold cost 1 handers with 1k DPS or so with CC / OS. If your aim is to go for rankings on diabloprogress (some of us laugh at the idea, some people actually take it seriously and invest loads of USD to get there) then you are better off sticking with a skorn because the paper sheet DPS of it will produce the same result as a pair of 1 handers would for about 1/4th the cost: If you are looking at a good high end skorn with 14XX DPS 500 STR and 180+ CD the equivalent you'll need in 1 handers is about 150 STR each + OS + CD>80% + 1180 plus plus plus DPS and we all know the prices for those
End of the day this comparison is equivalent to comparison of a blonde vs brunette, which is sexier???
LS / LoH is unaffected by DW or skorn, both grant you up to 2k LOH and 6% LS
I would go for Unforgiving passive, with this I can keep sprint up at all times while farming. Stacking some IAS to get it closer to 1.30-1.40 is also going to gelp a lot.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Svenny-2142/hero/11952139
a nice vid showing skorn build:
This is my video, so I wanted to chime in here a bit. As I think the video shows, farming with a skorn can be very effective, but the standard WW is not really optimal for it.
Beyond that, the downside to Skorn is just the lower fury generation from the slower attack speed. If your character sheet lists a higher DPS with the skorn than with DW, you WILL do more DPS with the skorn than with DW IF you can maintain your fury. I have a pair of 1 handers but since buying a lifesteal skorn I only use them on the ZK/siegebreaker fight where maintaining fury is difficult. For key farming and for any of the other ubers I just use by Skorn with the standard WW spec, because its more damage and I don't have any trouble keeping fury up in the other two fights.
Anybody saying that you do more dps with DW and a lower character sheet damage because of the faster attack speed are wrong. The only difference is fury generation, which is much slower with the 2hander. If you don't believe me, check the "true DPS" calculator here http://www.d3rawr.com/d with both item sets. It's explained here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6864416737?page=1 and its a formula that account for the tick speed of the sprint tornadoes and whirlwind.
Also, "bmiha" posting above who said he guarantees he does more damage with his DW setup: You're using a 1200 DPS 1hander. If you're going to compare that you a skorn, you need to compare it to one of relative value, i.e. 1500dps+. Also, I do MP10 ubers and I don't die, because I have 8.4% Lifesteal without having to use bloodthirst.
I found that I really needed to re-gear and re-skill my Monk to tailor her to the weapon. The loss of Spirit generation was a huge problem at first but now I am farming at experience/hour rates that are much higher than ever before.
One thing that has not been mentioned is that many offensive skills are keyed to weapon damage. A well rolled Skorn will absolutely improve damage output from these skills vs dual wield. For example, my seven sided strike routinely lands single critical hits over 1.3 million dmg and always pours 6 million total damage into the boss I am fighting.
Personally, I think a players decision on whether they should use a skorn or be dual wielding depends on many things. Such as their gear, their build and what their intentions are, that is if they want to farm for xp and items or keys. I will use my barb as an example of what a person that wants to maximize both loot opportunity and xp gain would look like.
Edit: I can't post URL's yet but if you search Zeto#1125 on the diablo site then you could find me.
At the moment, I farm MP2 because as I've said, I want to both gain a good amount of xp in a short amount of time and get a better chance at good loot (hence why I don't do MP1 instead). Now, as to the reason why I choose to farm MP2 as oppose to MP3 or higher, with my current gear and build, I can basically oneshot white mobs with WW in MP2 thus allowing me to continue on the move. For my playstyle, a person who likes to be constantly on the move, I don't like having to backtrack just to kill a mob with a low hp bar. Which, is something I find myself having to do in MP3 since the mobs have more hp and I can't oneshot them like in MP2. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but if a mob doesn't die you get neither xp or loot.
Now back onto the topic of whether you should be using a skorn or be dual wielding. I agree that dual wielding may be the way to go. While with my gear and build I've completely eliminated the idea of "being fury-starved", I think the majority of players will have that problem of not having enough fury because a skorn is so slow. And from that slowness, several other problems may arise, such as losing survivability because LoH or LS isn't as effective. Sure for my intentions this isn't a huge problem because MP2 is fairly easy, but if I were to farm say MP5, I'd get put in my place fairly quickly.
So ultimately, I think that if say you had 500m (just to throw a number out there) to spend on weapons, buying two good weapons for dual wielding is the better option than buying one good LS skorn, since you can stay alive better, have a better fury gen and keep WoTB up.
If going for max damage, DW would be the way to go. (my Skysplitter/Blade of Warlord combo does slightly less "paper" DPS, but faaaaaaar more damage in actual play)
I do wish the Grandfather had a better range of stats available though, because that shit is sexy as hell.
And before you say it. No running mp5 or 6 cannot reach the ammounts of xp, you get doing on low mp dual wield.
Currently played toon: https://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Rage-2973/hero/97362116