A while back on DiabloFans, I noticed a poll that someone ran on the forums on which set people preferred/looked forward to the most. While this was still in the Lightning Whirlwind days, pre SoH fix, IK was leading the way with Raekors trailing far behind the other two. This prompted me to try and think why no one was as excited about Raekors or would find it as appealing to the other sets.
Fast forward three weeks, i'm currently closing in on paragon 500 with every single Barbarian set in my repertoire along with all the flavorful legendaries one could have for any popular barbarian builds these days, including mix-match dual-final-set-bonuses. Yes, i've been extremely lucky and no, this isn't a thread about my drops. However I do want to examine some of these initial receptions and perceptions people have about the different sets people have for barbarians.
While trying to complete my third and final set of the three, Earthquake, I had access to the complete other two sets. What I had found during that time while bouncing back and forth between builds and bonuses was quite interesting and contrary to the initial polled reactions people had. Often a perceived underdog and lesser-discussed set, I made it a mission to try and discover why Raekors wasn't as appealing as the others and maybe find out some redeeming qualities to it. Furious Charge gaining every rune certainly wasn't as flashy as the other sets. But here are my findings:
For Immortal Kings, I was able to stack around 100% elemental damage of Fire, Lightning, and Physical to test out most of the runes properly in various torments. I found that it had great flexibility in creating slightly higher torment survivability with Together As One, although it sort of caps out near Torment 6 when the amount of damage you take actually kills the Ancients quite often and faster than the cooldown of the skill, sometimes providing problems in maintaining them. The Council Rises, along with my perfect AS rolled Taskers and Theos gave my ancients the ability to crit very often for over 12 million at a time. This however, was undermined by the randomness of the AI in terms of targeting when faced with multiple mobs, which happens to be a great portion of the gameplay. This "drawback" proved too inefficient at killing through regular mobs at a faster pace that you'd come to expect from a well-built and groomed Whirlwind build. However they excelled at killing single mobs (read: annihilates single rift guardians) over almost any other Barbarian build I tried. Ancients' Fury is a very volatile rune, as many have predicted and tried. It allows for reliability in Fury-heavy builds such as Boulder Toss and/or HoTA variations. Unfortunately, as controllable as these situations are, their fury regeneration is often plagued too by the clunky AI where the ancients often get stuck in a limbo when off attacking a mob near the edge of your screen/their leash range. With all of these things in consideration, I would place Immortal Kings 4 piece bonus *THIRD PLACE* overall when compared to the other two sets. I do want to point out that the set bonuses leading up to the 4 piece are all extremely strong.
Raekors-- What Immortal Kings lacked, Raekors surpassed.
Fire damage-- Many people these days are stacking fire damage. The Council Rises as Ancients do incredible fire damage. How does Raekors stand up to them? As the Ancients were off doing 12mill crits to whatever random mobs they often pleased, Battering Ram Furious Charge was a controlled and often spammable (thank you Merciless Assault) attack that would crit every single mob the charge grouped up with Dreadnaught rune for 20-40 million damage per mob. This was the surgical efficiency that The Council Rises lacked. It made white mob grinding lightning fast even when compared to beefed up fire Ancients.
Fury heavy builds: Boulder Toss and HoTA variations and more. Ancients' Fury made it possible to sustain such builds with or without the help of a primary attack. Could Raekors do the same? Thanks to the Stamina rune and the spammability of Merciless Assault, I felt that on-demand fury was actually better than IK Ancient's Fury. To get a full Fury bar, you have to wait for the Ancients to attack for somewhere close to 5 seconds unhindered by clunky AI. With Raekor's charge, you get a full bar instantly so you can get back to throwing large rocks or slamming that big hammer immediately. This on-demand full fury bar function felt like a cornerstone in making any build I wanted to work. Even for less fury heavy builds like Whirlwind, a charge once in a blue moon could keep you Whirlwinding for the next 30 seconds unimpeded. I never felt as if I had to run something like Warcry: Charge! or a primary to generate fury. Did I mention that you also deal very solid damage every time you charge?
Survivability. Together as One, essentially permanent Ignore Pain is tough to beat. How can Raekors possibly stand up to Immortal Kings in this department? The answer wasn't as straightforward or as simple. I soon discovered that Raekors contribution to survivability was through another method; one that required a much higher learning curve than Immortal Kings (in which IK rune is passive, requires no such curve). The combination of Battering Ram (increased damage), Bull Rush (stunlock control), and Dreadnaught (aoe monk Cyclone-esque group up) allowed Raekors to surpass IK in the highest of torment levels. While Together as One gave a flat damage reduction, they still suffered from survival problems. Raekors was a built-in, reliable and vital tool that never went away. You can literally stunlock entire groups including elites from 100%-0% by using Furious Charge. While stunlocking, you're doing incredible damage, especially when stacking fire damage. Dreadnaught allowed you to take the fight away from dangerous affixes such as exploding Frozen orbs, or lethal Arcane Enchants, while grouping in more enemies for the kill. With this kind of reliable damage and control, I didn't need Together as One to survive.
By my anecdotal experience, I believe Raekor's strength in reliability, damage, control, and build-making/sustaining abilities are either parallel or surpass Immortal Kings in every department. I hope that fellow Barbarians will continue to embrace Raekors hopefully as much as the other sets too, or be just as excited to completed the set as they do for Earthquake or Immortal Kings. The potential is there, and I hope this inspires some really interesting builds to come.
I think Raekor's set is the most interesting and one I'd like to try, but it's also the hardest to acquire (for me at least), and it doesn't do anything interesting until you have the 6-piece bonus.
In contrast, IK can do interesting things at 3 pieces (passive fury generation and some bonus healing) but the 4-piece permanent Ancients seems the least style-defining of the 3 sets. However, it's probably also the most universally useful. It's more of an add-on to a build for me rather than the impetus for designing a build.
The Earth set is also interesting, especially with Lut Socks and Earthen Might. It's a tough call between Earth and Raekor's, but I played with Dreadnaught for a bit at level 60 in patch 2.0, and I really like the way it works.
The problem with IK is that we are forced to use a fury regenerator such as frenzy, cleave, bash etc *losing out DPS*. Whereas with Earth and Raekor we could drop those and put in leap / furious charge.
In terms of reliability i would say Earth is better than Raekor because it is easier to kite and does more damage.
In terms of awesomeness i would say Raekor all the way. *i just feel barbaric when i charge em mobs*
I too have all 3 sets, with a massive array of items to contribute to various builds. What I generally find is Raekor's is fun and works amazingly well in Rifts at any torment, **except for on the final boss**. The larger the group, the better raekor performs (thank you Bloodshed Rune), but on final bosses, even with 20% CDR (Paragon + Diamond in Helm), Charge has nearly 7 second cooldown. I've recently been using Raekor's with lightning on one of my barbs: Leland - Lightning Raekor Barb
Generally the set performs better with Fire gear (Battering Ram effect), but I find this combo actually allows me to run max fury and still survive pretty well at higher torment (Parthan Defenders). I have a few pieces of gear to try out still with this combo, but still don't see it working as well as my Cold Leap barb on T5 / T6: Lela - Cold Leap-Quake Barb
Overall, I don't place IK set as a singular set because of the Ancient bug where they often stand around doing nothing. I have been fortunate enough to get some amazing Tri-fecta Tasker and stack around 90 Fire damage while using Council Rises. Ancients crit upwards of 18mil (using Wrath of Berseker) and attack super fast, but I still clear slower than on my Leaper. Mixing IK with Raekors or Earth has proven to be the most successful for me.
problem wtih Raekors set is the flawed mechanic of Furious Charge...has a very long cast time and an even longer recovery time. Your character is in limbo for 1-2 seconds at the end of the charge, it should have a smoother effect.
@Timoxa: Your "my barb" link isn't working correctly... check the URL
@Philippos: No, charge doesn't have a 2 second lag at the end... you can spam it almost instantly upon arrival at the end, and there is zero cast time when you press it. Perhaps you play with higher latency than me, but I don't see any "limbo" when charging.
1) Furious Charge is still buggy and clumsy. It's very easy to go no where with a charge due to pathing issues (the ability should path around things as best it can rather than doing nothing). The slight delay due to the animation at the end interrupts seamless and cohesive gameplay as well. Blizzard should tidy up this ability and that would help a lot.
2) Raekors is an inherently weak set compared to IK and Earth against single targets. Why? Because Furious Charge is very weak against single targets. Fury generation falls significantly.
Where Raekors excels:
High speed, consistent 4+ target combat where charging up to 200 fury quickly and dumping a Boulder while stacking physical damage (and maybe a 300th Spear) make a lot of sense. Example: clearing a rift up to the guardian. It is possible (using the IK Boulder Breaker and RoRG) to combine both sets, which could be quite good as a modification to over come this at the rift guardian. Not tested as I have not looted a BB to date.
Not as good, but Seismic and HoTA work okay instead of Boulder Toss. In my observation, the Raekors set is by far most effective with a Charge - Boulder Toss - Charge - Boulder Toss type combo though.
A clanmate has good success using this with WW - Dust Devils on a smaller number of targets, but its still no where near as effective as IK with Ancients Fury at sustainable fighting (Rift Guardians).
Regardless, 200 million boulder crits are hilariously fun.
I have the ability to go full Reakors (shoulders, chest, helm, pants) and Ik set (gloves, belt, boots) basically the fire HOTA build you use in one of your videos. I have tried it and found myself moving down it torments because i was dying and went back to my current gear ( http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/monsterkill-1616/hero/5323899 ). I am considering going back to this build and trying it again but don't know if its truly worth it. It is viable for t5/6 without using the unity cheese? I also had a resist question. I have just over 800 all resist and can do T5 at the moment, i see people with around 1,200 that are farming t6, do i need 1,200 or is my 800 fine?. Would love to go raekors and Ik set with stormgaurds and makes no sense to me that my current gear beats it. Any feedback and advise would be great.
- I can go with the following rotation (40%+ CdR): charge, charge, charge... by the time I stop I have run around the map gathered 3-4 elit pack end killed them.
bad:
- others in the group can't keep with it. Even EQ barbs.
- Dreadnough, you don't want to pull the mobs out of EQ, Black Hole, Piranhas, Cyclone Strike etc. Sometimes I want to turn off just this rune.
I would like to see a Raekor barb in a group on high torment.
Been using Raekors and a Physical Stack to solo T6 Rifts (15 minute clear) and mostly T6 Bounties (for gold) pretty efficiently . You can view "Gnada's" build in my profile link below.
Need around 15 million toughness to make this work without the Unity - Immortal Follower "feature". Less of course if you are going that route. Ess of Johan of the follower helps a lot.
Reapers Wraps and Swords to Plowshares help a lot to overcome the single target damage output.
I've also stacked 71% bonus damage to elites, which is the real saving grace. Layering in physical damage with Furious Charge, Rend, Run Like the Wind, and WW adds up fast. Seeing WW tick for 5 million damage on elites if funny. Not as good as some other options for T6 grouping or soloing, but it's what I've got, so I'm using it.
Mixing up my "farming" quite a bit right now to try to keep the game fresh while I hunt for my last Piece of Leapquake (Earth shoulders or pants).
Fast forward three weeks, i'm currently closing in on paragon 500 with every single Barbarian set in my repertoire along with all the flavorful legendaries one could have for any popular barbarian builds these days, including mix-match dual-final-set-bonuses. Yes, i've been extremely lucky and no, this isn't a thread about my drops. However I do want to examine some of these initial receptions and perceptions people have about the different sets people have for barbarians.
While trying to complete my third and final set of the three, Earthquake, I had access to the complete other two sets. What I had found during that time while bouncing back and forth between builds and bonuses was quite interesting and contrary to the initial polled reactions people had. Often a perceived underdog and lesser-discussed set, I made it a mission to try and discover why Raekors wasn't as appealing as the others and maybe find out some redeeming qualities to it. Furious Charge gaining every rune certainly wasn't as flashy as the other sets. But here are my findings:
For Immortal Kings, I was able to stack around 100% elemental damage of Fire, Lightning, and Physical to test out most of the runes properly in various torments. I found that it had great flexibility in creating slightly higher torment survivability with Together As One, although it sort of caps out near Torment 6 when the amount of damage you take actually kills the Ancients quite often and faster than the cooldown of the skill, sometimes providing problems in maintaining them. The Council Rises, along with my perfect AS rolled Taskers and Theos gave my ancients the ability to crit very often for over 12 million at a time. This however, was undermined by the randomness of the AI in terms of targeting when faced with multiple mobs, which happens to be a great portion of the gameplay. This "drawback" proved too inefficient at killing through regular mobs at a faster pace that you'd come to expect from a well-built and groomed Whirlwind build. However they excelled at killing single mobs (read: annihilates single rift guardians) over almost any other Barbarian build I tried. Ancients' Fury is a very volatile rune, as many have predicted and tried. It allows for reliability in Fury-heavy builds such as Boulder Toss and/or HoTA variations. Unfortunately, as controllable as these situations are, their fury regeneration is often plagued too by the clunky AI where the ancients often get stuck in a limbo when off attacking a mob near the edge of your screen/their leash range. With all of these things in consideration, I would place Immortal Kings 4 piece bonus *THIRD PLACE* overall when compared to the other two sets. I do want to point out that the set bonuses leading up to the 4 piece are all extremely strong.
Raekors-- What Immortal Kings lacked, Raekors surpassed.
Fire damage-- Many people these days are stacking fire damage. The Council Rises as Ancients do incredible fire damage. How does Raekors stand up to them? As the Ancients were off doing 12mill crits to whatever random mobs they often pleased, Battering Ram Furious Charge was a controlled and often spammable (thank you Merciless Assault) attack that would crit every single mob the charge grouped up with Dreadnaught rune for 20-40 million damage per mob. This was the surgical efficiency that The Council Rises lacked. It made white mob grinding lightning fast even when compared to beefed up fire Ancients.
Fury heavy builds: Boulder Toss and HoTA variations and more. Ancients' Fury made it possible to sustain such builds with or without the help of a primary attack. Could Raekors do the same? Thanks to the Stamina rune and the spammability of Merciless Assault, I felt that on-demand fury was actually better than IK Ancient's Fury. To get a full Fury bar, you have to wait for the Ancients to attack for somewhere close to 5 seconds unhindered by clunky AI. With Raekor's charge, you get a full bar instantly so you can get back to throwing large rocks or slamming that big hammer immediately. This on-demand full fury bar function felt like a cornerstone in making any build I wanted to work. Even for less fury heavy builds like Whirlwind, a charge once in a blue moon could keep you Whirlwinding for the next 30 seconds unimpeded. I never felt as if I had to run something like Warcry: Charge! or a primary to generate fury. Did I mention that you also deal very solid damage every time you charge?
Survivability. Together as One, essentially permanent Ignore Pain is tough to beat. How can Raekors possibly stand up to Immortal Kings in this department? The answer wasn't as straightforward or as simple. I soon discovered that Raekors contribution to survivability was through another method; one that required a much higher learning curve than Immortal Kings (in which IK rune is passive, requires no such curve). The combination of Battering Ram (increased damage), Bull Rush (stunlock control), and Dreadnaught (aoe monk Cyclone-esque group up) allowed Raekors to surpass IK in the highest of torment levels. While Together as One gave a flat damage reduction, they still suffered from survival problems. Raekors was a built-in, reliable and vital tool that never went away. You can literally stunlock entire groups including elites from 100%-0% by using Furious Charge. While stunlocking, you're doing incredible damage, especially when stacking fire damage. Dreadnaught allowed you to take the fight away from dangerous affixes such as exploding Frozen orbs, or lethal Arcane Enchants, while grouping in more enemies for the kill. With this kind of reliable damage and control, I didn't need Together as One to survive.
By my anecdotal experience, I believe Raekor's strength in reliability, damage, control, and build-making/sustaining abilities are either parallel or surpass Immortal Kings in every department. I hope that fellow Barbarians will continue to embrace Raekors hopefully as much as the other sets too, or be just as excited to completed the set as they do for Earthquake or Immortal Kings. The potential is there, and I hope this inspires some really interesting builds to come.
In contrast, IK can do interesting things at 3 pieces (passive fury generation and some bonus healing) but the 4-piece permanent Ancients seems the least style-defining of the 3 sets. However, it's probably also the most universally useful. It's more of an add-on to a build for me rather than the impetus for designing a build.
The Earth set is also interesting, especially with Lut Socks and Earthen Might. It's a tough call between Earth and Raekor's, but I played with Dreadnaught for a bit at level 60 in patch 2.0, and I really like the way it works.
In terms of reliability i would say Earth is better than Raekor because it is easier to kite and does more damage.
In terms of awesomeness i would say Raekor all the way. *i just feel barbaric when i charge em mobs*
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Eiduart-1819/hero/46734235
*This is my T6 bounty setup* for high torment 5-6 rifting i swap unity for SOJ / keep it if my group has unity, and switch animosity with ruthless.
edit: still farming for earth set T_T
That provides me mass spammable control as well as decent DPS.
Here is a link to my build.
And my barb
Generally the set performs better with Fire gear (Battering Ram effect), but I find this combo actually allows me to run max fury and still survive pretty well at higher torment (Parthan Defenders). I have a few pieces of gear to try out still with this combo, but still don't see it working as well as my Cold Leap barb on T5 / T6: Lela - Cold Leap-Quake Barb
Overall, I don't place IK set as a singular set because of the Ancient bug where they often stand around doing nothing. I have been fortunate enough to get some amazing Tri-fecta Tasker and stack around 90 Fire damage while using Council Rises. Ancients crit upwards of 18mil (using Wrath of Berseker) and attack super fast, but I still clear slower than on my Leaper. Mixing IK with Raekors or Earth has proven to be the most successful for me.
@Philippos: No, charge doesn't have a 2 second lag at the end... you can spam it almost instantly upon arrival at the end, and there is zero cast time when you press it. Perhaps you play with higher latency than me, but I don't see any "limbo" when charging.
1) Furious Charge is still buggy and clumsy. It's very easy to go no where with a charge due to pathing issues (the ability should path around things as best it can rather than doing nothing). The slight delay due to the animation at the end interrupts seamless and cohesive gameplay as well. Blizzard should tidy up this ability and that would help a lot.
2) Raekors is an inherently weak set compared to IK and Earth against single targets. Why? Because Furious Charge is very weak against single targets. Fury generation falls significantly.
Where Raekors excels:
High speed, consistent 4+ target combat where charging up to 200 fury quickly and dumping a Boulder while stacking physical damage (and maybe a 300th Spear) make a lot of sense. Example: clearing a rift up to the guardian. It is possible (using the IK Boulder Breaker and RoRG) to combine both sets, which could be quite good as a modification to over come this at the rift guardian. Not tested as I have not looted a BB to date.
Not as good, but Seismic and HoTA work okay instead of Boulder Toss. In my observation, the Raekors set is by far most effective with a Charge - Boulder Toss - Charge - Boulder Toss type combo though.
A clanmate has good success using this with WW - Dust Devils on a smaller number of targets, but its still no where near as effective as IK with Ancients Fury at sustainable fighting (Rift Guardians).
Regardless, 200 million boulder crits are hilariously fun.
good:
- I can go with the following rotation (40%+ CdR): charge, charge, charge... by the time I stop I have run around the map gathered 3-4 elit pack end killed them.
bad:
- others in the group can't keep with it. Even EQ barbs.
- Dreadnough, you don't want to pull the mobs out of EQ, Black Hole, Piranhas, Cyclone Strike etc. Sometimes I want to turn off just this rune.
I would like to see a Raekor barb in a group on high torment.
Need around 15 million toughness to make this work without the Unity - Immortal Follower "feature". Less of course if you are going that route. Ess of Johan of the follower helps a lot.
Reapers Wraps and Swords to Plowshares help a lot to overcome the single target damage output.
I've also stacked 71% bonus damage to elites, which is the real saving grace. Layering in physical damage with Furious Charge, Rend, Run Like the Wind, and WW adds up fast. Seeing WW tick for 5 million damage on elites if funny. Not as good as some other options for T6 grouping or soloing, but it's what I've got, so I'm using it.
Mixing up my "farming" quite a bit right now to try to keep the game fresh while I hunt for my last Piece of Leapquake (Earth shoulders or pants).